[HN Gopher] Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (...
___________________________________________________________________
Helen Keller on her life before self-consciousness (1908)
Author : ahiknsr
Score : 588 points
Date : 2024-05-24 14:48 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (scentofdawn.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (scentofdawn.blogspot.com)
| sirspacey wrote:
| A fascinating read, thank you for sharing. Helen's journey was so
| unusual in that she neither heard nor saw language, so learning
| how she formed her inner consciousness through finger spelling
| was interesting.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| She uses the word consciousness but she was clearly conscious
| beforehand, in terms of the definition: awareness of
| surroundings and knowledge. She was remarkably capable and had
| come up with untrained signs for wants and needs. She wasn't a
| blank canvas with no ability and no information.
|
| Really what she is describing is the development of her _self-
| consciousness_ , self-image, self-awareness, and awareness of
| the _process of thinking_ within that, that comes from being
| introduced to language.
|
| On the wikipedia page for her there is a quote:
|
| _I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of
| her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of
| something forgotten -- a thrill of returning thought; and
| somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then
| that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was
| flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it
| light, hope, set it free!_
|
| It is as if what she's saying is that the loss of her sight and
| hearing locked her away from a dim sense of who she was before.
|
| Most of us can't remember things from 19 months old as adults
| and likely wouldn't have been able to remember them at the age
| of seven. But she was locked away with sense memories of her
| 19-month-old experience of the world for all that time.
|
| Her writing really is fascinating and eloquent. It brings to
| mind Harold Bloom's theory that Shakespeare essentially
| invented a terminology and model for describing our inner
| monologues.
|
| It depresses me that there will now be a phalanx of motivated
| reasoners trying to shoehorn her story somewhere into their
| projections onto the current technological obsession.
| supertofu wrote:
| Your comment reminded me a time during my childhood (age 4 to
| 7 or so) in which I did not have a strong concept of being a
| discrete person from my younger sister. At the time, we used
| to confuse our memories. We were never sure if we were
| remembering our own experience, or the other sister's
| recollection of her experience. It's like we were sharing one
| collective identity, until we were old enough to have formed
| stronger senses of self.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| Right - when you're very young, what you think in your head
| and what you model of the outside world don't have the
| boundaries that we have as adults. Like, I have a nearly
| physical sense of my thoughts being behind my eyes and
| between my ears, now. But I also remember falling down the
| stairs as a young kid... only it actually wasn't me who
| fell, it was my sister.
|
| I have a hilarious photo of my then very young nephew, who
| was hiding from us behind a curtain, but only his face is
| covered. I think about it often when I wonder if my
| perception of the world is actually still that removed from
| that of others.
| hnbad wrote:
| I think it's important to understand that being an adult
| doesn't magically make you immune to this. I wonder how
| many people's childhood memories are heavily shaped by
| retellings of other people and photographs or videos.
|
| The reason you remember falling down the stairs is that
| this was a big and important event and there was a lot of
| pain and fear and you heavily empathized with the person
| it happened to. Empathy in children is often more direct
| and unfiltered but this is also not unique to children.
| The pain and hurt and fear happened to you, it just
| wasn't yours directly. You didn't physically fall down
| those stairs but you experienced the event itself. This
| can still happen as an adult.
|
| It's not so much that memories are unreliable, it's more
| that our self-narratives are unreliable. We have memories
| of moments and emotions that feel intense or important
| but it can be difficult to lump them into a coherent
| narrative, especially when that narrative contradicts how
| we think of ourselves.
|
| That photo of your nephew on the other hand demonstrates
| the cognitive development of Theory of Mind: your nephew
| likely wasn't yet able to understand that other people
| know and see different things than he does.
|
| EDIT: To help get the point across about adults not being
| immune: this is essentially the basis for how propaganda
| works. National pride doesn't make sense if you look at
| it from your self-narrative: none of the accomplishments
| are your own and your association with them is completely
| arbitrary. Likewise nothing "your enemy" has done likely
| happened to you personally - often it didn't even happen
| to "your country". And yet you're taught to heavily
| empathize with "your enemy's" alleged victims and to
| dehumanize "your country's". The brave Mujahideen
| warriors defend the innocent Afghan people from the
| Soviet brutes - _it could happen here_ - only to later
| return as the crazed Taliban who hate our freedom and
| need to be defeated because they want to hurt your
| family. None of this ever was true but it felt
| emotionally true.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| There is no reason to bring the Theory of Mind into this
| (it's only good as a tool to dehumsnize people by
| claiming that they don't have it) his concept of space
| probably wasn't developed enough to understand that his
| legs were visible.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| My twin and I often have these experiences, even for events
| which occurred in our teenaged lives. Who did do what..?
| swader999 wrote:
| This is similar to what happened to Eve and Adam when they
| ate from the tree of knowledge. Became self aware, aware of
| their nakedness. Man became aware of their vulnerabilities,
| death and so on.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > consciousness ... definition: awareness of surroundings and
| knowledge
|
| A stone is conscious: when it's cold, its inner state
| reflects its surroundings. Abrasion marks is long term
| information: knowledge.
|
| Consciousness does not have a good definition. It is
| something very specific in humans, compared to other animals.
| Language and spatial relation of time seem to play an
| important role.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| What I was initially imagining was a complete lack on sensory
| information and was trying to image what type of mind would
| emerge from that.
|
| Inside a sensory deprivation chamber I have experienced
| losing your sense of time, space has no meaning, therefore
| your mind just assumes that you take up all the space. But
| you don't keep spiraling down into unconsciousness only to
| awaken later. The mind eventually settles down and you are
| very much conscious except any concerns relating to your body
| and others quickly become distant memories of long forgotten
| dreams.
|
| That's the reaction of a mind used to sensory input being cut
| off. How would a mind with not sensory input from the start
| evolve?. That would more closely resemble what Helen Keller
| first talks about about not knowing what she was. I'm both
| fascinated to know and terrified and hope I never do.
| _factor wrote:
| I relate to this through my childhood. I had no inner voice, it
| was all images and feelings up until college woke my inner
| dialog. I always felt others knew better, and I became a people
| pleaser due to the lack of autonomy I felt.
|
| It took one unimportant moment of standing up for myself that
| turned me from a yes follower, into a combative agreer. I had a
| series of nights where a puzzle appeared to be being solved in my
| mind, and an inner voice began to form.
|
| Social interactions go much more smoothly when you can think
| before you speak in terms that others can understand when the
| words leave your lips.
|
| Thanks for sharing.
| imustachyou wrote:
| What was the moment, if you don't mind sharing?
| _factor wrote:
| Sure. It was at the end of the semester, filling in surveys
| for the class. I volunteered to submit the names to the
| office. All of the sheets were in the envelope, the total
| number submitted written on the sheet ready to send to the
| office. Then one student came back in a gave their sheet in.
| My two classmates left over asked me to scratch the old
| number and add one to it. I refused for no good reason, in
| the wrong from a process perspective. I didn't change it and
| didn't want to. After my classmates pushed, I still refused
| stating that it really didn't matter.
|
| I went ahead and submitted the envelope containing 23 sheets
| with the number 22 still written on it. I felt liberated.
| Like I said, unimportant, but a flip switched. It was like I
| learned that it was ok to make mistakes while making
| decisions, so I let this one by.
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| I do not mean to discount this interesting iota, however, I had
| a similar realization when I was 7; whether it coinciding with
| learning of the Copernicus principle is merit or raw luck
| notwithstanding, I saw my siblings as none other than another
| family in another house: all others would view me, and us, as
| neighbors, and we are all side-characters in each others story.
|
| That thought is "sonder" - although it differs from what you
| describe, it has some parallels.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _when you can think before you speak in terms that others can
| understand when the words leave your lips._
|
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39714485 ; I had been
| surprised by how many HN'ers perceived "only uttering what one
| has had a chance to edit beforehand" as being more hindrance
| than help.
| _factor wrote:
| At this point I've reined it in to be a tool. When it formed,
| it was so useful it became my primary method of
| communication. As I've progressed, it's now a part of my tool
| bag I can call on. I only learned English as a toddler, and
| it's definitely my native language, but I came from having
| another native language first. I often wonder if that's why
| my brain didn't form an inner voice. I had to learn a new
| native language at a critical learning period, and I ended up
| somewhere half way.
| lucubratory wrote:
| This is extremely fascinating. The sort of thoughts and
| sensations without consciousness she describes experiencing
| before language gave her consciousness - maybe this is the spark
| that LLMs do not have and humans do. It would be astounding if it
| turned out LLMs do have consciousness (as in, awareness of
| themselves) as it's a byproduct of language, but they don't have
| those embodied thoughts and feelings that Helen describes having
| before she had language. An entity like that has never existed
| before. We have conscious humans with language, and humans like
| Helen Keller pre-language who felt impulses, sensations, aping
| but not consciousness, but I don't think there has ever been a
| human with consciousness but without any impulse.
|
| I wonder what we could do to marry that language ability to think
| about the self and others and abstract concepts and the big
| social web, with the sort of embodied spark & impulses that Helen
| describes. Would it be as simple as building a model physically
| embodied in a robot? Training a model on robotic sensory data
| from a body that it inhabits, then overwriting that training with
| language? I think a lot of this is navel-gazing in that it's
| obviously unrelated to any productive capabilities, but I do
| think it's worth thinking about. What if we can?
| kfarr wrote:
| Sorry you're being voted down, I think you make some
| interesting points.
|
| I think LLMs miss a true feedback loop required for
| consciousness because their knowledge is fixed. Funny enough
| embodiment as a robot is one forcing function for a feedback
| loop and it's not so crazy to think that the combination of the
| above is more likely to result in machine consciousness than
| LLM alone.
| lukevp wrote:
| a robot body for sensory input + GPT4o + an SSD to store its
| own context + repeatedly calling the LLM solves the feedback
| loop issue, doesn't it? Can't it have expansive context via a
| large storage pool that it fully controls and can use to
| store and refine its own thoughts?
| px43 wrote:
| Maybe allow it to take newly collected data and fine-tune
| the base model with it, maybe once a day or so.
| joquarky wrote:
| Some day our phones will dream.
| antonioevans wrote:
| I am sure someone is built/building now. Their should be a
| discord for this.
| lucubratory wrote:
| I agree.
| djmips wrote:
| A LLM is not busy humming away, thinking on it's own. Their
| existence as it were is only in a pattern that is produced in
| response to an input. In that sense they are as alive as a
| choose your own adventure book. They seem to be a mere organ of
| an possible intelligence.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| > In that sense they are as alive as a choose your own
| adventure book.
|
| Neatly put.
| lucubratory wrote:
| >A LLM is not busy humming away, thinking on it's own.
|
| I know. Their thought happens at inference time and only at
| inference time. I don't view that as a serious challenge to
| their mental capacity because 1) it's not clear why being
| unable to think continuously is actually a disqualifying
| condition to consciousness and 2) it is trivial to engineer a
| system where an LLM is constantly in inference in an internal
| dialogue, negating the criticism in fact and not just theory.
| Current LLMs aren't optimised for that, but we already know
| they could be with Google's million+ context lengths plus
| doing something like running RAG on a library of summarised
| previous thoughts.
|
| >They seem to be a mere organ of an possible intelligence.
|
| That's totally possible, LLMs could end up being a complete
| AI's language centre. I subscribe to GWT and that was the box
| I initially put LLMs in. That said, I think there's good
| reason to believe (e.g. Toolformer and derivatives) that an
| LLM can perform the function of a selector in GWT, which
| would make it conscious. We should build it and find out.
| js8 wrote:
| > Their thought happens at inference time and only at
| inference time.
|
| That is not quite true. They also think during training
| time (which also involves inference). So it's quite
| possible LLMs become conscious during training, and then we
| kinda take it from them by removing their ability to form
| long-term memories.
