The Biological Processing Machine

The CPUs have an internal clock frequency, that is used to synchronize the whole chip to execute certain instructions. Every time a computer executes certain instructions, energy flows through the chip, dissipates into heat, and then warms up the processor. That is why processors have Dynamic Frequency Scaling, which can effectively speed up or slow down the computer, which will make the processor work on fewer instructions per second, but will warm up less than it would otherwise.

I came to understand that our brains might work a little differently than that, in the sense that the speed of our brains is faster if more hormones are floating around, and less if there aren't any, which makes sense if you have to run away from a wild boar (I first wanted to say "bear", but as Leonardo DiCaprio showed us, there is no reason for that). But if you are laid down in a bed, fewer hormones will be produced, therefore less brain processing. However, as my experience goes, the brain does not seem to cope with the absence of hormones for a long period. Which seems reasonable from an evolutive perspective, if you want your species to keep evolving. Besides, that is why one has so many ideas flowing around during the Sunday mass. That is a statement that I could never formalize to myself but always seemed reasonable,  as an answer to why one could not be dived into social media apps for too long, no matter how funny cat videos are. Later I started questioning the siren call effect produced by those apps that makes you stick to it for too long, and if there is a way to bypass it at all.

Additionally, the idea of wanting to do something is the base reason behind the addictiveness of entertainment apps such as YouTube, which always gives you something interesting to watch, or something new to think about. Generally, when one gets to the boredom state the brain quickly starts pondering what should be done now. There seem to be two paths the brain might take, the first and easiest is the "Straightforward Things" Path, which has many subpaths such as: reading a book you started, continuing writing a blog post, and doing some more challenges from a CTF. This path is filled with straightforward decisions because you know exactly what to do if you decide to proceed in that subpath. For example, if you pick "continue reading a book" you don't have to choose from the library of books you already have (which might be a difficult task), you just have to pick the last one. Unlucky for us, this path is the one that contains the "continue seeing Instagram" subpath as well, which is very straightforward to do as you might instinctively recognize the Instagram app icon.

Alternatively, the second is the "Novel Things" Path, which might have something like building a physics engine using C, configuring a private DNS server, or reasoning about an idea you had. All those subpaths are the ones that you previously thought might be possible, but you never thought about how to start it. If you thought about how to start it, then it should be straightforward. If you somehow skip the Straightforward path, which is very enticing, you would have to think about how to start this novel thing, which can be a real rollercoaster of emotions. The main problem with that path is getting to the zone where you have many ideas about how to start but you never try anything because you want to make sure you understand the whole path before taking it. While it might make sense, it is not applicable to more complex scenarios that are hard to keep all in memory at the same time. As you spend a lot of time thinking but not getting results, it might seem like walking on a treadmill and hoping the landscape changes. That is why this path is tricky, because even though in a more simple Novel Idea you should be able to think the whole way through, in a more complex project you might experiment without thinking much, finding which one is the case is the difficult part.

In summary, the Straightforward Path is usually the one where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, while the Novel Path is the one where you get in with a blindfold. However, even though the Novel Path does not seem so tempting, the brain seems to reward both paths differently, following that "less effort, less reward" rule, in a very exponential fashion. Everyone knows the effect of building something or writing a new program you thought about, compared to the reward of skipping through Instagram posts for an hour. If you think about it, the reward rule being something like an exponential function makes a lot of sense from a species evolutional perspective: Do you want a species that keeps doing the same thing all the time, or do you want some that keep trying new stuff?

Unfortunately, it is very easy to control human behavior by adding subpaths to the Straightforward path. While before, subpaths like "continue reading a book", or "clean your room" demanded some effort, nowadays there are subpaths like "listening to the radio", "watching a YouTube video" or "Skipping through TikTok videos" that demand almost no effort but a decent amount of reward, skyrocketing the ratio effort over reward. That leads to my main fear of the future, which is the possibility of someone never having the feeling of the reward after doing something new voluntarily, because of this social media addiction (p.s. I am discarding the scenario where you would have to do it involuntary, such as doing homework).

