This is just a form of meditation, keeping focus on something deliberately for a long time.
Men who stare at walls
301–310 of 346 posts
Re: Men who stare at walls
#302Is this not a form of meditation? I've never been able to keep a meditation habit, but my understanding is that meditation techniques often feature closing your eyes and focusing on breathing, body parts or some other irrelevant thing, it sounds like staring at a wall would serve the same purpose.
As someone who's maintained a meditation practice since 2013, this is definitely meditation. And by "maintain a practice", I mean it's more like something I return to with frequency and less a daily compulsion. Focusing on the breathe or ambient sounds is "easy", and is precisely the reason meditation is seemingly difficult. The mind craves more than simplicity; for some this occurs after a few seconds, for others af…
Staring does something interesting. It does slowly reduce brain waves, but it is harder to hit theta with eyes open. And it works very differently initially. With eyes closed meditation where we, say, follow the breath we use the salience network to slowly chill the DMN for a bit. When you stare at a wall the salience network is what deactivates letting the DMN rip to try and figure what predictions are useful. But it runs out of steam and slowly the state converges with a traditional meditative state. With one important difference: your visual field is still active. Traditional meditation lets you hit theta brain waves. Eyes open is harder to hit theta with but you can definitely hit alpha waves.
So I agree it is meditation, but its quality and mechanism is interesting and different by a bit. It does make me wonder. When we traditionally meditate we grow the salience network (physically). Wall staring trains the brain to simply not seek attention in the first place. Wall staring doesn't strengthen the Salience Network's ability to act as a manager. It recalibrates the Salience Network's threshold for alarm. It trains the dACC to stop firing when nothing is happening.
So both are useful. And provide different neural wiring and myelination.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking? Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
For a while, I programmed while walking on a mini-laptop. Nice walking paths where I lived. I was on a hobby project and wanted to spend any minute on it. It wasn't pretty. I kept trying to design a contraption I could wear on my shoulders that worked like a laptop desk. I also attached a laptop to a treadmill at home, but the static electricity from the rubber mat kept zapping the laptop. The best result was a lapto…
I have an under-desk bike (just pedals really). Being able to just move my feet while working is nice. But yeah once it turns into an actual workout then I'd be focusing on pedaling and not work.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
And mostly reduced creativity. I'm addicted to reading, I take my kindle and phone everywhere, so will grab them when I'm walking, taking a shower, waiting in line, going to the restroom... Between my kindle and my phone, I read a lot more books than I ever did but I don't digest the information as much as I used to. I also don't make as much associations between what I read and things going on in my own life. So, in…
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking? Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
Aside from what everyone else has mentioned, I wonder if Meta's Raybans or something similar could be useful in this sense (kindle app in your HUD).
Still have complete awareness of your surroundings but still be able to read.
I'd argue that's a much more useful "killer app" than recording everyone around you without their consent.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read while walking, I live in a walkable city. The pedestrian way is safe. I stop reading when I arrive at any intersection then start again once I cross. Even as a kid, I'd rush to open any magazine I bought before I got back home and would read them while walking.
I live in a walkable city, am safe, but others dont appreciate me bumping onto them. And I want to reach the destination without bumping into walls. Or stepping into bike lane or car lane.
See the above comment by pfooty who explains it better than I did. I don't bump into people nor bump into walls. I use my peripheral vision to see what's happening while reading my kindle.
Honestly, it's never seemed hard to me and I don't remember a time when I was not able to walk while reading without bumping into things. Even as a student when studying for exams, I'd walk around in circle in my room reading my textbooks, for some reason walking helped to better remember...
Re: Men who stare at walls
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called default mode thinking. Or the default mode network [1]. And I agree, not letting your mind do this from time to time results in higher stress and less ability to focus. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
At some point on William Gibson's now defunct micro blog*, he's about to embark on the book tour for Pattern Recognition (so circa 2003). I'll butcher his insightful phrasing, but he remarks to the effect of > I think I'm going to stop blogging. The act of sitting at a laptop and writing these posts seems incompatible with my life as it exists on a book tour. The only free moments available for it to occupy would be…
> William Gibson's now defunct micro blog
Isn't that what X/Twitter basically is (was?), a "micro blog"?
Re: Men who stare at walls
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking? Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
For a while, I programmed while walking on a mini-laptop. Nice walking paths where I lived. I was on a hobby project and wanted to spend any minute on it. It wasn't pretty. I kept trying to design a contraption I could wear on my shoulders that worked like a laptop desk. I also attached a laptop to a treadmill at home, but the static electricity from the rubber mat kept zapping the laptop. The best result was a lapto…
> kept trying to design a contraption I could wear on my shoulders that worked like a laptop desk
Nathan Fielder wears something like this in The Rehearsal. Google tells me it is called Connect-A-Desk.
Re: Men who stare at walls
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
And mostly reduced creativity. I'm addicted to reading, I take my kindle and phone everywhere, so will grab them when I'm walking, taking a shower, waiting in line, going to the restroom... Between my kindle and my phone, I read a lot more books than I ever did but I don't digest the information as much as I used to. I also don't make as much associations between what I read and things going on in my own life. So, in…
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking? Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
An early stage iPhone app has you covered for typing ;)
https://www.type-n-walk.com/
Re: Men who stare at walls
#309I've recently realised that the biggest problem with smartphones is not that they steal your attention (which is bad enough), but that they steal your disattention I don't know of a better word for it than disattention. Perhaps downtime? But it's not so structured. It's just those moments where you'd previously let your mind wander. Gone forever.
>biggest problem with smartphones
Disattention is happening because the user isn't actually in control of the smartphone, the smartphone is in control of the user, because that control is a commodity upon which a grand economy has been built. That control is only possible because the smartphone itself represents an extraordinary degree of managed control in the way it works, a fact which is used to obviate the users own agency over the product they supposedly own.
So I think the biggest problem with smartphones is that significant parts of the smartphone product no longer belong to the user, but they are in fact rented and leased out to other third parties for the exclusive use of attention-gathering.
We wouldn't have third party applications stealing our social media property as individuals - indeed they wouldn't be necessary anyway, in a functioning operating system - if the operating system of the smartphone was designed to make the user able to do social media without requiring a third party.
But smartphones are, literally, sanctuaries for third party economics, against a captive user. They have been designed, as such. Third-party social media is necessary because the operating system vendors are no longer designing operating systems for the users - but for themselves, and others, for which they are handsomely rewarded ..
Re: Men who stare at walls
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called default mode thinking. Or the default mode network [1]. And I agree, not letting your mind do this from time to time results in higher stress and less ability to focus. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." -Blaise Pascal
Eh, I get what he's going for but I think it has more to do with our inability to see others as human.