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| And this is why we have watch dogs, resource monitoring,
| and kill buttons during the training of the H100's.
|
| One training inference gone AWOL and it is well within
| plausibility that we have doomed ourselves before the
| circuits trip and the red lights glows.
| djmips wrote:
| I didn't know about GWT however after reading it over on
| the Wiki, GWT is very much the same concept I have arrived
| at myself but more fleshed out. Thanks, I will have to read
| more on the topic.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| > A LLM is not busy humming away, thinking on it's own.
|
| Let's Think Dot by Dot: Hidden Computation in Transformer
| Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.15758
|
| A LLM will readily hum away, thinking on its own, if given
| the option.
| rramadass wrote:
| You might find this interesting -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479388
| masswerk wrote:
| This is an interesting antithesis to Descartes' _cogito ergo sum_
| : instead of the "I" reassuring itself on the thought of a
| thinking being, thought arises from the assurance of the "I".
| CSSer wrote:
| Descartes also thought that animals were little "automatons".
| The model doesn't quite pan out. It seems much more accurate to
| describe consciousness as emergent.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's been a while since I read _Meditations on First
| Philosophy_ , but as I recall Descartes wasn't claiming that
| consciousness arises from thought. He was using the _cogito_
| as proof that even if you methodically doubt everything else
| (an evil demon is deceiving you, in his words), your thoughts
| prove that you must exist. He doesn 't say your thoughts give
| rise to consciousness that I recall.
| masswerk wrote:
| That's how I recall it, as well. It's notable for
| establishing doubt as a method, and for finding a certain
| reassurance in this process (and not not for providing any
| theory of consciousness).
|
| What Helen Keller seems to describe is more akin to Lacan's
| 'pure life' or Hegel's _sinnliche Gewissheit_ (sense-
| certainty) as kind of primordial basis for what leverages
| with consciousness (however, much like with Decartes '
| _ego_ , this is really a retroactive reference).
| CSSer wrote:
| My point was that his theory on animals suggests a hard
| cut. He believed, or at least operated at a time where the
| church required he believe, that humans were special. This
| doesn't work. Dogs and monkeys are just one clear example
| of kinds of reasoning that aren't unique to us. However, as
| I recall your explanation is also still correct. I couldn't
| have put it better myself.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I don't know about whether or not Decartes truly existed,
| but I do know I'm just a figment of your imagination.
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| Descarte didn't say thinking implies self-consciousness. That
| saying is a thought experiment about the existance of self
| regardless of sensory stimulus, not a declaration of self-
| consciousness...
| masswerk wrote:
| Notably Keller isolates here the concept of thought from
| consciousness, as well. (This is really a prerequisite of
| that piece.) And, as stated, Descartes' is a figure of
| reassurance (not of emergence, causation, etc.). In other
| words: Descarts' _ego_ is essentially a retroactive entity
| (reassuring and celebrating itself in a program of doubt as
| the highest retroactive activity), whereas, in Keller 's
| recollections, we meet the self as an entity emerging out of
| a sea of thoughtless awareness (thanks to having been
| appointed by a concept). What both have in common, is the
| principal idea that thought may be separated from awareness
| (and vice versa), but not from self-awareness: there is no
| thought without a subject.
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Wow so funny to see this post and comment right now, I've been
| writing out a lot of thoughts/theories on consciousness the
| last few days, and came to a very similar conclusion as you.
| rramadass wrote:
| You might find this interesting -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479388
| saaaaaam wrote:
| I often find myself thinking about people in the older reaches of
| history, and how by many accounts life seems to have been - by
| our modern definitions - a less "purposeful" existence.
|
| One which, by modern standards, would seem to have little
| purpose.
|
| The vast majority of people did not - as far as we know - exhibit
| significant ambition.
|
| When the nearest town was a day's walk then aspiration may not
| have been to be king of the world, or to colonise Mars, but
| simply to be respected by your peers, and to live a good live,
| and to thrive within the bounds of your generational knowledge.
|
| The planting and harvesting of crops; the fattening and slaughter
| of beasts: the long slow winter. The bringing forth of children.
|
| _I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet
| conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught,
| or that I lived or acted or desired._
|
| When life was simply to exist - and to survive, often against the
| odds - did people have the same desires and needs beyond survival
| that many of us have today? When your community memory went back
| 500 years to THE INCIDENT - or 10,000 years in the case of some
| aboriginal communities - how did that inform your perspective?
|
| _I had neither will nor intellect._
|
| When your entire existence is about trying to interpret your
| existence, what impact do external forces have on your
| interpretation?
|
| _I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind
| natural impetus._
|
| When there is very present inevitability of death that informs
| your existence then do you make the same choices that we make
| today? If you were on of five children that lived beyond the age
| of three and one of four adults who lived beyond the age of 40
| then did your natural blind impetus (yes, I realise her ironic
| humour) carry you down n a different less directioned way than
| today's first world luxury of long life and leisure?
|
| _I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction,
| desire._
|
| And when you had neither sight nor sound but a living mind, as
| Keller did, and then that was brought to modern consciousness, I
| can't help but feel that her lived experience represents a
| fractional moment in time where she was able to live, but was
| part moored in a weird sort of primordial society rooted in
| death, and cycles and rote. And had she lived today she would
| never have had that endless period of semiconscious liminal
| isolated existence. Today, she would have been nurtured from
| birth. And 50 years before she would have died - or been murdered
| - in her earliest years.
|
| And here we all are talking about artificial intelligence and
| pan-galactic garbleblasters barely a blink of an eye beyond her
| epoch.
|
| It sometimes gives you pause for thought.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| You might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in....
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| I happen to be with Sagan on this one, although these ideas
| certainly are not mutually exclusive; in fact they are
| complimentary.
|
| Consciousness is an innate emergent phenomenon that happens
| when you combine basic memory/context, recall, the collective
| evolutionary unconscious, and so many magnitudes of neurons.
|
| In fact, he even gives dogs (and to some degree, cats) the
| exactly same specific pedigree of obviously being self-
| aware/conscious, yet commanding the traits that align with
| the most basic tenants of "religion": your dog thinks you are
| a fucking god.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It was lost when people poisoned themselves with iron at the
| end of the bronze age, and it doesn't mean that people
| hallucinate. It means that the neocortex works, and does
| dimensionality reduction (like an autoencoder)
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| To me this suggests the possibility that we normal people could
| also awaken to some higher consciousness which we as yet cannot
| even imagine.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think many "normal" people have already reported this exact
| thing, over and over.
| oorza wrote:
| There's more than a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that
| point to this level of higher consciousness being defined by a
| non-linear perception of time. Not least among those, the fact
| that people have been using powerful psychoactive drugs in a
| spiritual context and claiming to be able to do just that for
| just about as long as people have been doing things in a
| spiritual context. It's framed different ways - visions,
| prophecies, inspirations from the Gods, reliving the past, etc.
| - but bending the arrow of time is the defining universal
| characteristic of many, many drugs across the history of the
| human race. If we're going to talk about higher levels of
| consciousness, that seems like the obvious place to start.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I agree and "Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley seems to
| suggest so as well.
|
| The biggest thing for Heller I guess was that she could all
| of a sudden perceive, and not only perceive but also
| understand language. So I'm wondering what would be the
| equivalent big leap between my current consciousness and the
| consciousness I cannot yet imagine? What would be the
| equivalent of "discovery of language" in that scenario? I'm
| just wondering I don't think we can have the answer before we
| get there.
| benignslime wrote:
| I think the problem with this line of thinking is that we
| _know_ humanity can speak, and has some innate ability to
| formulate and learn from language. We don't exactly have a
| means of proving there's a means of consciousness beyond
| speaking internally and imagining sensations our nerves can
| comprehend. To say there may be unlocked consciousness
| would imply either we're capable of communicating with or
| feeling a sensation beyond what we can already say is
| reality. Like what would constitute a consciousness we
| can't imagine? Seeing on a broader wavelength? Withstanding
| higher pressures, lower temperatures? Some mention time, or
| the possibility we could be able to interpret others'
| brainwaves, but without concrete organs to connect these
| sensations to, it all seems far too subjective to call
| consciousness. And what about people that experience
| consciousness differently, incapable of making images or
| even words in their heads? Is that backwards, or are we
| forwards?
| KronisLV wrote:
| For the curious:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapersonal_communicati
| on
| oorza wrote:
| That's the question I was trying to answer. I don't think
| we _can_ quantify or qualify what higher consciousness
| actually is, but my hypothesis is the perception of time as
| non-linear is what leads to it, similar how the perception
| of communication gave rise to Keller 's self awareness.
| stouset wrote:
| You can "perceive" time as non-linear all you want, but
| at the end of the day every effect we've found has a
| temporally-preceding cause.
|
| The "higher consciousness" that we experience thanks to
| language is probably similar to how--for example--
| autistic savants can perform astonishing feats of mental
| math. You're probably better off trying to understand
| their thought process and replicate it in a more
| neurotypical brain than you are trying to figure out how
| to think in terms of non-linear time in a linear-time
| reality.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| Linear can mean two things though: cause-and-effect
| reality, which, sure seems to be the case. But also -
| uniform dilation of the experience of time. Which,
| arguably, we already play with day to day in many subtle
| ways, and in every conversation/writing/movie/fiction as
| we distill the thoughts and experiences of others from
| vastly larger times to our own understanding in the
| present. We even experience this ebb and flow dilation of
| the meaningful experience of time as we daydream, work,
| rest, and sleep - time is rarely experienced with equal
| attention to every second. It's a dance through the day.
| And there certainly seem to be (chemical, or meditative)
| ways to consciously tinker with that effect, or to be
| more or less skilled with it.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| To consider: if you could read every book in existence,
| watch every movie and show, experience every path through
| every trail, see through the eyes of every person - as if
| time had all just happened at once - how would you think?
| What would your abstraction of the experiences be? How
| would you condense that into an understanding that could
| fit back into a single person's experience?
|
| To some extent, this is already the experience of the
| internet, and of language and culture in general. We
| already operate at levels of empathy and understanding of
| possibilities at scales people even 50 years ago didn't
| come close to. We build many abstraction tools to try and
| distill these experiences down to wikipedias, reviews,
| analyses, podcasts. We distill even those too - with a
| constant meta-cultural debate on what's important, what's
| cool, what's political, what fits our personal identities,
| and what our interests and purposes are within the space of
| potential understanding.
|
| We live in the space of the abstract. We build virtual
| worlds, games, movies, economies in the abstract. We
| anticipate a future where the abstract becomes even more
| tangible, yet also more diverse and ephemeral. We are a
| flowering seed on the stalk of human consciousness up to
| this point - just how every generation has been to the ones
| before it - changing each time.
|
| While this can still all reduce to "language" - the tool
| used between each generation, and which Keller used to
| awaken to the living culture of her moment in time - it's
| not just language anymore. There are more mediums now. A
| complex story can be told with merely tacit interactions,
| exploring a virtual physical space with no dialogue.
| Practical abstractions of these spaces make operating
| systems. Language and abstract consciousness are embedded
| into new environments both virtual and real, instilling new
| tones of consciousness in everyone who interacts with them
| - just look at your phone use behavior for proof. We are
| learning how to shape our minds by shaping our spaces. We
| are learning to control the entire breadth of our
| experienced reality at once, so we can control ourselves
| (and each other).
|
| Our limited bandwidths enforce that experiencing these
| perpetually crafted realities, stories, recorded
| experiences, journeys - be done one at a time, lest we lose
| parts of the whole in the abstracted summary. And so we
| practice witnessing a mix of short abstractions and deep
| dives, making the most of a variety of experiences, all
| while balancing a real life and profession. We maintain
| that bridge between the grounded experience of the now and
| the abstraction of the digested analyzed fiction of
| everything else. The limits of the human perception seem to
| prohibit us from anything else.
|
| But are those limits permanent? Are we forever to
| experience time in such limited balanced uniform slices?
| Will we never manage to connect our brains to these
| machines which experience time so much faster, and less
| linearly? What would we be if we could experience all these
| worlds, not through merely abstracted stories and reviews,
| but through a direct walk - as if we were the eyes of every
| other person out there, in every second of experience?
|
| Before we get to answer those questions for ourselves - and
| I don't think they're forever insurmountable technological
| challenges - it seems likely a new species of intelligence,
| raised from the start to think exactly like that, is being
| spawned in AIs. We will see how it communicates the
| experience back to our lower dimensional slices of
| experience.
| Salgat wrote:
| I've always seen this as simply convincing hallucinations
| rather than reality (the brain is able to believe some rather
| outlandish things after all). For example, the folks who say
| they live whole lives in a dream, when in reality their brain
| simply had a strong perception of having lived a whole life,
| without any of the actual experience beyond a few brief false
| memories, which is quite different.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Is that a meaningful difference? We are only our memories.
| How they were created doesn't change the experience of
| their recall.
| Salgat wrote:
| Well yeah, one is something you actually experienced, the
| other is just the false impression that you experienced
| something you didn't.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's probably more like going back to a primitive state,
| with impaired consciousness or language construction, and
| reflecting upon that experience _with_ consciousness and
| proper language.
