Martin Gardner reported a case of No. 3 on people becoming mad after mistreating their minds wih “Hinton Cubes”. That are simple mechanical tools for developing a various parts of 4-dim. visual imagination (actually, when reading on regular solids etc., I can imagine such things without toys tools...). The unlucky practitioneers of a cult Hinton made out of that got mad because the trained ways of modified perception started working automatically, they could not stop that any more. Now imagine, someone would have confronted them with suitable analogues of impossible figures etc.…
An other case of No. 3 was reported by a jewish scholar on the Talmud this way: It’s 63 volumes are not only ‘passionate disputes’: By demanding the reader to follow them, they provide a training in the type of thinking used by those medieval, hermetic scholars. … Then a clever designed ‘mental trick lock’, an ‘intellectual vortex’ comes. The emotional and motivational aspect of all the training with repetitions, variations, rythms, starts working like a maelstrom along the previous levels of learning. The first ‘trick lock’ the student meets is the barrier of his own intellectual strength, a barrier artificially made thicker than necessary. Only then comes the real ‘trick lock’ for the student who thinks he has the trouble behind him: The now since long dragged-in mental concepts and thinking-ways are set into conflict. A Talmudist described it: ”… it puts the mind at war with itself; the more powerful the mind, the more destructive the conflict.”
Martin Gardner reported a case of No. 3 on people becoming mad after mistreating their minds with “Hinton Cubes”.
Indeed, Gardner prints such a letter in the midst of introducing those very cubes to a larger audience. I presume that the letter is the work of a joker or crank, as it appears to be.
The unlucky practitioneers of a cult Hinton made out of that got mad because the trained ways of modified perception started working automatically, they could not stop that any more.
I don’t understand why this is being downvoted (at −3 when I saw it). Could someone explain please?
“Hinton Cubes” sound fascinating. In ~1998 some friends and I sketched a plan to train people’s brains to be good at 4D visual imagination (though, googling reveals Hinton’s method and ours to be quite dissimilar). I was thinking that it could be done so that 3D shapes with complex internal workings might be more easily visualized all at once to boost mechanical design skills. The idea never went anywhere for lack of time, resources, or follow through but finding out that someone already tried something along these lines with negative side effects seems informative but not very dangerous. Saying that “systematic practice with X was reported to be harmful by those who tried it” can be informative and the listener can avoid the negative side effects by simply not “practicing X”. I would think that logic would be obvious… though perhaps I’m missing something?
And the Talmudic thing, if I understand correctly, just sounds like the fairly obvious generic claim that “smart people tricked into taking dumb pre-suppositions seriously can twist themselves in knots” combined with an accusation that this is what Talmudic study involves. Is the part of the post worth downvoting the bit where holy texts from a minority culture are implicitly bashed, or is there something else bad about it that is less obvious? I know relatively little about the referenced texts and enlightenment would be appreciated (if this is even the thing drawing the downvotes).
ThomasR appears here to be throwing around interesting-sounding trivia which he doesn’t understand. Looking at his other contributions to the site, I can guess that he’s developed a reputation for that, which would explain the downvotes here.
What do you think I would not undestand? Hinton’s Cubes share since ages a bad reputation of disturbing the minds of his followers, fitting nicely to contemporary theories of learning and habit-development of the brain. Only two mathematicians seem to have profited from an exposition to them in their childhood. Ans the one who played around with constructing 3D/4D-analogues to Penrose/Escher 2D/3D-”impossible figure” doubted that such an endeavor woud threaten his health. The info on Talmud etc. came from a well known scholar. Both examples fit to the questions above.
Martin Gardner reported a case of No. 3 on people becoming mad after mistreating their minds wih “Hinton Cubes”. That are simple mechanical tools for developing a various parts of 4-dim. visual imagination (actually, when reading on regular solids etc., I can imagine such things without toys tools...). The unlucky practitioneers of a cult Hinton made out of that got mad because the trained ways of modified perception started working automatically, they could not stop that any more. Now imagine, someone would have confronted them with suitable analogues of impossible figures etc.…
An other case of No. 3 was reported by a jewish scholar on the Talmud this way: It’s 63 volumes are not only ‘passionate disputes’: By demanding the reader to follow them, they provide a training in the type of thinking used by those medieval, hermetic scholars. … Then a clever designed ‘mental trick lock’, an ‘intellectual vortex’ comes. The emotional and motivational aspect of all the training with repetitions, variations, rythms, starts working like a maelstrom along the previous levels of learning. The first ‘trick lock’ the student meets is the barrier of his own intellectual strength, a barrier artificially made thicker than necessary. Only then comes the real ‘trick lock’ for the student who thinks he has the trouble behind him: The now since long dragged-in mental concepts and thinking-ways are set into conflict. A Talmudist described it: ”… it puts the mind at war with itself; the more powerful the mind, the more destructive the conflict.”
Indeed, Gardner prints such a letter in the midst of introducing those very cubes to a larger audience. I presume that the letter is the work of a joker or crank, as it appears to be.
Citation needed.
I don’t understand why this is being downvoted (at −3 when I saw it). Could someone explain please?
“Hinton Cubes” sound fascinating. In ~1998 some friends and I sketched a plan to train people’s brains to be good at 4D visual imagination (though, googling reveals Hinton’s method and ours to be quite dissimilar). I was thinking that it could be done so that 3D shapes with complex internal workings might be more easily visualized all at once to boost mechanical design skills. The idea never went anywhere for lack of time, resources, or follow through but finding out that someone already tried something along these lines with negative side effects seems informative but not very dangerous. Saying that “systematic practice with X was reported to be harmful by those who tried it” can be informative and the listener can avoid the negative side effects by simply not “practicing X”. I would think that logic would be obvious… though perhaps I’m missing something?
And the Talmudic thing, if I understand correctly, just sounds like the fairly obvious generic claim that “smart people tricked into taking dumb pre-suppositions seriously can twist themselves in knots” combined with an accusation that this is what Talmudic study involves. Is the part of the post worth downvoting the bit where holy texts from a minority culture are implicitly bashed, or is there something else bad about it that is less obvious? I know relatively little about the referenced texts and enlightenment would be appreciated (if this is even the thing drawing the downvotes).
ThomasR appears here to be throwing around interesting-sounding trivia which he doesn’t understand. Looking at his other contributions to the site, I can guess that he’s developed a reputation for that, which would explain the downvotes here.
What do you think I would not undestand? Hinton’s Cubes share since ages a bad reputation of disturbing the minds of his followers, fitting nicely to contemporary theories of learning and habit-development of the brain. Only two mathematicians seem to have profited from an exposition to them in their childhood. Ans the one who played around with constructing 3D/4D-analogues to Penrose/Escher 2D/3D-”impossible figure” doubted that such an endeavor woud threaten his health. The info on Talmud etc. came from a well known scholar. Both examples fit to the questions above.