
Our brain is a storyteller, not a reporter from an inner world - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/62/systems/this-man-says-the-mind-has-no-depths
======
vladgiverts
The saying “all models are wrong, some models are useful” seems appropriate
here. The interviewee is arguing against both the correctness and usefulness
of “sub-conscious thought” as a model for the human mind. But he seems to
conflate the two arguments. It sounded to me like he was saying: “Here are all
the ways that the sub-conscious thought is wrong and confusing, so it must not
be useful either!”

He talks about motor neurons and sensory processing as an unconscious brain
process, which is so different from what we consider “thought” that it doesn’t
make sense to call them unconscious thought. He then goes on to rail against
Jung and Freud and psychology in general. But that’s a straw-man. Based on my
limited knowledge, I don’t Freud et al were talking about the mechanical brain
processes when they wrote about the unconscious mind. Instead, they were
talking about things like the self-images and expectations that we hold at any
given moment.

Like, if I hold a very low opinion of myself (like I did for most of my life)
I might feel awkward and insecure around girls or certain social situations.
The unconscious belief in those moments was that there was something
inherently wrong with me (I was unloveable, of little value, etc). Ten years
ago if you had asked me I would have told you I was amazing. I probably
believed it at conscious level. But given my levels of anxiety back then, it
certainly wasn’t true. It’s only now after some inner exploration that I am
able to see and realize this.

Is it fair to call that unconscious or subconscious if these beliefs were
there all along I wasn’t aware of them? I personal find that a useful model
and I think that’s what psychologists have in mind when they use those words.

~~~
mariushn
> It’s only now after some inner exploration that I am able to see and realize
> this.

How did you learn to do the inner exploration?

~~~
vladgiverts
It’s a long story with a lot of nuance. To keep it short, most of my formal
learning came from studying Integral Coaching at New Ventures West[1] and
later participating in a Ridhwan[2] group. Both gave me a certain amount of
healing and led me to insights into myself.

[1]:[https://www.newventureswest.com](https://www.newventureswest.com)
[2]:[https://www.diamondapproach.org](https://www.diamondapproach.org)

------
wallflower
"What happens is not what happens. What happens is the story that we tell
ourselves about what happens."

A contrived example:

Adult is home with parents. One of the parents asks her to clean up her
dishes. She reacts quickly with a knee-jerk "I was going to do it! Ugh!".

What happened was that the parents wanted to clean up the table.

However, since the adult has this shifting narrative in her head about 'my
parents don't treat me with respect', she immediately interpreted the simple
request as _proof_ or _evidence_ that 'they are not treating me with respect'
and emotionally reacted. Kind of like a vicious circle.

It's kind of like when we have a bad day, we can interpret it as everything is
conspiring against us. The thing is that we are _interpreting_ what happens to
us all the time. It doesn't have to be a single origin story/root cause like
the author of the book in the article states.

The way to look forward is to actually start taking proactive actions towards
the story that you want. Since we don't exist without other people, you cannot
simply spit affirmations into a mirror or make a vision board. You must put it
out there with the people who are entangled in your reality. For the adult in
this example, it would be something like being honest with her parents
(something like non-violent communication) and telling them how she feels they
are treating her without respect and working with them to "co-create" a new
reality.

