Core Self

What a troublesome experience to be alive! Why are people so different from each other? Some people have talents while others are mediocre. Some people are easily to get mad while others are easy to get sad. Why do some people enjoy a variety of foods while others stick to what they like? Why some people are creative across multiple fields while others are articulate in expressing themselves. Even more improtantly, why does each person feel a variety of thoughts, emotions, senses, personalities as if they are a chaotic mess? But it is not a mess. In science, this is called the hard problem of consciousness. There is a pattern to people’s conscious experiences. There is a pattern to their unique madness. It seems to be too abstract to understand however I will show you in this chapter that it can be understood. I will combine a variety of theories and conceptual models to pin point what our consciosuness is.

Since I was young, I have always believed that each person has a core self that affects them. It seems though they are fulfilling a destiny that is written by their genes, environments, social circles and luck that are out of one’s control. Maybe it is a result of my bringing that I have come to this conclusion that every person has a core self that they can’t escape. Many religions and cultures in the South East Asia where I was born believed in the determinism of one’s birth and destiny. Maybe this model is wrong and something more mysterious is happening behind the scenes. Let’s think about it seriously about this core self. I imagine a core self like a treasure island that is hidden from view in the middle of an ocean. In geography, if you want to find an island that cannot be located, you use the triangulation technique to find out its coordinates. You go one part of the world and establish a direction in which the island would be, then you go to another part of the world and do the same with three or four lines of contact. Then you allow the lines to cross each other and approximately determine where the treasure island is. Let’s try and do the same with the core self model.

So the first line to find the treasure is the sensory perception. Why are the senses integral to the core self? Imagine our brain is locked in a pitch black room with no light to know where it is. The senses are the windows and doors that allow light from the outside world to come in to the dark room to illuminate what it’s there. In other words, the senses carry data from the outside world to feed into the brain in order to understand the world that we live in. Many of the senses we have are evolved later in the 3 billion years of evolutionary lineage. In the beginning, the most primitive senses are just chemicals sensing each other in order to differentiate between the internal environment of a living cell and the outside abiotic chemical enviornment for feeding and replication. Sense of smell and taste are indeed the oldest sense. Over billions of years, evolution has built life forms to acquire new senses to take in more data from the world to make feeding and replication more efficient. Our human brains are no different. It is a legacy of evolutionary selection that we happened to have the senses that exist in our human body. I define sensory perception as windows that measure the different laws of physics that exist in the universe in order to use this information to compete and fight for the rights of our survival. Our vision is evolved to sense the elecromagnetic radiation a.k.a photos or light. Our hearing is evolved to sense the pressure waves of the air. Our smell and taste are evolved to sense the chemical molecules. Our touch is evolved to sense the pressure, vibration and osicillation of matter. Our temperature sense is evolved to sense the kinetic energy of the molecules. Our pain is evolved to sense boundaries of these physics that if crossed could be deadly our living body. Our interoception is evolved to track the energy budget of the body and the overall metabolism that keeps us breathing and living. Our kinesthetic and balance sense the earth’s gravity and adjust our muscles and bones that have unimpeded movement. Our time sense track the changes that exist in the world in different measures of time. There are parallel systems of sense of time that exist independently in the brain and body. Our spatial sense tracks the three dimensional elements of the world for navigation and building safe environments for survival. Seen in this way, each of our senses are specialized to collect data of one aspects of reality that are important to ecological niche that humans are evolved to survive in. Every person has different levels of sensitivity to these perceptions and different levels of talents as well as different interpretations of their perceptions. The same data arriving from the world going into two different individuals will give slightly different perceptions because their senses are modulated slightly different. Other animals can sense other physical phenonmenon that we can only imagine like magnetic sense that some migratory birds which they can see the earth’s magnetic field coming from the ground, elecrical sense that some sharks can detect to find their prey, ultrasound sense that some dolphins and bats have to find their prey. Even our vision can detect only a small band of electromagnetic radiation. Other animals can detect infrared like some snakes that live in dark caves or ultraviolet vision that some insects have to find colourful flowers and their nectar. We humans have invented new technologies to perceive these physical phenomenon that does not come into our conscious experience and interpret them through abstract symbols like language or mathematics. However we still use our base senses to understand the signals coming from the machines. In other words, measuring the sensory perception is the first element of understanding a person’s core self.

