Familiarization principle

“I wanted to be a scientist, a philosopher and a phychologist and I found i could be all of them at the sametime.”

This essay seeks to explain further the repetition/ familiarization principle.

Any concerns, refutation of claims please voice them.

Repetition

The repetition principle derives from the observation that the more a person performs a thought process (action) the action is then performed faster. (An action is defined as: something which is done with an effort (consumes energy)).

Observation

A person attends to school or any other educational institution where he is learning a foreign language. There he is exposed to the language for long periods of time. However, let us assume that he stops going to this institution for three years and he is not, for that space of time, exposed to the foreign language taught in the institution. The result will be that he will forget a great deal of what he had learned; however, he will find re-learning the foreign language easier and faster than learning it for the first time. A further example of this phenomenon would be a child learning simple arithmetic. At first, actions such as adding and multiplying will seem to take an effort. Nevertheless, over time these actions will seem effortless and people will be able to perform this once complicated process faster.

From this one can conclude that the more an action is performed the action in turn is done faster. The repetition principle thus is stated as: the more an action is performed the faster and with less perceived effort it will be performed.

Characteristics

The repetition principle in essence is a conceptualize notion of prior attempts to explain the above characteristic of human behavior. Prior experiments such as Ivan Pavlov’s experiment (Pavlov’s dog) demonstrate how when two sensorial stimuli are consistently perceived together they seem to become stronger in the person (animal) who is making the perception. A better simplification would be the later explanation known as Hebb´s rule which states: “Let us assume that the persistence or repetition of a reverberatory activity (or “trace”) tends to induce lasting cellular changes that add to its stability.… When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.”

This rule is often used to explain associative learning but it also has other ramification as a consequence the neurons that are fired together become “stronger” or as Hebb says they increase the efficiency of the pairing. This rule is thus often stated as: “Cells that fire together, wire together.” Or”If a synapse repeatedly becomes active at about the same time that the postsynaptic neuron fires, changes will take place in the structure or chemistry of the synapse that will strengthen it.”

Familiarization

The concept (principle) of repetition gives rise to the principle of familiarization. This principle states: Once a set of associations have become “stronger” (more efficient) through the process of repetition, the action (association) will take an effort not to be performed.

Observation

This principle stems from the following observation: let us take a person who has been living in a country using the regional accent moves to another location where it is not convenient for him to use the accent and therefore he has to stop using it. Every time he speaks and tries not to use the accent he will feel as though the action takes him an effort. Moreover if he loses concentration the accent may “slip” and without wanting to he will regress to speak with his native accent. This occurs because the person became familiarized with the accent and using the accent became almost second nature to the person to the extent that it will take a lot of effort to not use it. Although it is conceivable that with time the person might adapt to the accent used in the region, at first this is what would be observed.

From this it can be concluded that: an action (association) that has increased in efficiency (becomes stronger) would take an effort not to be performed (associated).

Characteristics

The familiarization principle obeys one simple rule: energy (neural impulses) will take the path of least resistance. As such for a person not to perform an action which he has become familiarized with, it will take him an effort not to perform it. In order words if unaffected by anything and assuming that nothing makes a person behave differently the action that are repeated are going to take place again. This is the principle that makes people fall into habits of behavior or what is known as personality which is defined as: familiarized actions, consistency of behavior. (It must be noticed that the familiarazation principle is a probability law and not an absolute statement.)

I think that the rule: energy takes the path of least resistance, has already been stated but I am unable to find who said it first. Can anyone help me with this?

Well, first I would like to point out that the phrase, “path of least resistance” is a little misleading. It is a little more precise to say that things take “the path of greatest opportunity”. I can explain metaphysically why they do that, but as far as the history of the phrase, I haven’t a clue.

Interesting I would like to see your reasoning for that. Could you give me a link?

Not a link, just yet, but…

As you know, an existence is a mutual affecter. Every"thing" that exists is always trying to affect its surroundings and vsvrsa.

The position of a “thing” is determined by the position of the most presence of its affect. Wherever it is affecting the most, is where it is.

A stationary affecter, an object, is being affected by its surroundings equally to the affect it is having on its surroundings and is thus stable, non-shifting, not moving. “Equal and opposite balance of affecters/forces”.

Because it is always attempting affect, when it has more affect upon a space in one direction than that space had upon it, its center of affect, its “center of mass”, shifts. The affectance that it is, grows in that direction. It is seen to “move”, yet it has really only relocated its center of affect by affecting more in one direction than the others.

Thus it appears to travel toward the direction in which it had the most affect, “the greatest opportunity”.

But it isn’t entirely wrong to say that it traveled in the direction of “least resistance” because the only reason it had more affect in one direction than another was because the other directions were having equal affect back onto it, more resistance.