Note: This is not my thought. It comes from a personal development
organization that starts with 'L' and ends with the letter before 'l'. The
extent of my involvement was going to a weekend seminar on invitation from a
friend.

~~~
bena
> telling them how she feels they are treating her without respect and working
> with them to "co-create" a new reality.

You also have to be wary of people who know this as well. People are often
able to hide equally shitty behaviors in the language of compromise and help.

I've been told by someone that it was rude that I was texting them because
they were out with someone catching up. Not that I knew that, but whatever.

On the flipside, they felt free to text people the next time we were together
and catching up and hanging out.

And they said how rude it was for someone to tell them to not check their
messages when they were hanging out. That it was controlling.

It basically came down to always having the proper response to someone in
order to do what they felt like doing at the time. It kind of goes with the
article. It's all vaguely surface, "Let me do what I want" and then they
concoct the reasoning that gets them there.

The thing is that sometimes people are just flat out wrong and that person is
just looking for a reason and the only real solution is for them to realize
that they're being irrational. That there is no halfway point. Reminds me of a
bit that happens in Fear of a Black Hat. The band is arguing with the label
about the album cover. The label is complaining because it promotes violence
against law enforcement as it shows a picture of the band on top of a pile of
15 dead cops. They want a different cover. The band wants the cover as is. The
manager looks up from his phone and attempts to mediate the situation. He asks
the band "How many cops do you want? 15?" then the label, "How many do you
want? 0? Let's meet in the middle, 7 cops. Good?"

The joke is that it's not the number that's the problem. There's no real
compromise that can be reached here. Even one dead cop is basically giving in
to the band.

So it's possible the parents just asked with absolutely no disrespect in word
or tone. But the adult child is simply railing against perceived slights. And
them saying they "want to be treated with respect" is just being weaselly.
_What_ does that respect mean? How are you being disrespected? If you can't
articulate that, then you aren't being disrespected. The problem is you, not
the world.

~~~
Retra
One of my roommates used to accuse me of making them uncomfortable all the
time because I never talked to them (for instance, when I would walk into the
kitchen and quietly wait for them to get out of the way.)

It turned into an argument one day, and I just said "I hear what you're
saying, but can't really change my behavior, because I just don't have
anything to say to you and/or am thinking about something else." The absurd
thing was that I wasn't doing anything noteworthy. Just in my head trying to
map out what I wanted to do.

If you're the person who 'throws the first stone', then it's pretty easy to
make it look like the other person is at fault. Maybe they were uncomfortable
for reasons that have nothing to do with my behavior? Maybe they don't have
any reason to try and force me to be on the defensive? That makes _me_
uncomfortable, and surely if I were more engaged I could have found some way
to blame them for being in my way all the time rather than just spending time
in my own thoughts. But who really wants to turn something boring and innocent
into an outright conflict?

People are fookn weird.

~~~
bena
They didn't realize that they were trying to turn their hangups into your
problem.

Having you stand there waiting probably made them self-conscious about what
they were doing. They were feeling judged despite you likely didn't care what
they were doing. And that made them uncomfortable.

But that's not your fault technically.

------
kashyapc
This reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's notion of "experiencing self" vs.
"remembering self" (the story-telling self). Here's a story he shares in one
of his talks[1] about how the "remembering self" dictates what a person gets
to keep as a memory:

 _Now, I 'd like to start with an example of somebody who had a question-and-
answer session after one of my lectures reported a story, and that was a story
-- He said he'd been listening to a symphony, and it was absolutely glorious
music and at the very end of the recording, there was a dreadful screeching
sound. And then he added, really quite emotionally, it ruined the whole
experience. But it hadn't. What it had ruined were the memories of the
experience. He had had the experience. He had had 20 minutes of glorious
music. They counted for nothing because he was left with a memory; the memory
was ruined, and the memory was all that he had gotten to keep._

And here's [2] another reference -- "Memory Vs. Experience: Happiness is
Relative".

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_expe...](https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory/transcript)

[2] [https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/memory-vs-
expe...](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/memory-vs-experience-
happiness-is-relative)

------
kilovoltaire
I was thinking about this recently—given how difficult it is to explain "why"
an artificial neural network behaves a certain way, it's probably similarly
difficult for our conscious minds to explain our unconscious behavior, the
best they can do is pattern match and tell stories.

From the article: "If we could understand the processes by which billions of
neurons cooperate to help us recognize a face or interpret a fragment of
speech, we would find these as unrelated to the stream of consciousness as the
operation of the liver."

