
Non cogito, ergo sum - godelmachine
https://www.1843magazine.com/content/ideas/ian-leslie/non-cogito-ergo-sum
======
motohagiography
Driving is a perfect and mundane example of unconscious competence most people
have. If you could perform with the simple confidence of driving to work,you
would probably be very good at what you were doing.

A friend once rhetorically asked me what trying to be funny meant, and of
course it means being not funny, yet when we want to achieve some other end we
approach it by trying. Yoda summed it up well, but we don't really get a
chance to understand what it really means. Trying to drive on a highway is
farcically dangerous, but simply driving on one is among the safest ways to
drive.

There is a mental change that comes from physical competence where you no
longer fear failure, and I'd argue its that lack of fear that makes the
difference at elite levels where skills are largely equal. It also makes the
difference in the rate at which you learn. The try/humiliate style of teaching
is a way to produce industrial scale mediocrity, and so few can appreciate the
difference that there is often no reason to change.

~~~
ikeboy
Meantime I failed two road tests and my instructor said I was overthinking it,
I finally gave up and figured I'll wait till driverless cars come around

~~~
gsich
I guess you'll wait 10+ years.

~~~
ikeboy
I've already ridden in a driverless Lyft as part of a trial, and really in
cities I prefer Uber/Lyft or subway, I don't have a pressing need for a car

~~~
gsich
I would argue that getting a drivers license is different then needing a car.

~~~
ikeboy
I've never needed to drive. It would be mildly more convenient if I could, but
not enough for me to justify spending another few dozen hours practicing to
pass the test when it'll be an obsolete skill soon enough

~~~
gsich
It's still nice to have it. You gain a lot of independence be it home or on
vacation. It's nice not being dependent on taxis/public transport or anyone
else. This holds especially true if you are not in an urban area, and busses
that don't drive 24/7 classify as those, so it's not only the typical "rural"
regions.

And no, it won't be obsolete soon. And by "soon" I mean what I wrote earlier,
10+ years.

------
GarvielLoken
This is one of the goals of Judo. It combines rational thinking, "How does
this throw work? Why did not my attempt work?" with the end goal of not
needing the thinking in practice. No Mind. It's what allows any musician or
performance artist, race car driver, to be effective; Because they need to
operate creatively at speeds that are faster then rational thinking. And this
in our field is of course known as "being in the flow".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_(mental_state)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_\(mental_state\))
"Once mushin is attained through the practice or study of martial arts
(although it can be accomplished through other arts or practices that refine
the mind and body), the objective is to then attain this same level of
complete awareness in other aspects of the practitioner's life. "

[http://budobum.blogspot.com/2015/02/states-of-mind-
mushin.ht...](http://budobum.blogspot.com/2015/02/states-of-mind-
mushin.html?m=1)

~~~
beat
_Consciously_ playing music seems nearly impossible to me. There's a whole
world of physical technique that can be baffling.

I recently went through some deep study of my guitar picking technique. My
playing nearly fell apart while I was doing it. Thinking about the angle at
which the pick strikes the strings is really painful.

~~~
oriel
Such things seem like the same discipline needs to be applied except instead
of practicing the music, you practice thinking about the music.

Specifically, thinking after the fact. If you play a chord, what do you
remember about the angle the pick strikes the strings. Play it again, what do
you notice afterwards. etc.

I have a strong hunch that its as much about developing the introspective
ability/bridge to the skill as it is about bridging the write/edit flow gap
(ie in writing its said to be better to write without reading, then edit in a
separate session).

~~~
beat
Yes, that's conscious practice. I do that a lot. Conscious practice to
repetition to unconscious playing. Physical technique can be carefully studied
in practice, _in order to_ not think about it at all during performance - you
already know what you're doing, and why you're doing it. The mind can focus
instead on the ideas and feelings you are trying to express.

------
xte
Develop instincts actually need thinking... At least for develop good
instincts without being hurt and without have to rediscover the wheel a
generation after another.

In my homecountry, Italy, there was an ancient theathral novel named "Re
Travicello" (King little beam, literally) that say having thinking subjects
it's a big problem: they contest, protest, convince other, they develop
working solutions against throne interest etc. So he invented two concept:
"trust the system" and "use your instinct" to stop people thinking...

~~~
yters
Incidentally, all this zen stuff came about during autocratic rule of China
when the emperor outlawed logic...

~~~
mcguire
I'm not so sure...

Zen, in China, chan, is a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, with Taoism
originating in the 4th century BC during the warring states period along with
most other influential Chinese philosophies (and, weirdly, much of Greek
philosophy).

One rival was Mohism, sort of a mix of logic and sophism (logic has origins in
rhetoric); Zhuangzi has some points about "disputation" that make me feel more
kindly to modern analytic philosophy.

[https://www.iep.utm.edu/zhuangzi/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/zhuangzi/)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/)

See also Arthur Whateley (?) and especially Angus Graham.

