Brain exercises

[Noxy]

I feel like sharing this with you all, it's just some basic exercises to unlock some mental abilities, if you don't have them yet:

Split-focus:
When you watch a duck, your mind focuses on said duck.

When you think about something, you usually may think in first person. "I need to buy bread", "I need to sleep", etc...
But you also have the ability to think of yourself in the third person; "He needs to buy bread", "He needs to sleep", etc... For sure this is not common, but the point is that it is completely possible to think of yourself in the third-person.

Now, I want you to think about a duck as clear as possible, in other words, I want you to focus as much of your attention as possible in this duck. Got it? Good.
Now, without breaking focus and keeping the duck as clear as possible in your minds eye, I want you to think about yourself in third-person thinking about the duck.

If you manage to do this, congrats, you're closer to dividing your focus in two. I've heard reading books whilst listening to someone talking is also a good exercise for this.



Alternative cognitive processing:
Do you have a voice in your head?
If you do, close your eyes and talk, try to feel 'which part' of your brain makes this voice happen, you don't need to be technical, focus on the feeligns. After you identify which part of your brain spawns this, I want you to do the following:

Do not allow it to speak. Focus on that area of your brain that you feel invokes the voice, and ensure that said voice does not say any thing.
After you accomplish complete silence, try reading, but you are not allowed to use your inner voice nor the part of your brain associated with said inner voice; You must read without using either of these.

If you manage to do this, congrats, you're more in touch with the symbolic/abstract part of your brain.
You will realize this part of your brain thinks really, really fast, it's extremely useful for certain applications.
If you want to expand on this ability, just keep trying to do complex stuff 'without thinking' conventionally.

---

Do you know any exercises like these?

 

[Lamoa]

Imagine a red cube, now rotate it continuously in your mind. You can do so freely and as long as you will.

 

[Andraserapis]

Here's a fun drawing exercise, but it requires pencil + paper obviously. Doing it can really increase your copying abilities even if it doesn't produce anything usable.

Find a reference image, preferably a scene in real life, and sit at a desk to draw. Flowers, hands, complex organic forms are best. Position your reference so that you need to turn your head almost 90 degrees from looking straight ahead. Place your pencil on the center of your paper, and then turn your head to your reference. Your paper should be totally out of sight.

Slowly but steadily, move the point where your eye is looking around each line in the reference image. Just moving your eyes at a steady pace, but again, slowly. Do this for a bit and then move your focus to somewhere on a line near the middle of the reference. Now keep steadily moving your eye around the lines of the drawing but sync it with your hand. Try to silence any inner voices--if you've done meditation, use those skills. As you move your eye, you should be moving your hand. Remember: steady, slowly, in perfect sync. And also NEVER LOOK AT YOUR PAPER. Do this until you've moved your eyes over every line in the reference. Then and ONLY THEN can you look at the paper.

Although the drawings made with this method don't resemble the reference, you can pick out small fragments that are incredibly life-like, much more than you've probably ever done if you've never really tried drawing. This is a pretty well-known exercise amongst those that teach drawing, but I wished I knew about it earlier. It's honestly a better attention sink for meditation than breathing or candle-watching, at least for me.

 

[angertard]

This sounds a little like how the the cold control theory of hypnosis would interpret hypnosis: forming intention to do things, without forming thoughts about thoughts about those intentions...

Theories of Hypnosis | Hypnosis And Suggestion

Theories about hypnosis can be categorised into 'state' and 'non-state' approaches.

hypnosisandsuggestion.com

Cold control theory of hypnosis considers the distinction between control and awareness in terms of Rosenthal's HOT (higher order thought) theory. According to Rosenthal we are conscious of mental states by having thoughts about those states. A thought about being in a mental state is a second-order thought (SOT), because it is a mental state about a mental state (e.g. 'I see that the cat is black'). Third-order thoughts (TOTs) are also possible, by becoming aware of having an SOT (e.g. 'I am aware that the cat I am seeing is black'). The cold control theory of hypnosis states that a successful response to hypnotic suggestions can be achieved by forming an intention to perform the action or cognitive activity required, without forming the HOTs about intending that action that would normally accompany reflective performance of the action.

Spoiler: more in link

http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/Zoltan_Dienes/cold%20control%20chapter.pdf

The main reason I am skeptical of intelligence-focused brain exercises is that I am lazy and don't want to do them, the second reason is that there is not a lot of evidence for any of them boosting cross-task transferable, general intelligence. People say stuff like "Dual n-back only makes you better at dual n-back." I heard a while back that intellectual work is very well coupled to the multiple demand network in the brain, to the point you can basically estimate IQ score by total volume damaged in this one network of the brain- and it lights up across tons of different tasks. Obviously you still need other parts of the brain to get access to the part that does the intelligent stuff, and you could have disabilities or traumas that block traffic between it and the senses or memories or something.

