The Clue

The clue lurked right there on a bumper sticker in a parking lot.  It pronounced that man created God in his own image – brashly mocking Genesis 1:27, “So God created mankind in his own image…”.  What struck me was not the contradiction but an agreement between the two parties that the essence of the creator is reflected in his creation.  

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The Problem

The problem relates to the nature of the human mind.  I became aware of the problem a few years ago when, after being separated for almost two decades, I reconnected with my high school classmates.  I realized that some of them behaved differently than what I had expected.  This was not earth-shattering.  But I was taken aback nevertheless, because we had known each other during six of our most formative years in a tightly knit residential high school.  Then there was a second observation several years later.  It was during the Covid pandemic.  The way most people behaved during the pandemic completely surprised me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised.  The mind of another person is an impenetrable fortress.  Each of us creates this individual fortress based on our own realities.  As the Russian futurist artist, musician, and theorist Nikolai Kublin had said:  “The self does not know anything except its own feelings, and while projecting these feelings it creates its own world”.  How can anyone truly understand, let alone rationalize, another person’s behavior? 

But the bumper sticker suggested that there could indeed be a pathway to the interior of the fortress - even if an imperfect one.  That pathway goes through one of man’s own creations – which is a computer.  That’s how the model was born.

Here I should mention that I have no professional credentials to write about the human mind or his behavior.  I am a retired polymer scientist, with the distinction of never having taken a single liberal arts course after high school.  I did have the opportunity to take a course in Marxism/Leninism in my undergrad years.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), it was not compulsory for foreign students like me.  That was in the former East Germany. Being young and inexperienced, I took the easy way out.

The good news is that I am only writing about a model.  I take courage in knowing that “all models are wrong” – as the famed British statistician George P. Box had said long ago.  But he had also added that “some models are useful”.  I fully except this model to have some of the former, but hopefully plenty of the latter as well. 

The Model

The model explains human behavior in terms of hardware, software and data.  These are the three parameters that determine the performance (behavior, so to speak) of any computer, be it for word processing, video gaming, calculating your finances, or whatever.  Of course, human beings are not computers.  Therefore, these parameters need some explanation.

Hardware

This model assumes that a person’s inborn intellectual capabilities are his hardware.  It is not to be equated with a person’s IQ.  Rather its quality is reflected in a person's overall achievements during the early years (when his software and data are still in a rudimentary stage).  A person’s hardware can be honed and optimized but, unlike computer hardware, cannot be replaced or updated.  In most people it remains underutilized.  

A hardware analogy for the human mind is not novel.  In The Language Instinct, linguist Steven Pinker has proposed that human beings are hardwired to learn language.  That’s why, he argues, it is so easy (for children) to learn a language.  Supposedly, a typical 3-year-old can outperform a supercomputer in language skills.  Pinker corroborates his hypothesis by pointing out that other species are hardwired in their own ways.  Bats for example, are hardwired to navigate by using echolocation, and birds by using the earth’s magnetic field.      

In that sense, inborn instincts are part of a person’s hardware, for example, reflex for survival, and urge for companionship, independence, inquisitiveness, etc.  The extent of such instincts is different in different people – within certain ranges.

Software

Software is the algorithm for making decisions and drawing conclusions.  A person’s early software package is shaped by his upbringing and exposure to cultural norms, values, morality, etc.  The package grows over time through updates of existing programs, as well as acquisition of new ones.  This growth is triggered by life’s experience, exposure to new environments, education, etc.  

Data

Data of a person is everything that one has read, heard, seen, sensed, felt, etc.  In this information age, data also includes any information that one can access from any source.  A person’s data too, grows with life’s experience and exposure to new environments. 

Interdependency of the Parameters

A feature of this model is “interdependency” of the three parameters.  For example,​​

• The type of software one acquires later in life depends on (without being dictated by) certain inborn hardware dispositions.  Parents of multiple children are aware of the inborn differences among their offspring in terms of their desire for compassion, inquisitiveness, adventure, etc.    

• On the other hand, existing software can enhance or moderate inborn instincts.  In fact, a measure of a person’s maturity, true education, and enlightenment is reflected in his software’s ability to recognize when such modulation is called for.  And wisdom is the ability to pull it through.

• Similarly, the growth of a person’s data depends on his hardware because it influences both the quality and the quantity of data he is capable of absorbing.  And if multiple sources of data are available then his software influences which sources he seeks out and which ones he ignores.

This model makes no assumptions about any similarities between the human brain and a computer in terms of their mode of action.  Rather it simply presumes that there is a similarity between how these three parameters affect human behavior, and how they affect the performance (behavior, so to speak) of a computer.        

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What is it Good for?

A model is only as good as its ability to help explain the complex reality it represents.  Here are five such examples for this model.

 Ex 1) The mod​el cautions us not to overrate intelligence when predicting a person’s actions.  It does so by framing                      decisions and actions in terms of all three parameters (hardware, software, and data).  This doesn’t mean that                  intelligence is not important.  Rather it reminds us that intelligence, of whatever kind, is only a tool.  What a person            does with this tool depends also on the other two parameters.  

