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Hive Thinking - A Theory on the Evolution of Cognitive Specialization and Applications to Digital Marketing. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF T ECHNOLOGY by JUL 19 2016 Harry A. Rein LIBRARIES B.S. Computer Science and Engineering ARCHIVES Massachusetts Institute of Technology SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY June, 2016 0 2016 HARRY REIN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of Author: .-Signature redacted: Deparutnent4fnE rf Grieglagineering and Computer Science Certified by: Signature redacted en Urban, Professor Emeritus and Chairman of MIT Center for Digital Business Thesis Superior Accepted y: Signature redacted Dr. ChristopherJ, Terman Senior Lecturer MIT Computer ScIvnee and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory HIVE THIN KING A THEORY ON THE EVOLUTION OF COGNITIVE SPECIALIZATION, AND APPLICATIONS TO DIGITAL MARKETING BY HARRY REIN 4 90 1Ilgi/>(arefs, i'ot/er (111(1 alndL te's( (V atLJe/w f eo<6e(/> II? (acy./mient come uitu aeie --xi 4' o>e Mwat c,/ cords (/h1/ e/g,1l /et our (ly(/tattwiot aw/ wIte/lectual cfarv0??y, 'Ylarwumf 4 4tawe conwensation acot low foe can, ft've our a/eitait/$qy p/ iumatl na ure to si>e offU (wor01( A Model of Conscious Reasoning A Brief History of Typing - Black Bile to Intuition The Cognitive Functions Intuition and Sensing - Perceptive Functions Thinking and Feelings -Judgemnent Functions Introverted and Extraverted Forms Our Model of Conscious Reasoning Functional Preferences - Conscious Thought Functional Relationships - Fully Rounded Cognition Hive Minds A Brief Story - Two groups of humans meet in the woods Hive Minds - Collective Consciousnesses The Necessity of Language and Words Designing Hives - Duals, Quatras and Further Symmetry and Asymmetry Applications to Digital Marketing A Terrible Used Car Salesman 7 Adaptive Advertising Emotionally Intelligent Digital Worlds ABSTRACT The purpose of this work is to put forward a theory of the evolution of cognitive specialization and demonstrate its significance towards the future development of human and computer interaction by demonstrating it in a modern context. For millennia, great minds have wrestled to build a typing model to classify the differences in human behavior. Recent theories have driven towards a theory of four functional abilities of the mind coming in two attitudes that drive asymmetrical development resulting in cognitive types, or personalities. Modern digital systems currently have rudimentary models of human cognition, it is this document's belief that by encoding a typing model our systems will begin to understand and act in a manner more similar to human behavior. The theoretical, more human extension of this work is to observe the evolution of a single 'hive consciousness' - a collection of individual minds acting as a single sustaining entity - with the underlying belief that it is the development of an optimal hive structure, not the development of an optimal individual mind, that results in the emergent seemingly specialized cognitive styles. The grounded, implementation based extension of this work is to demonstrate in a simple web-based digital marketing implementation - a system that can drive user actions, monitor those actions as to create an understanding of that particular user's cognitive type, and finally adapt it's contents as to optimally convince the user to consider a purchase decision. "The year is 10, 000 BCE and a Homo "The year is 2, 000 CE and a man wakes Sapien male wakes up to his family in his humble home just outside of sleeping beside him in a camp they had Boston. Remembering the meeting he has built the prior evening. Remembering the later that afternoon, he walks down the cold winter from the previous year, he rises stairs to make breakfast. As the news hums and walks around the camp to get a sense in the background, his intuitive mind races as to the region that their nomadic travels through the potential partners that may had led them. As the clouds race by, his join the meeting - considering which intuitive mind races through potential next members he should call on the train ride migration patterns - considering where in. As he finishes his coffee, he walks back to find their next meal. As he returns to upstairs to wake the children and tell them his family, he wakes the children and tells to get ready for school. Noticing his them of the plan to follow the buffalo daughter looks a bit red, he checks her tracks a few more miles, into a patch of head for a fever, humming a soft song as land with far more vegetative protection. his wife comes in to pick out their son's Noticing his children's sighs and moans of outfit for the day." hunger, he helps them lace their leather moccasins and hums a soft song as his wife gathers up the family's belongings for the next stretch of the