Cool story! But why did you expect that your subconscious would tell you when it learned something? Did your subconscious tell you when it learned the rule that specifies the precise ordering of words in the phrase “five smart Japanese government officials” (as opposed to for example “smart five government Japanese officials”)?
I expected that if it was noticing the mat’s presence, an object-recognition problem, that I would be consciously aware of it. I’m not aware that I subconsciously adjust to the presence of objects without realizing they’re there.
I think that if we were made consciously aware of everything that our “muscle memory” has learned to do, that we would be inundated with information that would distract us from the executive overview of our lives. The micro-management of our existence would likely drive us insane.
The question here is whether this is a muscle-memory matter, or an object-recognition / reasoning one, and what the cue is, and whether the nature of the cue determines whether it enters consciousness. It suggests that “muscle memory” can be based on precise spatial location. Adjusting your step due to the presence of an object, however, is not muscle memory.
Reading the wikipedia article on “muscle memory”, the concept looks like a dormitive principle. Taken literally, it makes no sense as applied to riding a bicycle (one of the examples in that article), because what you actually have to do with your muscles depends on what is happening with the bicycle in the moment. You are not playing back a stored recording of muscle movements.
Based on my own experience, it seems like ‘muscle memory’ means your brain learning abstractions of motion. So when you know how to ride a bike, you only have to consciously think ‘turn left’ rather than ‘move my right hand forward and pull my left hand back and lean a little bit to the left’. These abstractions are not just recordings, as they can vary along one or more dimensions: you can turn sharply left or gently left, and your ‘muscle memory’ knows how to implement that.
‘Sit in my desk chair’ might also be a learned abstraction that involves navigating the slippery mat.
you only have to consciously think ‘turn left’ rather than ‘move my right hand forward and pull my left hand back and lean a little bit to the left’.
That isn’t how you turn left on a bicycle, consciously or otherwise. If you do that you will fall off to the right. What you actually have to do is control your rate of falling over at close to zero while also controlling the rate of turning at a desired value. This cannot be done by memorising any mapping from desired turn rate to anything that you do with your muscles. A bicycle is an unstable system that the rider must continuously maintain his balance on.
You can think “turn left” and without any other conscious input your body executes a successful left turn on the bicycle. Something is happening in between; the common name for this something is ‘muscle memory’. It’s not necessarily a great name.
We don’t know exactly how muscle memory works, but we can make observations about its functioning. For instance, that it cannot consist solely of exact repetition of motions, and that it must be able incorporate real-time sensory feedback (or else biking would be impossible).
Cool story! But why did you expect that your subconscious would tell you when it learned something? Did your subconscious tell you when it learned the rule that specifies the precise ordering of words in the phrase “five smart Japanese government officials” (as opposed to for example “smart five government Japanese officials”)?
I expected that if it was noticing the mat’s presence, an object-recognition problem, that I would be consciously aware of it. I’m not aware that I subconsciously adjust to the presence of objects without realizing they’re there.
I think that if we were made consciously aware of everything that our “muscle memory” has learned to do, that we would be inundated with information that would distract us from the executive overview of our lives. The micro-management of our existence would likely drive us insane.
The question here is whether this is a muscle-memory matter, or an object-recognition / reasoning one, and what the cue is, and whether the nature of the cue determines whether it enters consciousness. It suggests that “muscle memory” can be based on precise spatial location. Adjusting your step due to the presence of an object, however, is not muscle memory.
Reading the wikipedia article on “muscle memory”, the concept looks like a dormitive principle. Taken literally, it makes no sense as applied to riding a bicycle (one of the examples in that article), because what you actually have to do with your muscles depends on what is happening with the bicycle in the moment. You are not playing back a stored recording of muscle movements.
Likewise walking on a slippery mat.
Based on my own experience, it seems like ‘muscle memory’ means your brain learning abstractions of motion. So when you know how to ride a bike, you only have to consciously think ‘turn left’ rather than ‘move my right hand forward and pull my left hand back and lean a little bit to the left’. These abstractions are not just recordings, as they can vary along one or more dimensions: you can turn sharply left or gently left, and your ‘muscle memory’ knows how to implement that.
‘Sit in my desk chair’ might also be a learned abstraction that involves navigating the slippery mat.
That isn’t how you turn left on a bicycle, consciously or otherwise. If you do that you will fall off to the right. What you actually have to do is control your rate of falling over at close to zero while also controlling the rate of turning at a desired value. This cannot be done by memorising any mapping from desired turn rate to anything that you do with your muscles. A bicycle is an unstable system that the rider must continuously maintain his balance on.
While true, this misses the point of his post, which is that muscle memory is the unconscious mastery of a complex abstraction.
That brings it back to dormitive principles again. What would it mean for muscle memory to not be “the unconscious mastery of a complex abstraction”?
It would mean that SilentCal had not given you a useful keyword you can use to learn more about something that perplexed you.
You can think “turn left” and without any other conscious input your body executes a successful left turn on the bicycle. Something is happening in between; the common name for this something is ‘muscle memory’. It’s not necessarily a great name.
We don’t know exactly how muscle memory works, but we can make observations about its functioning. For instance, that it cannot consist solely of exact repetition of motions, and that it must be able incorporate real-time sensory feedback (or else biking would be impossible).
Do we disagree on anything?
Only the usefulness of the name. “Stuff” would more clearly capture what we know about it. :) I think we can leave it there.