I constantly promote intensive brain work at any age, as the only remedy against senile dementia (Dementia Sinilis), and wrote, not without reason, that this senile dementia begins in childhood (Dementia Praecox), when a child notices that honest and UNPLEASANT thinking can be easily and pleasantly replaced by herd bullying, which immediately gives answers answers all the questions and satisfies such sweet mental laziness.

“The truth is not so beneficial, as malicious is SEMBLANCE of truth!”

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

But the topic of this note is different.

I read in Abraham Pais’s book “The Geniuses of Science” a chapter dedicated to the brilliant English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. A chapter written with obvious sympathy for him, but its end is tragic: In his old age, Paul Dirac also fell into senile dementia (Alzheimer’s disease?) and “he began to wander.”

This constantly caused me painful perplexity: Paul Dirac was a very talented mathematician who found application for his outstanding mathematical abilities in theoretical (mathematical) physics.

YOU CAN’T BLAME him FOR MENTAL LAZINESS IN ANY WAY!

So, why did he fall into this misfortune too? After all, he was constantly THINKING and thinking honestly and intensely!

Einstein died of a ruptured abdominal aortic segment aneurysm at the age of 76, being quite sane until the last minute of his life.

So, why was the talented and thinking Paul Dirac doomed by fate to a miserable existence of a subhuman in the last years of his life???

One of two things: Either all my arguments about constant and honest mental activity as a panacea for insanity are COMPLETELY WRONG, which seems unlikely to me.

Or there is some other reason: the CHARACTER, the WAY of THINKING.

In other words, it is important for the preservation of sanity not just constant thinking, but also the nature of this thinking.

What is mathematical thinking?

In my purely unprofessional opinion, this is a form of “machine thinking”. With this way of thinking, certain well-defined concepts and rules for manipulating them are first set. And then the mathematician thinks like a machine:

The initial concepts are defined.

The algorithms for manipulating them are also clearly defined.

There remains only the process of these manipulations in strict accordance with the specified definitions and rules. Which any computer does COMPLETELY MINDLESSLY.

“A step to the right, a step to the left is considered an escape! The convoy is firing without warning!”

Similarly, any games! They are also examples of purely machine thinking. The concepts are set. Algorithms are set. And a person can only follow these rules strictly AUTOMATICALLY, like a well-trained servant!

And here, too, our thinking is placed in a kind of game box with its walls, corridors, entrances and exits, and it only needs to follow the pointing labels exactly!

This way of thinking, even if it is completely honest and difficult, nevertheless, is an analogue of the usual herd genetically programmed thinking peculiar to each of us: Templates, standards, ready-made stamps!

SLANGING!

From the above reasoning, it follows that the way of thinking of even a very talented person, if he follows certain once and for all trodden synaptic paths (and this immediately BLOCKS ANY UNCONVENTIONAL THOUGHTS!!!– Any NON-DOMINANT synapse chains) differs little, from the point of view of neurophysiology, from the usual herd bullying, and therefore is subject to the same symptoms of age-related degradation!

Machine thinking, even if honest and very intense in youth and adulthood, is essentially neurophysiologically no different from ordinary herd thinking, and therefore DOES NOT PROTECT SUCH a BRAIN from Alzheimer’s and any other dementia!

These are just my assumptions and attempts to explain the inexplicable.

Faciant meliora potentes

19 XII 2024