~~~
yters
Yeah, Mohism was outlawed because of its use of logic. Emperors don't like
subjects that can think through the national policies.

------
tpaschalis
If you wish to see that "one of the all-time great shots" from Djokovic, here
it is on YouTube in HD.

[1]
[https://youtu.be/EjvSx0ipO0k?t=10181](https://youtu.be/EjvSx0ipO0k?t=10181)

~~~
deadbunny
Not to be an arse but this is the shot described[1]. I was extremely confused
when clicking you link then realizing it was actually a couple of minutes
later.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvSx0ipO0k&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvSx0ipO0k&feature=youtu.be&t=10317)

------
baxtr
_> Federer’s inability to win Grand Slams in the last two years hasn’t been
due to physical decline so much as a new mental frailty that emerges at
crucial moments. In the jargon of sport, he has been “choking”. This, say the
experts, is caused by thinking too much._

That’s the theory behind the article. Federer is 37, Dokovic is 31. Just
saying.

~~~
emmelaich
This was 2012, six years ago, so the difference (ok ratio) was less.

Anyway Federer seems to have lifted himself well.

~~~
faceplanted
Actually the ratio between 25 and 31 is Larger than the ratio between 31 and
37.

You mean that both of them were considered to be in their prime.

~~~
bshimmin
In the nineties - in fact, the era directly pre-Federer - most players would
be thinking pretty hard about retirement at 31! The current situation where
all of the top three men's players (and six of the top seven) are over thirty
is pretty much unheard of (with some notable exceptions of course, like
Connors getting to the US Open semifinal at 39).

(The ages of the women in the top twenty currently is much more how it used to
be in the men's game.)

~~~
faceplanted
> The current situation where all of the top three men's players (and six of
> the top seven) are over thirty is pretty much unheard of

I wonder if that has anything to do with modern sport science keeping people
at peak longer or even to do with steroids.

Could also be that they're just all exceptional, but I've been burned by
optimism about sport personalities before.

~~~
bshimmin
I think (hope!) it's probably a combination of factors - firstly that the top
three really are exceptional, probably the best men's tennis has ever seen;
vast improvements in modern sports science - nutrition, strength training and
conditioning, etc; being much more selective with their schedules (especially
Federer of late); improvements in equipment; and some weird quirk that has
meant the younger generation hasn't really come through and the older ones
have been able to stay at the top with a periodic cycle of displacing each
other as they get injured, struggle with form, and so on.

Or maybe it's just drugs, though they get tested regularly and punished very
severely (but you could say the same about cycling...).

------
brahmwg
Tangentially related, I was reading about the negative aspects of pursuing
high self-control[1], which could perhaps equate to overthinking. The text
also includes links to research purporting the situations where relying on
intuition is, perhaps counterintuitively, more advantageous than rationality.

Also quasi-related, a while back there was an article on HN about the human
brain's Bayesian like processes[2], which again seem to form the basis of
intuitive decision making.

[1]
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321621803_The_Intri...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321621803_The_Intricacies_of_the_Pursuit_of_Higher_Self-
Control)

[2]
[https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...](https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2016.00935.x)?

~~~
knrz
Odd, I find the concept of high self-control to _include_ the ability to
exercise no-mind at will. That is, high self-control is not limited to
exercising control of your "rational" (System 2), but rather involves a Zen-
like perspective over System 1 & System 2. No mind is both, yet neither.

I've had what seems like my greatest awakening this past week. Practice gets
you somewhere, but I can't authoritatively say "where" is. Like some other
commenter mentioned, I've found myself in an intentioned mushin [0] state.

This morning I was off the wagon a bit, but now I'm back. Can't wait to see
what I accomplish with this focus ;)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_(mental_state)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_\(mental_state\))

------
Insanity
It reminds me of myself. This probably falls in the same basket, I used to
game (online games) on a decent level, but I noticed that when I started
becoming too concerned with winning a round that I'd start failing more.

Whereas when I played more 'happy go lucky' I could coordinate my actions much
better.

There's probably other factors at play here, but overthinking really does have
a downside on my ability to play well.

Another interesting datapoint is a friend of mine, who overthinks when gaming
except when he was slightly intoxicated. Maybe like the Ballmer peak for
gaming! :D

------
hexane360
I find the arguments about "expectation" compelling, but isn't that
fundamentally different from thinking/not thinking? Also, aren't we making a
mistake by looking only at the upper end of the tail where high achievers
achieve less due to self-doubt/risk aversion? Isn't the reverse true in many
(if not most) situations, where risky behavior is mostly harmful?

I have one other qualm:

>But baseball players do so by instinctively following simple rules: run in
the right general direction, and adjust your speed to keep a constant angle
between eye and ball.

Humans definitely do calculate "complex" differential equations to estimate
the trajectory of a ball. If not, they literally wouldn't know which direction
the ball is traveling in, as you'd only have the position of the ball on the
eye's optic plane. Just because processes are subconscious or effortless
doesn't mean they aren't happening.

