Flawed Spiral
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Flawed Spiral has not written any posts yet.
Flawed Spiral has not written any posts yet.
True, I didn't mention emotional balance since it usually plays little role in my daily life. I used to have issues with managing extreme emotions in early childhood that I solved by both avoidance, and 'dimming' them to the point they are mostly manageable. I avoid anger in daily life because it was always unproductive for me in the past, and is incompatible with the social strategies I use nowadays (which I picked because I suck at social 'tactics').
The environment you describe matches up well, but not perfectly with the one I grew up in. I guess you can use that as a confirmation.
I personally see an inner monologue as as much of a tool as any other part of my brain. The inner monologue, as a tight coupling of auditory and linguistic processing, is rather helpful for performing some kinds of thought, for extending working memory (the auditory loop is an extremely easy place to store small amounts of nearly arbitrary data in the immediate term, and you can abuse your language processing to store moderate amounts of linguistic data in the short term as long as you're able to retrace a path of thought through it).
I do find that I don't have a constantly running narrative of my thoughts and what I'm doing,... (read more)
How do you define the difference between software subagents and hardware submodules?
I (feel like I) have a good understanding of what exactly which major 'parts' of my brain are capable of. I know what I can do by language modeling, I know what I can do and when with my visual cortex, auditory cortex, kinesthetic sense, motor cortex, working memory, I know what I can do with my spatial awareness. I can consciously focus on most of these parts and affect their workings, mostly by bringing them into attention. I'm also aware of, but not in direct conscious control of some other parts of the brain which makes me somewhat aware of... (read more)
On more self reflection, and reading a bunch of posts in the subagents tag, and looking into tulpas again, I believe I just don't have the mental architecture for this kind of thing.
I hypothesize that this skill requires thinking of yourself as a personality, but I don't see myself that way. I see my 'self' as my central attention. I don't believe I have software subagents, I believe I have hardware submodules with some configuration overlays at most. There's no 'default personality'. I switch how I interact with people based on context fluidly.
I don't believe my architecture is flexible enough for this, as I can't even write fictional characters that are not a version of my mind with masked knowledge and hidden or exaggerated traits (and otherwise with a manipulated context). I don't argue with people in my head, I don't do 'what ifs' of conversations, I don't imagine what a person would say in some situation.
Oh, I just realized this post is new, and not one of the 8 year old posts I keep coming across and want to participate in.
I don't think this technique works for me, at all. For several reasons. And reading through the comments section, I feel like other people can't imagine my failure case (e.g. the people surveying others about whether they do / can do this - "Can you imagine your friend saying this?")
I'm visually aphantasic, I cannot conjure a visual image at all except in some phases of sleep, or sometimes under extreme tiredness while 'awake' (I hypothesize those mental states are closer to sleep than normal waking awareness anyway).... (read more)
The discussion on this post reminded me of some incidents when I was overcome with strong emotion as a child.
I had a lot of issues controlling my emotions of anger and sadness, to the point that after other children angered me I exploded in hot, violent rage. Every such time I felt like I lost control of myself and was more of an observer. I needed to lock myself away from the world and let all that anger out somehow, until I came down and calmed down. Looking back, I think that (paradoxically) I felt more conscious during those moments. I think this might be because the overwhelming emotion purged all complex... (read more)
I overlooked the obvious, yes, I do that too, of course. However, less of the rehearsing speech part, and more of looking for concrete words for concepts in the moment. I do believe I would improve the fluidity of my speech by rehearsing, I'm not sure that kind of practice is aligned with my values.
Most of your meditation description sounds fascinating, it seems mostly like practicing the skill I already have to strengthen the connection between direct sensations and conscious attention. The only parts that I've never consciously done before are regulating emotions up, and paying attention in general while in emotional states.
I still find backtracking through thoughts difficult, and am not completely successful. I think the way I practice is not particularly effective, but I would like to improve.
I'm not sure I'd be willing to go to a meditation retreat, I'd have to re-evaluate quite a few things to consider actually going.