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!

  • Goat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • BOMBS@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Goat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        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?

        https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/niz2t7kzl0av4wp9nqw2r/a-biphasic-relational-approach-to-the-evolution-of-human-consciousness-un-enfoque-relacional-bifasico-para-la-evolucion-de-la-conciencia-humana.pdf?dl=0&rlkey=x0mapqjo4ohzbbw2w5rigtzw3

        [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.

        • BOMBS@lemmy.worldMEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • BOMBS@lemmy.worldMEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            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