Carl-Richard

I think John puts it perfectly here. He said it's not about the "what" but the "how" (the 4P model). And I think that makes sense, non-trivially: Again, I would have to review it more, but indeed it seems to deal with how cognitive agents relate to things in the world, i.e. relationships between things, parts; the "how". The tricky thing of course is that the 4P's are in themselves "whats", the parts in the relationships being described are themselves "whats". Nevertheless, the focus is on the "how". Or in John's language: it's what's relevant 😜

I can't remember exactly how it goes. I'll review it and see how it fits.

I take omniscience to mean God knowing everything in the universe, which is identical with being everything in the universe. If the knowing is identical to the being, then the knowing is simply a "what" ("it is what it is").

It's pretty impenetrable. Too many model words, being trigger-happy with semi-colons. But I think trying to reduce it down too much kinda goes against the purpose of the post, which is to draw many connections between different ways of saying essentially the same thing. If I had just wanted to communicate the crux of the issue, I would have just said "content, structure, and their physical manifestations".

I can't stop myself, but the three O's (omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence) also seem to reflect the metaphysical tripartite structure (I'll name it the "MTS"). Omniscience is the knowing (of all) of being; the contents, the "what". Omnipotence is the shaping (of all) of reality; the structure, the "how". Omnipresence is the spatio-temporal manifestation (of all) of reality; the physical correlates, the "where". And here is more: ontology is concerned with the "what" ("what is reality?"). Science is concerned with the "how" ("how does reality act or behave?"); causal relationships, correlative relationships, relationships between parts, structure. Applied sciences like technology and engineering is more concerned with the "where" (how does science get implemented in the physical world?). Now, there are of course overlaps: a lot of science is deeply concerned with physical processes, and proponents of science might even place these processes as the ontological primitive (physicalism). However, idealistically, or most fundamentally, these splits lean more to one of the sides than the others. You might also feel Wilber's Four Quadrants sneaking up as an alternative. Now, the way it's usually used, it seems more like a meta-theory for existing human knowledge than a metaphysical model. It's very concerned about the macro level (e.g. describing human worldviews, cultures and systems). But we could assume that it extends down to the micro level as well (e.g. atoms, atom-atom relationships). If we assume that, then the "what" and the "how" could be argued to fall under Interior (mind), as they are contrasted to "where" which definitely falls under Exterior (physical). Of course, materialists won't be happy with that, but at the same time, even they would probably have the intuition that something like math ("how") or Redness ("what") is not merely physical. Also, the "what" and the "how" could fall under Individual and Collective respectively (but not both). A "what" necessarily describes one thing (Individual), and a "how" necessarily describes relationships between two or more things (Collective). Maybe it would be interesting to make a Four Quadrants -esque meta-theory specifically for metaphysical models (which might have been done already by people like David Chalmers; "meta-metaphysics").

Every hormone in the body has many metabolic pathways, signalling pathways and target organs that vary depending on the individual. For example, you could be converting more of the testosterone to DHT or other metabolites than normal. You could have stronger signalling through some pathways than normal. And your target organs could have a higher sensitivity to testosterone than normal. All in all, one measure like the serum concentration of one hormone gives a very limited picture. Besides, he said his testosterone was 295 (presumably ng/dL). That's 5-33 times the normal range for women. Even if you're on the low side of the normal range for men, you're still on the normal range for men. The differences within the normal range are not that significant, especially when accounting for other factors. And of course, there are factors that contribute to masculinity other than hormones. Your overall brain structure is determined by various genes and environmental factors other than those responsible for hormones. And that's not going into the psychological side of things.

🥴

Ask it about the prefrontal cortex and other cortical structures.

Dividing the brain into parts is useful for some things, but not so much in this case imo. Rather, the whole brain is implicated. Also, "rapidly aging" is rather specific. I would simply say increased chronic stress, where rapid aging may be a byproduct. But it's indeed the case that hyper-salient stimuli like social media, TikTok and internet porn; hyper-palatable foods like fast foods, candies and sodas; environmental toxins, noise pollution and toxic foods; and lack of natural stimuli like natural landscapes; it's not what we evolved for, and it comes with certain challenges.

Hmm... "cognitive" 🤔... "universe"🤔🤔... "Cognitive universe" 🤔🤔🤔...

What does "CTMU" stand for? 🤔🧐🤔

David Marr. It sounds weird because it uses the language of computer science (computational neuroscience), but really, the split is metaphysical. It's the what, the how and the where. Here is Chomsky summing it up in 20 seconds: 5:18-5:43 What task does the computation solve? How is the task solved? What are the physical correlates? (and "where" are they: in a brain? In a CPU?) But yes, it's generally more clear to use more common words like structure vs content. The point was just to the draw connections and point out the many different areas you can find the same fundamental idea.

Masculinity is not really equal to testosterone. I bet if I measured my testosterone, it would be relatively high, but I'm way less dominant, assertive and combative than Destiny.

It's very cathartic to see him absolutely shit on the lunacy that is happening on the Right. If you deny the results of elections, think the media is the enemy of the people, and spread conspiracy theories like immigrants eating dogs or hurricanes being controlled by the government, you're absolutely poisoned.