That said, you could still probably improve intellect by way of memory capabilities with something like that. I mean, the method of loci and other memorization tricks are out there- if you know you will need to know something, it makes sense to really learn it. Unless it is stuff that you can solidify better through application, then I'd just cram and get real experience before the memory fades.

One skill I've heard people recommend is intuitive Bayesian inference. Like, you guess at some basic probabilities and visualize rectangles with lengths that correspond to the basic probabilities. It went something like this: So like height might be divided into two chunks, 30% Yes and 70% No, and that means the Yes rectangles will be vertically shorter than the No rectangles. Maybe width will be A 15%, B 35% and C 50% so there will be three YES and three NO rectangles. If you can imagine these rectangles, each of them can correspond to a sort of combination of circumstances- and this is might be better than what your brain might do by default? Like if you don't know if you are being paranoid, manic, traumatized or self-discouraging, you use this to try to estimate how likely different things are. I feel like there was something else you do with this that I am not remembering.

In the same vein, back-of-the-napkin estimates and sanity checks are a good skill to practice

Spoiler: link

Mixed Martial Maths - Simple Reasoning Tools For Complex Phenomena

Engineering, Robotics, AI, Technology

dtransposed.github.io

I do try to imagine things on the spot, and imagine new things that I haven't imagined before on the spot. Sometimes I just try to keep a detailed sense of the relative scale of differently sized cubes. I do a bit of meditation and sometimes lucid dreaming.

 

[totse]

If you manage to do this, congrats, you're more in touch with the symbolic/abstract part of your brain.

Funny you should call it that; the term unsymbolized thinking is where this is addressed in research. But this is "unsymbolized" as in not associated with mental imagery, where "imagery" is "imagined (or emulated) things": Visualization, inner speech, inner hearing[1], olfactory/gustatory imagery, kinesthetic imagery (an underacknowledged part of the "visualization" athletes swear by) . . .

I have a couple of self-quotes from when this came up elsewhere:

can you explain to me what exactly thinking without language is like? you mentioned pictures and images, sure that works for past memories, but how do you think about a solution to a problem without words?

Have you ever imagined the sequence of tasks needed to handle a situation, not by visualizing them or describing them in words in your head, but rather stepping through them in sort of quick flashes of intuition or intention?

You aren't looking at mental pictures of the steps or anything, but it's very close -- if you tend toward visual thinking at all, visualizations practically intrude into the realm of pure thought if you stop on any one concept for too long. It's very difficult at least for me to prevent the thoughts from crystallizing into a visualization or a verbal articulation once I'm aware that I'm trying to think in pure abstract concept.

But if you keep moving quickly enough, you can develop only the vague [n.b. 20250506: may be poor choice of word as the intentions do not feel fuzzy in scope, but I feel unsure of knowing them, I guess?] intention of doing each step, and an unsymbolized conceptual awareness of how each step will lead into the next, certain problems that could arise and how you'll mitigate them, intuitions of how some person or other might respond to something, which of a set of choices you would prefer, and more. And on a good day when your mind is nimble, you can arrive at a complete understanding of how you intend to do something before you have visualized or verbalized any of it at all.

This was my primary mode in childhood. I would also read fluently without redundantly manifesting the words in any form (though I would voluntarily examine the sound of some turn of phrase or visualize a word to think more about the connotation or feeling evoked by its shape, or whatever).

I noticed from the teens a disturbing increase in the difficulty of not subvocalizing while reading. This stayed pretty much the same rather than growing into something worse as it seemed it might -- I can still speed-read, usually, but I'm nearly overwhelmed by a sort of anxiety of failing to have actually fully understood. Feels like I can't be sure I didn't skip something.

Similarly, unsymbolized thought still occurs but is highly volatile and almost always must collapse to a visualization or articulation or a sensory or emotional or whatever other experiential emulation. I can still complete significant sequences of unsymbolized thought -- I always tended toward the term 'concept' and derivatives too -- especially in the area of developing a plan of tangible action, or thinking about the cause of some event, whether that's tracing the root cause of a technical problem or piecing together an interpersonal one, or about likely outcomes of actions, or...

Well, I'm not entirely sure I know the whole list, but anyway, if I somehow avoid going meta at all I can stay in that mode, but the first hint of metacognition, and especially if I start thinking about how I'm thinking without imagining anything tangible, and it's very hard not to start solidifying things into word or images even by accident.

