Were I conscious of my intuitive goal instead of merely tracking it,
How do you define “conscious” vs “merely tracking”? Like, what’s a rough way to explain the most important differences between them?
Intuitively, to me, “tracking” is synonymous with “being conscious of”; I wonder if you’retrying to point at some specific category of qualia or what :D
Yeah! I’m talking about the clarity / prominence of the thing in your mind, not a class of qualia per se. Pretty much orthogonal things. “Awareness” is probably a better term, so I’ll correct the post.
Let’s say I’m a seasoned pentester trying to crack some app. As I’m probing the auth mechanism, “somewhere in the back of my mind” is a map of the attack surfaces, but I’m not introspective enough to notice I’m tracking that shape. It’s still there influencing my subjective experience as a “qualium”, but I can’t be metacognitive of it.
Or, while driving, every action I’m taking is in service of reaching my destination, but I’m not aware that my cognition is aimed at getting to the destination.
I’m saying “conscious of” in the sense most psychologists do, where it’s possible to actually deliberate about the object of attention. It doesn’t have anything to do with qualia; unfortunately the term is really overloaded and I don’t know a better one.
Metacognition of what you’re tracking is extremely helpful for tacit skill acquisition; it’s deliberate practice up one meta level. As a special case of this, meta-awareness of the direction you’re optimizing lets you notice when something is irrationally tugging you and gives you intuitive handles for how to fix it.
How do you define “conscious” vs “merely tracking”? Like, what’s a rough way to explain the most important differences between them?
Intuitively, to me, “tracking” is synonymous with “being conscious of”; I wonder if you’retrying to point at some specific category of qualia or what :D
Yeah! I’m talking about the clarity / prominence of the thing in your mind, not a class of qualia per se. Pretty much orthogonal things. “Awareness” is probably a better term, so I’ll correct the post.
Let’s say I’m a seasoned pentester trying to crack some app. As I’m probing the auth mechanism, “somewhere in the back of my mind” is a map of the attack surfaces, but I’m not introspective enough to notice I’m tracking that shape. It’s still there influencing my subjective experience as a “qualium”, but I can’t be metacognitive of it.
Or, while driving, every action I’m taking is in service of reaching my destination, but I’m not aware that my cognition is aimed at getting to the destination.
I’m saying “conscious of” in the sense most psychologists do, where it’s possible to actually deliberate about the object of attention. It doesn’t have anything to do with qualia; unfortunately the term is really overloaded and I don’t know a better one.
Metacognition of what you’re tracking is extremely helpful for tacit skill acquisition; it’s deliberate practice up one meta level. As a special case of this, meta-awareness of the direction you’re optimizing lets you notice when something is irrationally tugging you and gives you intuitive handles for how to fix it.