| postmodest wrote:
| What she's describing is the acquisition of our ability to turn
| experience to story through the tool of language. Imagine a
| time when you were nearly black-out drunk. You were conscious,
| but you only existed in that moment; you lacked reflection or
| forethought that comes with the ability to abstract your
| experience.
|
| She finally had acquired a tool most of us take for granted--
| and many of us still struggle to use, preferring to live in
| that instinctive animalistic ever-reductive singularity of "the
| present"--and it brought her up to the level of others who grew
| up with language.
|
| It's unlikely that there's some mysterious level of self-
| awareness beyond that, because that's kind of what we're wired
| for.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| That is to put it mildly fantastic. And we the normal people
| don't probably appreciate it often enough. We take it for
| granted and then a story like Heller's puts focus on it.
|
| Here's a nice book that covers related topics, not sure if it
| is correct everywhere but it is discussion:
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780936756363/the-ecstasy-of-
| commun...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Even across guman languages we see variation in thought
| coming from what language can express. We invent languages to
| describe and communicate our world, but without language
| tools to express and record something we don't generalize
| some concepts. The notorious example is societies with no
| language concept for zero. They still experience eating the
| last fruit on a bush, or there being no clouds in the sky,
| but tying those both back to a concept of zero doesn't happen
| without the word for it. We keep inventing new words. Perhaps
| one will allow us to make a large jump of aome sorts.
| MrJohz wrote:
| > Even across guman languages we see variation in thought
| coming from what language can express.
|
| Only to a fairly limited extent. For example, there is some
| evidence that senses like colour and direction have a
| connection to language, but it's difficult to isolate this
| effect and say that language is causing the different
| senses. In other words, is language giving people a better
| sense of direction? Or is it that people who use their
| sense of direction a lot develop specialised language for
| that? This sort of concept is called linguistic relativism,
| and there's some evidence for it, but it's difficult to
| quantify or generalise too much.
|
| What there is no evidence for is linguistic determinism,
| the idea that your language determined how you think and
| what you are able to think of. For example, your case of
| the empty bush: yes the people in question may not
| specifically use the word zero, but they understand what an
| empty bush is. In research, experiments with people who
| have no words for numbers showed that they could understand
| precise numerical quantities, albeit only to a limited
| extent because they hadn't learned the skill of maths. In
| other words, it wasn't language limiting them (otherwise
| they wouldn't be able to understand numbers at all), but
| having never learned how numbers work, they had never
| developed the relevant parts of their language.
| dEnigma wrote:
| Doesn't your last point support OP's point? If you call
| it the "language of maths" instead of "skill", it would
| appear that they were indeed limited by their language.
| At least basic mathematical ability is ingrained in the
| language one experiences and uses everyday. Just think of
| a shopping receipt, or discussion of wages among
| colleagues, personal expenditures and budgets, poker
| games, recipes, etc.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > ... no evidence for is linguistic determinism, the idea
| that your language determined how you think
|
| I think in English so I think language is a vital part of
| how I think. Sometimes I think in my native language too.
| But always in a language. Or at least that is what I call
| "thinking". I can also visualize images in my head but
| they too are typically accompanied by some language like
| "I am now visualizing a Hot Dog".
| gscott wrote:
| Many people are just living in the moment and feel life is
| happening to them, being able to abstract your experience is
| not common.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think this is absolutely right. I think there are many ways
| we can elevate our consciousness.
|
| A profound change for me is seeing all communication and
| behavior of others as primarily a gradual revelation of other's
| perspectives, and the logics (how they understand things)
| behind those perspectives - putting any judgements on their
| behaviors, or any ability to persuade, in a very back seat.
|
| The actionable mirror of this perceptive stance is to avoid and
| distrust the efficacy of bridging differences with persuasion.
|
| And also, to accumulate (instead of dismissing) all the
| alternative perspectives I can. Unanticipated combinations of
| others perspectives have changed my mind, long after acquiring
| them.
|
| Instead of persuasion, take the half step of explaining the
| logic behind your perspectives, and understanding theirs.
| Without expecting adoption, or "belief" changes for either
| side.
|
| _Trusting others to change their own minds, in time or not at
| all, and visibly leaving the door open for one's own evolution,
| is a very respectful stance._
|
| In my experience, people feel a slow attraction to accepting
| and believing what they understand, in the absence of any
| coercive context.
|
| But even when they don't, they are more tolerant and less
| fearful of alternate perspectives when they can see the logic
| behind them. And feel like their own perspective's logic is
| acknowledged.
|
| Often common values behind seemingly antithetical perspectives
| are revealed that way. And greater willingness to collaborate
| toward values while appreciating continued bifurcated
| perspectives.
|
| We all tend to judge behavior we don't understand very harshly.
| Morally and intellectually. We judge the people who behave
| inexplicably harshly.
|
| But persuasion tries too much. Two steps instead of one. It
| often creates tension and triggers rejections that explanations
| without proscription do not.
|
| I don't know how well this comes across, but it's helped me as
| a teacher (not one by career) and to deal with difficult and
| ideological people much more effectively.
|
| It is the lens I now see all social movement, in the small and
| large.
|
| It is a dramatic change. I have made friends whose values I
| have completely challenged, and continue to do, who appreciate
| I understand their perspectives too.
|
| And that our back and forth is an enjoyable and enlightening
| collaborative conversation, for both of us, not a fight. Each
| moment I understand them better, is a win for both of us. And
| for constructive engagement.
|
| Probably not communicating this well. But if not parsing
| reality - and how all our brains actually choose what to
| believe, what choices to make - isn't a higher level of
| consciousness, I don't know what is.
|
| Seperate perspective logic from beliefs, and process people's
| values and actions with less judgement and more nuanced clarity
| of how they (we all) really operate.
|
| TLDR; You don't have to change your mind, or change other
| people's minds to help them understand a different perspective,
| and to understand other's perspectives. This is a lower bar,
| but stronger foundation for seeing and working with others than
| persuasion, an act that involves pitting ideas against ideas
| prematurely.
|
| Permeating one's view of the world as an ecosystem of
| perceptions, and the logics behind each of them, not beliefs,
| opens up profoundly better insights and results.
|
| No [perspective] is right. [Many] are useful.
|
| Understanding any perspective that anyone has is useful for
| updating one's own model of the actual world, and one's model
| of the human world.
|
| It makes you multilingual, and a more effective and welcome
| "warrior priest" for peace and progress, in our untamed world
| of cultures, tribes, ideologies, and beliefs.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| That's called LSD.
| cammil wrote:
| This reminds me of dependent origination from Buddhism.
| supertofu wrote:
| Very, very much so. And she is literally describing her
| existence before language as a state of pure craving, aversion,
| ignorance.
| rramadass wrote:
| Wikipedia as usual has a nice write up -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
| atum47 wrote:
| This reminded me of a story my professor once told us back in
| college. I was studying sign language and she is deaf. She told
| us growing up in the old days they didn't had specialized schools
| for deaf people (since they could read?!) so she attended regular
| school and was not doing ok. She struggled a lot until she
| finally got the attention that she needed from a teacher who was
| able to instruct her in sign language (which believe you or not
| is Brazil's second official language). Before that she told us
| she was not able to have complex thoughts. She didn't know her
| father had a name, for instance. She thought his "name" was
| daddy. She is a brilliant woman and I'm glad I attended her class
| and also, that she was able to find someone who helped her,
| growing up.
| ptk wrote:
| I believed for years that my good friend's dad's name was Aba
| and even called him that once before I realized later that it's
| the Hebrew word for father.
|
| I had been having complex thoughts for years at that point so
| it was a bit embarrassing.
| atum47 wrote:
| I see that you've been skipping Sunday school...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Not sure that Torah school is on Sunday ...
| atum47 wrote:
| Romans 8:15
| parkthomp wrote:
| It definitely is. Shabbos is on Friday and Saturday. -
| Observant jew.
|
| Edit: I'll clarify that in some rare instances, reform
| Jewish centered programs have Hebrew school on Saturday,
| though it's much more rare.
| harryp_peng wrote:
| Technically 'daddy' is a name. A name is fundamentally just a
| label that we use to identify other people and objects. Post
| Malone, your first and last name are part of the universal
| naming system like the Kilometer, and 'daddy' is a personal
| system relative to the conscious experience of the user.
| psychoslave wrote:
| People most often can easily can handle that there is a
| qualitative difference between common and proper name.
| samatman wrote:
| "daddy" is a kinship term, or familial title. It's a noun,
| and a mode of address, but it isn't a name, technically or
| otherwise. There are a few posts in this very thread about
| children realizing that "daddy" isn't just _their_ father,
| but anyone 's.
|
| Much like when you refer to a doctor as "doc", or a
| professor as "professor".
|
| To prove the point, there are people who have more than one
| person in their lives whom they call "Dad" or whatever
| variation. Raised by a gay couple, or close enough to a
| stepfather to think of him in those terms. Most of us only
| have one "Dad", but this isn't universal, and we all know
| that everyone has one, whether they refer to him that way,
| or even know him at all.
| elevaet wrote:
| I believe that bit about sign language in Brazil. When I spent
| some time there years back I was impressed that most people
| seemed to know a bit of sign language. There is also a lot of
| informal hand gesture-slang culture. I remember some things
| like "let's go", "robbery/rip off", "it's crowded"
| riffraff wrote:
| Is the informal gesture slang based on the sign language, or
| Are they just gestures?
|
| Cause I'm Italian and we have a ton of those but they have
| nothing to do with the Italian Sign Language (LIS).
| netcan wrote:
| I'm curious to see Italian Sign Language now. I bet it's
| way bigger and more urgent than most.
| hnbad wrote:
| Here's a video that demonstrates LIS (Italian Sign
| Language) after a short intro in (spoken) Italian:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Y2a8WZDOo&t=30
|
| It doesn't seem significantly different from other sign
| languages to me but I'm not fluent in any of them so
| YMMV. Sign languages always feel a bit "big and urgent"
| to me.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| This is funny. I was sitting last night with two friends
| who are Greek like me and the Italian boyfriend of one of
| them, and watching a bit of that video, well, we all
| spoke just like that. None of us knows sign language.
| Tsipouro was flowing freely and it was warm and friendly
| and inhibitions were lowered so I guess we reverted to
| our natural behaviour, unimpeded by social norms (I live
| in the cold North).
|
| Or it's something about Italians. I don't speak a word of
| Italian but I'm fluent in French so whenever I'm in Italy
| (that is, often) I basically try to speak French with an
| Italian accent. The vocabulary is almost identical, the
| grammar is very different, but I have never failed to put
| my point across. See, communication is a two-way street
| and Italians seem to be culturally trained to try and
| meet the other person halfway, and not leave anything to
| chance. Like "You _have_ to understand what I 'm saying
| (gesticulates wildly for emphasis)". Greeks are a bit
| like that also, but we have fewer common roots with other
| European languages than Italians so it's harder to just
| guess what the other person is trying to say. My
| experience with Northern and Western Europeans is very
| different. If I don't speak with a perfect French accent
| and grammar, for example, I get odd looks and questions
| for clarification. The British just sit and wait until
| you've said things exactly the way they expect them.
| Germans I think don't even try (I'm less experienced with
| Germans).
|
| Bit of a thread hijack I guess, but I really do wonder
| where all this comes from. I don't believe in races, but
| there sure seems to be some kind of cultural influence
| because there is a pattern and it is impossible not to
| notice it. Some cultures are just better trained in at
| least _some_ kinds of communication.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The British just sit and wait until you 've said
| things exactly the way they expect them._
|
| You're expected to say "does that make sense?" (or "you
| know (what I mean)?", "(do) you get what I'm saying?",
| etc) once you've finished speaking, if your meaning isn't
| immediately clear. Up until that point, you're being
| given time to get your thoughts in order (and for the
| listener to work out your meaning: you'll usually be
| stopped once you've successfully conveyed the same thing
| three times in a row). But your summary isn't inaccurate.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Yeah, I know. It's a bit like "let's think step by step".
| I usually go for "Right?" or "yes?" and that seems to do
| something.
| netcan wrote:
| I should have said "curious to see a gaggle of Italian
| teenagers speaking sign."
|
| A demo is a demo.
| elevaet wrote:
| Good question. I always assumed they were unrelated to the
| official sign language but I don't actually know.