~~~
alexpetralia
I speculated that if we make substantial progress in the field of
explainability research, we will be able to learn something new about human
consciousness.

------
raverbashing
Most "cognitive scientists" seems to conflate the world with their simplified
models. For a field with one of the lowest replication rates (and which won't
get better) they seem to take their conclusions more seriously than scientists
in hard sciences.

This interview is painfully self contradictory, "there is no inner truth but
there is no easy way of solving this", almost in self denial.

"What happens is not what happens. What happens is the story that we tell
ourselves about what happens." well, yes

And of course the brain tell stories, and "a deep truth" might not be so deep,
but past events and how we handle them ourselves do have an effect (though it
might not be so obvious).

In a fundamental level, is the brain chaotic ("deterministic " but
unpredictable due to millions of different variables) or does it have a random
component (and how much is that)? And what abstractions emerge from the
brain's complexity?

------
qubax
I remember seeing this on hn before.

The current thesis is that the brain ( consciousness ) is a predicting
machine. A very interesting lecture by a neuroscientist.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRel1JKOEbI)

------
textor
Behaviorists have failed to explain a monkey using a stick to get bananas for
the first time. I have little patience for antiquated baloney such as
"Emotions are are momentary improvisations to bodily reactions". Do paralyzed
people have no emotions now? What about locked-in syndrome?

His broader point about flatness may be justified, but his entire school of
thought is no less nonsensical than Freud's, which acolytes also try to revive
by sprinkling with modern research from time to time; so this "debunking"
leaves me unimpressed.

------
vinceguidry
More people should meditate. _Especially_ the people that make these kinds of
arguments or study these kinds of things. Most of what he says is pretty good.
But this part puts the lie to his whole argument, that the unconscious cannot
form thoughts:

> But think about the brain processes involved in even realizing that the song
> is familiar; or recognizing that the singer is David Bowie. We have no
> introspective access to these brain processes.

This isn't true. You _can_ have introspective access to these brain processes.
I have investigated recall pretty thoroughly, my conclusions are rather
difficult to put into words like many things about consciousness. Your
conclusions sound rather banal, unless you have the experience that caused
them to arise. But you can't have access if you don't develop it.

The other big mistake he makes is in discounting the abilities of stories
themselves to have depth. That the brain is constantly telling stories should
in no way imply that the brain lacks depth. There is depth in those stories
that is worth looking into, depth that the brain put there. The work of
psychotherapists is in no way invalidated, in fact, they're much better at
thinking about the stories we tell ourselves than we are.

It's just, same as with introspective access to your subconscious, you won't
find any depth if you don't go looking for it.

Through meditation, I was able to create what's called a _tulpa_ , a separate,
distinct personality that shares my brain with me. At first I thought it was a
non-physical entity, time and introspection and literally asking it what it
was, I eventually worked out that it was sharing my brain with me, I didn't
even know what a tulpa was back then.

If the subconscious can't think, tulpas, which maintain personality distinct
from the normal operating consciousness, would have nowhere to 'hide'. It
would be easy for the skeptic to then make the argument that it didn't exist,
but again, if you don't meditate, you can never really investigate the
question.

And if you want to keep arguing, say you want to now argue that the tulpa
personality was created on the fly by the brain, then eventually your
reasoning will turn circular.

