This post is off-topic for Systems Engineering but it’s something that I’ve had on my mind for several weeks and was prompted by something I’ve read in “Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence” by Sara Imari Walker. A good book that really prompts some deep philosophical thinking.
In this book, Sara discusses how the ribosomes in our cells carry all of the information on how to “build” a human and that information is carried by memory of how it’s been done for eons. The fact is that the ribosomes carry the historical memory of how to successfully create a human being. This started me thinking that we are, in essence, memory. This led me down a deep rabbit hole – for me, nothing unusual!
When we experience reality, the only way we perceive that reality is through our senses. Our senses are based on signals from our nerves to our brain and because this is not done at light speed, there is a slight delay between when our senses experience something and when it registers in our brain and we perceive the sensation. To me, this means that all of our experiences are nothing more than memory since by the time the sensation registers with our brain, the physical experience has gone by. We are, in essence, living in the past and don’t truly experience anything but only have memories of things that our bodies have physically encountered. Similarly, when I meet a person, the only thing I can perceive is a memory of that person which I carry with me both during and after the meeting. For me, this also means that if I don’t encounter a person regularly, my “internal model” of who that person is becomes degraded and so I’m frequently surprised by how much someone has changed when I see them again.
A side note about our perception of reality is appropriate here. When we experience reality, our senses provide us with input on whatever reality truly is. If our senses are “flawed” or different in some way from others, then we will perceive reality differently. Also, our senses perform some pre-processing of the sensory inputs. Similarly, we don’t go blindly into sensing reality. Instead, our brains build a model of what we should expect from reality based on our experiences and uses that to help us fit our sensory data into that model – or modify the model if that’s not possible. What does this mean? For me, this means that I have a unique perception of reality as does everyone else. I cannot truly understand someone else because I do not have access to their sensory processing nor do I have access to their internal model of reality. So each of us is uniquely individual in that regard and I don’t believe that we can truly understand how someone interprets things like “red”. We can agree that red is represented by some frequency of light but our individual perception of that frequency may be completely different from individual to individual. Based on this, I’m amazed that we, as humans, are able to coexist successfully.
Taking this further, I’ve realized that there may be deep and profound concepts to be learned in this. The one that stands out the most is that since all of our experiences are memory, that memory is shaded by emotion – either by the emotion at the time of the experience or later as I recall the memory. I can change how I view my “experiences” by changing the emotion I associate with that memory. Thus, for me, I am in control of how I recall my experiential memory.
This dissociation of memory and experience will not always work for everyone. There are some experiences that are so traumatic that it seems that nothing can change the emotions associated with those memories. I don’t mean to suggest this is possible. For me, though, I’ve been lucky enough to not have those kinds of memories and can choose what emotion I feel with my memories.
During contemplation of this concept, I’ve also realized that this does have applicability to systems engineering in a sort of roundabout way. I’ll discuss this in future posts, particularly when I talk about system architecture and the difference between the cognitive object that is architecture and the representation of that cognitive object. This has profound impact on how we conceive, plan, design, build, and test systems.
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