Sensors vs Censors

I'm reading Marvin Minsky's, "The Emotion Machine" and he makes a strong case for the role of "censors" in expert cognition.

Experts can arrive at the correct answer quicker. But how? Minsky suggests it's because the expert brain blocks unhelpful information and is not slowed down by useless processing. He refers to these automatic blocking agents as "censors". Censors, he suggests, free the expert brain to think about the important stuff. An expert learns from the mistakes of the past and censors help to avoid them in the future.

So far The Goo has been sucking in perceptrons via positive "sensors" but there is also a role for "censors" too. Spamassassin, for example, does a great job of filtering emails before they become email perceptrons. Spamassassin acts as a blocking censor.

But actively blocking events before they become perceptrons solves only part of the problem. There are still too many perceptrons coming in to stay in a state of "flow". They need to be channelled in light of your current mental context to prevent needless context switching.

So channelling perceptrons is the next step ...