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writingquestionsanswered · 8 months

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I wrote an outline for a chapter I haven't finished but I still can't get around to writing the said chapter. Any advice/tips for that?

Chapter Outlined But Still Can't Write It

I'm not sure if you mean you haven't finished the outline or the chapter, so we'll tackle it both ways. :)

Chapter Outline Isn't Finished - If you're struggling to finish the chapter outline, start by looking at the conflict of the scene/s that make up the chapter. What does the character want in the scene? Are they trying to solve a problem? Are they trying to obtain something? (Like information, improvement of a skill, an object, agreement from someone to do something?) What tactic do they use in an attempt to get the thing? What obstacles do they face, and how do their tactics escalate? Do they succeed or fail in getting the thing? Are there consequences of getting the thing or not getting the thing? Understanding the purpose of your scene/scenes/chapter helps greatly in figuring out what needs to happen from beginning to end. You can also look at scene structure, which I tackle in my post Easy Scene/Chapter Structure.

Chapter Outline Is Finished - If your chapter outline is finished but you're still struggling to write the chapter, it could be because although you know where it needs to begin and what needs to happen, you may not know specifically how to start it. In other words, it's one thing to know that the chapter needs to start with Katniss preparing to go hunting with Gale, but that doesn't tell us exactly how the scene needs to begin. Try analyzing what needs to happen at the beginning and visualizing where your character is at the first point you know.

In the THG example, we know Katniss will walk out the door to meet Gale to go hunting. So, we can imagine her poised at the door getting ready to walk outside... now we rewind it. What was she doing in the moments before she got to the door? What did she need do in order to get ready? What room was she in? Who or what did she interact with? What was she thinking about? These can give you clues to specifically where you can start. Remember, it helps to start with movement, or in other words, something happening. Like, "My feet touch the ice cold floor..." or "Wooden bowls clatter to the floor when I open our tiny cupboard." Or, in the case of THG: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress.

You want the opening image of the chapter to be a hook, either a dynamic moment that asks a question ("Where's Prim?") or dynamic imagery: Nothing about the woman sitting across from me suggested she was a private investigator, much less one who came so highly recommended by Hollywood's rich and famous.

Other things that could be going on... I can think of some other potential issues which are worth considering if the above advice doesn't help you move forward:

1 - You're not sure where the story is going - You may have a full or partial outline for your chapter, but if you're not sure what happens in the next chapter or later on in the story, that can create a sort of mental block that makes it more difficult to get started. It's almost like your brain can see the road is washed out up ahead and doesn't want to start moving until the road is repaired. So, make sure you have a good idea of what needs to happen next and where the overall story is going. You can head over to my Plot & Story Structure master list of posts if you need help plotting.

2 - You've stressed yourself out about it - When we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to start something or finish something, we end up creating an association of stress with the thought of that activity. In other words, when we think of doing the thing it stresses us out, and since our brains are programed to avoid stress, it makes us not want to do the thing. We can think we want to do the thing... we can be motivated and have things ready to go, but if that little bit of stress bubbles up, our brains can say, "Nope! Uh-uh... that way lies danger," and we just can't get going. So, see what you can do to resolve any stress you may be feeling about the chapter. Do some fun activities related to the chapter, like try story boarding it with cute doodles or images from the internet. Make an aesthetic for the chapter, or make a chapter playlist. Try doing a little meditation, yoga, or take a walk before you sit down to work on the chapter. And don't give yourself a hard time when you try but it doesn't go anywhere.

3 - You're not ready to write the chapter - Sometimes there's something blocking you from writing the chapter and it's not something you can necessarily figure out. On a subconscious level, maybe your brain realizes you don't know the characters well enough to give this chapter justice. Maybe something about the chapter isn't working. Or maybe you're just more excited to write another chapter. Remember it's ok to skip chapters and come back to them later. Sometimes that's all you need in order to make it work.

I hope something here helps for you!

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thydungeongal · 2 months

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What's so confusing about Tunnels & Trolls?

I am halfway through 5th edition rulebook so I can't give any advice but for now it looks much more comprehensive and elegant than AD&D RAW. Rules of combat are very different from mainstream ttrpgs because it was very early and explicitly not for wargame fans, but they don't look really hard, especially once it explained the logic. I think that if I was alive back in 1979 I would pick it over D&D without hesitation. I haven't really read rules on monsters yet but yeah they look counterintuitive.

I am not calling you stupid, I just want to actually try it and want to be aware of what problems I may encounter. Also I specified the edition just in case it's different in some later or earlier ones.

(While we are at it, can I say how funny its magic works. Recieving damage reduces constitution instead of absent hit points, which makes sense because due to this wounded characters perform some tasks worse, but casting magic reduces strength the same way. I think that the idea was that casters are tired from casting spells but making magic reduce constitution would make wizards and rogues die too fast, but as a result they created the world of muscle wizards. Yes, I said rogues because in T&T rogues are apparently not thieves but mix of fighter and wizard that can do both swordfight and magic... but also kind of sucks at both. And their implied backstory is that they failed to develop any of the skills because either their life circumstances suck or they themself suck.)

(Also, I wanted to send you an ask like "how would ttrpgs look like if they evolved from something else other than miniature wargames?", and apparently T&T is how ttrpgs would like if they evolved from traditional dice games like what landsknechts played in.)

We found the guy,

No but seriously, based on what little I've looked at T&T it actually looks really neat and I enjoy the idea of combat being basically what I've talked about at one point (kind of like a game of football in that teams clash for a moment then get into a huddle and think of their next play). I think what has made T&T hard for my brain to grasp is in part because I'm so used to TTRPGs that follow the structures of D&D (which is actually most RPGs) that the subtle deviations from D&D structures in a dungeon game just make my brain resist receiving any information

But yeah I do have one of the rulebooks? I can't remember which edition it was. But I might go and give it another look.

#thydungeongal answers

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wildissylupus · 8 months

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So, I don't exactly know if you've discussed this, but I think it's clear about what this current season is going to lead up to, and why I think it's so important to be adamant and weary about Null Sector's plans.

The evidence is there, and the claim?

Null Sector is trying to start another Omnic Crisis.

However, this one is less 'a glitch in the system'

And more, 'hitting the factory reset button and installing a virus intentionally right after.'

Why?

WELL BUCKLE UP YOUR BAMF BELT KIDDOS CAUSE THIS IS A TRIP AND A HALF.

As we know from story missions, Omnics are being subjugated and indoctrinated across the globe, all at once, in almost every part of the world by Null Sector and those helmets that quite literally place them under a catatonic state and wipe the Omnic's memories.

Torbjörn's analysis on the helmet is very clear when he brings up a very important piece of information:

"I don't know...this device is a nasty piece of work. I think I can get it off, but the bigger problem is, I'm not reading anything in the Omnic's memory banks."

"He's still alive, but it's like the essence of who he is,...is gone."

Now, when we say essence, I'm pretty sure we're saying the Iris, or Aurora's essence that was implemented during the awakening. Now I get what you're thinking. 'Ok Anon #324, but if the Iris gets removed, then why is Ramattra talking about Iris? During the Toronto mission?'

And to you- I say- oh ho ho, my dear, that's exactly what we should be fearing. Let it tie into the fact that there's also one of these Voicelines from Ram when talking about his favorite animal:

"Ants. They build marvelous structures and cooperate when threatened. I find them... Inspirational."

Toronto mission, hell, even the humans are terrified. Everyone is swarming in groups. It's not just gameplay either, when Sojourn is directing the groups of scared Omnics onto the ferry boat, it only proves Ram's point more. People are scared, people are grouping together to fight back, hide, run, and that's exactly what NS wants.

Not only is Null Sector wiping the Iris and awakening out of the Omnics altogether, they're creating a brand new version of the 'Iris'...let's call it 'Pink Eye' cause from what I've seen it's highly contagious. Not only from wiping memories, but also using the memories of strong fighters as well. Human's memories. (*Cough Cough* Ana.)

