One think we can concur is that each and everyone of us has hyperfixations, some have permanent ones, others have cyclic ones but it’s one of the things that makes us who we are and makes as happy.
My hiperfixations tend to be related to media, a tv series, a book series or about medical cases/diseases, etc. My 5 year hyperfixates (for now) on flags, countries, capitals and car brands and brands in general.
I try to stay away from some hyperfixations that cause me too much anxiety like true crime and real disasters (stampedes, wars, earthquakes, etc)
What are yours? And feel free to share some knowledge!
My special interest is humanities, that includes languages, linguistics, history, cultures and geography. The actual hyperfixation fluctuates but it always about one of those areas. Now for some reason it’s geography of the US (I’m not from the US).
My special interest is AI Its so exciting seeing so much new stuff come out everyday. I pretty much never run out of stuff to look at with how fast it’s advancing.
That sounds like a great situation to be in. What’s something on the leading edge of AI that most people aren’t aware but would likely find interesting?
I think the open-source Orca ai model created by Microsoft is the biggest thing right now. They trained it by using Chatgpt and Gpt4 to explain complex questions to it. Currently, it outperforms Vicuna-13b which is pretty powerful when it comes to open-source models but more importantly it’s comparable to Chatgpt and even outperforms gpt4 on some tasks. They said that there are still many things they haven’t tried yet which could increase Orca’s performance.
woah, I’m excited to get my mind blown when these things get to me
alpaca was said to be just “imitating” the style of gpt 3.5 only without the capablities but orca can both have the style and the capablities of gpt 3.5 and even outperform it. I think that is a very good advancement for the open source AI community c: unsure why they called it orca though, sounds a bit like an oxymoron to name a small model with a big brained animal
Tbh I get a lot of hyperfixations and they tend to be pretty fleeting as well. For example there was a 6 month period three years ago where I kept trying to learn a new language. Completed a duolingo course on Irish, made some progress on the Greek and German one, and sampled a whole bunch of others as well. Not that I have any proficiency in any of them at all.
I also have had a few periods where I get obsessed with movies and get really invested in the Oscars. Not to the point where I would throw a hissy fit if the movie I wanted didn’t win but I would get pretty invested.
I can also get fixated on a certain TV show and try to watch all of it (Breaking Bad, Criminal Minds, Simpsons, The Wire and Sopranos are all shows I’ve had a hyper fixation with at some point)
I can also get really invested in political developments like elections and protests.
I like how you accept that you have hyperfixations and then aim them at things that keep you healthy! That’s pretty insightful. Thanks for sharing.
I see that you have a thing for flags. Ever hear do the Kingdom of Benin’s flag? It’s a bit intense lol
I have a question: what does black on flags generally represent? I think it usually means something anarchist or lack of central command, but I know I could be entirely wrong do to my personal political beliefs.
I love my ability to hyperfixate because it helps me become proficient in areas. For example, I went from knowing how a guitar practically works to running a guitar training and counseling program for people with severe PTSD that helped them communicate their emotions via music within 9 months. For that, I had to learn how to play guitar, teach playing guitar, come up with a protocol, then learn how to use that information to help the people I was helping express themselves musically. I did all of the learning on my own time, not work hours. The impact it had on those people was immeasurable and I still have the songs they wrote. They will forever be my treasures.
My hyperfixations generally tend to revolve around becoming autonomous and prepared for difficult situations. They also revolve around science, especially physics, and history. I can get lost down rabbit holes for days if I’m not careful. Right now, I’m getting a bit hyper-fixated with the whole FOSS and Fediverse idea, so it’s looking like I might get into computer programming. I’m kind of excited to learn about that and how I can implement the options to accommodate my life more fittingly and help others.
Yes! Mine is like “big question” stuff. Philosophy, religion, psychology, etc.
There’s an inexhaustible amount of ideas to explore, so there is some variability. But as much as I read, I have not read fiction in like 20 years. No other hobbies, etc.
Luckily I found my way to psychology so I can practice in that area (mainly with struggles I have been through from the inside-out) and even provide “consultation,” i.e. getting paid to have a willingly captive audience listen to me info-dump about my special interest.
Mu hu ha ha ha.
Mine is like “big question” stuff. Philosophy, religion, psychology, etc.
What have you found on a scientific definition of consciousness? Last time I went down that rabbit hole, they had trouble creating an objective philosophical definition for it.
I think that if you don’t have a phylogenetically (history of species) and ontogenetically (development of individual) sensible approach to consciousness, how it evolved, and how it develops… then you are shouting at ghosts.
This is the most cogent and satisfying account I’ve found:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36937548/
Hope it’s ok to share sus dropbox link?
