Editorial

THE ALGORITHM OF THE MIND

I opened and turned on my white laptop and I waited for the word processor to startup. While I sat down and drank a malt beverage so as to help me concentrate and find the appropriated words that would make it possible for me to understand what I wanted to say, I began to write.

Even with the taste of the malt lingering in my mouth, I sat there waiting for the command prompt of the word processor to start writing; and anxiously waiting for a sign to start, I realized that I was waiting for a machine to give me the okay; I, a thinking subject, and belonging to the species who created these machines was waiting for a command; an artifact that could add, subtract, divide, write, read, follow my instructions, save and produce information and, in the case that it were to breakdown, or become useless, would never again let me find books, videos nor the music I saved and much less the words I had written; words which I could never see from inside the laptop but with no doubt, would be there because I looked at them daily. There. It was turned on waiting for me to type its first words on a new page, but it was still motionless and I wondered again how a device like this could seem like a view into the human mind.

The study of mind has gone through many milestones throughout history, being considered as a divine breath which allows us to become aware of the world. Wilhem Wundt and William James among others, are those who could reveal the study of mind, as a parallel universe with its own rules and mysteries after a science revolution; they applied understanding of scientific method of the mind. But even now, the mystery of mind still reveals many dreamer scientists and inspired artists, despite of all the scientific advances. My laptop has given me one of the clearer clues as to the understanding the mind; it’s because it can make mental processes such as I could do, and in fact, that is not random; based on my point of view a great revolution on mind understanding took place when they began to use computational models to understand how we process information.

Predictable, quantifiable and abstract models conducted by the engineer and electrician Shannon at the end of the 1940s, or mathematicians and physicist such as Norbert Wiener and Turing at the beginning of the 1950s, who considered the mind closer to be complex and executable algorithm by the only mechanism able to make processes and which gave psychology a better understanding of the human mind - the brain.

If we take into account the scientific ambivalence, the study of the brain based on different branches of neuro-science and also from the complex science perspectives we will get a revealing look at the mystery of what the mind is or what it is not. The most important thing here is that our brain should be considered a biological processor, running on the same path as current computers, with complex algorithms that give origin to our largest and most fascinating mystery, the human mind. According to professor Rodrigo Zequeira point of view, neurologist, who was my professor while obtaining my master’s degree, considered the brain as a great bio-processor, the brain is a bio-processor able to execute such complex algorithms which could process information even in the spiritual field and I am not far from this point of view cause I consider that the brain contains one of the most specialized cells of the body, neurons, which have a nature of bio-electrochemistry, and which are able to transmit billions of bits of information at almost miraculous speeds; an organ that can compute data that way, cannot be anything other than a bio-proccesor.

When I had already spent 30 minutes and the sun began to set from my window making it possible to have a cool tropical evening, I took into account that I had not begun to write yet and I smiled a little with speculation, which filled me with satisfaction and motivation, I began to write with another glass of malt by my side which my wife brought me.

Wilmar Fernando Pineda Alhucema
Ps. Mg (c) Neuropsicología Universidad Simón Bolívar, Barranquilla, Colombia