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3:10pm on Monday, 3rd December, 2007:

Great Minds...

Comment

The main article in this week's New Scientist concerns the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. Researchers have apparently identified four different ways that the conscious and subconscious interact, depending on the situation:



Hmm. Now where have I seen that before? Oh, yes, I remember: my book:



Pavlovian controller: opportunist/griefer
Episodic controller: scientist/networker
Goal-directed controller: planner/politician
Habitual controller: hacker/friend

Or, if you prefer 4 types instead of 8:

Pavlovian controller: killer
Episodic controller: explorer
Goal-directed controller: achiever
Habitual controller: socialiser

Reading the article, some of the analogies are quite striking (they talk about the habitual controller in terms of social activity, for example). They also use implicit/explicit as a dimension, which is what I added to transform my 4-type model into an 8-type model (implicit means subconscious, explicit means conscious). The other two dimensions I use are not particularly relevant to this classification, but nevertheless it's interesting to note that there's still a very good correlation between the different behaviours of the mind and my 4-type model. I don't know why they match up so well, of course, but it does seem to be somehow supportive of my model rather than denying of it.

Corollary: if playing virtual worlds is bad for your mental health, so is thinking.


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Copyright © 2007 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).