Beep beep!
Beep beep! The alarm clock sounds.
A rule fires inside your brain:

IF alarm_clock_sounds == true THEN turn_alarm_clock_off

A few more rules fire in sequence:

IF alarm_clock_turned_off THEN get_out_of_bed_now
IF got_out_of_bed == true AND time <= 9am THEN go_to_toilet_now
IF got_in_toilet == true AND time <= 9am THEN go_pee_now
IF peed == true AND time <= 9am THEN go_have_coffee_now
...
IF had_breakfast == true THEN go_brush_teeth
IF teeth_brushed == true THEN go_get_dressed
IF got_dressed == true THEN go_drive_to_work

Once in the car and while driving to work several millions more rules fire every second without you even noticing it.
You are on automatic pilot most of the time. Your subconscious mind is a rule engine. it evaluates rules and fires them, and the rest of your body obeys.

What? wait, wait, wait. Stop here. Are you saying that my brain is like a computer? A rule engine?
I refuse to believe that.
I have choices. I take my own decisions. I’m in charge. It was me who decided to wear these red pants today.

I’m sorry to disappoint you my friend. You are just running a computer program based on rules and priorities. Most of the decisions have already been taken for you.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Remember, all I’m offering you is the truth, nothing more”
Morpheus to Neo. The Matrix.

Show me the truth. Who put those rules inside my brain?

You did.

BOOOM !

We hear a loud noise coming from the room next to ours. Esperanza, my one-year-old daughter is learning how to walk and she just felt and hit the door.

Here you have. Samples have been gathered, machine learning has been used to train again the “walking model” and, as a result, a few new rules have been generated and stored. They are already available for the rules engine to fire.

Our subconscious brain is an ultra-efficient rules engine / pattern matching machine capable of assessing millions of rules per millisecond. It’s also extremely efficient at creating new rules with minimum effort, in other words, learning. It uses two different mechanisms for this purpose:

The main mechanism is supervised machine learning. It collects lots of samples. Each sample consists of hundreds of parameters, each with an associated value, and the “result” associated to the sample.

left_cuadriceps_muscle_tension = 35 AND right_calf_muscle_tension = 132 AND ... [many more variables here]
RESULT = Fail. My head hits the door

left_cuadriceps_muscle_tension = 48 AND right_calf_muscle_tension = 142 AND ... [many more variables here]
RESULT = Fail. I break the tv and mom gets really mad

With millions and millions of these samples “our machine” trains the “walking model”, then it will be able to predict if new combinations of those variables will provide a success or failure result. The process will keep running and improving, sometimes even for years, until the result is mostly success. We call this mastery.

The second mechanism for learning is first-order logic.

What the hell? mathematics also running inside our brains?

Yes. New rules are created by combining existing ones. Like if (A == B and B == C) then the new rule (A == C) gets created. This mechanism is responsible for innovation. When rules combined come from different models it creates mayor breakthroughs.

OK, if that is true, and our brain is full of rules, and I’m not saying that I believe it, I would like to erase a few of those rules.

You can’t. The database inside your brain containing the rules only allows inserts.

Whaaat? but, but that cannot be possible. People manage to stop smoking, or to overcome fear of flying. How is that then possible?

You cannot erase rules but you can create new ones that fire at the same time but with higher priority so they will run instead of the other ones.

Priorities? Rules have priorities? You are driving me nuts.

Yes.

How do you assign a higher priority to a particular rule?

There are two ways. The slow way and the fast way. The slow way is through repetition. The fast way is through emotions. The stronger the emotion associated to a rule the higher it’s priority.

Emotions? I don’t get it. I don’t see how emotions apply here. Give me an example.

