# Same cognitive paints, exceedingly different mental pictures

![COMPOSITION: GEOMETRIC OVERLOAD](https://d3rf6j5nx5r04a.cloudfront.net/TLtrY18X2GDzG1l66mOp5zDgJJs=/560x0/product/9/3/85f2b7c7527c4ff79a8792beed0daa36_opt.jpg)

*Composition: Geometric Overload (2017) by* [*Stephen Conroy*](https://www.artfinder.com/product/composition-geometric-overload-f282/?hidehd=1&epik=dj0yJnU9WWlPblRCZW9TMjZieDc2elhXYktESlVZZHlveHRzUEwmcD0wJm49TnpuUlU0S25KdngzU1NuV2VHeUJQdyZ0PUFBQUFBR2tZSXBV)

In [yesterday's post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r5ECX97KYHFZhS3xf/thoughts-are-surprisingly-detailed-and-remarkably-autonomous), I asserted that *thinking* is non-atomic in much the same way that walking is non-atomic: walking is made of individual muscle contractions, the movement of knees and ankles, and so on. Similarly, any thinking is made of component mental motions like generating options, thinking of considerations, pattern-matching applications of deduction, etc., etc. These small mental motions get built up into larger "thoughts" like judgments of morality, aesthetics, prudence, whatever.

Further, much as we walk without giving conscious explicit thought to how much we ought to bend our knees, we think without giving thought to "and now I should search my memories for any situations similar to the present". Rather, inaccessible parts of our minds carry out this grunt work, invisible, seamless, and mostly unacknowledged.

For the sake of this post, I will posit that there are 150 distinct mental motions[^lfumcevtyzl]. A rare few people learn them all[^y9stuo9nsnm], especially the rarer ones like vector calculus, but most people learn a good chunk of them.

Now, I don't know about you, but I was not born with my present faculty to think. 0-day-old me didn't know about modus ponens, didn't know how to multiply numbers, didn't know to consider that seeking info from the web[^p16r9ph96s] as an option when making decisions.

That people learn how to think better (or at least differently) over time is hardly an interesting point. What I want to draw attention to is that we don't just learn mental motions, we also learn *when* to use them. And by "we" here, I mean our broader mind/brain. The contractions of the mental muscles are mostly automatic. You're conducting a chain of thought and some part of the mind says that *now the correct mental act is to ask...*

*   *...how embarrassed should I be?* Or,
*   ...*what's a good distraction from this unpleasant topic?,* Or,
*   *...what's a good joke I can crack to defuse tension?* Or,
*   *rather than ask something, trigger feeling angry/happy/sad (for emotions are mental actions too, and whose elicitation is also trained into us)*

Which of these actually occurs depends on the person. And while both you and I might be able to feel embarrassment and crack jokes, each of us will be drawn to each option by different amounts. Some options will be weighted enough to be considered by the conscious mind, though most won't reach the surface or even be generated at any level. The mind isn't just the collection of mental motions it knows, but also the triggers and rules and patterns that evoke a given mental motion in any given thought-situation.

*cf.* [*Cup-Stacking Skills (or, Reflexive Involuntary Mental Motions)*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vQKbgEKjGZcpbCqDs/cup-stacking-skills-or-reflexive-involuntary-mental-motions) *by Duncan Sabien.*

Where do these rules/triggers/patterns come from? To some extent, they're probably innate, encoded in the genome and revealed as the human organism develops. Yet the reasonable  guess is we learn to think, both the motions and when to use them, substantially in the same way we learn most things: trial and error, imitation, *reinforcement learning*. Seeing what works. What's rewarded[^0jik57vm4te].

A child attempts to stand and walk. They fall, try again, fall, try again, and eventually the brain finds some weights[^u1p0js0kj6f],  some configuration of neurons and synapses, that works pretty well and gets locked in. It'd be the same learning a new skill at any age. But this isn't limited to motor tasks.