Have you heard Ram talking during the Toronto mission? He specifically states:

"Together, our one minded purpose. We will make this world, our paradise."

"We welcome you into the Iris."

----------

You let me know what you think about this. I wanna hear some raw thoughts. Big brain mode, no idea is a bad idea. I'm hungry for knowledge.

All I know is that, a couple of things could happen.

If those helmets are taken off, someone is going to have to sacrifice their memories either to bring back the original Aurora awakening and reinstall essence to the Omnics. Wonder who.

If NS ends up indoctrinating a major part of the Omnic population, many will die when and if those helmets do something else. If they can send out a location signal, who knows what else they'll do.

If sentience is reestablished into Omnics and possibly other software coding, this'll be one hell of a trip for all those Null Sector bots.

Man you had a brain blast and I. AM. LOVING IT!

Honestly I love your theory and I don't think there is much to add! It also is a good way to bring in the Junkers cause apparently he found the secret to Omnic life in the Australian omnium-

That could be a way to bring all the omnics back, the Australian Omnium was the place where Aroura was built after all. They could end up brining a second awakening, some residual of Aroura left in the Omnium. It could also lead to the sentience of the Null Sector drones, specifically the bots that are based off of actual people.

Like the C-455 Sharpshooter, P-900 Warhead, S-900 Sentry, A-7000 Wargod and K-2000 Blademaster. If they all have the same glitch that A-7000 has them that is one hell of an identity crisis they're going to have.

--------------------------

All that aside, I want to present my own theory. A counter theory if you will.

And that is Ramattra doesn't know that those helmets are erasing Omnics, he just thinks they are in a catatonic state. There is no indication that Ramattra knows what the subjection helmets are actully doing to Omnics.

If you look back at Ramattra's short story there is no implication of Ramattra wanting to create a new Omnic society through hitting a reset button;

There is an indication of imprisonment, of taking away other Omnics choices in order to make them listen, but that is very different from hitting a reset button. Essentially killing the soul of Omnics. It's something I don't see Ramattra doing knowingly. However, there is a group of people who would not only do this, but has tried to do this before.

Talon.

Something I remember from the Story Missions is Torbjourn saying that the helmets put an Omnics mind in a loop. It's something I didn't think much about. Until I read "The Hero of Numbani".

In that book Sombra hack and installs a virus several Omnics around Numbani. A virus that locks Omnics in a constant loop, and gradually corrupts the Omnics memories.

Sound familiar? There is also the fact that a part of Doomfist's beliefs that are presented in that novel are anti-omnic.

Not only that but I always found it strange that Dommfist, someone who wants conflict, would help someone who has the motivation of "Peace at any cost". Ramattra goal has and still is, for freedom and peace. Something that if he were to gain, would go against Doomfist's want for conflict.

Unless Doomfist is just using Ramattra and Null Sector as a tool to create conflict, adding either an updated version of Sombra's virus (or what he thinks is an updated version), to remove Omnics souls and create a true Second Omnic Crisis.

Not only that but that could also lead into an explanation on what "The Conspiracy" is, maybe it's another God AI who wants to do what Anubis did but has learned from the mistakes of the first Crisis and is trying to make it so they are guaranteed to win.

--------------------------

Either way I am excited for both of these theories, with the first one it's going to be interesting to just explore that aspect of Null Sector, if they get Omnics back are they going to still have their memories, their souls? Are they going to resort back to their basic programming, are they going to go back to being under Anubis's control?

In the case of the second theory, how will Ramattra react if he truly doesn't know what the helmets are doing? Will he stop the invasion? Will he double down? Will he go after Talon?

It's all so interesting!

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #overwatch lore #overwatch headcanons #analysis #doomfist #akane ogundimu #akande ogundimu #ramattra ow #ramattra overwatch #ramattra #null sector #talon overwatch #talon

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gwenbrightly · 9 months

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(Re)Building the Future Chapter 1

A mixture of ideas I’ve had rolling around in my brain since Ruin came out. Please enjoy.

"I'm so sorry…"

"I love carrot cake. Happy birthday, Cassie…"

There's a click accompanied by sobbing, and then……. Nothing…

……..

……….

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Reboot complete."

Roxy regains awareness with a groan. What happened?

She tries to sit up, but something heavy is pressing down on her. Great. Just great. It feels like one of those vehicles humans use to get around the Pizza Plex. Inferior to her golf carts, of course, but also dreadfully inconvenient to be trapped under. And Roxy would know. This isn't the first time one has fallen on her since she lost her eyes to that stupid boy, Gregory. That horrible awful loser. How she'd like to get her claws on him…

"Roxyyy"

Roxy tries to ignore the obnoxious voice in her head. Plotting revenge is much more appealing right now than dealing with Helpy. Unfortunately, Helpy doesn't seem to feel the same way.

"ROXANNE WOLF!" He blasts. If she were human, the volume would probably be painful.

"What? I'm a little busy here." Roxy finally replies, giving the vehicle another shove to prove her point.

"You're needed down below. That silly girl showed up out of nowhere and I… May have shown her how to deactivate all of M.X.E.S's security nodes. There's nothing keeping It from getting out now!"

"Oh, Fizzy Faz. Why would you give a child that kind of power?" Roxy really wishes cursing wasn't against her programming.

Helpy is right (for once). This is very bad.

"I’ve been feeling a little glitchy today, okay? Anyway," Helpy says, clearly avoiding responsibility for his mistakes, "we've got a HUGE problem, so get down there and do something."

"What exactly do you want me to do? Beat it in a race?" Roxy asks, finally managing to dislodge her good leg.

"Beating It is an option. Just not in a race. Don't worry - I'll be here to guide you, since, you know, you can't see! I'll be like your seeing eye bear!" Helpy says enthusiastically.

Roxy sighs. Normally, she hates spending time with Helpy. He's an annoying little digital know it all who doesn't know how to shut up. (and he did just insult her). But without her eyes, she doesn't really have a choice. Her Number 1 Twice is somewhere down below and has no idea what she's unleashed. She has to save Cassie. And taking It down is also important, she supposes.

Roxy is built for speed and agility. The next few minutes pass in a blur. Down the stairs - she loses track of how many flights. The elevator has already left. She takes another route. One covered with debris she must navigate. (If Helpy is leading her to her death, she'll kill him first). There are places she has to tunnel through planks and concrete rubble to make her way. But she does it. It's damp. She can hear water nearby and the ground makes a squishy noise when she steps in certain places. "Oh hey! There's an underground waterfall over there!" Helpy informs her at one point.

"Focus, Helpy. We're not here to sight see." Roxy reminds him.

"Riiiiight. Well, we're getting close. I think. Just through this door and down a few more flights of stairs!"

As she treks down stairs and through the halls of a structure she didn't even know existed until just now, Helpy continues to give her, well, 'helpful' suggestions.

"There's an automatic door exactly 2.345 feet to your right."

"No! Not that door!"

"Be sure to watch out for the burners on the floor in here!"

This particular piece of advice confuses Roxy to no end. "Why the Faz are there burners on the floor? Do you know how many safety regulations that violates?!"

"Don't ask me. I just work here. Digitally, of course."

After the weird burner rooms, and another round of stairs, Roxy suddenly runs out of floor. Without thinking, without waiting for Helpy to confirm that it is safe, she jumps. Luckily, the space beneath her is not very deep. Rolling into a stand with both legs more or less intact, she scrambles around until she finds a small hole in the wall. As she crawls through, she hears a small voice in the distance say, "You're not Gregory."

Cassie is close. She can feel it.

