#meta cognition

[yumearcana]

Mental narrator

✦ Before you continue: This space is for observation, not operation. We are studying the architecture of the mind✦ 

✦ ᛉ ᚨ ᚷ ᛟ ✦

Most people (though some don’t, which is already suspicious) have a mental narrator.

What is that?

The voice some of us hear when we think. An internal dialogue. A kind of commentator nobody asked for but that showed up anyway.

It can be detailed and constant, or more visual and quiet. It organizes thoughts, acts as working memory, might sound like your own voice… or a much more annoying one.

So what does hypnosis do?

In most cases, it tries to silence that mental narrator. The idea is that only silence remains. And the hypnotist’s words.

But sometimes your mental narrator doesn’t cooperate.

— Should you obey? No. I don’t want to. I don’t like you.

— Stop thinking. I want to think. Right now I’m thinking about how I’m listening to you.

— Let go of control. I am in control. Of being in control.

— This is safe. I don’t know. When someone says “this is safe,” it usually isn’t.

And there’s the problem.

It’s not that hypnosis fails. It’s that your mental narrator figured out the trick and decided to troll the process by live-commenting the whole thing.

and while you’re reading this… who’s talking now?

✦ᛉumeᛋᛇ✦

[alunah-lalunah]

One of the practical ways leading to awakening is practicing ‘Conceptual Inversion’

Why: Forcing yourself to defend the opposite of your belief builds meta-cognition. Example Practice: If you think “technology isolates us,” argue convincingly that “technology is the purest form of communion.” Result: Trains you to see ideas as tools, not identities. It's spinozist detachment from passions of opinion.

[whisperintrees]

The later you develop your meta cognisant self, the longer you get nudged and judged through others’ opinion.

[kstxiksc]

[fnordmazedataplex]

EP 308 David Chapman on Rethinking Nobility - The Jim Rutt Show

Jim talks with David Chapman about rethinking nobility for the modern age through his recent “nobility tetralogy” of essays. They discuss ch

[instantlymaximumblaze]

Your brain doesn’t learn the way we thought, according to new neuroscience breakthrough

Your brain doesn’t learn the way we thought, according to new neuroscience breakthrough

Scientists have discovered that the brain learns using more complex and diverse rules than previously thought, reshaping our understanding o

...

Our findings suggest that neurons, by simultaneously using two different sets of rules for learning across different groups of synapses, rather than a single uniform rule, can more precisely tune the different types of inputs they receive to appropriately represent new information in the brain. In other words, by following different rules in the process of learning, neurons can multitask and perform multiple functions in parallel.

...

Future applications

This discovery provides a clearer understanding of how the connections between neurons change during learning. Given that most brain disorders, including degenerative and psychiatric conditions, involve some form of malfunctioning synapses, this has potentially important implications for human health and society.

For example, depression may develop from an excessive weakening of the synaptic connections within certain areas of the brain that make it harder to experience pleasure. By understanding how synaptic plasticity normally operates, scientists may be able to better understand what goes wrong in depression and then develop therapies to more effectively treat it.

These findings may also have implications for artificial intelligence. The artificial neural networks underlying AI have largely been inspired by how the brain works. However, the learning rules researchers use to update the connections within the networks and train the models are usually uniform and also not biologically plausible. Our research may provide insights into how to develop more biologically realistic AI models that are more efficient, have better performance, or both.

There is still a long way to go before we can use this information to develop new therapies for human brain disorders. While we found that synaptic connections on different groups of dendrites use different learning rules, we don’t know exactly why or how. In addition, while the ability of neurons to simultaneously use multiple learning methods increases their capacity to encode information, what other properties this may give them isn’t yet clear.

Future research will hopefully answer these questions and further our understanding of how the brain learns.The Conversation

[nilachristi]

Sometimes, I reinterpret the symbols in my nightmares and see the final destination of my dreams.

Hypocrite or Alchemist? 

[m1rrag]

Cognition Archive

Meta analysis of personal google docs archive; a summary for future self on how my writing has developed over the years: - There were more dramatically juvenile writings than I think of when casually reflecting on my past writing ability.

- When I casually reflect on my past writing ability, I am generally aware that these existed, as I have been careful not to erase the parts of my expressive history that embarrass me the most. But reviewing the actual documents renews this awareness. - The embarrassing writing styles burn most significantly in my head, and as time goes by I tend to let the fact of their existence recede into mere fact; it dies and I forget the devils in the details.

- I also tend to focus on the fact that I had some perfectly great ideas and writings, which I still am all about. 

