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Men who stare at walls

alexselimov.com

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Re: Men who stare at walls

#331

Post by bitexploder »

reg_dunlop wrote: post #329
bitexploder wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I'm curious what is meant by > ...recalibrates the Salience Network's threshold for alarm. Superficial googling reveals superficial information about the SN. And more specifically, i'm curious what sort of physiological signals could verify recalibration.

Basic a high priority stimulus arrives. It is actually fascinating how this get sorted out, but the salience network say, gets a signal like, user stubbed toe, massive spike of cortisol along with pain signals filtering in from that part of the brain that manages them. When your brain gets bored it is effectively lowering its threshold to trigger "do something" . The brain is just wired up to constantly process predictive activity. By staring at a whole it stops registering stillness as a thing to activate this process of hunting for stimulative activity. This effectively lets your brain be more calm with no stimulation as it has learned this is not a "threat" state.

Being a modern human is hard. We were not really built for our life post industrial revolution. We evolved to always be ready for threats. The fact that our brains have adapted so well to modern life is amazing and why we have gotten to where we have as a species vs. others. However, it has costs. Our brains our wired to run the DMN loop non stop. So you can do two things. With traditional meditation you make your salience network stronger. Every time your DMN interrupts your meditation and you flex your salience network muscle so to speak you are training it to shift back to the lower DMN activity state. And with wall staring you are changing the brains calibration of what no stimulation means. Both contribute synergistically based on my understanding. (contribute to being less distractible).

Re: Men who stare at walls

#332

Post by fuzztester »

throw0101c wrote: post #290
pcblues wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that was Einstein, Lincoln, or Keller :)

It is from Pensées , 139: > Diversion.—When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enou…

tl;dr ;)

pascal long letter quote

https://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings/blaise-pascal...

Re: Men who stare at walls

#333

Post by jclardy »

baxtr wrote: post #240
hgomersall wrote: post #152

I'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.

While I don’t want to downplay the toxicity of smartphones, couldn’t the same be said for books and newspapers?

I think reading is the difference. People didn’t whip out a newspaper when they had less than 30 seconds available. The smartphone has filled these gaps with an infinite amount of content.

Also, community. In a doctors office reading a paper - it is the same thing your neighbor is reading so you can talk about it. With smartphones, this is lost unless there is a pressing global event.

Re: Men who stare at walls

#334

Post by timacles »

adolph wrote: post #88
timacles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it almost is but meditation, is done with more intent. In Zen Buddhism for example you are always striving to increase awareness , by constantly monitoring your internal monologue, pulling yourself back from day dreaming, expanding from focus on the breath to all near by sensation and phenomena. True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.

> True meditation, . . . takes intense willpower. This seems counterintuitive. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but in my newbie practice it seems to be like resistance or cardiovascular training where there is effort in the moment and a sense of one's limits and a sense of unfolding and gains toward more depth and weight and duration. Like the gym it can be disappointing to lose ground after a break but there is also the co…

There’s sitting quietly here and there and there is the practice and discipline of meditation.

You’re on the right track, keep it up for 5-10 years and you will understand.

The willpower aspect is maintaining a discipline, for years. With no motivation.

Re: Men who stare at walls

#335

Post by timacles »

cogman10 wrote: post #72
timacles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it almost is but meditation, is done with more intent. In Zen Buddhism for example you are always striving to increase awareness , by constantly monitoring your internal monologue, pulling yourself back from day dreaming, expanding from focus on the breath to all near by sensation and phenomena. True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.

> it almost is but meditation, is done with more intent. > True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower. There are different forms of meditation and the one with the most evidence is also the easiest to do, mindfulness [1]. Very little intent is needed to get the majority of the benefits from meditation. I don't know that zen meditation off…

They are beneficial on a superficial scale. It says a lot about the state of society when quietly sitting for 5 minute can bring about positive effects instantly

But I’m speaking about the discipline of meditation on the scale of years in order to change your character

Re: Men who stare at walls

#336

Post by timacles »

CPLX wrote: post #62
timacles wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it almost is but meditation, is done with more intent. In Zen Buddhism for example you are always striving to increase awareness , by constantly monitoring your internal monologue, pulling yourself back from day dreaming, expanding from focus on the breath to all near by sensation and phenomena. True meditation, in the zen sense, is an order of magnitude more difficult to do consistently, and takes intense willpower.

I am a practicing Zen Buddhist and I wouldn’t agree with this description, at least not in my experience and the community that I’ve participated in. Specifically I would say the concepts of “striving” and “intent” aren’t ones I would use. What it actually is takes a little more to pin down (famously) but I would consider the concept of surrender to be more applicable. In fact I would say the absence of striving woul…

Ah nice to meet you!