Note that this is a metaphysical truth to all reality and applies to literally all existence. With people, Perception of Hope and Threat (PHT) is what guides their will to affect, their choice in directions to take. Thus even in all societies; animals, insects, and people alike, the same rule always applies.

I guess that maybe I should make it a little clearer concerning my minor objection to the word “resistance”.

The reason an object doesn’t move in a particular direction is because from that direction, it is being affected as much as it is affecting. In a sense, it really is moving in that direction, but is being replaced by an equal amount of affect, thus the center of affectance, the “position of the object”, doesn’t change. There is actually no “resisting” going on. Nothing is “pushing” and resisting, but rather merely being replaced by an equal amount of affectance yielding the end result of no change in center of higher affectance.

The object finally moves only when from one direction, the amount of return affect is less than the opposite direction. Every object is merely a center of higher affectance than its surroundings.

UMM… It is valid argument, however I do not like the phrase “the path of greatest opportunity” would you consider giving another more scientific phrase? Otherwise I would have to leave it as that, for convinience.

It was just a minor issue of semantic precision. Do what you like.

I wonder myself
:confused:
1.4.1.2.1.

But more so I wonder how a “thing” can deduce opportunities, or is all the universe conscious?

Does air tend towards a vacuum and does water flow down a mountainside because it has projected its opportunities and willfully taken a path?
Fascinating.

Does a mass take a spherical space in four-dimensional space because it has analyzed opportunities and decided, along with most others, that this is the most efficient shape?

Opportunities for what?
Wealth, privilege, fame, perfection…a good meal, to get laid?

:banana-dance:

Poor humans, projecting, projecting all that absolution.

I could ask the same in reverse. Does an object perceive resistance and choose to take the lesser path? How did it know that resistance was futile? How amazing!! :open_mouth:

Water can’t go anywhere until there is an impetus and opportunity for it to go there.

Can you?

You mean a path of more resistance?
Only willfully…that means only consciously.
Only a conscious mind would choose more resistance…and then only because it projects an advantage.
That’s what willpower is.

Does air have consciousness; does water?
So, only life can have that choice and this is what is then referred to as a “free-choice”, when it is no such thing.

There is no object…there is no perception on the level of you are alluding to.
Air perceives nothing, it follows a path dictated by resistance…which in turn is determines by interactions.

Only a man can project an end, a purpose, a goal…and then he projects his own needs.

I know it is futile because it and you have no clue. You are mindless automatons governed by forces you are unaware of.

Water, boy, does not decide to take one path rather than another, it follows the path that gives way to its aggregate force.
Only a consciousness has this choice…and this is why it has an advantage.

Really?
So, there it sits, totally inert, and then it sees an opportunity and acts?

You mean gravity is not a force, coupled with the other forces of nature, that is in continuous activity?
Amazing.
There it sits, totally still, unmoving, inert, inactive and then suddenly boom!!!
It seizes an opportunity to what?..To flow free and wild?..Can it flow upwards against gravity if the opportunity arises?
Methinks yes…there it flows upwards, because up is where is sees opportunity…an opportunity for a better view, I suppose.

Amazing.

Is there a state of inertia anywhere in nature?
Name one, keeping in mind Sting Theory…is nature conscious outside of life?

How can there be a sudden choice to act when there is no beginning and no end?
If there is a beginning and an end then show it to us all.

Is water stagnate, is the soil that encompasses it stagnate…is the earth it lies upon stagnate, is the galaxy this world participates in and that this water sits upon stagnate?

It is hard for me to understand what you are trying to say but let me try and answer some of the things that I could get from your post.

I think you have misunderstood, When a lighting strikes it will, first, travel through the least resistant medium to discharge itself.

Change in an electric circuit will follow in general the path of least resistance. Derives from ohms law I=V/R.

Now it is a probability law, more charge will follow the path of least resistance than the more resistant paths. The higher the resistance the less charge will pass through it.

Now a thought process, (association) to the more fundamental level is basically connections become neurons and synapses, via neural impulses. This is energy and so by default they should follow the same rule, thus, i arose to the familiarization principle.

Who was talking to you?
You just repeated what I have written countless times before and more so in the link I posted.

I was talking to the mind that thinks things exist and that they exhibit the ability to evaluate opportunities, such as air flowing towards a lower atmospheric pressure, characteristic of climate, choosing that direction because it offers “opportunities”?
Opportunities for what?

There is only endless interactions governed, in an unconscious state, by this path-of-least-resistance.
This has been explored by me in that essay…as you probably know.

On the same note do you know that energy takes the path of least resistance is the reason why the universe expands and seeks homogeniety?