The Adaptive Unconscious

[anart]

OK, anart. Allow me a bit of time to catch up. Thanks.

Okie doke. :)

 

[obyvatel]

I SEE you.

I have also recently experienced a kind of visceral realization of the distinction between some Work ideas and the way the ideas are expressed by various people in varied contexts. With regard to 'being mechanical' or 'being biological machines', there is little reason to be sad about this. It just means we are thoroughly connected, on every level and scale, to Nature's ecology; and to our programming, we are naturally very responsive.

One can play different roles in the overall chain of interconnectedness - one could simply be food for higher density negative beings...

Have you ever met one?

If you mean if I ever met a higher density negative being - no I have not. I have not met the C's (higher density positive beings) either. Yet the very fact that I interact on this forum indicates that I do acknowledge the existence of such beings. If I did not and was still in this forum, I would be lying to myself and this forum.

BTW, I am not sure if you saw Laura's post here .

Well, you could just ask, but rest assured I saw the post. I've already acknowledged previously, that, even though I don't know how, Laura seems to know exactly what I need to hear and in what measure. As a result of my superficial critique and her feedback, I saw that she did, indeed, know the material...and the info she provided therein persuaded me to order and study the book.

You said you had read "You are not so smart". Laura's response was in the "Thinking Fast and Slow" thread and pertained to your critique of Wilson who wrote the "Adaptive Unconscious" and "Redirect".

[quote author=Buddy]
I can generally tell when someone is right and they know they're right and don't need my confirmation necessarily.

No confirmation is needed. The point is that you are missing the line of force behind the discussions in these threads.

[quote author=Buddy]
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't "back-talk" or "challenge what you say" for the fun of it. It's not fun. I just need to know that you know what you're talking about , as is also expected of me. Because if you can't do that, then I was probably right the first time. Who am I to say that? Is that self-importance or self-responsibility? Isn't wrong knowledge worse than no knowledge?

Since you asked, in this specific context it is your self-importance. If there is a popular thread where a specific topic (books in this context) is being discussed, and the response of the network is largely positive, then it is logical to read the book in question if it captures your interest. If it does not interest you, then you do not read - it is your choice. But if you do choose to discuss or critique the material, then reading the material in question is helpful.

In your last post, you asked for time to catch up. My intent in responding here is to provide input on some points you had raised. Do take the time you need - I am not waiting for a response, immediate or otherwise.

 

[Windmill knight]

Ok, so I'm on the last chapter of 'Strangers to Ourselves'. I started reading this thread during Christmas, and like others mentioned, it actually made me depressed (Christmas didn't help). That is, the idea that we are nothing, or almost nothing, and that we are almost entirely controlled by mechanisms of which we know very little. That we are machines. Not that I didn't know that already - it just hit me.

I SEE you.

Hi Buddy. I understand what you mean with that phrase, and I appreciate it, so thank you! :)

However I also agree with what obyvatel and anart have told you. I'll add to what has been said that it seems to me that you are missing the point and escaping into some sort of baroque philosophical rationalization, when you should be feeling viscerally the horror of the human condition, as described by the psychological material, so that you can begin doing something about it.

I have also recently experienced a kind of visceral realization of the distinction between some Work ideas and the way the ideas are expressed by various people in varied contexts. With regard to 'being mechanical' or 'being biological machines', there is little reason to be sad about this. It just means we are thoroughly connected, on every level and scale, to Nature's ecology; and to our programming, we are naturally very responsive.

Sure, it is part of our nature to be mechanical; in a sense that is what makes us fit into this world. That is part of the General Law and that is why it is called like that. But remember that it is also within the laws of nature that creatures eat each other, predators are the norm and we all go back to dust and become fertilizer for trees, including the people you love the most. From this perspective, war with all its horror is 'natural', and so is psychopathy, torture, poverty, injustice, ignorance, etc.

The fact is that we have the unique opportunity of realizing that it is also possible to do things differently, through the so-called Law of Exception, which is nothing other than learning how to not be mechanical in order for good things to manifest through us: creativity, empathy, self-sacrifice, finding meaning to life, etc. So, if we have this chance, will we take it? Only if we viscerally feel that there is something wrong with being a predatory machine and/or food for predators.

Lately I've been thinking that what infects us with negativity and that bias towards 'negational identity' at times, are the cultural memes of people with profoundly limited awareness and a delusional state of mind. People who insist on their own indescribable importance all the time - and thinking that, because of this indescribable importance, every aspect of their being must also be indescribably important and not like mundane, inferior things at all. Oh no, they have no connection with the universe at all, do they?

