Efficiency

Previous Post: Understanding and Attention

In the previous post, concepts of Understanding and Attention were defined with regard to the system of Experience. In this post, Efficiency is introduced as a ubiquitous force that shapes the components of Experience and drives the operations of the system. Everyone should feel encouraged to join the discussion and comment on or debate the assertions presented. All relevant comments are welcome and appreciated.

Experience needs Efficiency

For the whole of the system of Experience, Efficiency is a law. As an example, rather than receive the actual sensory inputs as they are, we interpret them and arrive at Perception; a streamlined version of that sensory input, because it is more efficient. Our whole Cognitive Model of the world is a simplified version of real world concepts and their relationships; coded for efficient manipulation, association and search operations. Memory and Prediction are typically only concerned with pertinent details. Memory is largely forgotten as a natural form of garbage collection. But Efficiency not only defines how the fundamental components of Experience are structured, it is also a consistent and pervasive guideline for the direction of operations within the system of Experience.

The ideal of Understanding represents a goal towards an efficiently consistent state of Experience overall. And when one pays Attention to something that is novel, there is an Efficiency goal that is being progressed toward, which is further Understanding. When one continues to pay Attention to it, after it is no longer novel, it becomes progressively more difficult to do so. At some point, Efficiency goals are no longer being served and there is nothing more being wrought from this aspect of Experience that yields a greater Understanding. This difficult state to maintain, paying Attention to the Experience that is no longer informative in a way that allows progression toward an efficient state of Understanding, is boredom. As well, without a considerable amount of deliberate reserves used to continue to pay Attention, a natural process will take over Attention and direct it elsewhere; to simultaneously cease attending to the concerns that no longer offer an Efficiency tradeoff, and to instead begin the search for aspects of the Cognitive Model that, if attended to, can yield a measure of Efficiency. A common automatic expression of this transition is daydreaming. These are just some of many dynamic effects Efficiency has on the system of Experience.¹

¹ The dynamic effects of Efficiency are evident throughout these assertions, but one interesting exploration omitted from this presentation is the notion of Intuition as an efficient method of evaluating and problem solving. Intuition operates without the formal structure of normal Cognitive Model interconnectivity, which equates to operating with a relative lack of Reliability. However, the intuitive process overall can be relatively efficient, especially in cases where there is a lack of contextual reference. This seems to reasonably suggest why Intuition can serve well in times of uncertainty, but can also represent a source of anxiety in times when the current efforts are of high priority; as in, when Efficiency tradeoffs are significant.

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