You can refer to the list of my articles arranged below:

Human behaviour

• The problem

• Functionalist architecture of mind

  • Identity

  • Reward system

Social structures

• Structure and Agency

• Information propagation, cascade in human society

History

• History and geopolitics through enculturation, evolutionary behaviour

Appendices

• Glossary

Support

• Referral program

The Structure Within

Now, you have parents at home and may not be able to play loud music or play with a ball. Same physical constraints, but now there are social constraints. Such constraints form the abstract structure. can’t see or touch it, but real nonetheless.

Our mind maintains a world model. This internal model is a subjective version and a small subset of the actual world. e.g. Before travelling to a destination, you’ll come up with possible routes from your current location, modes of transport, etc. Your decision-making will be limited to the information you already have and any map service provider. There exists a most optimised route, but you will not be able to utilise it if that information is absent from your mind or the map service provider. The world model is not just of physical terrain but also of abstract structures. Our actions within the environment, in any given circumstance, are decided based on this internal world model. Most of the time, we almost behave in an automated manner.

In the previous home example, the individual refrained from playing loud music in the presence of others to avoid argument/conflict.

In a specific context, error through environmental feedback or observation motivates us to update either the internal structure or the external structure. This helps maintain a consistent subjective model for better navigation. Read more about error management and cognitive dissonance in this article. In many cases, the agent and the structure co-evolve, e.g. beavers—dams, humans—social systems, where we don’t just adhere to learned structure (social rules) but also change them.

Evolutionary traits serve as the underlying foundation to our behaviour/agency, but many abstract structures are learned after we are born. e.g Humans, a single species but raised in various social systems, form different behavioural norms. Specific activities may be legal, rewarded in some social systems and restricted in others.

Animals’ evolutionary cognitive models are products of gradual training over millions of iterations/lifetimes, random mutation and novel behavioural patterns. The ones which led to survival and reproduction were inherited. All the diversity of beings we see today has evolved from much simpler organisms that became more and more specialised to specific arrangements of structure. e.g. beings with abilities (behavioural and physical) to thrive in e.g. rain forest, desert, water bodies, etc. You can observe that the territorial sense is very common among animals since that structure provided a foundation for agency throughout the evolution of all species.

Asteroids, planets, atomic particles, elements, weather systems, etc., have no agency but are governed by laws of physics, such as acting forces, chemical reactions, etc. Currently, the agency is only observable in living beings. And, AI systems, if we include man-made entities.

Agents are not necessarily individual beings like humans. In contexts such as geopolitics and conflict, we can consider organisations as agents.

Reward Seeking

Repeated ancestral behaviour that promoted survival and reproduction is registered as a rewarding evolutionary trait in subsequent iterations. All of our fundamental rewarding activities, such as socialising, pair bonding, etc., are products of such natural selection and hence drive our behaviour. Most of the things we do are to achieve these rewards. Read more about the reward system and its importance concerning human behaviour in this article.

Game Theory

Game theory is the study of such agents whose decision-making is dependent on each other within a specific system. The existence of multiple independent agents makes the structure highly dynamic.

Here are a few links related to Game theory:
Substack article by The forbidden files, YouTube: Video1 by Veritasium, Video2 by Pursuit of wonder.

Applications

Our social systems are composed of agents and structures across all scales. This can be used to observe, design and maintain social systems. This is subject to weaponisation.

Related work

Structure, Agency and Internal Conversation - Margaret Archer
Predictive Processing - Karl Friston
Cognitive Dissonance - Leon Festinger

Credits

Cover image from Magnific

Beyond personal belief systems, religions and cultural narratives also operate as instruments of social coordination, institutional power, and civilisational influence. A tool that can be weaponised.

Like most of the global social structure, identity beliefs and religious classification systems have been heavily shaped since the colonial era. Influencing both global perception and self-perception across many societies. For example, many discussions around Hindu identity are interpreted through concepts like conversionism, centralised doctrine, one-book-one-religion and insider-outsider classification.

Information, incentives, and environmental feedback absorbed throughout life gradually construct internal cognitive structures that shape perception, decision-making, and behaviour. We’ll see how various cultures affect the formation of such internal structure and human behaviour.

Things to keep in mind while reading

• Be aware of identity/social biases and hindsight bias.

• Avoid direct association of historical behaviour, actions with present-time identity labels. Analyse the behavioural patterns, present-time data.

• Look at social entities as a behavioural distribution across spectrum.

• Maintain focus on the horizontal social abstractions as well (apex, power structures, large populations).

• Goal:

  • Understand abstract structures and human behaviour. Information-internal structure-evolutionary behaviour.

  • Attempt to map history and understand modern geopolitics.

  • Identifying centuries-old security vulnerabilities (physical, abstract).

• As I’m still exploring, some topics may be expanded, and detailed sources will be added in future.

• Open to feedback, related information.

The Grand Designs

The Bible and the Quran provide clear segregation for insider-outsider classification. Promotes conversionism and territorial expansionism in some form. One book, one god. This monolithic design is simple and aligns well with human social biases, while negligible sub-identities fail to create internal balancing forces against cascading information and herd behaviour. This also reduces the diversity of social behaviour, forming a monotonous perceived norm, leading to aggressive social responses to deviations by social elements.

To begin with, the term Hinduism itself is an exonym and is used as an umbrella term for all of Indian culture. It was a name given by external societies for people who live around and beyond the Sindhu (Indus) river. None of the Hindus referred to themselves as Hindus, but various other terms (Asymmetric identity warfare vulnerability). Civilisation sustained and grew steadily, which led to stabilised social roles that occur naturally in hierarchies. Cultural literature absolutely contains no insider-outsider classification. Mentions of Ahimsa (non-violence) in texts dating from ~1000 BCE. Restrictions on combat rules, such as immunity to non-combatants, and non-harm to non-military/civilian infrastructure.

Apart from Hundreds of gods and goddesses with thousands of variations/avatars, a separate long list of leaders, philosophers, poets, warriors, and saints who are revered as gods. The diversity spectrum of Hinduism allowed various leaders to express thoughts that seem radical considering present times. Mahavir 599 BCE-527 BCE, Gautama Buddha (563 or 480 BCE - 483 or 400 BCE), Basaveshwar - 1131–1196, Guru Nanak 1469-1539. Forming new schools of thought without vanishing existing ones, which repeatedly emphasised non-violence, meditation and avoiding in/out-groupism etc.

