April 23, 2009
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Unconsciously deciding...
Incognito - From the Economist, regarding research about insight and consciousness.
I promise this will not be long winded. I've written too much lately!
I don't think we'll know for quite some time how the brain works, but personally, I think that our slow improvements in computer processing/logic is yielding insight into the function of the brain. In high school, dealing with supercomputers and parallel processing, we used to rant about how to get computers to be "smarter" than humans, and the whole problem was how to get computers to be creative. I personally suspect that one day we will conclude that the reason we function the way that we do is that the brain is essentially a massively parallel processing system, with subcompenents that are optimized for certain types of signal processing. You thus have internal feedback loops that provides us all these conflicting impulses -- and only some of them get to the "surface" of consciousness.
I think that the fact that certain types of EEG patterns are detectable prior to conscious awareness trends towards proving that. Consciousness is almost an epiphenomenon of neural processing.
I'm glad I'm not completely aware of my subconscious.
If you've never met someone with Pick's Disease, or with complete disinhibition -- I promise you, it's an experience. Phineas Gage, for instance? A classic example of what happens when the certain pathways get knocked out...
Comments (7)
That is TOTALLY how I make decisions. I have to do all the research, then go away and let it stew for a while. Then the decision just pops up. Drives Mr Brett crazy, who is a more straight forward analytical thinker. But now I have scientific proof that my brain is normal!!
@TizzyAlexander -
I do something similar to you. If I have a paper or article I want to write, I just make a mental note to start, and it works in the background... most of the time, by the time I sit down to write, most of it is ready to go. That's how I write a lot of my blog articles...
Also @TizzyAlexander
In "Writing Short Fiction" there is a long section about how to use Fred (the author's name for his subconscious) to create stories and characters and solve problems. It's basically exactly what you describe here.
@Ferd:
There was a study that had an odd parallel a while back. They were studying free will in making basic motor movements like moving your arm.
They put electrodes on a person who was told to move their arm whenever they felt like it, watched what happened.
The results showed some kind of consistent activity going on significantly preceding people's "decision" to move their arm, as if something outside their conscious mind had already made the decision and the mind only became aware of it at the time the motion was about to occur.
Funky stuff.
On another line of thought there's a (maybe-related) theory in some Japanese martial arts that you have a "center mind." It's located in your middle dan tien and can normally only communicate in a coarse or primal way with the rest of your consciousness and body, such as giving you various body sensations. The application of the theory is that by quieting your mind and connecting to it more intentionally, you unify yourself and your actions and achieve natural power in everything you do.
Hello ar,多謝分享
我唔知道Mendelssohn有信教丫,只知道佢有個姐姐囉...
你都彈琴的嗎??
@babyarmi -
試少少。。。
：（我試彈guitar。
不好意思，我試看粵語，但是，不試用電腦寫。。。
所以可能用部童話寫比較容易。大概你也看得懂吧？
That reminds me of this
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/japanese-researchers-create-images-from-thoughts-using-thoughts/
By the way, reading about Phineas Gage makes my head hurt.. Maybe my parallel processors are about to lock up.. Or maybe they have locked up, and its just trying to get out of it.
@lutangclan -
Phineas Gage is a scary story for all sorts of reasons -- only a few of them physical...
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