Those computers in your head
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Those computers in your head
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Those computers in your head
#2Reminds me of all the research/talk about the brains of London Taxi Drivers: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-bigge...
I imagine something similar has happened to many/most people. For me, I got rather obsessed with cycling ~5 years ago, and as time has passed on I've found that I can traverse entire 80 mile routes in my head with a lot of detail and accuracy. Further still, I listen to podcasts when I bike most of the time, and it's interesting to do a route twice and remember snippets of conversation from the podcast of the last time I road the route.
Brains are truly spectacular machines. Makes me wonder what cell phones / social media / all those free dopamine hits are doing to my brain and consciousness over all these years.
Re: Those computers in your head
#3Reminds me of all the research/talk about the brains of London Taxi Drivers: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-bigge... I imagine something similar has happened to many/most people. For me, I got rather obsessed with cycling ~5 years ago, and as time has passed on I've found that I can traverse entire 80 mile routes in my head with a lot of detail and accuracy. Further still, I listen to podcasts…
If you can traverse one of those 80 mile journeys in your head, you already have the hard part of a memory palace. Check out a method book, they're cheap and fairly common, and you can probably set up loci for a couple hundred items within your first two weeks.
Our brains evolved to store memories with locations as the index. Through some mechanism involved in cortical wiring, we evolved to abstract locations, so we can imagine places and things incredibly well, and our basic biology automatically sorts and traverses memories using 3d maps, real or imaginary.
With a minimal amount of practice and effort, you can gain what amounts to a superpower.
Things like this are so trivially easy I don't know why method of loci isn't taught in kindergarten and improved throughout formal education into adulthood. A society that embraced this would produce an astonishing culture.
Re: Those computers in your head
#4Ahh yes. I really love the idea or mental programs, or self metaprogamming, Human biocomputer, self fulfilling prophecy.
They truly run our lives, and sometimes can be drowned out by constant readjustment process, which in itself can be a program.
The simplist of these programs is the common habit. Showering routines, or waking up slightly before an alarm goes off.
They can be more complex, solving problems spontaneously after focusing on them cognitively for days.
Or simple and short term visualization programs that can be ran over a congruent conscious moment with a little mindfulness training -- each little intent of cognition adjusting what's being imagined.
The mechanism behind the muse, or meaningful dream.
PTSD, shyness, suddenly feeling sad, or happy.
Magical thinking, or the depressive voice constantly trying to find a new adjustment to fix things.
Computers in our head are everything. Not really computers in the classic sense, nor programs, but programs and program factories at the same time. Sometimes little programs with hooks to bail us out of other programs that may do us harm.
Wild stuff.
Re: Those computers in your head
#5Ahh yes. I really love the idea or mental programs, or self metaprogamming, Human biocomputer, self fulfilling prophecy. They truly run our lives, and sometimes can be drowned out by constant readjustment process, which in itself can be a program. The simplist of these programs is the common habit. Showering routines, or waking up slightly before an alarm goes off. They can be more complex, solving problems spontaneo…
Would be great to read a story based on programs running in one's head (or heads), perhaps a mix of inception and the matrix.
Re: Those computers in your head
#6Reminds me of all the research/talk about the brains of London Taxi Drivers: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-bigge... I imagine something similar has happened to many/most people. For me, I got rather obsessed with cycling ~5 years ago, and as time has passed on I've found that I can traverse entire 80 mile routes in my head with a lot of detail and accuracy. Further still, I listen to podcasts…
If you can traverse one of those 80 mile journeys in your head, you already have the hard part of a memory palace. Check out a method book, they're cheap and fairly common, and you can probably set up loci for a couple hundred items within your first two weeks. Our brains evolved to store memories with locations as the index. Through some mechanism involved in cortical wiring, we evolved to abstract locations, so we…
I watched this video[1] about a driving game track designed to be as long and boring and reptetitive and self-similar as possible, as a challenge of patience. The streamer is trying to be the first person to complete it, moving carefully over a flat grey pipe just as wide as the car, with only 90 degree turns, in gray fog, without making a single mistake for three hours.
After 42 minutes, he fell off, and had to go back to the start. After that much time and getting a bit complacent, he was not happy.
Then restarted, kept driving, faster this time. After about 30 minutes he suddenly says "wait, was it this corner? Wait, does this look familiar? This looks familiar to me; I think it was here. I'm just having flashbacks. I think it was exactly here where I fell. I just had deja vu. I'll never forget the moment I fell here. I think it was here".
Check out the video and see there is no way a casual glance would tell any corner from any other. He beleivably seems to have encoded a "whoa" memory from a negative experience, which triggered then. (I'm not really interested in "is it fake", even if it's fake it's perfectly relatable. That after 45 minutes of concentration, he can tell where he is on the self-similar map much more accurately than the viewer with a video open on a second monitor, and that there could/would be an emotional "beware" kick at that place next time).
[1] https://youtu.be/0oEtbjFHVo8?t=555 (16 min highlights)
Re: Those computers in your head
#7 "being able to walk around a city and not get lost"
I always thought that it was my innate ability to navigate three-dimensional spaces, but now I begin to suspect that this is a trained "module". I walk a lot (mostly in cities), and I played first-person shooters since the first DOOM back in 1993. And I recently found out that I strongly prefer first-person games to top-down / 2D games -- I instantly feel "at home" there.
So I guess my advice to someone who wants to train this "navigation module" would be to 1) walk on foot in complex spaces like cities, and 2) play first-person games without objective and map markers where the knowledge of the game space is critically important. Modern survival games, such as Green Hell, Subnautica, and The Long Dark, are a perfect fit.
Re: Those computers in your head
#8[dead]
Re: Those computers in your head
#9Reminds me of all the research/talk about the brains of London Taxi Drivers: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/the-bigge... I imagine something similar has happened to many/most people. For me, I got rather obsessed with cycling ~5 years ago, and as time has passed on I've found that I can traverse entire 80 mile routes in my head with a lot of detail and accuracy. Further still, I listen to podcasts…
These London taxi drivers started to experience actual cognitive tradeoff at some point.
We could spend a lifetime of study in other fields and yet not see any cognitive tradeoff.
Re: Those computers in your head
#10Ahh yes. I really love the idea or mental programs, or self metaprogamming, Human biocomputer, self fulfilling prophecy. They truly run our lives, and sometimes can be drowned out by constant readjustment process, which in itself can be a program. The simplist of these programs is the common habit. Showering routines, or waking up slightly before an alarm goes off. They can be more complex, solving problems spontaneo…
Would be great to read a story based on programs running in one's head (or heads), perhaps a mix of inception and the matrix.
You might enjoy Crystal Society. It's written from the perspective of an AI with an internal dialogue orchestrated by a few distinct modules.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28678856-crystal-society