Andres Valloud sqrmax@prodigy.net wrote: Descartes said "I think, therefore I am". Maybe a more illuminating thing to say in this context would be "I experience self-consciousness, therefore I am". If we go down that road, then many things seem more clear. Our self-consciousness "processor" runs threads. Threads tap on shared brain resources, they also have a dedicated storage space we may refer to as its state. The running thread can be interrupted by other threads. Any interrupting thread may become the running thread. Threads may call other threads, return, terminate, etc. Keeping a thread stack requires concentration. I suggest that this is not a useful way to think about thinking. Some years ago I noticed that if the instruments were sufficiently distinct in timbre or pitch, I could follow more than one musical part at once, with no _experienced_ switching. I could always "attend" to three parts at once, could "attend" to four parts at once more often than not, and on one occasion only managed to track five musical parts. I want to emphasise that there were no experienced* attention switches. I know what an attention switch feels like, and these days when listening to four parts experience them quite often. I can still manage three parts, though. At one and the same time, I am (as far as I can tell) _continuously_ attending to several musical parts, and there is another aspect of me that notices that I am doing this. The "attention points" don't feel as if they are in the same place in my head, although I am confident that this attention-point-location thing is an illusion. If I start thinking about anything, my capacity drops, and my musical attention starts switching.
I don't believe that I am unique.
Another data point. While I am typing this and thinking about what to say, I can whistle, hum, or sing, as long as I don't sign the words. When I try to sing the words, my typing stops.
I suspect, therefore, that the thing which is single-threaded is the speech centre, and that it is _verbal_ thinking at most which is single-threaded, NOT consciousness.
The relevance of this to things like Squeak and EToys is that programming by direct manipulation may have different consequences for "thought" than programming by typing words in a code pane, and that the metaphors we give children (about TELLING little men what to do) may be the source of sequential thinking, not any intrinsic limitation in the children themselves.
Hi.
I suggest that this is not a useful way to think about thinking. Some years ago I noticed that if the instruments were sufficiently distinct in timbre or pitch, <snip>
As I said before, there must be some parallel capacity since it is possible to "pay attention" to a piece of music which is the composition of many little songs. I'd say the magic number is again 7±2.
Andres.
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org