~~~
jonnybgood
> Humans definitely do calculate "complex" differential equations to estimate
> the trajectory of a ball. If not, they literally wouldn't know which
> direction the ball is traveling in, as you'd only have the position of the
> ball on the eye's optic plane.

The brain calculating differential equations doesn’t seem very plausible given
the fact it has no access to data to perform those calculations. Perhaps it’s
more about past observations or a priori knowledge? I think it’s worth
noticing that catching things is an ancient predatory skill and is not
exclusive to humans.

------
iLemming
To drive parallels with programming - once you develop muscle memory you can
become very efficient at coding. Thinking required only at the time of
learning. Yes, learning Vim/Emacs is hard. But you have to go through that
process only once. And after that typing/navigation becomes such an
unconscious activity.

And if you choose simple and less obtuse language stacks, e.g. Clojure(script)
- that will allow you to stop thinking about "mechanics" and concentrate your
focus on solving the problem (instead of fighting the ecosystem, dependency
management, language idioms, style guide, etc.).

------
emersonrsantos
Author is vague in defining thinking. To think is to be conscious not only of
thoughts but emotions, movement, awareness, sight, instincts, etc...

His examples of people losing focus (ie. thinking about a movement) are right,
but not because thinking is bad, but because one was focused on the wrong
faucet of one's consciousness. Conscience doesn’t exist only in the intellect.
Animals are not unconscious.

------
toss1
My (alpine) ski racing coach used to refer to "training your instincts", by
which he meant that we needed to train in the correct neuromuscular patterns
so that those would emerge without thinking (which of course is too slow at
35-40 meters/second in a Downhill race, or even 1/3 of that in a Slalom).

I also used to notice brain states that I'd call "fast meditation", completely
calm and meditative, almost just observing the body doing it's work, but at
speed. Happens even more in sportscar racing, i think because there's more
time to get into a "flow state". Turns out there's a connection -- meditating
monks generally slow down their sympathetic ('flight-or-flight") system and
the parasympathetic (slow maint) system becomes primary, except when they
achieve an exceptional meditative state they seek for years, when both systems
kick into high gear. I suspect the same thing is happening from the opposite
direction.

It is endlessly amazing . . .

------
AstralStorm
Miniature philosophical digression. Given even more technology we get more and
more power to do things unthinkingly. The problem with it is that the general
level of training has not caught up. Most people do not attempt to train
themselves, even fewer have the horizon far enough to "get" the consequences
of what they're doing intuitively, or even logically.

~~~
epicide
I'm sure this was also an argument used against supermarkets, automobiles, and
various other things.

Put simply, you can't learn the fundamentals of everything that affects your
life.

There are consequences, of course. It is important to learn to balance between
when you should learn something and when it really doesn't matter. This is
easier said than done and up for _constant_ debate.

------
nsaje
This is what the book The Inner Game of Tennis is all about.

------
mar77i
"Overthinking, over-analyzing separates my body from my mind" \- Tool

------
fromthestart
>The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer argues that much of our behaviour is based
on deceptively sophisticated rules-of-thumb, or “heuristics”. A robot
programmed to chase and catch a ball would need to compute a series of complex
differential equations to track the ball’s trajectory. But baseball players do
so by instinctively following simple rules: run in the right general
direction, and adjust your speed to keep a constant angle between eye and ball

This is why neural nets are so powerful. They're encoding generalized
heuristics, likely similar to those humans use.

~~~
AstralStorm
Are they now? Do you have some sort of breakthrough explaining ANN encodings?

Currently the state of the art is some sort of ad hoc correlation between
behavior and explanations.

The topological ANN explanation makes their thinking seem vastly different
from what logical heuristics would be...

------
empath75
I’ve seen this referred to as the mind/no-mind state or ‘mu’

You can get there fairly simply by playing any extremely fast-paced video
game, like Tetris or Tempest 2000.