Although this was not enforced through law, it created an abstract social structure that is not only complex but actively obstructs reward-driven, socially detrimental behaviour (cognitive dissonance).

Resource availability heavily governs the co-evolution of culture-human behaviour and the intensity of biological competition. The abundance of resources available in the Indian subcontinent (rivers, agricultural lands, nourishing weather system) was a crucial factor for the sustainability of a civilisation with a complex cultural structure, the highest population and one of the largest economies.

Now, we see human migration behaviour in non-Western populations. No wonder that, at the time, European explorers and traders were focused on finding a route to India and on naming the people they found along the way as Indians and indies.

How did this flip rapidly? What is the shortcut to being “first world”?

Un-Holy War

Before Islam (Year <600), the existing tribes/clans were in constant internal conflict driven by scarce resources within the Arabian region (agricultural land, livestock, food, water, etc.). The monolithic design of Islam reduced internal segregation and brought groups under one label. The solution here is contextual; the problem actually scaled up. The tribes that were pitted against each other stopped, only to assemble and fight outward. Within 130 years, territories under Islam spread to the Iberian Peninsula in Europe and the Sindhu (Indus) basin in the Indian subcontinent.

The older Abrahamic sibling, Christianity, had already spread in Europe. Response to Muslim aggression was considerably unified because of the centralised doctrine of Christianity. Military campaigns were initially classified under various terms such as reconquista (for the Iberian region) and crusades (for the southern Levant region, theological holy land).

Hindu-Muslim conflicts started in the region around the Sindhu river: ~600-700. This did not see a collective response from Hindus due to a decentralised social reality.

This disturbed the global trade route. China, India -> Arabian Gulf -> Rome, Europe. This trade network was the reason India and China grew to a ~35% share of Global GDP each, around the year ~1000.

Similar to Islam, the unifying factor of Christianity turned economic stress and internal conflict into healthy competition for global expansion, which began around ~1500 (Treaty of Tordesillas, 1994).

This formed the largest social communication networks (organic information systems). Unlike in modern systems, military and economic activities were heavily intertwined, sharing the same network, enabling unchecked exploitation. This global network probably led to the emergence of shadow hierarchies due to a shift in power centrality, which led to eventual breakaway from mainstream European identities and the formation of a complex geopolitical entity, which we call today the West.

In the Indian subcontinent, Hindu and Muslim forces have been continuously fighting for centuries. This included large-scale conversions and massacres of civilians/non-combatants, destruction of civilian infrastructure. European-Christian methods were similar while invading territories in North and South America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Hindu forces have been at a severe disadvantage due to the influence of moral constraints on combat rules and society with stabilised roles (tacit systemic knowledge). A complex and decentralised Hindu social reality obstructed the large-scale convergence of military forces.

Shivrai (1630-1680) established Swarajya (self-rule, later known as the Maratha empire). Sustained against massive enemy empires with relatively negligible resources and troops through a meticulous and pragmatic approach. Shivrai’s wide range of measures includes building military structure, legislature, building spy networks, using Sanskrit for official seals (abstract defence), stabilising the economy, strict laws against military abuse, and immunity for all civilians, etc. The Empire became the most powerful force in the subcontinent at its peak. This created a much-needed safe haven for civilians and Indian culture/Hinduism in both territorial and abstract space.

Explorers, artists, and traders from across the globe roamed India freely over millennia. Doing reconnaissance with invasive intent was not a big deal for European empires. After centuries of experience fighting with Muslim forces in Europe, in-progress global expansion, the European apex power structure had a grasp on information systems—enculturation—human behaviour.

Indian leadership was restricted and vulnerable due to depleted resources, limited access to information regarding global invasion etc. The British successfully exploited disunity, leading to British rule from 1757 to 1947.

People talk about empires that captured the largest territories, but none sustained like colonial empires. The modern Western geopolitical entities are a result of probably the epistemic continuity over generations/centuries in the context of statecraft, abstract warfare/defence. This is unlikely without a scientific understanding of human behaviour and information systems. As mentioned earlier, sudden access to information and an expanded worldview probably led to discoveries. Patterns are observable that suggest the usage of structure-agency to manipulate human behaviour across scales (individuals, large populations). The apex power structure was likely out of the influence of bias, but they leveraged its influence over large populations. Walking a thin line between weaponising and keeping it secret.

Among European powers, the Portuguese particularly committed horrendous crimes in the name of religion. Under the British, there are several events like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which suggests that even high-ranking individuals were under the influence of biases, while for the apex, it was the necessity to achieve their objectives.

Mughals often killed Indian leaders (spiritual, warriors), but the British relocated the leadership or were allowed ceremonial existence, diffusing potential moral inputs and suppressing the uprising. Rather than engaging in direct physical warfare, they hijacked abstract structures such as information systems, the economy and incentives to control human behaviour.

• Controlling information flows: hierarchical, generational, intra-communal. Breaking organic epistemic continuity.

• Amplifying sub-identity segregation through communal voting, inducing stalemate among conflicting groups through strategic incentives. Inducing biological competition. Even army regiments were caste label-based.

• Dismantling local industries. Extracting raw materials. Selling British-manufactured goods. Exploitative tax systems. Slavery.

Figure: Historical GDP share from the year 1 to 2017. Note that the initial data sampling rate is low, which creates a visual illusion in the latter half that the rate of change is gradual.

Unlike other captured territories, which were retained/became independent, reinvestment in India was limited to the goal of moving economic centrality. Attributing everything to the term British would be wrong because resources were likely distributed to develop other successor states of the British Empire.

After massive casualties throughout the rule and during the fraudulent partitioning process, ironically, India’s independence movement is labelled as non-violent.

There is an eerie similarity in geopolitics around India-Hindus and Israel-Jews. Both identities have historically been abused and exist in unstable regions due to direct/indirect external incentives. All this probably resulted from measures to neutralise unified backlash after centuries of malpractices and violent events, while the modus operandi shifted from expansion to sustainability.

The Ruin

Warriors, leaders, philosophers, and poets receive ritualistic reverence and are restricted to sub-regions, castes, and communities. The caste problem of Indian culture itself is a product of explicit branding and calcification through corrupt incentives. Designed to equip the population’s conscience against itself. Social reality is flooded with misinformation and disinformation. Sub-identity labels are artificially magnified, historical identities reduced to labels. Distorting thinking and thwarting progress.

