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I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_for_a_Hat is a fantastic exploration of this idea, focusing on people who have lost specific parts of their brains due to tumors or strokes. The human mind is very much like a complex modern website- take Amazon for example, if everything is working, it’s the website where you buy stuff, but if certain specific systems are offline, you lose specific features, like your order history, or your cart, or your recommended products, etc… Missing one or two of of those components diminishes the site somewhat, but it’s still more or less Amazon. Your brain works the same way!
And the underlying animal is still there too. It’s fully in control at birth, and gets drowned out as we mature (for some people, less than others).
Small children are little more than animals, which is why they’re so unreasonable.
It’s my belief that the reason the written word or things like clocks are usually unreadable in dreams, is because the animal is both illiterate and innumerate. Dreams are the animals understanding of our waking experience. It knows these patterns are important and how they relate to other things, but it has no fucking idea what any of it actually means.I do find myself reading and writing words in dreams quite a lot. I’ve never seen a clock though, not as far as I can remember.
But sometimes I can even remember signs with street names or banners / short paragraphs.
Dynamic lighting sadly doesn’t work tho. Light switches do nothing. For example if I turn on the lights in my bathroom in a dream, I can even hear the bathroom fan turn on, but the room remains dark. Ive heard thst this is apparently quite common though.
No there’s no need to posit cutesy sounding things, that’s how misinformation starts :) If you have any sources or can cite stuff you’ve read which may point to it, that’s cool though
No, people are allowed to speculate and throw out ideas they have without needing some “expert” or paper to back up what they are saying. The mistake is treating such as if it’s a fact. Sure, there’s always going to be idiots out there that will take ideas like that and run with them, but I reject the idea that we should censor those speculations and random thoughts because idiots might believe them.
The real problem are the con artists who work those idiots up into a frenzy of fear and distrust by deliberately presenting shit they can’t back up as a fact and threat to drive donations or sell snake oil to “protect” from it.
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think.
I agree that hypotheticals and thought experiments are fun, but I disagree that any random speculation is a good idea. Everything should have a kernel of originating known fact, or some reasonable foundation. You can’t do science without starting with some known facts, or stating your assumptions based on such facts.
Edit to say:
And I’d say even shit like what you said does more harm than good because it can drive those who enjoy harmless speculation but lack the confidence to push back towards the fringes because they think the mainstream wants to tell them how to think
Is this speculation harmless? I am not sure we can qualify that, so it’s wrong to assume that it’s harmless.
Anywho, anyone and everyone should be able to participate in a discussion! I just think it’s nice to ground hypotheticals with some kind of known or observed phenomena. The funny thing is that science validates itself, so maybe this person is accurately describing an unknown cognitive model.
To me, good conversation hygiene in science or related fields is rooted in observations 🤷
I agree that science involves more rigor, but we’re not doing science in here, it’s just an online discussion forum. And OP qualified their comment with “I posit” and didn’t present it like an established fact.
That can’t be because I clearly exist and cannot differentiate between these “smaller agents”, I am either so perfectly unified that I cannot tell, or this emergentism is bullshit
IIRC the “other consciousness” is the internal monologue or internal visualization you experience when thinking
There’s a potentially related theory too that the origin of religion is internal narrator thinkers having perceived the internal narrator as a second entity who was issuing them commands and beliefs rather than their own internal dialogue.
These people would claim to be “prophets” and basically evangelize whatever presence they ascribed responsibility for the internal narrator to. Leading to more people believing their internal narrators are also these divine forces speaking to them.
Not to dunk on rural americans, but a phenomena like this could also explain the recent evangelical movement in the US considering how much emphasis is placed on the personal relationship and communication with God, these people might actually just not realize their own thoughts and ascribe all thought process as the voice of the big man himself.
Lived in SE USA most of my life…the majority of the most ridiculous fundamentalists don’t have an inner monologue. They speak but there is nothing going on upstairs except life processes.
The way they cling to ideas from others explains why they cling so tightly…they never had one of their own.
Because of this phenomenal outlook they typically adhere to the first idea that comes around and dismiss everything else as false.
Critical thinking is not applicable to everyone.
