Comments on: Mental Mapping (Part 1)

By: aargh

aargh — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:15:36 +0000

psychic robots are always the answer!

By: halcyon

halcyon — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:15:26 +0000

To aargh’s point, this theory has Heisenberg problems up the wazoo. Obviously, the answer is to employ a psychic robot. Part 2 will be coming soon, so stay tuned.

By: aargh

aargh — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:33:55 +0000

i never said anything about expressing to others. i spoke only of awareness of one’s self.

By: battlegate

battlegate — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:30:57 +0000

I think Aargh’s saying that once you notice some errant interesting thought and label it as being unique to you, the more likely it is that you will think it again- then you wind up integrating that thought into the way you think of yourself.

I don’t think he’s saying it has anything to do with what you express to others, just that the act of being aware of those thoughts makes them occur more often.

Once you think about that unicorn horn the next time you consciously “mind map” you’re probably going to think about the unicorn again… and again, until you think of yourself as being this neat person who really does want a horn.

If you had a psychic observer, or machine to record your thoughts then the likely hood that you’d get some real results over time would be greater. That was my take anyway.

By: subspace

subspace — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 04:16:01 +0000

Aargh: I disagree completely. Things you express to other people aren’t the things that make up a unique mind. It takes time, and there are flaws (awareness of self-observation obviously skews it). But the longer you do it and the more honest you are (“How often do I really wish I had a unicorn horn?”) the better it works. Hopefully Halcyon will get around to expanding on this soon, because these next stages are really interesting to me.

Halcyon is a very zen person. When he’s not throwing tantrums over there not being coffee or cheese for his immediate consumption, he’s very zen.

By: battlegate

battlegate — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:07:59 +0000

I think our psych officer might be a closet Buddhist.
This model of mind mapping is one of the meditation methods for exploring what Buddhists believe are the fallacies of differentiating between self and not-self. This is the first step- becoming aware of individual attributes that we recognize as setting our selves apart from others. They take it a lot further though by going on to point out that the self noticing these things can’t logically exist without throwing yourself into an infinite regress of trying to figure out who’s noticing the noticer… er or something.
I could never manage to stay focused long enough to accomplish anything remotely meaningful. I always wound up thinking “My self is real and it wants a Coke”.

By: aargh

aargh — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:00:50 +0000

It doesn’t seem to me to be possible to accurately suss out your own mental map. collecting passing thoughts on a list will give them an existence outside of the orbital pathways that they used to inhabit. once you begin to actively and consciously catalog the notable passing thoughts, you will begin to regularly think of your catalog and thereby think of your notable thoughts already listed. this will skew the data on how often your notables occur. it will be impossible to tell whether a thought has appeared as a result of it’s normal orbit, or whether it was pulled in early through the wormhole that is the list that you now carry in you back pocket.
the only way to create a mental map, is to do it without knowing that it happens. perhaps a psychic could be employed to monitor you for a period of time.

By: quagmire

quagmire — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 05:56:57 +0000

I like to think of my mind as my mouth and my consciousness as a nice crunchy tortilla chip on the end of my arm in my hand. My thoughts/views of the world are a really big fucking bowl of 7-layer bean dip made with 3 kinds o’ beans, tomatoes, onion, sliced black olives and then topped … oh man, with guacamole, sour cream and salsa drowning the top o’ that sum’bitch.
Now, that hungry mutha of a mouth is always searchin, jabbin’ that white corn tortilla (the genuine rectangular, strip kind, no wussy round shit here) all up in that dip, searchin’, diggin’, trying to scoop up something tasty and interesting. After all these years it’s started to be too familiar and taste the same. But I keep diggin’ deeper, hoping to snag a wonderous morsel of somethin’ new.
I’ll find it … just-can’t-sleep … must-keep-scooping … must-dig-deeper … need-more-chips …
(note: my subconscience is a frosty Heineken in my left hand. The stuff dreams are made of. Ego? Hell, lost that when I started balding at 21.)

By: halcyon

halcyon — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:17:01 +0000

A:
Possibly on the (sadly defunct) bean mines? We can’t be sure. I never wrote about it before, though, so there.

B:
Good point. Classification is a whole wing of this “science.” The space metaphor doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny, and there are far more things in the galaxy than moons and comets. But it helps you visualize; that was my goal anyway.This is one of those things that’s as complicated as you let it be.
Go nuts.

By: subspace

subspace — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 04:16:37 +0000

It was mentioned on my last blog, but I gave it a very superficial treatment, and it wasn’t even my idea, it was Halcyon’s. I’ve been ragging him to write a better explanation for some time.