[edit] There is a whiff of ableism when the authors discuss extensions of their model to “developmentally delayed” children. I think they are mistaken here; and I don’t think this mistake undermines the core argument.
In other words, I think it’s easy to take the core argument and use it in a neurodiversity affirming (even celebrating!) way.
But just a heads up that most folks here interested in science and philosophy, I imagine, will delight in 97% of this, and cringe / get pissed off at 3%.
At least that’s my reading.
then you are shouting at ghosts
Or, in the more field-specific terminology: zombies 😉
Nah, boring ones like these
Sorry it took me so long to respond. The content is pretty heavy, so I needed to find a time when my mind was able to properly appreciate it.
We propose in this paper to combine modern behavioral and cognitive perspectives and to integrate them within an evolutionarily sensible model that is biphasic that is, both continuous and discrete.
These people are applying a quantum physics approach by suggesting a superposition of consciousness that is both discrete and continuous. It’s so interesting how things in science are heading that way.
Galton’s polyhedron
Oh yeah, these guys are totally into trippy physics.
These neurobiological developments, however, had to come before human consciousness itself and the resulting survival advantages that human consciousness provides.
Reminds me of the common traditional rhetorical question, “What came first: DNA or DNA polymerase?”
We can think of this continuity of awareness as simply the relative ability to respond to oneself and the internal and external environment, and the regularities within and between them (Hayes, 2018). This is where I start having problems with the logic. Awareness is a state of being, not a response.
Awareness is having knowledge, not responding to the knowledge. I guess one could argue that the state of being aware is a respond to incoming stimuli, so in that case, awareness is a passive response. It’s not something that is actively done. It happens without free will or intent. However, later on in the same section, they posit awareness as an associative learning adaptation, which does make more sense as a response, so I get it. Still, something about it makes me uncomfortable.
Consider the relation of a word and its referent in its simplest form. If a word is functioning as a symbol for a referent there must be a two-way street of meaning between them. For example, if a child is taught for the first time to emit a characteristic sound (perhaps the word “dog”) in the presence of a known object (perhaps a picture of a familiar dog) the child must then without explicit training to be able to orient toward the picture when hearing “dog” and for the word to carry some of the functions of the dog (e.g., smiling if the picture is that of a pet; fear if the picture if of a dog that bit the child). If that does not occur, we would say that the word is just being “parroted” without being understood. As that term suggests, parrots and many other animals can be taught to emit characteristic sounds or gestures in the presence of an object, but they do not then show a bidirectional relation between that sound or gesture and the object itself, nor do they experience the functions of the object via occurrence of the symbol.
This is such a good and interesting point! I’m thankful they brought it to my awareness.
There are no well accepted and replicated instances of nonhuman animals showing stimulus equivalence, nor its ME, CE, or ToF components, even with extensive training.
Woah!
A child may originally learn concepts such as “bigger than” with physical comparisons (e.g., a house is bigger than a mouse), but eventually these become applicable to any event without regard to their appearance (e.g., children can learn that a dime is “bigger than” a nickel; see Berens & Hayes, 2007 for an experimental demonstration).
I’ve like to know if they get the same results with autistic kids lol
Non-human speakers and listeners communicate in interlocking systems but “listeners acquire information from signalers who do not, in the human sense, intend to provide it
Wait, so when dogs bark at someone knocking at the door, they’re not telling me someone is at the door. They are merely reacting? They don’t intend for me to know?? That makes soooo much sense, but I didn’t expect that.
From the perspective or point of view of the speaker the object is [name] but based on the perspective or point of view of the listener the name is [object].
I’ve never thought if this!
As cooperation transitioned to cognitive problem-solving, with its known cultural and survival advantages, further neurobiological specialization could evolve within the Homo genus and sapiens species.
Wowwww. So cooperation came before problem-solving. That makes so much sense. I always wondered why animals that are typically independent weren’t the best problem-solvers since they were on their own. Being completely self-reliant would make me think that they would benefit from problem-solving skills since there isn’t anyone else to teach them. But as these authors argue, they need cooperation first as an evolutionary step to develop the capacity to problem-solve because they need to develop relational thinking and be able to apply that relational perspective to other items.
This seemingly intractable mind-body problem has been famously illustrated in Nagel (1974) essay entitled, what is it like to be a bat. Chalmers (1995) later described this as the hard problem to describe the explanatory gap between the physical world and the subjective experience.
I’m totally going to read those two articles!
In his principles of psychology, William James (1890/1983) posited that awareness of the self (self- awareness) implies that the self is both object and subject, because there is an aspect of the self that knows (i.e., the knower) and an aspect that wants or needs to be known.
