Fast Algorithms
My brain is, perhaps always was, a pattern match machine. Ever since the labeling days when my parents first starting teaching me ABCDs using a kindergarten book. A is for apple it went and so … ah that’s an apple. A label was created. B is for Boy. Ah another label. C is for Cat. Ah… you can understand how it developed. Since those days my brain became organized, as did yours most likely, into compartments filled with labels for objects.
The more interesting thing to me happens around faces. I see a face and there is within the space of a second or less often recognition… that looks like so and so or so and so’s daughter or son. Or if you combined so and so with so and so and made them look younger that’s what you’ll get. You get the idea. It’s highly computerized. Someone was in me, how did you get that particular deduction so quickly? Well think about how the mind is organized. If the person is brown instantly there are two buckets: likely Indian or Hispanic. If either have I seen that structure before? Where? And instantly, it’s somewhere in that cloud (that’s classified). Really someone from there comes back the reply. Can you show me who you’re thinking of? And so I feel the computer spinning through the various faces from that cloud and voila. A right match. Look at that and this. Usually followed by chagrined laughter.
Does that explain racism, another voice. Why sure. The brain creates buckets, you just have to label the bucket as friend or foe. That labeling is taught to kids early on by their parents and their community. Gringo. Mick. Charlie. See what I mean? Just buckets of slang and slop. Adivasi. Advaita. Adi Shankara. There are linguistic buckets also. And the funny thing is even the most discriminating people can’t get rid of those buckets because they reside inside their own minds.
Norges Bank has nothing on Riksbank. But I classify them in the same general geographical vicinity in my mind. Scandinavia, likely white blooded, you get the idea. It’s all just a way of storing stuff, one this is associated with another. The mind knew mnemonics way before a person actively starts using them to memorize things.
And that is why we don’t see things. Not really. What you first find when you see someone or something is a label inside your brain. That label tells you how to feel about that person or thing. And once you get that feeling you can’t get past it even though we were taught to not judge a book by the cover. Look at the Gaudi cathedral for example. Really beautiful from a distance. Look closer: ughhh what is that? That’s spectacularly ugly. Go inside. Wow, am I in heaven?? What is this place?
It’s the same place you saw from a distance. Yet our minds flipped twice. The cathedral didn’t change. Our minds did.
That’s my explanation of racism. You got a better one?