-~-~-~

The thing Fazbear Entertainment keeps trapped beneath the Pizza Plex doesn’t go down without a fight. Neither does Roxy. Unfortunately, she isn't able to hold it off for long before it's able to shove her aside and continue after Cassie. To make matters worse, Helpy is giving her conflicting directions, leading her in circles. It is probably interfering somehow. She's on her own if she wants to get anywhere with this. She stalks forward, listening carefully. A faint creaking, scaping sound catches her attention. Then a whimper.

Roxy dashes to her right. Right again. Forward. In the distance, the elevator doors slide shut with a grinding crunch. It struggles for a moment, seemingly caught in the door. This gives Roxy just enough time to pull the creature into a choke hold.

"Leave her alone!" she growls at It.

"But she came to rescue me!" It protests in a voice that sounds a little too much like Gregory.

Whatever actually prompted Cassie to come down here, Roxy is pretty sure the kid didn't come to save It on purpose. Cassie is smarter than that.

"You tried to kill her!" Roxy shrieks in anger. It struggles against her. She refuses to let go. With a little luck, the elevator will finish its journey soon and Cassie will be safely back at the surface in no time.

Luck, however, is a fickle thing. Rarely do things turn out as luckily as we would prefer. Roxy knows this. She's never relied on luck to win races or make crying children smile. Deep down, she knows she can't always win (though she still tries to, often at the detriment of others). But that doesn't make it any less horrifying when the elevator begins to plummet instead of going up. When she hears Cassie's panicked screams. Or the shattering crash of the elevator splitting apart at the bottom of the shaft.

"No…" Roxy nearly lets go of It in her panic.

"Now she can stay forever," It says gleefully, once again mimicking Gregory's voice.

"One more word and I'll tear your head off," Roxy threatens. She drags It away from the elevator.

"Lock It up!" Helpy screeches. "Lock It up!"

"Where?" Roxy asks reluctantly. She doesn't want to leave the elevator's ruins. Cassie is in there somewhere.

"M.X.E.S wants you to put It in one of the extra containment rooms to your left," Helpy starts, "No one is safe until you've done that."

As much as she hates to admit it, the annoying little bear is right. If Cassie is still alive, leaving It to roam free will put her in danger.

"Okay. Let's do this," she finally agrees. Hoping Helpy's instructions ring true this time, Roxy lets him guide her to It's new containment cell. Her threats seem to have worked; the creature doesn't fight her as hard as she knows it could. She shoves the thing into the room and grabs the sliding door, ready to shut It away forever, but she thinks better of it.

"I'll be taking these," Roxy says. Then she reaches for It's face and yanks on the eye receptacles. They give way with a pop. She haphazardly connects the wires to her own eye sockets, blinking as the world flickers into focus for the first time in a long time.

"My eyes!" It complains. "You took them!"

#fnaf sb ruin spoilers #fnaf sb ruin #fnaf cassie #fnaf fanfiction #fnaf fanfics #Roxanne wolf #Cyborg Cassie coming soon to tumblrs near you #rebuilding universe #myfics

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so-many-ocs · 1 year

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hi hello how on earth do you start on a new concept??? now that i've finished and am in the process of publishing my first novel i literally have. no brain. no thoughts head empty.

like i can think of a premise, i can think of the major complication, but from there onwards i find myself unable to flesh out anything. and these are ideas i love, too! it's frustrating :<

i've definitely been here before, and it can be a tough place to get out of, but don't lose hope!

let's talk brainstorming

there are a few ways to go about this:

create a bulleted list of all the things you know you want in your story.

under each idea or “problem,” elaborate with potential solutions and outcomes. try to think of the “coolest” option or the one you would enjoy writing more (you can refine ideas later!)

use these as opportunities to create more conflict throughout the story

freewrite scenarios based on the information you already have. see how conflict might emerge based on these ideas. keep the scenes that have potential, refine or discard the ones that don’t.

make a mind map, starting with what you have and working your way out into smaller branches.

generally speaking, i’d start broad and narrow your ideas down until you can fine-tune the details. what setting best suits your premise? what kind of people might live there? what made those people the way they are? how are they at odds with each other or their setting? et cetera, et cetera, until you have an idea of what to write.

you can look into different plot structures, as many of them provide a description for each “beat” of the plot and give you rough guidelines to work with. if you’re not big on plot structures, try summarizing your ideas in greater and greater detail.

when i’m really stuck, i go to prompt websites. a lot of them have character prompt generators, and, even if i don’t necessarily like what the website comes up with, i can at least use it as a jumping-off point for fleshing out different ideas.

mostly, though, focus on beginning with something general and getting more specific as you go. coming up with a whole new book idea can be intimidating; it’s much more manageable if you break it down into chunks or stages. for me, the stages are as follows: brainstorming the premise > brainstorming the plot > rough outline (goes over the main “beats” of the story) > main outline (revised version of the rough outline with more info on potential conflicts) > scene cards (i create a “writing prompt” of sorts with a brief overview of what i want to happen for each scene, what conflict needs to be resolved, etc).

take it one step at a time, divide your task into stages, and don’t get frustrated with yourself for the slow parts of the process. trust that you can figure it out.

i hope this was helpful! best of luck, and happy writing!

#🌿 asks #🌿 writing #writing tips & resources #writing advice #brainstorming #outlining #writeblr #writing tips #on writing #plotting

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canmom · 1 year

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the big thing in large language models at the moment seems to be a technique called "chain of thought prompting". this is where you ask the AI to solve a problem and tell it to "think step by step" or something like that.

(as an aside, it is so fucking weird to me that we can suddenly give computers instructions in natural language. not even a constrained subset of natural language like Inform 7, you just write instructions like you would to a human. that's fucked up.)

with this method, the models are able to solve problems that they couldn't otherwise (instead of just cheerfully bullshitting an answer). of course "solve problems" should be clarified, they can produce a sequence of words that a human can recognise as a solution to a problem. this chain of words really is a chain in that if the AI makes a mistake early on, it propagates forwards, and if the mistake is fixed and the chain regenerated, it corrects the 'reasoning'.

what really gets me about this is... that's also how I think. when I try to explain a problem, or write down my process, that helps me get to answers that i couldn't, and think about things more clearly than if I just let it sit in my head. all the long-ass essays I write on this website - this one included - are essentially a means of doing that.

language is a technology. not just for communication, though it is that, but for thinking as well. having something formulated in words (or equations on a page) is a scaffolding to store more information than short term memory can hold, and reformulate it in different ways. writing a draft and editing it. this is why students are prompted to 'show their working' in subjects like maths, it's trying to introduce them to a technique which can be extended.

is something analogous happening for AI language models? a common objection to the idea that AI can 'reason' is that it's just generating the most likely next word according to its corpus. having been fed various examples where humans reason step by step, it generates something that looks similar. the objection to this objection would be to claim, in the process of boiling down the corpus into neural network weights, it has managed to capture something analogous to the structure of 'reasoning' performed by humans. is this actually true?

