There are endless ways to model how the human mind works, so we can try to understand it. Some of the most fun models of the mind are: some argue that the voice you hear in your head is gods speak to you; some use electronic circuitry to understand and model how your thoughts are happening; some even claim that nothing much is even happening in your head.
But my favorite and what I find to be the most useful model of what’s happening in our heads is Marvin Minsky’s model of the mind, often called the “Society of the Mind” model, after his book of the same name.
While this model is a few decades old by now, it is as useful and as interesting as ever, not to mention the Lindy Effect is definitely in effect: the longer something (such as this insightful model) has been around in the past, is the longer it will likely be around in the future. So we’ll likely still be talking about the Minsky Model even after we stop talking about the multiverse model of existence.
Here’s how I like to think about the Minsky Society of the Mind model. To all the academics and intellectuals reading this: yes, I know I’m simplifying this, try to imagine all the qualifications, exceptions, and footnotes in your mind.
Usually, you describe people with a set of adjectives about their personality, “He’s nice,” “She’s friendly,” and so forth, we tend to see them as absolute permanent descriptions. “He’s a nice guy (although being humans of course there times when he’s not nice, but those moments are the exceptions.)”
But what if we, instead, imagine that each personality attribute, or each adjective to describe you – instead of being an eternal characteristic of you, becomes just one (of many) agents in your mind. Think about the classic angel and devil whispering into your ear, except thousands of them, and each one not representing such a broad category of your personality but just a tiny sliver of one miniscule aspect.
But where it gets interesting is the most direct implication of this model: why do you do anything, say anything, from the smallest to the biggest decisions, from the most sub-conscious to the most purposefully conscious decisions? Minsky argues it’s because that one particular agent has more power over the other agents at that particular moment.
It’s not that “John’s nice” but rather “John is currently nice because his Nice Agents are in dominant control of him now.”
And then, from there, there’s the natural implication of how we make decisions. It’s like a parliament or (to be darker) a war between these different teams every moment. You’re nice now because your nice agent is winning. But maybe in the long-term, your nice agent is losing the war, so you’re becoming less and less of the nice guy.
Also, this is precisely why Minsky named his model a “society”: what is a society if not a whole lot of people, each of whom has a particular viewing point, trying to get its voice heard so that the group overall can all do what it wishes to be done?
And the implications, then, get even deeper and darker: if you’re not really nice but just nice-this-moment because the nice agent is one of millions and it happens to be dominant this second, and the strengths of these agents change one moment to the next and then patterns of change are visible–if all this is indeed the case, then “who am I?”. If I’m a different person now than a moment ago because the nice agent just lost some battle in my mind–then how can I be even accountable for anything that a different me did moments ago? (I need to contact my metaphysical lawyer!)
So, of course, this delves into a “why do I exist?” question and the answer to that requires a bit more space than I have in this post, but I’m happy to go there and try to figure out why you exist if you drop me an email! But for our purposes here, Minsky’s model of the mind has two interesting implications for personality testing:
First this is a reason why here we argue that any model o fthe mind shouldn’t have 4 dimensions (think “16 Personalities” or “DISC”) or 5 (like “OCEAN”). It should have a dimension in our model for each minor independent personality attribute! Why not? Modern technology can do it. (Hint: this is part of what we’re building here at SpotlessMind.)
Second, we can’t treat the results of an analysis of your personality as static, but as an ever-changing dynamic; and the fact that they are treated as very static doesn’t account for the fact that humans change over time. So personality models need to be built on that assumption from the ground-up. (Hint: this is also part of what we’re trying to do.)
It shocking how many people still see themselves as the same 16 Personality type as from when they took the test 20 years ago. I know that I’ve become much more introverted over time, and perhaps that’s a pattern which explains why grandparents tend to have almost no friends.