One of those papers at the Google Scholar search link should go into some interesting stuff about the mechanism of unsymbolized thinking. I don't have enough academic/scientific insight to know how speculative vs. demonstrated this is, but it sounded plausible. In a nutshell, you know how someone might show subtle movements of the speech articulating muscles while reading to themselves? The idea is there are more steps in this chain: Subvocalized reading is reading aloud but aborted instead of carrying the motions out. Silent reading with inner speech is aborted subvocalization. There is wordless inner speech, which (I think) is aborted inner speech. And so (possibly having skipped some things) we arrive at unsymbolized thinking, which is merely aborted mental imagery.

Now, to chain it "backward" like this would almost seem to imply that the would-be form of the aborted imagery and its descendant action already exist -- but is this only an illusion of framing? If you have only so far had (or become aware of?) an unsymbolized thought, then what is it that determines what form of mental imagery it will crystallize into unbidden? Does it then follow that the ultimate physical action at the other end of the chain from the unsymbolized thought is already, in some sense, done, even if we abandon the chain? Maybe this is why Jesus said that bit about how if you be mirin' that m'lady then, yea verily, thou hast already smitten that side piece *pounds chest* Right Here, Homie.

I don't have time to figure out which papers those are because I spent it running my mouth here, but I can see about it later if someone is intrigued and can't find them.

1. That these are distinct is covered in another (or the same?) interesting paper somewhere in there

 

[Noxy]

Maybe this is why Jesus said that bit about how if you be mirin' that m'lady then, yea verily, thou hast already smitten that side piece *pounds chest* Right Here, Homie.

You're killing me

Similarly, unsymbolized thought still occurs but is highly volatile and almost always must collapse to a visualization or articulation or a sensory or emotional or whatever other experiential emulation.

I'm surprised, it's the first time I see actual research on this, and this is clearly someone that has indeed experienced it; It's really, really hard to 'maintain' a non-verbal, non-visual train of thought. It has that weird dream-like quality where you stop doing it without even realizing you did so. I have to read into these articles, thanks for sharing all of this information!

Now, to chain it "backward" like this would almost seem to imply that the would-be form of the aborted imagery and its descendant action already exist

It would indeed, I remember a study that claims the brain makes decisions before conscious awareness of said decisions. I wouldn't say that this has any sort of effect on the physical world like your Jesus quote, but it could mean that desire may form before your awareness of said desire comes. Of course, this is not the first nor only 'blind spot' in conscious awareness.

 

[Some_porcupine]

that unimagining reminds me of chomsky un-imperative
tho idont understand neither

 

[Junious]

Reading occult literature with an aim of understanding the hidden geometry of the universe is one well trodden path to improving mental powers. The ideal entry point to this path is the work of Dion Fortune, who is an early 20th century mystic said to have defeated Hitler in psychic warfare before is defeat on the battle field. In her book The Training and Work of an Initiate (https://archive.org/details/dion-fortune-the-training-and-work-of-an-initiate/mode/2up) she gives guidelines for studying "the occult" as it existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Now here's the kicker -- a lot of this is visualization exercises based on dense and complicated prose coupled with eastern Buddhist/Yoga self awareness and power centers. After Initiate one should move on to The Cosmic Doctrine (https://archive.org/details/dion-fortune-the-cosmic-doctrine/mode/2up) which is almost incomprehensible on it's own but is turned into a series of thought and visualization exercises meant to flesh out in ones head the separation of planes, differences in scale on the meat plane, and how to use your mind and feelings to serve you rather than be controlled by them. I highly recommend digging into the primers posted a few years ago on ecosophia (the blog of John Michael Greer) for doing the mental capacity exercises in the cosmic doctrine. The crazy thing is that the first principles of The Cosmic Doctrine mirror those of an introductory physical chemistry or statistical mechanics textbook, but using raw visualization power of the brain in favor of equations to generate curves. I found working through these books a few years ago to be an interesting and rewarding experience in which I learned the basis of most western occult practice -- cosmic doctrine is the stuff you pay big bucks to have revealed to you in the masonic temple or by the hermetic order of the golden dawn or by the rosicrucian mail order text. Enjoy it here for free and unlock your hidden mental potential!

 

[totse]

It's really, really hard to 'maintain' a non-verbal, non-visual train of thought.

I think it's easiest when I've woken up in early-early morning, before the sun, quiet house, crisp outside (weather is probably not a factor but maybe comfort is), and I'm not out of it but I am maybe still a bit spaced and still in the phase of sitting around and having a hot drink or whatever. Also ideal writing time.

