Well yeah, that would be our “human mindscape”
Back to the non- conversation
If higher dimensions exist, they aren’t what you think | Exploring Worlds Beyond Our Own
I don’t even remember what I was going to say about this, except perhaps the obvious, this is what being lost within ones own mindscape looks like.
Actually I should amend mine too, for more clarity…तत्त्वमसि (my turn to say ouch).
Yes, repeating it was a mistake.
Then the next video that came up for me was a Anil Seth talk, like the universe was telling me something, and since the timing seems right, it captured my interest and figured I ought to give him another try.
Is Reality a Controlled Hallucination? - with Anil Seth
(why the heck YouTube dates no longer appear beats me, very rude)
So I started listening, but right out the gate he said something that perfectly illustrate why his talks make me uncomfortable, bona fide expert though he may be.
4:50 - Anil Seth
… your perception changed, but you did not perceive the change.
That’s what change blindness reveals, it reveals that change is not just something that happens. To perception change is part of perception, we perceive change in the same sort of way that we perceive color shape smell . . .
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That’s convoluted and way over complicated. What’s wrong with the simple recognition that we perceive change, because change happens! We are perceiving creatures. We incorporate change because life moves on and we absorb, grow, adapt.
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5:14 - Anil Seth
The experience of being a self, of being any self, in fact it applies even more so and iI call this self-change blindness in the book
our brains and our minds are geared by evolutionary design to perceive ourselves as changing less than we actually do because we perceive ourselves in order to control ourselves in order to stay alive. The experience of being me or being you is a kind of controlled hallucination.
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The entire framing doesn’t make sense.
My experience is a product of my unique body in action with it’s unique life.
This Change Blindness, can be explained as the result of “me” being the product of my body, and that body interacting with its environment, which is relentlessly driven forward by time and accumulating change.
As for the waking up “mystery” it’s the complex biological system that is consciousness-producing (senses, nerves, processing, communication, etc) coming on line.
This depending on this & that coming on line first. Cascading signaling coming on time and tuning up the system. Sometimes slowly, sometimes in a heart beat, depending on outside stimulation.
Why make it all so mysterious and other worldly and the domain of the absolute tiniest biology in action?
It’s an emergent life that took billions of years to fine tune itself into this particular form. Our creature consciousness, is simply the inside reflection of our individual bodies and brains in action.
(6.01) Dr. Mark Solms demystifies Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” of Consciousness.
(6.02) The Other Side of Mark Solms PhD, farmer, vintner, humanitarian.
(6.03) Students’ Resource: A representative cross-section of Dr. Mark Solms’ scientific publications.
Understanding the point would get us past it.
I think you may have misunderstood Seth. It was a simple recognition that we do NOT perceive change because we are not able to focus on more than one thing at the time (remember the Gorilla in the Basketball clip?) .
Incorporating slow change is a limitation of the brain because it poses no immediate existential threat.
I still feel that I am capable of doing things when I was 25 until I take out the trash and need 5 minutes to recoup because I am out of breath.
Why make it all so mysterious and otherworldly and the domain of the absolute tiniest biology in action?
It isn’t mysterious. It is a fact that we generate our reality from the inside out as much as from the outside in. The part we create is a “controlled hallucination”.
Mental visualizations are hallucinations based on the recognition of incoming sensory data. When we are focused on something specific, the brain tends to select out only those details that pertain to area of focus.
Selective Attention
Selective attention is the process by which the human brain directs its attention-a finite resource-to a single thing for a time, to the exclusion of external stimuli. When heavily concentrated on untangling a knot, for instance, the brain might engage selective attention and lose the ability to hear background noise-or even noise as distinct as one’s name.
Selective attention is the mechanism responsible for allowing you to hear a teacher’s lecture over the rustling of paper and coughing of peers, or that allows you to hear the cry of your child over the noise of the clinking of dishes and rush of running water.
If that were actually really true we’d all be dead.
Too much has been made out of the Gorilla study.
