intelligence

i would imagine if such studies were really solid, we'd have heard about them during the teri schiavo ordeal. i think the more we study the brain, the more we understand how it works and where the different aspects of intelligence, memory, sensation, etc come from.

when a person suffers major head trauma, one of the first things a neurologist will tell the family is that they can expect some changes in the person's personality. my brother was in a car accident and was shaken up pretty good (didn't smash his head, but he did experience a major concusion). he's a totally different person now. used to be hyper and a bit aggressive, now he's calm and relaxed. he used to be ridiculously fast with numbers. not any more.

 

You brother has found green nuggets

 

There is a goal, at least one that can easily be determined by adding up the individual results of all those "decision points." But I suspect that you are using goal with an implied positive or negative, which I am not.

In your view, everything is a constant.

 

goal != result, in my book. a goal does have implications -- not necessarily good vs bad, but planned vs unplanned. for example, being "goal oriented" means you decide on outcomes you would like, then strive to achieve them. it's working from the end, backwards. whereas adding up your individual results for your entire life yields your current "place" i life, which i would not call a goal, otherwise "goal oriented" would mean "living in the moment" which is pretty much the exact opposite of a "goal oriented" person.


i'm not sure what you mean by everything is a constant.

 

I meant goal more like a sum or a product in math. The end result.

Again, like math. Every formula has a result and no matter how many time you use that formula it doesn't change. So you can come up with a 50,000 line formula that equals 1. But all you have to do is trace all the small results of even the most complex set of equations and you will get the same answer.

 

sure, but goal really does have a sense of planning associated with it -- that your result was "supposed" to happen as opposed to just happening because that's what was going to. it's an important distinction to make in this line of thinking because of the implications resulting from a true goal being set. namely, who set it and why?

perhaps a better word would be "consistent". "constant" implies static, which is what confused me.

and your analogy is correct. a mathematical equation yields the same answer every time you solve it, regardless of how complex it is.

 

doesn't solving for pi pretty much blow this out of the water?

 

how so?

 

I was hoping you could tell me

 

Pi has never been solved out to where it repeats.