Interesting thread.
My only contribution was a suggestion about intuition, but it might have other ramifications.
I suggested that the flood of information that invades our minds hovers there leaving memories. I thought that an intuitive conclusion arises from our unconscious connection of these pieces of perhaps disparate information.
Perhaps triggered by snake-like flames in a fire!
Perhaps, insights, inspirations, and suchlike, are also the connection of fugitive memories to produce something "new".
There are other stimuli.
Maybe three decades ago I was having dinner with three others including David Friedman - son of Milton - and we got on to the question of value. David wiped me out. I am not often destroyed in debate, so I went back to the drawing board, so to speak.
Our of it came my "collectible" theory with regard to land. Also, a re-write of the Austrian ideas of value - I think fleshing out ideas that kind of hang in the air.
This stimulus came from a blow to my psyche. Nothing so esoteric as seeing snake-flames in the fire. But, just as effective in drawing to the foreground things I knew - but didn't know I knew.
Which describes (I think) a source of inspiration, innovation, and intuition.
Harry ------------------------------------------------------------
pete wrote:
On Sat, 20 Sep 2003, Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Pete, > >What you write below, IMHO, is excellent and accurate. I wouldn't demur >from a single word. > >However, the whole point about all this is -- as I wrote in my reply to >Ed -- that we can't "get at" the sort of lateral thinking that some would >wish to inculcate by one method or another because the components of new >ideas are partly unconscious. Very often -- and this almost always seems >to happen in cases of great innovation by geniuses -- one of the >components of a brilliant new idea is an accident! One of the components >is a total obsession with a particular problem, and the other component >is usually an accident -- a chance event, a casual conversation. > >The prototypical case -- which you will certainly know about -- is that >of Kekule's discovery of the 6-carbon-atom structure of benzene which had >baffled many of the best brains in science. This obsessed him and >occupied this daylight thinking for years. But it was not until he fell >asleep in front of a blazing fire with snake-like flames that he then >dreamed of six snakes in a ring, each snake eating the tail of another. >He woke up with the solution to the benzene ring -- a concept that no-one >else had come within a million miles of guessing. Obsession+accident = a >new idea. There's no method of simulating this, no matter how many de >Bono books you buy, or brainstorming course you go on. > >Keith Hudson
Keith, I concur totally. My description of the self-deception practiced by the brain makes these "other ways of knowing" notoriously resistant to exploitation by the conscious mind and its schemes and goals. Generally we get these as "insights", and they are sort of our unconscious mind's gift to us. However I am not confident to totally rule out the possibility that these faculties could be accessed and harnessed, as my extensive practice of introspection suggests that with a level of diligence atypical in western culture, introspective disciplines can lead to unsuspected revelations about our mental architecture. However, twenty years of persistent effort at contemplation is quite distinct from reading a few pop books and taking the odd weekend workshop, so I think your observation holds for the large part.
-Pete Vincent
At 16:59 19/09/2003 -0700, [PV] wrote:
>On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Pete, > > > >I echo Selma - an excellent piece that I enjoyed. > > > >(Here come the "but".) > > > >It didn't make the case against linear thinking. We can have a bunch of > >linear thinking going on at the same time. A skilled mind can do a lot of > >things with its limited on/off synapses. > > > >This reply will also serve to answer Keith's comments as well. I >did not mean to say that there is nothing in the mind resembling >linear thinking. I would have thought that it is so pervasive >as to need no defence. What I mean is that what has the form and >appearance of linear thinking is sometimes no such thing, rather >a verneer of logic which "rationalizes" a multitude of unconscious >inputs, too many, often too subtle, and too far from conscious >familiarity to be conceptualized in a way that the conscious mind >can recognize, which contributed to a decision. The conscious mind >knows the descision, and knows the data it is capable of recognizing >which went into the decision, but this does not mean that it >really knows all, or even the most important data, which went >into making the decision. The unrecognized data was nevertheless >processed by the unconscious mind out of sight of consciousness >and contributed or even determined the result. > >An example of the sort of thing I have in mind is how one makes the >determination to enter in to a transaction with a person. You may >believe that you have decided that the factual content of the deal >is what made up your mind for you, when in fact a deciding factor >was your unconscious reading of the person's body language which led >to the determination of whether they could be trusted. This may >never even reach the conscious mind, which is convinced that its >decision was based on a logical analysis of the particulars of >the transaction. > >This sort of deception is only possible because the mind is so >fluent in the manipulation of logic, and the execution of logical >thought, a process which is probably often exactly as it appears, >and without which we would never have achieved the ability to >count to ten, let alone develop higher mathematics. It is the >language the conscious mind understands most readily, and >works in all the time. And I agree with Keith that many things >which we do routinely and universally, like assembling the food >to cook dinner, or build a shelter, would be impossible without >purely linear thought. But because of this constant ongoing >self deception, we can rarely determine if and when the other >unrecognized inputs from other parts of the brain are contributing >to our thought. These are the sorts of things which go under the >general heading of "intuition" and "non-linear thought". > > > >This came in this morning from my eldest daughter - Jackie. > >------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > >Don't let this fool you, follow along and read it! > > > >Interesting Thought....... > > > >Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in > >waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht > >teh > >frist and lsat ltteer is