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           One extreme example is Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.  He was a highly intelligent person with an IQ of 189.                He had graduated in mathematics from Harvard at 20, was widely read in humanities, and spoke multiple                         languages.  More common examples are bosses of organized crime syndicates, Wall Street bankers, most                        politicians, former Nazi leadership, etc.  There will be another, personal example in the next section.

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 Ex  2) Similarly, experience is important.  But, here too, its role should not be overemphasized.  As suggested earlier,                 two people, when exposed to the same experience, can end up acquiring different data.  And that is due to                        differences in their hardware and software.  A trivial example is that of a group of students who, after having read              the same books, end up absorbing information (data) that is different from person to person – both qualitatively                and quantitatively.  Furthermore, given software differences, decisions and actions of two people can deviate even            further, even after having gone through the same experience.  A dramatic example is that of someone having                    experienced child abuse.  As an adult, that person can repeat the same crime, or become active to prevent such              abuse, or just live on without doing either. Experience is not deterministic.

 Ex  3) Returning to the case of my classmates, the explanation is easy.  We knew each other at an age when our actions             were dominated by hardware.  It is only later in life that our software and data developed and diverged.  This is                 nothing unusual, but the effect was probably magnified because changes in our software and hardware had                     developed in separated countries, cultures, and systems.  

     The upshot of my confusion is that I started thinking about this model.  And when, a few years later, an even                      more perplexing enigma came along, I had a good tool at hand to make sense of it.  That enigma was the Covid              pandemic.

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 Ex  4) I don’t know your stand on the Covid pandemic, but glaring inconsistencies and irrationalities were obvious right               from the beginning – both in the narrative and the pandemic measures.  These include the use of PCR (which is               not a diagnostic test), together with the neglect of demography as a parameter, and the use of shoddy modeling               to project inflated danger; the absence of any risk/benefit analysis for pandemic measures; neglect, if not                           criminalization, of early treatment; censorship of legitime scientific discussions; the lack of scientific data to                       support vaccine safety and efficacy claims; a moving goalpost for claimed vaccine benefits; etc.  (See TO VAX OR            NOT TO VAX THAT IS THE VEXING QUESTION and a later piece in Global Research). ​  

           And yet, almost everyone I knew – regular folks, highly intelligent people, successful professionals, experts - went            along blindly and without questioning.  Worse still, anyone who expressed doubt was ridiculed and vilified, to                    put it mildly.  Only now are some mainstream media outlets starting to acknowledge mistakes.  (If you still trust the            mainstream media then see The Atlantic, Newsweek, Newsweek, and New York Times.  However, if you                  have been getting information from reliable alternative sources, then you already know a great deal more.)  Even              today, most people I know refuse to acknowledge their mistake.  How could it be?  This model sees the                              phenomena through the lens of all three parameters.      

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Hardware: 

Hardware impacted people’s behavior in two ways.  First, the hardware of most people was overwhelmed by a message of inflated danger.  As a result, (hardwired) instincts of fear and survival kicked in, shutting down any rational software that would otherwise make people pause and think.  At the same time, a software was triggered that promotes a lock-step behavior.  More on this later under software.  

Second, the hardware of many people did not have the necessary bandwidth and/or sophistication to deal with the deluge of complex information – especially in an environment of fear.  We must not forget that a large segment of the population is already stressed-out coping with day-to-day survival.  Not surprisingly, lock-step software took over.

Software: 

Software played an across-the-board role with some interesting demographic variations.  The most common type of software was that of tribal behavior.  This type of software is triggered by instincts of fear and survival. It prompts people to show blind obedience and subservience to a savior authority, seek safety in a like-minded tribe, and be hostile to anyone who disagreed.  The tribe feared both the virus and anyone who dared to question.  The dissenters were ridiculed, vilified, excluded, threatened, and prosecuted.  Choice labels conferred upon the dissenters included selfish, right-winger, Trump supporter, racist, anti vaxxer, etc., and all the way to Nazi, and antisemitic.

But it was surprising to see that even people with good bandwidth and sophistication of their hardware went along with tribal behavior.  There was a multitude of reasons.  In some cases, their software was not mature enough to know when a modulation of hardware instincts was called for.  In other cases, they feared being outside the protection of a tribe.  In others still, their software leaned too much and unwholesomely towards “pragmatism”.  After all, one must earn a living, pay the mortgage, save for children’s education, make a career, etc. – right?  An unusual subgroup had technical expertise in related fields.  But their rational behavior was outmaneuvered by a software that was biased towards an uncritical enthusiasm for scientific progress.  I know a few of them personally.  

And finally, there was a smaller but pivotal group.  They had excellent hardware but were infected with malware.  This malware drove them to unquestioningly strive for power, control, money, and greed.  They formed their own separate tribe.

