why are these articles always so pointlessly long. who wants to read all this meandering tangential bullshit when it can be distilled down into two paragraphs at most.
Sounds like you could use a walk :)
Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
71–80 of 120 posts
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've managed to finish a few 1 hour runs on pavement only during races, but an hour long trail run in in the woods? I'll plan a weekend around it. In Japanese there is the concept, Forest bathing, shinrin-yoku (森林浴).
I love running just about anywhere (except on a treadmill, which is just intolerably drab), but my absolute favourite places to run are on forest trails. There is something indescribably beautiful, spiritual and serene/exhilarating about running through the forest. I feel a profound sense of connection with my human and hominid ancestors going back millions of years. I feel the most human when running through the woo…
> I love running just about anywhere (except on a treadmill, which is just intolerably drab)
I'm the opposite; when I do run (which isn't often, now) I would rather run on a treadmill and listen to a podcast, or just music and zone out, and not have to worry about dodging obstacles or not being able to time my run.
I do love riding my bike around new places, though. I guess that's the same thing.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#73"our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward" A colleague in my phd program went on the job market this year with research that is related to this, especially to the connection between writing and walking discussed in the final paragraph. In a nutshell, his theory and experimental evidence suggest that we use the same cognitive mechanisms to process…
I'd really love to have him study Aphantasia (non-functioning mind's eye) and understand what people with the condition do to compensate.
I have Aphantasia, nice to see people suddenly becoming aware of this. I'm hoping to see a lot more research in this area in the next few years, but anecdotally I'll say spacial cognition and visual memory are different things, I have the former but not the latter. You don't need a minds eye to have a sense of where things are spatially but given that people with visual recall likely do this task visually, I'm not sure I can explain it.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#74Another possibility: walking is a means of seeding your brain's RNG with new entropy. That would explain why some sedentary activities (like driving to work or fiddling with a toy) can help you think too.
I don't know if that's at all true, but I sure like that idea.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#75"our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward" A colleague in my phd program went on the job market this year with research that is related to this, especially to the connection between writing and walking discussed in the final paragraph. In a nutshell, his theory and experimental evidence suggest that we use the same cognitive mechanisms to process…
this is super interesting to me, in my "research" into dyslexia, I find that folks with very high dyslexic traits also happened to be incredibly spatially aware. Coincidently, they also happened to be excellent artists, often in sculpting.
This made me think of the belief, in some psychology circles, that people with synesthesia are more creative. "Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway."[0] Ex: certain numbers trigger certain colors in some people's brains.
Here is an article with a description of the idea and an attempt to explain the mechanism: http://mobile.www.daysyn.com/Wardetal2008.pdf
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#76I always thought part of the power of walking was that it was a form of bilateral stimulation, such as found in EMDR therapy.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Audible 2x during any walk or mindless activity means you can easily get through a book a week without any lifestyle changes. Literally has changed me life.
I do all of my podcast from 2-2.4x depending on the speaker. Silence skipping gets it to an effective 3x speed. Most people hear me listening for brief periods and wonder how I understand any of it. It's a progression to get there, but it is totally doable. I'm sure some people can go faster, but I just tell them to go up .1x at a time until it sounds right.
Interesting. How do you change the speed, via software? I use VLC Player and it only seems to have a few speed settings.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#78So why does taking a shower help us think? Or driving a car on the highway to work? It has to be more then just getting blood moving?
>It has to be more then just getting blood moving
Yes. I think it's because when walking or showering some attention is kept in the body. This matters for thinking purposes because new ideas signal their presence at an emotional level.
Whereas sitting at a desk one's attention is mostly in "in the head" and this is also why lengthy sitting at work or in front of the TV is unhealthy.
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd really love to have him study Aphantasia (non-functioning mind's eye) and understand what people with the condition do to compensate.
I have Aphantasia, nice to see people suddenly becoming aware of this. I'm hoping to see a lot more research in this area in the next few years, but anecdotally I'll say spacial cognition and visual memory are different things, I have the former but not the latter. You don't need a minds eye to have a sense of where things are spatially but given that people with visual recall likely do this task visually, I'm not su…
I have visual recall but I often have a tangible sense of spacial memory. Like I'll feel an almost tingling or aura/presence of an important object in a given vector and magnitude.
Maybe related? But I also get the same kind of extra-sensory feeling when I copy data (doubly so if I cut data) -- like my hand is charged with something extra until I "unload it" by pasting the data. This has saved me many times when I get distracted at work mid-task, and before I go copy some new piece of data I can feel that I haven't pasted in the old data and go take care of that first. (I Wonder if anyone has done a study on this, and how many people experience something similar.)
Re: Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have Aphantasia, nice to see people suddenly becoming aware of this. I'm hoping to see a lot more research in this area in the next few years, but anecdotally I'll say spacial cognition and visual memory are different things, I have the former but not the latter. You don't need a minds eye to have a sense of where things are spatially but given that people with visual recall likely do this task visually, I'm not su…
I have visual recall but I often have a tangible sense of spacial memory. Like I'll feel an almost tingling or aura/presence of an important object in a given vector and magnitude. Maybe related? But I also get the same kind of extra-sensory feeling when I copy data (doubly so if I cut data) -- like my hand is charged with something extra until I "unload it" by pasting the data. This has saved me many times when I ge…
Never heard of anything like that, interesting. Sounds like some sort of synesthesia.