'generating the most likely next word' could be rephrased as 'generating a "good" sequence of words', based on the training examples. older predictive text models were trained to try to guess what the human would type next, and repeatedly taking the prediction would rapidly become nonsense bc it only keeps track of the last few words. but now they're trying to train much more complex AIs to generate original strings of words that interpolate/extrapolate the patterns in the corpus.

the thing I'm stuck on now is how alike/unalike is that to how humans think?

introspectively, thoughts appear in my head as a sequence of words, the so called 'stream of consciousness'. when i was a kid i would apparently move my mouth while reading as if mouthing the words, but i stopped doing this when someone pointed it out; nevertheless I tend to think 'verbally'. I don't know if everyone does this. but my brain generates sentences, somehow, which come to my conscious mind a word at a time.

so just like 'AI learns just like human artists', you could make the argument that I trained my inner neural network on a corpus - words spoken around me, books (lots of them), etc etc., to learn to generate strings of words that follow the patterns in that corpus, generating attempts at it, and being told whether they were good or bad. there is at least a superficial structural similarity in how that process played out.

i have no memories of how I learned language as a kid (beyond that i was good at spelling lmao), but to try to learn a second language today, two of the most effective tools are spaced repetition systems and immersion. the former involves exposing my brain to repeated queries that test if it's internalised some item or pattern, and then telling it 'right' or 'wrong'. the latter involves piling on as much stimuli as possible until it can start to discern patterns. (of course this isn't the whole story, reading verbal explanations of grammar points or creating mnemonics can help shortcut the process considerably by laying the necessary structure.)

eventually, I might reach a level of fluency where I could 'think in Japanese' - have an inner monologue entirely in Japanese instead of coming up with concepts in English and then mapping them to a Japanese equivalent. the first inklings of that are coming in set phrases like ただいま or (yes, sigh) 仕方がない which come unbidden into my head, acting as loanwords. (i expect the process would come a lot faster if I was in a context where people mostly spoke Japanese.)

that side of learning at least seems pretty similar to the training process used a large language model, right? you display a prompt, generate an answer, and then the brain 'updates' based on whether you're right or wrong.

on the other hand, one of the most effective ways that I have for learning something is to pursue a project that demands that I learn something new. the last few months, I've taught myself C#, Unity's DOTS, shaders etc. to a pretty decent level. this couldn't have happened if I wasn't trying to make a game that led me to constantly have to ask 'how can I do..., what is the best way to...' and experiment. though that gets into the murky question of motivation, desire etc, which isn't a factor at all in these non-agentic AI systems.

but to do this sort of thing I've got certain meta techniques. breaking down a problem into smaller chunks, creating smaller test cases, writing out what I'm trying to do and what the possible approaches are. you can see it in action in all those devlog posts for THRUST//DOLL, which are in effect a slightly cleaned up record of how I go about solving each problem that comes up while programming a game.

this is a sort of 'agentic' form of learning. I have a goal and I look up information (e.g. documentation, blog posts) that will help me achieve it. being able to do this is absolutely vital for humans now - the so-called 'extended cognition'. being good at looking things up might be better that just knowing a lot.

if you ask a GPTx AI to generate a plan, it isn't actually going to attempt to carry it out. but people have already started wiring together components so that the AI generates a string that says 'I will do this' and then another program generates an API call to match and feeds it back into the AI, e.g. looking up a piece of information it needs. I've also seen talk of using AI as a kind of 'glue' that creates effectively a universal natural language API between programs.

right now the AI's 'goal' is just to generate a good response to whatever the prompt is, according to the rewards applied during training (rewards in the sense of, increasing/ decreasing weights to encourage/discourage certain patterns).

but if it can generate a string of text that accurately encodes a chain of reasoning (as discernible by a human) and reliably figures out a way to an appropriate answer to a query posed... that seems to suggest that something closely analogous to 'reasoning' is happening in the computation that it's performing right? (unless it's regurgitating a specific chain of thought to a matching prompt that happened to be in the corpus... but a lot of these seem to be 'few-shot' or 'no-shot' tunings.)

what's wild is that this behaviour can be prompted just by writing 'think step by step'. like it's almost more a feature of human languages that the AI has gained access to. a behaviour that was latent in the trained model but had to be activated with the right prompt.

if programming felt like magic before... then giving commands to a black box AI where it's all based on trial and error discovery of what sentence evokes what behaviour seems even more so.

anyway idk. i have generally been pretty sceptical about AI claims but these last few months have really challenged that feeling, which puts me at variance to my friends whose general attitude is like lol techbros. I don't actually think The Singularity(TM) is upon us, but it is true that AI programs have suddenly blown past a lot of what had been hard limits, and making proclamations about what AI can't do seems like a great way to be laughably wrong. (they just solved hands!). a lot of things that were very difficult, like passing law exams, can suddenly be automated (allegedly). we've already seen Clarkesworld have to shut their doors to the flood of crappy AI generated submissions. I'm sure people will be eagerly trying to find ways to get AIs to act in an 'agentic' way, and close the feedback loop. what seems likely is a flood of janky AIs running wild on the internet at some point pretty soon. they don't have to be good, just cheaper than the human equivalent and sort of functional. whether the tendency to hallucinate will make it so the AIs just kind of implode before long if running in this mode... I guess we'll see. the 'danger' right now generally seems to be less a single AI doing a 'hard takeoff' and more that just about anyone can spin up an AI, and that means all sorts of assumptions of scarcity and bandwidth built into all our infrastructure will get invalidated. more effective spam, less novelty when there's 100 things generated with the same AI for every one from a uniquely 'trained' human.

idk, maybe I'm just buying the hype in a hypeful moment. there's plenty of reasons to be sceptical, 'AI will take over' has been a fantastic grift that's been shilled for decades, the people who are going most wild about this are often the same cunts who bought into obvious-scam NFTs last year, and it's obviously very easy to vaguely say 'this changes everything' and concoct some wild scifi scenario. alongside the genuine advances there will be a whole lot of bullshit, and it's very much in AI companies' interest to make out that their product is scarily powerful and maybe on the verge of becoming God, or at least as socially impactful as the internet.

but this feels like the low end of a logistic curve of capability, and while I'm sure it will taper off sooner or later, I have no idea what the other end looks like, how many 'low hanging fruit' have just come into reach of our ladder, and what the practical use for this tech will be once the hype bubble pops.

personally... i still haven't used an AI chatbot and AI image generators feel distasteful. I just write these long posts, which I'm sure Roko's Basilisk will read back mockingly to my simulated clone while saying 'how could you be such a dweeb' as it dissolves my toes in virtual acid.

#artificial intelligence

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owlbelly · 3 months

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man i can't stop thinking about that antidepressant post going around (this is really long & not happy)

the one that started out as someone comparing taking their SSRI to taking insulin or thyroid medication, & turned into other people linking all the studies showing that the serotonin deficiency / "chemical imbalance" theory of depression has been pretty well debunked & that doctors/scientists don't really understand how a lot of psych medication works, particularly SSRIs, so you can't really compare taking a medication for something your body actually physically lacks or that's correcting a chemically measurable problem to taking a psych med that isn't doing either of those things (no one is measuring your brain chemicals & there's no agreed upon baseline for something like seratonin - a re-uptake inhibitor isn't making you make any more of it either it's just prolonging its effects in your system)

like. idk. i understand that the science is demonstrably faulty & that advertising campaigns for medications are the reason the popular conception of innate "chemical imbalance" persists even among doctors! this is not new information to me & it's obviously critical to talk about it & continue to do research.

but i also feel like there has got to be a way to talk about it that doesn't implicitly shame or, idk, outright deny the experience of people for whom taking SSRIs has been life-improving or even life-saving? "this stuff doesn't work the way they tell you it does" is one thing, but it so quickly seems to turn into "this stuff doesn't do anything at all (except hurt you)" which is...literally just not true. we can question whether or not medication is the best choice for someone, we can criticize the intersection of capitalism & medicine that's resulted in poorly understood medication with serious side effects being pushed through to sales, we can talk about how structural/societal change would help most of us MUCH more, etc. etc.

but for some people nothing else works, or nothing else works without an additional boost, or nothing else is accessible (which is fucked). these are shit circumstances. idk i think the wording on that post was like "it's fine if you feel like they help you but don't spread this misinformation about depression as a chemical imbalance" & i guess "it's fine if you feel like they help you" always reads to me as "okay sweetie, you have the right to enjoy your poison placebo." clearly they fucking do help sometimes. we don't know how exactly & we should be concerned about lying corporations & shitty institutions, but like...some people are clearly getting results from them. not all of them good results! but good enough that we can function & live, otherwise we wouldn't take them.