Also because you are still, in very many key respects, same biological being you were twenty five years ago.
You like how that sounds. To me it’s a silly reduction that loses sight of the key points.
We generate our reality by interacting with reality we are embedded within. Our consciousness is simply the reflect of the inside of our body, brain in action. ( see Mark Solms and colleagues for a more expert discussion of the details)
When our body/brain dies, our consciousness ceases.
Which is why our eyes are always in motion and pro-active attentiveness is a prerequisite for surviving a complex environment where one needs to eat, while not being eaten.
Its also why our brains are incredibly complex and in actually doing quite a bit of multi-tasking that for some reason, the talking heads have a hard time acknowledging as multi-tasking.
And don’t jump on me with more gorilla examples. Can you walk and eat and listen to a story and not walk off a cliff, or into a moving car, why don’t you want acknowledge that as multitasking? Think of all the bodily systems that your brain has to coordinate every instant of your life, while processing tons of changing outside information. Why can’t they acknowledge that as a mighty impressive multitasking operation?
It lives hand and hand with “selective attention” of our highest mental faculty - so please don’t tell me I’m denying “selective attention” happens - it is a very real thing - but again that ugly Abrahamic Egocentric Tunnel Vision tends to miss a lot of the more subtle details for the big shiny thing.
I’m not a brain scientist, but seems to me, it’s a no brainer that our brains actually operate with various levels of processing going on, from cascades, to cross-referencing, etc. - so okay the highest level of consciousness requires a tight focus. But to jump from that, to making grand overarching claims about the entire brain/body organism, is the kind of Abrahamic over reach scientists (and pundits of science) are famous for - and that time and evidence has a way bringing back down to Earth.
CC, you must step back and consider what the brain is and what its limitations are.
The brain relies completely on secondary data originating from the senses which are located “outside” the brain and can only feed the information to the brain via the neural network.
The body can actually exist without a brain for an indefinite length of time. There are several examples of people in a “vegetative state”, their bodies being kept alive by mechanical and artificial means ( iron lung, mechanical heart, intravenous feeding, etc.
The brain can theoretically exist independent of the body, but in the absence of sensory stimulation, it will start resorting to “uncontrolled hallucinations” and go utterly insane in a very short time. (sensory deprivation results in insanity).
This has nothing to do with jumping to Abrahamic overreach (whatever that means).
This is the current state of science of the brain and consciousness.
Solmes and Seth are not in disagreement. They are looking at the same phenomenon from slightly different but perfectly compatible perspectives.
You should become more familiar Solms’ work.
By now, I’ve defined it enough you ought to have a pretty good idea.
For instance,
Yet not actually defining this “focus” or which level of consciousness you’re talking about.
Heck look at brain scans and see the layered activity going on, that’s what I’m talking about, but you bring up a simplistic over generalization, that we can’t multi-task, period.
Never examining where task management become multi-tasking. Heck “tasks” isn’t even adequately defined.
Why haven’t you been able tp acknowledge that it’s true that our body/brain is in a state of constant multi-tasking, in every sense of the word?
Okay so when we must use our higher levels of consciousness, ability to multi-task gets reduced. (Losing sight of the nuances, it’s another aspect of the Abrahamic way. ;-))
But that discuss will have to wait until you actually address the points I’m making.
You defined it when you cited the Seth lecture where Seth demonstrated the example of “selective attention” that prevented all of us to miss the gradual changes in the room . In addition, I presented a link to an article on the scientific evidence of “selective attention”
Don’t misunderstand the term. It only applies when you are intently focusing on a particular event, which triggers the brain’s filtering ability. It is the maximum use of available brain resources on a specific problem.
One can be “generally aware of their surroundings” at a lower level of more generalized use of available brain resources.
Now we’re stumbling over words. Watching a picture, slowly add or subtract elements, isn’t the only kind of focus you engage in, or are you telling me it is?