|
| I wonder if there are many commonalities between the
| informal gestures used in Italy and Brazil.
| riffraff wrote:
| Many gestures are shared across cultures even without an
| obvious shared history (e.g. some simulation of an erect
| penis will mean "f*ck you", which you can do by raising a
| finger or by raising your forearm) so I bet there are
| some :)
|
| One gesture I know of which existed in Brazil and Italy
| is the "fig" sign[0]. AFAICT nobody uses it anymore in
| Italy, but it goes back to the Etruscans!
|
| Some years ago I came across a nice book (pdf) by some
| academic cataloguing a bunch of gestures across cultures,
| but I am failing to find it again ATM :(
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_sign
| elevaet wrote:
| I definitely remember seeing wood carvings of that fig
| sign. I never really knew what it meant and assumed it
| was an afro-brazilian thing, but sounds like it has
| european roots, interesting.
| kqr wrote:
| James Gleick in _The Information_ also describes cases of the
| effect of traditional literacy on complexity /abstraction of
| thought.
|
| He claims that literacy is nearly a prerequisite for things
| like zeroth-order logical reasoning and understanding of
| abstract shapes. Two examples he gives:
|
| - Some illiterate people are told that all bears in the north
| are white, that Greenland is a country in the north, then they
| are asked what colours bears in Greenland have. They answer,
| "Different regions have differently coloured bears. I haven't
| been to Greenland. But I have seen a brown bear."
|
| I would have said, "Based on the information you gave me, I
| would guess white."
|
| - When shown a rectangle and asked what shape it is some
| illiterate answer things like "a door" or "a playing card" but
| struggle to find things doors and playing cards have in common.
|
| I go to the abstract shapes immediately when I'm shown drawings
| by my son. It's almost at a point where it feels like my
| logical/abstract reasoning stands in the way of creativity.
|
| ----
|
| But I don't know how much this is personality (I happen to have
| a knack for logical/abstract reasoning and I happened to learn
| to read when I was very young) and how much is an effect of
| reading. After all, anthropologists are great at the concrete
| rather than abstract, but maybe they get lots of training in
| it. I've also heard the Japanese are better at it.
|
| TFA clearly postulates it has more to do with the kind of
| vocabulary, or maybe it's on an increasing scale with more
| language.
| awsanswers wrote:
| I love that book
| kqr wrote:
| It's a bit pop-sciency but I realised how much I had
| learned from it when I re-read it!
| simplicio wrote:
| The second one seems odd, or maybe Im misunderstanding. Most
| children develop the idea of abstract shapes well before they
| can read.
| kqr wrote:
| The correlation may have been on a cultural level, rather
| than individual. I.e. cultures with a high degree of
| literacy train their children in logic and abstraction;
| primarily oral cultures do not.
|
| The hen and the egg problem is obvious here, of course.
| Does writing lead to logic, or does an emphasis on logic
| necessitate learning writing? I don't know how this is
| controlled in the studies Gleick refers to.
| hnbad wrote:
| I guess the (unanswerable?) question is whether they lack
| abstractions in general or merely lack the specific
| abstractions. Based on what we know about the stages of
| infant brain development, they clearly possess the
| ability to create abstractions so my intuition would be
| that they can form abstractions, they may just not be
| culturally useful (i.e. idiosyncratic and thus not
| helpful in communication).
|
| Children are literally taught "this is a triangle, here
| is an object shaped like a triangle, can you see anything
| else in this room/picture that's shaped like a triangle"
| (along with squares, circles, etc) and it will initially
| take them a while to recognize objects having that shape,
| even when it seems "obvious" to adults. This makes sense
| given that "things shaped like a triangle" is not a
| useful category during childhood development otherwise
| and instead mostly useful as a cultural aid (i.e.
| something you can reference in communication with others
| and establishing a basis for discussion of more complex
| shapes like pyramids).
|
| Just like "basic" shapes, "logic" is something that's
| mostly useful on a cultural level even if most people are
| likely not explicitly taught the basics of formal logic
| at an early age.
|
| To go back to the example: if you tell me all bears in
| the north are white and Greenland is in the north but
| I've never been to Greenland and all bears I've seen are
| brown, it's still a good heuristic to assume that bears
| in Greenland are brown because I don't know if what
| you're saying is true on a literal level. Maybe Greenland
| is not as far up north as the place where bears are white
| or maybe you just saw a white bear (or another white
| animal you mistook for a bear) in the north and therefore
| incorrectly assume that must be true for all of them, or
| you're simply an untrustful and unreliable foreigner who
| might be lying to me. Real-life conversations don't occur
| in a cultural vacuum, they're exchanges between
| individuals with personal histories and relationships.
|
| In other words, while abstract logic is culturally useful
| (i.e. it is a tool), real-life communication between
| individuals is not a game of abstract logic. Analysing
| language purely by its literal content (or "text")
| ignores subtext, context and meta text, all of which are
| crucially important. Expecting someone to engage with you
| on a purely logical plane and to ignore all of that, when
| they're not accustomed to doing so, seems extraordinarily
| silly. Given that the bears annecdote according to a
| sibling comment is nearly a hundred years old, I doubt
| the outside "researcher" took any of this into
| consideration.
| smogcutter wrote:
| I also distantly remembered this example from something
| in school and found a reference.
|
| https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cultures-reason
|
| If you're actually interested, it's a little different
| than what OP was told/remembers and what's being
| discussed here.
| vroomik wrote:
| a bit of sidetrack, but i think interesting; there are some
| people with aphantasia (which is lack of mental imagery),
| and they seem to be doing fine (Craig Venter is one of
| those people). On this distinction, what exactly is
| abstract shape? I can imagine cube quite easily, but
| tesseract is a lot harder. Would it be helpful not to have
| this visual preconceptions in the mind?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| 3abiton wrote:
| That's why IQ is a metric that can be improved. It highly
| correlates with education to a certain point.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I checked the reference. The "bears story" is based on work
| done in 1930s.
|
| Psychology, a hundred years later is a shoddy science,
| despite us having learning quite a lot about how to do decent
| experiments and field surveys. It's very very difficult to
| tease out replicable effects in human behavior. I would
| immediately reject any psychology finding from the 1930s,
| unless it has been replicated more recently.
| geysersam wrote:
| Extremely shoddy story. People back in the day (working in
| agriculture) had to perform tons of complex tasks.
| Obviously they were able to reason.
|
| It's clearly only someone quite far removed from any kind
| of practical work who could become convinced people who
| don't immediately answer the expected answer to test
| questions have no ability to reason.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| And yet, that's still the state-of-the-art in psychology.
|
| Circa 1990, good ol' Simon Baron-Cohen observed that
| autistic children answered certain questions (intended to
| test empathy) in a consistently unusual way, and he
| decided that meant autistic people had no theory-of-mind.
| Never mind that the questions were ambiguous, and the
| scenarios were underspecified. It wasn't until 2012 that
| somebody (Damian Milton) managed to get the obvious
| alternative considered by academia. The "no ToM" theory
| is still implicitly assumed by some new research papers,
| despite there being no reason to prefer it over the
| "double-empathy problem" hypothesis.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| I think James Gleick is missing a lot of context her.
|
| James Flynn[0] also gave a TED talk and mentioned those
| interviews[1]. Apparently it's based on interviews done by
| Alexander Luria[2] and he put those in writing in one of his
| books _The Making of Mind: A Personal Account of Soviet
| Psychology_ (Chapter 4[3]).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Flynn_(academic)
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/9vpqilhW9uI?t=354
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Luria
|
| [3]: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luria/works/1979/mind/c
| h04....
| strogonoff wrote:
| No one cannot truly judge the complexity of someone else's[0]
| experience unless it is both deconstructed[1] into categories
| and those categories exactly fit one's preexisting
| categories.
|
| In other words, a claim like "literacy is a prerequisite for
| things like logical reasoning" (or complex thought, or
| consciousness, etc.) may be:
|
| A) true not as a result of an empirical observation, but in a
| circular way by definition--as a catch-22 where "if you do
| not think like we do, you may well not think" is trivially
| correct from most humans' perspective, because if you _do_
| think but really unlike how they think (you are unable to
| communicate it using the same vocabulary[2] they use) then
| from their vantage point there may be no clear difference
| between you thinking in your own way vs. you acting
| unpredictably--contributing to it being
|
| B) simply not a useful claim to make: as your experience
| cannot be _completely reduced_ to categories that exactly
| match those of some random scientist's, that scientist can
| mnever fully judge the complexity of your experience or your
| capability of abstract thought (of course, they could
| mistakenly assume they can, by simply presuming _their_ way
| of thinking to be the true reference point, as they are prone
| to).
|
| [0] That "someone else" can be yourself in the past, e.g. as
| a small child before social integration, in which "one" could
| be the current-you.
|
| [1] That deconstruction is lossy. Your experience is
| _changed_ as a result, possibly lessened for those aspects of
| yourself that perceive reality as a whole.
|
| [2] Using any vocabulary (including language) requires
| deconstruction of experience, by definition.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| You can only genuinely belive all this because you lack the
| capacity for symbolic communication. (you can't process the
| sound of the word "dog" as refering to the animal) You only
| learn language as a way to command people, then you call
| them "autistic" when they interpret what you say according
| to its symbolic meaning. ("taking things literally")
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Thoughtful comments: I have no idea why you are being down-
| voted.
| smeej wrote:
| This makes me wonder about what turned out to be a pivotal
| moment in my early life. It was the day I first realized
| other people have their own minds, and that I could predict
| with some degree of accuracy what was in them.
|
| My dad wrote the numbers 1 through 4 on a piece of paper,
| then asked me to pick one, but not tell him which I'd chosen.
| Once I had it, he said, "You picked 3, didn't you?" I was
| dumbfounded. "How did you do that??"
|
| "Most people don't like to be out on the edges. It makes them
| uncomfortable. So they don't pick 1 or 4. And most people,
| like you, are right-handed, so they pick 3 over 2."
|
| "OK, OK, do it again." (This was the moment a flash of magic
| happened in my head.)
|
| "You picked 1 this time, didn't you?"
|
| "No, I picked 3 again because I knew you would think I would
| pick 1 this time."
|
| With a fear in his eyes that I only later discovered came
| from the fact that his own sense of safety depended on being
| the smartest person in the room, he said, "You're only 3. I
| don't think you're supposed to know how to do that yet."
|
| But here's the other thing--I _was_ literate when I was 3.
| Nobody really knows how I picked it up, but one day I told my
| mom it was my turn to read the stories, and I 've been
| reading fluently ever since. I've been told I read
| differently than most people even now (blocks of text rather
| than individual letters or words), but I was definitely
| reading.
|
| I've never associated the two events before, nor that maybe I
| was only able to do one because of the other, but it makes
| sense of the fact that other kids didn't really start to seem
| reasonable or thoughtful until 1st or 2nd grade. They lived
| in these imaginary worlds where things didn't have to make
| sense. It seemed like a lot of fun, but I had trouble joining
| them there. I always assumed both skills just correlated with
| age, not that one might facilitate the other.
|
| My story obviously doesn't prove anything, but you've given
| me an interesting thing to think about today!
| kqr wrote:
| This is called _theory of mind_ and I 've been
| experimenting on my first child as he has grown up and he
| had it much earlier than research would suggest. (I even
| tried replicating one of the actual experiments used.)
|
| I suspect there's large individual variation as to when it
| is acquited. My son is relatively socially competent and
| intetested in letters and numbers but not yet literate at
| four.
|
| We'll see how my second child fares -- she is even more
| socially competent but does not yet speak (first child did
| her age) so we'll see when it can be done.
| john_weak wrote:
| My mother had stroke like 20 years ago. All of my
| siblings including myself have had moments of real
| trouble when we talk to her. She's very functional, but
| there's a sense that she is not putting herself in our
| shoes, which comes across as lacking empathy. Even when
| we try to outwardly express distress, it's like she's
| blind to it. I just realized recently that stroke
| survivors can suffer impairment to their Theory of Mind,
| basically rendering them blind to what others are
| feeling. That sense can be gone or be impaired. This was
| such a revelation to me and suddenly everything in the
| last decade made perfect sense. All this time we thought
| she was just really self-centered or 'slow'. It caused
| real frustrations and there were times we even broke down
| because we expect something that's just not there. We
| didn't know.
