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My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

blog.johnnyreilly.com

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Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#51

Post by hacker_9 »

lazydon wrote: 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…

> My observation is that whenever you do anything that's unscripted or unplanned - it's "someone else"

Depends how you view your brain and consciousness. If you consider your brain to be made up of many components, consciousness being one of them, then your inner monologue is a way of communicating you intent to those other components. These will then respond back as best they can, and the act of learning trains them to be able to give better responses in the future.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#52

Post by c3RlcGhlbnI_ »

This makes a lot of sense when you consider more just how small a role your "conscious" mind plays in your cognition. It is really more of a control center, and has direct access to a very limited amount of your computing power. You can't consciously monitor all of your sensory neurons, or make use of the math processing your mind can do to throw a ball, or manually coordinate your muscles.

You can see the effect of this very clearly while talking. You don't plan out each word ahead of time, you go to say something and the words come out. You can choose to take a step back and plan things in more detail, but this isn't your default mode of operation. Also even then in your head the words tend to seem to just come from somewhere in a stream, like a little stimulation of what you were doing talking out loud.

It is not generally helpful to think of this as a different person, it is you and you stand to gain a lot from learning to trust it. Like how you trust it to be able to recall minute details of API documentation despite not being able to reproduce them in full. You can't recall every code problem you have ever solved, but in a way your subconscious has, and it has been refining them into a process to produce those incredible insights.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#53

Post by Klathmon »

charlieflowers wrote: post #45
lazydon wrote: 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…

Think about what happens when you decide where to eat for lunch. There's an internal process whereby you propose various images (hamburger? pizza? Mexican?). Something else "inside you" says, "Nah, that doesn't sound good. Hmm, maybe. Yeah, that!" Who are you asking? Who is answering?

I had a discussion with my friends many years ago that your comment reminded me of.

I don't "visualize" things I think about automatically. I'd need to concentrate on trying to visualize pizza to see it and even then it's a vague visualization with no real defining features. When casually thinking about pizza I don't visualize anything.

Some of my friends couldn't not visualize what they were thinking about. If they think of pizza, they "see" pizza in their head, and could even describe what they were visualizing in that instance in surprising (to me) detail.

We found that we were pretty well split 50/50 with no obvious associations.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#54

Post by DanBC »

charlieflowers wrote: post #45
lazydon wrote: 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…

Think about what happens when you decide where to eat for lunch. There's an internal process whereby you propose various images (hamburger? pizza? Mexican?). Something else "inside you" says, "Nah, that doesn't sound good. Hmm, maybe. Yeah, that!" Who are you asking? Who is answering?

That happens for you. How do you know it happens for other people? How do you know how many other people share your experience, vs people who don't have that internal monologue?

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#55

Post by Ologn »

For amateurs to become better chess players, they:

* Learn basic endings like KKR

* Review their tournament length games for where they made sub-par moves

* Learn tactics like pin and fork

* Replay grandmaster games

* Do two to mate chess problems, and other such problems

* Learn strategies like best placement of pieces, proper pawn structure etc.

* Learn openings (when one is more advanced)

Some of these can be reasoned out or explained step-by-step. Some can not - like doing chess problems. How does that make one a better player? In some ways it does not make sense, but in some ways it does - after doing many chess problems, I start "seeing" two to mates when they appear on the board, whereas I may have missed them before. When you do dozens, or hundreds, or thousands (Polgar book) of these two to mate problems, and redo them until you can see two to mates within seconds, your brain gets good at pattern matching, and you become more adept at seeing two to mates when they appear on the board during games.

One interesting thing is the first time you see a two-to-mate, it may take a few minutes, maybe even 20 minutes to find it. After subsequent review it may take a few seconds. Do this thousands of times, and it shifts from rational analysis to pattern matching.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#56

Post by DanBC »

Klathmon wrote: post #53
charlieflowers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about what happens when you decide where to eat for lunch. There's an internal process whereby you propose various images (hamburger? pizza? Mexican?). Something else "inside you" says, "Nah, that doesn't sound good. Hmm, maybe. Yeah, that!" Who are you asking? Who is answering?

I had a discussion with my friends many years ago that your comment reminded me of. I don't "visualize" things I think about automatically. I'd need to concentrate on trying to visualize pizza to see it and even then it's a vague visualization with no real defining features. When casually thinking about pizza I don't visualize anything. Some of my friends couldn't not visualize what they were thinking about. If they…

There have been a couple of articles about aphantsia on HN. I'm having trouble finding them.

Here's two

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#57

Post by steveeq1 »

amelius wrote: post #10

Sometimes I wonder if I actually consist of multiple consciousnesses at the same time, all wondering what the heck the others are doing. And I don't mean that in a pathological way.

There's a GREAT book that discusses this phenomenon called "Society of Mind": https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-Minsky/dp/0671657...

Every HN'er should read it. Basically, we have all these "mini-mentalities" in our brain, but they "talk" (or don't talk) together in different ways. Definitely interesting if you're an AI guy.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#58

Post by BatFastard »

throwanem wrote: post #26
BatFastard wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is it possible what you're seeing is driven by anxiety? Anecdotal, but I have noticed an inverse correlation between how likely I am to intuit a solution, and how much time I spend consciously ruminating on and worrying about the problem.

Indeed it is Anxiety. Happens mostly when I am on a deadline with more things to solve then I have time to do. Maybe if I practice meditation, it will help me let go of anxiety before sleep, which will help me sleep better and make my dreams more productive.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#59

Post by Reedx »

c3RlcGhlbnI_ wrote: post #52

This makes a lot of sense when you consider more just how small a role your "conscious" mind plays in your cognition. It is really more of a control center, and has direct access to a very limited amount of your computing power. You can't consciously monitor all of your sensory neurons, or make use of the math processing your mind can do to throw a ball, or manually coordinate your muscles. You can see the effect of…

You also don't know what your next thought is going to be. Furthermore there are strong arguments that free will is an illusion. See "Free Will" by Sam Harris.

Re: My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

#60

Post by Klathmon »

DanBC wrote: post #56
Klathmon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a discussion with my friends many years ago that your comment reminded me of. I don't "visualize" things I think about automatically. I'd need to concentrate on trying to visualize pizza to see it and even then it's a vague visualization with no real defining features. When casually thinking about pizza I don't visualize anything. Some of my friends couldn't not visualize what they were thinking about. If they…

There have been a couple of articles about aphantsia on HN. I'm having trouble finding them. Here's two https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894

I never knew there was a word for it! Thanks, I've got some reading to do now!
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