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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Thanks Ed !
I was never taught the loci method or have heard about it before. I have never purposely stored information by location. Rather I imagine walking a wandering path in the hills or I imagine myself in a maze, or wandering stacks in a library, then the answer comes to me. Likewise I learned that making a bodily motion like tapping a pencil while memorizing lists aided memory and then learned about it as a method of super learning much later.
This would indicate to me that it is an ability that all humans had at one time or may still have that they have forgotten. This makes sense in terms of pre linguistic hunters and gatherers and how they related to the world.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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spatial relationships and spatial memories are obviously important to food foraging and water location, etc...
interesting that you can take a practical capability and utilize it for more abstract purposes...
maybe why some of us like maps so much
it would be a real tragedy if civilized if we actually had to remember stuff without recourse to Google (or anything else)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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I do love maps and since I picked up this method in high school about the same time my father taught me how to read a topo map the two might be related. He would always make us look at the map before we went into the mountains and then we weren't allowed to look at it again until the trip was over, so we were trained in route finding and relating physical terrain to an abstract map. That could have been the mental trigger that set off the process. Clearly it's a method of implanting things in one's long term memory storage.
I think the masters of this must be the people who use Chinese characters which they remember by the number of strokes. Their fastest calculators envision abacus beads moving, not numbers. The Japanese don't name their streets and number their houses in the order they were built. Whenever they give directions, they physically go through the motions of going up hill, down hill, turning right and turning left whereas we give the name of the street and the number.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Years ago as a very young man I put up in sections the topo maps for the entire John Muir trail. I'd memorized every pass and campsite and food drop for the entire trip in anticipation of doing it that summer. The more I examined and memorized those maps learned those peaks and passes and micro ranges... the more I realized I wasn't really there.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 10, 2019 - 12:13am PT
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^^^you're a slow study...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Feb 10, 2019 - 07:42am PT
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Duck: . . . you are mayavada, . . . .
If it makes you more comfortable, then you can call me whatever you want.
I’d take exception to many things supposedly that the mayavada hold dear. Whether or not God is a personality is not anything I can say. Whether there is a universal or absolute or supreme consciousness, I cannot say. Whether there is liberation, I cannot say. Whether “things” are simply illusions, I cannot say. (There are manifestations, but what they are, I cannot say.) As far as I can tell, I can only say that there is consciousness: it’s experience.
Putting people into boxes with labels might be comfortable, convenient, and easy. I’m not too sure that it’s accurate, complete, or final.
Too many doctrines. Too many rules. Too many principles. Too much surety. Even you appear to be particularly cognitive, intellectual (oriented to models and analytical arguments), and speculative. I’d like to be done with that stuff. It’s been interesting and all for me over the past 50 years, but none of it has really shown me what’s truthful and right in front of my face.
I guess I’m sort of with Spider on this one. There’s too much narrowing down, too many limits imposed. If one is talking from their experience, then I would say they are on solid ground (or at least as much of solid ground as one might find). If one is talking from convention, consensus, or doctrine, then not so much.
One last time: I don’t know. You can take that as my position. (I’m willing to talk about it, though.)
Be well.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 10, 2019 - 07:50am PT
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Putting people into boxes
I don't ... you do it to yourself even though you can't see how that is happening ....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 10, 2019 - 08:03am PT
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Yes, Jan.
There is no consensus on the reality of lobster pain and what it is, "because we know it," but there are objective indications that lobsters and other animals and other people feel pain: screams, whimpers, and other sounds, bruises, cuts, and abrasions, tension in the face, abdomen, or other muscles, attempts to avoid a noxious stimulus, and increases in heart rate and blood pressure or changes in pupil diameter.
If a dentist insisted on proof provided by a patient that they had tooth pain, one wonders how that person trained to be a dentist and worries that they will not earn much of a living. A dentist who drilled or removed a tooth because a person reported a toothache would be in violation of professional ethics. Physicians and surgeons also must use x-ray, MRI, and other tests to investigate reported pain before trying invasive procedures to relieve it.
It is a canon of health care providers that, "Pain is what the patient tells you it is." Doctors, nurses, and dentists are well aware of the subjective aspects of pain. However, even they must be cautious about taking action based on verbal report alone, in this age of addiction to prescription pain-killers.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 10, 2019 - 09:25am PT
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It is a canon of health care providers that, "Pain is what the patient tells you it is.
