My Biological Navigation System

 

 

 

I have a brain, as do all living creatures. My brain’s job is to guide me to my goal, whatever that is.* In other words, my brain is a navigation system. And my navigation system is a blind.** Based on its initial default programming and its customized program adaptations + acquired data and current data inputs it computes and decides the probable ‘best’ next step towards my goal. ‘Best’ means better for survival (i.e. my actual and ultimate goal) in the current (or any future imagined) situation. In short, my brain serves as a Biological Navigation System (short: Bio-Nav), pretty much like the Sat-Nav in your car or private jet.

 

When I was born my brain, that is to say, my biological navigation system (or Bio-Nav) was fully on auto-pilot, i.e. on default settings. Later on I learnt to use my Bio-Nav semi-automatically. That means I could consciously select (anticipate, virtually) some actual goals (like a particular job or mate or beer) and consciously navigate towards them.

 

My Bio-Nav’s (i.e. my brain’s) job is to get me to my basic goal. My basic goal is survival. Because my basic goal is achieved within a particular, secondary (meaning everyday) situation, and of which there are an unpredictable zillion, and since the specific data of that situation are not given, my Bio-Nav’s basic response must be blind/blank. Being blind/blank but with the capability of learning (from hindsight), my Bio-Nav can eventually deal perfectly with most (everyday) situations. Just like a blind man learning how and where to bump along, so my Bio-Nav (i.e. my piloting (i.e. Guide & Control) function) acquires seeming sight (a meaningful position, thereafter a path) by means of data derived from contact and which it stores and arranges as memory.

 

My Bio-Nav’s basic, fully automatic job is to ensure my survival, that is to say, to make me a winner (i.e. the ‘fittest’, yet actually merely ‘fitter’) in every (of n situations I) encounter. On the basis of the data available to it my Bio-Nav automatically decides (i.e. computes) whether I’ve won or lost the encounter. It then signals ‘win’ (meaning a survival capacity increase) with happiness (or elation) and ‘lose’ (i.e. a survival capacity decrease) with unhappiness (or depression).

 

Fundamentally my Bio-Nav (i.e. brain) is a blind automatic virtual data shuffling operation. Being blind and reactive (like all computers) it neither understands nor judges the data it accepts and shuffles. That being so I or others, such as parents, politicians or priests, can deliberately (i.e. intentionally or unintentionally) feed it true or false or indeed fake data (as in a movie), or tweak its data acquisition and decision making programming, thereby tricking its win-lose decision making function and so manipulating my happiness and unhappiness responses.

 

See my book: ‘How to make and fake happiness’

 

*… Currently there are 7.500,000,000 alive on the planet + a zillion other living creatures. They all have pretty much the same (species related) brains. All 7.5 billion humans must survive in not just 7.5 billion life situations but in daily, indeed hourly multiples thereof. In short, all of them are proceeding to different actual life goals in order to complete the same basic operation, namely to survive. Only a (situation) blind (meaning almost fully open) navigation system can perform that job successfully, whereby the systems gains sight by means of discrete, step-by-step contact (i.e. like the blind man with his walking stick).

**… Because my brain is blind (i.e. having no local direction or goal) it can guide me to any goal and by so doing perform its default operation, namely ensuring (i.e. increasing) my survival. In other words, I (like all other 7.5 billion humans) operate like a submarine 5 miles down in a dark ocean and can’t see a thing. My external covering, i.e. skin is packed with data sensors whose job it is to gather data (i.e. by means of contact = reality testing), thereby to see, and so acquire my position/situation prior to plotting my course. Given my current position (i.e. as data-flow, hence my current (and true) reality and which includes my survival chances) my brain’s job is to compute the best possible next best step (on my path towards survival now and propagation in the future). But the next best step to where? Well, not to a place or state (which are but momentary orientation stops) but to increased survival. In short, the submarine’s (i.e. my own) ultimate goal is increased survival in each and every situation and which is achieved by self-adapting to become a winner (or survivor) in every actual situation (computed and beneficially iconised virtually as a form).

 

 

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©2021 by Victor Langheld