What neurophysiologists think about the way we think, pay attention, and get bored

[Taomeow]

Neurophysiologists' consensus seems to be converging on this model lately.  Apparently, natural neural networks (brains) operate on two counter streams of information.  The first stream usually comes from the senses, the second, from the "prognostic circuit," i.e. from those areas of the brain in which the models of the surrounding world are formed. In this "predictive loop," a constant evolution of competing models takes place -- "survival of the fittest models of reality," so to speak.  Those models survive that produce the lowest amounts of inaccuracies, inconsistencies between forecast and observation.

 

However, what discrepancies between forecast and observation detected by a healthy brain generate is attention and interest.  For example, we hear the ticking of a clock, and a ticking clock pattern quickly emerges in the "predictive loop," producing the expected ticking sound.  The signal from this model is synchronized with the signal coming from the ears -- and voila, they extinguish each other and we just stop paying attention to the ticking, because it is predictable and uninteresting.  That's the mechanism of getting "bored" -- uninterested and withdrawing attention:  full predictability of the model of reality we are presented with. 

 

But if a second clock is introduced -- and its ticking is not synchronized with that of the first -- we will be on our guard:  what is this new signal?..  Do I need to find out?..  So boredom goes, attention comes.  The brain starts paying attention in order to predict what will happen in the next second (not in detail -- no brain is able to do it in detail, there will not be enough neurons -- but at the level of a generalized forecast, our brains are capable of predicting events quite well).  Attention is a mechanism in the brain adapted to work with surprises, with poorly predictable phenomena.  If either no new phenomena are introduced or attention is not fine-tuned enough to discern them, it has nothing to apply itself to.

 

A healthy brain continuously works against boredom, by discerning finer and finer inaccuracies and inconsistencies between forecast and observation and creating more and more accurate models of reality.  A brain that is unable to focus on finer, subtler, more hidden, less obvious inconsistencies and inaccuracies chooses a model of reality that is both the most immediately available one and the least accurate.  In our time, the most available and the least accurate ones overwhelmingly come from controlled/controlling sources that mass dispense them.

 

From the POV of brain physiology, looks like a brain that accepts such models is both ill-informed (because it readily accepts a model of reality full of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, mistaking it for an accurate and consistent one) and chronically bored.  To overcome boredom, it falls for the crudest possible stimuli, because that's what it has been trained to focus on.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Taomeow

[silent thunder]

Fascinating topic.  Thanks for sharing @Taomeow

 

Donald Hoffman is a neurophysiologist involved in Entangling Conscious Agents, Consciousness/Reality Interaction and Fitness Modeling research for a couple decades.  I happened upon a short intro to the topic of Fitness Modeling and how humans hallucinate our reality.

 

His work and revelations are fascinating in the extreme and he shares their implications in a very direct, accessible manner.  I recommend any of his lectures, or interviews for anyone intrigued by the topic.  Haven't sought out any of his books.

 

I'd love to get in a time machine and invite he and Robert Anton Wilson for an evening of conversation on the nature of reality tunnels and human perceptual modeling...

 

 

[Taomeow]

Personally, I try to deactivate 2D spells by training and using (rather than suppressing, as our education and conditioning require) my pattern recognition skills, the machinery for which is naturally wired into our brains (as well as systemically) as 3D pattern processors.  In other words, any and all 2D spells I'm bombarded with I try to organize in my mind into 3D networks of relations and interactions.  A process also known as "connecting the dots."   Enough 2D dots adequately connected invariably form a 3D pattern -- and then it's up to me to verify its correspondence to the 3D patterns in the real spacetime world, where things like introspection (the past) and prediction (the future) are integrated into the picture, making it more complete and accurate.  The spell-breaking magic of the process consists in those pictures actually getting less complex.  The multitude of 2D dots in our world create a false image of complexity whereas the underlying 3D picture may just emerge as perfectly clear and recognizable at a glance.     

