I struggle to write. I cannot figure out how to access my own thoughts and ideas. They come in non-linguistic forms—vague feelings, 3D images, animations—with a verbal narrator on top, but my very bad memory, and the fact that my best thinking is done in the middle of the night when I ought to be asleep, means that I end up forming intuitions about things based upon my prior thoughts, but I’m unable to remember what those thoughts were, or even what intuitions have recently formed how. Instead, when something reminds me of a topic, I remember whatever is salient that I’ve already thought of at some unknown prior time.
I don’t possess a map of my own mind, nor even a search function. Just a mysterious black box. My mind is totally disorganized. And when I look at a blank page, I have no idea what to write, where to start. I don’t even know what questions to ask myself to prompt writing, nor how to answer any. I honestly have no idea how to think clearly. Particularly from a blank slate, without prompting or real-time communication with another person, who can dig things out of me I cannot retrieve on my own, by reminding me of things with their questions.
I’ve heard of the concept of “solve the whole problem day”, but alignment itself is not in my wheelhouse—I’m more of a “philosopher” (though that’s much too pretentious to call myself), and my “problems” are vague and undefined—nebulous clouds of concepts on which I fixate, returning again and again, like the nature (or, phenomenology?) of identity, boundaries, emotions—or plans for a digital platform for increasing collective intelligence, rationality, and coordination. And my “plans” are composed of an endless array of disconnected fragments I cannot put together—because, again, specific details only show up in my mind temporarily like electrons falling out of superposition, and then they return to being a cloudy orbital of pure intuition.
Does anyone else know what this feels like and have any tips for me? It’s maddening, and I’ve been suffering from it for basically my whole life. I’ve tried using the Zettelkasten system to “organize” my thoughts but it doesn’t work for me, the result is just a tangled mess as bad as my real brain, no easier to parse through. I want to be of use to this site, providing interesting perspectives, particularly in the search for “True Names” and the design of support structures like the aforementioned vaguely imagined platform—but I can’t do that if I can’t actually pull info out of my head, organize it, and write it up for others to read.
[Question] Any tips for eliciting one’s own latent knowledge?
I struggle to write. I cannot figure out how to access my own thoughts and ideas. They come in non-linguistic forms—vague feelings, 3D images, animations—with a verbal narrator on top, but my very bad memory, and the fact that my best thinking is done in the middle of the night when I ought to be asleep, means that I end up forming intuitions about things based upon my prior thoughts, but I’m unable to remember what those thoughts were, or even what intuitions have recently formed how. Instead, when something reminds me of a topic, I remember whatever is salient that I’ve already thought of at some unknown prior time.
I don’t possess a map of my own mind, nor even a search function. Just a mysterious black box. My mind is totally disorganized. And when I look at a blank page, I have no idea what to write, where to start. I don’t even know what questions to ask myself to prompt writing, nor how to answer any. I honestly have no idea how to think clearly. Particularly from a blank slate, without prompting or real-time communication with another person, who can dig things out of me I cannot retrieve on my own, by reminding me of things with their questions.
I’ve heard of the concept of “solve the whole problem day”, but alignment itself is not in my wheelhouse—I’m more of a “philosopher” (though that’s much too pretentious to call myself), and my “problems” are vague and undefined—nebulous clouds of concepts on which I fixate, returning again and again, like the nature (or, phenomenology?) of identity, boundaries, emotions—or plans for a digital platform for increasing collective intelligence, rationality, and coordination. And my “plans” are composed of an endless array of disconnected fragments I cannot put together—because, again, specific details only show up in my mind temporarily like electrons falling out of superposition, and then they return to being a cloudy orbital of pure intuition.
Does anyone else know what this feels like and have any tips for me? It’s maddening, and I’ve been suffering from it for basically my whole life. I’ve tried using the Zettelkasten system to “organize” my thoughts but it doesn’t work for me, the result is just a tangled mess as bad as my real brain, no easier to parse through. I want to be of use to this site, providing interesting perspectives, particularly in the search for “True Names” and the design of support structures like the aforementioned vaguely imagined platform—but I can’t do that if I can’t actually pull info out of my head, organize it, and write it up for others to read.