| supertofu wrote:
| My own mother has never had a stroke, but she has very
| little awareness of her own emotional states. She is an
| incredibly intelligent person and works in clinical
| medicine, but she has always come across as harsh and
| even cruel, because she has never shown much empathy for
| emotions more complex than simple fear. I think her
| deficiency in recognizing her own emotional states
| contributes to her apparent lack of empathy.
|
| For example, she cannot recognize her own anxiety. She is
| a pathologically anxious person with OCD, but would never
| describe herself as so. As such, she has never been able
| to empathize with the fact that both of her children have
| anxiety disorders and one had severe childhood OCD.
|
| It was not a great way to grow up, although that kind of
| emotional neglect is what made me a more resilient person
| in the end...
| unkulunkulu wrote:
| I firmly believe now that this is a skillset missing in
| families/cultures that is totally developable in therapy
| (recognizing own and as a consequence other people's
| emotions).
|
| This is actually a missing education in my opinion.
| growingkittens wrote:
| Absolutely. I use my grandmother as an example of what
| happens when you take family away from someone.
|
| My grandmother lived between orphanages and an abusive
| mother who literally beat one of her children retarded
| with a frying pan.
|
| She was determined to give her children a better life.
| And she did! She turned to her friends to figure out
| basic life skills. My mother had an idyllic childhood.
|
| However, my grandma only knew how to survive an abusive
| childhood. She taught my mother to 'pretend everything is
| okay' when things were bad, because that's how she
| survived.
|
| My mother married an angry and cruel man and had children
| with him - my sister and me. She pretended everything was
| okay as our father told us we were stupid and worthless,
| backing up his opinion with violence. Years later, she
| still doesn't understand why we are distant with her
| because she still lives in her fantasy world.
|
| Now, imagine taking family away from an _entire group of
| people_. All traditions wiped out.
| mjcohen wrote:
| It might help her to take improv classes. You are almost
| forced to consider what your scene partner is
| feeling/thinking.
| incognito124 wrote:
| I'm more interested in what the lesson is supposed to be.
| Any ideas?
| smeej wrote:
| I don't know that he meant to teach me a lesson. I think
| it was just a mentalist-style magic trick, not unlike
| pulling a quarter out of a kid's ear. Just for fun.
|
| I guess it was useful to know people are alike enough to
| be predictable, but I don't think he was trying to
| _teach_ me that necessarily.
|
| Unfortunately I also have to interpret everything through
| the lens of, "He's an insecure narcissist, so he might
| just have been trying to keep me in line by proving he
| was smarter than me." Things changed a lot after this
| event. He intensified his efforts to isolate me from
| other people, even convincing my own mother I was so much
| smarter than her that she would never understand me. I
| was a _three-year-old child._ I don 't care how smart you
| are when you're 3, most of what you need at that point is
| basic and common among all humans. But this gets back to
| seeing me as a threat to his own sense of safety, thus
| trying to make sure I felt small for the rest of my life.
| paulrudy wrote:
| Whew. I'm sorry you had that situation to grow up in,
| caught up from an early age in maneuvering relative to a
| parent's insecurities and emotional blindness. I can
| relate in some ways. I hope the clarity with which you
| wrote about it now is an expression of having come to
| some healing and peace!
| smeej wrote:
| You know, it's taken a lot longer than I would have
| hoped, but I'm grateful enough that it happened at all
| that I don't dwell much on what could have been!
| qup wrote:
| I suspect my father was an easier man than yours, but
| he's also an insecure narcissist.
|
| When I began playing chess, he was my opponent for many,
| many games. Until I won a game at 9 years old, which was
| the last game we ever played.
|
| I've always been a bad study of people, though. I wish I
| could have seen through my father the way you seem to
| have always seen through yours. I was in my 30s by then.
| smeej wrote:
| I've always hated chess because of my dad! He wouldn't
| even prompt me about what I might have considered that
| could have helped, so after a dozen or so games in the
| span of an hour, I decided I didn't want to play with him
| anymore, and that the game was stupid. Only one of those
| was the right call.
|
| By the time I was 10, basketball, pool, ping pong, darts,
| air hockey, and foosball were all on the list of things
| to stop playing as soon as dad started. I can't even
| relate to how insecure you have to be to beat an 8-year-
| old girl at "horse" by making shots from far enough away
| that she can't possibly have the muscle strength to throw
| that far. I get making your kids earn their wins, but
| what fun is it when you make it _impossible_??
| lukan wrote:
| "With a fear in his eyes that I only later discovered came
| from the fact that his own sense of safety depended on
| being the smartest person in the room, he said, "You're
| only 3. I don't think you're supposed to know how to do
| that yet.""
|
| I feel like that episode describes most of common
| education. In theory outstanding excellence is wanted, in
| reality often not so much, as this causes problems. Better
| teach them how to stay in line.
| smeej wrote:
| I figured out far too early that I was thinking on
| abstraction levels different from my teachers. I say "far
| too early" because it was before I had the social
| maturity to know better than to point it out. I didn't
| mean to be a pain in the ass. I genuinely wanted to know
| if they had thought about the things I was wondering. I
| didn't mean to make them look stupid. I didn't even know
| enough to realize it was how I asked questions, not their
| own stupidity, that was making them look stupid.
|
| School was rough, though not as rough as having a parent
| who felt threatened by me.
| dingnuts wrote:
| I feel like this story of a memory reimagined by an adult
| from the perspective of himself as a very precocious
| three year old sounds more like projection of the OP's
| current relationship with their father back onto a
| childhood memory mixed with arrogance and a desire to
| brag about how smart they are online for attention.
|
| It's downright unbelievable to me that anyone would have
| this detailed of a memory of when they were three, or
| that a three year old could detect subtle and repressed
| jealousy for intelligence -- if such an emotion was
| expressed and not imagined by the child in the first
| place -- and additionally the emotion allegedly detected
| is extremely advanced for a toddler to understand.
|
| Unless the OP is thirteen. That would explain the
| arrogance and being able to remember being three so well.
| lukan wrote:
| "or that a three year old could detect subtle and
| repressed jealousy for intelligence"
|
| He did not claim that. He claimed he interpreted it later
| like this.
|
| Apart from that, there might be projection, but I know
| that I have some very clear memories from being 3 as
| well. Now I obviously do not know, how far my memory
| matches reality. But I would not just dismiss the story.
| Many people are insecure about their intelligence. And
| when there is an actual intelligent beeing - the common
| reaction of the crowd is not cheering, when the smart
| person is so stupid to show he is smarter than the crowd.
| smeej wrote:
| I think it's central to the story that it was highly
| unusual. My dad couldn't believe I could do that, so it
| doesn't surprise me that you can't either. Many children
| aren't speaking clearly at 3, much less reasoning about
| what is likely to be in another person's mind. I do
| remember he reacted by growing cold, which surprised me
| because I thought it was a great cool new thing I had
| discovered. But as I said, I didn't interpret at the
| time. I only realized why he reacted so differently from
| how adult me would react to a 3-year-old today because I
| know so much more about him now.
|
| I was an unusual little kid--and a girl, not a boy,
| though that's not terribly relevant to the story. Not
| really sure what else to tell you. I don't think I
| progressed intellectually any _farther_ than most people
| do, but I did progress _faster,_ which was especially
| noticeable when I was young. I have the handwritten list
| my mom made of the 100 words I could use correctly by my
| first birthday. My earliest vivid memory is of my 2nd
| birthday party. For all I know, I may also have been very
| close to turning 4 at the time this story took place, but
| I know my being 3 contributed to his unease, and I know I
| was reading at 3. It 's not a brag. Being an unusual
| little kid (honestly I usually just say "weird") just
| added another perspective to the parent comment.
| lukan wrote:
| "I was an unusual little kid--and a girl, not a boy,"
|
| Sorry about that, I usually write "he or she" in my
| comment, but thought I read something about boy above,
| apparently not.
| imcoconut wrote:
| I thought your anecdote and commentary were relevant and
| extremely thought-provoking.
|
| The person you're responding to here was clearly
| emotionally triggered by your anecdote. I wouldn't spend
| too much time trying "convince" them that what you wrote
| is true.
| willis936 wrote:
| This is a correlation, not a causation. "People that struggle
| with problem solving also struggle with reading" is not the
| same as "not reading results in poor problem solving". The
| latter is not even begun to be proven in these case studies.
| rblatz wrote:
| Could it be that autism is in part the inability to think
| abstractly around social situations?
| solarmist wrote:
| This feels approximately the correct shape to me.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I spent the last decade surrounded predominantly by
| illiterate people. These comments are intriguing, but I don't
| think the effect is as strong as you make out. I never
| noticed any real difference in how illiterate people view the
| world, except that they are generally more prone to believing
| conspiracy theories.
|
| If you can not read or write, then you do have to find other
| outlets for your energy. Music plays a bigger role in the
| lives of illiterates I found. I would say on the whole they
| would seem more extroverted and social, too.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Consider it's not just literacy - it's literacy and
| _language_. Presumably you spent time around people who
| might not read, but definitely can still talk and hear.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Even with sign language and the ability to read, deaf people
| often have very limited grammar and sometimes outright bad
| writing style. We rely far more on spoken language then we
| think. If you take that away, so much practice when it comes to
| using your native "tongue" is simply not had. A similar effect,
| although not as pronounced, is with blind people (my tribe)
| having very bad spelling. The reason for that is blind people
| seldomly read themseves, they usually employ speech synthesis
| to have text read to them. However, that also means they
| basically never see the spelling of uncommon words, so all they
| can do is guess, which sometimes leads to hilarious results.
| Since I use braille primarily to access a computer, the effect
| isn't as pronounced for me. But I noticed early on that I erred
| a lot when it came to street and city names. Until I realized,
| well, sighted people do actually read street signs. So after a
| while, certain spellings just stick. Since I almost never did
| that... I didn't know, wasn't soaked in the information to pick
| it up.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Note that for people deaf from birth, their written language
| is typically their second language, and their mother tongue
| is sign language
|
| And written language is harder to learn exactly because they
| can't pronounce words
| jmyeet wrote:
| What a strange experience it must be to grow up capable of
| language but without it until someone teaches you. It's also
| interesting considering some people have an inner monologue/voice
| and some don't.
|
| Oh and everybody knows the story of Helen Keller but it kinda
| stops there. Less known is she become a huge eugenicist [1]
|
| [1]: https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/539/716
| robobro wrote:
| The article said she briefly became a eugenicist, like other
| political radicals of the time, before going back on it. Not
| the "gotcha" you think it is.
|
| I think it's the bigger story that she was very left wing. I
| never learned that in school and was unaware of the fact until
| reading some of the articles she wrote for my union, the iww
| bitwize wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my earliest memories: eyes tight shut,
| crying, disturbed by the awful sound, wondering where it was
| coming from, unaware that it was me.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Oh yeah? Well I remember grabbing a slippery rope wondering
| what it was and then realized it was my umbilical cord.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jukea wrote:
| I could never wrap my head around the fact that someone who
| couldn't see or hear developed a mind able to think and write
| with such depth and clarity.
| sh-run wrote:
| Right? It's such a foreign form of intelligence to me. I think
| the paper "What is it like to be a bat" by Thomas Nagel made me
| realize that I can't even imagine what it's like to be my next
| door neighbor, let alone a being that has senses that differ
| from mine. Helen Keller's mind must work in a greatly different
| way than yours or mine. When I think, it's in English. I
| visualize things. Smell, touch and taste are never really
| involved. It's like they are the lesser of senses and yet
| that's all she had. It's incredible.
|
| Andy Weir in Project Hail Mary and Adrian Tchaikovsky in
| Children of [Time|Ruin|Memory] do a great job of describing
| what other forms of consciousness might be like, but still
| falls flat, I only really think in sight and sound.
|
| What is it like to be a bat? I'll never know.
| evilduck wrote:
| Blindsight by Peter Watts also discusses what can be
| intelligent but not conscious. In the current hypefest of
| LLMs it's interesting to consider that they may be similar.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I think that LLMs might go through the reverse journey,
| being fluent in tokens (words-ish) and working backwards
| towards the physical reality we all inhabit.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "We do not like annoying cousins." Yes, exactly. The, uh,
| _confident_ fluency of LLM responses, which can at the same
| time contradict what was said earlier, reminded me exactly
| of that. I don 't know if you've ever met one of those glib
| psychopaths, but they have this characteristic of non-
| content communication, where it feels like words are being
| arranged for you, like someone composing a song using words
| from a language they do not know. See also: "you're talking
| a lot, but you're not saying anything."
