Who are we? How our brain works at a high level.

Disclaimer: This is literally what I jotted down as I woke up. The order is just the train of thoughts I was following. What it captures is my current model for how the brain works at a very high level. Some of these things are probably well known, some I’m sure have already been proven wrong, some others are pure speculation. I’m not sure which ones are which but it was fun and liberating to just write them down in a naive way. Enjoy!

• A cluster of neurons is a collection of one or many neurons.
• To think is to stimulate one or more clusters of neurons.
• An action is whatever happens when we activate a cluster of neurons that is connected to our body actuators.
• When we are alive we are constantly reading (thinking) and writing on our brain.
• We can think of our brain as a linked hash map.
• We can stimulate one or more clusters of neurons to achieve short term or long term goals.
• Our short term or long term goals are also stored in clusters of neurons.
• We can have zero or many clusters of neurons active at the same time.
• A configuration of cluster of neurons is what we call a thought.
• When we activate a thought (i.e. a configuration of cluster of neurons) we experience again the emotions that were associated to creating that cluster of neurons to begin with.
• The faster we can activate neurons and the faster we can create new connections the more intelligent we are.
• A mood is something that influences what emotions we experience when we activate clusters of neurons.
• When we are in a good mood a filter is active to select the positive emotions/memories.
• A mood is a filter or selector.
• To be alive we need to have energy to be able to stimulate the neurons
• We can selectively send pulses of current to any neuron in our brain.
• If we want to think about Jennifer Aniston we need to stimulate her neurons, how do we know where they are? Through association.
• Our self is a cluster of neurons which is constantly active.
• We get to Jennifer Aniston or to any other thought starting from the self (if we start thinking from scratch) or from whatever other cluster of neurons might already be active (we already got there)
• So one possibility is that to find Jennifer Aniston cluster would involve navigating a chain like this (starting from the self): 
  Self -> human being-> other human beings -> humans I don’t know → females -> actresses -> Jennifer Aniston
• This in our brain is like a linked list and it’s very fast to navigate.
• The links are created as we live (think, experience, etc.).
• Every one of us has different links.
• Who we are as people depends on the concepts for which we have reserved a cluster of neurons in our brain and what associations we have created between them.
• We don’t have a choice to live without activating (stimulating) clusters of neurons in our mind, if we are alive we do.
• We have a part of our brain that detects patterns in our sensory inputs and writes associations between these and clusters of neurons.
• Therefore if our eyes are open we cannot not think, things are wired like that.
• How can a cluster of neuron be always active (our self)? I picture it as something where the current always flows no matter what, i.e. it’s constantly stimulated in a sort of a self-sustained loop.
• Emotions (fear, happiness, etc.) exist at a primal level and are shared also by other animals that don’t have such a sophisticated linked map like we do.
• Pain is what we experience when we disrupt the current flow in our brain, pain we can’t bear and kills us is that pain that disrupts the flow of current so much that our self-sustained self stops having current flowing through it.
• Pain is a tool of self-preservation.
• Why do we want to keep that self-sustained loop active? Because there’s no difference between ourselves and that loop, we are that loop, we are energy.