Architect of Thought

Welcome to the Platonic Academy of Mind

I have a deeply rooted belief that the human mind is much more powerful and agile than we usually expect it to be. Sure, there is no fantasy-book mind magic for us, no literal telepathy, and we cannot subjugate other beings purely with the force of will. Yet there are many things we can do: learn swiftly, do quick mental math, control our emotions, and communicate complex ideas to people of different backgrounds.

At first, this project was planned to be merely a framework. But then, as its structure grew richer, I realized that the ceiling for what I alone can tell is much lower than all the things we can do together. Thus, another catchy metaphor arose — this time for the community rather than solely for this newsletter: the Platonic Academy of Mind.

Motivation

Aside from the pure possibility to improve our thinking, there are more elaborate bits behind the idea to start with this endeavor.

Progress of humanity

Straight from the premise above, it’s possible to imagine that we underperform on the global scale, as a species. Possibly by orders of magnitude, although such a claim may sound contrived right now. But think of it in terms of history — and you’ll notice that the arsenal of tools that expand your mind today would make presidents envious even 40 years ago. Throw a glance a couple of centuries back, and it becomes obvious that our current condition is that of gods, compared to that of past time.

For centuries spiritual traditions developed techniques to control one’s emotions and mold the mind, but they were rarely coupled with scientific progress-making. We can unite these two approaches and make them reinforce each other.

Brain-computer interfaces

Today, we can only guess what improvements will Neuralink and other BCI projects bring us, and in what ways will the qualia of a chip wielder change. My wild guess is that at least partly, the increase in computational efficiency will be tied to the prior mental skills of the user. This is the second reason to whet your mind.

It’s easy to visualize what we would see if our eyes could perceive wavelengths outside of the visual spectrum, or what we’d hear if our ears were not limited by the hearing range. But can you imagine having 100 times more working memory capacity?

Works of fiction

The last, and probably the least, part of the motivation is fiction. Although we cannot perform real magic or possess supernatural abilities, they can nonetheless inspire us. I’ve put up a list of works that I think have brought me here:

• “Understand” by Ted Chiang

• “Diaspora” by Greg Egan

• “Mother of Learning” by Domagoj Kurmaic

• “HPMOR” by Eliezer Yudkowsky

• Magic: The Gathering (blue mana factions especially)

• Role-playing games, both video and tabletop ones

• All the books that I listed in My Wizardry Teen Years

What we’ll do

The more different things we learn, the smarter we become. It may sound like a trite statement but many approaches to increasing intelligence focus on a specific subset of skills or measurements, as IQ tests do. What we will pursue is different because we will aim for changes in many directions at once.

Boosting awareness, improving concentration, navigating yourself at will in the space of beliefs and emotions — these will be the foundational skills, and on top of them we will build an edifice of mastery and performance.

Some of the well-known ideas we will work on: mental palaces (the method of loci), spaced repetition, speed reading and listening, quick mental calculation. Some have no widespread names yet (or I simply don’t know about them) but let me give you several examples of what will be there. Mind you, these are just examples, the list is not comprehensive by any means.

Mental biomes

Derived from the method of loci, a mental biome serves not as a memorizing tool but as a virtual place to exercise a specific discipline or routine. Say, if you find it difficult to make yourself exercise it may be helpful to put yourself in a suitable environment, like Shaolin Temple or some other legendary training grounds. If you want to practice mathematics but get distracted, try to imagine a library around you — or, probably, even some abstract space that makes your specific problem easier to approach.

Conditioned reminders

We need sometimes to set a reminder that will fire under specific circumstances that are not easily scripted with existing tools, like phone notes or programming. We can probably try to employ the brain as a conditional store for simple prompts. It is just a rough idea for the time being but we can find a way to make it work!

Non-verbal thinking

One of the haziest concepts that I have, but probably also the most promising one. When you stop your inner narrator, you don’t lose your ability to think. Rather, when you try to think with your internal monologue off, you either shift back to the verbal thought process (which is almost always) or you start using higher-order abstractions that are not mapped to words or even sentences. Those abstractions are akin to visual representations of the thoughts you’re having, but even without the visual part.

Why bother with those? Because that mode of thinking may be much faster than the one where you use words. Which makes it perfect for searching in solution spaces if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. It also may be way less precise — so you should always check the newfound solution with verbal or notational rigor.

What this project is *not* about

First of all, this is not a cult in any conceivable meaning of that word. We don’t form a group identity. We don’t recruit people or force them to do anything. We can assemble functionally as a group of scholars and dig the topics that are interesting to us.

Although not approached scientifically from the outset, Architect of Thought will come to that stage when most of what we do will be tested experimentally. Being a fallible human, I cannot guarantee that we won’t feature any myths about how the brain works in our research. But I can guarantee that we will do our best to check incoming and produced information before sharing it.

Architect of Thought is free of charge both as the newsletter and as the community and will always remain free, although you can support it on Patreon.

Next steps

During the next several months, I’m planning to publish a post at least once every two weeks. The roadmap for the zeroth and first stages is as follows (also you can check out a very approximate plan for future posts and directions here):

Stage 0

• Optional prerequisites (physical exercise, breathing techniques, etc)

• Critical thinking (to safeguard from false conclusions more easily)

• Productivity and the role of self-love in it

• Awareness and what death has to do with it

• Background activities that may increase the payoff

Stage I

• Body awareness and relaxation

• Stopping internal monologue

• Newborn sight (seeing the world as close to how a baby does it)

• Becoming zero (giving up emotional and worldview coordinates)

• A close-up of motivation

• The basic state of being present

• Concentration exercises

• Visualization techniques

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Disclaimer: all content in this newsletter and any associated platforms is for informational purposes only. It shouldn’t be construed as a call to action, medical, or psychological advice.

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