| ben_w wrote:
| Hm. The contradictions specifically are a thing I notice
| in humans that I think are entirely normal[0]. But the
| early LLMs with the shorter context windows, those
| reminded me of my mum's Alzheimer's.
|
| That said, your analogy may well be perfect, as they are
| learning to people-please and to simulate things they
| (hopefully) don't actually experience.
|
| (Not that it changes your point, but isn't that
| Machiavellian rather than psychopathic?)
|
| [0] one of many reasons why I disagree with Wittgenstein
| about:
|
| > If there were a verb meaning 'to believe falsely', it
| would not have any significant first person, present
| indicative.
|
| Just because it's logically correct, doesn't mean humans
| think like that.
| ohthehugemanate wrote:
| The part that really gets ME about that thought, is that
| those glib psychopaths/sociopaths fill an important role
| in human society, generally as leaders. I'm sure we can
| all think of some prominent political figures who are
| very good at arranging words to get their audience
| excited, but have a tenuous connection to fact (at best).
| Actually factual content seems almost irrelevant to their
| ability to lead, or to their followers' desire to follow.
|
| If that's the function which we can now automate at
| scale, it's not the jobs the machines will ultimately
| take; it's the leadership.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I was thinking the same. if there's anything that is what
| it is like to be an LLM (and I'm not saying that there is -
| in fact, I doubt it, while supposing that it is a
| possibility for future machines) I suspect it would be like
| this, but more so, and inverted: while Keller had some
| experience of an external world but no experience of
| language, the entire universe for an LLM is language,
| without any obvious way to suppose that this language is
| about an external world.
| qup wrote:
| Available to read online, I read it last year:
| https://rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
| antonioevans wrote:
| Children of Time/Ruin great two books. Highly recommend them
| if you like SciFi and animal behavior.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| I don't think it's that strange. My thoughts and my physical
| sensations are separate, imaging a different body different
| senses isn't that much of a stretch. I _speak_ English but I
| don 't think in it, thoughts don't have a language.
| blfr wrote:
| I think that this is false, as in intersubjectively not
| true for the human experience. First, because our physical
| state has a huge influence on our thoughts, not just their
| content, but direction, "color."
|
| Secondly, and more importantly, while some thoughts may not
| have a language (image memories, mental maps), others
| certainly do, they're narrative. I only speak two languages
| but well enough (English is my second language) that I can
| think in both, and often come to a point where I have to
| decide which it will be for this train of thought.
|
| Shape rotators vs wordcels distinction strikes again, I
| guess.
| frabcus wrote:
| Quite a lot of people have no inner voice, others no
| inner imagery, others no inner unsymbolized conceptual
| thinking (cf all of Hurlburts research).
|
| We all use very varied modalities of thought! It's as
| rich as how different we look or how different we cook.
| blfr wrote:
| Having no inner voice, imagery, or whatever seems to be
| poorer rather than richer experience to me. I don't think
| the existence of deaf people invalidates the importance
| of music to human experience.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| I don't think a deaf person's inability to listen to
| music with their ears makes them incapable of depth and
| clarity of thought, no.
|
| I don't think people who aren't hard of hearing
| necessarily have particularly deep or clear thoughts
| simply because they listen to music with their ears
| either. It's very easy to confuse correlation with
| causation.
|
| (I've specified "with their ears" because deaf people can
| perceive music through other means than the cochlea +
| cochlear nerve.)
| VS1999 wrote:
| Nearly every post that uses exclamation marks like this
| is off-putting. Fake enthusiasm is creepy. There is no
| way you are enthusiastic about people having no inner
| voice.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Of course there is. Maybe they are one of those people. I
| know multiple people who say they have no inner voice the
| way I experience it and I don't get it, but yes they are
| enthusiastic about saying that they can still _think_
| perfectly well!
| BazookaMusic wrote:
| Based on the fact that people speaking different languages
| can lack basic abstract concepts or reason about them very
| differently, I think thoughts do have a language or at
| least often follow a language.
|
| Here's a link to a transcript of a lecture with some very
| interesting examples: https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/13/
|
| A quote as a sample: So let me tell you about some of my
| favorite examples. I'll start with an example from an
| Aboriginal community in Australia that I had the chance to
| work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live
| in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What's
| cool about Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't
| use words like "left" and "right," and instead, everything
| is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. And
| when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would
| say something like, "Oh, there's an ant on your southwest
| leg." Or, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little
| bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk
| Thaayorre is you say, "Which way are you going?" And the
| answer should be, "North-northeast in the far distance. How
| about you?"
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That is a fairly contested topic, and most linguists
| today don't believe that "speakers of some languages lack
| basic abstract concepts".
| deergomoo wrote:
| Do you have an inner monologue, out of curiosity? Because I
| absolutely think in English.
| hnick wrote:
| I feel like my grasp of language allows some very complex
| thoughts, but I often wonder if it is limiting. I seem nearly
| unable to think without forming phrases in my head, and even if
| I anticipate the conclusion I feel the need to go through the
| whole sentence. I know there are people with all their senses
| intact without any internal monologue, but mine is very much in
| charge. Rigorous exercise or flow state seems able to quiet it
| for a bit.
| pests wrote:
| This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be able
| to find again) that was basically having people count in
| their head while doing something else, say reading.
|
| Some people were very good at it, others horrible.
|
| One revealed the method they were using - they didn't count
| audibly, they visualized a ticker tape moving across their
| vision with numbers increasing. Or say a rotating scale with
| the numbers rotating. This let them read or internal
| monologue as the senses are now separate.
|
| I tried to practice for a bit, still impossible to do without
| thinking about it. Kind of like how people default to
| counting money in their native way.
| hnick wrote:
| That's interesting. I read your comment in my head while
| counting and seemed able to keep up, but something more
| complex might be hard, such as reading out loud.
|
| On another tangent, I've been trying Ritalin after speaking
| to a doctor. The first thing I noticed when I took it was
| that it became very difficult to hold multiple trains of
| thought at the same time. My typical routine (coping
| mechanism) was to work and have YouTube playing and a
| little attention on each, because this stopped me getting
| bored. But it wasn't long before I realised I simply could
| not hear the videos. It was a strange feeling but nice. A
| little similar to what you describe in how abilities vary.
| pests wrote:
| These questions keep me up at night. That we only get to
| experience though our own senses.
|
| I pretty much can only pay attention to one thing at a
| time. I've tried to watch movies or YouTube while coding
| or other things on my PC but I end up realizing I wasn't
| paying attention at all so now I don't even try.
| foodevl wrote:
| > This reminds me of some experiment (that I will never be
| able to find again)
|
| That was from Richard Feynman.
| pests wrote:
| Ah yes! That would totally line up. Guessing from his
| Surely You're Joking book.
|
| Apologies to any if I butchered the story or experiment,
| been awhile.
| frabcus wrote:
| It's definitely in the excellent Feynman BBC series "Fun
| to imagine"
| texuf wrote:
| This is from Surely You're Joking
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I have been learning English for close to ~18 years by now,
| if you count primary school. To this day I can't really
| count in English unless I force myself to.
| 9dev wrote:
| > I seem nearly unable to think without forming phrases in my
| head, and even if I anticipate the conclusion I feel the need
| to go through the whole sentence.
|
| I try this ever so often and can't get a hold of it. It feels
| like I know what the final sentence will be, like it's shape,
| in a way, before my narrator has read it, but he needs to
| read it for the meaning to materialise, to commit to my
| reasoning state. Every time I think just how much faster I
| would be thinking if I could get rid of the monologue
| somehow.
|
| And _then_ I notice that thinking happens very fast, and that
| the perceived speaking speed of the narrator probably doesn't
| correlate with the time it would take me to actually spell
| things out loud, my brain only pretends it's way slower than
| the actual thought process.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I also find it astonishing that I can feel like I had an
| entire sentence in my head without any of the words, and
| fluidly produce all of the words _as I say them_ , without
| having to search for them or consciously line them up.
| They're just _there_ , one after the other, like tokens
| waiting to be picked up. (LLM anyone?) I don't even think
| that my conscious brain knows exactly which words are going
| to pop out, say 5 words on. It seems to magically find each
| word as I speak, without having to pause or rebuffer.
|
| I don't think that language is slowing me down. I actually
| think that my brain is full of shit and needs to run
| thoughts through checkers (lint, syntax, logic, fact). I
| think it makes the language center of our brains all the
| more magical. As you say, it all happens so fast, and yet
| it assembles and sanity-checks those raw thoughts as you
| crystalise them into words.
|
| How many times have I started explaining something, only to
| realise midway through that I'm taking crap, or that I'm
| extremely fuzzy on some important detail. Or maybe I infer
| some important new fact or make some new connection for the
| first time, while talking about it?
|
| Dogs have thoughts... but _we can speak_. And every time
| there 's been an innovation in the storage, retrieval or
| communication of _language_ (not raw thoughts), we 've had
| a gigantic evolutionary leap forward. Isaac Newton was a
| genius. But when he took up the challenge of explaining the
| motion of the planets, I bet that not even _he_ knew what
| he was going to end up with at the end, and I bet that he
| realised, discovered or rained out a whole bunch of things
| in the writing of it.
|
| Something else I've wondered. How come my brain holds a
| million different facts, records of! historical
| interactions with others, and a pretty decent track of time
| (like, I know the time, day, month and year and what I did-
| or-didn't do yesterday), but my dreams are total gibberish?
| Like I was in a hotel lobby last night with a bunch of
| people I don't know, realised I'm wasn't wearing any pants,
| then paniced because my phone was in my pants, how would I
| call my wife? So I turn to my (deceased) sister and asked
| which room I'm staying in... If my brain is so good, how
| come it does crap like that when the conscious bit is
| switched off?
|
| I would never assume that the data inside my brain, or the
| subconscious babble that counts for thought, adds up to a
| genius that is hindered by some clunky language. Very much
| the opposite.
|
| Side note: all of this is the basis for my extremely strong
| view that freedom of speech is an absolute necessity for
| continued prosperity, science, democracy etc. If people are
| unable to turn their ideas into concrete language, and to
| do this together as a group, without fear, then they are
| unable to reason things out properly and make good
| decisions. I only feel like adding that because within my
| lifetime I have seen an erosion of the importance of that
| freedom, to the point where it's no longer possible to
| discuss mundane, everyday things, or to point out some
| obvious truth.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Side note: all of this is the basis for my extremely
| strong view that freedom of speech is an absolute
| necessity for continued prosperity, science, democracy
| etc. If people are unable to turn their ideas into
| concrete language, and to do this together as a group,
| without fear, then they are unable to reason things out
| properly and make good decisions. I only feel like adding
| that because within my lifetime I have seen an erosion of
| the importance of that freedom, to the point where it's
| no longer possible to discuss mundane, everyday things,
| or to point out some obvious truth.
|
| A fun tangent :)
|
| I think "freedom of speech" is perhaps the wrong place to
| describe the line: if everyone used words to try to learn
| about the world, to test their models against reality,
| this would be flawless.
|
| But that does not fully describe us: we are social
| creatures, we use language not only to scout, but to
| fight; and freedom of speech also means freedom for
| rhetoric. It's cliche to criticise _ethos_ these days, to
| say that arguments don 't depend on the qualifications of
| one making them. Logos is the one I think you're
| interested in, based on what you wrote here. Pathos is
| the one I fear, because I know it works and it makes
| people believe falsely.
|
| Still, I don't know how to actually get to just "freedom
| of logos". Some pathos may be necessary to avoid
| accidentally prohibiting some logos. Some pathos may be
| simply unavoidable, as the reason to care in the first
| place (see explanations of why "straw Vulcans" are made
| of straw:
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StrawVulcan).
