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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: October 15, 2002 So, is your brain really hierarchic? (Scripting News) -- "Now think about your whole house, and how many things there are in it, and for almost every thing in your house there's an equivalent place in your brain where you store knowledge of how to retrieve the object. That's a hierarchy." (Comments: Few people think that the brain is hierarchic. One of the main strengths of the brain is that it is not hierarchic!)
Reader Comments...
As far as I'm aware, even our top scientists have yet to find the area of the brain devoted to tracking Q-Tips, but I'm sure they'll get there one day. (I can see what he's getting at, but he's chosen a vague analogy and explained it poorly)
For us foreigners a "Q-Tip" is a "Cotton Bud". This 'argument' is even less well thought out and ridiculous than one of mine! Posted by: Mac on October 15, 2002 08:36 AM
Don't you mean the mind is not hierarchic? Medically, the brain -- and really your whole body -- is all hierarchy. It functions on a strict rule set. The brain is the general of a massive army, deploying and maneuvering troops as needed 24 hours a day. I'm most impressed with the hierarchy of essential body functions and what systems the brain chooses to shut down first in an emergency to sustain its core functions. Posted by: Contrarian on October 15, 2002 11:37 AM
Post by Matt Round said it correctly... Dave Winer is a fanatical "blogger" - in my opinion, most blogs are wide and shallow, just like Mr Winer's analysis. (BTW: He's also a fanatical "Outliner," which is precisely the reason he's talking about "hierarchy" at all. Seems like he's looking to justify his interest in Outliners.) Giving this whole thing a bit more thought, if our minds were so "hierarchical," why the heck would we need an Outliner, which, by design, is a tool to ORGANIZE our thoughts in a hierarchical way!? We would just spit out thoughts in a hierarchy! Dave is Lame
Surely our brains function as they do precisely because they AREN'T hierarchical? How else could we make the ridiculous associations between disparate things - for example, train journeys always remind me of 'Get It On' by T.Rex (or Bang A Gong as it was called in the USA). I won't explain why. And how would you explain creativity? Or am I just misunderstanding the point? Posted by: Alan Fisher on October 17, 2002 04:14 AM
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