My initial impression is that this is absurdly efficacious (maybe it’s partly due to expectation, however). What could this be emulating on a neurophysiological level? Why would this even work? My first thought was that it’s spoofing external cues en masse, but that doesn’t seem right.
The striatum receives “bids” from other brain regions, each of which represents a specific action. A little piece of the lamprey’s brain is whispering “mate” to the striatum, while another piece is shouting “flee the predator” and so on. It would be a very bad idea for these movements to occur simultaneously – because a lamprey can’t do all of them at the same time – so to prevent simultaneous activation of many different movements, all these regions are held in check by powerful inhibitory connections from the basal ganglia. This means that the basal ganglia keep all behaviors in “off” mode by default. Only once a specific action’s bid has been selected do the basal ganglia turn off this inhibitory control, allowing the behavior to occur.
Think of the mind as an assembly of subminds who are bidding for control of the body. Sweep all the complexity aside for the moment and think purely of that bidding process. It seems evident that subminds can win the bidding war by being weak yet insistent. You can get your mind to pay close attention to your breath by repeating tiny intentions at a high frequency. You can make yourself do pushups by the same means. You’re effectively hacking the bidding process by taking advantage of an exploit.
Many of these action bids originate from a region of the lamprey brain called the pallium…
Each little region of the pallium is responsible for a particular behavior, such as tracking prey, suctioning onto a rock, or fleeing predators. These regions are thought to have two basic functions. The first is to execute the behavior in which it specializes, once it has received permission from the basal ganglia. For example, the “track prey” region activates downstream pathways that contract the lamprey’s muscles in a pattern that causes the animal to track its prey. The second basic function of these regions is to collect relevant information about the lamprey’s surroundings and internal state, which determines how strong a bid it will put in to the striatum.
Neurologically, I guess you’re submitting a large number of rapid-fire “copies” of the same motor program from the pallium (cerebral cortex, in higher animals) to the striatum. I guess the striatum isn’t smart enough to recognize spam when it sees it. And why would we expect it to, necessarily? It’s not like the subminds are literally fighting to win the bidding war; except in pathological edge cases like OCD and addictive behavior, you don’t see a lot of spurious motor program submission going on. So it kinda makes sense that this exploit would work.
(I assume from your post that you actually tried it and it worked?)
So I’m very worried about this. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the striatum is capable of learning that it’s being exploited in this way and compensating appropriately. Median case is the technique just stops working. Worst case is something really weird happens to your ability to submit bids.
(Not worried enough to not try it, mind you. But worried enough to not have tried it yet out of fear.)
I certainly won’t strenuously argue that it’s definitely safe, because I really have no idea if it’s safe. But I would note the analogy to addictive and/or compulsive behaviors. The striatum doesn’t distinguish “valid” compulsions from invalid ones by default, and that’s why it’s so easy for us to get addicted. It’s not like the striatum has any way of knowing what counts of spurious input. At least, I can’t imagine why it would.
Again, not really arguing with you, really still just working through my own sense of why this works at all.
Yes, it did work for me. In fact, once I’ve spammed my brain into meditation, it has a very dopaminergic, “you’re-about-to-be-rewarded” mental signature. I’m going to tread quite carefully.
(I normally cannot stand sitting still and meditating.)
My initial impression is that this is absurdly efficacious (maybe it’s partly due to expectation, however). What could this be emulating on a neurophysiological level? Why would this even work? My first thought was that it’s spoofing external cues en masse, but that doesn’t seem right.
Part of what led me to think of this was the recent Slate Star Codex post on motivation.
Think of the mind as an assembly of subminds who are bidding for control of the body. Sweep all the complexity aside for the moment and think purely of that bidding process. It seems evident that subminds can win the bidding war by being weak yet insistent. You can get your mind to pay close attention to your breath by repeating tiny intentions at a high frequency. You can make yourself do pushups by the same means. You’re effectively hacking the bidding process by taking advantage of an exploit.
Neurologically, I guess you’re submitting a large number of rapid-fire “copies” of the same motor program from the pallium (cerebral cortex, in higher animals) to the striatum. I guess the striatum isn’t smart enough to recognize spam when it sees it. And why would we expect it to, necessarily? It’s not like the subminds are literally fighting to win the bidding war; except in pathological edge cases like OCD and addictive behavior, you don’t see a lot of spurious motor program submission going on. So it kinda makes sense that this exploit would work.
(I assume from your post that you actually tried it and it worked?)
So I’m very worried about this. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the striatum is capable of learning that it’s being exploited in this way and compensating appropriately. Median case is the technique just stops working. Worst case is something really weird happens to your ability to submit bids.
(Not worried enough to not try it, mind you. But worried enough to not have tried it yet out of fear.)
I certainly won’t strenuously argue that it’s definitely safe, because I really have no idea if it’s safe. But I would note the analogy to addictive and/or compulsive behaviors. The striatum doesn’t distinguish “valid” compulsions from invalid ones by default, and that’s why it’s so easy for us to get addicted. It’s not like the striatum has any way of knowing what counts of spurious input. At least, I can’t imagine why it would.
Again, not really arguing with you, really still just working through my own sense of why this works at all.
That’s a fascinating possibility.
Yes, it did work for me. In fact, once I’ve spammed my brain into meditation, it has a very dopaminergic, “you’re-about-to-be-rewarded” mental signature. I’m going to tread quite carefully.
(I normally cannot stand sitting still and meditating.)