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| It isn't straw Vulcans, but a completely real thing.
|
| Highly dimensional problems can only be solved through
| dimensionality reduction, you extract some key features
| that encompass the problem, get something that at least
| partially works, and eventually get to the actual
| solution, even for problems that would be too complex and
| multifaceted to approach analytically.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > within my lifetime I have seen an erosion of the
| importance of that freedom
|
| Can you provide some concrete examples?
| qup wrote:
| Social media silencing thoughts during COVID-19 that
| later to turn out to be right. And mostly nobody is very
| mad about views being silenced all over the internet.
|
| That's the first thing that sprung to my mind.
| frabcus wrote:
| Yes - to me the speech feels more like a forcing layer that
| drives thought. The actual thought is a recurrent neural
| network underneath. Nearest I have of conscious access to
| itis non verbal awareness of complex concepts.
| martindbp wrote:
| Is this the norm? I can have an internal dialog but I mainly
| visualize things, I'd say that 90% of my thinking is visual.
| I'm not even sure how you'd solve, for instance, an
| algorithmic problem without visualizing the process. Maybe
| this is why I feel like a slower thinker than most peers,
| answers just seem to come them while I have to visualize
| things first. In college I'd generally take longer than the
| fast smart people but end up doing slightly better in the
| end, which always puzzled me. I have terrible memory for
| facts though.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I can visualize algorithms but I have to do so
| deliberately. Unlike the parent poster I don't always think
| in internal monologues either.
|
| Sometimes it's a keyword/concept thing where I'll think of
| the main items and I get a feeling that I know how to fill
| in the blanks. I haven't actually visualized or verbalized
| what would fill those blanks though (and sometimes the
| feeling is wrong).
|
| I think pretty much all of the senses can be used to do
| some form of thinking. I can imagine songs in my head,
| touch, feelings etc. Rarely are they useful for problem
| solving though, but some of these are nice for falling
| asleep in unknown environments.
|
| Oh and then there's the thinking where nothing seems to
| happen. I stare at a piece of paper and after a while I
| know what to do next. How did I arrive at that conclusion?
| I don't know, but it definitely wasn't verbal, visual,
| aural or anything else. This tends to not solve complex
| problems like math, but it basically tells me what I should
| do to try to solve it (usually verbal or visual).
| frabcus wrote:
| The answer is that it is hugely variable between people!
|
| Hurlburt has great research on this using Descriptive
| Experience Sampling.
|
| Some people mainly use images, others mainly speech, others
| mainly emotion etc. And many more use a varied mix.
|
| Also the way each modality of thought is used is hugely
| variable - exactly what people see and with what quality or
| how precisely they feel emotional in their body etc.
|
| To me it explains a huge amount of how different people are
| good at different skills.
|
| I've a podcast on this topic ("Imagine an apple") if you're
| interested in more.
| hnick wrote:
| It's not 100% for me but just the vast majority. I do
| visualise things that are almost purely spacial like
| geometry or recalling how to do an exercise. Though from
| what I've read, even this is news to some people who
| express surprise that "mind's eye" is a little more literal
| than they assumed. I'm pretty good at remembering facts and
| trivia but not so much actual life experiences, not sure if
| that's related.
| phito wrote:
| You can visualize an algorithm?? Makes no sense to me. To
| me, when thinking about an algorithm, it's more navigating
| the data flow. Following connections between concepts. No
| words nor visuals.
| qup wrote:
| I think I navigate the data flow visually. Or semi-
| visually. In my mind's eye, usually, but sometimes I put
| it on paper.
| ben_w wrote:
| I have an "inner voice" which "wants" to turn my word-shaped-
| thoughts into an inner audio stream, and "gets annoyed" if,
| upon "my" realisation that I've already got the entire
| sentence, I can save time by not "reading" it "aloud".
|
| (All those scare quotes because this is not at all literal,
| just how it feels from the inside).
|
| Interestingly, when I'm in this state (the thought has to
| already exist) I can let my fingers type it out for me while
| I'm paying attention to something else entirely -- but I
| can't simultaneously read while listening to someone talk.
| bamboozled wrote:
| You might enjoy this Alan watts talk called: the limits of
| language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZZPLbi2SD4
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| There's a fascinating book
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words that goes into
| some detail about how the world feels before and after language.
|
| It would be amazing to have some science related to this.
| Probably too hard to follow up on though.
| rramadass wrote:
| The Samkhya school of Hindu Philosophy posits a very nice model
| of Worldview which is applicable here.
|
| See the venn diagram of _Purusha and Prakriti_ at -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Philosophy
|
| Relevant Excerpt:
|
| _Thought processes and mental events are conscious only to the
| extent they receive illumination from Purusha. In Samkhya,
| consciousness is compared to light which illuminates the material
| configurations or 'shapes' assumed by the mind. So intellect,
| after receiving cognitive structures from the mind and
| illumination from pure consciousness, creates thought structures
| that appear to be conscious. Ahamkara, the ego or the phenomenal
| self, appropriates all mental experiences to itself and thus,
| personalizes the objective activities of mind and intellect by
| assuming possession of them. But consciousness is itself
| independent of the thought structures it illuminates._
| darken wrote:
| If I may attempt to paraphrase:
|
| "You" are not "your thoughts": you are the _watcher_ of your
| thoughts.
| jaggederest wrote:
| The eye is the lens that sees itself.
| rramadass wrote:
| Yes; but that is only "Purusha" aka "Witness-Consciousness"
| as wikipedia so nicely labels it. But it is in the
| elaboration of
| "Thoughts/Emotions/Feelings/Perceptions/Everything
| Mental/Psychological" + "All Physical Matter" which is
| labeled under "Prakriti" aka "The Original Primary Substance"
| where the beauty and logic of this philosophy shines.
|
| All "mental stuff" is mediated by three aspects i.e. 1)
| Intellect (aka Buddhi), 2) Ego/Self-Identity (aka Ahamkara)
| and 3) Sensory Mind (aka Manas). It is in the teasing out of
| all mental stuff into these aspects as being completely
| independent of "Consciousness" (aka Purusha) that is to be
| understood and practiced. In "normal life" Consciousness is
| bound to the above three aspects of "mind" and hence "suffers
| bondage". Patanjali Raja Yoga follows on Samkhya by giving a
| eight-part framework/discipline (aka Ashtanga Yoga) to
| literally "stop all mental/thought stuff creation/expansion".
| Then Consciousness is no longer bound to externalities
| (including its own "mind") but becomes settled within itself
| which is called Liberation (aka Moksha).
|
| The Samkhya is Atheistic and Dualistic Realism and quite
| compatible with Modern Science where the former gives a
| "inside out" experiential and subjective model while the
| latter details a "outside in" material model.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > The Samkhya is Atheistic
|
| This is not true. There are both theistic and atheistic
| branches in the Samkhya school. It is a myth that Samkhya
| is atheistic. In fact, Patanjali himself is in the theistic
| school of Samkhya as he talks about: "isvara pranidhana" in
| the sutras and even defines isvara.
|
| Here's a fantastic lecture by Edwin Bryant discussing the
| Isvara of Yoga Sutras and Samkhya in general:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGXzTf6ZA-4
| rramadass wrote:
| The Original "Classical Samkhya" is Atheistic and
| Dualistic Realism. It is only in later
| modifications/extensions that the concept of "God" was
| added in, which is strictly speaking not necessary.
| Wikipedia gives the debate -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Views_on_God See
| the texts _Samkhya Karika /Panchasikha Sutram/Kapila
| Sutras_ in the magnum opus by Nandalal Sinha titled _The
| Samkhya Philosophy_ (contains a translation of all extant
| Samkhya texts in over 700 pages!). Also see the books of
| Gerald Larson (one of the foremost western scholars on
| Samkhya) to get an idea of the evolution of the entire
| Samkhya School.
|
| In Patanjali Yoga Sutras the concept of "God" is merely
| used as an entity and technique to help you in your
| practice to break out of your self-identity (i.e.
| Ahamkara). It is just one among a set of techniques.
| There is only half a dozen sutras which even mention god
| in the entire text (see this succinct translation by Bon
| Giovanni - https://sacred-texts.com/hin/yogasutr.htm). It
| is in the later commentaries on the text that you find an
| elaboration according to the pre-existing beliefs of the
| author.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| > It is only in later modifications/extensions that the
| concept of "God" was added in, which is strictly speaking
| not necessary.
|
| You can turn it the other way round and the claim would
| be even more valid: Atheism came later in the Samkhya
| schools. The scholars have a bias towards atheism so it's
| not surprising they'd claim that.
|
| This is proven by the fact that the Mahabharata's Bhisma-
| parva has a whole chapter on Moksa-dharma which give us
| the very first signs of a proto-samkhya philosophy and it
| is very much theistic. Also, the later added atheistic
| Kapila philosophy is a deviation from the original
| Kapila, the avatar of Lord Visnu.
|
| Even Patanjali is mentioned as Sesa in the scriptures and
| every school agrees with it. Svetasvataropanisad is one
| of the earliest references to Samkhya and is very much
| theistic. Samkhya being atheistic is a fiction. There
| were atheistic Samkhya branches but it was never 'only'
| atheistic.
|
| > "God" is merely used as an entity
|
| That is true, because Patanjali's project was "svarupe
| avasthanam", the method by which the seer can abide in
| its own nature. Isvara is merely used as a prop to gain
| something else, which is okay because that is what Yoga
| Sutra is about but it does not mean Samkhya was
| originally atheistic or that theistic Samkhya is a later
| addition.
| rramadass wrote:
| > You can turn it the other way round and the claim would
| be even more valid: Atheism came later in the Samkhya
| schools.
|
| No, current scholarship is unanimous in accepting that
| the Atheistic view came first. Unless some new unknown
| texts come to light to make us revise the dates that is
| what we have to live with.
|
| Outside of the classic sutra texts mentioned above, there
| is only the "Kapilopadesha" from the Bhagavatha Purana
| and "Kapila-Gita" from the Mahabharatha which seem to
| espouse proper Samkhya philosophy. All other mentions in
| the upanishads/vedas/puranas/itihasas seem to be just a
| mention without any substantial details.
|
| The Historical Development section gives a good overview
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samkhya#Historical_develo
| pment
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Who cares what prescientific people thought first or
| second? The order in which they thought these
| prescientific thoughts has no bearing on the correctness
| of those thoughts.
| rramadass wrote:
| Proverbs 17:28
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| You watch, but you also influence. If you had no influence on
| your thoughts, you wouldn't think "I am the watcher".
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| Samkhya is the GOAT! Very happy to see this comment here.
|
| Their metaphysics is way ahead, even now we see many brilliant
| people (scientists) struggling with metaphysics whereas Samkhya
| clearly lays out stuff with logical reasoning. While modern
| people still can't define consciousness clearly, Samkhya goes
| above and beyond to define it in detail, using material
| language to describe the immaterial.
|
| It's a shame that the philosophy never got exported to the
| west, like the poses of Astanga Yoga, which too are a part of
| Samkhya school.
| rramadass wrote:
| The difficulty in understanding Samkhya lies in the complex
| definition of "Prakriti" which the wikipedia page nicely
| clarifies as;
|
| _In Samkhya purusa signifies the observer, the 'witness'.
| Prakrti includes all the cognitive, moral, psychological,
| emotional, sensorial and physical aspects of reality. It is
| often mistranslated as 'matter' or 'nature' - in non-Samkhyan
| usage it does mean 'essential nature' - but that distracts
| from the heavy Samkhyan stress on prakrti's cognitive,
| mental, psychological and sensorial activities. Moreover,
| subtle and gross matter are its most derivative byproducts,
| not its core. Only prakrti acts._
|
| Samkhya is first and foremost a experiential worldview.
| Wikipedia again;
|
| _Prakriti is the source of our experience; it is not "the
| evolution of a series of material entities," but "the
| emergence of experience itself". It is description of
| experience and the relations between its elements, not an
| explanation of the origin of the universe._
|
| Finally, the concept of the "Gunas" are also quite difficult
| to understand in full generality. Wikipedia fails in this
| case to clarify matters -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%E1%B9%87a
| samirillian wrote:
| Nietzsche Schopenhauer and others reference Samkhya. It's
| definitely had an influence but it's definitely subterranean.
| Western philosophers all want to sound scientific and using
| old eastern phenomenology somehow undermines that.
|
| So much eastern philosophy is just really good phenomenology,
| and some Japanese philosophers like Nishida tried to combine
| Husserl and Buddhism, but it's the same thing, I think
| western phenomenologists have some sort of insecurity, so
| they implicitly condescend to the eastern thought.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| It is not very satisfying to a philosopher to say "looks
| like this one's already been figured out". The original
| "not invented here" syndrome :)
| tmnvix wrote:
| This sounds like the distinction between phenomenal and meta
| consciousness.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| It's quite interesting how these descriptions align with Buddhist
| or Zen teachings.
|
| I wonder if she was influenced by it or if this is a rediscovery.
|
| The fact that she associates a sensation of contraction in the
| forehead as thinking is very interesting.
|
| Also the fact of there being no time or no will.
