Leah asks if the video below of synchronizing metronomes is akin to the trampoline analogy I offered recently. To repeat, a trampoline is analogous to consciousness as both are a displaceable medium, i.e. when stimulated an organism is induced into sensations of disequilibrium. So two people standing and especially moving on a trampoline displace the fabric and are inexorably drawn toward each other. Each destabilizes the other and on the deepest subconscious level, they find themselves drawn to each other. Were they to join hands and be still, the state of disequilibrium would be terminated. This is emotion, a virtual force of attraction, centered within each individual in terms of where their physical center of gravity happens to be. However, coherent and efficient movement is impossible unless they synchronize their motions. Then they can maneuver freely about the trampoline and be as close as they want and still feel free. This latter state is a feeling. A state of attraction has evolved into a feeling of weightlessness, or resonance, and this is held in the absolute center of their anatomy when in motion (the null value of all momentums affecting their bodies, it being configured around an ever changing p-cog) in the heart. In the trampoline example we have synchronization making alignment possible.

http://io9.com/5947112/watch-32-discordant-metronomes-achieve-synchrony-in-a-matter-of-minutes

Applying the model to this video, animal consciousness as a displaceable medium corresponds to the moveable surface that the metronomes are attached to. They begin already aligned so that variable has been removed from the equation. Emotion, the operating system of the animal mind, is the laws of motion, gravity and thermodynamics by which the energy of the metronomes is transferred to the medium. Emotional fusion is the fact that all the metronomes are connected to each other by being physically attached to a unifying medium. Fused, the motion of one affects the others. (In the animal mind, the fusion of external values with the sense of the body’s physical center-of-gravity, transpires through the hunger circuitry by way of Pavlovian conditioning.) Feelings are the auto-tuning/feedback dynamic by which each individual attunes to the overall flow system so that its movements become tuned according to a principle of conductivity. Because they are all fused together in the same frame of reference, there is less resistance by moving in sync with the others than by maintaining the original beat that was discordant. If the platform were static, then the principle of conductivity would not be implemented and there would be no harmonizing capacity. Emotion is dynamic, it transmutes from pure emotion (current), to unresolved emotion (solid), to resolved emotion (gaseous)/////(E->UE->RE). These phase changes of emotion reconcile all individual actions into an overarching principle of conductivity and is represented here by the moveable platform to which the metronomes are attracted. Motion that isn’t synchronized causes stress (UE) and the object of stress is to resolve it by becoming aligned and synchronized (RE). If these metronomes were sensate beings they would feel the discordant energy transmuting into coherent energy from the absolute midpoint of their physical anatomies that are in motion, where the null value of all these affecting forces resides. We could call this midpoint, the heart of a metronome. In this video alignment makes synchronization possible.

Notice that if cognition were the source of advanced and complex social systems, then physics would have nothing to say about the evolution of complex social behavior. And yet as many recent simulations featured on this site have shown, physics is making significant contributions to our understanding of the animal mind. There is no need to read thoughts into the minds of animals to account for their propensity to socially aggregate and interrelate meaningfully. If these metronomes were animals, behaviorists would immediately project thoughts into their minds, or rationales into their instincts to account for how they intelligently adapt to each other and to their surroundings. When in fat there’s nothing to think about, Heart does the work.