This brain dump has been in the pipeline for a long, I guess I do not have enough clarity. At the time of writing, I know its form is not exactly what I desire. On the other hand, I feel that I need to find a compromise between:
performing a brain dump as thoughts come into mind, even if thoughts have little coherence (related to “Confusion and velocity“);
spending too much time to refine the brain dump, with the risk of losing focus as the scope increases (related to “Impact of feedback loops on cognitive overload“).
In the past, I suggested that finding a good cadence between consecutive brain dumps requires “balancing the response time with the capacity to process and react to new information“. This “principle” applies when some (external-)feedback is present unless enough internal awareness is available so that the system does not become overwhelmed, effectively creating a feedback loop on a self-regulating and autonomous system.
From my understanding, the only necessary component for this is an external memory with a high enough degree of coherence, such that a dynamic growth process can be initiated and sustained (this process is non-linear). I still note, however, that having enough self-awareness is a necessary pre-condition to this.
I am digressing from the main topic of this brain dump, which initially started from a very confused and weirdly expressed idea. What if having empathy fundamentally means having a tremendous memory for things people said and actions people took (i.e. changes in behavior) so that such memory would make an empathetic individual realize that the only explanation for a phenomenon or observation thereof can be given by “meeting” the other individual on a particular emotion, even if such emotion was not explicitly outspoken?
Emotions are universally recognized, they transcend cultural and language barriers. To reach a common understanding with someone, the emotion needs to be properly expressed. This requires profound awareness and knowledge: awareness about the emotion of the self and knowledge about the other person's “world”, which is often, if not always, unreachable. Everything discussed thus far cannot be communicated and described solely with language; art is probably also insufficient. Ideally, a shared experience is needed, since the human experience can only be communicated holistically, if the experience can be communicated at all. Conversely, it (the emotion) should just be "experienced or lived”.
The following are a couple of references I gathered that I think are worth sharing:
Skin aging can be described in terms of dying cells passing onto new cells the markers containing the information about the major risk factors that have been experienced (ref, minute 12:00). I am unsure whether the reference is related to epigenetics; unfortunately, I could not find the specific study that was mentioned. If correct, this can be an example of “distributed” memory, not necessarily in the brain. Also, complexity science describes most of our decision-making as being not cognitive-based;
CT fibers in the skin are sensitive to light stroking. It has been suggested that they subserve an affective component of touch, engaging areas of the brain involved in the processing of emotions – the limbic system. This concept was cited in the video referenced in the previous point. Here is a potentially related publication;
Perception is influenced by memory. A distorted audio which is seemingly incomprehensible becomes clearer after the memory of a meaningful message is instantiated (ref).
A closing note on memory comes from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and a possible definition in such context (ref):
Memory is the tendency of agents to respond using rules based on past conditions; the overall tendency of the system to continue along a trajectory based on past conditions. Parallel concepts: hysteresis, path dependency.
One conceptual remark to be made about hysteresis (ref) is that it is common in different systems (incl. biological) and reflects processes' irreversibility, a property often described only in terms of thermodynamics laws and entropy.
I am not particularly satisfied with this brain dump, since it took too long to reach a state that, I think, is not clear and coherent. Perhaps it will become useful later or, if anything, it helped declutter my internal memory.
Picture created by the author using GenAI
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