This is just positivist nihilism in another form.

~~~
KennyCason
This short and brief response is also to @bena,

I have struggled with this a lot. I can completely understand the notion to
discount such experience. My conclusion is that this seemingly can not be
"proven" in the traditional sense as it's a construct of the mind and not
something external. It's sort of like me trying to prove that the way I see
"red" in my mind is the same way you do. It's just not doable. Thus, I think
this is something limited to the experiential. This used to bother me, now I
just enjoy it.

A few anecdotes from my brain:

I have experienced deeper consciousness where instead of being from my normal
1st person view, it has been from a lower point of view. As metaphor, Imagine
you are dreaming and there are 10 people in your dream, including yourself. As
normal you are viewing the dream through your eyes and the 10 people seem to
be functioning on their own. But then within the dream something happens and I
realize the arbitrariness of my perspective and I suddenly become aware that I
am actually simultaneously looking into my dream world from all 10 people's
perspective at once and a lower level consciousness, which now becomes my
conscious perspective, is omni-aware of this fact. It's also very strange as
it sort of makes me question which viewpoint is really "me." Particularly when
my consciousness shifts between the various perspectives.

I've also had things happen like when I am talking to someone sitting in front
of me, I lose my 1st person perspective and my perspective moves to a lower
external level where I can now see how my brain is "drawing" both myself and
the person I'm speaking to, and the "onion" layers of thought that built those
images of us and our environment as well as the sounds of our words.

Even as far as how when we say a sentence of words, I've had perspective where
I can see the words expanding to other concepts and deeper meaning of the
word. It's usually a very visual and emotional process, but quite interesting.
So the words "tasty" "apple" start as two peaks of two mountains, but as the
brain unpacks the concept of "tastiness" and "appleness", the thoughts expands
outwards, just as the peaks of mountains expand outwards to their base. It's
when the bases overlap that I can see the relation of the terms and how they
interact with each other. But then imagine that for entire sentences, or
stories, or any thought/concept.

When you can shift your consciousness from the peak to the base, it's
interesting because you can see these larger concepts. For example, you can
"see" taste, or sexuality, or redness, or anything-ness. Very fascinating.

I've also had interesting experiences where starting a an object, say my
garage floor, I've been able to see layers of overlapping patterns that my
brain seemed to have used to draw the floor. When I see it from the top, I see
a floor. But when I move to the side, It's layers of different patterns.

I don't usually shares these on a public forum as I have already spent enough
time questioning my own sanity as I rarely hear others talking about this sort
of thing. Self diagnosed conclusion: I'm sane. :)

~~~
bena
They say only sane people question their sanity. Insane people are convinced
they are sane.

Why do you think all of that is "deeper" consciousness?

Also, you say we may never know if you and I see red the same, but we do know.
We know that color is simply a reflection of light along certain wavelengths,
we can demonstrate this. We know how our eyes receive and interpret this
information. We know that there's something missing from the middle and it's
all upside down and that our brain corrects for this. We even use this
information to create optical illusions.

I know you're thinking "But what if what I see as 'red' you see as what you
would consider 'blue' and vice versa". That's meaningless. If I hold a red pen
and say "This is a red pen" and you agree that it is a red pen, then we are
both perceiving that to be red. Our perceptions are in agreement.

The rest sounds like idle daydreaming. I mean, nothing you've described sounds
really all that out there and I have done plenty of that as well. It's a good
way to pass the time during my commute.

~~~
KennyCason
My sane comment is certainly a joke. I think self confirmation of that would
be quite difficult indeed haha

In terms of seeing red the same. I think you are misinterpreting what I mean
by “seeing”, I’m not talking about the chemical process of how our eyes
receive light “signals” and input that into your brain. I’m talking about the
“images” your mind draws, the mental image that you see. This is an age old
philosophy question and a more nuanced than the way you are stating it.
Perceptions being in agreement is not the end all of this question. It is also
not meaningless. It’s only meaningless if your goal is that two agents can
agree that something is red. But that’s definitely not the essence of the
question.

As far as me using the word “deeper”, I do think that’s a bit assumptive on my
end. I really only know that it’s “more” and “different” than how I normally
experience things. I also think the phrase idle day dreaming does not capture
what I experience. I know the difference between my mind just wandering when
sitting on a bus and when my mind is exploding with intense visuals, patterns,
and thoughts.

------
nerdponx
This looks like it amounts to an indirect endorsement of therapeutic
modalities like somatic experiencing.

I just hope that it doesn't get spun the wrong way. We may not have
unconscious "thought", but we certainly do have unconscious "feeling". I
haven't read the book (and didn't read the whole interview), but I hope it
makes this distinction.

