The decision tree model/theory provides (in my opinion) a possibility to research what causes a person to emotional/cognitively fall into certain decision patterns.
One of the things I feel is best diagnosed and treated with the model for instance, is Multiple Personality Syndrome.
When the model is extended with the emotional/cognitive inheritance model (actually the 'pre-conscious' model) it also gives insights into the base of schizophrenia, and religiosity (which in my opinion are closely related, due to the 'whisper' effect.
A quick example how MPS is explained by the model: The second personality mostly is a person who is fully functional regarding language and agility, but lacks 'morals' or decision that one makes depending on emotional results. This shows that in cases of sever trauma (mostly emotional trauma), the branch or sometimes a whole tree of a personality's ethical/emotional decisions are 'unrooted'. The new personality is a choice of the brain, to ignore the initial branch/tree results, meaning other parts of the brain will be used to 'rewrite' these choices. Hence the observed effects of a person with such trauma having less moral conflicts or regressing to childlike behavior. Why the person can alternate between the two branches, might have to do with the 'mending' of the mind, or the fact that the impulses are sent to both trees, but at certain moments will have more chances of initiating a result from the initial tree, instead of the new tree.
The basics: A small description
The decision tree theory takes the following premises:
1. The brain and nerve system are evolved as a response system to protect the organism from dying.
2. The Claustrum is the center of all neural nodes and due to its place, houses the consciousness.
3. The Prefrontal Cortex is what causes the organism to be 'self conscious'.
The model of decision trees, works around the build up of actual decisions depending on other decisions before them. As if the whole brain is molded into a 'electronic' circuitry AFTER each learning part gets added.
The results of how this relates to mental disorders etc will be explained in 'The effects'.
The model starts a single node of decision. This is based in the initial blueprint of the biological organism (genetically inherited brainpatterns).
The brain is a network of nodes, which will respond to a certain amount of tension (like a resistor). The tension will result in a (current visualisation) sonar like result to the claustrum.
So, the autonomous vital functions don't fall within the decision tree's context. The initial 'breath of life' is caused by the initial functions of the body (compression of the chest and decompression, causing first breath), the heart cells are responding to electrical stimulation, so while the body is alive, the heart will receive electrical impulses.
The first decisions are 'etched' (fixed pathway for the (neural) electrical current to create a certain response from the stimulus) based on input received from all the senses. The body's receptors are evolved to respond to the same impulses as it's parent's body, adapted to perhaps small differences which have influenced the parent's body with heavy pain or fear (Emotional hard etching). This is why children start to learn from the moment the neural network reaches a certain level of completion.
Lets call this period (the womb based learning period) the blueprint etching. This means the period, where most of the learning is 'testing' the 'ancestral' learning or 'genetic inherited' brain pattern. Here the most basic of neural paths that the species/family parent brain has passed on, are most easily activated. These will be the initial decision root. From these initial markings, the rest of the tree is based on these response fixes.
The why: Heritage of development
So, why and how did I come to the realisation of decision trees?
Well, I assume I am not the only one who has come across this venture and moment of clarity. So here goes and likely you have heard/thought it all before. I just write it down, so my own mind makes sense.
I have two children and they evolve. Before my eyes, they become bigger, they learn and they come across every awareness level, we all have at moments in our lives. Sometimes more often when we 'rediscover' some clarity. Seeing my children evolve and recognizing the moments from before their birth, as the phases they are changing, I began to realize that humanity and from that actually all of the universe and life on Earth in specific, wasn't really evolving much different. Of course it doesn't, because every current state of species grows along the same line. But not just physically, we as humans evolve in mind, along the same path. Humanity as a whole follows the same path. I guess someone already made some 'great unification' theory, explaining how this is true. Children first learn of input, then of acquiring the necessities to survive physically (cry, find a caretaker). After the moment it feels secure it will live, it learns of its body (aware of ability, not of self), it learns of the world close by, small steps in grasping things, seeing things, then interacting with things. It finds out, that there is a 'Pavlovian' effect, Cry and food comes. Cry and attention comes, attention is activating neurons, feeling good. Then it starts to feel comfortable about its abilities and recognizes its interaction and its results. Stimuli and response, but also intent and reaction.
So, that is all fine, it is how a child gets to know itself and learns to be human. YES, but not just humans have this. EVERY species has this. They learn up to their abilities. The closer their neurological network resembles ours and their physical abilities resemble ours, the closer their learning/adapting process seems to ours. This means that it is not the human conscious that causes learning and adapting, but something earlier. Children with low cognitive abilities, still are able to act on simpler impulses. They are still able to adapt, to respond. Life is all about responding.
