In the Q & A below I answer some general questions that people interested in my upcoming book have asked me.
Students/ scientists / computer engineers / spiritual people / authors (creative writing) / psychologists / people in emotional distress. Briefly, anyone who wishes to improve his/her mental performance.
For students and authors this book provides useful study tools such as reasoning and problem solving skills, a template to write articles and tools to prioritise actions.
For scientists the book presents the challenging question whether intelligence is algorithmic and how the same steps are recognisable in evolution and mind processes alike.
For computer engineers the book discusses the latest AI developments and proposes challenging ideas as regards artificial intelligence pathologies, artificial consciousness and a Global Webmind.
For psychologists and people in emotional distress the book provides a refreshing look on emotions as monitors of threatening or attention demanding situations and how such situations can be dealt with in the most effective manner.
For spiritual people the book provides tools for achieving mental equanimity which is an important step for those practising meditation. Moreover, the book presents an interesting take on intuition, linking this concept to the collective consciousness.
Nature's evolutionary processes and human thought processes follow a same sequence of steps in their operation. Briefly from a diversity of many possibilities the most successful candidates are selected (analysis, diagnosis). These candidates are then recombined to give higher order entities or concepts, respectively (synthesis, therapy).
These concepts can be exploited in making us aware of how we (re)cognise objects, how we reason and how we can solve problems and thereby increase our mental performance.
The book furthermore provides other tips and tricks to optimise information processing, organise our thoughts and priorities and manage our emotional states.
Finally the book is an update about developments and future developments in artificial intelligence systems. Notions such as artificial intelligence pathologies, artificial consciousness and a Global Webmind are addressed.
The book can make you increase your performance by showing which steps your mind follows in thought processes. By making these steps conscious, you can carry them out actively in a structured manner and save time of going in loops. The book provides specific tools for problem solving, such as relevance mapping, prioritisation and heuristics. It provides several tools for emotional control and a template which serves both as a means to organise your thoughts as well as a map how to write convincing articles.
Intelligence employs algorithms, sequences of steps to automatize and optimise its performance whenever it can. But these algorithms have to be generated as well, which is not a trivial thing and can itself not systematically be reduced to a meta-algorithm that generates algorithms. Moreover, intuition and creativity show us that the way we have our Eureka moments most often does not rely on carrying out a fixed protocol.
Interested in reading the book? It will be published in January 2018 and can be ordered here.
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