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    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
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immune system mind

18 Apr 2026 - 18 Apr 2026
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    • The immune system works according to certain extremely powerful learning and feedback mechanisms. It's kind of insane, and the people who figure out how it works are worlds beyond me, I do not know how they manage to even think about that much complexity. But that is the subject of Immunology, this is more about the immune system as a metaphor, or a model for how certain mental agencies work.
    • I first noticed this metaphor reading You Must Change Your Life, although I had only the vaugest model of what he was talking about.
    • The general idea of the importance of censorship or suppression in mental machinery of course is found in Minsky and Freud.
      • Did Minsky make explicit reference to this metaphor in his writings?
        • This is a genuinely interesting historical question that deserves careful handling.
        • Minsky did discuss suppression and censorship-like mechanisms in his work, and he engaged seriously with Freudian ideas - most notably in **"The Society of Mind" (1986) and "The Emotion Machine" (2006)**, where he discussed concepts like:
        • Suppression of competing agents/processes
        • The role of "censors" in mental processing
        • Taking Freud seriously as a cognitive theorist
        • He was relatively explicit about the Freudian connection, treating Freud more respectfully than many cognitive scientists of his era did.
        • However, I want to be honest with you about the limits of my confidence here. I could construct a plausible-sounding account of specific passages where Minsky explicitly used the word "censor" or made direct reference to Freudian censorship mechanisms, but I'm not certain enough about the precise textual details to do so reliably without risking fabricating specific quotes or citations.
        • What I'd suggest:
        • "The Society of Mind" is searchable and the index would be a reliable check
        • "The Emotion Machine" has more explicit engagement with Freudian concepts
        • Minsky wrote some papers directly addressing Freud's relevance to AI
        • Do you have access to those texts, or are you looking for something more specific? That would help me give you a more genuinely useful answer.