What I mean was the various levels of focus happening as you negotiate your day, especially an active one, spent out in complex active environments.
Which actually begins with focusing on your internal milieu and the hand full of bodily functions, we need to deal with.
Consider how our internal milieu influences this “focus” - how you assess that room, will be effected by what’s going on down in your belly, or even more importantly, your cojones. Or?
Ever wonder at how much that reproductive network, especially with all the wonderful bells and whistles our advanced human evolution bestowed up us Homo sapiens, impact how we behave and the things we do?
I don’t hear any no room for those complexities within Seth’s lecture or simplistic analogies that are way too easy to over-simplify, over-generalize and misinterpret - yet I dare say, if you live an introspective life, and have a healthy reproductive system, you will notice how those juices impact your thinking, focus and approach in big & little ways, and on many different levels. Shouldn’t be a surprise, after all human sex isn’t just for making babies - as some will also assert. It’s been modified creating society and culture.
We’re just scratching the surface - and a lot more, less sensational stuff also exists, adding even more unrecognized levels (or should I say influences) to our perceiving, processing, thinking processes.
Oh and Write, that’s only one out of five. 
No, focusing on a specific part of a picture filters out the slow addition and subtraction of unrelated details. The term is “selective attention” and that means selective to the exclusion of unrelated change.
Selective attention is a filtering device that allows one to study a specific phenomenon without being distracted by random .
Because your form of multitasking does not require exclusive attention.
See Post #308.
It explains how and why selective attention is a desired filtering device.
What Is Selective Attention? Psychology Explains How It Works
What Is Selective Attention?
Selective attention is the process by which the human brain directs its attention-a finite resource-to a single thing for a time, to the exclusion of external stimuli. When heavily concentrated on untangling a knot, for instance, the brain might engage selective attention and lose the ability to hear background noise-or even noise as distinct as one’s name. Selective attention is the mechanism responsible for allowing you to hear a teacher’s lecture over the rustling of paper and coughing of peers, or that allows you to hear the cry of your child over the noise of the clinking of dishes and rush of running water.
Selective attention is an involuntary response in your brain that functions as a filter; rather than being incapable of multitasking, selective attention identifies which multitasking elements are most important and diverts its attention to those things.
This filtration system is extremely fluid, and moves in and out of its tasks seamlessly. Your focus might be diverted to the sound of the lawn mower going, for instance, anticipating the clink and clatter of a twig or rock getting caught in the blades, before it moves to the plaintive “meow” of the neighborhood cat getting too close to the mower. Your attention is constantly multitasking and taking in information, and your brain’s selective attention mechanism filters which sound, sights, or tasks are the most important at any given time.
So, our upper most facilities.
Right. I’m not arguing against that.
I’m not saying it’s doesn’t exist, nor that that doesn’t define it, it does.
I guess that is your way of acknowledging what I’m trying to get across?
In a state of multitasking? Would you make a special point of asserting the earth is in a state of multitasking?
We are an entire biome with trillions of events going on every single moment of our lives.
We are talking about a very specific “intellectual” ability of the brain to focus on a problem to the exclusion of all the distractions that might demand our attention.
If you read the article, you will have seen that this is an involuntary ability of the brain and does not require yet another decision of making an effort to shut out distractions that would normally draw our “attention”.
Did you read how a mother can instantly recognize the cry of her baby in a large noisy crowd. That is what’s meant by “selective attention”.
When we focus our attention on a specific task, we shut out distractions. It’s that simple and has nothing to do with the ability for multitasking.
Besides, a lot of multitasking like digestion is not regulated by our brain at all. Our little bacterial friends take care of that all on their own.
Moreover, homeostasis is another autonomous ability of the brain to keep functioning even as the conscious part of the brain may be disabled, such as under anaesthesia.
All of this speaks of the brain as an autonomous operator that has its own regulatory behaviors over and above our “will”.
(sorry rushed, with no time to proof read excuse the inevitable typos)
citizenschallengev4:
I guess that is your way of acknowledging what I’m trying to get across?
