5>10. Function of Body & Mind: assist Life to satisfy her urge to self-actualize.
5. Life is defined as the urge to self-actualize.
6. Life employs her 2 components to satisfy this urge – the quest to fulfill potentials.
7. Life’s two components have distinct functions. These functions are associated with Life’s mysterious urge to self-actualize.
8. Body is defined as Life’s material component. One of Body's functions is to serve as Life's cellular Home.
9. Body also functions as Life’s Tool. As Life’s Tool, Body enables Life to interact with Matter – the molecular world. This interaction enables Life satisfy her urge to self-actualize.
10. Mind is defined as Life’s information-based component. Mind's function is to provide Life with assistance in her quest to self-actualize.
11. While Body operates in the material world, Mind operates in the world of information. Mind assists Life to find meaning in information. Mind derives meaning from information via the Living Algorithm's mathematical system. The Living Algorithm digests data streams to reveal the ongoing rates of change – the trajectories at each moment – the data stream's derivatives.
12>15. Biological & Mental Energy: refinements of Living Energy
12. Life's urge to self-actualize supplies living energy to the system.
13. The living energy behind Life's urge for self-actualization is refined to supply Body with biological energy and Mind with mental energy. Note: biological energy is supplemented with and interacts with physical energy. The biological energy has intent or direction, for instance the urge to survive. Physical energy has no intent.
14. To fulfill her functions, Body craves sustenance, i.e. food and water, to survive. The biological energy behind this craving is a refinement of mysterious living energy.
15. To fulfill his function, the urge to assist Life, Mind craves information/knowledge. The mental energy behind this craving is a refinement of living energy.
16>23. How Mind issues mental energy
Let's see how Mind manifests this mental energy.
16. The senses translate the continuous flow of environmental information into data streams.
17. During the Conscious state, Mind focuses mental energy on these sensory data streams via Attention. Attention is a feature of the Conscious Mind.
18. Attention and the Living Algorithm form a synergistic unit. As soon as Mind focuses Attention upon a sensory data stream, the Living Algorithm begins digesting it. As mentioned, the Living Algorithm’s digestion process translates data streams into rates of change (derivatives).
19. Mind employs these data stream derivatives to translate information into knowledge that will be useful to (has meaning for) Life.
20. When Mind focuses complete Attention upon a data stream, this is represented mathematically by a series of 1s. In similar fashion, partial Attention is represented by a series of numbers less than 1, and over-extended Attention by a series of numbers greater than 1.
21. During the Unconscious state, Mind ceases issuing mental energy. This is represented mathematically by a series of 0s.
Mathematical fact: The Living Algorithm employs an iterative process to digest data streams. In other words, the Living Algorithm's digestion system consists of an algorithm that is repeated over and over again.
22. Multiplying Attention by the data stream's content reveals how much mental energy enters the Living Algorithm's information system with each iteration (repetition of the process).
23. A data stream's 1st derivative, the Living Average, reveals the manner in which this mental energy is employed. This assumption is of vital importance to our theory of urges and is crucial to the notion of info quanta.
Alternate Assumptions
• The 3 Stages of Mind's Information Digestion System
16>17. Body & Mind Digestive Systems consist of Elimination, Transformation & Downtime
16. Body has a digestion system that eliminates waste and transforms food into nourishment, a substance that enables the organism to survive. Further the system requires downtime to complete the digestion process.
17. Similarly, Mind also has a digestion system that performs these same functions. Mind filters random data streams to eliminate meaningless information. Mind's digestion system transforms information into knowledge that is useful. This information system requires downtime, a Rest Pulse, to complete the digestion process.
23. Mind's Elimination System
There are 3 distinct stages to Mind's digestion process.
23. Attention is attracted to data stream acceleration (the 2nd derivative) as provided by the Living Algorithm's digestion process. Due to this innate attraction, Attention disregards/ignores any data stream, whose acceleration remains low. The acceleration of a random data stream is very low in comparison to an organized data stream. Thus, Attention ignores random data streams. Attention's innate attraction for data stream acceleration acts to automatically filter out random data streams from consideration. This is the first stage in the process of translating information into knowledge - the elimination stage.
24>27. Mind's Pulse-based Transformation System
Mathematical fact: when the Living Algorithm digests a data stream consisting of identical information, the data stream's momentum rises precipitously and then gradually falls, eventually approaching zero. This Pulse of Momentum is shown at right. The process that produces this graph is pure mathematics.
24. For the information to have any significance, Mind must invest mental energy in the data stream.
25. Mind invests mental energy via Attention and only when Conscious. Hence this intriguing graph is also called the Pulse of Attention.
26. To transform information into knowledge, the Pulse of Attention must be completed. The the data stream's energy density also reaches completion at the end of the Pulse. Complete data stream density is required to change the information network – perhaps fire a neuron or rearrange a neural network. This process might transfer the content of the data stream or information about the data stream.
27. Due to Attention's innate attraction for rising acceleration, Attention is automatically on the look out for fresh data streams after peaking – when the Pulse begins to fall. Mind Intent is required to hold Attention on the data stream until the end of the Pulse. If the Mind/Life synergy determines that the information in a data stream has potential meaning, mental energy is sustained upon the data stream. In other words, Sustained Attention is required to complete the Pulse. In this way, the sustained mental energy attains enough concentration (density) to spark the gap between mental and physical energy. This is the 2nd stage in the transformation of information into knowledge.
28. The necessity of Downtime to complete Mind's digestion process
28. While Conscious, Mind invests mental energy in a data stream via the Attention/Living Algorithm synergy. However, as long as Mind is conscious, residual mental energy builds up as the active energy is consumed.
23. As mentioned, the Unconscious state is represented by 0s, this means that no fresh mental energy enters the system during Unconsciousness.
Downtime is required to consume this residual energy. When Mind is Unconscious, the information that was ingested during Consciousness is further assimilated and organized. This downtime is the 3rd and final stage in the transformation of information into knowledge.