Identity crisis
I spent last all Friday trying to find a fault in my software. It was quite a difficult problem, involving five different computers and special software to set up the condition in which it failed. Progress was slow, and by the end of Friday I hadn't found the fault. So I left work on Friday evening with a definite feeling that I had had enough for the week and I would not even think about the problem for the weekend. I emphatically closed the mental file, and later in the evening tried, unsuccesfully, to do some design work on a project of my own.
Then, at some time in the small hours of Saturday morking, I woke up and realised that I knew exactly what was going on in my system at work. An assumption I had been making was not true, and all my testing had been based on that assumption, and aus thus pointless because of that. However, ass soon as I saw the faulty assumption, I knew what the real fault was, and that it woulld be easy to fix. So I rolled over and went back to sleep, startled but pleased.
In the morning I had no recollection of my nocturnal discovery. But on Saturday evening, for some reason, I was looking foreward to the week ahead. Amd I remembered that I had solved my problem in the middle of the preceding night. I though that it would turn out to be one of those phantasmagorical memories one sometimes has of dreams, which fall apart when remembed while awake. But to my great surprise, the solution was as clearly right in the light of day as it had been in the dark watches. And I had a distinct feeling as I recalled it of a sort of mental opening of the filing cabinet - the retrieval of something that had been left for me to get out when needed by some other part of the brain.
Which is where I come to the subjecty of this ramble. What am "I"? "I" don't feel that I solved that problem. Indeed, so far as I can tell, the problem was solved while "I" was fast asleep. This is more than a little worrying. I earn my living by writing complex software, and I do it, according to a number of people (fortunately including my employers), rather well. Indeed, it is probably the only thing that I do do well - the rest of my life I bumble through tryng not to fail too badly rather than trying to succeed. And yet this ability, the source of my worldly wealth, such piblic esteem as I may have, and such self confidence as I may have, is generated by a mechanism over which I have, apparently, no control at all. So far as I have any control over that faculty, I told it to shut down for the weekend or, failing that, to work on my own project. It did neither, carrying on working on the work problem completely oblivious to my conscious wishes.
This reinforces my view that, so far as "I" exist as an entity, it is not as Lord and Master of my own facilties, but rather as the spokesman or PR person for a group of entities which resemble a quarrelsome revolutionary cabal rather then a co-ordinated team. One of that team wone might call the geek or problem solver. But also in the team are the dirty old man, only after one thing, and the altruist, who genuinely wants to help other people. Others include the glutton, only after one (different) thing, and the romeo, full of truly romatic love. Two close colleagues are the prevaricator, who always wants a second pinion and to wait longer to see if it will be better in a while, and the lazy git, who wonders whether anything needs to be done at all. And the conscious "I" has to make sense of this cacophony of disjoint voices.
Robert Heinlein described man as not so much the rational animal as the rationalising animal. I think this is very true - perhaps even truer than he meant. I thimk that all our real thiniking occurs in these lower, uncontrolled, levels of the mind. It is the the function of the spokesman of the group to comvert the decision thrown up by the real thinkers into words. But that spokesman, who is "I" doesn't think at all. All it does is to wrap the decisions of other levels in words. And sometimes it cannot find words to wrap those thoughts, which we then ascribe to "gut feel" or intuition. Such unvoiceable thoughts differ from the voiced ones only in that the lower levels have not offered up enough information for the spokesman to be able to clad them in convincing words.
Then, at some time in the small hours of Saturday morking, I woke up and realised that I knew exactly what was going on in my system at work. An assumption I had been making was not true, and all my testing had been based on that assumption, and aus thus pointless because of that. However, ass soon as I saw the faulty assumption, I knew what the real fault was, and that it woulld be easy to fix. So I rolled over and went back to sleep, startled but pleased.
In the morning I had no recollection of my nocturnal discovery. But on Saturday evening, for some reason, I was looking foreward to the week ahead. Amd I remembered that I had solved my problem in the middle of the preceding night. I though that it would turn out to be one of those phantasmagorical memories one sometimes has of dreams, which fall apart when remembed while awake. But to my great surprise, the solution was as clearly right in the light of day as it had been in the dark watches. And I had a distinct feeling as I recalled it of a sort of mental opening of the filing cabinet - the retrieval of something that had been left for me to get out when needed by some other part of the brain.
Which is where I come to the subjecty of this ramble. What am "I"? "I" don't feel that I solved that problem. Indeed, so far as I can tell, the problem was solved while "I" was fast asleep. This is more than a little worrying. I earn my living by writing complex software, and I do it, according to a number of people (fortunately including my employers), rather well. Indeed, it is probably the only thing that I do do well - the rest of my life I bumble through tryng not to fail too badly rather than trying to succeed. And yet this ability, the source of my worldly wealth, such piblic esteem as I may have, and such self confidence as I may have, is generated by a mechanism over which I have, apparently, no control at all. So far as I have any control over that faculty, I told it to shut down for the weekend or, failing that, to work on my own project. It did neither, carrying on working on the work problem completely oblivious to my conscious wishes.
This reinforces my view that, so far as "I" exist as an entity, it is not as Lord and Master of my own facilties, but rather as the spokesman or PR person for a group of entities which resemble a quarrelsome revolutionary cabal rather then a co-ordinated team. One of that team wone might call the geek or problem solver. But also in the team are the dirty old man, only after one thing, and the altruist, who genuinely wants to help other people. Others include the glutton, only after one (different) thing, and the romeo, full of truly romatic love. Two close colleagues are the prevaricator, who always wants a second pinion and to wait longer to see if it will be better in a while, and the lazy git, who wonders whether anything needs to be done at all. And the conscious "I" has to make sense of this cacophony of disjoint voices.
Robert Heinlein described man as not so much the rational animal as the rationalising animal. I think this is very true - perhaps even truer than he meant. I thimk that all our real thiniking occurs in these lower, uncontrolled, levels of the mind. It is the the function of the spokesman of the group to comvert the decision thrown up by the real thinkers into words. But that spokesman, who is "I" doesn't think at all. All it does is to wrap the decisions of other levels in words. And sometimes it cannot find words to wrap those thoughts, which we then ascribe to "gut feel" or intuition. Such unvoiceable thoughts differ from the voiced ones only in that the lower levels have not offered up enough information for the spokesman to be able to clad them in convincing words.