In the subcontinent, culture is still trying to recover from fragmentation caused by colonial era social structures and modern political branding. Digital information systems (mass media) and economic networks serve as potential inroads for abstract warfare. Many regional powers are subjugated, abusing their restricted agency.

All this is vast and dense. Intense enough to lose sight of the larger picture, including sustainability, planetary health, extra-human ecosystems, and life. I discussed a meta-solution in a separate article, link here.

I will expand further and also write about abstract warfare and structures in future pieces. Subscribe for free to receive updates.

Sources

1. Periplus of the Erythraean Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_of_the_Erythraean_Sea

2. Ethical Code of War in Ancient India https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd38426.pdf

3. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/2000-years-economic-history-one-chart/

Credit

Cover photo by Magnific

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We will attempt to take a similar approach towards understanding our minds.

We’ll avoid anatomical terms such as the left/right brain, frontal cortex, and hippocampus, etc. Anyway, we cannot voluntarily decide to use or control any of these while thinking or performing any task. Still, we can become aware of various functions and processes that take place in the mind.

How to use this?

Through this piece, I want to enable readers to:

• Become aware of the internal components and processes involved in daily activities.

• Use cognitive abilities efficiently and constructively.

• Understand and improve the internal structure that affects individual behaviour and decision-making.

• Isolate and manage stressors.

• Build safeguards against psychological/cognitive attacks.

Think of this article as a map you’ll keep returning to while practicing. Skilling up will require active thinking, practicing along with daily activities for a sustained period of time. If this were easy, everyone would be perfectly empathetic with each other, there would be no communication gaps and conflicts in the world.

The diagram may look overwhelming at first glance. Remember learning bicycle, car, a music instrument or any other skill? How mentally frictional it was initially, but with practice gets almost automated. In this case, start with any of the activities we do regularly such as conversation, reading, writing, creative work etc. and identify the components involved and the information.

To help with this, I have made a retro inspired poster that can be stuck to the wall allowing quick access with an aesthetic touch. Currently, it is available through referral program. This article and the original diagram will be accessible here.

The Diagram - Mind Architecture

Components

Some components are explained through short descriptive text and may be moved to separate pieces in the future. Subscribe to receive the latest updates.

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Cognitive lens

This comprises evolutionary traits (reward system, emotions, cognitive biases) and learned data collectively affecting incoming information before it is encoded into memory.

Salience/filtering: Our senses continuously get bombarded with information. A lot more than we can consciously handle. But the cognitive lens automatically filters out most of it and keeps focus on relevant pieces of information. This relevance is a combination of evolutionary traits and learned information/behaviour.

Framing: Existing learned data is retrieved based on the current context, incoming information, subjective salience, and prior emotional experiences.

Reward system

Separate article here

Identity

Separate article here

Cognitive biases

This component represents a full set of evolutionary behaviour. A large set of instructions that are executed upon environmental conditions/patterns being met. But these are not accurate.

This enables us to recognize high-level patterns and endorse behaviour driven by survival and procreation. Socializing on weekends, sexual attraction, group behaviour, competitiveness, supporting a favorite sports team, the list won’t end. It’s all driven by biases.

Although biases are associated with cognitive errors, bias literally means inclination, but in the modern lifestyle, they can lead to errors or worse, exploitation. Especially in a modern environment, unnecessary responses may be generated due to the heuristic nature, leading to stress (Read more in Error Management).

There are staggering 150+ biases identified. Please refer to the links below to the external work.

Cognitive Bias Codex - Interactive. Clicking on an individual bias will redirect to the Wikipedia pages.

List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia.

Many of the important identity/social biases are not included in the list above. I’m attempting an independent bottom-up approach and consolidating most of them into a few classes based on the underlying mechanism. The work is in progress, but you can refer to my notes below.

- **Sampling biases/data biases**:
  - Perception of specific event, information is supported by the existing contextual information which may not be accurate sampling of actual reality leading to fallacy.
  - Information/perception about self is primarily driven by environmental/social feedback. Distorted feedback lead to distorted self-perception as does the prolonged thinking about either "positive" or "negative" points.
  - Various personal experiences including emotional, acts as data to allow empathising within respective context. Absence of contextual experiences may create empathy gap.
  - We have tendency to accept what aligns with our existing contextual belief sample. Throughout evolution if an individual has survived till age of 20-30, that means individual have likely formed behavioural model from adequate data sample and associations. Rapidly updating model with anomalous data is not likely to be beneficial unless it has high reward, emotional valence or social reference.
  - actionability
- **Association biases**:
  - Association between information/data is supposed to be driven by semantic meaning but prone to malformation if reinforced by environment especially not observed first hand or is abstract.
  - Even if existing information is a good sample, the sample actually to used for perception, decision-making maybe be inaccurate due to incoming information or environmental constraints.
  - Within context, recently learned or frequently accessed/reinforced information is likely to influence thought process regardless of relevance.
  - If information is emotionally stimulating, its association tend to influence decision-making, conclusion and memory retrieval with respect to emotion and its valence.
- **Identity biases**:
  - Prioritising self group affiliation over other identities in various situations including economic activity. Tendency to accept and propagate information within identity.
  - Accepting information with high social reference. Behaving based on social truth despite awareness about it being factually false.
  - Acceptability of information and behaviour based on perceived ranks within social hierarchy.
  - High salience towards information regarding self two-traits, enabling collective response to threats.
  - Tendency to live close community with shared identity variables.
  - Tendency to identify encultured and learned behaviour as inborn/genetic.
  - Identity biases coupled with data sampling and association:
    - Influences perceived norm of various [identity variables](/essays/identity#id-variables), cultural beliefs and practices. Anomaly detection based on perceived norm.
    - Sentiments and opinion towards self-identity and other identities (identity wiring).

Emotions

Works as a compass to navigate the environment, e.g., fearful response to threatening situations and fleeing or forming relationship bonds. Real-time response to environmental stimuli while recalling memories.

Even though emotions are evolutionary traits, how we manage them internally and respond is a learned skill.

Experiences are emotionally tagged and stored in memory. We can recall memories based on emotions such as the most fun or the most fearful, etc.