What I have named above, is actually the fact that humanity grows like all species, and even the whole of life on earth grows in awareness. Like every individual organism that starts live, it has to come to understand what it can do, where it is, how to interact. What it is, depends on whether it becomes self aware. To understand how our psyche works, it is imperitive to understand that our drives, our inner nature, comes from...nature. From the first photosynthetic plantlike organism that consumed sunlight to mix chemicals, up to the actual animals of any size and complexity, it had specific responses to stimuli. Our brains are created after milions and millons of years and millions and millions of generations adjusting into a neural network that is able to respond to stimuli of its surrounding and, in our case, also able to act upon its environment. The responses are the basic results when a stimuli is processed by the body and nervous system. The brain is the center of action, because the signal will be sent there for a decision to be made. As Michael Shermer explained already with Patternicity, it is simply a response to a complex amount of stimuli that might cause the organism harm. If something touches the skin, the skin will send a signal to the brain, the brain will send the haptic values (heat, cold, pinch, puncture) to different parts of the brain that have been previously activated by comparative signals. The build up of the brain is generally the same with every human, when they are growing up, because the same pathways/decision trees are build, based on cultural structure. This is no different with an amoebe or a coyote, just the level of intrinsic complexity differs. Now, this is the base on which I seat my theory of decision trees and I will work this out as I continue to find objective reasoning for it.
To put it short:
The model came to be, based on my research/understanding of how humanity came about 'religious' ideas. Like children (or rather children like humanity, being an individual evolved from the ancestral relative), we started having very little ability to cognitively understand the world. We start with emotions. Our parents are our world. Then we start to become able to move ourselves and our parents become our protectors in the surrounding we now see as our world. Then we try to mimic cognitive abilities after we mimicked physical abilities. This will give us freedom, but we still hold to the affection of the parent/protector/ruler of our world. The emotions are still vivid, but we are then moving into a more cognitive phase. We start to understand the world, bit by bit on a cognitive level. But lacking language and the possibility to see causality, we fill in the blanks. We have a 'magical' world, because we don't know everything yet. We see a chair and it is an object, it moves if we move it, but when we kick it, we are surprised it didn't move. We expect it to behave as ourselves. 'magical thinking', agenticity as some scientifically knowledgeable people call it. This was the start on which I based my theory that the way humans think and evolve, is caused by the 'development' of inherited abilities. This means that in the same analogous way, humanity will grow as humans grow in their understanding of their life and abilities.
Well, I assume I am not the only one who has come across this venture and moment of clarity. So here goes and likely you have heard/thought it all before. I just write it down, so my own mind makes sense.
I have two children and they evolve. Before my eyes, they become bigger, they learn and they come across every awareness level, we all have at moments in our lives. Sometimes more often when we 'rediscover' some clarity. Seeing my children evolve and recognizing the moments from before their birth, as the phases they are changing, I began to realize that humanity and from that actually all of the universe and life on Earth in specific, wasn't really evolving much different. Of course it doesn't, because every current state of species grows along the same line. But not just physically, we as humans evolve in mind, along the same path. Humanity as a whole follows the same path. I guess someone already made some 'great unification' theory, explaining how this is true. Children first learn of input, then of acquiring the necessities to survive physically (cry, find a caretaker). After the moment it feels secure it will live, it learns of its body (aware of ability, not of self), it learns of the world close by, small steps in grasping things, seeing things, then interacting with things. It finds out, that there is a 'Pavlovian' effect, Cry and food comes. Cry and attention comes, attention is activating neurons, feeling good. Then it starts to feel comfortable about its abilities and recognizes its interaction and its results. Stimuli and response, but also intent and reaction.
So, that is all fine, it is how a child gets to know itself and learns to be human. YES, but not just humans have this. EVERY species has this. They learn up to their abilities. The closer their neurological network resembles ours and their physical abilities resemble ours, the closer their learning/adapting process seems to ours. This means that it is not the human conscious that causes learning and adapting, but something earlier. Children with low cognitive abilities, still are able to act on simpler impulses. They are still able to adapt, to respond. Life is all about responding.
What I have named above, is actually the fact that humanity grows like all species, and even the whole of life on earth grows in awareness. Like every individual organism that starts live, it has to come to understand what it can do, where it is, how to interact. What it is, depends on whether it becomes self aware. To understand how our psyche works, it is imperitive to understand that our drives, our inner nature, comes from...nature. From the first photosynthetic plantlike organism that consumed sunlight to mix chemicals, up to the actual animals of any size and complexity, it had specific responses to stimuli. Our brains are created after milions and millons of years and millions and millions of generations adjusting into a neural network that is able to respond to stimuli of its surrounding and, in our case, also able to act upon its environment. The responses are the basic results when a stimuli is processed by the body and nervous system. The brain is the center of action, because the signal will be sent there for a decision to be made. As Michael Shermer explained already with Patternicity, it is simply a response to a complex amount of stimuli that might cause the organism harm. If something touches the skin, the skin will send a signal to the brain, the brain will send the haptic values (heat, cold, pinch, puncture) to different parts of the brain that have been previously activated by comparative signals. The build up of the brain is generally the same with every human, when they are growing up, because the same pathways/decision trees are build, based on cultural structure. This is no different with an amoebe or a coyote, just the level of intrinsic complexity differs. Now, this is the base on which I seat my theory of decision trees and I will work this out as I continue to find objective reasoning for it.