 

Our whole education and conditioning system, on the contrary, demands that we use 2D cognition and suppress 3D perceptions -- which among other things explains the so-called "dyslexia" classified as a disorder, whereas what it really is is above-average competence in pattern recognition in 3D.  This above-average level of processing is what makes it hard or nearly impossible for many "dyslexic" kids to interpret 2D images.  In all cases where there's no other kinds of health impairment (until education and conditioning induce psychological trauma), a "dyslexic" is a 3D child of a 3D world who is not falling under the 2D spell with ease.  For such children, a letter or a word -- an object that is not supposed to be perceived as 3D in order to be recognized -- is viscerally unnatural, and they are therefore instinctively trying to look at those images as natural 3D objects.  I.e. they try to assess and interpret the depth, height, width, view from left-right-above-below, etc. -- whereas in order to gain "reading proficiency" they must cut out those "extra" dimensions and only see in 2D. 

 

Most children can be trained to lose parts of their natural perceptions in order to focus on only those aspects that are not found in the natural world -- e.g. the "sound" and "meaning" of a manmade 2D picture that "is" a letter -- but the so-called "dyslexics" struggle with that, because their 3D perceptions are resistant to being shut down.  At the same time their competence in the actual 3D realm is often astounding.  Nicola Tesla would be one example.  He invented his devices in his head, beginning to end, and would put them on paper only toward being able to show them to others.  When his assistants would tell him, OK, now that we have the blueprints we need to build the prototype and test it to see whether it works, he responded, sure, you can build the prototype and test it, or you can go ahead and build the final version and assume it has already been tested a thousand times -- it makes no difference, it will work exactly as described, I tested it in my mind.  That was his extent of 3D competence -- if he built a 3D object in his 3D head (leaving higher dimensions out of the conversation for a while), building exactly the same one in the actual 3D world couldn't possibly work differently.  Tesla's mother, a peasant who, according to him, was a greater and much more brilliant inventor than himself, was "wired" like that too, but without any education or "credentials" the only way she could use that genius in our world was by making brilliant improvements of household utensils and inventing new ones, unique to her home.  And aside from her son, no one in the world realized she was a genius.  Takes one to understand one.  

 

And now for a little test of pattern recognition skills -- if anyone cares to test theirs.  You don't have to tell me or anyone how you did, just offering for self-introspection purposes, no one's grading. 

 

However, here's a tip: if you don't find the solution in 30 seconds, your pattern recognition skills suck --

and you should ask yourself why your understanding of how the world works only allows for coincidences, not patterns.  Is it because it contains no patterns, or is it because you can't see them?  You can't see them because there's none and those who see them where there's none are you-know-what theorists -- or because patterns are indeed there but you can't see them?..  Chicken and egg...  

 

 

      

[liminal_luke]

that test is a doozy!

[cheya]

... 

Edited July 14, 2021 by cheya

[cheya]

17 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Personally, I try to deactivate 2D spells by training and using (rather than suppressing, as our education and conditioning require) my pattern recognition skills, the machinery for which is naturally wired into our brains (as well as systemically) as 3D pattern processors.  In other words, any and all 2D spells I'm bombarded with I try to organize in my mind into 3D networks of relations and interactions.  A process also known as "connecting the dots."   Enough 2D dots adequately connected invariably form a 3D pattern -- and then it's up to me to verify its correspondence to the 3D patterns in the real spacetime world, where things like introspection (the past) and prediction (the future) are integrated into the picture, making it more complete and accurate.  The spell-breaking magic of the process consists in those pictures actually getting less complex.  The multitude of 2D dots in our world create a false image of complexity whereas the underlying 3D picture may just emerge as perfectly clear and recognizable at a glance. 

 

I love this whole post, Taomeow. It describes, in words I've never used, how my brain works.  For me, I think of it as I have "files" in my brain, and when I run across something that contradicts my files, an "anomaly" from what I think I know or can expect from what I think I know,  it immediately gets my attention, even if it's kind of a minor-seeming thing.  Some I can ignore, but others, not so much. I'm kind of driven to figure out if the files are wrong or if the new info is wrong, or if it indicates something else entirely going on. Sometimes I think of it as related to paranoia... like why can't I just let inconsistencies and anomalies lie?  Other people seem to have no problem doing that.  I really like hearing that that's it's a pattern recognition skill and that it's hardwired in our brains. That "that just doesn't fit" feeling  always gets my attention.

