* The Conscious v unconscious mind
The sentient mind appears to reside entirely in the neural networks of the cerebrum. Consciousness may in fact simply be the result of complexity. Unlike a computer, the various processing networks appear to terminate in many different places at the same time. The cerebrum is wired left to right down through the symmetry of the body. The cerebellum, strangely enough, is wired left to left. It receives mostly the same sensory data as the cerebrum, and has its own processes for sending data back out again. It is particularly concerned with fine motor movements. If you leave the cerebellum to handle the act of running up stairs, it will do it perfectly. Think about it consciously, and you may trip.

The two brains (along with other parts, such as the limbic system, that preceded them in evolution) appear autonomous, though they do influence the other parts. They are like two work colleagues rather than family members.

The important factor for Matrix Collisions is that the conscious mind is largely `after the fact'. That is, it spends a lot of time `justifying' to itself and the outside world what other parts of the brain have already `decided' is the right action in the sensory circumstances.

Imagine the President of the State of Mind. He may, like any President, appear to be in charge. In fact, any leader is only as good as the system he commands makes him look. A president has a very ungranular overview of the system of which he is figurehead. He cannot get into details - there is just too much information. So President Bush (for example), gets a one or two page summary of the USA and its interaction with the world, every morning with his breakfast. It contains information about the economy, the war, the political processes, and other prioritised areas. The summaries are based on the work of thousands of people (sensors) who submit very granular data that is processed and compressed as it goes up through the system. Along the way, possible decisions about the meaning of all this data begin to form into options for action. Some lower-level decisions are already made and executed, based on experience. By the time all this gets to the high level just below the President, all the raw data has been stripped out, (except for anomalous crucial data) and what remains are very limited options for action which are presented to the President. Even these are usually presented in such a way that there is only one choice. As I said, the President is a figurehead. Consciousness is largely a figurehead.

Now on to more mundane assumptions:

* Habituation
The everyday mind expects that everyday happenings will contain their own logic. We rely on this logic to be able to get through our days. If we buy a strawberry icecream, we expect it to taste of strawberry. If we get on a bus that is marked with Helsinki as the destination, we happily assume and expect that Helsinki is where we will end up. And so on.

* Matrix as microcosm
We could call one of these `trains of logic' a matrix. The bus journey is a matrix, with Helsinki as the keyword. The type of bus, where we get on, the look of the driver and the other passengers, where we sit, how long it takes, the weather: all these are part of a particular journey matrix. But the key is to get to Helsinki. We can accept variation in all the other parts of the experience, except the destination. We expect to get to Helsinki.

* Categorization
We don't take as much notice of our surroundings as we think we do. When we get to Helsinki we would be hard-pressed to remember any of the passengers, the colour of the seats, how many bus stops we stopped at, and so on. We fill in our memory with `busness', just as when we walk through a forest we don't register individual trees - we sense `treeness'. We fill in from memory, instead of seeing the trees that are actually surround us on our walk.

* Running on autopilot
Everyone has driven along a motorway daydreaming or thinking about other things than driving, and discovered that the last 5 kilometres of driving cannot be recalled. We were on automatic pilot.

* Novelty
The mind is, however, always ready for novelty - the moment when anomalous data pops up. If we come across a purple tree on our walk through the forest, `treeness' will disappear and all our attention will go to the amazing tree. We will examine it carefully and we will remember it, probably forever. Novelty doesn't have to be amazing to cause a reaction. Watch a cat staring peacefully out of the window and then snap your fingers. The ear closest to the sound will turn to focus on the sound source. The sound is novel in the context, but probably not consciously novel. Wait a few moments and then snap your fingers again. The ear will turn again, but possibly less vigorously. Snap again and the ear may not move at all. The cat's brain has habituated the sound. But wait 10 minutes and then see what happens.

* Feedback oscillation
A room-heating thermostat is in a feedback relationship with the space it monitors. The thermostat is set at a certain temperature. If the thermostat monitors that the current temperature is the same as this setting or above it, it will do nothing. One might say it is habituated. But should the monitored temperature fall below a preset minimum, it will send a signal to the heating system to supply more heat. When the monitored temperature reaches the maximum setting, it will send a signal to the heating system to stop.

If the minimum/maximum settings are too close to each other, and the monitored temperature is rapidly fluctuating (due to external forces such as doors or windows opening) the thermostat will oscillate, sending signals to the heating system to switch on, switch off, switch on in rapid succession. We can say that the thermostat is too sensitive. The logic has been defeated.

OK. That is enough assumptions for the moment.

If I tell a joke, I will use these assumptions and expectations. It has been said that there are only 10 basic joke formats, and that all the billions of jokes on this planet are variations upon these 10 formats.
We could call a joke a matrix. It is a microcosm. It is the President's breakfast summary. "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman went into a bar...". We don't expect a lot of detail, the destination sign is enough. We know, however, that we are not going to Helsinki!

The joke would not mean as much to Japanese fisherman, because particular jokes are cultural, they require you to fill in the general situation from experience (Unless of course the Japanese fisherman was an anglophile).

The basic body of the joke is a set-up, with the thermostat operating normally. Doors and windows in the story are often opened and closed to check that the thermostat is working, but the main thrust is to put the audience on autopilot - to make the novelty ahead all the more surprising.

Then comes the punch line. The punch line always comes from another matrix - another logical set. The listening mind, the conscious mind, suddenly finds itself confronted by a decision that is far from all the options expressed in the breakfast summaries. The `barness' into which we had been lulled by the Englishmanness, Irishmanness and the Scotsmanness, is shattered by something that doesn't fit into the logic.

Our minds oscillate between the two logic sets, unable to find the right connection. It is as if someone was alternating waving an opened refrigerator and a hair drier in front of the thermostat. The room has not changed, but the thermostat monitoring area has.
Confronted by this logic oscillation (if it is sufficiently novel), the physiological response is breathing oscillation - laughter. Two matrices have collided and created a boundary between chaos and control. A joke is a nice place to be.

The more important conjecture though is this: we are confronted by these same kinds of oscillations or matrix collisions when confronted by all `evocative' situations. By evocative, I mean art. To cast your eye over a painting or a sculpture, to stand back and take it in as a whole, to contemplate it, is to become involved in matrix collisions. They are far more complicated than a joke. They are as simultaneously complex as consciousness. They wake us up from autopilot, up away from the boredom of linear logic and up to the surface that intersects with chaos.