It would indeed, I remember a study that claims the brain makes decisions before conscious awareness of said decisions. I wouldn't say that this has any sort of effect on the physical world like your Jesus quote, but it could mean that desire may form before your awareness of said desire comes. Of course, this is not the first nor only 'blind spot' in conscious awareness.

The following to physical conclusions is, of course, supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but I do slightly get the feeling or entertain the distant possibility that there's somehow something to it, lol.

There's the matter of post-hoc rationalizations of subjective preferences (as featured in Ramey's blog/books). I forget all of the details, but they demonstrated somehow that: A decision is made about which of a pair of paintings, e.g., is preferred. We perceive that we evaluate the paintings, then decide which one we prefer based on qualities weighed prior to the decision. But ackshually, we look at the paintings, decide unconsciously and pretty quickly which one we like, and then spend the rest of the time making up an explanation for why we like it. Or something like that.

Maybe I should actually look at your link and make sure I'm not on the same thing, lol.

This also brings to mind Rene Girard's mimetics (mimicry not memetics) of desire, but I'm not sure it's really that apt of a tie-in, and I still need to revisit that and see if it's really as profound as it seemed.

 

[Noxy]

the work of Dion Fortune

I have been aching for some heavy reading on similar topics as those of prometheus rising. Thanks a lot for the book recommendations!

defeated Hitler in psychic warfare before is defeat on the battle field

Funniest thread on Agora
However it is true that Hitler was heavy into occult stuff, otherwise why would he bury swasticas?

 

[Some_porcupine]

It would indeed, I remember a study that claims the brain makes decisions before conscious awareness of said decisions. I wouldn't say that this has any sort of effect on the physical world like your Jesus quote, but it could mean that desire may form before your awareness of said desire comes. Of course, this is not the first nor only 'blind spot' in conscious awareness.

either "muscle (count-in brain) memory" or non-local theory (we had there: )
(but i might be totally wrong and guess because more i learn (and forgot how) the less i... you know the drill:

Non-Local Consciousness

Been reading about consciousness a lot recently after diving into the "CIA remote viewing" rabbithole. The most interesting thing to me was that the studies done were very scientifically sound, and virtually all PhDs involved in the program agreed that "remote viewing" worked... Sometimes. The...

forum.agoraroad.com

 

[kimn]

Oh my friends, I am envious of those who have still not heard the good word. Get into tulpamancy - you won't regret it.

 

[wavve-creator]

Say something false again and again until you believe it, there your depression is gone.

 

[Some_porcupine]

Say something false again and again until you believe it, there your depression is gone.

this pro-tip reminds me of that thread on "is morality real"

 

[fairytalekisses]

Imagine a red cube, now rotate it continuously in your mind. You can do so freely and as long as you will.

its better when you make it an animal like a sheep or a dog

 

[Arcensyl]

Do not allow it to speak. Focus on that area of your brain that you feel invokes the voice, and ensure that said voice does not say any thing.

I'm curious, is there any advantage to doing this? I assume it could maybe help you read faster if you normally do silent reading with an inner voice narrating it.

I tried to do both of these experiments, and this second one was really interesting. I rely on my inner voice almost exclusively for normal thoughts. I can still visualize stuff with my mind fairly clearly, but it takes conscious effort to do so. As far as I remember, I don't think I've ever thought about abstract concepts without reasoning about it through my inner voice. I'm sure I did when I was really young and lacked command of English, but that's way too far back for me to remember anything.

It was surprisingly easy to feel a general area where my inner voice came from when I tried; I just thought about it and it was there. Of course, actively trying to mute it was the hard part. For whatever reason, my immediate idea to do this was to essentially imagine myself squeezing this area to suppress it. I also noticed that I reflexively start holding my breath every time I try this, which is interesting. While doing this definitely made my mental soundscape different, I can't really explain how. I feel like using my inner voice is so ingrained that I can't actually tell when its there or not. Like how you mentioned in post #6, its also really easy to accidentally fall out of this state.

 

[totse]

I rely on my inner voice almost exclusively for normal thoughts.

What's your inner voice like? Are you speaking internally, or hearing internally? (Even if it's your own voice, you can "hear" it without "speaking" it.)

If you get stuck with your current method, try a compassionate sort of approach. Rather than squeezing, maybe it would help if the aim is to allow yourself to be comfortable without fully articulated thoughts.

The voice is not the thoughts; the thought has already happened by then, but if your experience is anything like mine, the missing piece is a little more confidence that you know/think/intend what you know/think/intend, without seeking verification in the concrete. Maybe it will get you more time in the unsymbolized phase. You might also experiment with sustaining the state by hopping along, not staying on any one granule too long, just skimming.