- When I think and write today, I notice that, probably through a combination of learning to take better mental care of myself and through learning how to be a better writer through out the years, I have cultivated the ability to ignore invasive bridging thoughts. A person who more naturally struggles to connect ideas but can more clearly state what they think at any given time would benefit from cultivating more associative thinking habits. They are an inversion of myself. Today, I still constantly struggle with the desire to link what I’m thinking or writing to everything the phrases I’m producing link to or reference. But I possess the metacognitive skill to recognize, separate, assess, prioritize, and filter bridging or associative thoughts. I think I am better now at letting go of ideas in favor of completing a paragraph or cohering a thought. - I wonder if my compulsion to keep all of these records of my old selfs around is linked to my messy thought habits.

- I imagine a personal world in which I’ve burned away my old files to be lighter than my present situation with its nagging memory spaces and associated sorting tasks. I imagine that clearing out old files would somehow allow me to move on with my new writing more assuredly. I can feel my past writings. The desire to review them and salvage the good snippets has been stewing on the back burner for the past four years. Their material weight translates to anxiety in my daily life. 

- I can’t just throw away my notebooks though. It would feel wrong. Like I had a valuable asset I threw away. A way of moving through my past; a gift from myself in the past to myself in the future. I like taking positive snippets. I like looking back on sunny pictures of smiling faces. I think I can remember the FACT that I was unhappy and trust myself as a fact, even if I lose the memories that prove it. They are too contingent on factors that were present in specific time-space-memory conjunctions and material nexuses that will never be accurately resurrected. They are valuable. All of these things exist.  - There were a lot of writings that are neither particularly interesting, particularly acceptable, or particularly unacceptable. 

- My ability to make a judgment on my own work from six years or more ago feels more solid than ever before. Yet I am aware that I might possibly be making some concessions based on where I was at the time. If I sense I’m doing this, I put it in an archive like Tumblr here, and plan to reassess in the future. Eventually, I’d love to feel consistently confident in my writing. I’d like to know my future self probably won’t disapprove as frequently; I’d like it to be of superior utility to others. I don’t like writing that requires too much filtering and excusing. Of course writing is never perfect but I do know I’ve made progress. 

- I have no reason to publish any of the writings I was proud of, or anything I write today, except on Facebook or for my personal archives. I remember making a purposeful social change in my writing style at some point. I decided the highest form of writing would be to write useful letters to specific people. Grants count. The more people the letters are useful to, the better. I feel confused about publishing in paper publications; I am only interested in publishing according to context; to answer a question. I definitely used to run into problems because I would try to do more than just answer prompts. I would try to answer them and then add my own creations and syntheses. But there wasn’t time or space within the document constraint criteria, so I would try to shove everything in in a really messy way. Since my teen and younger adult years, I’ve gotten better at compartmentalizing where I put my processing-and-integration writing and where I communicate and try out ideas socially so that they don’t make outrageous or unacceptably extraneous appearances in formal documents.  - There are things I was writing in 2010 that are more coherent and wise than things I was writing between 2012-2014. This correlates with my levels of insanity between 2012-2014 and how much I did not want to be in college at the time. I am trying to banish the “what ifs” that this inspires. Useless: “what if I had taken a break when I wanted to?” “what if I had transferred to a better school for me when I tried to?” “what if I had taken the honors program more seriously?” “what if I had transferred out of the arts college and into arts & sciences college like I wanted to instead of listening to the people who exclaimed ‘but people transfer TO the visual and performing arts college, not OUT of it!” I have tried to make this past useful. I have tried to learn something from it. Learn how to somehow avoid getting trapped in a situation like that ever again. Two interpretations I have been operating with for the past four years, knowing they work but are not sufficient: 1) I should have somehow known what I was doing and what I wanted my work to look like after college. 2) I should have not been in college. Possible conclusions that render paradoxical, stagnant, and possibly impossible working models: 1) I should only do things if I know every single aspect of what I am getting into and what will arise. 2) Despite loving writing, reading, editing, and learning voraciously, despite secretly wanting to be media studies and/ or writing teacher since 2013, and despite desperately desiring to be surrounded by other people who love these things, the academy is not the place to be. Conclusions that are possible and if true render desirable, progressive working models: 1) I can never know enough about what any given moments or series of tasks and environments will give rise to, so I should just move forward imperfectly and take the risk of living “wrong” again incase it turns out to be better than the present. 2) Despite not having taken various possibly better paths in the past and therefore never proving for sure whether they would have worked or not, I can trust that, after four years outside of the academy, four or more years to assess and integrate the past, I am now far more capable of being responsible and purposeful with my life choices. I know what I want and I want it because I have a better idea of all of the elements that need to go in to the formulation of life pursuit goals for myself, personally. 3) I am currently in the process of making the types of choices I wish I had made in 2011.