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My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

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Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#31
If you look carefully enough its not only the developer in you but anything meaningful or living in your life is done by someone other than what you usually refer to as me. Normally, such phenomenon is mostly associated with ideas we get on waking up or during shower or exercise.

My observation is that whenever you do anything that's unscripted or unplanned - it's "someone else". Say - answering well an interview with questions that you never expected and had relatively less exposure to, writing a blog post when you plan to write something but then all the ideas rush in and begin to write themselves and so on. I'm from India and I find it hard to communicate with western people these ideas directly. A contemporary ideas that's closest is the Dennet's theory of Narrative Self. Essentially, this article is the author's narrative self trying to make sense of the overnight solution the got.

it was interesting when in article he says such ideas come to him sometimes not all the time - one thing he can do to improve this is to subdue this narrative self a bit. A very good video on this point is by Alan Kay in context of Inner Game of Tennis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#33
This immediately made me remember Dr. Milton H. Erickson who through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive. This was a great influence and basis for big parts of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which was in part based on his hypnosis techniques. The NLP crowd believes that through some tricks and work on yourself, you can open a wider channel for your unconscious to show its potential, for example not having to wait a whole day for some answer to come to you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#34
post #33

This immediately made me remember Dr. Milton H. Erickson who through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive. This was a great influence and basis for big parts of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which was in part based on his hy…

Years ago when I read Milton H. Ericson's book: "My Voice Will Go With You", it made me think of all problems as something that my unconscious should deal with if I just give it the reins. It worked quite well, thank you for reminding me about something I used to do.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393301354/

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#35
Explaining this like there is some sort of magic second you is a bit strange.

The way i see it is not something that is solved while i don't think about it. Rather it is the brain moving information around and placing it in spots that fit and make it easier to access making the solution seam obvious.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#36

I get this all the time when coding. I'll either write some crappy code that works but isn't elegant, or I'll hit a wall. Then either I'll go for a bike ride and get the answer, or I'll wake up in the morning and just type in the solution. Thing is, it only works if I really care about the problem. I have to have gone through a period of trying to see it from multiple angles and failing to find a nice solution. I hav…

"I have to have tried and failed. I never get the answer for free."

Absolutely my experience. One person who changed my entire belief around creativity is John Cleese. His basic premise is that creativity is all about hard, really hard work. You will spend the majority of your time coming up with the obvious ideas, and only after exhausting them will the truly creative ones happen.

More often than not I will do exactly this and it isn't until a night of sleep afterwards that the best ideas surface. This has been my experience with tough problems in coding as well as those with game design.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#37
post #33

This immediately made me remember Dr. Milton H. Erickson who through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive. This was a great influence and basis for big parts of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which was in part based on his hy…

Hmmm so a reductive description of NLP sounds exactly like monotheism?

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#38
post #31

If you look carefully enough its not only the developer in you but anything meaningful or living in your life is done by someone other than what you usually refer to as me. Normally, such phenomenon is mostly associated with ideas we get on waking up or during shower or exercise. My observation is that whenever you do anything that's unscripted or unplanned - it's "someone else". Say - answering well an interview wit…

I've noticed that there's a conflict between the needs for communication and explanations, versus the more "mystical" (intuition-based pattern recognition, hunches, habits) aspects of programming (and debugging).

Also the thing when experience coalesces into aesthetic taste that makes wrong solutions just feel bad or ugly.

(It's also very possible to develop intuitions and tastes that actually aren't based in reality, kind of like erroneous folk wisdom.)

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#39
post #33

This immediately made me remember Dr. Milton H. Erickson who through conceptualizing the unconscious as highly separate from the conscious mind, with its own awareness, interests, responses, and learnings, he taught that the unconscious mind was creative, solution-generating, and often positive. This was a great influence and basis for big parts of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which was in part based on his hy…

Hmmm so a reductive description of NLP sounds exactly like monotheism?

"The Origin on Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" has some controversial but interesting ideas about divinity arising as a reification of brief conscious "messages" from the unconscious in times of stress or elation.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the exercise approach, as I used to solve tough problems over quiet twenty minute rides on back streets with low traffic. But the more I've learned (thus the more complex the block), the less effective this became. I worked on a passion project a few years ago where I was coding between twelve and sixteen hours a day for several months. When I was finally so burned out and weary that nothing worked anymore,…

I tend to be more tortured by my dreams of coding, I toss the idea around in my head, but rarely come out with a solution. Any idea's on how to better utilize my dream state?

I get that too, but only when I code to close to bedtime and can't let go of the problem.
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