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Humans have a larger neocortex compared to other mammals, which gives them more storage, working memory, and computational potential than other animals. The cu

Humans have a larger neocortex compared to other mammals, which gives them more storage, working memory, and computational potential than other animals. The curses of the human condition are anxiety and regret, the conditions that render people unable to engage in the present moment. The former is characterised as being stuck in the future psychologically, and the latter is being stuck in the past. Since neither the future or the past can be changed by obsessive thoughts in the present, these psychological conditions are a recipe for unhappiness, because happiness can only ever happen in the present moment, which is lost. What characterises flow state and mindfulness is total absorption in the present moment. What if animals that are not burdened by human quantities of neocortex, such as insects and canines, which exist in the present moment, are actually experiencing flow and mindfulness? The spider weaves its web in perfect concentration, not stopping to contemplate, plan, or exercise executive judgement. Might not that be akin to flow? The dog and the cat and the cow and the horse, given physical comfort, do not seem to worry about the future or regret the past. Might they not be blessed with a form of mindfulness that humans in the rat race rarely manage to experience?

cagenut 5y ago
hi i mostly liked your thought trail there, but if you've ever adopted a shelter dog they most definitely regret the past (they clearly experience nightmares)
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  That's a thoughtful, considered observation, that adds plenty to this discussion. Your comment is a positive exemplar of the application of the human neocortex.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  A relative got a dog from what was obviously an unqualified breeder. The dog was always anxious, distressed, waiting at the window. One day I pet him on the back without making sure he heard me coming. He nipped me in panic, then ran and hid. It was obvious he thought I was going to hit him for it. And since I would never, that must have been from a past experience. I think he was actually dissociating since I sat there with him for about 10 minutes and he didn't move at all, just stared off into a wall. He finally snapped out of it and accepted one (1) headpat.
  - Tycho 5y ago
    Are there pet psychologists who can cure this sort of thing? (serious question)
    - thephyber 5y ago
      Behavioral-specialist trainers for dogs. Most dog trainers do most of their useful training on the dog owner, not the dog. The trainer gives the owner guidance and strategies for conditioning out these undesirable behaviors and the owner should continue training the dog for the duration of their relationship. There are classical conditioning strategies which can reduce stress/anxiety of the dog, increase the dog’s socialization / reduce reactivity to stimuli in the environment (like and unexpected touch), and increase the bond between dog and human. Obviously the more severe the trauma, the longer it takes to counter condition the stress response.
- playpause 5y ago
  I think trauma is different. It’s more like scar tissue in your psyche, caused by a specific event but affecting the shape of your thoughts and inclinations in general. Regret is conscious reflection on past mistakes, imagining how things could have been, etc. A bad experience can lead to regret, or trauma, or both, or neither.
- joegahona 5y ago
  How do you know what they're having is nightmares?
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    My dog (who spent about 3 months in a shelter) sometimes "talks in his sleep", making sounds like he is scared/stressed about something. Other times he makes happier sounds while sleeping. It seems pretty clear that he's experiencing a range of emotions in his dreams, but I don't think it necessarily means reliving specific events.
RichardHeart 5y ago
Awesome comment.
laurent92 5y ago
And it’s the thirst for dodging those thoughts which leads a lot of us into passions, games, videogames and even workaholism, which then becomes its own condition. The addiction of investing in work in order to avoid thinking about the painful aspects of life.
KineticLensman 5y ago
> The spider weaves its web in perfect concentration I don't think you can equate the mental capabilities of a human in flow state with a spider following a set of instincts (hard-wired neural processes / behaviours). I'm not aware of any evidence that spiders can engage in any abstract thoughts about their web.
- meowkit 5y ago
  I wouldn’t equate them either, but its a nice comparison. I like the idea that my cat is constantly in a flow except when hungry haha. Flow state comes about when skill and challenge are maximized. There is an element of perception of both those axis which plays into it. Since we don’t know what the perceptions of non humans are its going to be hard to know if they experience any type of flow. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Model-of-the-flow-state-adapted-from-Csikszentmihalyi-2020-Perceived-challenges-and_fig2_343922792 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Model-of-the-flow-state-...