This is where Zen gets tricky and most people drop out.

All spoken words have duality and as a Zen practitioner I’m sure you know the ultimate goal is non duality, so you can never say it directly

But to your point, yes non - striving is the ultimate goal also, but you cannot ever aspire to it without striving in the first place. Being a zen practitioner is all about understanding nuance, so some level of striving is necessary.

The most famous zen trap is trying to not try, which is inescapable and also impossible to explain to a layman. The discipline I speak of is being committed to walking that fine line of trying to induce not trying… for years.

Staring at walls is compatible yes. But true zen is a difficult discipline. We have to be inclusive though, so yea 5 minutes of mindfulness is good if it works for them

Re: Men who stare at walls

#337

Post by adolph »

timacles wrote: post #334
adolph wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True meditation, . . . takes intense willpower. This seems counterintuitive. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but in my newbie practice it seems to be like resistance or cardiovascular training where there is effort in the moment and a sense of one's limits and a sense of unfolding and gains toward more depth and weight and duration. Like the gym it can be disappointing to lose ground after a break but there is also the co…

There’s sitting quietly here and there and there is the practice and discipline of meditation. You’re on the right track, keep it up for 5-10 years and you will understand. The willpower aspect is maintaining a discipline, for years. With no motivation.

[dead]

Re: Men who stare at walls

#338

Post by gosub100 »

tomwheeler wrote: post #121
proee wrote: post #105

When I was a kid, I would often sit on my bed and stare at the wall. My Dad would walk by my room and ask if everything was ok. I would always say "yeah", since I was literally just thinking. It's a great feeling to just stare at a wall and think. My first thought is usually, "If I could think about anything right now, what would it be?" And this frees my mind up to think about what I want to think about.

> When I was a kid, I would often sit on my bed and stare at the wall. My Dad would walk by my room and ask if everything was ok. I would always say "yeah", since I was literally just thinking. Me too. And all I wanted was a Pepsi.

Great reference.

Re: Men who stare at walls

#339

Post by DoctorOetker »

This reasoning seems flawed:

>This calculation includes audio, visual, and text data and incorporates quality into the measurement, i.e. 10 minutes of HD video has more information than 10 minutes of 480p video.

From a video compression or storage perspective this is of course correct. But I argue it results in the opposite direction when it comes to mental taxation:

Consider how actors/agents/brains process information: we subconsciously model the world around us. Imagine you drop a tiny screw on a carpet, you really need it, its part of a digital caliper and helps align the capacitive PCB's... With high visual acuity, you quickly find the screw. With low visual acuity uncertainty increases and you need to model a "superposition" of multiple possible worlds: is this glint the screw? (ah no thats one of many solder blobs that fell from the table), is that glint the screw? (ah no thats one of the many clipped leads that fell on the carpet)... having more information in and of itself lowers the lack of information (entropy). entropy is logarithmic in number of states. number of possible alternative states is exponential in entropy. clearly having better acuity allows to track things more effectively and resolve detected doubts more quickly, decreasing the stack of mental "TODO's".

Its just a criticism of that sentence and its reasoning, I am of course not denying the effects of using deep learning and mass collection of user behavior to increase addictivity and "user metrics". That can explain continual increase of mental overload. But a mere increase in detail for the senses should actually decrease mental overload...

Re: Men who stare at walls

#340

Post by lasftew »

hellohihello135 wrote: post #284
lasftew wrote: post #247

OP mentions they are a coffee drinker, and use caffeine a lot to fight tiredness and brainfog. While the suggested methods to refocus are great, maybe there is some improvement potential by looking at root causes? As a former heavy coffee consumer, I experienced varying degrees of tiredness over my workday, and inconsistent sleep patterns. Ever since I stopped drinking it, my energy levels have been far more predicta…

Do you have any advice on how to quit? I would love to try not drinking caffeine but it just seems too hard.

I quit cold turkey about two years ago. It wasn't enjoyable at all, as I felt dizzy and very unproductive for weeks. I was also suffering from prolonged headaches and slept two hours more per night than usual.

The upside of this though was that it showed me how heavily dependent I was on caffeine to just function. Which helped me to endure the withdrawal, and I guess that's the only advice I have: Turn it into positive energy and let that insight power your determination to get your body into a more natural state. After a few days, I definitely noticed that I got better, which also helped.

Now I feel better, fresher and more balanced than ever. Waking up in the morning is much easier, and have no reason or intent to ever go back to cafeinated life.

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