In the real multi-verse, everything fits together. We live in a universe of cycles where there is no beginning and no end. In biology, we have the idea of plants feeding on fungus, insects feeding on plants, animals feeding on insects and fungus feeding on animals. No end; no beginning, so it's rather like fungus is the bottom and the top of the food chain at the same time. Even if it were not possible to achieve anything in terms of conscious evolution, I could be quite happy to be a thermodynamic or energetic equivalent of a fungus. It means I'm useful and needed. It's the very confined rigidity of those snooty azzhats that make them so limited in their usefulness to the universe, OSIT. :)

Well, again, this perfect fitting-together of the universe that you describe is in one form or another true and good at the level of 'God'. But we are not God. We can contemplate the Big Universal Picture as much as we like, yet the fact is that God has placed us in this position of being machines, with the tiny possibility of making efforts to be something better than that. It is all fine to understand that from the point of view of God there is a purpose for everything, but this can also become an escape into avoiding making our own choices, living life and doing the Work. It is attempting to avoid our role in Creation - which come to think about it, is rather rude towards God, who after all placed us here so that we would play our parts one way or another. This avoidance is what Theodore Illion called the sin of trying to put oneself at the level of God (from 'Darkness Over Tibet').

Now you may tell me that this is not what you meant. That in fact you accept your role in Creation as a machine, or a thermodynamic fungus, as you put it. What strikes me then is, why are you so happy and calm about it? Wouldn't you rather be something different knowing that you may have the opportunity, as small as it may be? Illion also described this trap, and gave the example of people who were willing to give their food and even their lives and the lives of their children to rats, because they so much respected and loved rats as part of nature. This is another form of escape, one which leads to disastrous consequences, for obvious reasons.

 

[Jacques]

I SEE you.

I have also recently experienced a kind of visceral realization of the distinction between some Work ideas and the way the ideas are expressed by various people in varied contexts. With regard to 'being mechanical' or 'being biological machines', there is little reason to be sad about this. It just means we are thoroughly connected, on every level and scale, to Nature's ecology; and to our programming, we are naturally very responsive.

One can play different roles in the overall chain of interconnectedness - one could simply be food for higher density negative beings...

Have you ever met one?

If you mean if I ever met a higher density negative being - no I have not. I have not met the C's (higher density positive beings) either. Yet the very fact that I interact on this forum indicates that I do acknowledge the existence of such beings. If I did not and was still in this forum, I would be lying to myself and this forum.

Just as an hypothesis, could it be possible that you could have met one but you did not see it or notice it for whatever reasons.

My point being can we be certain that we did not meet those higher density negative beings

 

[Buddy]

obyvatel, for the moment I just wanted to say I appreciate your latest reply. It makes me feel like you're just as human as I and that you really do care. That seems to make a big difference to me. Thank you.

Hi Buddy. I understand what you mean with that phrase, and I appreciate it, so thank you! :)

Hi and your welcome. Thanks for speaking to me. :)

{snipped some stuff}
[...]
Now you may tell me that this is not what you meant. That in fact you accept your role in Creation as a machine, or a thermodynamic fungus, as you put it. What strikes me then is, why are you so happy and calm about it? Wouldn't you rather be something different knowing that you may have the opportunity, as small as it may be?

Well, it' really difficult to answer here because it feels like more than one level of meaning and being is involved with these metaphors of fungus and machine. To make it a bit easier, I will say that it actually scares the hell out of me to think that the day might come when my body expires and my awareness of my existence dissipates because I was never anything but a machine. Even if the soul or essence or something else does remain, it doesn't necessarily follow (in my mind) that my sense of myself will remain intact. What if souls are eternal and personalities are transitory? Will I remember myself in the next life or whatever? Even if I do survive body expiration, the possibility that I'll forget myself and my loved ones bothers me a lot.

I do think about these things and I do the Work I'm capable of doing where I'm at. IRL, my relationships with everyone from my wife to the latest addition to my extended family has improved considerably as a result of my work at self-observation and my attempts to discipline self, as far as I can tell. Also, IRL, I really give everything that I have and can come up with, for the people in my life because they are much more valuable and special than I am. Maybe that'll eventually be worth something on the etheric balance sheet. I don't know, but I do what I can. That I do the best I can with what I have to work with is all I can really be "happy and calm" about, OSIT. But I do have energy and I like trying to make people feel better and I like people to feel that they're being "seen", so to speak.

Illion also described this trap, and gave the example of people who were willing to give their food and even their lives and the lives of their children to rats, because they so much respected and loved rats as part of nature. This is another form of escape, one which leads to disastrous consequences, for obvious reasons.

Gross. I haven't read Illion, but I'd have to be delusional or demented to forget about any concept (even hypothetical) of a hierarchy of consciousness in Nature or the Universe. ATM, I really feel like I'd throw myself off a cliff first.

