I’ve observed that quite a bit of the disagreement with the substance of my post is due to people believing that the level of distrust for one’s own brain that I advocate is excessive. (See this comment by SarahC, for example.)
It occurs to me that I should explain exactly why I do not trust my own brain.
In the past week I have noted the following instances in which my brain has malfunctioned; each of them is a class of malfunction I had never previously observed in myself:
(It may be relevant to note that I have AS.)
I needed to open a box of plastic wrap, of the sort with a roll inside a box, a flap that lifts up, and a sharp edge under the flap. The front of the box was designed such that there were two sections separated by some perforation; there’s a little set of instructions on the box that tells you to tear one of those sections off, thus giving you a functional box of plastic wrap. I spent approximately five minutes trying to tear the wrong section off, mangling the box and cutting my finger twice in the process. This was an astonishing failure to solve a basic physical task.
I was making bread dough, a process which necessitates measuring out 4.5 cups of flour into a bowl. My mind was not wandering to any unusual degree, nor was I distracted or interrupted. I lost count of the number of consecutive cups of flour I was pouring into the bowl; I failed to count to four and a half.
I was playing Puzzle Quest (a turn-based videogame that mostly involves match-3 play of the sort made popular by Bejewled) while reading comments on LessWrong, switching between tasks every few minutes. I find that doing this gives me time to think over things I’ve just read; it’s also fun. At one point, as I switching from looking at a comment I had just finished reading to looking at my TV screen, I suddenly began to believe that matching colored gems was the process by which one constructed sound arguments. In general. This sensation lasted approximately five seconds before reality reasserted itself.
I might not have even really noticed these brain malfunctions if I hadn’t spent significant effort recently on becoming more luminous; I’m inclined to believe that there have been plenty of other such events in the past that I have failed to notice.
In any case, I hope this explains why I am so afraid of my own brain.
I’m imagining some kind of sliding-block puzzle game, with each block as a symbol or logical operator. You start off with some axioms and then have to go through and construct proofs for progressively more complex first-order logic expressions.
Or maybe a game that does for syllogisms what Manufactoria does for Turing Machines. (Memetic hazard warning!)
I spent approximately five minutes trying to tear the wrong section off, mangling the box and cutting my finger twice in the process. This was an astonishing failure to solve a basic physical task.
I have a tendency to do this if I want to solve a basic task and someone is watching me, especially a teacher. (I’m in nursing school, so a lot of my evaluations consist of my teacher watching me assemble equipment, not something I’m talented with to begin with.) Alone, I’ll just start experimenting with different ways until I find one that works, but if I’m being watched and implicitly evaluated, paradoxically enough I’ll keep trying the same failed way over again until they correct me. I don’t know if this is a weird illogical attempt to avoid embarrassment, or if I’m subconsciously trying to hasten the moment that they’ll just go ahead and tell me, or if it’s just because enough of my brain is taken up worrying about someone watching me that the leftovers aren’t capable of thinking about the task, and just default to random physical actions.
I lost count of the number of consecutive cups of flour I was pouring into the bowl; I failed to count to four and a half.
I do this all the time, too. Maybe because my default state, when I’m alone and not under pressure to do something, is a kind of relaxed spacey-ness where I let my thoughts go on whatever association trains they please. People make fun of me for this, and it is irritating, but it’s something I’m slowly learning to “switch off” when I really, really have to be focusing my whole attention on something.
I suddenly began to believe that matching colored gems was the process by which one constructed sound arguments. In general. This sensation lasted approximately five seconds before reality reasserted itself.
This kind of thinking happens to me all the time in the state between sleeping and waking, or during dreams themselves. It’s occasionally happened to me while awake. I don’t find it particularly concerning, since it’s easy to notice and wears off fast.
Noting that this thread is nearly two years old: AS is highly correlated with deficiency in executive function. This would explain the bread incident, although not the other two.
In the intervening time I’ve also been convinced that I have ADD, or at least something that looks like it. My executive function is usually pretty decent.
Is ‘AS’ supposed to mean ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’? I was thinking so and the bread incident does sound like an executive control problem, but the third TV incident sounds more like a schizophrenic sort of hallucination.
It sounds like the type of unusual, creative, synaesthetic association that can occur under the influence of cannabis or psiloycbin mushrooms, or just sleep deprivation.