Ah yes, the certain validity of personal experience. A proper practice.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Feb 10, 2019 - 09:59am PT
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Zen Master SS explaining "don't know mind"
WHAT IS ZEN?
CORRECT MEDITATION
Berkeley, California July 9, 1977 Dearest Soen Sa Nim,
Diana just called to tell me of your heart and diabetes problem.* I am so sorry you don't feel well. I am remembering what a shock it was when we first found out that my son had diabetes and would need to take insulin. He was only seventeen, and his pancreas worked irregularly, so the adjustment of his insulin dosage was dependent on his activity as well as on his food. But he soon learned to anticipate his need and learned to drink orange juice when he overestimated. I am sure that by now you also have adjusted to your new treatment.
I was sorry to miss the last Big Kido. Get well soon!
Love you, Marge
* In July of 1977, Soen Sa Nim went into the Hospital to have his irregular heartbeat monitored and to began using insulin to control an advanced case of diabetes.
July 15,1977 Dear Marge,
Thank you for your letter. How are you?
I have just returned from the hospital. You worry about my body; thank you. Now I am following the hospital's instructions, and I am just beginning to take insulin. I had taken diabetes pill for fifteen years, but the doctor said that these pill damaged my heart, so I went to the hospital, took some heart medicine, and now my heart is working correctly, so my body is no problem.
When I was in the hospital, many of the doctors there were interested in certain meditation techniques that help the body to heal. My doctors suggested that I try this kind of meditation of meditation so that my heart would get better quickly, so I did. When I first went to the hospital my heart was not beating in
regular way. This problem usually takes two or three months to fix. But I meditated, so it only took one week to fix, and the doctors were very surprised and happy. They said that now many doctors like meditation because it can help to fix your body. Several doctors wanted to learn more about meditation, so they arranged to come to my hospital room and I taught them little about Zen.
I told them "fixing-your-body” meditation is a kind of concentration. It is not bad and not good. But it is not correct meditation. This kind of yoga meditation lets your body rest and become strong. Some yogis only sit in a quiet place, breathing in and breathing out, and sometimes they live for one hundred years or thousand years. It is possible to keep your body this long, but eventually it will die.
Correct meditation means attaining freedom from life and death. True, our bodies have life and death, but our true self has no life and no death. I said that if you attain your true self, then if you die in one hour, in one day, or in one month, it is no problem. If you only do "fixing-your-body” meditation, you will mostly be concerned with your body. But some day, when it's time for your body to die, this meditation will not help, so you will not believe in it. This means it is not correct meditation. If you do correct meditation, being sick sometimes is OK; suffering sometimes is OK; dying someday is OK. The Buddha said, "If you keep a clear mind moment to moment, then you will get happiness everywhere.”
How much do you believe in yourself? How much do you help other people? These are most important questions. Correct meditation helps you find true way.
I told them that I had asked the man in the bed next to me, "What is the purpose of your life?” he had a good job, a good family, a good wife, but these things could not help him. So he said, "Nothing.” He understood "nothing,” but this understanding could not help him, and therefore he was suffering. Zen means attaining this nothing-mind.
How do you attain nothing-mind? First you must ask, "What am I? What is the purpose of my life?” If you answer with words,
this is only thinking. Maybe you say, "I am a doctor.” But if you are with a patient and you are thinking, "I am a great doctor,” you cannot perceive your patient's situation -- - you are caught in your thinking. Thinking is only understanding; like the man in the hospital, you will find that understanding cannot help you. Then what? If you don't know, you must only go straight —- don't know.
Don't-know mind cut through thinking. It is before thinking. Before thinking there is no doctor, no patient; also no God, no Buddha, no "I,” no words — nothing at all. Then you and the universe become one. We call this nothing-mind, or primary point. Some people say this is God, or universal energy, or bliss, or extinction. But these are only teaching words. Nothing-mind is before words.