To put it short:
The model came to be, based on my research/understanding of how humanity came about 'religious' ideas. Like children (or rather children like humanity, being an individual evolved from the ancestral relative), we started having very little ability to cognitively understand the world. We start with emotions. Our parents are our world. Then we start to become able to move ourselves and our parents become our protectors in the surrounding we now see as our world. Then we try to mimic cognitive abilities after we mimicked physical abilities. This will give us freedom, but we still hold to the affection of the parent/protector/ruler of our world. The emotions are still vivid, but we are then moving into a more cognitive phase. We start to understand the world, bit by bit on a cognitive level. But lacking language and the possibility to see causality, we fill in the blanks. We have a 'magical' world, because we don't know everything yet. We see a chair and it is an object, it moves if we move it, but when we kick it, we are surprised it didn't move. We expect it to behave as ourselves. 'magical thinking', agenticity as some scientifically knowledgeable people call it. This was the start on which I based my theory that the way humans think and evolve, is caused by the 'development' of inherited abilities. This means that in the same analogous way, humanity will grow as humans grow in their understanding of their life and abilities.
The how: The model of decision trees
Overall introduction
From the moment of conception, our body is build to respond to impulses. Though we could look at the neural responses and the way it influences our psychology from this point, I rather go a bit deeper.The human neurology is based on millions of years of evolution. Starting (like the conception of our current organism/life) at it's conception. As humans we are often very easy to add emotions and thoughts to organisms that are not aware like us, don't have the same intrinsic responses as we have. However, like everything that evolves, our responses are all based on those of who came before us.
To explain what is meant by the inherited responses, I like to take the examples from research, where mice bred from mice that have walked a maze repeatedly. The next generation would be able to solve the maze more easily. Their neural pathways had adapted to possible stimuli. If they merely had the same pathways and had to learn, they would roughly need the same amount of time. This is what we already learned from research on the short term, but we haven't just come to this point of learning, adapting, living. These adaptions are caused by the way we have evolved. At each point they are the optimum mode of operandi for a species. Until the habitat changes to fast and the adaption within the culture is not possible within enough generations. When a species is the optimum of operandi, a stasis in development can be observed. It means that the neural pathways are optimally used for responding to the environment the organism is living in. We have already found the track back to the initial primates. But the actual decisions are based on much older neural choices/responses to stimuli.
Life is about consumption It is about continuing motion. In organical sense, our bodies have started somewhere as as simple an motion as the tides of the oceans.
The Layers
The human mind is currently the top level of several layers of processes that are going on within us as an organism. Though many other animals show signs of behavior that we describe to 'intelligence'. Intelligence isn't necessarily the same as mind/self awareness.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence Reference to human and animal intelligence.
In all, we can say that because humans aren't the only ones with a minimum level of intelligence, it is NOT the mind (the cognitive decision taking) that holds 'intelligence'.
So, there is a layer before the layer of 'mind' that can hold 'intelligence'.
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1. Animals don't have such valuation system (regarding good and bad/right and wrong). They learn what is healthy and what is not, but they are not making a conscious choice to implicate a future situation to mean this cause of effect to be positive or negative on their health. Water is to drink. Positive. No matter if it is poisoned. Some animals have a nose that will tell them that water is undrinkable, yet most don't have that luxury, because their ancestors lived in environments that had an abundance of clean flowing water, or very little water, so the 'society' of the species stayed so small, they would not evolve the reaction to a deadly situation, so that the species would act on instinct (this is a neural pathway created by genetic material).
2. This is also something that animals don't reasonably have. They can be fierce, deceiving, agressive, but that is from instinct and not by choice (we have choice, because of the abundance of neural options). So, how can we figure out what is objectively good or bad/right or wrong? Any action we do ourselves is with 'intent' and as such is already given value by acting. From the point of an animal, we will have to assume, the animal is not too much domesticated, that it will adher to human behavior and be deceitful by choice. Also, we now know that for instance dolphins have the option to choose to be nice to other animals (likely there are more). Now, what would be a thing to see without emotional value?a rock. But we know a rock will just lie and do nothing. Until we pick it up and act with it. It will not influence us, except when we interact WITH it. Automatically putting the value of action on our own part.
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