~~~
s-shellfish
I agree with this. I had a heightened degree of anxiety the other day and I
wasn't sure why. I'm sure there's a reason, but I couldn't process it. It was
completely different than the way I've experienced an awareness of my own
emotions my entire life. Always in relation to social environment. Now I seem
to just get anxiety over bugs in code. Emotionally connected to my computer.
Life is an experience, always new awarenesses to be experienced.

I still don't think there's anything permanent about the functioning of the
mind. I think the things one decides to be true that one is allowed to believe
are true to the individual are the things that are the most important.

There can be subconscious thought. I've experienced that. There can also be no
unconscious thought. I've experienced that.

Theory of mind, always a very tricky subject! Epistomology, cognitive science,
theories of intelligence.

------
Hasknewbie
Reminds me of Daniel Dennett's _Consciousness Explained_ , where he also tears
down the common perception of 'subconscious' thoughts. Not the most
easy/didactic book (and certainly not the most humble of titles) but worth a
read.

------
aytekin
Reminds of Viktor Frank’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Don’t make things
unnecessarily complex. Instead of trying find a problems from the past in your
unconscious mind and fix, find yourself something to live for. Look forward,
not backwards.

------
ai_ia
He talks about all thoughts arise from bodily sensations. This is exactly what
Vipassana teaches. I wonder if he 'borrowed' from there without attributing.

~~~
analog31
Likewise Aristotle, and perhaps others as well.

------
cryptozeus
Great read ...totally opp view of my current thinking about self ...“it’s
important to think of the project as going forward, rather than thinking that
I and everyone else are in the grip of a mysterious force that’s controlling
us and we need to voyage inward to find it. It’s just an unconstructive
direction to be looking inward instead of outward. A forward-looking approach
to our lives is the positive benefit.”

------
jesperlang
Another article that refers to the book "The Mind is Flat", there was recently
a submission and related discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17625244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17625244)

Highly recommend reading the book, it really is mind blowing and thought
provoking!

------
tranchms
The book “Sapiens” by Noah Harari provides a historical anthropological
explanation of the powerful role stories play in forming conciousness.

Stories mediate conscious experience and form the basis of reality as we know
it.

It’s difficult to wrap the mind around what this means exactly, and see it’s
far reaching implications. It’s difficult because, our minds are embedded in
narratives, embedded within stories that mediate our conscious experience.
These stories or narratives operate unconsciously, like programs running on
your computer, like an eye trying to examine itself without a mirror.

But they impact our ability to perceive, to engage with reality in different
ways, even our ability to see and hear phenomena directly acting upon us. The
stories we become conditioned to either enhance our ability to perceive and
adapt and explain and engage with our world, or limit it.

We only hear what we understand.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein

“When we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes.”
—Leo Tolstoy

Contemplation and reflection are the mechanisms which allow the mind to
examine itself and it’s unconscious assumptions, to detach from ideas— the
thoughts and feelings produced by stories— and identify inconsistencies and
contradictions and paradoxes (problems) that create dissonance and discomfort
and suffering (pain). Reflection is the basis of all enlightenment, and how we
reconcile conflicting stories and the beliefs they produce.

Every story and narrative mediates our experience with the world. They act as
a filter that organizes data and information for our senses and the faculties
of our mind that we can then use to make decisions.

Every story has contradictions and inconsistencies, because no story
completely explains everything about our world, because our world is always
changing and evolving.

If we believe our story is absolutely “True”, we won’t revise our stories and
change our beliefs. As a result, we will want to revise and change the world
to conform to our narrative. The latter is incompatible with the highest
realization: impermanence is the only permanence; change is the only constant.

It is the philosophers and critical thinkers duty to expose those
inconsistencies and contradictions, so we can revise our stories, update our
webs of belief, and provide a more comprehensive story and understanding of