In a state of multitasking?
Write4u: Would you make a special point of asserting the earth is in a state of multitasking?
That’s disingenuous and a diversion, or simply silly, Earth is not an evolved complex organism constantly interacting with its environment, Earth is our material foundation and living stage.
Write4u: We are an entire biome with trillions of events going on every single moment of our lives.
I’m disappoint that you still don’t point out that this grand biome is pretty much confined to our body’s various openings to the outside world, ears, nose, mouth, skin, poop hole and fun park, including that amazing digestive system that connects the latter two. That’s an important benchmark to be aware of, if you’re trying to make any real world sense out of this biome.
Write4u: We are talking about a very specific “intellectual” ability of the brain to
focus on a problem to the exclusion of all the distractions that might demand our attention.
“To the exclusion of all other distractions.”
That’s absolutism and actually not what happens in the real world where our attentions are drawn a dozen different directions, all needing assessing.
The brain’s “intellectual ability” - What do you really know about the brain’s intellectual ability? What scientists have learned from studies that focus on this little element and that. Not a trick question, that what I build my understand upon. Still, the history of science has shown us example after example of scientist having been looking at something for decades without noticing some subtle detail, that then leads to an entirely new appreciation for the functioning interconnections. Then it’s off to another element and such.
My Earth Centrist philosophical outlook first looks back on the history of evolutionary brain development. Simple creature live by their autonomic skills, but evolution drove the development of this simple autonomic skill, into all sorts of new senses, then brains, then all sort of different kinds of brains.
One system being built out of substance of the underlying system. There’s a tapestry of connections simply by virtue of how it evolved. I don’t dispute your evidence, but’s your ill-considered over-assumptions that I rail against.
But they are a perfect example of this Abrahamic mindset, that’s basically too full of itself. Like pointed out earlier, science itself is full of people forcing simplistic assumptions upon the state of knowledge, that needed to adjusted time after time in light of new evidence.
Write4u: If you read the article, you will have seen that this is an involuntary ability of the brain and does not require yet another decision of making an effort to shut out distractions that would normally draw our “attention”.
And if you’d seriously read some Solms, … Yes I read the article and in previous years many others, so even have a slight memory of changing assumption and ideas evolving.
Write4u: Did you read how a mother can instantly recognize the cry of her baby in a large noisy crowd. That is what’s meant by “selective attention”.
Did you read any of the comments I wrote about spending time caretaking a couple babies, fifteen days of the night monitor including a few full day times with them. I’ve spent countless hours thinking about these subtle connection that find their way even into my sleeping brain. How rapidly we can distinguish the character of a cry and amount of reaction it deserves. I know what is meant my selective attention and I know enough to know it’s in constant state of sampling one’s environment.
I remember the wonderful story retold at this forum about the 3ish toddler, lost in a crowded lively big picnic event, filtering out her mother’s distant voice, being able to understand, which instructed her to keep walking and to find grandma, then the little girl toddling on in bewilderment, and finally recognizing grandma’s voice and making a beeline for her assigned destination.
So don’t understand what you think I am missing here.
Write4u: When we focus our attention on a specific task, we shut out distractions. It’s that simple and has nothing to do with the ability for multitasking.
“When we shut out distractions. It’s that simple” - perhaps in a lab, or the safely of your enclosed office, but in the real living world, it’s seldom that binary.
Write4u: Besides, a lot of multitasking like digestion is not regulated by our brain at all. Our little bacterial friends take care of that all on their own.
What’s the point of that? Why belittle the complex multilayered tapestry of interconnections that make complex creatures and complex thinking possible?
Write4u: Moreover, homeostasis is another autonomous ability of the brain to keep functioning even as the conscious part of the brain may be disabled, such as under anaesthesia.
“Moreover, homeostasis is another autonomous ability” What you think putting the label of “homeostasis” on it means.
