Loose ends

After finishing Hofstadter's book, I felt that I was a little harsh, but not too much. The man is convinced that a single adult human mind is the top level of consciousness. And frankly that's crazy. He flirts with the idea that two people might form something more than a single individual, but he shies away from the idea as fast as he approaches it. At one point, while he is thinking about video cameras pointed at the TV that displays what the video camera sees (making a little strange loop, like at target or best buy when they have the TVs set up so that you can play with their video cameras and you point the camera at the TV; you get a sort of grey tunnel hall of mirrors effect.), he thinks about two such cameras situated so that they can see each other's displays.
This is sort of a complicated situation.
With one camera pointed at its own screen, you get a sort of infinite tunnel, like when two mirrors face each other. But because of the time delay in the camera, if you add any input (like waving your hand in front of the camera) you get a cascading pulsating image, which Dougie is pretty excited about, mostly because he has played with it a decent amount, and feels like it's something he has explored more than other people.
But things get much more interesting with two cameras and two TVs. Good ol' Dougie just points out that each camera still has the specific TV tied to its own input, and so two individual strange loops exist, but he completely misses the existence of the big strange loop made up of the whole system, two cameras and two TVs.
The same problem happens with people. He's so worried about losing his own ego that he just won't acknowledge the entity that consists of himself AND his wife, and their awareness of each other. Again, he flirts with the idea, but only enough to infuriate me.
We are two. And we are one. And I am many, and you are many (there are so many ways to carve up Reality). But the One is just as important as the many. No more, no less.

What I'm getting at is this:
A mind is made up of subsystems that share information (experiences, emotions, moments, sights, sounds, tastes, conversations, touches, kisses, movements, etc). Any two minds that have flow of information between each other ( see above ) compose a single, greater mind.
Once you have a physical understanding of the mental, this is an undeniable fact.

When we are together, we build a communal headspace. Our minds are like houseboats. When they float near one another, we build bridges between them. Then, when the bridges are stable, we begin to build rooms and extensions to our individual houseboats. I add to your boat and you add to mine, we both add to the space between. The entire constructed entity, this big bunch of two houseboats and the bridges and rooms between them, the links that tie it together make it into one houseboat.

[Metaphorical thinking: helpful?]

As we interact, our two individual minds comprise one greater mind. Your brain has two hemispheres that cannot communicate everything that happens between themselves. But they can communicate, and it is their communication that is YOUR MIND. Our communication is OUR MIND. Yours AND mine. Just because minds are physical and so are we.

This might all sound crazy, but it's just true.
If we spend some time thinking about the physical nature of our minds, and abhor mysticism with a proper carefulness, we must come to the conclusion that any pair (or greater number) of minds in communicative community will comprise a single greater mind.
The End.


The thing that is important is the life of this entity that is made up of you and me.
With a brain, you can separate the two hemispheres, so long as you maintain the informational connections. The connection can be stretched over any given distance (with little radios, or fiber optics, or quantum strangeness, or what have you). This will change the rhythm of the complete brain, but not its function.
Any distance between two people works the same.
The rhythm will change, but not the function. Not the existence of this greater whole that we are a part of. And that's what's amazing about being here together.
Here can be very, VERY big.
And we only have to stretch it a little to get a taste of that.

Nighty night.