Psyche's First Task: Systemizing

What is Systemizing



The brain looks for patterns for different reasons. First, patterns enable us to predict the future. If the church bell chimes exactly ten times every Sunday morning at exactly 10am, a mind that can systemize can then predict it will do so again this Sunday at exactly that time. Patterns in the church bells may not be a matter of life or death, but you can immediately see how such a general pattern-recognition system might have wide applicability - anything from predicting how prices vary in the market to how crops vary in different seasons.  Patterns also enable us to figure out how things work by suggesting experiments we can perform, to confirm predictions.  If I put a battery into my clock, the hands start to move.  That's a nice simple example, but that same ability to spot patterns can enable you to figure out a new device that has no instruction manual, or enable you to repair a device that has multiple components. In each case, the trick is to manipulate one of these componoents at a time, and see what happens - what pattern is produced.

The other valuable thing about patterns is that they enable us to  play with one variable at a time, to modify a system, thereby inventing a new one.  If you make a canoe thinner, it moves through water faster.  If you change the weight of an arrow, it can fly further, faster, and with greater accuracy. You can see that spoting such patterns is key to our ability to invent and improve.

Finally, spotting patterns provides us with direct access to the truth, since our predictions are either confirmed as true or false.  The church bell either does or does not ring as predicted.  Philosophers and theologians have long debated what we mean by truth.  My definition of truth is neither mystical, nor divine, nor is it obscured by unnecessary philosophical complexity. 

Truth is (pure and simply) repeatable, verifiable patterns.  Sometimes we call such patterns 'laws' or 'rules', but essentially they are just patterns.  Sometimes the truth might not be all that useful (e.g. the British postman uses red elastic bands to bundle the envelopes), and sometimes the truth might be very useful (e.g. an extra chromosome 21 will switch a baby to develop Down Syndrome).  Sometimes, the truth will reflect a natural pattern (e.g., left handedness is more common in boys than girls), and sometimes the truth will reflect a social pattern (e.g., in India you shake your head to show agreement).  But it is the repeatability of a pattern that elevates it to the status of truth.

Work cited, Zero Degrees of Empathy: a new theory of human cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011

....and what do you do for a crust?

That's Australian for 'what do you do for a living? What's your job?  For some years, whenever I am asked what I do for a crust, I have to suppress the wicked urge to reply: "I steal them from the ducks in the park!" because not everybody gets my sense of humour and they think I'm being a smart-arse.

Which I am.

Then they suspect I'm trying to make them look stupid - and with some people, they don't need my help. They're doing just fine all by themselves; and as stupidity is a kind of protection against impressions one cannot deal with; heck, I'll admit to being a tad envious of that bovine banal intelligence.

Just a tad.

But back to what we do for a crust and whether or not there is a scientific connection between breadcrusts and curly hair, there is certainly a connection between what some people did for a crust and ovens.

Will we ever Break the Chain?

The phrase 'banality of evil' relates to the fact that tens of thousands of ordinary individual people were complicit in the Final Solution. Many of them could not be charged with war crims later because they were just doing their job, just following orders, or just responsible for a tiny link in the chain. They followed orders mechanically and without questioning them. Consider the simplification of the chain:

Person A: I simply had the list of Jews in my municipality. I did not round up the Jews but I did pass this list on when requested to do so.

Person B: I was told to go to these addresses, arrest these people and take them to the train station. That's all I did.

Person C: My job was to open the doors of the train - that was it.

Person D: My job was to direct the prisoners on to the train.

Person E: My job was to close the doors, not to ask where the train was going or why.

Person F: My job was simply to drive the train.

[Through all the other small links in the chain that led to......]

Person Z: My job was simply to turn on the showers out of which the poison gas was emitted.

The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference

- Ian Kershaw

Indifference.

White Astrid Rose

   ...why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?

So................what do you do ..for a crust?