This posting covers some of my thoughts about mental models. It also sets the ground work for my upcoming theory of empathy.
As I've mentioned in several previous posts, I believe that any set of interacting minds has a mind of its own. One consequence of this theory is that corporations like NASA have a mind, and I find it productive to initially frame my theories in terms of corporate minds than human minds. This prevents the theories from being too brain-centric and human-centric. After all, if a particular theory about minds is correct, it should apply to a variety of different minds, not just those that are biological.
As a mind interacts with things, it gains information about them. It benefits a mind to remember this information in a form that allows it to recognize patterns and their behaviors. As a mind creates an inventory of mental models, it can use them to influence the universe it which it lives.
Let's take a look at mental models in the context of NASA. Specifically, we'll focus on how a mental model of a particular asteroid can rapidly evolve over time.
In this example, the NASA radio telescopes are scanning the skies for potential impact threats. Computer programs analyze the data from the scans to look for objects whose trajectories might intersect that of Earth. One of the programs detects a candidate object and "tags" the object with a flag that indicates it's a potential threat that warrants more investigation. (this is analogous to the way that antibodies in an immune system "tag" foreign cells so that killer cells can quickly find them and destroy them).
The telescope systems notice the "tagged" object and some of the telescopes alter their scanners to focus on the area of the object. They gather lots more data about the object and "tag" it with additional information such as its type (in this case, an asteroid), more details about its trajectory, and the estimated time of impact (in this case, soon).
At this point, other systems are alerted by the new tags, since some of them indicate a certain degree of urgency. Some of these systems are human, such as experts in asteroids, and other systems are programs that specialize in chemical analysis and damage projection. Each system analyses the object and tags the object with additional data. For example, the asteroid specialist might add tags that indicate its point of origin, the chemical analysts might add tags that describe its chemical composition, and the damage projection system might add tags with damage estimates.
As NASA's mental model of the asteroid grows due to all the tagging, additional systems are alerted that there is indeed a high potential for damage and planners start to project different scenarios based on the various actions that NASA could take. For example, one scenario might launch a nuclear warhead to try and break the asteroid into pieces, and another scenario might attach an engine to the asteroid to try and push it off course. The costs, probabilities and outcomes of each scenario are evaluated so that a "best course of action" can be devised. Finally, NASA contacts the President, explains the situation, and asks for permission to take action.
In the scenario above, NASA's mental model of the asteroid starts off by occupying just a few bytes of computer memory in one of its scanning systems. Nothing else in NASA is even aware of its existence. But as the model of the asteroid grows due to progressively higher levels of tagging, the percentage of NASA's resources that are focused on enriching this mental model grows quite fast; by the end of the scenario, it's possible that 30-40% of all NASA's resources are dedicated to modeling the asteroid and devising a way to alter its future state.
The main point of this post was to show that:
1. non-biological systems like NASA contain and evolve mental models that guide action
2. the percentage of a mind's resources dedicated to a particular model that change dramatically
The next post will continue with another similar NASA scenario.
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