Many articles and books have been written about the importance of questions to achieve innovation. Entrepreneurs and business leaders have also talked about the critical impact questions have on innovation. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, went even further when he noted: “We run this company on questions, not answers.”
So there is clearly an immense reliance on questions. Yet not even Neuroscientists understand the cognitive process behind how questions work. Their best guess is that the brain cells produce the mind, which then produces you, who then asks the questions and then proceeds to answer them. Unfortunately, that’s not a scientific model. That’s science fiction. To truly understand a valid cognitive process, a new paradigm called the Mind Model is going to be presented here. It is one where the brain/mind dynamic is identical to the model of how the computer works. The computer has mechanical hardware that is run by an operating system. In turn, the human has biological hardware that is run by an operating system. We label the biological hardware as the brain and the operating system as the mind. In the computer, when the operating system advances to the point of making the mechanical hardware obsolete, that mechanical hardware has to be thrown away and replaced by upgraded hardware. But in a human, the biological hardware that is the brain is continually upgraded by being rewired by the operating system that is the mind.
But that is only a partial description of the Mind Model. The rest of the description is one where the mind is not one single component but is comprised of several separate components. Starting with the main mind component which is you – the identity you sense and perceive your Self to be. This is an important aspect to recognize because there is a critical delineation between your Self and your other mind components. Those other mind components will be labeled henceforth as: Creative Thought, Reactive Thought, Rational Thought, Intuition and Emotion.
Let’s first take a deeper dive into explaining who you are. Your identity includes your core attributes of intelligence, personality, talents, likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. Your identity also includes your memory, for which the new term Personal Knowledge Base will be (i.e. Virtual RAM) substituted from here on. You are also the decision maker. The other mind components of Thought, Intuition and Emotion only present choices for you to make decisions on. These choices are a form of guidance and influence on you that have helped determine who you are now.
These other mind components have been guiding and influencing you throughout your whole life as you were making decisions. Influencing you for good and for bad as well as for collaboration and for conflict (i.e. Cognitive Relativity). Yes, this process of interaction between you and your other mind components has been so seamless and fluid that you have always considered your thinking to be the function of one solitary unit. But it is not. Only you make the ultimate decisions on the choices the other mind components present to you. Jesus and Buddha described these mind components masked in the cloak of religious terms. But societal evolution has now advanced enough for these concepts to finally be openly unmasked in scientific terms.
The last aspect that needs to be described has also, up to now, been masked in religious terms. It deals with where the informational-choices come from that are presented to you by the other mind components. That information originates from one source that will be labeled henceforth as the Universal Knowledge Base (i.e. Virtual ROM). In essence, the other mind components perform a function similar to highly advanced search apps that also originate their information from one source but are customized and personalized for each unique mobile device – which in this case is you. Yes, you are unique, like your iris and fingerprint. Furthermore, out of all the mind components, only you are curious. Only you ask questions. If you already have the answers you need within your Personal Knowledge Base then you would not be asking questions. The act of asking questions means you are seeking answers from a source outside of your Personal Knowledge Base. So when you ask questions internally, the responses are coming in the form of choices from the other mind components.
Then you perceive those choices as answers to the questions you asked. The mind components of Creative and Reactive Thought offer you the positive and negative information-based answers that you did not know before to facilitate innovation.
So the process within our complex matrix ecosystem is one where you have free-will to make unique random choices on existing Universal Knowledge Base information for the purpose of co-creating completely new experiences and innovation that has never existed before. But people have not understood this process and therefore have only used it incidentally. With this process unmasked, you are now empowered to use your mind components intentionally, like tools from a toolbox. Yet, this can only happen if you ask questions. So, now we finally get to the crux of the entire paradigm to ask what is so special about questions in this process?
In computer terms, asking questions is like initializing command prompts. They have three outcomes: 1. Questions give you the mandate to set the agenda for the other mind components to follow and focus on. 2. Questions always prompt a response from the other mind components. Be it in the form of a complete answer, an assumption or just a hint. 3. Questions unlock and make room in your Personal Knowledge Base to receive and store new information from the answers you receive.
When you are not asking questions the other mind components are guiding and influencing you with their own agenda. Also without asking questions your Personal Knowledge Base is blocked from retaining any new information, therefore severely limiting your ability to innovate. In essence, you are either using the other mind components or they are using you. The other mind components using you has been observed by Psychology and given many different labels. One of those labels is ‘automaticity’ or the ability to effortlessly take actions. This ability of being able to act without really thinking about it is the state most people are engaged in most of the time.
So now we understand there to be two types of completely different mind functions that can happen in your mind. The first type is where you are able to make effortless and fast decisions on the agenda the other mind components set for you. There is no potential for Self-identity growth in this reactive mindset. Therefore it has also been labeled by Psychology as a ‘fixed mindset’. Then there is the secondary type mind function comprised of laborious and slow thinking. Within this type of thinking you are setting the agenda by asking questions, analyzing the answers to those questions and accessing your own Personal Knowledge Base to solve problems. There is nearly unlimited potential for Self-identity growth in this creative mindset. This has been labeled by Psychology as a ‘growth mindset’. Again, you are either using your mind components by asking questions or the mind components are using you. That is why questions are the linchpin to the cognitive process of originating new ideas for innovation. And the highest level of this process is not just to originate new ideas but to use the technique breakthrough innovators use and develop Idea Models.
At this point you may be asking if there is a bold use for this paradigm? The answer is yes, and it is anchored in the understanding that millions of future years of information in the form of breakthrough physics and technology exists and can potentially be sourced. While the construct of planned randomness (i.e. Uncertainty Principle) ensures that future human experiences and conflicts remain only as planned probabilities, the information for breakthrough physics and technology to continually evolve sentient societies is set.
Everything from powerful conscious AI, to medical instruments that use frequencies in repairing DNA, to geometric shaped starships that are propelled forward at near light speed – without resistance – by internally moving magnetic fields that move external space-matter/space-time around the vessel. ALL. THIS. INFORMATION. EXISTS. NOW. And it can be sourced through questions and Idea Models. Wouldn’t it be fun to hack our matrix ecosystem and go source it?
These Mind Model concepts are not isolated. They are derived from a larger physics Unified Field Theory model. The full documentation on this new paradigm is found at: oisource.com/why-we-exist. But the only place you can learn the practical application to this paradigm, to come up with the right questions and to use your other mind components as tools to develop Idea Models, is in the OIsource ( oisource.com ) training. Contact us to find out how to make our innovation training experience work for you and your company.