(or: How to think good)

Everything we learn gets stored in a large neural network. Therefore, it is best to compartmentalize and organize everything that you learn. Neural networks are big freeform associative meshes with connections going all over the place -- if two events occur together frequently, then a connection will be made between them. Therefore, it is very important not to do too many things at once when learning.

Learning two things, which should be separate skills, simultaneously, is wasteful. Imagine each skill as a bunch of tricks which become encoded in your neural network. When you learn one at a time, you only have to encode each trick once. However, when you learn two sets of tricks simultaneously, your brain separate out the individual tricks from the deluge of information it is collecting. You're giving your brain too much to work on at once, and it can't extract the simple, refined, isolated patterns (which represent the tricks). The whole temporal-sequencing factor adds a good deal of complexity to the task as well. So, what it ends up doing is creating correllations between things that should not be correllated, because they just happened together enough times coincidentally that it believes they're a pattern. If you somehow manage to learn both skills simultaneously (skill 1 with n tricks, and skill 2 with m tricks), you won't have learned n+m tricks, but something closer to n*m correllated tricks.

What a waste!

To make the system efficient, you have to make sure you're associating the right things together.

As Sir A.C.D. says,

• You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. There comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before; depend upon it. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

So, basically, the best way to organize your mind is to remove as many complexities as you can from all your concepts until only the most fundamental patterns remain. As Einstein used to say:

• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

True dat, homes!