Here is my answer to to the game I wrote in the previous post “Arrrrrr!”. This is actually my whole philosophy of mind relation and productivity.
Consciousness is the pirate monkey.
That means YOU, the entity that is aware right now, is a little pet rhesus living on a pirate ship.
The people that said you are the parrot, were also close, but knowing you are a pet monkey gives us more understanding of what is actually happening here and what you can do about it. What does this knowledge give us?
There is an entire multi-million dollar industry called “self-help”. It is entirely devoted to answering one question: how do you do things?
Not just on a skill level but actually how just to do something you want? Because if people knew how to do things everyone would be rich, healthy, athletic, smart and popular.
Now the good books give you the answer, but it is not actually an answer you want to hear.
The answer is: it is not actually YOU that does things.
It is the body and certain brain parts that DO stuff.
So let’s look at the other important pirate ship parts and see what they are in this perspective:
Crew – action functions of the body
Captain – the decision making part of the brain
Sail map and measuring tools – rational thinking
Rats – drugs
Loyalist – social programming
Parrot – the voice in your head
Queen – DNA programming
The most important part to understand is the Queen. She gives the default orders for the corsair ship to operate on. The default orders are to sail the seas and fight pirates.
In our situation we have genetic programming. The DNA orders are to survive and to reproduce. The only thing this organism is interested in by default is to survive as long as possible and to reproduce one of its kind. That’s all.
Now, because there is free will this can change. You cannot change this directly because you’re not the Captain. You are a little monkey fooling around on the ship. The only thing you, as a monkey, are interested in is… having fun. You want to have fun, but you are on a corsair ship. You want to sail to Treasure Island and find gold, you want to become a reckless pirate but you’re just a little monkey. This is why it is hard and this is why so few people actually live their dreams.
My whole philosophy revolves around finding clever tricks or actually convincing the Captain to do what I want.
You have a little bell strapped around your little rhesus neck. The first thing you can do is – Attention.
By running around and ringing your bell you are working on the attention of the ship crew members. You can notice for example a book about treasures in the Captain’s library and hold his attention to it, so he might read it and think it’s a good idea. You might dance around on the map where the Treasure Island and capture the attention there. You can also gain trust from the Captain and crew members. For example if you notice an iceberg you can ring your bell and the danger will be avoided. If you gain trust by cleverly using attention, the Captain will soon give you more responsibility for driving the ship.
The second thing you can do is – Mess around.
You have little monkey hands and you can use them to manipulate the ship environment. You can use it for evil and sabotage the ship, for example throw a rat into the kitchen, but you might get punished by doing that. You can do other things too, like sit in the map room and erase the voyage plans and draw your own. This might work for a short while, but when the Captain notices this he will backup and your plans will fail. Because the parrot is also an animal (I like to think of this as a Disney movie) you can talk with it. You can tell the parrot to squawk all day long to the Captain and try to convince him this way.
These are tricks, the real goal is to actually convince the Captain to do what you want. That is when things really start happening, because the body stops being interested in survival benefits and starts living for adventure. The real good thing about it is, that things will actually start becoming done by themselves, because again it is not YOU that does stuff. This is what my next article will be about – conscious effort – and why it is a totally wrong idea and why once you get to learn how to use your special monkey abilities you’ll know how to make the body do things by itself – and you’ll have fun while doing them.
One other important thing to this is, whatever you are imagining and living right now, what seems to be going on in your head, is not equal to the reality of the body (and the absolute reality if we’re at it). The body lives in a world that consists only of two questions: how do I survive and who do I fuck? That is its reality. Your reality might be something completely different because you are not the body. It can also be similar because reproduction can be fun if you know what I mean.
Just know that whatever dreams you have is really your imagination and the body is most likely not interested in them. If you want to create a game for example, there is no survival benefit in that. If you ever tend to be lazy and sit around watching TV that is because lying on the couch is a direct survival benefit, it is MUCH more important for this organism. Realizing your dreams is not.