lmao maybe i just don't know how to not feel like shit about any discussion of SSRIs, since i have taken them longer than almost anyone i know (almost 25 years) & from a young enough age that they've possibly shaped the development of my brain in ways that no one really understands & the side effects have definitely shaped my life & i have never been able to function without them! maybe i never will be able to now. was it wrong for them to be prescribed to me in the first place? idk i was pretty set on being dead at that point. maybe i would have been okay, maybe not. i've tried to taper off them multiple times, both with doctor supervision & without. it fucking sucks & i stop feeling like living. should i do it again & stick it out to the point of wanting to die because "depression isn't actually a chemical imbalance" & i am just a duped pawn of big pharma?

or am i SSRIs Georg now, who has been taking Prozac for a quarter of a century & does have a resulting "chemical imbalance" & is an outlier, should not have been counted

sorry i hate this i hate being both critical of & also dependent on psych meds, i hate the way everyone talks about it. people who are pro-meds always act like no one is ever forced to take them or stigmatized for not taking them & that the science around them is clear-cut, people who are anti-meds always talk like there's no stigma around taking psych medication (lmao! even antidepressants!) & also like they're just shit placebos for idiots.

i super hate not knowing what 25 years of SSRIs has done to my body & also being pants-shittingly terrified of trying to remove them from my life. it all fucking blows i just want to see a little more compassion for all of us trying to survive here in whatever way we can

#ailments #sorry this is really long #is there a support group for extremely long term medicated people who are critical of the medical industrial complex & but not anti-meds

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ifuckinglovedinosaurssomuchjesus · 6 months

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Ok, I finished Life on Our Planet

It was... loose. A bit disjointed.

The gimmick of this series was that the CGI footage of extinct animals was always paired with live action footage of modern animals to compare. Except, it was kind of stretch at times, ranging from "here is a modern relative of the extinct thing we showed you" to as vague as "uh, this thing lived in a desert so here's some footage of modern desert animals."

All the modern footage was great, none of it was stock like I feared, and hell some segments were more enjoyable than the ones featuring the dinosaurs! I loved those clumsy frogs. It is just a little disappointing that it takes up most of the screen time, with the extinct animals being only about a quarter of the whole show, with the remaining runtime being dedicated to footage of natural disasters or sped up landscapes as stand-ins for whatever global event Morgan Freeman is describing.

The episode structure was really weird too. The first episode is just random things being thrown at the screen, seeming like a desperate hook to get you to keep watching but came off more as confusing nonsense than anything. The next four episodes follow a chronological order of the Cambrian to the end of the Cretaceous, but then the next two buck the trend and focus on the evolution of birds and mammals respectively, until it goes back to chronological with the final episode being from the Ice Age to today.

The narration is also ridiculously overdramatic, constantly painting evolution like a grand war and clades of animals as armies in an escalating battle. My favorite example being Morgan Freeman calling grass an "invader" that the mammals had to conquer in order to consume. It again adds to the confusion, I can just feel all the information given slipping from my brain as it's too fluffed up with melodrama to present any solid facts and the evidence backing them up.

The CGI segments, the draw of the show, were beautiful with some stellar designs and animations, but suffered the same short fallings of all of these documentaries. Showing the live action segments made the problem even worse in my eyes, as you call tell it was two different teams providing the footage. The modern animals are shot from so many amazing angles, top of the line photography creates such a dynamism that really engrosses you in their little worlds. Meanwhile, the CGI dinosaurs stand around flat locals, always shown from the same general height, never too intense with the lighting or shadows, and overall just a little bit more boring.

This is especially true for the behaviors. In the real footage, we see animals be clumsy and playful and pathetic and all around... real! Animals have so many different behaviors and we get to see everything ranging from Ant raiding parties to Eagles snatching bats out of the air to whales racing, but with the CGI segments it is all the same chase scenes and predators attacking prey that we've seen a million times before. It just doesn't feel creative, especially compared to the wonderful ways Prehistoric Planet experimented with dinosaur behaviors just last year.

Overall it isn't bad, I liked a lot about it, it's cool that we got a series narrated by the amazing Morgan Freeman and since it's on Netflix instead of Apple TV this will be much more accessible than PhP. The CGI is fantastic, the designs are great, it's wonderful seeing a mix of old fan favorites and new species that haven't had much of a spotlight before, and I legitimately love some segments. The Cameroceras in the storm, the Arthropleura mating dance, the Smilodon messing with the Doedicurus, etc. I think there is enough here to be worth a watch. I just... was hoping for something a bit more cohesive.

#media #life on our planet

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steampunkforever · 11 months

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I’ve said this before, but it’s a crying shame that the Fast and Furious movies are seen as the go-to for car films. I adore Tokyo Drift (one of the most effective car film openings period, in my opinion) and the first two weren’t that bad all things considered, but the series overall is terrible.

Fast X is no exception. The movie--the first installment in the final F&F trilogy-- functions as a massive Marvel-Movie Cameo montage for notable characters in the series. It harps on Vin Diesel’s one-track obsession of “family” while saying absolutely nothing new about it. These people are family. They’d do anything to protect their family. That’s it. There’s no other development there. Nobody’s surprised here but you’ve got to call a bad movie for what it is.

The cars, of course, were extremely good. Even with certain inspector-gadget-style gimmicks, the Fast and The Furious understands how to select cars for each character’s personality. Fast X follows this formula and I’ll give it that.

Remember when this series was a point break ripoff about a cop infiltrating a Tivo-heisting gang running underglow on their honda civics? This is a series that doesn’t know how to deescalate, something shown clearly by the fact that the last movie sent them to space. Even the spinoffs can’t go low stakes in these films. To be frank, I miss when these movies could take a step back and just make it about a 30 year old playing a teenager as he learns to slide his car so that he can beat the yakuza and claim the title of drift king. F&F doesn’t need to be elevated as much as it needs to learn how to handle a proper plot structure and regain some modicum of reality. You know you have a problem when Black Widow has more realistic physics than your film does.

Not that the movie is unenjoyable. If you want to turn off your brain, unfocus your eyes, and watch flashing lights as muscled men punch each other, this is the movie for you. Some of the little jokes and bits of dialog legitimately made me laugh. The cast is fun, and almost everyone who could make it from previous films pops in to say hi.

One of the highlights was Jason Momoa, who went as flamboyant as possible with this, something I don’t think many other films would allow him to do, as he painted his nails, wore the craziest silky outfits, and was clearly having a blast. Sung Kang was also a fun part of the film, as was a brief cameo by the drummer of Twenty One Pilots, if only for the sheer surprise of seeing one of the defining faces of 2016 emo for 1.5 seconds as he and his wife bump into John Cena (who is cast as Vin Diesels biological brother in this series, by the way) at the airport.

To say that the movie is bad is to inform the public that the sky is blue. It’s a given, but I don’t think I would suggest this to anyone unless they were put in the same position as I was and arrived at the theater to find that John Wick 4 was sold out. If you do watch it, I suggest you hold out until the end to have a laugh at what I can only describe as “John Cena Death Scene (EMOTIONAL)”

#Fast X #fast and furious #filmposting #the fast and the furious #vin diesel

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sharlmbracta · 3 months

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youtube

comment excerpt:

ADHD is a boon to creativity the challenge is consistency… or seemingly so. I think in general living, you need to impose structure to survive as an adult with ADHD, especially if you go no-meds like I have. I don't think that's nearly the case with creative activities though creativity is our domain, man. It's more about trusting your mind to do good exploration when you let it run free.

Everything that ever really stuck for me about music theory, stuck AFTER doing that. Not from reading and practicing but inadvertently actualizing it in my noodling, which I've come to realize is my mind's way of sorting out the information.

It's really interesting how the knowledge comes sometimes. I have been playing guitar for 20 years, largely self-taught. l've spent a lot of time pouring over different techniques and studying theory, never really feeling like I got where I was supposed to with it. I certainly enjoy what I play, but it's always felt like the understanding that other people have, escaped me.