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by cheya

[liminal_luke]

15 hours ago, cheya said:

... 

 

Yeah, well.  Some people are good at numerical puzzles, others can take a jumble of research evidence and piece together a sensible plan to, say, bolster the immune system.  They can then present that gathered information to others in a simple easy-to-understand format that interested folks, who might not be research oriented, can actually use.  We all have our talents.

[cheya]

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

Yeah, well.  Some people are good at numerical puzzles, others can take a jumble of research evidence and piece together a sensible plan to, say, bolster the immune system.  They can then present that gathered information to others in a simple easy-to-understand format that interested folks, who might not be research oriented, can actually use.  We all have our talents.

 

Yes. And some people even have the talent to say the exact right thing to comfort people or calm them down, to take care of them inside.. That's not one of my talents, alas, but I'm very grateful there are some of you on the forum. 

[Taomeow]

I did formulate the premise (30 seconds etc.) a bit too harshly and I have to retract that.  I just got carried away by my own thoughts about how nice it would have been to subject all those people who are entrenched in their spell-induced beliefs to a battery of tests, designed by experts, that would scientifically prove to them they're stupid idiots.  They do respect "experts" and "scientific proof," don't they? -- so they would be forced to accept the verdict.   

 

Alas, it's impossible.  And of course I didn't mean that there's a direct correspondence between seeing, with ease, a 2D pattern (which is what the "math test" might reveal) or even a visual-spacial 3D one, and a far more broad-spectrum ability to see 3D patterns as cognitive "holograms" -- "the bigger picture," "the whole shebang," etc..  The ability and training to accomplish the latter may or may not coincide with the ability to see and interpret the former -- remember my example of how visual-spacial 3D competence in "dyslexic" kids may actually be in the way of their 2D competence?  So, if you didn't get the right answer (which is 12) at first glance, it means nothing whatsoever, rather than that "your pattern recognition skills suck."  Apologies all around.      

[liminal_luke]

42 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

  So, if you didn't get the right answer (which is 12) at first glance, it means nothing whatsoever     

 

 Nothing? Oh man!  (Luke slowly puts down the maracas and stops doing his genius dance.)

Edited July 14, 2021 by liminal_luke

[Taomeow]

21 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

 Nothing? Oh man!  (Luke slowly puts down the maracas and stops doing his genius dance.)

 

Pick up the maracas, please.  "It means nothing" means that among other things it doesn't mean you can't do your genius dance.

[silent thunder]

Wait...

 

the right answer isn't 18?

 

aw crap...

[Boundlesscostfairy]

Everything you think of is filtered..into oncoming and outgoing logic..

 

 

[Boundlesscostfairy]

But it is you that chooses to keep things?

[Taomeow]

3 hours ago, silent thunder said:

Wait...

 

the right answer isn't 18?

 

aw crap...

 

23 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

 

 

      

 

9x10=90

8X9=72

7X8=56

6x7=42

5x6=30

4x5=20

3x4=12

 

A hole in the pattern (5 and 4 missing) gets filled in accordance with its already established algorithm -- and that is what gives the complete and accurate picture.

 

The point was, noticing and not ignoring holes in observable patterns can make or break assembling an accurate picture.  Which can't be done if only the known elements are looked at -- one has to extrapolate into the unknown and see if it fits the observed pattern.  If it does, we're good, we're getting a complete picture even if our available data is full of holes like Swiss cheese.      

[liminal_luke]

4 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

The point was, noticing and not ignoring holes in observable patterns can make or break assembling an accurate picture.  Which can't be done if only the known elements are looked at -- one has to extrapolate into the unknown and see if it fits the observed pattern.       

 

I think lots of the debate and conflict on the board right now revolves around this topic of extrapolation into the unknown.  The conspiracy theorists extrapolators see a very different picture of the world than those who are working only with known pieces of the puzzle.

Edited July 15, 2021 by liminal_luke

[Taomeow]

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

-- H.P. Lovecraft

[silent thunder]

Ignorance is bliss.  ~ Cypher, The Matrix