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    > I like the idea that my cat is constantly in a flow except when hungry haha. Alternatively, one could argue that 'sprint' predators like cheetah and Peregrine falcons are in flow-state when hunting (i.e. hungry) and in a non-flow state when resting between hunts / kills. Considering Peregrines, outside breeding season, they might only spend a few minutes flying per day and are then happy to perch on a secluded branch until they need to venture out again for their next kill. If there is a flow/non-flow distinction (and you are right, we may never know), I'd conjecture that flow starts when hunger exceeds a certain threshold and finishes when the bird is fed. Edit: I work with different types of raptors and can confirm that they vary significantly in their mental capabilities. Owls have relatively small brains because their skulls are full of eye and they are not easily trainable, compared with say a Caracara [0], which to my mind is the bird equivalent of a racoon: smart and pesky. I can imagine a Caracara having a greater flow/non-flow distinction compared with an Owl which is much more instinct-driven. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_caracara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_caracara
  - 5y ago
pmoriarty 5y ago
"The spider weaves its web in perfect concentration, not stopping to contemplate, plan, or exercise executive judgement." This reminds me of reading about researchers feeding spiders flies laced with various drugs and observing how they weaved their webs: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/aa/ff/b1aaff36806e72cf2862174427f6e79a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/aa/ff/b1aaff36806e72cf2862...
- nr2x 5y ago
  I was literally checking if somebody had posted this as it came to mind immediately.
- spookybones 5y ago
  The caffeine web is particularly concerning.
bavila 5y ago
> Since neither the future or the past can be changed by obsessive thoughts in the present... Is this really true, though? The past certainly cannot be changed, but the future is not set in stone. If I spend my time obsessively thinking about what kind of person I want to be, what kind of career I want to have, or what sort of companion I want to have in life, then it seems reasonable that these thoughts will lead me to pursue different courses of action than I would have pursued had I _not_ spent all this time in such ruminations. And, ideally, such thoughts should lead to better future outcomes, if the actions born from such thoughts are well-reasoned. Granted, this may not necessarily be the case in all circumstances, and an excess in obsessions may potentially lead to detrimental outcomes. But I think our ability to feel anxiety can be a blessing, not just a curse, when we work through our anxieties carefully and productively.
- wpietri 5y ago
  For me the dividing line is in how productive the thought is. If the thought leads to new understanding and behavioral change, I'd call neither regret nor worry obsessive. That said, there's a bit of a definitional trick being played here by most people. In the just-released "The Tomorrow War", one character is portrayed as irritatingly obsessive about a science topic. Their detailed knowledge turns out to be useful later, at which point respect for him is portrayed. The judgment criteria shift in retrospect, even though the behavior is the same. A darker example comes from "Maus", a memoir about a Jew who barely escaped Nazi Germany. His pre-escape behavior in abstract could easily be described as obsessively worried. But in practice, the ones who were more "reasonable" went into the ovens. My takeaway from this is that apparently maladaptive behavior is often just adaptive to a different environment. That's certainly my experience.
- teddyh 5y ago
  > The past certainly cannot be changed Sure it can. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. This is because the past does not exist, as Alan Watts described.
Kon5ole 5y ago
Your comment really clarified some vague ideas I've been thinking about lately. I found it inspiring. Thanks for writing it!
punkspider 5y ago
I think your comment made something click and it may just change my life. I'll try stick to being mindful of what you said: > The curses of the human condition are anxiety and regret, the conditions that render people unable to engage in the present moment. The former is characterised as being stuck in the future psychologically, and the latter is being stuck in the past. Since neither the future or the past can be changed by obsessive thoughts in the present, these psychological conditions are a recipe for unhappiness, because happiness can only ever happen in the present moment, which is lost. Hopefully it will have a positive effect on how I approach things, since anxiety/regret are the main things that affect my work, I believe. We'll see. In any case, even if there's no noticeable effect in the near future, I'm very happy I stumbled across your comment. Thank you very much!
- throwamon 5y ago
  If you think this is life-changing (and it is), you should definitely learn more about Buddhism. The part you quoted is literally "Buddhism 101" (just look up "Four Noble Truths"). And it goes much deeper than that.
acituan 5y ago