But now, I tend to think I just never actually realized how much theory I had picked up over the years of scattershot study. Maybe I don't have the most well-rounded foundation, but my actual output on the instrument conveys to other, more learned people, an understanding that they always seem to want to know more about, like somehow I have figured out something they haven't.

My answer has always been "Well, I never practice, but I always play." Most other players l've met, are far more 'on-grid' than me, more predictable and consistent in their decisions and application of technique. You never know what I'll play, or why it actually works. One of my best friends is an incredibly talented and dedicated musician, with high mastery of guitar, piano, and especially trumpet. HE does not understand what I do half of the time, puts all of this analysis into it, trying to crack the code. He wants ME, to teach HIM what I know.

And yet, I don't even know the code. It's all impulse from my perspective. I don't know why things come together like they do. I just know that they do the majority of the time. I know enough theory to point out what worked about them — I do that sometimes, get into a mode of reverse-engineering what I play under the lens of modern theory and it helps me internalize — feed that intuition I'll need later. It's still terrifying for me to improvise in front of people, but every time I do, people tend to presume I am much more serious and studious than I have ever been — like I meant for things to work out this way, when I probably had little clue what I was going to play before I began.

It's like I am fully present when I play, just not cognizant. Maybe it's just that the strain on memory in those times doesn't permit my brain to consciously process it all, but it seems like it still does SOME kind of recall that is almost absolute. I can do anything a normal musician can do, it's just not accessed in quite the same way. I just put in the time and it worked out.

I WILL however say. It was not always that way. For the first 5-7 years I had a hyperfocus for it that just would not let go, so I would in fact practice for hours every day. Now, I worry less about it because 'm more focused on learning new stuff and being exposed to different music that inspires me to play and write more music. At some point, I found I just had the skill-born freedom wanted on tap and it just became about discovery for me.

A lot of my best skills are like that. I don't know how or why l'm good at them, or why I can randomly rattle off in-depth information I otherwise don't ever consider. I think our ADHD brains internalize things differently. It's not that we forget things, it's more as though much of the information stored in memory comes out somewhere outside of consciousness, more in the space of intuition. The problem with ADHD isn't as much one of storage as it is recall mechanisms. The better relationship I have with my intuition, the more my skills in things I want to do just seem to come to me by just following my own impulses to engage and letting my brain get whatever it thinks it needs… and just accept that I might never know that directly.

Learning with ADHD is often akin to tending to a garden and watching as the flowers bloom.

- differentbutsimilar7893

#adhd #brains #study #stuff #forwarding #life #《 Learning with ADHD is often akin to tending to a garden and watching as the flowers bloom 》#adhd music #adhd musicality #adhd creativity #tags for me to remember

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theoldaeroplane · 9 months

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Man; this last year has been so strange for me in terms of my perception of myself.

It has been not quite a year since I said to my [redacted] that my fussiness over people at my work not following any sensible structure in their code was so strong that you would almost think I'm autistic. I'm not sure why it was that idle thought, specifically, that made me start researching what having autism actually looks like. It was such a tremendous breakthrough for me once I started reading, in a way it hasn't been for some friends that have offhandedly mentioned they thought they might be autistic. (It's possible they're having their own breakthroughs in private, but I don't think so.)

Suddenly I had Explanations for why I am the way I am. I had the language. I didn't have to constantly fall back on "I guess I'm just overly sensitive" or "I'm weird like that" with no obvious cause.

On the heels of this, and I mean like three weeks after I started reading, I began to suspect I might have ADHD as well. I've suspected this in the past, I even took a test, but I was told I didn't have it. And they were the professional, and I paid hundreds of dollars for that test, so surely it meant I didn't have it, right? My problems with time and attention and memory must just be quirks. I must just not care enough.

Buddy.

Earlier this year I finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist, who asked me some questions and gave me a prescription. It had to change a few times before we found one that balanced side effects and symptom relief.

I can't tell you how strange it's been to watch my perception of myself change. For most of my life, I was told I was weird, lazy, that I didn't care enough, that I was too sensitive, that I needed to try harder, that I had so much potential I wasn't living up to, that I was acting different on purpose, that I thought I was so special. I internalized all of it. I believed all of it. What else could I do? I was a kid. Something was wrong and the adults in my life decided it was those things.

No one ever thought I might be autistic. No one ever suggested I might have ADHD. Not even my dad, who also has ADHD, who is probably autistic himself.

I do my best not to be bitter. The world was different when I was a kid. Information was hard to come by and we were poor. For all that I've come to hate my mother I understand that she herself was struggling heavily with her own mental health. I'm angry I slipped under the radar, but I don't know if anyone can really be blamed. And being angry can't change the past. All I can do now is move forward.

I have to remind myself, often, that I am a good person. (The fact I was raised to believe that all people are inherently wicked is another post.) That I am trying my best, and operating under a fundamentally broken system that is intolerant to people who don't fit its borders. That if the screaming and shaming and self-flagellating were going to work they would have done so by now. That my brain is built in such a way that causes it to constantly feel both over- and under-stimulated. That I'm not broken.

I was, as the story goes, a cygnet being raised by ducks, who simply got more and more frustrated when their strange duckling did not act the way a duckling should.

Well. I guess I'm a swan now. A swan with baggage, which is a funny image. I can't quack, but I can trumpet. And I have wings so powerful that they can break bones. (Just go with the metaphor.) More importantly, I know I'm not a duck, and I'm learning I don't have to keep trying to be one.

#corgijournals!

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gillianthecat · 1 year

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I'm just gonna vent about something that is not that big a deal and most likely won't be an actual problem, but for some reason my stupid brain is stuck on it. Hopefully complaining will let me move on.

So. Part 1) The good news. I figured out a weekly schedule that was going to be great! I have academic classes in the morning, then two evenings a week I would take dance classes - one dance conditioning to get strong again, a Jazz dance class, and a dance theater class which is Fosse based, so also Jazzy. The other two evenings there are lap swim hours, so I registered for the lap swim "class" so I could use the pool.

And it's perfect! I'm going to be hanging around campus anyway so I'm not stuck in rush hour traffic, so this way I can make sure to get exercise, in a structured way, and get back into dance which I've missed so much, and learn more jazz style, which I love but don't know well. There's time to do hw beforehand, so it will help keep me on track academically. I did my first swim yesterday so I know how the whole signing in and everything works and it's very doable. I was excited about this schedule!

The frustrating part: Apparently, this schedule puts me one unit over the maximum allowable. And I went to the academic advisor to say, look, these are dance classes and lap swim, these are not extra work, they help me do the work. But he wouldn't let me sign up for them all. And it's ridiculous that to use the pool I have to sign up for a "class." (I suspect it has something to do with how the school gets its funding, so I can't be mad at them, but I am mad at this rich city full of rich people and corporations for chronically underfunding the school. But that is another rant.)

So now I have to make decisions. And making decisions is so hard for me. I thought I was done! Hopefully the teachers would let me take the class even if k can't enroll officially, but which class? And do I ask or just keep showing up until they notice? And if I don't, which class do I drop? I want all of them! I guess it would be the Jazz class, because the theater dance seems like it will teach more detailed technique, whereas Jazz is more free form and fun, so the technique is useful. But I don't want to choose! And even if I can attend without registering, I liked the structure of being officially enrolled! And I want the teacher to get credit/paid for the class 😕 I could drop swimming, but I think that would be really good for me, plus it occupies another day of the week, and that one I definitely can't do without being registered. And I really need the dance conditioning to rebuild strength in a safe way.

It's so ridiculous. I get the reason for the credit unit limits, but they should not treat lap swim the same as an academic course in calculating that! And because I haven't completed a semester here they won't make and exception for me, regardless of the specific classes. Boo.

And it's not that big a deal if I can't take one of the classes—it barely affects my weekly schedule, I'm still getting plenty of exercise, I still get to dance. But managing my schedule, and finding a system that will keep me on track, always feels so precarious that the slightest setbacks feel huge.