Emotional response is also normalised to our experiences. Remember any childhood events like exams that felt tense at that time, but when we look back, they seem tiny compared to the challenges we face as adults.

Memory store

Storage of all memories and experiences. Made up of data and intra-data associations, forming a web of information.

e.g., think about the term “pet” and you’ll start gathering all related information that you have, like pets you had or kinds of pets people have, etc.

Weaker data associations cause an inability to recall the information despite the existence of information in the mind. This happens to rarely accessed information. We tend to operate smoothly in the context of regular work since frequent access strengthens the associations in that context.

Encoding does not happen according to the chronological order of events that occurred, but the order in which information is received or accessed.

If you have heavily researched an event that occurred decades ago, you are likely to consider it more than an event that happened a year ago and is more relevant but you haven’t used it since then.

Although most animals gather information, trying to keep conscious reality as close as possible to objective reality for accurate navigation, two realities really are distinct. Conscious reality is a separate copy of objective reality. And cognitive biases perform heuristic scans on this copy (conscious reality/memory store), which may lead to miscalculation.

Working memory

Compared to a seemingly infinite memory store, working memory is finite. This is similar to the RAM, where data is retrieved according to the current context of work, and information is made available at the fingertips for fast access. You must have experienced how it takes time and active thinking to get up to speed for deep research work. This is also why it feels frictional and energy costly to move between multiple contexts of work, especially when contexts are semantically distant.

Sometimes, early-day emotional experiences, whether good or bad, set the tone for the whole day, which affects thinking and behaviour; that emotional state is maintained here. Since information and memories are also retrieved through associations of negative or positive emotions, we also tend to retrieve more of the same. This can affect decision-making and hinder critical thinking.

Thinking on retrieved information and memories also encodes back to the memory store (alters, strengthens). e.g., Only thinking about positive or negative aspects of a specific entity leads to the respective association with that entity.

If you have heard monks, experts talking about emptying the cup, this is that cup.

Attention mechanism

Responsible for bringing our attention to unfinished/pending tasks, commitments, habits, and other high-priority actions.

Ever feel the need to set a reminder for checking social media, playing games, watching favorite shows, or eating unfinished favorite food in the kitchen? The attention mechanism sends those push notifications.

If you feel like the cup is filling despite trying to empty it, this may be the cause.

When thinking about a “second brain,” the attention mechanism is one of the few cognitive processes that benefits from being offloaded. A simple, externally maintained and prioritised to-do list can significantly improve focus.

Error management

Identifies discrepancies between various pieces of information and keeps the behaviour model consistent and avoids the formation of mismatched beliefs. e.g. If you are discussing with somebody and that person says something that contradicts earlier statements, you are likely to catch that.

But despite this, a high quantity of information in the modern environment malforms the cognitive model. Especially, in early life, where cognitive abilities such as critical thinking are still underdeveloped, the information and environmental feedback for years is absorbed and encoded with little or no manual arrangement. This hinders subsequent perception and error management, forming an inconsistent behavioural model. e.g. holding non-aligned or contradictory beliefs due to high social reference.

Sustained error in any specific context/skill causes a belief break, putting us on our toes, reducing our confidence, and endorsing rethinking to reduce the error margin.

Cognitive dissonance: A psychological state of discomfort that arises when an individual holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours. This leads to compulsion/motivation to reduce the inconsistency by changing beliefs, justifying actions, or altering behaviour. e.g Doing something that parents/family told not to do. This also arises due to a mismatch between evolutionary traits and behaviour.

You must have realised by now that what we call conscience is a product of this. It is not a super tool to identify what is objectively right, but it is only capable of identifying a mismatch between various pieces of information/behaviour (various combinations of learned and evolutionary traits/biases). i.e. works within the context of conscious reality and not objective reality.

e.g.

1. Deviating thinking and actions from social norms causes friction, even if an individual is objectively correct.

2. When identifying a mating partner, sexual attraction is primarily driven by physical and behavioural feature recognition of the opposite sex. But non-shared identity variables may disturb the pair bonding. Both are evolutionary biases but likely to cause cognitive dissonance.

Error management should be actively considered for enculturing human behaviour that aligns with sustainability while also minimising mental stress (per capita kind).

Processes

We looked at components and their function in a somewhat isolated manner. Now we’ll look at few processes that occur throughout our daily activities, comprising multiple components.

Perception (Information Inflow)

We start gathering information and learning from the environment since birth. In the earliest memories we can remember, we are already capable of speech. Our cognitive model actively develops from environmental information in a continuous, recurrent process throughout the whole life.

As we saw earlier, perception of incoming information involves a combination of various components that collectively form cognitive lenses. As we gather more and more information, the factor of learned information increases relative to evolutionary traits. Learned information also includes information about human psychology, such as emotions, reward system, and identity, etc., potentially decreasing their negative impact on critical thinking.

Mental injuries such as identity crises or highly emotionally valent experiences destabilise cognitive lenses.

Meditating on existing information(Active Thinking)

As seen in C1, contemplating existing memories and data will lead to a similar response from evolutionary components C2. e.g. Feeling associated emotions when thinking about past memories.

In this case, critical thinking can be more effective due to the absence of environmental constraints, but is also limited to known information.

Contemplating over specific information driven by evolutionary salience (emotionally stimulating or rewarding) increases its effect on subsequent perception, even more than necessary. Considering this, active information gathering and thinking from multiple sources with diverse backgrounds are important to avoid fallacies of bias.

Information outflow, actions

This includes talking, using motor skills to perform actions, play sports etc. This mostly occurs concurrently with perception. e.g while conversing, we hear what the other is saying, we set the context for dialogue and retrieve existing memories and prepare information to talk back.

Memory encoding and retrieval

A sugar glider is an exotic pet. They like to eat sweet food and have natural wingsuit to glide from tree to tree, hence the name. They are adopted in pairs at least, to avoid one going into depression.

If you received new information from the above paragraph, you associated that info with the keyword “pets”. You might also associate it with the likeness of squirrels, but they belong to a distinct family of species. Next time, if you are chatting with friends about pets, you are likely to recall this information.

Due to real-time emotional response and its association with memories its is easier to recall emotional memories than some emotionally neutral textbook knowledge.

Information sources

1. DNA - Evolutionary traits, including cognitive biases, emotions, reward system come from this.

2. Environment - Enculturation. Learned behaviour, like languages, cultural beliefs, and work skills, is acquired after we are born.

