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Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

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Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#31

Post by innguest »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #16
forim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I accomplished "working with it" by changing my outlook on life: instead of trying to achieve happiness (which was impossible during a prolonged depression), I tried to achieve putting my socks on. Most of my life during those periods translated into tiny goals like this. Some days it was not possible to do anything. Eventually I learned that it can be OK to not be able to do anything too (instead of tryi…

I think most people don't "get over" depression, so much as learn to live with themselves and the world and their new outlook. It's how I feel about it at least, and it's not hard to recognise it in others. The process can take many years. There's still joy in the world, but I find I have more conscious awareness of it. I'd be really interested to see studies of people who "recovered" from depression. Maybe there are…

> I'd be really interested to see studies of people who "recovered" from depression.

Indeed. I'd be interested in reading case after case of people that recovered from depression. But for all the industry has put out (drugs, therapy) they do not seem interested in interviewing those people that they say got better in their abstracts. I guess the academia is not interested in that.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#32

Post by petercooper »

As I've gotten older, I've learnt to just accept things for how they seem to be, rather than how I might "logically" think they should be and this is why I sleep on things.

More times than I could bear to count, I've stopped deliberating on a (usually technical) tricky problem and then the next day an elegant solution jumps to mind at an often unusual time. It's a great way to annoy customers or people you're collaborating with (who think you're being lazy), but then they enjoy the end results anyway so I can get over it.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#33

Post by juanre »

Here's a wonderful description by Henry Poincaré (Science et Méthode, 1908) of how mathematics can indeed be done by parts of your brain you are not aware of:

"À ce moment, je quittai Caen, où j'habitais alors, pour prendre part à une course géologique entreprise par l'Ecole des Mines. Les péripéties du voyage me firent vite oublier mes travaux mathématiques ; arrivés à Coutances, nous montâmes dans un omnibus pour je ne sais quelle promenade ; au moment où je mettais le pied sur le marchepied, l'idée me vint, sans que rien dans mes pensées mathématiques parût m'y avoir préparé, que les transformations dont j'avais fait usage pour définir les fonctions fuchsiennes étaient identiques à celles de la géométrie non euclidienne."

An English translation:

"At that time, I left Caen, where I was then living, to take part in a geological excursion under the School of Mines. The vicissitudes of the journey made ​​me quickly forget my mathematical work; reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to drive somewhere; when I set foot on the step it occurred to me, without anything in my mathematical thoughts having prepared me for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical to those of non-Euclidean geometry."

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#34

Post by tannerc »

Stoo wrote: post #23
electromagnetic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a writer. As much as I work on my craft, when I sit down and put my fingers on the keys I'm not doing any of it. 95% of what I write I have no conscious decision in making. I remember completely scrapping a 1500 word piece, rewriting the whole piece and resubmitting it to my editor. He was amazed I did it so quickly, I was quite disturbed I'd written the whole thing with barely an iota of conscious thought going…

Also a writer. The first time I was given a writing prompt as a timed exercise I was surprised by what I came up with. If I'd sat and thought of what to write I never would have written what I wrote in a five minute unthinking flurry.

This is arguably true for most writers I think. Not all writing types, of course, but for many. I created an iOS app around this very topic if you're interested, it's fittingly called: Prompts.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#35

Post by jerf »

jensen123 wrote: post #10

I'm skeptical. For example, in my bedroom, I have 2 cabinets. A while ago, I moved my socks and underpants from one cabinet to the other. Afterwards, I kept going to the "old" cabinet every morning for quite a few days. I'm wondering if this is an indication how how smart my own subconsciousness is...