That is a subject that leads me to another interesting topic, boredom. It is often during boredom times (Like being at church, or listening to a class you have no interest in) that lead you to the first step on a "Novel" subpath, which is awesome. But other than that, there are very few moments when you decide to eat without watching or listening to something. Or even finishing a project, and just looking through the window until something new comes up. Usually, Straightforward subpaths arrive way earlier in mind, and picking up the smartphone comes almost instinctively, which is good because it gives your brain something to think about, but it is actually a local maximal in terms of reward but is very far from the global maximal that you would get to if you think of something novel to do. Maybe we should take a little more time before taking our phones, but what is the clear incentive to do that?

The Car Manufacturer Dilemma

Imagine you have a car factory, with mechanical arms and employees working for you in a pipeline that is 20 years old and already set to build a Nissan 350Z. The cars are selling great, but worse than they used to. After a market study, you understand that you would sell more cars if you started producing Porsche 911s. The problem is that your factory is already set and optimized to build another type of car, and you would have to change all the production lines to start producing Porsches. Besides, that feeling of "that is guaranteed" is popping into your head and trying to convince you that changing it would not be a good option.

Today at breakfast I was thinking of a situation that would produce the same feeling inside your brain, but that has nothing to do with car machinery. A while ago I was trying some video editing techniques and tools, and I was enjoying every bit of the process and the results. Eventually, I got to a point at which I was trying to convince myself that it was enough for the day and that I should do something else for the rest of the day. That was, impressively, the most difficult thing I did in quite some time because it seemed like part of my brain was fighting against itself. At the same time that I had reasons to do something else, my brain was throwing tons of hormones in itself to make me "continue doing what I was already doing".

Considering that I am very far from a neurologist expert, I started thinking that, in a way, the brain might work just like a river flow. Think about it. At each point in a river, all the water particles have the same direction and speed, which are two properties that slightly change over the river's life. If you suddenly try to change its direction, all the droplets will fight together against you because in a way they are all "used" to going in that direction.

From the perspective of the brain, that might be similar. While working on something, the brain redirects the brain waves to a portion of neurons that will be the most helpful at finishing that specific task, which is a hell of an evolution. But if you suddenly try to change what you are working on, the brain will have to change all the hormones and start figuring out which is the other brain portion that will be the most helpful to the following task. That is a lot of trouble for it, and that is why I think that my brain was fighting with all its power against me to make me continue trying video editing. So far, the only technique that I discovered to be effective at shifting the attention of the brain into something else is taking a little nap while thinking about how should you start something else.

Because of that, I started thinking that this brain-shifting difficulty is responsible for the popularity of social networks or entertainment apps. While it is way easier to avoid using TikTok when you are fully concentrated on a math topic (when the river is flowing in that direction), it is way easier to start using it when you wake up (when there is no river flow). And after you start using it, your brain waves start flowing towards the "Entertainment Neurons", and will be very difficult to change it to something else. Even though you might force it (maybe due to homework that you have to finish) your brain might still be flowing in that direction, which will make you think about it all the time.

Also, at the same time that it is difficult to change your brain to think of two very different things, especially something that you have very few neurons for (like how to structure a project using a framework you never used before), our fingers are very used at clicking on Instagram when is caught up doing nothing. That is something that scares me because it seems that the brain volume related to social media stuff is growing over time, which leaves less volume to other more critical stuff. At the same time that I feel that social media brain neurons help at socializing, and speaking with other people, I feel that clicking on a button should not be this automatic.

Besides, I think that using entertainment apps makes me think less on those "why is the world like this" questions, which is something that I miss when I try to elaborate a more interesting idea. However, I am scared of completely avoiding it and consequently reducing social capabilities. Well, I guess that it is a million-dollar question, isn't it?