Simplicity

I imagine that drawing a stroke for each goat might have been the simplest method to describe how many goats I have - as long I was poor with || or ||| goats only. However, when I imagine myself richer, with |||||||||||||||||||||||| goats, the description looks a bit awkward. Something like XXIV, although more complex, looks to fit the purpose better(10+10+5-1). Old Romans did quite well with it, but simple adding, multiplying or dividing might have required a considerable mind power. Arabs brought us from Indians a further complication that transformed MCMXXVIII into 1928 (1*10³+9*10²+2*10¹+8*10⁰) and simplified even more our descriptions of quantifiable phenomena. This "complicated simplification" alone allowed for a number of pretty complex mathematical operations with much less mind power than ever before - and math and science simply flourished. The invention of calculating machines and later computers and programming languages (that enable a peculiar "description of the world") put at our fingertips an enormous computing power - and strangely enough - the first glimpses of emergence at work. A rise in complexity of our descriptive methods, obviously did enormously simplify "our description of the world and ourselves within it" and enabled us to tap phenomena "out there" we simply could not before.

The ever evolving "our description of the world and ourselves within it" with little, if any, hope to be able to describe the world entirely - seems to be our curse and our blessing. Knowing that we will never be able to know "absolutely" everything gives sense to our lives.

I imagine that there is no simpler way in "describing our world and ourselves within it" than indicating a repetition of an item within it or a part of it. By a simple statement - "and do so again on another side" we eliminate a need for detailed description of another side creating in progress symmetry. By varying the "do so" we could achieve a variety of symmetries (including transformations) and patterns quite sufficient to address the most of our needs in simplifying "our description of the world and ourselves within it". And it does not have to end with spatial repetitions - it can be easily expanded on temporal repetitions. As a result we have cycles, rhythms, music... and such basic concepts like cause & effect or time and space.

Yoram Bonneh, of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, and colleagues have been showing people a swirling pattern of blue dots superimposed on some stationary yellow dots. Focusing attention on the blue dots makes the yellow dots disappear. Jack Pettigrew, a neuroscientist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, believes that the illusion results from the left hemisphere of the brain (parietal lobe) suppressing sensory information that conflicts with its idea of what the world should be like; the right sees the world how it really is.

Nature Science Update

When simplified, our "description of the world and ourselves within it" will continue to denote everything denoted before and with less exceptions - leaving some room to describe what we were not able to describe before. And - we will start noticing "things" we did not notice before.

Some patients that have that part (parietal lobe) of their brain damaged, apparently can perceive only one object at a time. This indicates an inability to construct a comprehensive "description of the world and ourselves within it" based on "lower level descriptions". Consequently, expectations raised will be partial, resulting in a partial perception that can manifest itself as perception of a single object at the time.

An enigma described in the article "A Brain in Doubt Leaves it Out", that can be found in the archives of Nature Science Update, indicates existence of a "generator of expectations" based on "our description of the world and ourselves within it". I would caution though against premature conclusions that there is a single "description of the world that surrounds us" within us, and that the right (irrational) side of the brain sees the world as it really is. I imagine that there are layers upon layers of "(partial) descriptions" that interact horizontally and vertically. In such a scenario, the area in parietal lobe might be a kind of coordinator or decision maker that unifies numerous and sometimes-conflicting "descriptions of the world and ourselves within it".

A somewhat simplistic division of our brain into the left (rational) and right (irrational) sides hides many dangers. Although inconclusive, findings that indicate that other parts of our brain could take over some of the functionality of damaged parts should not be discarded.