A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

“In the architecture of the mind, every cortical column is writing its own story of the world.” — Jeff Hawkins

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins is a groundbreaking exploration of how the neocortex creates models of the world through thousands of parallel learning units called cortical columns. Building on decades of neuroscience and the author’s Hierarchical Temporal Memory framework, Hawkins proposes that intelligence arises not from a single unified model but from the collective voting of many independent models, each mapping features in reference frames. This theory reshapes our understanding of human cognition, offers a roadmap for more brain‑like AI, and illuminates how perception, memory, and planning emerge from the same underlying principles.

1️⃣ Intelligence as Prediction and Model‑Building  

Hawkins shows that the core function of the neocortex is to predict sensory input by building internal models. When predictions match reality, we experience understanding; mismatches drive learning. Actionable strategy: in daily tasks—like navigating a new route—pause to predict what you’ll encounter next, then compare your prediction to reality, sharpening your brain’s model‑building skills.

2️⃣ Cortical Columns as Independent Learners  

Each cortical column learns a complete model of objects or concepts within its sensory domain. Intelligence emerges from their collective consensus. Practical example: instead of relying on one source, gather multiple viewpoints when making decisions. Strategy: break complex problems into smaller components and seek independent solutions, then integrate them for a robust outcome.

3️⃣ Reference Frames Unify Sensory Inputs  

Columns use reference frames—location‑based coordinate systems—to link sensations (touch, vision, sound) into coherent object representations. Actionable tip: when learning new information, anchor it to multiple contexts (visual, spatial, emotional) to create richer mental reference frames that improve recall.

4️⃣ Sensorimotor Integration Drives Understanding  

Hawkins emphasizes that movement and sensation are inseparable: we learn objects by touching and moving around them. Strategy: adopt embodied learning techniques—use gestures, build physical models, or walk while brainstorming—to engage your sensorimotor system and deepen comprehension.

5️⃣ Sequence Memory Underlies Prediction  

Temporal sequences—like the steps in a process—are stored by columns as transitions between states. This sequence memory enables anticipation of what comes next. Actionable exercise: when mastering a new procedure, break it into small, repeatable steps and practice them in order, reinforcing your brain’s sequence‑learning mechanisms.

6️⃣ Attention as Selection of Reference Frames  

Attention focuses processing on particular columns and reference frames, enhancing prediction accuracy. Practical tip: use focused “attention sprints”—set a timer for 15 minutes of uninterrupted work on one task, minimizing distractions to strengthen your brain’s attentional networks.

7️⃣ Continuous Learning, Never Freezing the Network  

Unlike many AI systems, the brain never stops learning. Hawkins argues for architectures that learn continually without catastrophic forgetting. Strategy: incorporate spaced repetition into your study routines and review material at increasing intervals to mirror the brain’s continuous learning process.

8️⃣ Ensemble Decision‑Making from Model Consensus  

Columns vote on the most likely interpretation of sensory input, and the consensus becomes perception. Actionable strategy: when faced with a tough choice, solicit opinions from a diverse group—each person acting like a “column”—and make decisions based on the collective input rather than a single viewpoint.

9️⃣ Implications for AI: Toward Brain‑Like Architectures  

Hawkins critiques deep learning’s limitations and advocates for Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) as a more biologically plausible alternative. Practical step: explore open‑source HTM frameworks (such as Numenta’s) to experiment with brain‑inspired AI models and stay abreast of emerging architectures.

🔟 The Promise of Understanding Consciousness  

By revealing how the neocortex builds multiple models and integrates them, Hawkins offers a path to demystify consciousness and develop machines that truly understand. Actionable idea: follow the latest research in neuroscience and cognitive science—subscribe to journals or attend webinars—to track progress toward mapping the brain’s unified theory of intelligence.

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Apa Artinya Papua Merdeka buat saya? (2)

Kita sambung menjawab "Apa Artinya Papua Merdeka buat saya?"

Uraian di sini menjelaskan jawaban-jawaban dari berbagai pihak Orang Asli Papua (OAP), lalu dikaitkan dengan jawaban dari saya. Intisari persoalan yang hendak dipaparkan ialah kekosongan abstraksi "Papua Merdeka" sebagai konsep berbangsa dan bernegara yang diperjuangkan "Papua Merdeka"

Kita telah melihat dua jawaban dari pejuang di Rimba New Guinea dan orang Papua Warga Negara Belanda di Negeri Belanda, yang saya sendiri temukan dalam perjumpaan dengan mereka.