3. Self-Generated/Reflective - This is relatively rare and a product of active thinking on observed data, forming new ideas, meaningful combinations, series of personal choices. e.g. artists creating paintings, music, and lyrics to name a few.

Related work

Cognitive dissonance - Leon Festinger
Predictive processing - Karl Friston
Cognitive bias codex - Buster Benson, John Manoogian

The reward system motivates us to take actions that lead to beneficial outcomes while avoiding detrimental situations. Over time, it helps us learn and reinforce behaviours, playing a central role in shaping our behavioural model. Most of our repetitive habits and behaviour is driven by the reward system. Most of the living beings, especially those that can move, find food and sexually reproduce, have this system.

Overview

Let’s try to understand it through this article, starting with reward types and examples.

Rewards

Evolutionary (primary): These reward functions are shaped by evolution and are directly related to survival and reproduction: social stimuli (bonding, recognition), safety, sexual behaviour, and eating food.

Learned (secondary): Secondary rewards are learned associations built on top of primary reward functions. Examples include money, social media engagement, video games, or professional achievement. These activities trigger the reward system because they simulate or indirectly provide access to primary rewards such as social recognition, status, and resources.

Penalties

Penalties include signals that discourage certain behaviours: physical pain, emotional distress, social rejection, or social pressure. e.g. Use of punishments by law enforcement, Emergent social response to behaviour outside social norms.

From these examples, it becomes clear that emotions are tightly coupled with the reward system.

Role in building a behavioural model

A crucial factor for the behavioural development of children to be able to lead a functionally healthy life. Early childhood behaviour is largely driven by exploration of the environment. At early stages, children cannot distinguish what is safe or unsafe, e.g., what should not be put in their mouths. Still, parents repeatedly saying NOO with wide eyes serves as a negative feedback associated with the action. They eventually stop doing it while positive feedbacks such as praises for good grades, reinforce associated behaviour. It’s crucial that positive acknowledgements/compliments and negative acknowledgements/penalties are delivered with high accuracy by the environment for respective actions or behaviour. In a sense, the environment acts as a training dataset. Accurate feedback functions like correct data labelling, helping children associate actions with outcomes. This aligns with reinforcement learning principles, where behaviour is shaped by repeated reward and punishment signals.

While human behaviour or brain stats such as emotional valence are difficult to measure precisely across individuals and environments, we can approximate them using coarse categories (quantisation), for example, classifying actions as low, medium, or high in terms of desirability, and pairing them with corresponding levels of reward or punishment. (Diagram below shows such a pairing).

It also has to be paired with reasoning to build a comprehensive understanding, avoid blind adherence to constraints and achieve better self-supervised learning.

Individual versus Environment

At any point in time, the behavioural model of an individual is a product of continuous interaction between the actions of that individual and the environment. In other words, the environment is responsible for a significant portion of the behavioural development of inhabitants. Considering this, how social systems rewards or penalise their inhabitants is extremely important in shaping collective social behaviour.

This also includes indirect feedback learning, such as what behaviour of others leads to rewards and penalties. We have a tendency to reproduce the high-reward behaviour and suppress penalising behaviour of others, e.g. viral short-form content remake, fashion trends, etc. The effect of this influence is much higher from celebrities and other highly visible personalities (high rank nodes), as their behaviour reaches a much larger portion of the network.

Behaviour is not formed by intention alone, but by the consistency and accuracy of feedback received from the environment.

The mind behaves like a statistical model in many ways. Our behavioural model (behaviours and habits) is built from countless pieces of feedback received since birth. A non-negligible amount of mismatch between behaviour and environmental feedback at an early age creates a malformed foundational model that distorts subsequent perceptions, trapping the individual in a vicious cycle. Depending on severity and the combination type of mismatch between behaviour and environmental feedback can lead to a fragmented cognitive model, malformed emotional response, over/under confidence, polarised behavioural patterns.

Figure tip: visualisation column: Black: behavioural/actions distribution(right side-positive actions, left side-negative actions), Blue: rewards, Red: penalties.

Reward signals are powerful enough to reinforce habits despite conscious awareness of their contradiction, creating behavioural patterns that are inconsistent.

Similar to a belief system, the action-feedback sync does not necessarily need to be backed by empirical truths, but importantly, social truths, allowing social navigation with minimum conflict and cognitive dissonance (considering the aim is not to be right but to be accepted and safe).

Reward normalising (Hedonic adaptation)

While we are living our day-to-day life, each of us adapts to a certain level of rewards. Over time, repeated exposure to rewarding activities raises this baseline. Activities that once felt highly rewarding begin to feel normal. To experience the same level of satisfaction again, the activity must occur more frequently or with greater intensity, gradually raising the subjective baseline. We burnout, get depressed (not clinical), and anxious when activity engagement is reduced or becomes impractical.

In concise terms, an individual’s subjective level of normal/baseline, which can be expressed as the average of all rewards associated with actions over a specific time window. We have a tendency to continue meeting this level of expected reward or increase it through actions. Actions/behaviour that exceeds these expected rewards will be motivating, and while falling short will be depressing (not clinical depression).

This is why people face difficulties reducing social media, gaming time, etc. after prolonged intense engagement. This is why practices such as meditation, intentional boredom or reduced stimulation can help reset the baseline and restore balance in reward-driven behaviour.

The reward system is evolved to build or reinforce behaviours to acquire the resources necessary for survival. However, because it responds automatically to environmental stimuli, it is highly susceptible to exploitation. In modern socio-technical systems, many mechanisms are intentionally designed to capture and manipulate this system. What we interpret as free will in our behaviour may largely emerge from interactions between the individual and the environment. At present, there is no clear boundary separating ethical engagement from exploitation. Along with identity, the reward system is a highly utilised component in economic, PsyOps/cognitive warfare.

Related work

Learned Helplessness- Martin Seligman.
Double Bind Theory- Gregory Bateson
Respondent Conditioning- Ivan Pavlov.
Operant Conditioning/Instrumental Learning- Edward Thorndike.
Social Comparison- Leon Festinger.
Predictive Processing- Karl Friston.
Structure Agency and the Internal Conversation- Margaret Archer.
Self-Determination Theory- Edward Deci, Richard Ryan.