the world.

Our ability to choose a story relies on our understanding of the relative
nature of our conscious experience. Traveling and exposure to new cultures,
reading books, meeting and befriend those with different beliefs, (even taking
psychedelics), all enlarge our understanding that Truth is not an absolute
construct. The stories that form the basis of our beliefs all mediate our
perception of Truth.

Those who share the same stories agree to the same truths, and see the same
world. Those that don’t have fundamental contradictions about what is.

Stories vary in simplicity and complexity, and therefore have a spectrum of
explanatory power. The stories of hard sciences may not possess the same
utility as religion or Jung’s theories of mind when treating psychological
illness. Likewise, the stories of religion may not possess the same utility as
hard science when treating physiological illness, or solving environmental
crises.

Placebo’s (stories that have no basis to the material world) have consistently
been shown to be more powerful than many pharmaceutical treatments.

The only explanation is the power of stories, and the mind’s power to manifest
the experience it believes in.

The basis of personal development and self-mastery lies in the understanding
and acceptance that we can update and revise personal narratives and beliefs
that alter our behavior and lead to desirable results.

We are not fixed, static creatures, unless we refuse to let go of limiting
stories and beliefs.

It is difficult to let go of assumptions that have deep emotional attachment.
Many people are unable to accept that their conscious experience is relative,
that their experiences are not True, in the capital T sense. Your conscious
experience is true according to your story, and anyone who shares your story.

Your feelings and thoughts are real. You cannot tell someone they are not. But
it’s not the whole story. Those feelings and thoughts are not “necessarily”
true. There are other ways to feel and think about the same events and people
and ideas.

Your conscious experience is limited to the stories you are conditioned to
believe about the world. Pain and pleasure and everything in between. And
those who share your story affirm your beliefs and reinforce the conditioning
of those stories, which in turn operate more pervasively as unconscious
assumptions of the world, as cosmic Truth.

In this way it becomes increasingly difficult to accept the relative nature of
the conscious experience, and examine personal narratives and the beliefs they
produce in ways that allow for the adoption of updated stories, which
stimulate growth and enlightenment and progress towards harmony and
flourishing.

Because self-preservation is the highest aim and prerogative of all life, and
because life requires constant adaptation to maintain equilibrium, it would
seem evident that stories which allow us to revise and update themselves, to
accommodate new information about the world, and enhance our explanatory power
about the world, would be the best operating narrative. This is precisely the
task of science and philosophy.

By examining a story’s explanatory power, we can evaluate its utility and
merit, and determine if it’s good or bad, if it should be adopted or rejected.

Every group of humans possess narratives. Some are global, like religious
stories, and some are local, like cultural traditions, or personal historical
narratives. Some are specific to domains or subjects of thought, like the mind
(psychology) or society (sociology) or the body (medicine), and some the world
(geology) and life (biology), and some deal with abstractions (mathematics and
physics) and methods (philosophy) for organizing experience in an intelligible
way.

It’s important to realize that stories provide meaning. They guide our
behaviors and provide a moral framework for action and productive social
collaboration, and point us toward a worthwhile purpose to struggle and labor
after.

Because there are endless stories to tell, and endless stories that exist, one
may conclude a nihilistic attitude, that all is meaningless.

It is accurate to say that no story possesses inherent meaning, other than the
meaning that the collective imagination gives it. But that is meaning.
Realizing that there is no inherent meaning imposed by transcendental truths
establishes a freedom to create stories and meaning relative to your
experience, which allows you to be the hero, the protagonist, rather than a
spectator caught in stories imposed by others, such as religious orthodoxy,
demagogues and charismatic personalities, or brand advertising that reinforce
cultural values such as consumerism.

You can create your own story, and live it out, with the peace of mind that
you have a purpose as fulfilling and meaningful as any story you would have
inherited.

