2008/01/19
>>Read This Whenever You're Doubting Yourself

You can do this. Do you know how I know why? Because returning to this confidence, strength and courage is who you are. You are a very brave person with a lot of things trying to hold you back emotionally. But I already know you won't let them do that.

You are strong because you have given yourself the tools to accomplish these things with. Your strength may not show itself every single moment of every day, but when you need to use it, it's there for you and you know how to use it to get the job done.

You are courageous because no matter how low you get, you are more than willing to fight your way back up. Other people would turn tail and run in such situations, but you have so much courage and some much bravery that you can stand in the face of the unknown, beat it down and conquer it.

You are confident because you know you have these two things and with them, you can accomplish more than most people think is even possible. Your confidence is exceedingly robust when you're challenged with something you need to put all of your effort into. You knowingly rely on yourself, aware that you are the support you need.

These things live inside you, have always lived inside you. You know what happened, what you did wrong, and now you know what must be done to fix it. So do it, knowing you have what it takes to get it done.

I have faith in you, more faith that you can understand right now.

Now go.

2008/01/05
>>Inducing Auditory Hallucinations #1

Background

An at first strange but now understandable change in my brain occurred without me noticing until years later. While in grade school, I was frequently in situations where noise was going on that I didn't want to listen to. It could be my relatives talking, or music on the radio I dislike. Whatever the circumstance, I would find means on my own of playing music in my head such that I wouldn't have to hear whatever background noise I either didn't want to listen to or just plain didn't care about. If I did this long enough, with characteristically distinct music I had listened to plenty of times before, I could induce an auditory hallucination so strong and loud that I would startle myself at the music blaring in my ears. As soon as I became startled, the music I thought I was hearing suddenly would stop. The entire process from first playing music in my head to the auditory hallucination was about five minutes, with the "audible" music playing for about four seconds total before being abruptly cut off.

Environmental Changes

After entering my Senior year in high school, I was in a constant position of listening to whatever real music I wanted to and being around only people I wanted to hear talking. If I were ever in a situation where I didn't want to listen, it was always in a place that required listening anyway, such as work or class. From then on, continuing today, the lack of my being put in a situation where I don't want to listen and have the option of tuning everything out and listening to my mentally produced music diminished to none. Five years went by without a single moment where I would have listened to my own mental radio.

Causes

As a result, the ability fell out of practice, and I find myself no longer able to induce my own auditory hallucinations at will. I found I had even ceased to play mental music for the most part, and any time I did try to, singing had become so attached to breathing that listening to music with vocals in my head resulted in forced breathing timed with the singing, and listening to music without vocals caused me some breathing distress until it rhythmically fell in time with the beat of the song. This most certainly was caused by the great deal of singing by myself to my own played music I had done in the last few years, both in my own cars and at home.

Hypothesis

As a small test, I tried very hard for a few hours a day to induce the hallucinations and break my breathing attachment to the music I would play in my head. The attachment for the most part is broken, but the furthest I got with the hallucination induction was the brief sound of running water right before I fell asleep one night. The neural connection/pathway that enabled me to induce such hallucinations is surely still there in some capacity, and can readily be strengthened and induced once again. The trouble is finding out what situations or circumstances are best to bring about its return. Since the running water incident, I have reflected on all of the auditory hallucination I had done, and realized that most if not all of them resulted in me putting myself into some kind of meditation, or more likely a pre-sleep mode wherein my brain changed its behavior in some manner much like before I fall asleep at night, and the clarity allowed the concentration on the music I was mentally producing to successfully activate my audio cortex (much in the way that thinking about moving one's hands for long enough sometimes inadvertently results in spontaneous movement). Can I truly regain the power of auditory hallucination again, recapturing the neural pathway that once was so strong and so readily accessible? Does the plasticity of the brain extend to voluntary hallucinations, given enough time and concentration?

2007/12/31
>>Delicacy

The mirror neuron system is a uniquely influential part of the brain. The construct of mirror neurons in the brain allow humans the ability to learn by observation a number of aspects ranging from the intricacies of displayed emotion to the technicalities of moving ones hands to catch a thrown ball. With mirror neurons, the brain is able to grasp the ability to place the owner in an observed person's place, seeing how they see and thinking how they think. In essence, the mirror neuron construct is what gives humans the ability to empathize.

The construct is set up throughout the brain in key locations to aid the areas within and adjacent to their location. It functions different depending on the stimulation and makes adjustments to neural pathways and learned mental maps accordingly. When an action or emotion made by an observed human being registers in the construct, the mirror neurons firing are dependent upon the type of action or emotion being witnessed, as well as the result of that action or emotion. Different parts of the construct are accessed depending on the type of action or emotion witnessed. The action-related one allows human beings to understand concepts of intention and goal-oriented behavior. The emotion-related one allows human beings to understand concepts of feelings in others, the causes and effects of emotions, and how the expressed emotion relates to environmental and situational context.

