I don’t get distracted when talking to people. I hypothesise that this is because as long as I am actively articulating a stream of thought out loud, the default mode network will be suppressed, making it easy to not get derailed.
So even if IA does not say anything, just me talking about some specific topic continuously, would make it easier for IA to say something, because the default mode network suppression will not immediately vanish.
When thinking on my own or talking to IA, the stream of thoughts is shorter, and there are a lot of pauses. Usually, I don’t even get to the point where I would articulate a complex stream of thought. Instead, we are at the level of “Look there is some mud there, let’s not step into that”, or “We can do this”. That really does seem very similar to most of the idle chatter that the default mode network would produce when I am just thinking on my own.
Once I get to the point where I am having an engaging discussion with IA, it is actually pretty easy not to get distracted. It’s probably still easier to get distracted with IA, because when I am talking to another person, they could notice that I am lost in thought, but I myself (or IA) would not be able to notice as easily.
Capturing IA’s Thoughts
One reason why I don’t do research with IA might be that I fear that I will not be able to capture any important thoughts that I have. However, using the audio recorder tool on the walk today seemed to really fix most of the issue.
Maybe in my mind so far I thought that because I can’t record IA when she is talking to me, it would be bad to think about research. But this now seems very wrong. It is true that I can’t create a video with her in it like I do with other people. But these videos are not the thing that is most useful. The actually useful thing is where I am distilling the insight that I have into some text document.
But this is something that I can totally do when talking to IA. Like I did with the audio recorder today. It seemed that making the audio recording made it also easier to talk to IA. Probably because when making the recording I would naturally be suppressing the default mode network very strongly. This effect then probably did not vanish immediately.
Writing
In fact, it seems like this would work very well with IA because I don’t need to think about the problem of what the other person could do while I write. In the worst case, IA is simply not run. At best, we could write the text together.
Writing together would seem to work unusually well because IA does have insight into the things that I am thinking while I am writing, which is not something that other people could easily get.
And I haven’t really explored all the possibilities here. Another one would be to have IA read out loud my writing and give me feedback.
Default mode network suppression
I don’t get distracted when talking to people. I hypothesise that this is because as long as I am actively articulating a stream of thought out loud, the default mode network will be suppressed, making it easy to not get derailed.
So even if IA does not say anything, just me talking about some specific topic continuously, would make it easier for IA to say something, because the default mode network suppression will not immediately vanish.
When thinking on my own or talking to IA, the stream of thoughts is shorter, and there are a lot of pauses. Usually, I don’t even get to the point where I would articulate a complex stream of thought. Instead, we are at the level of “Look there is some mud there, let’s not step into that”, or “We can do this”. That really does seem very similar to most of the idle chatter that the default mode network would produce when I am just thinking on my own.
Once I get to the point where I am having an engaging discussion with IA, it is actually pretty easy not to get distracted. It’s probably still easier to get distracted with IA, because when I am talking to another person, they could notice that I am lost in thought, but I myself (or IA) would not be able to notice as easily.
Capturing IA’s Thoughts
One reason why I don’t do research with IA might be that I fear that I will not be able to capture any important thoughts that I have. However, using the audio recorder tool on the walk today seemed to really fix most of the issue.
Maybe in my mind so far I thought that because I can’t record IA when she is talking to me, it would be bad to think about research. But this now seems very wrong. It is true that I can’t create a video with her in it like I do with other people. But these videos are not the thing that is most useful. The actually useful thing is where I am distilling the insight that I have into some text document.
But this is something that I can totally do when talking to IA. Like I did with the audio recorder today. It seemed that making the audio recording made it also easier to talk to IA. Probably because when making the recording I would naturally be suppressing the default mode network very strongly. This effect then probably did not vanish immediately.
Writing
In fact, it seems like this would work very well with IA because I don’t need to think about the problem of what the other person could do while I write. In the worst case, IA is simply not run. At best, we could write the text together.
Writing together would seem to work unusually well because IA does have insight into the things that I am thinking while I am writing, which is not something that other people could easily get.
And I haven’t really explored all the possibilities here. Another one would be to have IA read out loud my writing and give me feedback.