I was making bread dough, a process which necessitates measuring out 4.5 cups of flour into a bowl. My mind was not wandering to any unusual degree, nor was I distracted or interrupted. I lost count of the number of consecutive cups of flour I was pouring into the bowl; I failed to count to four and a half.
About half of my caloric intake is bread I bake, and I am terrible at counting. I keep a stack of pennies handy for exactly this reason.
I’ve observed that quite a bit of the disagreement with the substance of my post is due to people believing that the level of distrust for one’s own brain that I advocate is excessive. (See this comment by SarahC, for example.)
It occurs to me that I should explain exactly why I do not trust my own brain.
In the past week I have noted the following instances in which my brain has malfunctioned; each of them is a class of malfunction I had never previously observed in myself:
(It may be relevant to note that I have AS.)
I needed to open a box of plastic wrap, of the sort with a roll inside a box, a flap that lifts up, and a sharp edge under the flap. The front of the box was designed such that there were two sections separated by some perforation; there’s a little set of instructions on the box that tells you to tear one of those sections off, thus giving you a functional box of plastic wrap. I spent approximately five minutes trying to tear the wrong section off, mangling the box and cutting my finger twice in the process. This was an astonishing failure to solve a basic physical task.
I was making bread dough, a process which necessitates measuring out 4.5 cups of flour into a bowl. My mind was not wandering to any unusual degree, nor was I distracted or interrupted. I lost count of the number of consecutive cups of flour I was pouring into the bowl; I failed to count to four and a half.
I was playing Puzzle Quest (a turn-based videogame that mostly involves match-3 play of the sort made popular by Bejewled) while reading comments on LessWrong, switching between tasks every few minutes. I find that doing this gives me time to think over things I’ve just read; it’s also fun. At one point, as I switching from looking at a comment I had just finished reading to looking at my TV screen, I suddenly began to believe that matching colored gems was the process by which one constructed sound arguments. In general. This sensation lasted approximately five seconds before reality reasserted itself.
I might not have even really noticed these brain malfunctions if I hadn’t spent significant effort recently on becoming more luminous; I’m inclined to believe that there have been plenty of other such events in the past that I have failed to notice.
In any case, I hope this explains why I am so afraid of my own brain.
Someone has to write this game.
I’m imagining some kind of sliding-block puzzle game, with each block as a symbol or logical operator. You start off with some axioms and then have to go through and construct proofs for progressively more complex first-order logic expressions.
Or maybe a game that does for syllogisms what Manufactoria does for Turing Machines. (Memetic hazard warning!)
This could be promising...
I have a tendency to do this if I want to solve a basic task and someone is watching me, especially a teacher. (I’m in nursing school, so a lot of my evaluations consist of my teacher watching me assemble equipment, not something I’m talented with to begin with.) Alone, I’ll just start experimenting with different ways until I find one that works, but if I’m being watched and implicitly evaluated, paradoxically enough I’ll keep trying the same failed way over again until they correct me. I don’t know if this is a weird illogical attempt to avoid embarrassment, or if I’m subconsciously trying to hasten the moment that they’ll just go ahead and tell me, or if it’s just because enough of my brain is taken up worrying about someone watching me that the leftovers aren’t capable of thinking about the task, and just default to random physical actions.
I do this all the time, too. Maybe because my default state, when I’m alone and not under pressure to do something, is a kind of relaxed spacey-ness where I let my thoughts go on whatever association trains they please. People make fun of me for this, and it is irritating, but it’s something I’m slowly learning to “switch off” when I really, really have to be focusing my whole attention on something.
This kind of thinking happens to me all the time in the state between sleeping and waking, or during dreams themselves. It’s occasionally happened to me while awake. I don’t find it particularly concerning, since it’s easy to notice and wears off fast.
Noting that this thread is nearly two years old: AS is highly correlated with deficiency in executive function. This would explain the bread incident, although not the other two.
In the intervening time I’ve also been convinced that I have ADD, or at least something that looks like it. My executive function is usually pretty decent.
Is ‘AS’ supposed to mean ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’? I was thinking so and the bread incident does sound like an executive control problem, but the third TV incident sounds more like a schizophrenic sort of hallucination.
It sounds like the type of unusual, creative, synaesthetic association that can occur under the influence of cannabis or psiloycbin mushrooms, or just sleep deprivation.
About half of my caloric intake is bread I bake, and I am terrible at counting. I keep a stack of pennies handy for exactly this reason.