When I was djing regularly, I could get to that state, too. Given how
introverted I was, it would have been impossible for me to actually get up in
the DJ booth in front of hundreds or thousands of people and _think_ about
what I was doing. I had to lose myself in the activity. I often walked out
after two hours not really remembering anything I did.

------
nyc111
It is surprising that the exact mechanism of this behavior is not known. It
must be related to habits. To the microbiome where most of our decisions are
made. Would like to know more about how to leave out the conscious mind. I
notice that when I'm doing a task on the computer which is interestingly
repetitive that requires some dexterity I forget about the passage of time. So
one can achieve this state even in daily life that does not require the return
of a tennis ball under stress.

~~~
AstralStorm
It seems that our logical side evolved to predict behaviors of others since
empathy is limited to same species. It is probably the other side of the same
circuit... Similar to how A3C ANNs work, we have a reflective capability to
change how and what we're training. "Superego" so to speak. A metric ton of
automated systems for learning and action though. At least two action oriented
predictors - logical/heuristic and direct emapthic/sympathetic.

As to not noticing passage of time consciously, it is because conscious though
likely it's more energy intensive, so to save it when subconscious processes
are sufficient it gets throttled down. Of course this is a "just so"
explanation and we do not actually know how exactly this works. Perhaps the
consciousness related to sensing time and rhythm gets relegated to something
else.

~~~
nyc111
I believe loaded words like "subconscious" make it difficult to come up with
new explanations.

It's interesting that when the body is happy and relaxed the mind is not aware
of it. So there seems to be a continuous struggle between the ordering mind
and instinctive body. Or the mind and the animal side.

~~~
AstralStorm
The contentment might be like temperature in an annealing system or
experimentation/forgetting tunable in an artificial system.

When we're content, nothing has to be changed, right? The trouble is, our
"contentment sensor" has been evolved a long time ago for a different
environment and is probably hard to train being so ancient and we do not know
how to do it...

Of course this is another "just so" explanation. There's not enough science on
contentment and discontent related to intellectual performance.

Currently I found this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6846034/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/6846034/)

------
samblr
A novice wants to master. But a master wants to ONLY practice.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"Practice" being to use the skill or practice being to work to improve the
skill ([further] mastery)?

~~~
samblr
The idea is there shouldn't be much difference in both. One same as the other.

However, really successful tilt this balance unnaturally (see above).

------
falcor84
Isn't this article just reappropriating the system 1 vs system 2 distinction
that Daniel Kahnemanb discusses in "Thinking, Fast and Slow"?

------
robomartin
This is key:

“Unthinking is not the same as ignorance; you can’t unthink if you haven’t
already thought.”

Put simply, unthinking requires extensive experience and training. This isn’t
some magical monk super power everyone can reach for, it is only available to
those who have devoted enough time and effort to the task that it almost
becomes an instinct.

Driving is an example of this everyone can relate to. Imagine a newbie
“unthinking”. Ouch!

------
geonnave
This reminds me of the book "The Power of Now", which try to combine teachings
of many religions, and basically says that you gotta "feel your presence now,
without thinking" to fully connect yourself with the world. The author even
mentions Descartes' famous quote.

------
marcos123
The HN audience is ripe for this kind of knowledge.

------
amelius
To me it's unsatisfying that you have to offload the work to some part of the
brain that you have no strong conscious connection with. It's like letting
someone else do the work.

In my view, you really master something if you have conscious control over it.
Perhaps that is what Federer was trying to do.

~~~
Tor3
> you really master something if you have conscious control over it.

Quite the opposite - you master something when you can do it automatically,
i.e. without conciously controlling it. The conscious mind has many
limitations, one is that it's way too slow to handle real-time events - you
can't consciously think about what actions to perform when you suddenly skid
your car in a curve, or when you're performing the high jump on a sports
field. The other main problem with the conscious mind is that it can't multi-
task. So you use your conscious mind to practice, carefully, slowly at first,
one part at the time, until, finally, your unconscious (or automated) trained
sections of your brain can do it for you, and all the conscious mind has to do
is to sit back, relax, and be the conductor. Or just watching.

~~~
amelius
Yes, that's a common view, and you worded it nicely. I think you didn't get
that I'm taking about the _next level_ of mastery.

The problem with training a neural net (or part of your brain) is that it is
fuzzy. You don't know _why_ it works, just that by trying hard enough, it
often works. I'm saying that this is from a certain perspective unsatisfying.
Also, talented people often do things automatically, without understanding
why, and they have a hard time explaining things to a beginner.

~~~
babygoat
I still have no idea what you're trying to say.