Absence of an inner monologue does not mean that there is no thought process. I’ve done just fine without one myself. Can’t speak to whatever is plaguing the fundamentalists apart from indoctrination and being steeped in an oppressive culture that’s been fostered over generations.
I have a coworker who I discovered a few weeks ago had no idea internal monologues were a thing. I had to explain that it’s a real documented phenomena and that it’s actually a minority of people that don’t have one. She’s pretty damn smart, too. I also play D&D with a guy who has aphantasia. He’s also pretty damn smart and you would have no idea he was incapable of visualizing things if he didn’t tell you. Him casually mentioning it in conversation surprised people who had known him for years. So, yeah, absolutely no correlation between intelligence and how your thoughts may or may not produce phantom sensory input.
My internal monologue is written. I see letters (they seem typed, but no recognizable font), but I don’t know what it was before I could read.
The only thing I really hear in my head is intrusive- either ear worms or standard intrusive thoughts, otherwise it’s text.
The idea of not having a internal monologue is kinda strange to me. I have a constant internal monologue. Like there doesn’t go a moment by without me talking to myself in my head.
I had it a couple of times that my internal monologue was off, usually due to medications or after intense experiences where I just need some space to process. It’s the most strange feeling.
The idea of not having a internal monologue is kinda strange to me. I have a constant internal monologue. Like there doesn’t go a moment by without me talking to myself in my head.
You should try taking Finnegans Wake, especially before going to bed, and see what happens. It rewires your internal monologue syntax in some really strange way that is not far from the experience of sleep.
Grandpa gave me some advice…
“Think before you speak. If you think while you’re speaking, then you’ve already failed.”
Thanks Gpa…wise words.
I read… Something once and they suggested the past we may have collectively possessed a more direct relationship with rekigi9n like you’re talking about. That for some reason or another we don’t tend to “hear the voice of hod” like we once did. Out relationship with our internal self had changed. Maybe it was bred out by our tendency to kill the religious folks who disagree the most with whatever the dumpster jour religion at the time is.
Makes sense, in a lot of spiritual practices I’ve been involved in, hearing such a voice is believed to be a higher power.
Unless you mean thoughts themselves, and not something similar but deeper…
I mean that for a lot of these people thought and that higher power are one in the same.
They believe God is a speaker who instructs them via their inner dialogue, or for seers, by “visions” which could be better identified as a similar phenomenon but involving visual thought rather than inner dialogue thought.
Huh, maybe this isn’t the “Higher Self” then… because when I think, I can “hear” a voice in my head, and I can literally make it say what I want…
But when I hear the “Higher Self” it’s just suddenly I know something or I’ll experience a different kind of silent voice where I can’t hear any words… but I suddenly know something I didn’t before and it doesn’t “feel” like me, it feels like it comes from much deeper in than a mere thought does, there’s no “Thought process” in the event of a higher self thing, just realization, and it’s usually shit I couldn’t possible know, but it’s not like I can summon it on command and what it tells me isn’t always useful.
Like, one time it told me I’d drink a regular Mountain Dew, not flavored, for the first time in literal years in a matter of minutes.
I disregard it as unlikely, but decide it may be a good idea to get some food as it had been a long day. So I go to Taco Bell, and get my usual drink, a Baja Blast (which is a flavored mountain dew, but the “higher self” specified that it wouldn’t be flavored, it’d be the OG mountain dew) They tell me they’re out, so absent mindedly I say “Regular mountain dew’s fine.”
Only after I say that do I go “Wait a god damn minute…”
Obviously this can’t be a different form of my thought process that I just don’t understand, because how the fuck was it supposed to know the inventory of that exact Taco Bell? Then again, why would a Higher Self care about what drinks I’m drinking… Weird shit like that happens, and since it’s always right, I always listen to it, and when it actually comes through in a time of need things seem to turn out fine. I can’t explain it, ironically you’d think this would make more really superstitious, but the sad truth is I lost my faith in such things ages ago, it’s just the higher self still functions as it does in spite of that.
If you’ve got an explanation I’d love to hear it
Honestly I’m more impressed by your categorical inventory of the exact kind of Mountain dew you’d been drinking for years.