Saya akan masuk ke dalam tanah Papua. Di dalam negeri sendiri saya mau sebut tiga versi pejuang Papua Merdeka. Yang pertama ialah versi nostalgik, yaitu mereka yang selalu membandingkan kehidupan di zaman Belanda, kebaikan-kebaikan Belanda dan dibandingkan dengan kejahatan-kejahatan dan kebiadaban NKRI (Negara Kolonial Republik Indonesia). Wacana yang mereka kembangkan ialah bahwa Papua Merdeka adalah untuk mengembalikan memori di zaman Belanda itu menjadi kenyataan dan pengalaman hidup hari ini dan hari esok.

Kelompok kedua versi pragmatis, mereka tidak perduli dengan apa yang ada di zaman lalu dan apa yang akan datang kemudian. Mereka hanya mau NKRI harus keluar dari Tanah Papua, karena dengan orang Indonesia keluar dari negeri ini, maka kedamaian akan hadir, entah dalam bentuk apapun tidak-lah menjadi masalah. Yang penting tangan pembunuh NKRI harus keluar dari Tanah Papua. Itu yang disebutnya Papua Merdeka.

Kelompok ketiga ialah mereka yang membela ideologi dan menentang ideologi. Mereka berteriak menentang kolonialisme dan kapitalisme. Mereka sering mengatakan "kami tidak membenci orang Indonesia", tetapi "kami membenci kolonialisme dan kapitalisme". Ada wacana sebagai lawan dari kolonialisme dan kalpialisme, kita berpihak kepada sosialisme, karena sosialisme dianggap sebagai jalan keluar dari kolonialism dan kapitalisme. Mereka menyampaikan wacana tentang betapa manisnya dan indahnya hidup sebagai negara sosialis, masyarakat sosialis.

Orang Asli Papua (OAP) yang meperjaungkan Papua Merdeka ditantang untuk menjelaskan, pertama-tama kepada dirinya sendiri, "apa yang dia maksud dengan Papua Merdeka?" Kita sudah lihat dua versi jawaban dalam catatan sebelumnya, Kini kita lihat tiga jawaban lagi.

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Apa Artinya Papua Merdeka buat saya? (1)

Papua Merdeka Masih Butuh Abstraksi yang Berisi Fiksi tentang Republik West Papua yang Merdeka dan Berdaulat

Apa maksud saya, kalau saya bilang "Papua....." disambut dengan "Merdeka!!!!!", atau dalam bahasa Inggris di Papua New Guinea saat ini selalu diucapkan "Free West Papua". 

Kaum intelektual West Papua dan Melanesia secara umum perlu menjelaskan apa yang kita maksudkan dengan "Papua Merdeka", dan mengapa "Papua Merdeka", bukan hanya sekedar dengan menunjukkan sejarah yang salah, pelanggaran HAM yang berat dan perusakan alam yang dilakukan Negarea Kolonial Republik Indonesia (NKRI) selama ini.

Bagi kebanyakan orang awam, "Papua Merdeka!" artinya tentara Indonesia, polisi Indonesia, aparat pemerintah Indonesia mulai dari Presiden sampai Kepala Desa, semuanya angkat kaki dari Tanah Papua. Itu artinya "Papua Merdeka!"

Bagi kaum intelektual, tentu saya "Papua Merdeka!" artinya menggantikan semua sistem yang ada sekarang, yang dimiliki dan dijalankan oleh NKRI dan digantikan dengan rancangan sistem yang baru, yaitu yang berasal dari bangsa Papua.

Kalau kita mendengarkan cerita-cerita di antara gerilyawan yang ada di rimba New Guinea, maka ceritanya sedikit berbeda. Mereka setuju Indonesia keluar. Mereka setuju sistem baru diberlakukan. Tetapi mereka juga mau agar semua keinginan-keinginan liar dan tak terkendali yang ada di dalam diri mereka diekspresikan tanpa batas, sampai sepuas-puasnya. Misalnya, mereka punya rencana untuk menikahi perempuan-perempuan. Mereka punya wacana untuk mengkhususkan tempat-tempat peristirahatan bagi para gerilyawan, dan dilayani sepenuhnya oleh negara. Mereka punya wacana anak-anak para pahlawan diperhatikan penuh dan dibiayai oleh Negara Republik West Papua (NRWP).

Waktu saya bertemu dengan para pejuang yang ada di Belanda, wacana mereka juga berbeda. Mereka bilang, "Anak, kakak, sobat, saya sudah punya hubungan dengan dengan pabrik pesawat Fokker, dan kita akan buat perusahaan pesawat di negara West Papua dan kami menjadi pemilik sahamnya." Ada juga yang bilang, "Sobat, saya punya hubungan sangat dengan dengan Shell, jadi kita sudah siapkan perusahaan untuk operasi di negara kita". Jadi ada angan-angan tinggi, di mana kita akan mengendalikan dan mengelola sumberdaya alam yang ada di Tanah Papua.

