
Daydreamers might solve problems faster - nreece
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/daydreamers-might-solve-problems-faster-20090513-b22z.html
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SamAtt
"People assume that when the mind wanders away it just gets turned off"

Who assumed this? It seems like a pretty stupid assumption from a cognitive
standpoint. Daydreaming is basically an activity where the brain has to create
a whole scenario without the benefit of any outside stimulus what so ever
which sounds fairly hard to me.

I was a day dreamer when I was a kid and my Mom never assumed I was stupid.
The only problem with daydreaming is when you do it instead of applying
yourself to the task at hand which makes this study a bit irrelevant imho.

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dkarl
I think the question is whether your brain is working on problems that aren't
part of your daydream. In other words, if I'm daydreaming about Isabella
Rossellini dressed up as a starfish, am I also figuring out how to improve
problematic code at the same time?

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jamesbritt
" ... f I'm daydreaming about Isabella Rossellini dressed up as a starfish,
..."

Have you seen the movie "Infected"? If not, you may find it, um, interesting.

:)

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kyro
I've always considered myself one of the biggest daydreamers I know. Most of
my time in class is spent daydreaming, and it's definitely served as my
biggest source of creativity. Many of the ideas I come up with are usually a
product of my incessant daydreaming. Sure, a lot of the times it's me carving
through the hills of Italy in my Aston Martin, but when it's not, daydreaming
is my problem solving time. I start on an issue, ride down its tangent line,
hop onto another node, etc., until I land on something of value. I'm not sure
if imagination/creativity leads to more daydreaming, or whether more
daydreaming leads to the development of imagination/creativity, but they
definitely play off each other and allow the brain to wander and bend in
amazing ways - ways people who are too focused never get to experience, I
think.

It can get to an extreme, though. Often times I find myself daydreaming too
much to where it borders laziness, and ultimately me not executing most of
those ideas.

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jerf
My technique for designing software architecture is basically to daydream what
it would be like to use the best possible API for the problem, then further
daydream about what problems might result. It takes a bit of discipline, but
with years of practice it turns out to work pretty well. You never get good
enough to _never_ get blindsided by some requirement, but you can cut it down
a lot.

Don't skip that problem step; all architectures have tradeoffs and if you
can't name the bad things about your choices you don't understand the choices
yet.

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tlb
Argh, another brain imaging study proving nothing.

What any of these fMRI studies measure is energy consumption of brain
structures. Energy consumption != useful thinking. Their conclusion is exactly
like saying: my screensaver causes my CPU to get warm, therefore it is doing
useful computation.

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joeyo
While I enjoy hating on fMRI studies as much as the next guy, it's a little
harsh to say that this study proves nothing. Brain activity _is_ proportional
to blood flow/energy consumption. We can argue about the linearity of that
relationship, the spatial and temporal resolution, the problems of averaging
to increase signal-to-noise and other interpretational issues, but it is still
a proxy for neuronal activity.

To use your analogy, I'd say it's more like looking at the spatial
distribution of temperature in your CPU. Even if it's just driving the
screensaver, at least now you know something about which registers are
involved. Likewise, the authors in this study have implicated a couple of
areas as being involved in the process of daydreaming.

Where I _would_ criticize this study, is the part where they conclude that
there is a connection between daydreaming and problem solving on the basis
that executive function areas are active during daydreaming. It's a suggestive
link, but very tenuous.

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dkarl
I hope research along these lines helps clarify the folk wisdom about
subconscious cognition. Everybody "knows" that if you need to hoover up
existing knowledge, you should focus intensely and block everything else out.
To learn an existing system or API, set yourself up with a long, focused
coding session. If you're stuck on a problem that needs to be solved or a
false understanding that needs to be corrected, do something relaxing and
unrelated.

It's not clear exactly what you should do to enable that subconscious process.
This study suggests that daydreaming works. Is high-pressure, focused thinking
okay if it doesn't have anything to do with the problem you need to solve?
What about competitive sports? What about the mentally quiet yet highly
attuned state achieved during endurance exercise? Does caffeine help or hurt?
So many questions.

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Agathos
Sometimes I worry that I don't daydream any more. Instead I just hit some
websites, like this one.

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DTrejo
I avoid listening to music and other things while I am traveling - I find that
when I have plenty of time to think and daydream I come up with more ideas and
solutions.

It's too bad that HN takes up some of my idea time, though thankfully I learn
enough while here to make up for it.

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imgabe
Apparently, I'm working on something like a madman all day. Wish I knew what
it was...

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tezza
whilst I am a daydreamer, I am not sure I could daydream when _stuck in an MRI
scanner_

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sp332
It's not as hard as you might think. Sure, it's loud and cramped, but it's
_really freakin' dull_ in one of those things! I daydreamed just fine. I even
know someone who fell asleep during an MRI.

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tezza
I bow to experience... may I cheekily ask how you managed daydreaming with the
_other_ probes attached/inserted? I find even whistling difficult. ;)

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sp332
Heh, it was only my brain they were interested in.

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Adam503
Apparently, that doesn't include the daydreaming one might be doing while
teaching is going on though.