As for explanation, not everything is owed an explanation. That’s part of my issue with the idea of god in the first place, it’s an act of trying to define what cannot be explained because for an unfortunate number of people having an answer is more important than not giving one unless you can confirm it’s correct or at least approximate or in the direction of a correct answer.
Maybe there is a higher power out there, maybe the supernatural is lurking behind every darkened window and hidden alley, maybe 40k is a prophecy of times to come sent in the form of a table top wargame fortelling the danger of beings worshipped as gods who lust after feasting on our souls, what matters is that all of that is just a story we tell ourselves to pretend those questions aren’t still there because an unanswered question is the true incarnation of madness and terror to most people.
God is the King In Yellow, a cloaked masked figure built to contain all the emptiness we fear in the universe.
It’s not so much I was categorizing the Mountain Dew, it’s that I’d specifically only been drinking flavored mountain dews, so a non-flavored one would have been a clear outliers, just for the record.
I will always held belief that we are part of the spiritual greater universe and our brains are antennas for the consciousness. At the same time I won’t allow this belief to interfere with my daily logic and scientific pursuits.
It’s way more fun to have some nice private things you are contemplating as you enjoy the various psychedelics.
I, too, did a heroic dose of mushrooms once
The vibe when you pay monthly tribute to your landed lord. 👌
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Ah the Soul Antenna theory, yyes I hope that’s valid
I’m aware of my other consciousness. She’s cool. I try to be more like her.
I wish mine would stop giving me intrusive thoughts
I call it my customer service face.
I’m pretty sure mine hates me and makes me so stupid stuff whenever I’m distracted.
Only the Baron Harkonnen speaks in my head, so hah!
Kill the Abomination!
I love the way that’s said in the audiobook. Cheers!
Fear is the mind killer.
So not one but two suffering entities?
Somehow that makes it worse.
So that’s why my constant inner-monologue is verbose and meaningful, but I can’t communicate for shit?
Nah, that’s just anxiety my dude.
Can vouch for that. Ive always been of two minds on any given subject
Its what I tell people are the voices in my head
make us whole
Inside you there are 2 wolves
And neither one has access to speech
Mine share the same lonely neuron.
Well looks like someone broke the barrier because the smart ass up there is always giving me shit!
Neither of mine can do speech.
The only thing I can think of that this could refer to is split brain patients who have undergone a specific medial procedure once used to treat epilepsy. It’s possible, although not well understood, that the two halves of their brain operate sort of independently, and only one has access to speech.
It’s a very interesting topic, well worth diving into! But it’s also very muddy, there is contrasting evidence for and against the “two mind” theory.
Anyway, I’m fairly certain this “theory” does not apply to healthy brains which have not undergone this procedure.
I heard that that was a misunderstanding, and the two halves of the brain are still the same entity, but with more limited ability to communicate
If you’re interested I highly recommend this evidence review on the topic. I don’t remember the details but there does remain some compelling evidence for both sides. It seems like the two halves are able to communicate in some ways, but not in others. It’s not fully clear if this means there are two distinct consciousnesses, or if they continue to operate as one.
Well I’ll be, still I think “Still continue to operate as one” makes less assumptions, we barely know consciousness is even real to begin with, how can we confidently say that it’s like an infinitely dividable amoeba of some kind? I guess I’ll check the link.
Yeah I think that’s what’s so interesting about it! It’s one of the few situations where we have been able to (in a limited way) study how consciousness comes about in a mind. Perhaps leaving us with more questions than answers… Tantalising.
Check out- Thinking, Fast and Slow By: Daniel Kahneman
It deals with the concepts of two minds in one. System one and system two
It’s the same as the old devil v angel on your shoulder bit. There’s a left hemisphere mode of understanding, a right hemisphere mode of understanding, and there’s what happens when they’re well integrated, which is mostly only achievable through meditation.
Just for the record, the left brain is the denialist, which offers hypotheticals and which takes the behaviour of others and places it firmly outside yourself, edifying the lie you tell yourself that you are separate and different from the other largely identical monkeys. The right brain tends to communicate in gestalts and complete pictures, without negativity and possibly without reference to individuality; YMMV.