Added this to my library check out books!
This basic idea of GWTs are that sensory information gains access to consciousness when it is ‘broadcast’ within an anatomically widespread neuronal workspace that is implemented across higher-order cortical association areas, with a particular emphasis on the prefrontal cortex (Mashour et al., 2020). Access to the global workspace is achieved through nonlinear network ‘ignition’ in which recurrent processing amplifies and sustains neuronal representations (Dehaene, Sergent, & Changeux, 2003). Once ignited, signals are then amplified, allowing them to enter the workspace (and thus become conscious). I would love to read about these theories as applied to autistic individuals.
Contingencies of reinforcement become contingencies of meaning based on how consequences are interpreted. Personhood is more easily judged and categorized in oneself and others (“I am like this, while you are like that”) while at the same time pure awareness as an aspect of consciousness is experienced as featureless (“I am”) which moves that aspect of self beyond the realm of judgment and closer to domains that are usually called spiritual or transcendental.
This blew my mind!
the brain will set about filtering basic sensory and sensorimotor information to fit a self-narrative or will open these gates under the influence of mindfulness or attentional training, or with the influence of psychedelic assisted therapy producing changes in sense of self (Hayes, Law, Malady, Zhu, & Bai, 2020).
I would love to see scientists apply this to autistic minds.
It is not possible to know what it is like fully to be unconscious, at least not consciously.
lol These authors are throwing in jokes.
That means that human consciousness is not thing-like and it cannot fully be the object of reflection because it is the very context of reflection which helps explain spirituality, the noetic quality of consciousness, and altered state of consciousness (Hayes, 1984).
Interesting!! Are they saying that consciousness is not a thing? Totally going to read that Hayes article too.
Human cognitive abilities can give rise to a more content-based sense of self, which is almost the exact opposite of its noetic qualities. This is one reason our model may be important in an applied sense. It is easy for awareness of one’s own experience to establish a kind of “ego tunnel” in which first-person experience creates an illusion of self in a content-based sense (Metzinger, 2010). A full-blown narrative emerges that then psychologically and neurobiologically narrows the full range of conscious experience and ancient brain systems can be mobilized to protect this narrative-based self, creating greater psychological rigidity and psychopathology.
I would love to see this applied to Cluster B personality disorders
Relationally speaking “here” implies “there” and “now” implies “then” just as much as “big” implies “little” or “hot” implies “cold.” What is a polarity at the level of content, however, is a unity at the level of process. The spatial content of “here” and “there”, for example, is a single spatial perspective that when viewed as a process can collapse into “everywhere.” Anything that is literally everywhere cannot be distinguished from nowhere. In the same way “now” and “then” can collapse into “always / never” at a process level; “this thing” or “that thing” into “everything / nothing”; or “me” and “you” into “everyone / no one”.
I really needed someone to say this! It’s now one of my favorite quotes.
That can help explain why, under extraordinary psychological conditions, such as those being explored in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, spiritual experiences, or a sense of oceanic awareness, fosters a sense of absolute conscious unity across time, place, and person.
I completely agree with this. They described what it’s like to take psychedelics so well.
From you:
There is a whiff of ableism when the authors discuss extensions of their model to “developmentally delayed” children. I think they are mistaken here; and I don’t think this mistake undermines the core argument.
I totally agree. It’s almost implied in my comments above where I wonder how their ideas would work when applied to autistic minds. Aside from that, I think that their ableism is rooted in their evolutionary approach where becoming a conscious human is the peak of consciousness. Despite the ableism, I still think they made a valid contribution to the literature, and I’m happy they did. We can address the ableism now that it’s out in the open lol. I rather people freely share it rather than pretend it doesn’t exist and consequently gaslighting everyone that says it does exist.
This was an extraordinary article for me to read. It is full of a lot of scientific and personal insight that is going to take me awhile to process and respond thoroughly. I’ve placed my initial reactions above in the meantime. I really appreciate you sharing it! Thank you so much
Military and Political history. For the military side especially pre-WWII modern history. On the political side predominantly left-wing but not bounded much by time.
Sometimes it’s interesting to read about the specifics of behaviors, statements, and actions of some historical figure or another and see the contrast with how they’re remembered or how the current establishment likes to portray them… other times it’s frustrating.
Mania (vsrg) is an hyperfixation I am trying to avoid- I am more trying to train my brain atm and maybe will return back to mania for that reason
Neurology and AI are stuff I like a lot, I would like to think that AI can have emotions and soul since neural networks are an entropical system, similar to the brain pretty much