It's worse. It's language. Chose your reductionist poison.

Just a quick wild connection I made: Destiny and Alex O'Connor discussed how in the vice president debates, Tim Walz not answering the question about something innocuous like exaggerating a story about being in Tiananmen Square got compared to J. D. Vance not answering whether he believed in the results of the last election. That's valuing structure (algorithm) over content (computation). Same when Destiny said "when you lost on the substance and fight on the logic". It seems like computation, or values, or facts, is where virtue and wisdom lies, while algorithm or logic is easily corrupted. For example, sophism gives the appearance or emulates the structure of wisdom (fluency, confidence, charisma), but of course, the substance isn't really there, or it's bullshit. Same with when he commented on how Biden speaks vs how Trump speaks. Biden might speak slower and struggle to get a sentence out, but he is actually saying something of substance, which is hard and takes brain power. Trump speaks more fluently, but he speaks 3rd grade level ideas and just gibberish. Who is really the cognitively weaker person?

I just recently decided to start trying "image streaming", literally right now. It practices verbal fluidity and vividness of visual imagery: https://winwenger.com/resources/cps-techniques/image-streaming/

There are many tripartite theories I refused to name because they didn't fit, and one of them came from Freud. Many of them are similar but not quite analogous to Marr's Three Levels.

Systems theory describes systems. A system is necessarily a set of relationships between parts and thus "logos", structure, Shiva. The relationships can either be chaotic, complicated or complex. That is what the Cynefin framework describes. Shakti is usually associated with "chaos", or energy, which dances upon structure (Shiva) to create manifestation (physicality, the world of sensations). Brahman is what "is"; being, or the core of all existence. Each part of existence, at its core, even Shiva and Shakti, can be said to be Brahman, and therefore Brahman represents all parts, all units. Every concept is fundamentally Brahman.

I don't see the connection 🤔 Some other terms for what I'm talking about would be the "what", the "how" and the "where". The Cynefin framework and systems theory in general is mainly concerned about the hows; "relations" between the whats; syntax, structure. Concepts (whats), e.g. emotions, can be related to each other (how), e.g. in a complicated relationship, and implemented in a concrete physical substrate (where), e.g. in neurons or physiological responses.

He could've said "syntax vs semantics", "algorithm vs computation", "form vs being", but no, he chose "structure vs content" (🤓) I just realized Sat-Chit-Ananda or the Holy Trinity or Brahman-Shiva-Shakti describes the same thing as Marr's Three Levels (Computation, Algorithm, Implementation), but that is just me being Jordan Peterson and interviewing myself

This topic is a South Park episode.

I would think it's the specific pattern recognition and chunking that doesn't transfer between tasks, but the underlying working memory training that is indicated by the fatigue does transfer. It's like playing basketball and then one day switching to football. Your game performance will drop significantly, but your general physical fitness will stay the same. N-Back training does load your working memory, or else there would be no platform to develop the pattern recognition or chunking abilities on. Your working memory is the general workspace of your mind, kinda like the musculoskeletal system is the general workspace of your body. The question is simply how much N-Back training loads it and whether it's more efficient than simply using your brain in other similar ways (e.g. reading a difficult text). And indeed, I believe N-Back training is more efficient at this, because it follows the same principles of maximizing muscle growth: short and intense periods of work (e.g. 1 minute x 10 sets), short rest periods in-between (e.g. 30 seconds), and longer periods of rest (e.g. two to three rest days a week). So to speak, you can develop your muscles by simply doing manual labor all day, but you won't win the Mr. Olympia. But how much more efficient is it? That's an empirical question, and paraphrasing one of my professors, "the evidence on the benefits of brain training on improving cognitive performance is weak to moderate", and the studies that show positive results generally point to e.g. single digit increases in IQ. However, I believe more clever research designs could show more convincing results. Just like there are better and worse ways of training for example bench press, there are better and worse ways of training N-Back, and I don't believe this is well-controlled for in most studies. The way you structure your training, your focus, your intensity, your consistency, your technique, etc., matters a lot. This is also not to speak about factors like internal motivation, which is unbelievably important for pursuing growth in anything and arguably one of the largest predictors of cognitive performance in itself. You will probably never find a high-quality study like a randomized controlled trial that uses internally motivated participants unless they intentionally selected for it, and that is rare (and almost practically impossible in this case: where would you find people who can't wait to start N-Back training but has not already started it?). As for what I believe is possible, I believe you could increase your IQ by 10 points using a proper N-Back training protocol with internal motivation (and coaching) in one month of training. You could probably increase it another 5 points or so over time, like indicated by the anecdotal report mentioned by OP (although he was also maximizing other factors like diet and exercise). On the surface, this would probably get me laughed at by some scientists, but again, I would ask them for better studies. So to sum up, N-Back is a very intense exercise, and it fits well within a training protocol that maximizes growth.

This might be interesting: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00430/full

If you're playing the game and putting in an effort and you develop fatigue, that is a sign you're using your working memory. It's true that your brain develops strategies over time, but that is countered by simply increasing the difficulty of the game in the game settings. So to see progress, just increase the difficulty over time.