Nice! I think this is insightful and useful. It matches my understanding of cognitive psychology, but it’s framed in a more useful way. Regardless of what’s happening in the brain, I think this is a great type of TAP to work on.
I think what’s usually happening here is that by using that TAP you have created a habit (or automatic behavior/System 1 pattern/unconscious behavior) that says “think about this thing now”. Which seems odd, because weren’t you already thinking about closing that door? You sort of were, in that it was represented in your sensory and motor system. But you sort of weren’t, in that it wasn’t represented in your global workspace (higher amodal cortical areas). You were simultaneously thinking of something else distant or abstract. (Or perhaps you were “zoned out” and thinking of/representing nothing coherent in those higher brain areas).
The tricky bit here is that you lose memory of the thing you were thinking about just before your attention switched to closing that door. Perhaps you were already “sentient” (actively thinking), but about something else. Or perhaps you weren’t sentient—you were “zoned out” and not actively thinking about anything. Your brain was representing something, but it wasn’t either goal oriented or danger oriented, so it/you was just letting representations arise and dissolve.
In either case, the return to “sapience” here is your brain asking itself the question “what is important about what I’m physically doing?” (with some pointers maybe to the problem with closing something without means to open it again).
This habit generalizing so well is wonderful, and a good reason for us to try to install TAPs in similar situations, particularly surrounding addictive behaviors. I wonder if it generalizes better because of pulling your full attention/representational capacity/question-asking potential to that situation, so that you’re expanding your concept of what happened and how it’s useful.
I wondered about the global workspace thing too. I kind of wonder if the auto-generalization thing happens nicely because the “summon sapience” thing puts more of what’s going on into global workspace, meaning it’s integrating more context, so whatever it is that does strategic stuff is accounting for more of what’s relevant.
I’m just making stuff up there. But it’s a fun story. It’s at least consistent with what I’ve noticed of my experience with these algorithms!
Nice! I think this is insightful and useful. It matches my understanding of cognitive psychology, but it’s framed in a more useful way. Regardless of what’s happening in the brain, I think this is a great type of TAP to work on.
I think what’s usually happening here is that by using that TAP you have created a habit (or automatic behavior/System 1 pattern/unconscious behavior) that says “think about this thing now”. Which seems odd, because weren’t you already thinking about closing that door? You sort of were, in that it was represented in your sensory and motor system. But you sort of weren’t, in that it wasn’t represented in your global workspace (higher amodal cortical areas). You were simultaneously thinking of something else distant or abstract. (Or perhaps you were “zoned out” and thinking of/representing nothing coherent in those higher brain areas).
The tricky bit here is that you lose memory of the thing you were thinking about just before your attention switched to closing that door. Perhaps you were already “sentient” (actively thinking), but about something else. Or perhaps you weren’t sentient—you were “zoned out” and not actively thinking about anything. Your brain was representing something, but it wasn’t either goal oriented or danger oriented, so it/you was just letting representations arise and dissolve.
In either case, the return to “sapience” here is your brain asking itself the question “what is important about what I’m physically doing?” (with some pointers maybe to the problem with closing something without means to open it again).
This habit generalizing so well is wonderful, and a good reason for us to try to install TAPs in similar situations, particularly surrounding addictive behaviors. I wonder if it generalizes better because of pulling your full attention/representational capacity/question-asking potential to that situation, so that you’re expanding your concept of what happened and how it’s useful.
I like your exploration here.
I wondered about the global workspace thing too. I kind of wonder if the auto-generalization thing happens nicely because the “summon sapience” thing puts more of what’s going on into global workspace, meaning it’s integrating more context, so whatever it is that does strategic stuff is accounting for more of what’s relevant.
I’m just making stuff up there. But it’s a fun story. It’s at least consistent with what I’ve noticed of my experience with these algorithms!