This is why losing weight is so hard for many people. Eating more and more is a direct survival benefit and what YOU know the body doesn’t know. If you know excessive fat will kill you that doesn’t mean shit to the body. It doesn’t know what you’re thinking. The body does not know about your plans. The Captain does not listen directly to a little monkey.
The trick is to find ways of letting the brain and body know about your plans and make them reality. In simple words you must connect your dreams and convince the body that it will be either a survival or reproductive benefit. You will know when this happens because you’ll start having fun, that is what you are here for. So have fun while waiting for my next post.
The Humanities posts are really resonating with me. Thanks a lot for it!
It’s nice to see that someone’s interested in fundamental philosophical issues like say mind/body division, ontology etc. It would be great if this left the confines of michal’s blog and maybe introduced someone to Philosophy 101 at their school/college/university. Other than that, someone’s reinventing the wheel here…
And it would be great if any of it was based on scientific fact, rather than random correlations. To each his own, though.
bigbossSNK: Scientific fact is just an opinion of the current scientific establishment. Remember scientists laughed at Copernicus’s idea ages ago. What if what I’m writing isn’t based on fact, but thinking like this WORKS in the real world? That’s all I’m interested in. If you’re interested in productivity then open your mind, if not there’s no point for discussion.
I just want to thank you for these “Humanities” articles! I find them very interesting. I really enjoy reading them
Michal, I have no grievance with disobeying conventions, scientific or otherwise. But when I do cancel conventions, I expect to replace them with a higher degree of correlation to reality.
In that respect, Copernicus might have been laughed at, but ultimately he was correct. I don’t see why I should disavow 40 + years of neuroscience research to come up with some theoretical understanding of how the brain works. Especially when no data are used to validate the ideas, just some “this should fit the puzzle” shenanings.
I think MM’s post can by hardly described by neurologics because its getting more of an psychological matter. Meditation for instance have similar purpose and it seem to work. And i think the post is also very plausible. Darwins law explained it a long time ago. Why not try it? The most important thing that it helps YOU, not the scientists.
I was looking for the new game but now im strained for the next post in Humanities. I should rather pwn myself first instead of a game
Why not add an philosophical forum on link-dead.net
MM, Copernicus is not very good analogy to your situation. After all he had scientificaly proven his idea. It was just to hard to bielieve at that times. Ultimately, his theory wasn’t aproved becouse he was talking about it over and over but because he had a proof.
So it was the monkey? Woohoo! I’ll be waiting for your next article!
lol?
bigbossSNK: A theory is a theory 😛
Just have fun with it… play with it. If you find it doesn’t fit – discard it. That’s what we do with theories.
Michal: You missed the scribe
“a chronicler or writer aboard the ship”
I’d say this is the memory – the part of you that remembers the past.
It knows the mistakes you’ve made, and will urge you to try to avoid them.
It also knows the positive things you’ve done, and will urge you to do them.
But either way, Espressokuppi is a monkey with a bell. Cute
So are you, André.
I’m not interested in proving anything, I’m not interested in science. I’m only concerned about the usefulness of theories. Ultimately I’m only interested in making games. If you want to discuss if this is True or not, exclude me. If you have something to add about how to DO things then please comment otherwise there’s no point.
NightCabbage: yeah the chronicler is memory.
Quit interesting, a monkey with a bell.
Reminds me of Disney movies where animals or bugs or whatever try to push a human to do something. Like a car on a highway with little animals clambering all over th human to force him to go somewhere else.
Divan: yeah it’s like that:). Like the human is sleepwalking and the animals try to get him to walk somewhere.
So… What did I won? Hmm, I have something in my throat:
*cough*beta*cough*testing*link-dead*cough*please*cough*
01001001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101110 01101110 01100001 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01100001 00100000 01110100 01100101 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01110101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100101 00111111
There probably will, but not right now.