 

[Windmill knight]

Well, it' really difficult to answer here because it feels like more than one level of meaning and being is involved with these metaphors of fungus and machine. To make it a bit easier, I will say that it actually scares the hell out of me to think that the day might come when my body expires and my awareness of my existence dissipates because I was never anything but a machine. Even if the soul or essence or something else does remain, it doesn't necessarily follow (in my mind) that my sense of myself will remain intact. What if souls are eternal and personalities are transitory? Will I remember myself in the next life or whatever? Even if I do survive body expiration, the possibility that I'll forget myself and my loved ones bothers me a lot.

I do think about these things and I do the Work I'm capable of doing where I'm at. IRL, my relationships with everyone from my wife to the latest addition to my extended family has improved considerably as a result of my work at self-observation and my attempts to discipline self, as far as I can tell. Also, IRL, I really give everything that I have and can come up with, for the people in my life because they are much more valuable and special than I am. Maybe that'll eventually be worth something on the etheric balance sheet. I don't know, but I do what I can. That I do the best I can with what I have to work with is all I can really be "happy and calm" about, OSIT. But I do have energy and I like trying to make people feel better and I like people to feel that they're being "seen", so to speak.

In that case, I see you too Buddy! I think it is a positive thing when anyone feels like you describe here. To me it means they are alive inside and have that small but invaluable chance to become something more than a machine. To me, it is life without meaning that bothers me the most, and what would provide more meaning is the ability to give real, objective, creative, unconditional love. But the condition for that is a minimum of self-control and consciousness, and those things will only come with Work. That's how I see it at the moment anyway.

 

[Laura]

Well, that whole "I SEE YOU" business gives me the willies because that was something that Eric Pepin was on about.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on the fact that no matter how many times Gurdjieff said that man is a machine, it was really hard to get it in the fullest meaning of the phrase until this cognitive science material came along. But still, I tell the story quite often about my own realization along this line which was pretty similar to Gurdjieff's only in much less dramatic circumstances. When it hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I kept watching it for years and I think that it is partly the actual seeing of it and observing it that "grows" the observer self which, until you DO see yourself, is only weakly nascent.

 

[Buddy]

Well, that whole "I SEE YOU" business gives me the willies because that was something that Eric Pepin was on about.

Oops! Didn't know that. It doesn't really need to be said anyway, I guess - just demonstrated with proper feedback.

Anyway, I wanted to comment on the fact that no matter how many times Gurdjieff said that man is a machine, it was really hard to get it in the fullest meaning of the phrase until this cognitive science material came along. But still, I tell the story quite often about my own realization along this line which was pretty similar to Gurdjieff's only in much less dramatic circumstances. When it hit me, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I kept watching it for years and I think that it is partly the actual seeing of it and observing it that "grows" the observer self which, until you DO see yourself, is only weakly nascent.

Thanks for that. I got a feeling that I missed a few bricks, so there's probably a few more to come.

 

[StrangeCaptain]

I kept watching it for years and I think that it is partly the actual seeing of it and observing it that "grows" the observer self which, until you DO see yourself, is only weakly nascent.

This makes me think of the G. quote in ISOTM where he is saying that knowledge and being must be on the same level for understanding to occur. If one is ahead of the other, then there are limits to what can be understood. It is almost like one part of oneself watching the other part and waiting for it to catch up.

 

[cubbex]

Hey people, I've read an interesting article from SOTT:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/241083-The-Price-of-Your-Soul-How-Your-Brain-Decides-Whether-to-Sell-Out-

Could this be related with the adaptive unconscious?

 

[andi]

After reading Timothy's book, I am starting to understand that we were not made to seek the truth and understand it, but serve nature instead. I think "Thinking fast and slow" describes the situation even better and in more detail, at least for me it helped anchor better the idea how the adaptive works and for what purposes.

I am forced into shock by this two books because they are presented in such a way that even a normal person can understand. It only remains a question of accepting the reality presented and at least trying for oneself and observe the results.

It seems to me that our emotional and motor centers dictate the biggest majority of our lives(maybe all) in ways we hardly understand. A major point for me was presented in "Thinking Fast and Slow" and that is : our emotions and feelings - " how do I feel about it right now? " determines the answer to difficult questions while the real question remains unanswered, while truth and reality remains hidden and we remain servants to the present purpose of nature.

Both are great books. "Thinking Fast and Slow" has helped me to better understand the first one even if I haven't finish it yet.

 

[Psalehesost]

Very important to check out the "Thinking, Fast and Slow" thread, too: https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,26334.0.html

I would say that Kahneman's book goes to the top of the list also. I think we have to revamp our "Big Five" psych books into the "Big Ten" or so.

I've noticed, in becoming more familiar with these concepts, that they build an inner framework to which many, many things can be connected and better understood.

For example, the knowledge previously gained from the old Big 5 psychology books is somewhat vague, fuzzy, dreamy, and consisting largely of poorly interconnected islets of thought - and it's been hard to apply and understand in the context of my own life. [...]

