Programmer’s Guide by Lorin Friesen

This book is a Programmer‟s Guide to the Mind. 

In it, we will attempt to do two things: 

We will try to explain how the mind works, and we will also show how a person can make it operate more effectively. If we compare the task of developing the mind to that of taking a journey, then this volume could be described as a combination road map and tourist guide. While there are many similarities between a brain and an electronic computer, there are also several factors which make the human „computer‟ unique: 

First of all, it is rather large. 

The electronic chips which are contained in the computers of the 1990s are constructed from flat little squares of silicon, no bigger than postage stamps. In contrast, the human thinking apparatus is a three pound, three-dimensional, solid chunk of neurons and interconnections. The average human brain contains about one hundred billion neurons and around one hundred trillion connections. Compare this to today‟s computer chip with its total of about ten million transistors, and you can understand why, at present, we have about sufficient technology to simulate the brain of a slug. Unlike computers which are made from silicon, the human mind is not just a conglomeration of mathematical calculations and dry logic. Rather, it feels as well as thinks, it has a personal interest in its surroundings, it makes friends—and enemies, and it has both a self and a self- image. All of these factors will be included in our analysis of human thought. 

Those of you who work with computers have discovered that computer manuals generally fall into one of three categories: 

User‟s guides, Reference manuals, and Programmer‟s guides. 

A User‟s guide is for the person who says, “I do not want to know how this gadget works, just tell me how to use it.” I suggest that bookstores are full of User‟s guides for the mind, each containing a few nuggets of wisdom aimed at helping us to use our minds more effectively. This book is not a User’s guide. 

What you will be reading is also not a Reference Manual. These are deep, heavy tomes full of specialized words which plunge into the depths of the machine, never to return to the surface of normal speech and everyday life. They deal with theoretical questions such as interrupt levels, capacitive loading and assembly language. These volumes seem to forget