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Boothill’s Tribal Democracy

 Articles  -  Islam and Politics 

Wednesday, 17 Rajab 1428

 

He asked, “Are you a Muslim or a terrorist?” I was talking with a group of villagers, all Africans, while sitting under the tent erected outside a home in Boot Hill when a young Indian man joined us and posed that question to me. It could have been a deliberate and maliciously conceived act of grave provocation or, perhaps, it was nothing more than the frivolity of one who turned in worship in the direction of Washington. But the villagers responded to the question with fury. They insisted that it was an insult, and that I should not answer the question. Instead they demanded that the young man apologize for his insult, and they persisted until he eventually apologized to me. That was a taste of Boot Hill’s tribal democracy that brooks no tribal injustice. Politicians and political scientists of this country would do well to study Boot Hill’s tribal democracy.

 

I went back to Boot Hill (a nickname for St. Thomas Village, Chaguanas, in my native island of Trinidad), my childhood hometown, to offer my sympathies to Kenneth Valley whose son had been shot and killed two days earlier in the nearby village of Felicity. It was a killing that provoked significant tribal protest from Boot Hill’s African villagers that quickly erupted in dangerous street demonstrations. It even provoked acts of violence against Felicity villagers. Some of them were beaten and a vehicle was destroyed.

 

Felicity is tribally homogeneous with the overwhelming majority of residents being Indian and Hindu. And while the shooting death in Felicity of the young African from Boot Hill may not have been caused by race, it certainly provoked a violent racial response. Indeed I fear that the die has, perhaps, been cast, and that the dangerous new stage now reached in tribal rivalry can eventually include the entire country in a fatal grip. Hence this timely essay! 

 Rivalry between the two main tribes of this country continues to be provoked by the tribal nationalism that has infected Trinidad and Tobago’s politics for the last fifty miserable years, and tension between the two main rival tribes has long been simmering. Indeed the violence that so spontaneously erupted in Boot Hill and in Felicity is, perhaps, a case of “chickens coming home to roost”. A corrupted political system that divides the tribes rather than unite them, is itself a Sign of the Last Day. 

 

We are in fact poised on the brink of a pit of fire with the eventual likelihood of tribal segregation of the island’s population, and yet all that the establishment has to offer is an “Imperial Presidency” as an answer to the failed political system.

 

My father had the foresight to oppose the PNM’s tribal nationalism. (PNM is the People’s National Movement, which is the ruling political party in Trinidad and Tobago.) He paid the ultimate price for that opposition. But that is another story. He must have had strange feelings in his Boot Hill grave when one of his children eventually rose to hold the highest office in the public service of the country.

 

My Indian Muslim family lived in Boot Hill for more than a hundred years until my widowed mother, worried by tribal nationalism and by mysterious changes that were slowly creeping upon the country and the village, moved us a mile away when she built a new house in midtown Chaguanas. But even then I continued to work as a teenaged teacher at the Chaguanas Government School where my father had spent the last years of his life as Principal. The children of the village thus became attached to me, as they had been to my father before me, as their own hometown native teacher.

 

Many tribes were represented in that tiny village that nestled so peacefully right next to the bustling town of Chaguanas. The tribes all lived with each other in a state of harmony, with recognition of tribal equality, and with respect for tribal identity and for differences in tribal culture and religion. Each tribe possessed autonomy and the right to preserve its tribal identity and to regulate its life in accordance with its own system of values and tribal genius. More than that, Boothill hosted the Chaguanas Government School as well as the Chaguanas cemetery, as a consequence of which the village became the educational home for thousands of children from far and wide, and the final resting place for all who died. Neither the living nor the dead, coming from far and wide, ever felt discomfort in Boot Hill’s tribal democracy.

 

I would always remain grateful to Allah Most High for the good fortune that I had to grow up in a Boot Hill whose tribal democracy stamped itself upon my teenaged consciousness. It was that very tribal democracy that I offered to the nation in my address on “Islam and a Tribal Democracy” in our Muslim Consultation on Constitutional Reform that was held at the Jama Masjid San Fernando.

 

The proposal for a ‘tribal democracy’ that would resolve dangerous rivalry and contain the tribal nationalism that has corrupted Trinidad and Tobago’s politics these last fifty years provoked an enthusiastic response from men like Congress of the People’s leader, Winston Dookeran and University of the West Indies academic, Prof. Dr. Brinsley Samaroo who attended the Consultation. It even earned the quiet respect of Attorney Rajiv Persad who had worked long and hard on the Principles of Fairness draft constitution, and of Ambassador Patrick Edwards, both of whom also attended the Consultation.