Anyway, hopefully venting about it will allow me to move on. I think I'll talk to the teachers tonight to see what the options for taking one class without registering are, and then I can make an informed choice. Once it's set I'll probably feel more settled about it.

#this is basically a diary entry #venting #gillianthecat goes back to school #gillianthecat's life

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cellarspider · 1 year

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Oh boy I am poked

For those in need of context: I mentioned my desire to fight Noam Chomsky behind a Dennys, after reading The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar by Mark C. Baker (2001).

What follows is a 2000 word essay on why. Holy heck this took all night.

Top-level disclaimer: I am not a trained linguist. I am an enthusiastic amateur at best, thanks to my hobby of constructed language-making. If anybody would like to correct something or discuss the topic, feel free!

Because l have loud feelings about The Atoms of Language. I think the way it conceives of the world has a lot of parallels in how people view science in general. So despite its age, it’s worth giving it a bit of a kicking. Both for its specific claims, and the big picture.

To summarize: the shape of our languages aren’t hard-coded into our brain by genetics. Languages don’t fall into immutable, hard-edged categories based off of binary choices. The author presents only one alternative: random chance, unconstrained by any environmental factors, that each child must learn without pattern recognition. This is a false dichotomy, and one that cuts off far more reasonable means by which languages can evolve and be learned. Science is not a fight between absolute order and absolute chaos.

I have to begin with a two paragraph digression to set the scene.

The sciences are home to a perennial nerd squabble about whose field is the best and most pure, usually in a "physicists and chemists versus everyone else" divide. This is timewasting nonsense, but it's worth acknowledging that physics and chemistry allow for experiments where one can test universal truths to a ludicrously high degree of certainty. This cannot be done in other fields, because there are too many complicating factors. My chosen field of genetics deals with systems that have so many moving parts, they're impossible to fully predict. Social sciences study behavior, which is even harder to make generalized statements about.

Now, this does not mean physicists and chemists can explain everything about genetics or social sciences. Their tools are not suited to the problems tackled in these fields, and anybody who claims otherwise is a blowhard. But sometimes people can get jealous of the certainty of physical laws. They may try to legitimize their field or their pet theory by describing it in terms of physics and chemistry.

And so Mark Baker wrote The Atoms of Language.

You may be able to see where the problems start with this book.

So, what is this book trying to authoritatively explain? Well, a couple of big questions in linguistics are "how do babies learn languages when they are small and bad at everything?" and "why do so many unrelated languages share structures that function similarly to each other?"

Baker subscribes to Noam Chomsky’s theories on the subject, which can be summarized like this: The grammatical structures of all languages are formed from a limited and definable set of parameters, which are predefined by a “Language Acquisition Device” in the brain, found exclusively in humans, due to a single evolutionary event that no other organism has replicated.

In fact, Chomsky asserts that not only is this the root of all language, it’s also the only way that babies could ever learn a language. He posits that they don’t receive enough information to learn their language. Instead, they instinctively pick up on linguistic parameters that the Linguistic Acquisition Device is hard-coded to create, selecting those that are relevant to their first language and discarding the rest.

Using these parameters contained within the Language Acquisition Device, Baker posits a periodic table of language. One that could be used to describe and predict all possible grammatical constraints of language.

This is highly controversial on every level. I’m going to start with the Chomsky stuff and move on to what Baker does with these parameters.

The human exclusivity of syntactically complex language is currently up for debate, with Carolina chickadees and prairie dogs arguably being capable of the same feat in the wild.

Chomsky never tested this theory in a rigorous manner in humans either. However, its structure is similar to many experiments from the past few decades. There was a wave of neuropsychology studies that claimed “we found the brain region responsible for [behavior] via an FMRI study!”. These usually ended up being shaved down by later investigations into "actually that part of the brain does at least six things, and that particular behavior is split between at least fifteen different regions.”

To this date, no single region of the brain has been identified as the source of childhood language acquisition. While it’s hard to get a kid to sit still in an MRI machine, this is backed up by one of the oldest ways to study the brain: looking at what breaks when it’s injured. While there are many brain injuries that can affect one’s ability to speak or to comprehend language, none have been conclusively shown to abolish the ability to form grammatical sentences. Even ones you think really, really should: witness the man who had a key language center of the brain surgically removed, and somehow continued to speak pretty damn coherently all the same.

This is a problem, obviously, but one could argue that a circuit could form between multiple areas of the brain to create a Language Acquisition Module, right? Okay then. Let’s examine the parameters it supposedly contains. These are the fundamental categories that human languages are locked into, according to Chomsky and Baker. While Baker begins with the metaphor of the periodic table, what he actually describes is more of a flow chart: an increasingly specific pattern of choices that build up to form a unique language.

Baker admits he doesn’t have the complete periodic table of language. In fact, he backpedals in the last quarter of the book, and says well, we don't have a periodic table of linguistics yet, maybe we never will, but we could!

And he’s pretty sure of the chart that he does have. And he still considers it to demonstrate immutable categories of language. For example, he says there are two basic word orders: Subject Verb Object (“I eat apples”) and Subject Object Verb (“I apples eat”). He presents this as the most basic thing a child learns about their language’s structure. This is first, all else comes after.

…Except he then admits that actually, there are other word orders, but they’re really rare, so that proves him right anyway.

This, as the astute in the audience may note, does not in fact prove him right. Language is not behaving like the perfect, hard-edged system he wants, it’s messy. And it doesn’t get any better from there. More and more exceptions pile up, perfectly reasonable in the context of their languages, but they’re problems to this model. Baker asserts that culture has no meaningful effect on the structure of language.

To Baker, these parameters cannot have evolved independently based on cultural trends. This must be set in stone, or everything would be chaos. He argues that two languages coming up with similar structures independently by means of culturally-influenced linguistic evolution would be like two people flipping a coin a hundred times and getting the same sequence of heads and tails.

How languages end up the way they do is still a topic of study and debate. But Baker is pulling out an argument often used by creationists, so we’re in my wheelhouse here. I will briefly use biological evolution as a metaphor to explain why he’s wrong.

Biological evolution keeps coming up with similar structures and adaptations across wildly different species. Birds and scallops have eyes, even though their last common ancestor didn’t. Bees and bats can both fly. How is this possible, if evolution is a random process and isn’t directed according to some plan? Because all organisms are dealing with similar environmental pressures. Why are snakes and ferrets and eels all long, thin, slinky tubes? Because hunting and hiding in small burrows is easier that way. Snails and turtles and beetles have hard shells because being chewed on is bad. The environment creates restrictions on what sorts of bodies can feasibly exist, and that results in convergent evolution.

Language is working within a more restricted environment: You have a vocal tract.* You are a social animal. It benefits you and your kin group to be able to communicate things about yourself and the world around you. What does that mean? Telling people about the location of things. The qualities of things. Describing actions that have a cause and effect. You need some way to say "There is food here" or "I hit it with a stick, and then bees came out."

These desirable qualities mean that languages are subject to massive environmental pressures to maintain a minimum level of ability to communicate specific kinds of information, regardless of how they change over time. And you're presenting the information through a linear medium, one word at a time. These physical and behavioral traits limit the possible things a language can do.

So while I do not have the technical knowledge to propose a detailed model of linguistic evolution, I do not find it unlikely that human languages could experience convergent evolution, producing highly analogous structures completely independently of each other. Are there components of human cognition that lead humans to prefer some forms more than others? Almost certainly. But again, they’ll be messy! And they will be very, very hard to tease apart from the social context of language.

So, why did I just spend 1500 words ranting about this? Because despite the fact that this book was published not long before most linguists rejected these premises, it still plays into a lot of misapprehensions people have about science. Can we come up with absolute, iron-clad laws for everything? No. Many systems are so complicated that with our imperfect knowledge, they resist the language of certainty.

