THE MECHANISM OF THE SEIR MODEL FROM PSYCHOLOGY TO PHYSIOLOGY Written by Kaveh Dimitri Salahi
Description
SEIR-as-psychology is the interpretation-layer instance of SEIR-as-architecture. The clinical papers described the loop at the slowest and most visible layer (the mind)that involves response which then creates a new situation. That situation becomes new input, which updates the stored experience. The formula is a loop inside the human mind. Holding on to that description this paper adds a new finding which claims that the loop is not exclusive to the mind layer alone and that everything established about it in the clinical work applies wherever the loop operates. PART ONE — THE QUESTION Give two people the same cold virus. One becomes sick. The other does not. Give two people the same cut. One heals within a week. The other takes three. Give a young body and an old body the same difficult night — no sleep, a heavy meal, a sudden fright. The young body destabilizes and returns. The older body destabilizes and may take far longer to recover, or may never completely return. The insult was identical. The response was not. That difference is what this paper examines. Medicine is highly effective at describing the insult — the virus, the wound, the plaque, the mutation. It is much less complete in explaining why the same insult produces different outcomes in different bodies. The usual explanation is that the bodies were different: age, genetics, fitness, and chance. This is true, but it is not yet an explanation. Different how? Different in what measurable way? This paper proposes an answer, and the answer is a process rather than a substance. PART TWO — THE FORMULA The process consists of four stages. It is called SEIR. Sensory Input. Information arrives — from the external world or from within the body. Not all information is received equally. The system takes a filtered and selected version, weighted by what has mattered in the past. Experience Encoding. What arrives is stored — but never neutrally. It is stored according to significance: how frightening it was, how rewarding it was, and how often it occurred. The stored information is not a recording. It is a collection of expectations about what is likely to happen next. Interpretation. The new input meets the stored expectations, and the system determines what the input means and what is likely to follow. This is where the active process occurs. Response. The system acts: through a feeling, a thought, a behaviour, or a physiological change. The response then creates a new situation. That situation becomes new input, which updates the stored experience. The formula is a loop.