 

There was a Portugese man living in our midst in Boothill. “Bosey” Vasconcellos lived obliquely opposite our home and was the owner of a big oblong concrete building where his family produced wine. That misfit of a building still stands to this day. “Bosey” had married Doris, an Indian woman, and all three of their children looked more European than Indian. There was also Eric Maingot, a Frenchman who married an Indian woman from the village. They had a houseful of children who easily found a natural place in village life. And then there was a Spanish woman who lived in the village just a few houses away from us with her Indian husband, Clifford Imamshah. They also had a houseful of children who all looked far more European than Indian. Even the elderly Mr. Kidney, whose property was next to our home, was of English stock.

 

All these Europeans and their Euro-looking children were accepted in the village and lived in complete harmony with all other villagers. Yet the amazing thing about Boot Hill was that Europeans resident in the village were not recognized to be in any way superior to the rest of the villagers. Tribal equality was not imposed upon the village. It emerged naturally. Nor did the Euro-families segregate themselves. They lived harmoniously among the villagers.

 

The Chinese were prominently represented in the middle of Boothill by the Chong Kai Mee family who ran the only village shop. When Mee Zin’s husband died she persuaded her brother, Ato, to come all the way from China to live with her to help run the shop. Her daughter, Millie, made friends with the village girls (my elder sister claims that Millie was her only real friend) and was slowly becoming a part of village life when she had to leave for Hong Kong. But the villagers were predominantly African and Indian with quite a few of mixed tribal descent. The Africans were almost all Christians, and the Indians were almost all Muslims.

 

What was most remarkable about Boothill fifty years ago was the harmony with which it managed its tribal diversity. No tribe looked down upon or felt threatened by another tribe. No tribe discriminated against another tribe. We all lived as a family. And when a villager was in distress or in need, the village would assist without any tribal discrimination. The poor of the village, to whichever tribe they belonged, would all flock to the Masjid for alms on the day of Eid. And alms would be given to all. The tribes lived together without even a whisper of residential segregation between tribes, or between the rich and the poor.

 

Tribal harmony grew into a veritable symphony when it came to selecting the Boot Hill cricket team or the Globetrotters (football) team. The marketplace of sports was a tribal democracy of the purest form. If you could play well you could get selected and even become the captain of the team – it did not matter to which tribe you belonged. I had the honor of being selected on a few occasions as 12th man of the cricket team and had to ‘tote’ my fair share of cricket gear.

 

The village Masjid was one of the earliest to be built in Trinidad. Indeed, for almost a hundred years it was the only Masjid in the greater Chaguanas area, and Muslims came from far and wide to offer prayers in our Masjid. The Anglican Church is still located across the road from the Masjid and the mutual respect and cooperation which characterized Christian-Muslim relations in the village named after St. Thomas Aquinas, reflected yet another dimension of the village’s tribal democracy. My father and Rev. Lamont even exchanged cars on occasions – something that provoked many a smile in the village.

 

Most remarkable of all, the village demonstrated great tolerance of inter-tribal marriages. In addition to the Portugese-Indian, French-Indian and Spanish-Indian marriages, there were quite a few African-Indian marriages. The Mackintosh family was a case of an African-Indian marriage that was totally accepted by the village. And then there was Orin - a thorough gentleman - who, with his quiet dignity and good manners earned the respect of all. When Orin, the African villager, married the Indian Imam’s daughter, he remained dearly beloved to all. They had many children. Those children, like all the other mixed race children in the village, never suffered from identity problems – not in Boothill.

 

My own Indian father dearly loved an African woman and longed to marry her. But in the end religion stood between them and they had to sorrowfully give up on marriage since she adamantly insisted that any children born to them would have to be raised as Christian. And so my father sacrificed the love of his life so that his children could be raised as Muslims, and so that this son of his could eventually disseminate Islam in this country and in many other parts of the world.

 

I was pleasantly surprised when the villagers gathered at the Valley residence gave me a warm and loving welcome as a long-lost son of the village. After all, I had left the village more than forty years ago and during that time I had become a part-time Trinidadian. My happiness was complete when Kenneth Valley himself reminded me that I was his teacher at school. As we sat discussing Boot Hill and its tribal democracy the villagers urged me to write this piece and to publish it so that the country might benefit from what Boot Hill still has to offer to this day.

Posted via email from Tribal Democracy

Tribal Democracy: Postmodern Democracy for All Communities of Beings

Tribal Democracy is a proposal for a democracy in postmodern era, in which All Communities of Beings are involved in daily live of running the government. In other words, it is a proposal for "democracy from,, by and for all communities of beings".

What does "All Communities of Beings" mean?
It means all beings, material and non-material beings, moving and static beings, material and spiritual beings, plants, animals, material beings (rivers, mountains, valleys, air) and spiritual beings, organised and coordinated by human beings.