Credits

Photo by Sivani Bandaru on Unsplash

But clarity fades when we move into the abstract.
Social systems, human behaviour, and beliefs. These shape our lives just as powerfully, yet remain difficult to see, define, or agree on.

Below is a working glossary of concepts that form the foundation of a broader model. Each term sharpens the cognitive lens. Abstract tools to grasp abstract ideas.

The model is still evolving. The glossary will expand. Some terms will be explored in depth in future pieces.

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Terminology

The set of terms and their definitions that are agreed upon allows flawless communication and reduces ambiguity.

Two Traits (of Identity)

The foundational components of identity:
Group affiliation (“Who are my people?”)
Territorial association (“Where do we collectively operate and take responsibility?”)
Historically coupled through evolution. Read more.

Belief Break

A threshold event in which sustained contradiction between beliefs and perceived reality renders a value or belief model unreliable, causing low confidence within context and triggering accelerated and often noisy belief updating.

Environmental Feedback

Signals (social, economic, or physical) that reinforce or penalize behavior, shaping learning, beliefs, and habit formation.

Behavioral Model

A full set of habits, beliefs, and response patterns to environmental stimuli of an individual. This is a state snapshot at a particular point in time and is subject to evolving.

Cognitive dissonance

A psychological state of discomfort that arises when an individual holds conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. This leads to compulsion/motivation to reduce the inconsistency by changing beliefs, justifying actions, or altering behavior.

+Extension— Dissonance arising from tension between evolutionary behaviour and modern social constraints.

Salience

Certain information, stimuli, or thoughts stand out and capture attention due to their specific properties, often influencing perception and decision-making disproportionately to their objective importance.

Mental Injury

A disruption to psychological stability caused by intense, prolonged, or conflicting experiences that impair emotional regulation, perception, or coherent interpretation of reality.

Empirical Truth/Factual Truth

Empirical truth can be verified using observations through scientific methods.

Social Truth

Information that gains behavioral authority through widespread social referencing and reinforcement. Regardless of its factual accuracy, it must be considered in behaviour and decision-making, since it’s part of the belief system of a significant portion of the population. Read more.

Social Node

Within a social network/graph, a node is an informationally interactive entity. The rank of a node represents its influence based on social referencing. This includes elements of an information system, such as individuals or organisations, mass media, etc.

Social Referencing

Information, behaviors, opinions, or reactions from other social nodes that are used as evidence by individuals for interpreting situations, forming beliefs, or deciding actions.

Watchdog

An individual, group, or institution that monitors the actions of others to ensure accountability, transparency, and compliance with rules or standards, to prevent abusive and exploitative behaviour.

Power Structure

The organized system of individuals, groups, and institutions that hold authority and influence within a society or organization, shaping decisions, resource distribution, and behavioral norms.

• Formal: Systemically accepted laws and constitutions.

• Informal: See Shadow Hierarchy.

Shadow Hierarchy

Social hierarchies, networks with significant influence power (economic, political, social) but no public visibility. In short, hidden power structures.

Large populations/Everyday people

A broad group of individuals considered collectively, often used to describe patterns, trends, or behaviors at scale. At the individual scale, they do not possess specialized expertise, authority, or exceptional circumstances.

Abstract Warfare

Conflict that does not occur through direct physical violence but operates through other modes, such as

• Economic warfare

• Psychological warfare

  • Identity warfare

  • Information warfare

• Cyber warfare

These modes do not operate in isolation but overlap in practical implementation.

PsyOps (Psychological Operations)

Planned activities that manipulate information and the environment to exploit psychology, influencing sentiment, attitude, and behaviors in support of broader objectives. Targets range from a large subset of the population to an individual.

Identity Wiring

Identity wiring refers to the structured set of sentiments and opinions of various identities towards each other and the self, driven by human biases. These beliefs are formed by social truths through information propagated through social talks, mass media, historical records, the education system, etc. This heavily influences further/ongoing warfare of any mode and co-evolves with it.

Identity Fishing

A PsyOp tactic that propagates intricately designed information through various media targeted towards specific identity(ies). Although information accessible publicly as neutral, its perception by targeted identities is driven by high salience towards self two-traits and pre-trained shared beliefs. Effects include reinforcing/altering identity wiring, distorting perceived identity norm.

Information System

An Information system is an ecosystem of components (people, data/information, technologies) capable of performing the following functions in a specific context.

• Collect data

• Store data

• Process data

• Distribute data

• Generate new information/data

Super Structure

A socio-technical system integrating human behavior, information flows, structural constraints, and their co-evolution into a single analytical unit.

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Social Network

Network theory provides a useful framework for studying interconnected systems and the behavioral patterns that emerge within them. Our focus is on information propagation in the modern environment and the human behavior associated with it. In this system, the components include individual humans, organizations, and socio-technical systems that together form a social network. A minimal network (or graph) is made up of just two components, nodes and edges.

Nodes

Within a social network, a node is an informationally interactive entity, i.e., it can collect, store, distribute, process, and generate information. Nodes can be an individual human or an organization that has agency with respect to structure. Non-human entities such as search engines, books, AI systems, and websites are ultimately managed or created by humans and therefore can reflect human biases, political incentives, or institutional agendas.

The social rank of a node is a numerical representation of its social influence. It tells us how likely other nodes are to receive and believe that information. This includes node attributes such as visibility, authenticity, etc., but since large scale human behaviour is driven automatically by heuristics and biases, we’ll limit nodes to two ranks— High and Low.

High rank node: Nodes such as political leaders, experts, and actors. Non-human entities such as search engines, AIs, websites, etc. These nodes are more likely to influence or shape the beliefs of low-rank nodes. The high state of rank comes from high reference weightage from other nodes. References from another high-ranking node add more value, such as institutional recognition (awards, prizes, etc.).

Low rank nodes: Large populations/common people. In the case of a receiver human node, information perception is subject to cognitive biases like the perceived identity of the distributor node.

Edges/links

Edges or links between the nodes show the connectivity. Since we are looking at the human society as an information system, the edge denotes the capability to exchange information. In the case of epidemiology, which is the study of the spread of viruses and diseases, using geolocational proximity for edges makes sense.

Connectivity can be unidirectional or bidirectional. e.g., two friends sharing info, chatting, influencing each other’s thoughts is bidirectional. Large populations following a specific high-rank node (such as a celebrity) create a largely unidirectional connection.