in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl > >mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not > >raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. > >Knida ctue, eh???? > > > > > >Taht is azamnig! I rlleay did not hvae any pbroelm rdeanig taht at all! > > > >------------------------------------------------------------- > > > >I wouldn't have believed it until I read it - easily. > > > >Harry > >------------------------------------------------------ > >I venture to suggest that, first of all, this is a classic demonstration >of non-linear thought. If you wanted to accomplish reading that >with a linear thought process, it would have taken hours. The >reason you can read it at speed is precisely because all sorts >of preconscious wizard modules of your perception are cranking >away at full speed far out of reach of your conscious mind, >computing in parallel to solve the problems presented by each word >longer than three letters, using memory and pattern recognition, >both processes which are effortlessly easy for us, but so subtle >and complex that we are unable to model their function in any >way in a computer which can perform as well as we do without >even being aware of it. We, our conscious minds, get the resulting >answers, without ever being party to the incredible amount of >work involved, which would be so overwhelming and distracting >that it is best that we aren't aware of it. > >The second point is that it wouldn't be nearly so easy to >read if the paragraph were chosen with no word less than >seven letters long, and the internal letters were ordered >all consonants first, and all double letters broken up. >An epmrxlaey ittlrlsouian stcnneee pdvrioed ptlrnseey dssttnrmaoes >tihs tlhhgruooy, I tnhik. > > -Pete Vincent > > >pete wrote: > > >On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, [EMAIL PROTECTED] forwarded what > > > >Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > >Salvador. > > > > > >As always, it all depends on what you mean by intuition. > > > > > >My view is that intuition is the result of unconsciously bringing > > >separate and perhaps disparate thoughts together to reach a conclusion. > > > > > >In a note that didn't reach FW I pointed out that linear thinking (a b c > > >d e) is all we have.(in spite of Van Vogt's "Worlds of Null-A"). > > > > > >The next step would be network thinking, but I doubt it's possible - > > >until it happens. Accomplished and practised thinkers may "linear think" > > >so well that it looks more than it is - but I don't think we are out of > > >linear mood yet. > > > >Actually, pyschology demonstrates that this notion is an illusion. > >I'll just sketch a couple of examples, which are probably familiar. > >The truth is revealed by instances of physical brain function > >disruption, which can be generated by strokes, or by radical > >surgical intervention. The surgical instance is most impressive, > >as in this case, the majority of the brain is fully severed into > >left and right halves to stop massive epileptic attacks. As a > >result, the patients become, at the intellectual, interpretive > >level, two distinct entities which do not share any information, > >despite the fact that because the lower brain is still (must > >still be, for the patient to survive) intact, the patient percieves > >themselves as a single unitary entity. Probing the behaviour of > >such patients teases out the way the brain conspires to fool itself > >that it is behaving rationally. As you are probably familiar, > >when the patient's hands are placed in two boxes so they cannot > >be seen, which contain two different objects, then the patient > >is interrogated as to the content of the box which he can feel, > >if the answer is to be spoken, the response will relate to one > >box, but if it is to be written down, it will relate to the > >other box, as speech is on one side of the brain, and writing > >is on the other, and which ever side is to provide the answer > >conveys only that which it knows (the sense data from each > >hand goes only to one side of the brain). But if you try to > >point out the discrepancies in the reponses, the patient is > >found to have a surprising resistance to acknowledging the > >disparity. It can be demonstrated that each side of the brain > >uses every trick it can come up with to sneak access to the > >knowledge of the other half, meanwhile denying that there is > >any separation, flatly refusing to believe that two autonomous > >"thought engines" are operating, even when the evidence is > >indisputable. Why should this be? Because in reality this sort > >of deceit is going on all the time in normal healthy individuals, > >it is just that with considerable communication between the > >hemispheres, the illusion is much more seamless and easy to > >conceal. > > > >The other sort of damage which reveals the same deviousness > >occurs with stroke victims. Again, I'm sure you have encountered > >the stories. When a part of the visual cortex is damaged, a > >patient will draw pictures with one side of all the objects > >missing, but won't realize that it is gone. Or will be unable > >to acquire some piece of sensory information, but will aggressively > >"eavesdrop" on themselves to acquire the information by > >other means, while refusing to acknowledge that they are > >doing so. The important point being that in these cases, > >while their errors are glaringly obvious to all other observers, > >they are utterly invisible to themselves. > > > >These anecdotes, which I have only briefly indicated, point > >to the systemic misdirection the mind uses to maintain > >an illusion of a unitary self, whose behaviour is rational > >and consistent. In fact, the reality is that loads and > >loads of little semi-autonomous pieces of the brain are > >always churning away, sensing, filtering, interpreting, > >providing bits of information, and most importantly coming > >to conclusions, outside of the purview of conscious > >attention, which flits from "module" to "module", pulling > >in bits of resultant items to sew together to provide an > >apparent seamless, linear stream of awareness, with an > >apparent logical, rational narrative justification to > >hold it all together. But knowing what we now know about > >how this mechanism works, it should be clear that this > >narrative is essentially propaganda, a convenient myth to > >keep the individual from collapsing into an existential > >chaos of fractured identity. In truth, the brain works > >massively in parallel, and is not linear at all. > > > > -Pete Vincent
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.comcast.net/~haledward ****************************************************
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