In the last part of this series I described three ways to gain clues for building a Mind. In this part, I'd like to focus on (3), which is "a Mind is a general concept that is not limited to biological brains but instead is an emergent property of a complex system."
Complex systems like companies, cities, and countries exhibit all the qualities of a Mind that I listed in part 3 of this series. In many respects, this is not surprising, since like a Brain they're all built out of highly networked, self-assembling, non-trivial parts, each with their own individual goals. They also all interact with their environment and need to make intelligent choices in order to survive.
So one way to study a Mind and figure out how it works is to study large systems like countries. This is a lot easier and cheaper than studying neurons in a living brain!
In addition, any subsystem or feature of one Mind will probably have a parallel in other Minds. For example, if a biological brain uses a hierarchical way to recognize patterns, then it's likely that countries will also use a hierarchical way to recognize patterns. Of course, the kinds of patterns that a brain looks for will be different than the patterns a country looks for, but nonetheless a parallel should exist.
I will refer back to this concept of Mappings between Minds many times during this series.
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