Social Truth

Isn’t truth just truth? What’s social truth? One of the ways to look at our minds is that it works like a statistical model. Information we receive, things we observe again and again, reinforces itself in our minds regardless of its factuality, building a conscious reality that is independent of empirical reality.

For detailed analysis, we distinguish social truth from empirical truth. Emprrical truths can be independently verified using observations or scientific methods.

In network terms, a statement or a node gains strength as more nodes refer or distribute it. As the social referencing weightage increases, informational and normative social influence encourage nearby nodes in the network to adopt it. Over time, this reinforcement can allow an idea/statement to sustain itself and become a social truth, regardless of whether that statement is true, false, or partial.

We are more interested in partial/false social truths. Let’s take a few examples - “Vikings wore horned helmets.” “Columbus discovered America”, “Dinosaur looked grey and scaly”, or pick any other topic that is relevant to you, and think where that belief originates? Are these factual truths? No. But you will still find a lot of people who believe these because they were propagated by high-visibility nodes repetedly such as films, education systems, TV/news, online media, etc. These examples are fairly simple, but our belief system is full of such social truths that drive our behaviour and decision-making in an automated manner.

Social truths are not inherently harmful. They have been an integral part of human civilization and a significant factor for the sustainability of the social system on large scales, e.g., cultural beliefs and faiths. Ideally, cultural beliefs function as simplified interpretations of reality and are supportive of sustainability. Science is hard and tends to get lost without explicit documentation. Simplicity is what makes particular information capable of becoming a social truth. But a large divergence between social truth and empirical reality can lead to deteriorating social outcomes, as decisions are increasingly based on inaccurate models of the world. Balanced existence of social truths within a scientific framework may be key to sustainability in the context of human behaviour. The ability to classify information as social truth allows us to analyze its effect in social and political dynamics in comparison with empirical truths/ideal reality.

Related work

Social network theory
Normative & informational social influence - Morton Deutsch, Harold Gerard
The social construction of reality - Peter Berger, Thomas Luckmann
Truth threshold

Credits

Cover image by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Identity is one of the core and most powerful biases resulting from natural selection. This has effects and applications on a global scale, down to personal lives. Under its influence, humans are capable of assembling in numbers towards a single purpose, constructive or destructive.

Identity is a critical basis for social collaboration and biological competition; hence, regardless of the intensity of biological competition/phase of warfare, you will find identity at the heart.

The aim of this article is education— to build safeguards against exploitative elements and social phenomena that have emerged or been induced, and to avoid being a victim or the medium of identity warfare.

I have personally found patterns of information that suggest identity was first (consciously) wielded as a weapon at least a few centuries ago. Now its use is widespread. But to keep this content “unbiased”, digestible for all identities, and staying true to the aim, we’ll avoid real examples.

Components of Identity

Identity consists of the:

• The two-traits:

  • Social affiliation: Who are my people?/which human group do I belong to? (Ideally, a two-way relationship between a person and a community)

  • Territorial association: What my territory is (Not as private property, but social and with shared responsibility among inhabitants)

• Individuality: individual role WRT two-traits.

Even though our identity sense is evolutionary, it is equipped with the information ingested from the environment through the social system, the education system, etc.

Then versus Now

Throughout the evolution, and even in present-time tribal settings, the territory is shared with “my people”, i.e., the two traits are near-compulsory, mutually inclusive. Hierarchical sense/bias also exists for efficient functioning as a single unit. In fact, this applies to all social animals (chimpanzees, bonobos, hyenas, wolves, lions, etc.).

The evolution of any specific species through natural selection is a very gradual process that takes place WRT environment in which that species inhabits. Sudden changes in the environment are detrimental to survival, e.g. End of the ice age is one of the major factors for the extinction of mammoths, the extinction of various species due to global warming, etc. In our context, environmental change refers to the explosion in the quantity and complexity of information intake, causing friction between the environment and evolutionary traits/behaviour affecting mental health.

In modern times, we have (seemingly) established a nation-state-culture system and induce a sense of identity in a way that the “two traits” are NOT compulsorily mutually inclusive, which can be a positive thing, but the presence of economic fault lines and lots of identity variables causes identity confusion in large populations, leaving them highly vulnerable to identity crisis and its exploitation.

Identity + Economy + Reward System

Identity combined with economy and individual scale human behaviour-reward system, explains the evolution of the political-demographic-territorial state of the world, how it came to be from historical states and potential states that may emerge in the future from game theory dynamics between global power structures while hiding behind the camouflage of information-dense environment with no tools for large populations or watchdogs to evaluate whether a specific social phenomenon is emerged or artificially induced.

Historically, as humans started producing a variety of goods and trading, their rewards promoted them to step out of their local identity and form economic integration with other identities, easing the two traits. Obviously, easing up on the two traits also leads to putting the guard down against invasive identities in both territorial and socio-economic space. Conversely, if resources are scarce (high economic stress), identity intensifies and makes us engage in biological competition aggressively. This identity-economy seesaw effect can be used as an economic deterrence to form an integrated, sustainable network of regions/identities. But leverage must be equally distributed among parties/power structures, otherwise, identity with high centrality will be in a position to exploit.

Identity is constantly exploited through political/economic/violent means worldwide (inter-national, intra-national), effectively triggering collective emotional reactions among involved identity(ies).

Examples of variables across which identity can be leveraged or exploited:

• Territorial provocations: Challenging the territorial/boundaries status quo, territory partitioning/border redrawing to create new disputes.

• Non-territorial identity variables: Nations, states, communities, sub-communities, castes/subcastes, ideologies (left, right, capitalism, communism), physical attributes (various skin, hair colours, monolid eyes), religions, ethnicities, languages, gender/sexual orientations and recently trending generations (millennial, Gen Z, etc.)

Considering the aforementioned high variable count, coupled with high-volume information in a modern environment, this double downs on the identity bias and drives behaviour and decision-making in an automated manner. This coupling of information+evolutionary bias—>behaviour is not just limited to identity.

Tradeoff between Individuality and the Two-traits

Balanced incorporation of the two-traits and individuality can promote social responsibility and prevent reward-maximising behaviour among individuals. We can observe the tradeoff between two-traits and individuality within the human social hierarchy. Strength of large populations is in the numbers, and mutual two-traits is the force that brings cohesiveness, and as we go up high in the social hierarchy/pyramid, individuality gets stronger. Individuality strength comes from 1. influence over two-traits and 2. support from two-traits, leading to game theoretic lock-in.

