The brain is
akin to, if not the same as, a sophisticated multi-threaded, multi-processed
learning-based neural network. So like any software system, it does several computations in response to an input and produces an output. Most of the time, we just don't ponder about all the
computations the brain must have performed in response to a stimulus. However, once in a while, when a response from our brain is challenged or questioned, we are compelled to sit back and look
at the application logs for our brain in order to understand how it produced that particular output. This process is called introspection, and can sometimes the intricacies of how your brain works can amaze you.
This morning
I +1ed a post that read "Must wake up bright and early tmr. Must report
to jury duty. :(". I obviously did not stop to think why my brain asked me to +1 it. I just
did it. And that would have the end of story, had the
author of the post not commented, "Why
did +Somo Banerjee +1 ? Lol". And so I had to go back and figure out why my
brain prompted me to +1 this post. Here I present to you a summarized analysis of
what went on in my brain (in a matter of mere milliseconds) to spur that reaction.
Firstly, to
my brain, a +1 or a Facebook Like means that the last piece of information
received from the optical nerves has triggered an emotion (a smile, a frown, a
raised eyebrow, elation, disapproval, origin of a long series of thought
computations, etc., etc.) but the emotion was either not strong enough or not
well-defined enough to stimulate a verbal response.
Coming back
to the post,
1. The
first thing that my brain identified was that fact that the author was not
accustomed to and was not looking forward to rising early, hence the emoticon.
2.
Secondly, it figured out that the commonly used phrase 'bright and early' is not valid without
making a few dubious assumptions. On top of that, these assumptions are subject to significant changes depending on person and geographical location. As an example, consider my case. I wake up, if my Blackberry doesn't run out of battery, at
4:45 AM. That is 'early' to me. It is far from ‘bright’ at that time, even
during the summer months. At best, there is enough light outside to see 20
feet, and at worst, it is still night. By the time it is bright, it is definitely
not early for me anymore.
And if one
were to argue that 'bright' indicated a state of mind rather than a measure of
available illumination, then the phrase becomes even more murky and subjective.
It is not easy to be 'bright' when you have to get out of bed at an ungodly
hour of day, especially if you are not used to it. Moreover, 'brightness' might depend on the reason for waking up early. Rising up early to
attend a funeral (or in this case jury duty) is almost certain not going to induce
'brightness' of mind. On the other hand, rising up early to meet your brand-new
girlfriend at a scenic vista point for breakfast or rising up early to test
your brand-new Corvette on the empty freeways can definitely brighten you up.
3. That
brings me to the last, and most striking part of the post that caused my brain
to determine that this post was +1 worthy. I have heard of people rising up early for
a myriad of reasons. Some do it out of habit, some due to lack of time, some to
wind up unfinished business, some to start the day early so that there would be
enough time to finish up a particularly time-consuming task at hand, to read
for exams, to answer a call of nature, to go to the morgue as part of probation
requirements, etc etc. But never
before have I heard of anyone rising up early to attend jury duty. Jury duty being the cause of an early
morning wake-up call was not something I had come up against before.
That, and only that caused my brain to deduce that this post was +1 worthy. It is as simple as that. And everything you read before that, and either nodded in agreement with, or raised your eyebrows in disapproval to, or scratched your head in confusion to, was just a figment of my imagination, and had nothing to do with how my brain works.
That, and only that caused my brain to deduce that this post was +1 worthy. It is as simple as that. And everything you read before that, and either nodded in agreement with, or raised your eyebrows in disapproval to, or scratched your head in confusion to, was just a figment of my imagination, and had nothing to do with how my brain works.
In fact, I
don't even know, nor have any inkling of how it works.
Nor am I
smart enough or interested enough to figure that out.
Nor am I
even going to try.
Have a bright day, whether or not you rose early to read this article.