The old "Big 5" will be well-worth a re-read, I think, once I've gone through this new material. It can be seen at this point that it would all now come to be understood in an entirely new way.

This now confirmed - reading again some concepts of narcissism, I could see the personal relevance in a whole new way. But a long way still to go before it can all be applied - have again hit a point where further concepts don't sink in - so much more to read, and perhaps experience, and be understood first, I think.

 

[Psalehesost]

A very helpful concept from Strangers to Ourselves in understanding the books on narcissistic wounding is that of "feeling rules", in the chapter on why we don't know what we feel.

Repression is usually mentioned as the reason we don't know of our wounding and the emotional aspects, the feelings that have resulted and drive us off the track. But repression as commonly understood, while it can also occur, is not the sole reason, or perhaps even the main reason.

Ability to be aware of our real feelings is removed simply by the presence of contrary expectations, the explanations, the self-view and perspective of the "conscious" self, all the beliefs formed as our false personality grew. A false self with false ideas - that's all it takes to be oblivious - unable to feel what we really feel.

Now knowing this, I can by inference begin to realize what I felt all along - and remove the false ideas, gaining some awareness of what's gone on inside me all along.

 

[bngenoh]

WOW, AMAZING thread everyone, thank you all very much.

Psalehesost this:

Reading these latest threads - this one, along with "Do you know when you are lying to yourself?" and others - has, in processing it, increasingly made me lose faith in the inner narratives - realizing that the "narrative self" is always a fraud by its very nature, and that it cannot ever be anything else - no matter how it describes itself - which, in a sense, makes everything very "equal".

"My" self-image has begun to crumble in a big way - and there's a growing indifference, in seeing that all concerns based or focused on it are inherently bogus.

Regarding self-reflection, what I've done in processing this is to a great part different from narrating to myself - feeling and sensing deeper into myself - I don't know exactly what this part of my mind then reached is, but it's wordless and seems driven by feel. And in a way it seems much more "real" than the narrative self.

is exactly what i have SEEn and experienced. Allow me to explain. "I" have discovered a new sense, it is a kind of quickness & sensitivity, which allows me to note what is probably a miniscule amount of the churning cauldron which underpins "me." The most direct information which i have been able to gain from this sense comes from feeling. The information that is contained within this information is indeed wordless, but yet a part of "me" is able to understand, at least partially, but yet i don't know how i understand it.

In the observer state, i am able, to varying degrees of clarity, able to perceive this "process," it is "behind me." A couple of days ago, when self observing, acutely feeling this process, and even being able to "turn" slightly to the left to SEE a part of it, coupled with the quickness i mentioned i was able to literally SEE 'it's" effects, it rippled across the substance of my mind, a part of me started to translate this into words even before the wave rippled, another part of me saw this process beginning, and with astonishing rapidity comprehended the entirety of the intention while the part of me that would be able to translate it into thought was only starting. This process being finished i was able to, for lack of a better word negate it from being thought.

"I" have done my best to translate into words, that experience, acutely aware that the construct that is "I" is a liar, misrepresenting and obfuscating reality as it is. FWIW

 

[Keit]

Then the way he talks about the origin of these 'negative informations' reminds me of De Becker's Gift Of Fear and Gladwell's Blink books. There are nonconscious processes that can save your life, or let you get an unpredictable grip on certain situations.

I probably state the obvious here, but since it might interest others who haven't read "Blink", and since this book was mentioned by several others who read it when it was first brought up on the forum, just wanted to say that indeed ideas that are expressed in "Blink" are related to the the adaptive unconscious. I caught it today accidentally while listening to "Blink"'s audiobook. That what it says in its second chapter:

The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions like this is called the adaptive unconscious, and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology. The adaptive unconscious is not to be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmund Freud, which was a dark and murky place filled with desires and memories and fantasies that were too disturbing for us to think about consciously. This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is thought of, instead, as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of the data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.

When you walk out into the street and suddenly realize that a truck is bearing down on you, do you have time to think through all your options? Of course not. The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species for as long as we have is that we’ve developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that’s capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information.

As the psychologist Timothy D. Wilson writes in his book Strangers to Ourselves: “The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the unconscious, just as a modern jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from the human, ‘conscious’ pilot. The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner.”

Wilson says that we toggle back and forth between our conscious and unconscious modes of thinking, depending on the situation. A decision to invite a co-worker over for dinner is conscious. You think it over. You decide it will be fun. You ask him or her. The spontaneous decision to argue with that same co-worker is made unconsciously—by a different part of the brain and motivated by a different part of your personality.

Personally, I find it quite amazing how sometimes certain information just sits there and waits till certain connections are made before it clicks! Now I am going to reread (well, listen to it) again and keep all the new info in mind.