I had a great day
I had a great day. After I finished my cog sci paper well before the deadline (a nice change), I strutted into my Indian Philosophy professor's office and argued with him about consciousness for two hours. I finally got to lay out my concerns with Vedanta and Yoga that I've had all semester; it was great to get all that released. I think he enjoyed the conversation as well.
He is not, as I first suspected, a kook. What I perceived as an anti-scientific attitude had a very human source. He claimed that he has repeatedly tried to get people in the Cognitive Science or Neuroscience departments to systematically study consciousness (getting Yogi's in meditative states into an fMRI), but they have been reluctant, turning instead to their fields of specialty, which he frustratingly declared to be "easy."
I could talk a lot about our conversation, but I won't, because...
I've had this experience a lot in the past week or so (and more, for ever, really...) where between me and the internet the major constraint on communicating is not my capacity to think but the rate at which I can effectively communicate. This is similar, somehow, to my having all the knowledge I could possibly use essentially at my fingertips (Google, Wikipedia). My only restriction on absorbing it is my ability to click and read.
There are some cog sci models of offloaded cognition--where we offload counting onto our fingers, or information storage into journals. Controversially, when cognition gets offloaded, the relevant active, cognizing system can be thought of as not the person acting, but the entire apparatus of person and matter.
The internet and I--we are one godly beast of cognition.
But I'm getting off track. The discussion with the professor ushered in one of my rare and ecstatic adrenaline-filled periods where I am totally detached from any inhibitions and react potently and effortless to all stimuli. I strode into dinner and was, as some people noticed, unusually funny, boisterous, animated. I felt like I could take on the whole fucking world...
That is my at my best, but it might as well be a second personality. If I knew the secret of unlocking that aspect of my self, I would... I dunno. But my life would be different.
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Operation: Write a Novel is underway. My collaborator, whose porn star name also happens to be Paul something, and he seems totally on board. I'm excited about this. The problem with feeling infinite while having one's cognition plugged into the internet is that it makes you realize how much space you need to fill with yourself. Blathering into the unknown via -ive-ournal is one way to go about it. But if Paul and I could swing a novel, that has the potentially to reach farther across this space....
He is not, as I first suspected, a kook. What I perceived as an anti-scientific attitude had a very human source. He claimed that he has repeatedly tried to get people in the Cognitive Science or Neuroscience departments to systematically study consciousness (getting Yogi's in meditative states into an fMRI), but they have been reluctant, turning instead to their fields of specialty, which he frustratingly declared to be "easy."
I could talk a lot about our conversation, but I won't, because...
I've had this experience a lot in the past week or so (and more, for ever, really...) where between me and the internet the major constraint on communicating is not my capacity to think but the rate at which I can effectively communicate. This is similar, somehow, to my having all the knowledge I could possibly use essentially at my fingertips (Google, Wikipedia). My only restriction on absorbing it is my ability to click and read.
There are some cog sci models of offloaded cognition--where we offload counting onto our fingers, or information storage into journals. Controversially, when cognition gets offloaded, the relevant active, cognizing system can be thought of as not the person acting, but the entire apparatus of person and matter.
The internet and I--we are one godly beast of cognition.
But I'm getting off track. The discussion with the professor ushered in one of my rare and ecstatic adrenaline-filled periods where I am totally detached from any inhibitions and react potently and effortless to all stimuli. I strode into dinner and was, as some people noticed, unusually funny, boisterous, animated. I felt like I could take on the whole fucking world...
That is my at my best, but it might as well be a second personality. If I knew the secret of unlocking that aspect of my self, I would... I dunno. But my life would be different.
-----
Operation: Write a Novel is underway. My collaborator, whose porn star name also happens to be Paul something, and he seems totally on board. I'm excited about this. The problem with feeling infinite while having one's cognition plugged into the internet is that it makes you realize how much space you need to fill with yourself. Blathering into the unknown via -ive-ournal is one way to go about it. But if Paul and I could swing a novel, that has the potentially to reach farther across this space....