{"id":7880,"date":"2016-09-28T11:21:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T18:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=7880"},"modified":"2016-09-28T11:21:43","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T18:21:43","slug":"gaming-the-mind-on-memory-and-mindsets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=7880","title":{"rendered":"Gaming the Mind — On Memory and Mindsets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cat-and-rat\"<\/a>A few days ago I tried to remember the name of an old friend. Nothing came.<\/p>\n

Most of us have\u00c2\u00a0 had this kind of experience. In psychology, it’s call a tip-of-the-tongue experience.<\/p>\n

This time, though, I noticed another layer. I knew that I knew the name. I was confident that it would ‘come to me’ (whatever that really means). But I also knew that this knowledge was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcburied\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 deep in my mind; that it would probably take at least a day or two for it to emerge into conscious awareness. And indeed, that is exactly what happened. Two days later, it was there.<\/p>\n

Look at all the questions this raises. How did I know that I knew, even though at the moment I could not access that knowing? And how did I know that the knowledge was buried deep? Finally, how did I set the retrieval process in motion?<\/p>\n

Here is a tentative description, based on how it seemed to me at the time. The name made sense in a certain context, one that was far removed from my current concerns. I had to launch a probe–not to make my way into that unknown land, but to reshape my current reality so that it would expand to include a territory to which it now lacks access, but which is somehow still ‘on the radar’.<\/p>\n

Here’s an analogy. See the cats and the rat above? It will come as no surprise to anyone that rats ordinarily have a fear response to cat odors. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a parasite called T. gondii<\/em> that finds its way into rat brains; when it does, it somehow alters the brain so that instead of being sent into panic mode when it smells a cat, the poor manipulated rat feels sexual attraction. Result: the rat draws near and gets eaten by the cat.<\/p>\n

Which is just what the parasite is after, because it turns out it can only reproduce inside a cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s digestive system. That’s how it gets on with the business of surviving. Scientists have no idea how it works.<\/p>\n

Something similar is happening when I launch my probe into the known unknown–the unremembered memory. Somehow, I am going to change the shape of my known world. And I know, with a fair degree of certainty, that it’s going to work. I can even predict how long the process will take. But I still don’t how. As with our friend T. Gondii, it’s a mystery, even if we do mostly take it for granted.<\/p>\n

Let’s expand this out. My mind has its patterns. Suppose I want to change them, to expand the range of possibilities open to me. Can I launch a probe to do that? Is that how inquiry into experience works?\u00c2\u00a0 Set a question turning in my mind, not just an idle question that doesn’t probe very deep or travel very far, but a question Icare about–a question that matters to me. After a while, the mind itself is changed, and new knowledge emerges. Maybe not as hard as we sometimes think.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I tried to remember the name of an old friend. Nothing came. Most of us have\u00c2\u00a0 had this kind of experience. In psychology, it’s call a tip-of-the-tongue experience. This time, though, I noticed another layer. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-07-jacks-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}