See what you did just there was instruct the reasoning center of the brain to google a binary to ASCII translator. Your consciousness (self awareness, awareness of others and their interaction with you) had no bearing on the decision.
So, in answer to your initial statement
“It is not actually YOU that does things.
It is the body and certain brain parts that DO stuff.”
My body and my brain ARE my constituents. I AM my body and my brain. In order for consciousness to cease existing, I have to incur a specific kind of injury to a specific part of the brain that takes all the data I have already accumulated and relates that to my internal notion of my body, other people, objects etc. That is consciousness.
Hopefully your next blog post will be something to do with Link-Dead.
No!
Every post about Link-Dead makes me angry because i haven’t the time (or motivation) to make a similar game by my own. Additionally it is a bit exhausting to watch almost every feature as a post and wainting for month or years to finally play that game that is maybe doesn’t is funny for me. It’s like a f***ing drug. I love it
Better discuss about philosophy and then play the game without any strain
@bigbossSNK: Yes, it is YOUR body that makes the decisions. But the control of that body by your conciousness is very limited. Your conciousness isn’t able to make clear decisions because it is always dependent on all the other body parts that you can’t control. Each decision is “filtered” by the other brain parts, the hormones and the genes. That is MM’s message, i think.
“See what you did just there was instruct the reasoning center of the brain to google a binary to ASCII translator.”
Actually, I used one that I wrote myself. 😛
yv3 you can overcome those filters if you have strong will/determination. Every programmer has deadlines to meet. Have ever experienced one where your program isn’t working and you have to no time left?
If you haven’t, believe me, you can bring your body on the edge of auto destruction; from lack of sleep,lack of movement and eyes hurting like ***. Sure your body will protest but a deadline is more important ;).
The more you train the more you can overcome, ultimately you can become a geek 😉 No seriously overcoming physical needs is one thing that greatly helps you to stop living like your body says you, but like you want to. In the end you will realise that you need to do things your body wants anyway, but you’ll make them of your own will.
Like MM said body isn’t very smart. If you won’t limit how much you eat you’ll be in trouble. Some people just can’t realise it. They think that if they’re hungry they must eat to be healthy. The truth is eating less then you need is more healthy then eating more then you need. The question is: is your will strong enough to cope with the hunger.
О да, я маленькая обезьянка с колокольчиком на шее, которая имеет тенденцию околачиваться около телика и ничего не делать.
“Yes, it is YOUR body that makes the decisions. But the control of that body by your conciousness is very limited. Your consciousness isn’t able to make clear decisions because it is always dependent on all the other body parts that you can’t control. Each decision is “filtered” by the other brain parts, the hormones and the genes. That is MM’s message, i think.”
You cannot control low level functions like autonomic system responses (body temperature, heart beat, hormone secretion (partially) etc). You CAN control all other high level functions like thought and decision making.
And there is a clear instance in which your argument falls apart at the seams. Consider a case where a person overcomes his hormonal and genetic programming. Like a junkie deciding to go cold turkey and get over his addiction, or when a man with violent behavior chooses to disregard his anger. In your hormonal or genetic programming model, these events cannot occur.
Both of these cases illustrate that you DO have control over your actions, actively regulating your own behavior.
I don’t believe in will power, it will come out in the article about conscious effort that you’ll see in a couple days. The thing is, you can convince the body to be on your side. If you find a valid reason not to eat or to be a geek:) it will help you do that. This is why anorexic people exist, they don’t use will power not to eat, they just don’t consider eating, and don’t. Haha lessons about productivity and fat-loss from anorexic people, that should be my next post.
“If you find a valid reason not to eat, this will help you do that”
Valid reasons are the stepping stones of will power. If I don’t assign a goal to my actions, I lead a futile life. I might be able to endure pain, but if it’s just for the heck of it, that’s just an exercise of futility.
If you don’t have the will to change your life, you lead the path of least resistance.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”
– H.L. Mencken
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Haha, i laughed my ass off, this monkey video is so funny 😀