Identity crisis

Any observed/perceived information or experiences, especially in a non-negligible quantity and a relevant time span that is contradictory/not aligned to existing identity beliefs, can trigger an identity crisis. e.g. Facing repetitive discrimination within inhabited land. In other words, there is a non-negligible error/discrepancy between the mind’s current belief (conscious reality) and actual reality WRT perceived information, causing belief to break in this context, its identity.

Errors in our predictions are not that rare, but since identity is a core value from a natural selection POV, the brain triggers a mechanism in order to rebuild the identity behavioural model at the earliest, so the victim can successfully navigate and survive in the environment.

In computer science. terminology, high error and lower confidence score of behavioural model predictions lead to ramping up the learning rate (overthinking). Due to the injured mental state, years of existing pieces of information/memories are in a dangling state and information gushing in from the environment is not efficiently and accurately analysed, labelled, and assigned importance weights, causing cognitive overload.

From my personal experience, the identity crisis is more like slow poisoning rather than sudden trauma. I have seen people suffering from an unresolved identity crisis throughout their whole life without being aware of its existence, severely affecting their quality of life. Social systems are under-equipped at identifying victims and aid engagement. Identity malformation and crisis can run cyclically in generations of a family. Since this can be twisted as family history, explicitly mentioning that identity doesn’t run through genetics but is learned from the environment.

Behavioural traits of an active identity crisis

(Descriptive, not diagnostic.)

• Increased sensitivity to overall environmental stimuli. Increased vulnerability to addictions, naturally selected high reward functions, e.g. Sexual attraction/porn, social stimuli, food cravings. Increased emotional response and volatility, including impulsivity, mood polarity.

• Discomfort in society, low confidence, mimicking the behaviour of others, and normative social influence.

• Unrestrained emotional and reward-driven thinking/behaviour. To rebuild the behavioural model, going through existing memories/data, trying to find patterns and possibilities leading to daydreaming, self-talk, and manifesting as hallucinations.

An information-dense modern environment is the cause behind susceptibility to identity crisis as well as the obstacle to recovery. Due to the same, identity is likely to be malformed by information ingested from the environment (Identity foreclosure).

The recovery is also affected by the social identity design and the complexity of the local society in which victim inhabit, but it’s definitely not limited to it, as most of the chaotic/politically dynamic regions are often fuelled by international politics.

Misinformation and disinformation regarding the subject can lead to mental illness stereotyping/cultural labelling of victims at the hands of society. Because of the higher sensitivity to environmental stimuli, an active identity crisis is a highly valued mental state from PsyOps POV. Applications at the individual and population scale. The use of this knowledge for psychological, socio-economic warfare is not acknowledged widely, nor do safeguards exist in society. Unlike traditional physical warfare, these attacks are relatively difficult to predict, identify and confirm.

Feedback:

If you see conceptual gaps, counterexamples, or adjacent research, I’m interested.

Related work:

Social identity theory - Henri Tajfel, John Turner
Identity formation & identity crisis status model - Erik Erikson, James Marcia

Credits:

Article preview image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

There is one thing that deserves more attention than we are allocating: Human Society, which is still governed by fragmented models and influenced by human biases.

Why this priority?

When assembled, humans are capable of achieving extreme goals. Numbers always been our raw strength, while the social system and culture decide the direction of confluent forces. Throughout history, we have proved that goals can be both constructive and destructive. We aim to focus on constructive karma (actions) without losing sight of destructive deeds. We cannot afford either too much optimism or pessimism. If we could create a sustainable social design compatible across scales, to create confluence and direct it correctly, it would not just solve existing problems like conflict, basic needs, and power exploitation, but also give a huge boost to progress in scientific areas.

What is dragging us?

1. Historically, ideation may have been hindered by the absence of instant large-scale communication, information systems, and feedback loops. And the power structures, who learned the knowledge, weaponised it, driven by reward-maximising behaviour. This abstract warfare further deterred other components from understanding objective reality.

2. Political deadlock: Various identities have inflicted wounds on each other through the course of history. It still influences politics and our emotions. History itself is vast, and with the employment of disinformation, it is easy to get lost deciding what is right and wrong. This has created a sticky situation among global power structures and an inability to use available resources to approach the problem.

3. Psychology, sociology, information systems, evolutionary history, and economy— These subjects are treated in a fragmented manner, especially when it comes to actual application to solve social problems. Point 2 may have an influence on this.

Potential Practical Approach

Driven by identity crisis, I attempted a solution with a less than half-cooked problem definition, a fragmented understanding of the world, and “any-means-necessary” methodology. I ended up gathering a lot of data after strenuous interaction with society. One of the conclusions– Human society is resistant to change, as is every human. Society collectively fights back, led by power structures to protect the very system they have struggled to master. Hence, keeping aside what I cannot control and focusing on 3rd point.

The first thing we need to understand is that this whole planet is one system. No geographic region, identity, or any other subset exists that can be classified as an independent, isolated system. Weather systems, ocean currents, human activity-climate change-global wildlife ecosystem, sourcing of products we use daily, geopolitical-economic fluctuations are a few examples of how intertwined this world is.

Considering this, we should be able to create a model/framework that provides an integrative, granular view across all scales with cause-and-effect. This includes— Individual and collective human behaviour, media/information systems, the economy, culture, biological competition/warfare, social structures, and hierarchies. Identify components/subcomponents with a varied degree of abstraction through socio-economic indicators and geography.

Once we have the model that provides us a high degree of transparency, we should be able to agree on problem framing of the current state of the world(or any subset) and define a sustainable social state, a design that allows balanced distribution of power, deterrence against any exploitation, and economic and cultural stability, to name a few. What remains is consensus on the steps to take to achieve a sustainable state from the current state we are in, with minimum disruption.

In the upcoming articles, I will attempt to dive deep into the components that heavily influence- Politics, economy, culture, and conflict.

I’m developing a conceptual framework that attempts to model these interactions explicitly within a single system: individual human behaviour, collective social dynamics, information systems, environment, and social structures.

The work-in-progress lives here: https://seeThroughThis.github.io

I’m sharing it publicly to invite feedback.

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Credits:

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Article preview cover image by Sajad Nori on Unsplash