Chariot Allegory

[Jochen Fromm-5]

Nick,

IIRC you said you would like to hear more metaphors and allegories. A while ago you have asked if code & coding could be a relevant metaphor for the mind or the brain. I think yes. Code is essential. Here is why.

In programming writing code means basically creating one command after another, like "Load 2 in register X" or "Add 3 to register Y". Loops and conditional statements can help, but basically code is on a most fundamental level a set of commands which is executed sequentially. 

In my vacation at the sea which I make every year to get a break from coding I have read among other books two novels from Michael Crichton and one book from Edith Hall about the ancient Greeks.

https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Greeks-Shaped-Modern-World-ebook/dp/B01MQG49Q4

Edith Hall mentions the famous Chariot allegory from Plato in her book, how the Greek philosophers changed the world, and what made them unique. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_Allegory

Michael Crichton describes in his classic novel Jurassic Park how dinosaurs come to life from a mere DNA sample, from a piece of code. Because all living beings, whether animals and plants, are made from DNA, this is indeed possible. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_(novel)

There is a connection between both cases and it is related to code. Humans are of course more than just animals as we all know. We are made by DNA, but we are also controlled by social rules, laws and commandments. The ten commandments for instance are a set of commands how to act in certain situations. Since code is nothing but a set of commands, they are essentially a code. If this code is applied to multiple distributed actors simultaneously, it can be used to create and maintain a group. 

Humans are therefore controlled like puppets by multiple puppeteers. Each set of genes acts as an own puppeteer to control their puppet. Plato would say like a charioteer who drives a chariot. He has used the picture of a Charioteer driving a charior pulled by two winged horses. The emotions can be considered as the (winged) horses that move us, and the genes as the real charioteer. They create the body and the mechanisms that trigger emotions. They are the code that contains the recipes for the construction of the body. And since we have multiple types of genes, there is more than one charioteer.

Take for example a priest or monk. One charioteer can be identified with the normal genes which say sex, offspring and children are extremely important. The other charioteer can be seen as the religious genes which demand full attention to the temple (already priests and priestesses in ancient Greece often had to obey celibacy). He says to hell with love, sex and offspring, you should pray all day and copy the holy texts. 

I think the allegory of genes which are competing charioteers is compelling. They shout commands, and commands are nothing else but code. Commands are the connection between behavior and code.  Therefore code is a relevant metaphor for the mind. 

-Jochen

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