It has also been suggested, however unproven due to lack of research, that the mirror neuron construct assists the grasp of language and its situational/conditional usage, considering the proximity of part of the construct to certain known language centers in the brain.

A theory that is currently gaining ground relates unresponsive or missing mirror neurons to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Persons with ASD display a range of symptoms all tied to functions of the mirror neuron construct: they lack the ability to read emotions in others, are incapable of metaphorical language comprehension, have extremely underdeveloped social skills, lack of displayed curiosity/interest, missing language abilities, et cetera. Human beings with ASD have repeatedly given EEG readings that show a distinct lack of difference between the way their brain reacts to performing actions themselves versus observing another human being perform them. In human beings without ASD, these readings differ specifically within parts of the brain containing the mirror neuron construct. There is also a distinct physiological difference between the brains of those with ASD and those without, namely the thinning of key construct areas and the thinning of those areas correlating with the severity of the ASD.

The human race has not been able to prove that these correlations are necessarily causative. However, current research continues to lend support to the malformed mirror neuron system as a significant contributor to ASD.

Here, we part ways with the scientifically proven, and delve into logical conjecture.

These human beings affected with ASD will rarely show some kind of savant ability. The savant abilities the affected is capable of, however, has little to do with the their ASD. There are many different cases of savant abilities in people who do not have any kind of ASD. The neural pathway mapping of the brain in such individuals is markedly different from the normal mappings found in human beings, giving rise to savant abilities (such as photographic memory or number calculation) but simultaneously severely suppressing or altogether leaving out large sections of other abilities that are normally found in capable human beings (creating meaningful relationships with others, being able to view the larger picture instead of intensely focusing on one aspect uncontrollably). This profoundly different and unknown mental mapping is, perhaps, spurred on by the brain attempting to find ways around malformation in utero, trying to heal itself to somehow maintain a method of functioning.



2007/12/24
>>The Acquiescence to Weakness is in the Choices We Make

It is a general accepted aspect of Psychology that an individual's environment has both indirect and direct effects on the individual. Even if one is being attentive and making sure not to allow such changes to happen, interactions between the individual and others still causes subtle changes in the individual. Typically, these go unnoticed for some time until a situation arises in which the changes have weight and show themselves through the individual's immediate reaction in dealing with the situation.

When confronted with changes that the individual cannot readily accept, or for some reason conflicts with existing truths of self, a series of decisions must be made. The most significant is whether the change is ultimately favorable.

If the change has been determined to be favorable, the individual attempts to resolve the changes with anything they conflict with (perception of self, past persona projections, et cetera).

If the change is determined as unfavorable, the individual is charged with figuring out how to go about reversing/altering the changes. This can go one of three ways: the change is altered via the individual's mental capacity of self-control, the other person who encouraged/gave rise to the change is removed (thereby making the chance that the individual returns to their previous state feasible), or both of these.

The truly favorable method of altering unfavorable change is found in different ways depending on the goal of the individual. If the goal is simply altering the change, then the option of both is best. If the goal is easiest method, getting rid of the cause -- the other person -- is best. If personal understanding and growth is the goal, self-alteration is best.

Most people here would pick the easiest option: get rid of the cause, get rid of the change, right?

Which one do you pick?

2007/12/18
>>What Does This Say About People?

The sole program on a computer has been told to determine the most appropriate, useful choice of three objects given a situation Q in which they are to be used, and return that answer. The program is then shown three objects X Y and Z, which for Q they are all of determinably equal use. Which object does the program pick?

To start off, the program would need to have been given a method of responding to these circumstances. That method of coping with identical quantifiers infers a preference, but it is the preference of the program's creator. At the root of every(?) computer language, there is an inherent preference for one of the objects depending on how the language creator told it to handle such a situation. If the program were written without one, the language it is written in will have something dictating which object is chosen, inferring the preference of the language creator.

Would a computer having preferences necessarily dictate personality? Given that the preferences were programmed into it by an outside creator, no. The computer isn't what is determining how it handles such a circumstance. The program or the language is doing that for it and directing which object is chosen. The preferences put in place are a sort of given personality.

Because pre-stated preferences exist, it follows that the program has been given a personality and not developed it on its own. It can display its static personality via its responses from being asked to choose between qualitatively equal objects, but it cannot alter the personality it has been given, and it is not using any outer reasoning capabilities to determine the preferences. It is a false personality.

I am Sawa.

Since your thinking has a direct bearing on your performance, your thinking must be based on sound input.

I listen. I watch. I write.
With no wings, with no things.