OK. Let’s say it’s summer and you are in a hiking vacation. You are resting in the campsite and decide to put your shoes on and go where your friends are. You put your bare foot inside the boot and you feel something strange, like hairy. You take your foot off the shoe and when you have a look you see a big and poisonous spider coming out of your boot. It’s your lucky day and you have not been stung but a high priority rule has just been stored in your database. For the rest of your life you’ll have a look inside the shoes before putting your foot in.
Another example. A kid gets lottery at school to sell it among friends and family. The first person she approaches says “No. I don’t want that stupid lottery”. Rest assured she won’t make a living as a sales rep.

If what you say is true, why learning takes so long?

There are some limitations in the learning process:
1- You are the only one who can collect samples for yourself in order to train the machine learning model. You could also record rules when you just see someone doing an activity but those rules usually have low priority. You won’t learn much from someone telling you how to ride a bicycle.
2- You have only 24 hours a day to collect samples.
3- Since our conscious mind usually has to be involved in order to fill out some of the variables for those rules we easily get overwhelmed after a few minutes of collecting samples. Remember when you were learning how to drive? there was too much to process at a time. The clutch, the brake, the mirrors, the steering wheel, looking for cars coming.

Is there a way to hack those limitations in order to dramatically speed that process up? I would like to learn anything in just a few minutes, like Neo learns Kung Fu in The Matrix movie.

There are indeed ways of improving the process of creating new rules (AKA learning).
Since learning implies collecting samples you could hack it by collecting more samples per day. If you make the activity fun you will stay at it longer. Another way is to avoid involving the conscious mind. You could achieve this by directing your attention somewhere else while doing an activity so time flies for you.

Another area you could work on in order to hack the process is to improve the quality of the samples you collect so you need less of them. Try to collect samples as varied as possible. When you learn how to play tennis your coach will make you do all sort of drills so your samples are of a wide variety. You won’t master an activity until the samples you have collected represent the whole spectrum for that domain. You won’t get to black belt in karate performing only one kata over and over again.

Once you have high-quality samples assign them high priority. Use emotions for that. Imagine you are teaching mathematics to a kid. You give him two marshmallows plus three marshmallows equals five marshmallows, and he eats them all. Ufff, that’s a nice lesson.
Or imagine now learning how to speak Spanish while in Seville, being with a handsome spanish boy (or girl) you have a crush on. He teaches you the word “beso” while giving you a very passionate kiss. You’ll probably remember the word “beso” for the rest of your life.
If the emotion is strong enough you may need only one rule to set a whole habit for the rest of your life. Fear also works wonders here.

So what you mean is, just do something and feel something at the same time.

Well, it’s not that easy. You have to believe it as true. A rule won’t be stored unless you believe that as true.
No matter how many times you repeat to yourself “I’m confident”, you won’t be confident until you really believe it. The rule won’t be stored in the database.
You have to use your imagination a bit. It’s much easier if someone tricks you without you knowing it. Like the placebo effect in double-blinded clinical trials. Some people take pills without the medicine and still get some of the beneficial effects.
Teachers, parents and coaches play a gigantic role here. A great coach will make you believe you can beat that guy. He believes in you so he makes you see it as true. Then you go and you make it a reality because the only thing that was missing was that one rule inside your brain. If you manage to write that rule that means you believe it as true and you will act effortlessly accordingly.

Remember the other mechanism for creating rules? First-Order logic?
You can hack that as well by having lots of rules in your brain. Better if they come from many different realms. Computers, investing, soccer, karate, Chinese language, entrepreneurship, travelling, history, fishing, you name it. Then you just relax and let the subconscious mind do the work for you.
Where were you last time you had a great idea? having a shower? hiking? running? I bet it wasn’t working.

As of today (February 2017) we still don’t have the user and password for the database in our brains where rules are stored. We can’t read the rules that are stored and we don’t even know what the data model is.
Once we find that out we will be able to copy rules from person to person and learn anything in a matter of seconds.

If you want to get the most out of this you have to bring this model down to strategies that work for you.
In a later post, if you find this interesting, I could write some of the strategies that work wonders for me when I want to set new habits in order to achieve my personal goals. You may find them useful.