journey." PART I - A MODEL OF CONSCIOUS REASONING 1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF TYPING - BLACK BILE TO INTUITION For millennia, mankind has come to the recognition that individuals seem to fall into distinct groups in the ways that they engage with the world. Around 400 BC, the Greek physician Hippocrates suggested four 'humors' that work together to make up the human disposition - blood in the liver, yellow bile in the spleen, black bile in the gall bladder and phlegm in the brain - a concept that was extended in the second century AD by another prominent Greek physician, best known as Galen of Pergamon. He, in a similar manner to Hippocrates, searched for physiological reasons for different behaviors in humans, concluding that there Figure 1 there exist four general temperaments - sanguine (optimistic and Galtd "" of"Pcp'unOn'S fOu "'efl(1d1 teinpcl-anwlelts social), choleric (short-tempered or irritable), melancholic (analytical and quiet), and phlegmatic (relaxed and peaceful). These four temperaments stem from an excess of the four humors purported by Hippocrates, resulting in an imbalance of psyche - a type. Modern scientists, held to far more rigorous academic standards, quickly dismiss the concept of bodily liquids driving human behavior, however the model of personality driven off of a system of four has remained. Present thinking points to the seminal work in the field of personality typing - Carl justaf Jung's Puchologische Tpen. In this work, Jung sets out to reconcile the theories of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler into a single theory of the conscious and subconscious psyche, concluding that "it is one's psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person's judgement" [3]. It is, he believes, a balance between two attitudes the introverted and extraverted attitude and four functions of conscious thought intuition, sensation, thinking and feeling - that drive outward behavior amongst individual minds. His research was quickly adopted in the United States by Katharine Cook Briggs who had begun dcv\eloping her AA A own theory on personality typing before recognizing the similarity with Jung's work. Katherine, along wNith her daughtcr Isabel Briggs Myers, pulled together their theory F1Eil El into the well acclaimed Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, in an attempt to adapt the theory of psychological types for practical use. Their test, nicknamed the MBTI, was used 10o initially in World War II in order to help women who were entering the industrial workforce for the first time to A identify jobs that were well suited to their mind's preferences [5]. M Europe also took note of Jung's findings when Ausra Augustinaviciute merged the jungian ideology with that of Polish psychiatrist Antoni Kgpinski's theory of information metabolism, in the early 1970's. Their resultant ideology, named Socionics, used the same eight fundamental Figure 2 An individual mind cognitive functions as described by Jung. Her philosophy can be moddeld as a stack of their cognitive (Unctions. ordered by the stemmed from a basic belief that intra-human individnti-s fe)rCirence to communication is a creative, rather than a craft skill, and CoscioUIsly act in that pfarticuilar statt of mind. Most individual's that individuals differ in a model-able way in the ways by consisio, behaviorl is (riven by which they approach this creative act. Augustinaviltite* their piminary and secondary fi"n tin ifit ro (ore a stack of twO found that her Socionic formulae, a classification system of can sufiLr its a model. sixteen types, formed a basic formula by which a science could be formed about the understanding and agreement between people. Throughout this document I will use a model that sticks strongly to Jung's initial findings, extended through the lenses of the tightly coupled Socionics and the more practical sense of the NBTI. Both model's stem from the core ideology of .jung which believed that a psychological type is an inborn psychological structure that delineates a specific nature of informational exchange between a person and his or her social environment. I have chosen this model as many of the prominent researchers before me had - through extensive research into the topic and personal experience with the types outlined in the literature. II. THE COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS In order to adequately conclude about the outward behavior of the human mind, we must first abstract away from the fundamental workings to observe from a far more teleological standpoint. A delve into the neurological basis for this work would miss the point - we are not focused on understanding the patterns of neuronal firings that give rise to conscious thought, we are instead looking from a high level view as to the emergent properties that seem to occur when individuals enoage with their environment.