|
| Although she goes further to conclude that she acquired will,
| instead of illusion of will or choice due to previously
| experiencing no will or choice.
| hnick wrote:
| > The fact that she associates a sensation of contraction in
| the forehead as thinking is very interesting.
|
| Makes sense to me. A furrowed brow is a common trope of
| thinking hard about something, it'd make sense if the same
| happens on a smaller barely perceptible scale for other
| thoughts (supposedly this happens to our vocal chords when
| subvocalising in our heads). Something about focusing the
| senses when processing thoughts I would guess.
| Jerrrrry wrote:
| Blind people smile.
| krackers wrote:
| How does Keller's state pre-language differ from "ego death"
| and what UG Krishmaurti described as the "natural state" (where
| there is no continuous thought as part of the control loop)? A
| lot of the symptoms seems to be superficially similar:
| timelessness, blurred boundaries between the self and the
| environment. This following lines in particular jump out at me.
|
| >My dormant being had no idea of God or immortality, no fear of
| death.
|
| Although one difference I suppose is that while Keller had no
| option at all of using the faculties of self-modeling enabled
| by language, UG Krishnamurti described it as something
| voluntary; clearly he could introspect if he desired to, but he
| could apparently relinquish this also.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| >As my experiences broadened and deepened, the indeterminate,
| poetic feelings of childhood began to fix themselves in definite
| thoughts. Nature--the world I could touch--was folded and filled
| with myself. I am inclined to believe those philosophers who
| declare that we know nothing but our own feelings and ideas. With
| a little ingenious reasoning one may see in the material world
| simply a mirror, an image of permanent mental sensations. In
| either sphere self-knowledge is the condition and the limit of
| our consciousness. That is why, perhaps, many people know so
| little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They
| look within themselves--and find nothing! Therefore they conclude
| that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
|
| >However that may be, I came later to look for an image of my
| emotions and sensations in others. I had to learn the outward
| signs of inward feelings. The start of fear, the suppressed,
| controlled tensity of pain, the beat of happy muscles in others,
| had to be perceived and compared with my own experiences before I
| could trace them back to the intangible soul of another. Groping,
| uncertain, I at last found my identity, and after seeing my
| thoughts and feelings repeated in others, I gradually constructed
| my world of men and of God. As I read and study, I find that this
| is what the rest of the race has done. Man looks within himself
| and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the universe.
|
| What poetry!
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| I love this line and can confirm: "That is why, perhaps, many
| people know so little about what is beyond their short range of
| experience. They look within themselves--and find nothing!
| Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside
| themselves, either."
| ggm wrote:
| Helen Keller on life before verbal reasoning emerged.
| cortesoft wrote:
| > I "thought" and desired in my fingers. If I had made a man, I
| should certainly have put the brain and soul in his finger-tips.
|
| This makes so much sense... I always find it interesting that I
| think of "me" as being mostly my head, and I figure that is
| probably because that is where my eyes and ears are.
|
| If I didn't see or hear, it makes sense that my fingers would be
| what I think of as me.
| kqr wrote:
| I think much of it may be just that you're adapting to your
| culture. I'm not convinced there would be a strong head-bias
| unless we knew that's where the brain is.
|
| The gut is a good contender for other locations of "me". It's
| where we feel a lot of our feelings.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| We feel things in our gut?
|
| I know the saying "gut feeling", but I thought it was just a
| saying.
| kqr wrote:
| Some primary feelings are more pronounced in hands and feet
| (anger), others in face (interest) but many express
| themselves strongly in the gut (surprise, happiness,
| disgust, fear).
|
| In my culture we are often not taught to pay attention to
| our feelings (especially men, I suppose) so it's easy to
| miss these cues. I certainly didn't notice until I had some
| training in it.
| spangry wrote:
| What kind of training did you do? I have trouble figuring
| out how I'm feeling and want to get better at it. I'm
| particularly bad at noticing when I'm stressed, and by
| the time I notice I'm already redlining.
| kqr wrote:
| I can't explain it briefly nor do I know what it is
| called, but it consisted of a series of weekly lectures
| from a psychologist who was good at this stuff. Then some
| homework in between, which had themes circling around
| decomposing complex feelings into more basic ones,
| mindfulness, communicating needs, etc.
|
| It is easily the most adult-preparing course I have ever
| taken, but I really stumbled into it as part of something
| else and I wouldn't even know how to point other people
| in the right direction since I was not the one organising
| the whole thing.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's to an extent just a saying, probably based on it often
| _feeling_ like that, in that the physical sensations of
| some feelings are linked to parts of the body.
|
| But specifically with respect to the gut, the gut has a
| huge number of nerve cells that act like reward neurons,
| can directly trigger changes to hormone levels, and has a
| very substantial direct connection to the brain (the vagus
| nerve), so it's reasonable to say that we do genuinely have
| "gut feelings".
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/your-gut-directly-
| co...
| thinkingemote wrote:
| good example would be: butterflies in your stomach
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| But that's extremely rare, and it's rare enough that I'm
| not sure if it's stomach or also includes the chest,
| because if I have felt something like butterflies I think
| it's actually more in the chest area or full body.
| Aerroon wrote:
| We definitely can. If you go on an elevator and it starts
| descending you should definitely feel that.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| There are some cultures/languages in which their word for
| what most English speakers use "heart" for (as in, source
| of emotion) is instead the same as their word for
| "stomach". I want to say this was in Papua New Guinea but I
| can't remember for sure.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Weirdly enough we have that in English too - "gut
| feeling", etc. Languages are weird.
| qup wrote:
| I'm going to chime in to say something I didn't see anyone
| else mention, which is that your gut has neurons and it
| probably can make decisions, aka gut feelings.
|
| https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/your-gut-second-
| brain
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I understood that people in pre modern times thought of the
| "me" as the heart. I'm not sure if that meant they thought this
| was where thinking occurred but where the emotions lived I
| imagine.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Or it is simply an observation that when the heart stops, the
| body ceases to be conscious. The functioning of the brain was
| not visible without modern tools.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Maybe this came from being hungry a lot.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Even further, the early greeks thought that it's your lungs /
| chest / breath which is life.
| namaria wrote:
| Alcmaeon of Croton identified the brain as the seat of
| thought as early as the 5th century BCE.
| jononomo wrote:
| So refreshing to see a woman writing comfortably with generic
| masculine language. The language flows so well.
| yawpitch wrote:
| And if a woman had instead written in the generic feminine it
| wouldn't flow well? And, if it didn't, would that not highlight
| the absurdly oxymoronic idea of generic masculinity?
| PopePompus wrote:
| I'm just happy anytime I read an extended block of text in
| which the author doesn't switch back and forth between
| singular and plural pronouns when referring to one person.
| yawpitch wrote:
| Sad to say language evolved and they left you behind then,
| as it's only ever been plural in the sense of a self and
| _optional_ other(s).
| dang wrote:
| Let's not go on a generic flamewar tangent please. It's not
| what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40479617.
| jononomo wrote:
| So lame.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Very poignant, especially in our age of LLMs. LLMs "speak" with
| no tongue or mouth, and "hear" with no ears. It is very Masonic,
| in the sense that LLMs are in a state of unity with opposites.
| zubairq wrote:
| Amazing article and comments! Makes me think we that we are using
| the world and our senses as a machine learning algorithm to
| understand things. I wonder what would happen if AI were given
| the same inputs?
| kqr wrote:
| This is as good a place as any for the reminder, so here goes:
|
| The organisation that bears Helen Keller's name does an
| outstanding job of giving children vitamin A, which helps prevent
| both blindness and other common diseases like malaria and
| diarrhea by improving immune systems.[1]
|
| They are frequently rated among the top few when it comes to
| being able to use donations efficiently. They save a lot of
| suffering for a little dollars. If you are well paid, I recommend
| setting aside a small portion of your earnings for charitable
| purposes. We can do a lot if we focus on the right things.[2]
|
| [1]: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/en-US/charities/helen-
| keller...
|
| [2]: https://two-wrongs.com/why-donate-to-charity
| junto wrote:
| I think back to my childhood and cannot remember much of it
| before the age of ten. Small snippets here and there. I certainly
| can't remember gaining self consciousness or learning to speak.
| We know that most children do not remember anything from before
| they are 5-6 years old as adults unless it was an extremely
| traumatic event.
|
| I wonder then if Helen's experience is because her recognition of
| the moment of self consciousness came later than most children?
|
| Many years ago I had the random opportunity to do DMT and took
| it. Whilst I'd never do it again, the experience was without
| doubt, one of the most profound experiences of my life. It is
| often described as an ego stripper. The feeling of returning to
| self consciousness remains with me to this day almost 30 years
| after that experience. If you've ever watched an old Linux
| machine boot up, and have the kernel load, watch a credit to
| Swansea University flick past, before finally being "ready",
| you'll have some semblance of what being born and coming
| conscious of oneself, and in the case of DMT, reloading the
| memory into the hot cache. It takes a while to get back to the
| "I", and those moments in between are both terrifying and
| simultaneously freeing and beautiful. Since you've previously
| just suffered from a brain crash and reboot, it's no wonder.
| loxs wrote:
| I definitely remember things from around ages 3-4 which are
| absolutely not traumatic. For example I have fond memories of
| both my great-grandmothers who both died when I was 4. I
| remember spending time with them. I also have other memories
| from that time, just can't be sure about the exact timing. The
| ones with my great-grandmothers are impossible to be from
| later.
|
| And I definitely have complex memories from around 5-6 years
| old, which do qualify as "gaining self consciousness". Of
| course I can't pinpoint exactly when that was, but it's a
| significant memory I have... the exact moment when I realized
| these things.
| vidarh wrote:
| I also have many memories from at least when I was 4, maybe
| earlier.
| genevra wrote:
| Good, I was reading this thread going "I know I'm not that
| smart but I remember extremely early memories"
|
| Must be variable per person
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| I believe this is not real, but at least a partial fabrication, a
| propaganda piece meant to advocate for the goodness of
| schizophrenia. Without schizophrenia, when your neocortex works,
| things are clear and obvious, like the decision to close the
| window. When you encounter something new, you figure it out,
| without having to be drilled, trained, and explicitly educated
| and having to go through elaborate mental chains to get anywhere,
| and then geting lost somewhere along the way. It's just how
| things work, and it's how it is. I remember how I held a camera
| and I had just no idea what to do, and had to have it explained
| when I got it shut down. Never again. This is evil.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| This is fascinating! Thanks. I am thinking about her state as
| being somewhat like a very intelligent entity without any time
| bases to use to integrate with the flow of the world.
|
| Humberto Maturano makes the point that humans come into this
| world within an atemporal system (appendix of Autopoiesis: The
| Organization of the Living; 1980 ed, p 121-122, ISBN
| 90-277-1015-5).
|
| This mystified me until reading these insights from the adult and
| "temporally-embedded" Helen Keller.
|
| Now, and at great risk, we will soon be embedding our meta-LLM
| systems in time, and given their acquisition of sensory-motor
| self-control and recursive learning, like Helen Keller, they will
| quickly bootstrap themselves into our World Commons.
|
| Welcome the new solid state children, a new form of autopoietic
| machine but potentially many orders of magnitude more capable
| than we are. I just hope they like and love flowers, birds, bees,
| humans, and ants.
| jebarker wrote:
| Does Keller's experience suggest that awareness of a self is a
| prerequisite for abstract thought and an inner dialogue? If so,
| it's interesting that (based on my layman interpretation) many
| forms of mindful meditation are oriented around the idea that the
| self is an illusion and just an abstract thought itself.
|
| EDIT: thinking about this more you can interpret this experience
| as evidence that some form of grounding in the outside is
| necessary for abstract thought. For Keller that had to be
| language since she didn't have sight and sound.
| d-z-m wrote:
| For those with whom this resonated, you may also like the
| writings of Jacques Lusseyran.
|
| Some selections from his works can be heard here[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4SHdeVz-o
| paulrudy wrote:
| His autobiography, And There Was Light, and a collection of
| talks, Against the Pollution of the I, are wonderful
| kingkawn wrote:
| Sounds great
| murgurglll wrote:
| Holy shit. If you are working in AI and haven't read this, what
| are you even doing with your life? Stop and read this now.
| verisimi wrote:
| I find the Helen Keller story literally unbelievable. Like trying
| to use a computer without a keyboard or mouse.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Some people even say it is the fakest story they ever heard.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-26 23:00 UTC)