Chapter 7 — How Reference Uses Content

Reference becomes easier to understand when we follow what happens in an ordinary situation.

Getting Food for John

Suppose John asks you to get some food for him but does not say what he wants.

The active content may include John, food, his request, and the current situation. Your brain can use that content to bring forward what you know about him:

• John likes burritos.
• John usually orders chicken.
• John dislikes very spicy food.
• John is allergic to peanuts.

Your brain must parse and process the content of these Tags. Hard-Links may help activate knowledge associated with John, but the Links themselves do not say which food to buy.

The current context narrows the useful knowledge. After processing it, you may buy John a chicken burrito, ask him what he wants, choose something else, or do nothing.

A Separate Example: The Unfamiliar Sound “Pad Thai”

Now consider a completely separate situation.

Suppose you do not know what Pad Thai is, but you hear, “Pad Thai is very popular.” Your brain can understand very popular. It may also recognize the sound Pad Thai if you have heard it before.

But if no meaning is connected to that sound, the search in your brain comes to an end. You know that something called Pad Thai is popular, but you still do not know what it is.

Later, you learn that Pad Thai is a Thai noodle dish. That meaning becomes connected to the sound. Afterward, hearing Pad Thai can Reference the meaning and your related knowledge of the food.

The Hidden-Treasure Letter

Now suppose you discover a letter from your great-great-grandfather saying that treasure is hidden somewhere.

The importance of the letter may create vivid Tags for your great-great-grandfather, the letter, the possible treasure, and your desire to find it. You may think about it day and night and even dream about it.

But the letter is written in a language you do not understand.

At first, the writing supplies only unfamiliar visual patterns. You can study the symbols repeatedly and remember them perfectly while still having no idea what they mean. Attention and repetition can strengthen familiarity, but they cannot replace missing knowledge.

Learning Creates Meaningful Access

You begin learning the language. Gradually, one written pattern becomes the word for house. Another means well. Another expression means behind the house.

Once the unfamiliar word is connected with knowledge you already possess, the same visual pattern can Reference your understanding of a house. As more words and grammar become understood, sentences become meaningful and the clues begin to reveal a possible location.

This demonstrates an important limit:

Reference cannot produce understood meaning from completely unknown Signals. Learning must first provide the knowledge needed to interpret them.

Old Words Require Context

Even after learning the language, you may need to determine what the words meant when your great-great-grandfather wrote them. A word such as coach house may describe a building that no longer exists. A distance measured in paces may be uncertain.

You may need to combine the letter with old maps, family stories, property records, landmarks, and historical meanings. Several possible interpretations may become active. The brain processes them together and forms a likely explanation to test.

The Same Words Activate Different Knowledge

Later, a friend or a movie mentions a great-great-grandfather. The speaker knows nothing about your family or the treasure. Nevertheless, the words can match content stored in your brain and activate your own great-great-grandfather Tag.

Strong Hard-Links may then activate the treasure-letter Tag, the unknown wording, and possible locations. Another listener may think of an old photograph, genealogy, or nothing important. Not everyone has a treasure letter from a great-great-grandfather.

The incoming words are similar, but what follows depends on what is already in each brain.

Importance Can Change

Your own response can also change. If the treasure is important to you, a small reminder may occupy your thoughts for hours. If you learn that you have only one week to live, the treasure may suddenly mean very little.

The Tags and Hard-Links may still exist. What changes is their importance in the present situation. Attention, mood, emotion, needs, values, and preferences influence which activated content continues to be processed.

The Main Point

The brain must parse and process the content of active Tags to determine what happens next. The content may come from sounds, speech, writing, pictures, diagrams, gestures, sensations, or anything else the person has learned to understand.

Matching content and Hard-Links help bring knowledge into activity. The current situation influences what remains important. The result may be an action, another thought, continued searching, or nothing.