Does that mean that science is useless in those cases? No!! You can still figure out restrictions on what can and can’t happen, what is and isn’t reasonable to expect. This is the language of probability. The more we rigorously study a subject, the more precise we can be. That’s what we do in science.** We describe the world as precisely and carefully as we can, using the resources we have. It’s not always elegant, but not everything will be.

And I think that’s a good excuse for me to end this without a neat little closing thought.

---

*and hands, but I am not qualified to discuss sign languages.

**The desire to be achingly comprehensive is strong. You have no many times I had to delete tangents in this thing. They would have made my points more precise. I could have talked about synaptic pruning in the developing brain. I could talk about multiple testing correction while calculating probabilities. I wrote a footnote ramble about Japanese serial verb constructions, but I deleted it! Go me!!!

#spider rambles far too much #that was a lot #haven't gone on a ramble this long in ages #that was fun but tiring

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maaarine · 1 year

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Andy Clark:

"When you think about perception as being structured by prediction, perception of our own body is structured exactly in the same way.

So the way my body feels, my pain, my tingles, they're all just percepts that are constructed in exactly the same way as all the other percepts.

They're constructed by bringing predictions, most of them unconscious, together with sensory information, in a way that's balanced by precision weighting.

For instance, I quite often get phantom phone vibrations, where I feel my phone going off in my trousers, and actually it isn't.

What seems to be going on there is that overactive expectations are kind of swamping bits of otherwise innocent sensory information.

So under the strong expectation that my phone might ring, small fluctuations in my bodily state can be treated as good evidence of an incoming call, so I sense a buzzing.

This is predictive processing 101: if your expectations are strong enough, then that's how you're going to experience the world. (…)

Something like this seems to be going on in different degrees in chronic pains.

In nearly all cases of chronic pain, what seems to have gone wrong is in the pain signaling system.

The bodily problem is no longer sufficient to account for the pain, the pain is just persisting.

A sort of over-weighted expectation of pain can become ingrained is that kind of way.

So you move really quickly into stuff that looks much more like psychiatric issues.

If you think about that balance enacted in other domains, imagine that you constantly over-weigh the incoming sensory evidence.

Now ask yourself what your life might be like.

Under the predictive processing framework, you can see that that could easily be one aspect of autism spectrum condition: sensory information is over-weighted, at least by neurotypical standards.

So that makes it hard to spot certain kinds of patterns in noisy environments.

Subtle patterns might involve how other people are feeling right here, right now.

The primary issue is an enhanced sensory world. They're seeing the world brighter than we are, if you like.

What's the right balance between sensory information and expectation? There's no good answer.

It's easy to imagine worlds where having the balance one way is better, other worlds where having the balance another way is better.

If you happen to be in a world structured by people who have their balance one way, then you're inhabiting an artificial world where your balance might not be useful, or might be problematic.

There are systematic attempts to look at different psychiatric ways of being, like having PTSD for example, that try to make sense of them by thinking about these different checks and balances in a predictive system.

Maybe if that works out, we'll end up with a kind of taxonomy of different ways of experiencing our world, where we can slot things in according to the level of precision weighting.

That would certainly be a step on the road to having the causal picture that might enable one day better intervention."

Source: Converging Dialogues: #224 - Brains As Prediction Machines: A Dialogue with Andy Clark

#andy clark #converging dialogues #podcast #mbti #mbtiideas #autism #fibromyalgia

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alice-bushneva · 5 months

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How to get rid of boredom once and for all? (If you an average person)

Have I finally found an antidote to one of the most unpleasant feelings that exist? For some of you, definitely. For others, maybe not...

The utility of the following information completely depends on your will. The will not only to understand it but also to apply and actually change old patterns.

I am never bored. And can insist that I know what I'm talking about because:

1. Either way, it definitely works: we can assume that all actions I take in life are leading to not being bored. 2. Either way, I was born with a natural capacity for receiving more emotions (or just having a higher range of them) by doing daily life things - therefore just not needing additional stimulation. 3. I can also assume that it was one of the ways I've been taught. If you have nothing to do, usually equivalent to boredom, my mom would give me tons of home chores to do (because there's always an infinite amount of it :) ). So it might have played a crucial role, but that's not the only reason for sure.

Right now, if it sounds a bit confusing, just keep in mind that we are at a basic level. No need to think of complicated theories; instead, think of how you don't get scared while watching a horror movie, and your mom does. Here you are: different people experience a different range of the same emotion. And it's either a life experience or either an innate predisposition that led to it.

In fact, this made me curious about why people around me experience it so often, while I haven't thought of it once (or at least haven't been using this exact term to describe it). While they're struggling with it, I would have a list of things to do and always be lacking time (it started being a problem at some point until I understood 'the concept' of priorities).

So, boredom is a lack of intellectual and/or physical activity. Activity leads to brain stimulation, which will elicit emotion in response to this outside stimuli.

So, that's what you have to determine on the first place. What exactly are you lacking?

1. Is it a daily routine that is eating you alive (distinctive features are: being okay with your life but finding it all dull and not interesting)? 2. Or have you just mentally overworked (here you're sick of your life, want to be a rebel, just do things to feel something)?

For the first case, an intellectual activity is key. For the second, a physical one.

Two things you can do are:

1. Create a list of potential activities (I heard of people with ADHD doing that - to help manage their attention).

2. Think of it on the spot - and benefit from an element of surprise if it's crucial for you.

That's already what you're doing already, but from now on, just try to be more self-conscious about it. You are already choosing from the activities you know, so the choice is very limited. Probably (since our brain is really lazy - which is actually a good thing! Sometimes :) ), you're choosing the easiest high-dopamine activity such as scrolling TikTok or Insta, masturbation, eating, or less often going out with friends and getting drunk (which is less probable because of the effort required).

Instead of that, I propose you diversify your choices and make it less self-destructive; in fact, even use this time beneficially.

Do not think that I'm telling you to eliminate 'chill' time and work only. NO! Because, for sure, it is really important to have time when you don't consume any information and just do nothing (processing and structuring your thoughts only).

The list should be divided into two categories:

I need an Intellectual activity:

- Become good at something - Favorite study - Math - Talk with people - Express feelings for people - Create something of your own (this works only if you're already good at something; if it's not the case, go back to the first activity proposed). - Make money

I need a physical one:

- "Life dangerous" (without actual life danger - but the one our brain considers as the catalyst for turning on the Basic Survival Instincts), such as swimming, cold shower, etc. - Favorite sport - Quick sport - Sex - Do absolutely nothing (I mean actually just look around you and think about random stuff)

The last piece of advice is: Keep in mind that you know yourself the best, so you have to look at this information through your preferences - only this way you'll be able to create a strong pattern system that is going to work for and not against you.

And keep in mind that: you are the only one responsible for your life.

Bonus for nerds:

So instead of doing top-down decision-making, you're going to be doing bottom-up decision-making. These are the notions Elisabeth Filips (source down below) has been using for describing a simple self-conscious analysis (the ability to understand what we actually need in this particular moment - to be more efficient and actually have control of ourselves and our actions). She introduced it while explaining how to stay focused and avoid any distractions. And by distractions, she meant scrolling = wasting time = procrastinating, while being scared of the upcoming deadline. In our case, there's no deadline, but a need for a pleasant activity. And a lot of people, in order to get it, seek it from sources (social media) that only give half of satisfaction compared to others (moving/thinking).

It's like washing your hands without soap because of not knowing that it exists or being too lazy to use it. So doing that is literally twice less efficient than properly washing them. Not particularly smart, right?

Source: https://elizabeth-filips.notion.site/Deep-Focus-Why-Your-Brain-Needs-Understimulation-f6f677ef8d4e4dcd803c94302817b10f#7d5e1d0d7c7f4c06ab4c48b38a4da146

#Elisabeth Filips #self consciousness #Productivity #productivity aesthetic #productivity tips #student life #studying #study motivation

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