The big question I am trying to solve is what effects it will cause, if your society tends to use every free minute for work, entertainment or intensive workouts. I refer to seeing people travelling without looking out of the window in order to keep working on their laptop, pupils driving home drown in their Smartphone and some people sitting on a park bench while listening to their audio books.
Assuming you agree that some free time to make up your mind without planning how to do so is useful.
This question is trying to understand from a scientific point of view:
1. What exactly happens when we follow one thought after another?
2. Why it is important for our development as an individual or a society?
3. What would happen if it becomes erased from our average day?
I highly appreciate interdisciplinary answers, personal opinions and links to related research!
It's amazing seeing couples out together, yet apart, as they both text, surf, facebook or tweet others not with them. I suppose reflection may matter as it allows time to have learn from experience.
Yes, I totally agree. It sometimes seems to me as if they are in the "Matrix" and their bodies are somehow empty...
But what is it that distinguishes the real experience from the virtual? The (emotional) benefit in comparison to the effort is much higher in virtuality. That is one of the reasons people get addicted..
A stressful image/visualisation can trigger a similar physiological and psychological reaction as if a person is in the real stressful situation. (Or whatever is stress-triggering for that person.) On the upside, a virtual reality world can also provide relatively safe, quick and easy rewards (eg winning a game) whereas real life (outside of The Matrix) excitement with rewards are probably less frequent and less exciting. Just sitting in the real world having 'reflection' time is probably unexciting and boring for some people (unlike being in The Matrix).
On my deathbed I doubt that I will say that I should have spent more time playing virtual games although I really enjoyed the Matrix film!
Now, the question would be do we really need time to think in reality on a scientific point of view? I really think it is important for inner balance, innovative thoughts, apreciation of reality, etc., but has this been proven somewhere? What is happening in our brains when we let neurons fire without a trigger from the outside?
We may need to do a search of relevant articles to see if it's been proven!
Triggered responses to input from the environment forms a feedback cycle capable of "control", neural network changes adapts this control loop to give us what may be termed closed loop feedback. However some input for the environment cannot generate plausible responses . In this case the we (humans) have adapted internalised feedback (lets call them potential responses) in which we model against a current state or context to generate some sort of response set which give us the equivalent of closure. This internalised modelling may be termed reflection and may be seen as a model based process for open loop closure.
Hence reflection is a natural extension to system control which allows adaptation to the unfamiliar from a complex environment. This mechanism possesses the property "intelligence" (I can't see how properties can ever be artificial)
Thank you Stephen and John for your answers!
I tried to find articles and models about this process, but have not found anything relevant.
The model John is describing sounds quite logic to me, reflection as the adaptation to unfamiliar, may it be that we will run into a stuck-state if most of the people tend to adapt only to familiar things?
By the way, I am trying to form a project group raising more of these questions and their social/technological solutions. Let me know if you want to join!
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