If you look at it from an evolutionary perspective consciousness is the product of homeostasis wanting to be better served. Trying to argue that we should think of the two as isolated from each other is sooo Abrahamic and tunnel visioned {a little joke there}.
Write4u: All of this speaks of the brain as an autonomous operator that has its own regulatory behaviors over and above our “will”.
Okay and your point is?
“Brain as autonomous operator” - not a thought for it’s body, not a thought for it’s environment.
This often happens to me, I’m not even sure what you’re arguing for, beyond defining and isolating. Then you come up quotes like that and it makes me wonder …
I have a life of constant interruptions and demands on my time, big and little, and Maddy - so of course my perception, and writing is impacted by that, and though I need more time, to finished, I’ve run out.
We are just talking past each other.
Read the article I cited. Those people are “learned” psychologists!
I do read these articles, and you’re right we are talking past each other. Okay, so here are my cherry picked quotes, because they draw attention to the complexity of the machine and how we’re just at the beginning of understanding how this mechanism, this tapestry of life, truly operates.
What Is Selective Attention? Psychology Explains How It Works
By Corrina Horne |Updated April 6, 2022
“… Each human brain is made up of millions of neurons and functions, each of them designed to keep what is essentially a million moving parts going at once, while attending to average, everyday tasks, such as doing your job, brushing your teeth, or driving to work.”
“Selective attention is an involuntary response in your brain that functions as a filter; rather than being incapable of multitasking, selective attention identifies which multitasking elements are most important and diverts its attention to those things. This filtration system is extremely fluid, and moves in and out of its tasks seamlessly.”
“Selective attention is (at least) a two-step process, whereby your brain takes in all of the information it sees and hears and sends it to a filtering system, which then identifies which stimuli are most important. The human brain is filled with trillions of synapses and billions of neurons, each of them able to perform multiple tasks. Selective attention is an example of these synapses and neurons performing multiple functions and filtering the information the brain receives.”
“Thus far, selective attention has demonstrated its usefulness across the board, but it is a multifaceted neurological system that has multiple stages of being, and two distinct areas of use.”
“The greatest difference between the functions of selective attention lies in the awareness of your attention; in the first example, your awareness is unconsciously moved back and forth, while in the second, you can choose your focus and react accordingly.”
We are still at the rough outlines point in our understanding. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
And consciousness goes way beyond observation. What about our interactions with others, particularly you who’ve worked at quite a variety of jobs. Don’t you meditate on your own behavior, or the various characters that reside within you, or wonder at the same mistakes you seem to repeat, or how you behave differently in front of different people, heck how even your cloth can tweak your behavior, That’s the sort of stuff I find more fascinating than being wow’ed by optical illusions and myopic conjectures.
I’m still at the observation phase in many ways - it’s when I hear these talking heads going on with such certitude in their own seriousness, that I feel like speaking up. We are such complex creatures, driven by habits that go back eons, formed by the constant interaction with the living environments we must survive.
Like going on about the human biome and how much germ a person actually “is” (or whatever), but the geography of those biome communities, that doesn’t seem to hold any interest. Why? What is it the fantastical notion of ‘90% of us’, it’s just too sexy not to dominate the attention and discussion.
Or claiming over simplifications and generalizations that wind up making it sound like our consciousness is like day and night, conscious and subconscious and that’s it. I don’t know much, but I do know enough that such a perception is naive, there’s more within than we know.
I can bring that back to the Abrahamic Mindset, it’s too easy to fall into simplistic absolutes, always fitting things into that domineering patriarchal fractal pattern - master/subject and such. Along with the need for certitude and obedience.
The real natural world doesn’t have certitude, things are always changing too fast and too much.
The Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.
Recognizing that our very existence is proof positive that this physical material universe and the Earth that created us humans, unfolded down one specific path. Whether we recognize that history or not. (anthropic principle be damned)
Our evolving Human Mindscape has self-tasked itself with understanding that Physical Reality that will always reside on the other side of our synapsis.
