I was feeling lethargic and unmotivated today, but as a way of not-doing-anything, I got myself to at least read a paper on the computational architecture of the brain and summarize the beginning of it. Might be interest to people, also briefly touches upon meditation.

Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science (Andy Clark 2013, Behavioral and Brain Sciences) is an interesting paper on the computational architecture of the brain. It’s arguing that a large part of the brain is made up of hierarchical systems, where each system uses an internal model of the lower system in an attempt to predict the next outputs of the lower system. Whenever a higher system mispredicts a lower system’s next output, it will adjust itself in an attempt to make better predictions in the future.

EDIT: Just realized, this model explains tulpas. Also has connections to perceptual control theory, confirmation bias and people's general tendency to see what they expect to see, embodied cognition, the extent to which the environment affects our thought... whoa.