Apropos software – the pandemic exposed a severe scarcity of a type of software that regulates two behavior patterns which, if they were more prevalent, could have promoted a more sensible behavior in the society. These are common sense and critical thinking.  I don’t know if they are different things or just two aspects of the same entity.  But they have one thing in common.  Both are randomly distributed among all demography, and cannot be explained in terms of intelligence, level of education, professional success, age, life’s experience, affluence, etc. 

Here are two interesting examples to make the point.  Midway through the pandemic, my longtime barber asked me if I found it curious that the authorities were claiming Covid-19 to be the most dangerous disease in recent times but, at the same time, they were ignoring its early treatment.  (In fact, they were criminalizing such attempts).  She had no higher education or technical expertise but had common sense.  Contrast that with the odd case of my classmates excluding me from a reunion because they were vaccinated, and I was not (adequately) so.  Here “the protected (meaning my classmates) were trying to protect the protected (themselves) by forcing the unprotected (me) to take a protection (the vaccine) that did not protect the protected (them)”.  My classmates are highly successful, intelligent professionals.  But intelligence, of whatever kind, should not be overrated.

Data:  Thanks to manipulation of their software, most people voluntarily limited their source of data to a few (official) sources, while ignoring valuable data elsewhere.  While determining credibility of data requires some technical expertise, in many cases the use of common sense and critical thinking could have served the same purpose.  As a result, most peoples’ data (on the pandemic) remained biased.  No wonder, even people with sophisticated hardware and software made faulty, if not wrong, decisions.  

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External Factors:

Multiple external factors had a decisive influence on all three parameters.  Take for example, lack of “available” hardware bandwidth.  This is (partly) a reflection of a society where a big segment of the population is already struggling for day-to-day survival.  Bandwidth blockage is also manipulated by (external) messaging.  It was uncanny to see a massive and sudden use of phrases like “shelter in place” (danger, danger!), “be safe” as a form of greeting (danger, danger!), “social distancing” instead of physical distancing (it’s dangerous to communicate with each other).  Just a coincidence?

Similarly, a lack of hardware sophistication relates to inadequate “honing and optimization” of hardware.  This in turn, can come from a lack of good, basic education, which is driven by external factors.

Software too, can be manipulated externally, and that rather effectively.  Mask mandate is a great example., whose implementation (btw, without any scientific basis) fostered tribal behavior by promoting fear and forcing people to demonstrate tribal affiliation. 

It is very similar with data.  External factors (such as cancel culture, de-platforming, censorship, intimidation, etc.) were very effective in manipulating both the quality and quantity of data that people ended up having to use for making decisions.

 Ex  5)  The final example is that of mass delusions that periodically sweep through our societies.  Charles Mackay, in his             1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowd, had examined a multitude of                     such events, including the Mississippi Scheme and the Tulip Mania in the Netherlands.  He concluded: “Men, it                 has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses               slowly, and one by one".  

            His assessment is relevant in two ways for this model.  First, human beings are predisposed to act spontaneously             in herds.  This is a relic of their long evolutionary journey for survival as a species.  This behavioral code is                         common and is imprinted in peoples’ hardware widely.  Therefore, they act similarly and in unison.  Second, the                 process of awakening is individual (and therefore slow) because it requires the use of software which is different f.             from individual to individual.  

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And One More Thing….

If you have made it so far then both thanks and congratulations.  Thanks for caring to read something written by a non-expert.  And congratulations because you recognize that it is not a good idea to listen exclusively to experts.  An odd statement coming from a professional expert (in certain other fields). 

While putting these thoughts together, I realized that human beings are essentially herd animals.  This may have helped humans survive as a species.  But unfortunately, this trait also makes humans easy targets for mass manipulation and propaganda.  Evidence abounds throughout human history, including in recent times.

Many scholars have written about the how’s and why’s of herd psychology.  Mattias Desmet is one of them with his mass formation hypothesis.  I wonder if the model I have described here can help bridge the gap between external factors that initiate a mass process and how these factors play out at the individual level.

With all that said, I won’t be surprised if you found inadequacies in this model.  But remembering George P. Box’s comment on models, hopefully you have found some usefulness as well.  If nothing else, maybe it was an enjoyable exercise in outside the box thinking. 

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PS:  Finally, some off the cuff remarks on theories vs. models.  I believe that there is a difference between theories and models.  Both are meant to predict events in a complex system, but the former tries to explain the process as well.  As a result, a theory needs a mechanism of action (which is built upon certain cause-effect relationships).  The success of a theory depends not only on its ability to predict events, but also on how well the proposed mechanism of action, as well as the associated cause-effect relationships can be experimentally verified.  

In contrast, a model only predicts events without attempting to explain how the process works.  It is based on a set of logical and consistent assumptions without being bound by a specific mechanism of action.  A model may make use of some cause-effect relationships that are expected only to be statistically verifiable for the given model, without saying anything about the mechanism of action in play.  My intent was to write about a model.  Not sure if it ended up becoming  hybrid!

I have a hunch that this model could be used to elucidate certain human behaviors (pragmatism, leadership, etc.), as well as the essence of education.  Maybe some other day if I feel like doing so.