People learn about this stuff, and can often end up over-extrapolating it. For every story of it doing something astonishing and powerful, an observant person can find it doing something blitheringly stupid when examined by the cold light of reason. It may be true that your subconscious is more powerful than naive ideas would lead you to believe, but flipping to the opposite idea that it must be brilliant and the conscious mind extraneous or unimportant is merely the complementary naive idea. The conscious mind may be riding the elephant, but the rider still exerts a lot of important influence over the elephant.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#36

Post by vinceguidry »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #25
tannerc wrote: post #2

Researching creative thinking processes over the last decade, this is a no-brainer (pun not intended). There is so much complexity to the brain that it's hard to imagine a time when we, as human beings, will ever really understand how much of it works. It's no surprise there's a lot going on "behind the veil" of consciousness, and I'm glad researchers continue to show this is the case. Similar studies have shown that…

when it comes to problem-solving in software development, I tend to regard my subconscious as a black-box object with a fuzzy help me! method I can call. If I have a coding problem I'm not sure how to solve, I go for a brisk walk and let my mind wander. By the time I'm done, I've got the answer. If it's a tougher problem, I might need to go home and get a good night's sleep. Then I usually wake up with the answer ful…

I've gone a bit deeper with it.

I spend 7-8 hours at my desk every day. I get about the same amount of work done each day, but I don't consciously control how I'm spending those hours. I might be reading / posting on HN, thinking about personal stuff, or even coding. When doing the latter, sessions start when I feel motivated to code and stop the very instant I'm not feeling it anymore.

After I stop, my subconscious goes to work. While I'm 'screwing around', insights will bubble up concerning the broader architecture of the platform I'm building and where the thing I'm coding now fits into it. At some point I'll realize why I stopped coding and what I need to do to continue. It's inevitably some deeper consideration that I never would have thought of had I not taken a break. I've also stopped making mistakes more than once. The second I make one, I lose motivation to work until my subconscious has worked out why I made it and how not to make it in the future.

I had to 'give myself permission' to operate in this way. Conscious mind just doesn't want to give up control, you need to exercise will in order to give up will. It was a little scary at first. As I built up confidence, I started trusting myself to do it more and more.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#37

Post by Stoo »

tannerc wrote: post #34
Stoo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a writer. The first time I was given a writing prompt as a timed exercise I was surprised by what I came up with. If I'd sat and thought of what to write I never would have written what I wrote in a five minute unthinking flurry.

This is arguably true for most writers I think. Not all writing types, of course, but for many. I created an iOS app around this very topic if you're interested, it's fittingly called: Prompts.

Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#38

Post by madaxe_again »

Diederich wrote: post #26
madaxe_again wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I often get asked by people things like "how did you think of that?" - and the honest answer is - I didn't. I "think" by largely shutting off higher rational thought, and just let a problem freewheel through my mind. Either an answer comes pretty much instantaneously, or it doesn't at all. I don't logically think things through - I find the answer, then it justifies itself. This was always infuriating for my…

> I "think" by largely shutting off higher rational thought, and just let a problem freewheel through my mind. Either an answer comes pretty much instantaneously, or it doesn't at all. I have gone out of my way to find ways to 'step out of the way' of my subconscious for many years. For me, big, non-trivial answers don't come quickly or in full. As ideas, thoughts and proto-answers surface, I let them 'float' for a m…

I use spatial and visual centres, I think, as I tend to view problems in an almost mechanistic fashion, as components in a multidimensional space, which interact, and have causal results. Of course, if it's a non-abstract problem, then I visualise it directly - or abstract it to then visualise a general class of problems it sits under. Most things fit into a finite number of patterns.

It's really hard to explain, but it makes for easy and rapid evaluation of possibilities, as you can just "see" what fits, and what doesn't.

Re: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

#40

Post by tannerc »

tjradcliffe wrote: post #5
tannerc wrote: post #2

Researching creative thinking processes over the last decade, this is a no-brainer (pun not intended). There is so much complexity to the brain that it's hard to imagine a time when we, as human beings, will ever really understand how much of it works. It's no surprise there's a lot going on "behind the veil" of consciousness, and I'm glad researchers continue to show this is the case. Similar studies have shown that…

> How exciting to be driven by (or driving, depending on what you believe) such a vastly complex thing. Dancing with.

I like that, mind if I borrow it for future discourse?
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