Zen is attaining nothing-mind, and using nothing-mind. How can you use it? Make nothing-mind into big-love-mind. Nothing means no I-my-me, no hindrance, so this mind can change to action- for-all-people mind. This is possible. Nothing-mind neither appears nor disappears. It you do correct meditation, nothing- mind becomes strong and you perceive your situation clearly: what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch are the truth, without thinking. So your mind is like a mirror. Then moment to moment you can keep your correct situation. When a doctor is with his patients, if he drops I-my-me and becomes one with them, then helping them is possible. When a doctor goes home and he is with his family, if he keeps his father's mind 100 percent, then understanding what is best for them is clear. Just like this. The blue mountain does not move. The white clouds float back and forth.
So, the doctors liked Zen. Maybe they will try practicing!
I hope you only go straight — don't know, attain nothing- mind, use nothing mind, and save all beings from suffering.
Yours in the Dharma, S.S.
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Feb 10, 2019 - 10:16am PT
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Putting people into boxes with labels might be comfortable, convenient, and easy. I’m not too sure that it’s accurate, complete, or final.
I know it is not accurate, complete, or final. The reason being is I do not know the reference frame for certain, and even if I was certain of it, I would still suspect my own inference as being skewed.
I stumbled onto David Bohm and then searched ST for any posts---of which there are some. I was struggling with determinism and now embrace causal and non-causal as determiners in life. Ha Ha.
I was going to post something about memory a couple of days ago and decided not to. And then the subject pops up.
I asked a friend, who had (rip) a phd in behavioral psychology, why is it I remember, for years, meaningless stuff including dreams? He said, no one knows why we remember what we remember.
edit wiki:In the seminar, Bohm develops several interrelated themes. He points out that thought is the ubiquitous tool that is used to solve every kind of problem: personal, social, scientific, and so on. Yet thought, he maintains, is also inadvertently the source of many of those problems. He recognizes and acknowledges the irony of the situation: it is as if one gets sick by going to the doctor.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 10, 2019 - 02:30pm PT
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Largo has spoken of being in a seminar or classroom when Bohm addressed an audience. Apparently, his presentation was difficult to follow and understand.
From Wiki: "In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm 1980, p. xv)."
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Feb 10, 2019 - 02:42pm PT
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LOL jogill I was going to post that myself but didn't. Interesting take.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 10, 2019 - 03:50pm PT
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These famous scientists, when they wander over into metaphysics, come up with intriguing ideas.
Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe:
Wiki: "Tegmark's MUH is: Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.[3] That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics (specifically, a mathematical structure). Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that exist mathematically exist physically as well. Observers, including humans, are "self-aware substructures (SASs)". In any mathematical structure complex enough to contain such substructures, they "will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world".[4]"
;>)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 10, 2019 - 04:24pm PT
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the certain validity of personal experience. A proper practice.
If your patient told you they needed pain relief, you would prescribe the oxycontin?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 10, 2019 - 05:34pm PT
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http://stephenhwolinskyphdlibrary.com/downloads/Beginners%20Guide%20to%20Quantum%20Psy.pdf
If you want to see Bohm's stuff applied to Mind, check out the link above.
I remember in the year's since I met and attended a seminar with Bohm that physicist friends wrote him off because some of his ideas were debatable. But Wolinsky has, IMO, tickled out some useful stuff per Bohm's ideas relative to the study of mind.
Without some practical experience in mental fitness modes the above link might be a bit much, but it's interesting stuff in any event.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Feb 10, 2019 - 05:50pm PT
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Zen is attaining nothing-mind, and using nothing-mind. How can you use it? Make nothing-mind into big-love-mind.
How seldom we hear this sentiment on Zen and the mind and the nature of consciousness.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Feb 10, 2019 - 09:07pm PT
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I'm curious. Why the expression quantum psychology?
Quantum (def):
1.Physics
a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents. an analogous discrete amount of any other physical quantity, such as momentum or electric charge.
Physiology
the unit quantity of acetylcholine released at a neuromuscular junction by a single synaptic vesicle, contributing a discrete small voltage to the measured end-plate potential.
2.
a required or allowed amount, especially an amount of money legally payable in damages.
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capseeboy
Social climber
portland, oregon
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Feb 11, 2019 - 10:28am PT
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Thanks Largo for the Stephen Lowinski link---most helpful. Cheers.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Feb 11, 2019 - 10:36am PT
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I second that.
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