Sometimes people lock in something that works so-so, but have learned *bad habits* that are holding them back and they have to deliberately hold themselves back from the old way and train themselves into a new way. But this isn't limited to motor tasks.

So, coming back to the "150" mental motions available to humans, we might suppose fifty of these are very universal and include motions such as "question/disbelieve", "ignore", "retrieve memories", "sum two small numbers". By the end of high school, most people have learned all of these. Then we have another fifty that are advanced but not uncommon and are motions like "deductive logic with three premises". Beyond those you get the truly specialized like "apply the concept of supply and demand".

People don't just differ in which of these they know, but also in which of these they think to apply. Like above, when I say *they,* I really mean their whole brain, including a lot of unconscious, automatic, S1, non-explicit brain processes that automatically determine which thoughts to think as much as the positioning of your tongue happens automatically. And different people's brains learn slightly different tongue positions and that's how you get accents. ("*You want accents? 'Because that's how you get accents!")*

*But thought can vary a lot more than tongue positions.* **Different people learn very different profiles (patterns/triggers/rules) of mental motions – which ones to apply and when – even when they're working with the same palette of mental motions.** This is where the analogy to walking and talking gets weak. While gait and accent have some variation, there are only so many [practical](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2ViNJFZC8) ways to walk. In contrast, I think that thinking habits admit tremendous variation.

Really, I come here to present what you already know to be true. Contrast different life histories:

One child is especially pretty and artistically skilled. For this they get much praise and their mind associates "aesthetic = good/advantageous". They learn (and I mean *learn* rather than *choose*) to attend to matters of appearance: face, clothes, decor. *How will this look? Is it aesthetic?* These are the privileged mental motions for them.

Another child is good at mathematics. In school they earn praise for acing the quiz, later math earns them prestige via a fancy degree at an elite college, and ultimately it makes them $$$ in their technical career. Their mind is quick to see quantitative relationships and mathematical models, for it has learned this way lies goodness. Math is Fun. Math is Valuable. Math is Good.

The first child might have learned the opposite, even. They tried math at school, found it difficult and demoralizing, and now their mind shirks away from math. Their mind never suggests math as a useful tool and if it is brought up by someone else, they bounce off it.

A combination of innate inclination and life experience trains each person into their very specific mental patterns. Brains are pretty capable. Built to learn. And people learn what works for them.

*cf.* [*Personality: The Body in Society*](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personality-the-body-in-society/) *by Kevin Simler*

To take stock of positions I've been assembling in this series so far:

1.  Thinking is non-atomic. Thoughts are composed of smaller mental acts.
2.  Many or most of those mental acts are automatic and subconscious[^w0f2qjlzrnh], like the choice of muscle contractions.
3.  Unlike muscle contractions, the palette of available mental motions is vast.
4.  People's minds learn mental motions and when to use them.
5.  Different people learn very different patterns and mappings of which mental motions to use when.

In my next post, I will explore all the different ways that people end up with different patterns of thought.

[^lfumcevtyzl]: How many there actually are depends on some kind of ontology, which is not something I have, and if I did, it'd probably take a great many more posts to share. For that kind of thing, try the writings of @Steven Byrnes. 

[^y9stuo9nsnm]: Thereby completing their Thinkadex and becoming regional thought champions; at least until more mental motions to catch are added in the next generation. 

[^p16r9ph96s]: According to Wikipedia, the first well-documented search engine was launched a month before my birth. 

[^0jik57vm4te]: Since social rewards granted by others are of paramount importance to people, what is culturally rewarded will shape a person's thought. And of course cultures inject memes into mind which shape cognition. I might write about this tomorrow. 

[^u1p0js0kj6f]: In the ML/AI sense of weights/parameters. 

[^w0f2qjlzrnh]: Though one thing the subconscious mind can do is say "hey, this seems like the kind of thing where I ought to apply careful conscious deliberation".