The second line to find our treasure island is motivation. Motivation? You might be thinking? So generic, so boring. Hear me out! When I say motivation, I don’t just mean a random surge of energy you get from energy drinks to complete your shitty work given by your shitty manager for a measly amount of money. I am talking about the brain’s dopaminergic system in the hypothalamus and the midbrain that is designed to reward action from taking resources from the environment to enrich our needs. I am simplifying the concept of course it involves other important hormones and neurotransmitters, not just dopamine. Unlike plants which has to express themselves by growing themselves due to its roots, animals like us are evolved for millions of years for locomotion. We don’t wait for the resources to come to us. We go out and take them. These dopaminergic motivational systems are very old like four hundred million years old at least. All known animals has them. In the human brain, the hypothalamus has two modes of operation. When the resources like food, water, necessities in the environment are scarce, it prioritizes survival above all else. When these deprivations are fulfilled, it switches to a mode of exploration to seek higher accomplishments, look for meaning, building social connections, actualize your innate talents, creativity and hobbies. Of course our ancestors evolved in a competitive world of predator and prey, so we have powerful motivations to go out hunting or protect ourselves from potential predators. The hunting instinct is recycled in the brain to chase after accomplishments in the modern world. The prey instinct is recycled to create laws that protect us from crime and violence. There are big sex differences in how the hunting and prey instinct are wired. When we look at the statistics of dominance and submissive in the sexual realm, the vast majority of women likes being dominated which is the expression of their stronger prey instinct while most men likes to dominate which is the expression of their hunting instinct. Don’t get me wrong, there are some men who love being dominated too (definitely not me thank god) and some women who likes to dominate but they are a minority. They are exceptions that prove the rule. The vast majority of women also express they have a strong intuition for danger and suspicious behaviours while many men are oblivious to danger around them. Some of them are the danger themselves. Since we have conquered all known habitats and most natural predators no longer scare us, the potential predator is another human which is why we have created laws to punish violent antisocial behaviours with heavy prison sentences.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a well known research in how humans are motivated to act or don’t act in their lives. Maybe you have seen a Maslow pyramid of needs. Maslow never put the hierarchy in a pyramid, its some idiot consultant in finance trying to sound smart so these big companies will foolishly give them a lot of money. That’s because the hierarchy is not static, it constantly switches according to the needs of the environment. There are also differences in extrinsinc and intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations are derivations of the intrinsic motivations but enforced by the culture. For example, it is an intrinsic motivation to seek out food when you are hungry, seek out shelter when you are hot, cold or in rain, seek out belonging when you are lonely. If an abstract concept like money which is an invention of the culture can fulfill all of these intrinsic needs at once, then our brains learn the extrinsic motivation that getting more money will allow us to get more fulfillment and happiness. Children intuitively understand the value of food but doesn’t understand the value of money. They have to be taught. Just a fun reminder, anything you have to teach children that they don’t intuitively understand like money, clock, calendar, writing, these are all recent inventions from the culture, not natural at all! Anyway when you have to do that shitty job to pay the bills or studying hard for a shitty exam only to get a mediocre grade while your parents are regretting why they didn’t abort your dumbass brain, you are in the realm of extrinsic motivations. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely respect your sacrifice for your happiness to do in these shitty jobs if you are providing for your family. You are the goat! But if you have no one to care for, why are you doing this shitty job? Quit these jobs that you are using the money for your porn onlyfans subscription or buying luxury handbags for no reason at all. This is a rat race of extrinsic motivations designed to trap you forever in the grind of the machine. Intrinsic motivations are where you will find true fulfilment and joy.

Assembly Theory Letters of Consciousness

Sensory:

Vision - Va: Art, Vn: Nature, Vs: Sexual Beauty, Vc: Cuteness, Vo: Optics, Vi: Illusion, Vg: Aggression, Vd: Disgust, Vf: Familiarity, Vs: Strange

Hearing - Hm: Music, Hl: Language, Hs: Silence, Hv: Voice

Smell - Sa: Amplification, Sp: Profiling, Sr: Recollection

Taste (gastaoception) - Gf: Flavour exploration (eating and cooking), Gc: Craving, Gh: Health Conscious, Gs: Social Sharing

Touch - Td: Discriminative, Ts: Social, Ta: Affective, Th: Hot, Tc: Cold, Tw: Warmth

Kinesthetic - Km: Movement, Ke: Extension, Kp: Possession

Balance - Bb: Balance, Ba: Acceleration, Bo: Orientation

Pain - Pm, Pain magnitude, Pr: Relief, Pi: Instrumental

Interoception - Is: Deprivation vs Satiation, Ie: Emotion, Ii: Intuition, Ih: Hormonal

Time (Change) - Cc: Circadin, Cu: Ultradian, Cr: Rhythm, Cf: Flow, Cm: Memory, Ci: Imagination, Cp: Planner

Spatial (3D) - Dn: Navigation, Da: Spatial Awareness, Dh: Home or Nesting Instinct, Dl: Spatial Logic, Dm: Spatial Memory

Valence: P: positive, N: negative, M: meh or neutral

Motivation:

Motivator 1 - M1n: Narrative, M1p: Purpose, M1m: Meaning

Motivator 2 - M2p: Progress, M2a: Accomplishment, M2s: Self-Challenge, M2c: Competition

Motivator 3 - M3f: Freedom, M3lc: Linear Creativity, M3cc: Chaotic Creativity, M3sc: Social Creativity, M3p: Play

Motivator 4 - M4m: Money, M4o: Ownership, M4s: Security, M4n: Nurturing

Motivator 5 - M5f: Familial Bonding, M5l: Sexual Love, M5t: Friendship Trust, M5b: Belonging, M5m: Mentoring, M5a: Altruism

Motivator 6 - M6e: Economic Trading, M6s: Scarcity, M6t: Time Scarcity, M6s: Status and Luxury

Motivator 7 - M7c: Curiosity, M7e: Exploration, M7n: Novelty, M7m: Mystery

Motivator 8 - M8f: Fear, M8a: Anger, M8p: Panic, M8j: Jealousy

Personality

Conscientiousness: PCe: Self-efficacy, PCo: Orderliness, PCd: Dutifulness, PCa: Achievement-striving, PCs: Self-discipline, PCc: Cautiousness

Extraversion vs Intraversion: PEf: Friendliness, PEg: Gregariousness, PEa: Assertiveness