For practice deferring the engagement/processing of thoughts, try out the Cycles of Ten breathing meditation under the red code block text, past the intro: rentry.co/VulcanMeditation (yes really)

I'm not throwing the shades at you or anyone here and I'm not some wordless sage, but I just wanted to say as an aside that if there are NPCs, then it must surely be the monologuelets who think they are the ubermensch because they can't think without always putting everything into words or pictures, words or pictures. Do you think in words or pictures, they would say to us. Stand on this or that side of the room. Sad! Is this what they call "clamped"?

 

[Arcensyl]

What's your inner voice like? Are you speaking internally, or hearing internally? (Even if it's your own voice, you can "hear" it without "speaking" it.)

I don't really think about this much, so its somewhat hard to describe. I guess its closer to "speaking" than just "hearing". To me, both internal and external voices feel like part of the same process. Going from my inner voice to actually vocalizing is almost like flipping an imaginary switch to the "mode" of speech. My inner voice usually "sounds" like my external one, but its pretty easy to make it sound like someone else.

If you get stuck with your current method, try a compassionate sort of approach. Rather than squeezing, maybe it would help if the aim is to allow yourself to be comfortable without fully articulated thoughts.

I think relaxing could be a good approach. If we want to use a muscle analogy, then "squeezing" is basically me holding the muscle and preventing it from moving. It could be good to try relaxing it so that it naturally comes to a standstill instead of forcing it there. Personally, I feel like my issue is less being uncomfortable without fully articulated thoughts, but rather that I'm unable to even perceive the abstract thoughts happening underneath. I can hear the narrator, but I am blind to the scene being described. I'll try this out later.

The voice is not the thoughts; the thought has already happened by then, but if your experience is anything like mine, the missing piece is a little more confidence that you know/think/intend what you know/think/intend, without seeking verification in the concrete.

As I somewhat mentioned above, I do think the inner voice is more of a narrator instead of anything else. All of the thoughts and logic are happening at some lower, abstract level, while the inner voice is the brain going back and translating these into a more concrete, articulated representation. I'm sure that I can think without it, but its more like a habit that's extremely hard to break.

You might also experiment with sustaining the state by hopping along, not staying on any one granule too long, just skimming.

I noticed this helped while I was initially messing around with this exercise. I can keep this state going for longer while reading if I keep my eyes moving quickly over the text. If I focus on one part for too long or slow down too much, then I'll quickly fall out of this state and my inner voice will re-assert itself.

For practice deferring the engagement/processing of thoughts, try out the Cycles of Ten breathing meditation under the red code block text, past the intro: rentry.co/VulcanMeditation (yes really)

I'll be sure to take a look at this soon, thanks. I've never really gotten into anything related to meditation before, but its something I've been curious about. Its definitely worth trying, and I think I'd benefit from having more granular control over my own mentality.

 

[totse]

Cool, it sounds like the meditation might be useful then. I'm not saying I used it to get better at this, but based on how it was for me, I'm strongly guessing it would help to some degree. The Vulcan thing is definitely not a vital part of it, but I found the framing interesting and the phrasing accessible (it's the document that got me into meditation years ago (despite that, I have unfortunately not "been meditating for years")). Any mindfulness / "be aware of your thoughts as they appear and let them drift by" meditation should do just as well. The one described there is particularly unburdened by complications compared to what I was finding at the time, though.

 

[Noxy]

I'm curious, is there any advantage to doing this?

At some point you can ditch the inner-voice entirely and think exclusively using this weird method; I can't say for certain but I think it does help a lot with lateral thinking.

It was surprisingly easy to feel a general area where my inner voice came from when I tried

Seems like you have a 'thing' for this!
I wonder if you can also get rid of headaches like I do... This one will may sound like a lot of mumbo-jumbo:

Before anything, you need to be able to feel more than just a part of your body, so, first I want you to try and feel that there is something flowing inside of you, alongside your blood. You can call it energy, aether, qi or whatever you want, it does not matter.

If you are able to physically feel this energy qi thing flowing, you are ready; Next time your head hurts or you get a migraine try this: feel this thing flowing inside you, however this time there is something encompassing the parts that hurt in your head. Concentrate in the parts that hurt, and put your hands somewhere above your head as if you were holding a vase on top of your head.
Between your hands, visualize a black, featureless leech (it does not matter if you 'feel' it or not), and picture this thing sucking away all the pain, make an effort to feel the pain transferring from wherever it's hurting to the insides of the leech.

After you are done, you will need to take this thing off from your head and throw it to some other mammal so it attaches and stops bothering you. I wonder, does this work for you?

As a side-note, I have heard of someone that just 'pulls' the pain away so feel free to experiment and find what works for you, this is not science.