~~~
slx26
I particularly liked how you explained some of the concepts in the second part
of your comment. But about the last part, I tend to prefer a slightly (or
vastly) different way to put it: "meaning" is a human concept, it only makes
sense in that context. Searching for universal meaning that "transcends
humanity" is a contradiction, it doesn't make sense. The conclusion is the
same you were explaining, to look for meaning in our own stories, in our own
terms, in our own reason, feelings and perspective.

------
callesgg
It was a long time since psychologists believed that unconscious thoughts
where actual thoughts.

They are more like patterns in the way your brain interprets the world for
you.

Patterns that where programed in to your brain when you interpreted that part
of the world before.

------
patkai
Not sure what to think of this yet, but it is refreshing to have an
interesting new angle on the brain. This guy reminds me of Marvin Minsky, who
once said "I bet the human brain is a kludge."

~~~
bena
That's probably not wrong. How else would you describe a 3 pound lump of fat
whose job is to make sure you don't choke on your own saliva?

~~~
gowld
It only takes the evolutionaroly oldest smallest few grams to avoid choking

------
cobaltnightmare
So, as a professor of clinical psychology...

I think there's a lot of sound and fury and misunderstandings and stuff in
this area. People try too hard to prove that they've shed Freud without
realizing it's basically the same as Kahneman. Also different people are
referring to different things when they discuss "consciousness" and "conscious
processing" which confuses things.

There's some interesting papers emerging in recent years suggesting that two-
system models ("subconcious," "fast," "intuitive" versus "slow," "conscious,"
"deliberate") have a lot of theoretical problems and can generally be
explained by other models that don't have this structure.

At the same time, there's a lot of evidence that there's different types of
processing, or processing of different kinds of content, and that people are
not always good at verbalizing their state. The analogy I always like to use
is visual versus verbal processing: some visual content you can reason about,
but have a hard time putting into words, or vice versa. If you were looking
for someone at a huge wedding I was at, and I wanted to know if they were
there, it's a lot more efficient to show you pictures of that person than to
ask you to verbally describe them. This is different types of processing.

I suspect there's something analogous for other types of processing, such as
emotional, interoceptive processing, etc.

This is different in a lot of ways from some of what the article is referring
to, about subconcious problem solving, but then again the article deliberately
conflates the two when talking about, e.g., psychotherapy. The flash of
insight of a mathematician and a psychotherapy client are not the same flashes
necessarily (although they might be). Maybe neither requires "subconcious"
processing. But it is possible they involve nonverbal processing, and also
possible that verbal processing is differentially associated with other types
of processing.

It's also a mistake to assume that verbal reports of people _should_ be
treated as "inner world reporters." What I mean is that there's a difference
between asking someone if they are currently hateful, and expecting an
accurate response, and asking them for their views on, say, some member of
different sociocultural group, to which they respond with hateful speech. Both
are self-sourced verbal behaviors, but we interpret them differently.

This is kind of a long-winded way of pointing out there's different things
being referred to as "subconcious" (I haven't even gotten into dreams and
sleep-arousal states). Saying that one thing can be explained differently
doesn't necessarily mean the other thing should be explained the same way.
"Consciousness" and "conscious" have become so broadly used that they're close
to meaningless because they can mean so many different things.

~~~
dboreham
As a layperson...

I wonder if it might be helpful to focus on the _interfaces_ between what look
to have been different processing systems that evolved consecutively over
time.

For example, when we meditate and do Tolle's experiment where we "wait for a
thought", are we actually "packet sniffing" the interface between the
Neocortex and the Limbic system?

These interfaces may be somewhat inefficient and ad-hoc from the perspective
of humans used to "designing" their own machines. Perhaps this is why the
Neocortex seems to "invent" thoughts to explain the emotions being signaled by
the Limbic System (because the interface doesn't include sufficient fields to
"tag" the emotion output with a reason).