> Humans have a larger neocortex compared to other mammals, which gives them more storage, working memory, and computational potential than other animals. Computational cognition models are more and more replaced by embodied cognition models. Not only that, "computation-like" functions of human consciousness is by far not limited to the neocortex. Much older parts like cerebellum play a significant role in noise filtering for example. Just like we have adapted our tongues to a new purpose of speaking, we have been adapting the existing information processing machinery to perform higher level cognitive functions. Neocortex is not the add-on consciousness chip. > The curses of the human condition are anxiety and regret, the conditions that render people unable to engage in the present moment. I will object to this on the basis of being an overly romantic notion. The preoccupation with future and past is simply requirements for the predictive processing we have to do in order to have any agency in the world. Normally this is fantastically adaptive, and a requirement to fulfill our needs, which I presume is required for what you call happiness. (Not to mention this is not even a human-specific trait). Being genuinely stuck in past or future is the disease state of this otherwise adaptive feature, and because it is an emergent property of a complex adaptive system, it is harder get out of it because it resists that shift. Which is why one trick interventions like "be in the present" moment are likely to fail to get one out of those states in isolation. > What characterises flow state and mindfulness is total absorption in the present moment. We need to expand several notions here. Being in present moment is such a vague metaphor that it barely describes anything. A more apt description would be being in perfect conformity and harmony with the task at hand, being able to dance with it, being able to adapt to the challenges it throws at us. And it brings different criteria for flow state vs mindfulness; in flow state there is usually a sense of dissolving ego boundaries, there is a sense of being one with the task itself. E.g rock climbing. Mindfulness is a more complicated state, because the task at hand is tightly related to the metacognitive state of the person. There is usually much more ego awareness, because the focus is the ego content. The eventual aim is to gain flexibility over the ego content, and being able to shift the opacity of it (i.e. swiftly switching between thinking from "i am thinking this" to actually thinking it, and during that process more fluidly change the "it"). As such, I would agree animals could be in something that resembles the flow state, but can't really do mindfulness. > The dog and the cat and the cow and the horse, given physical comfort, do not seem to worry about the future or regret the past. I again find this to be an overly romantic notion. Just like I've mentioned, animals do have a capacity for learning, because it is adaptive to be able to undertake predictive processing. Which makes way to the "worry"s you mention. If you spend time with any animal that has PTSD, you'll immediately realize that they are stuck in a state of predicting harm that doesn't exit. That is an expensive, low precision state and not one of comfort. They can be trained out of their traumas, sometimes more easily than with humans, but they also can't do any of the rational/cognitive interventions that we could do. Basically you're advocating for a lower state of consciousness because our cognitive machinery can fail more drastically than other animals. I would agree with the second part, but not the first part. We have been developing a plethora of techniques to upkeep our psyches, mindfulness training being one (and remember one intervention alone can't do much with complex adaptive systems), we've been just not good at scaling the know-how over time and people, at least not in comparison to our default state of ignorance.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
My cat absolutely gets into a flow state when something triggers her to groom herself fully. Other than significant external pressure to stop (getting picked up and/or prevented from grooming) she will persist in grooming even if it isn't herself: my arm if I picked her up, a blanket if I relocate her, the air for a few seconds until she breaks out of the "loop".
wildmanx 5y ago
Sounds great, but your reasoning is not actually based in a solid scientific basis. It "kinda makes sense", sure, but is more anthropocentric than based on evidence. For the longest time people defined humans as "we're the only animals who can use tools; we're special". Nonsense, there are countless examples in the animal kingdom of tool use. "Oh but we're the only ones who can _make_ tools." Also nonsense. "Oh but only we can think ahead strategically!" Nonsense. "Only we have feelings". Nope. The whole "only we have anxiety and regret" is in the same ballpark. It's a claim without evidence. The connection with the neocortex is less clear than you made it sound, and the conclusion doesn't even hold up. Dolphins have a larger neocortical area. Not just by a bit, by over 50%! So let's keep the whole "humans are the only animals who ..." out of this which only serves to make us feel special. (And by extension is mainly used to exploit nature without regret. Whole religions are based on the concept of us being special and justifying atrocities against thousands of species.) Honestly it's absurd to think that only humans can experience flow. (Even disregarding that we don't seem to have a common definition of that state anyway, against which such claims could be tested.)

cagenut 5y ago

hi i mostly liked your thought trail there, but if you've ever adopted a shelter dog they most definitely regret the past (they clearly experience nightmares)

wombatmobile 5y ago
That's a thoughtful, considered observation, that adds plenty to this discussion. Your comment is a positive exemplar of the application of the human neocortex.
mkr-hn 5y ago
A relative got a dog from what was obviously an unqualified breeder. The dog was always anxious, distressed, waiting at the window. One day I pet him on the back without making sure he heard me coming. He nipped me in panic, then ran and hid. It was obvious he thought I was going to hit him for it. And since I would never, that must have been from a past experience. I think he was actually dissociating since I sat there with him for about 10 minutes and he didn't move at all, just stared off into a wall. He finally snapped out of it and accepted one (1) headpat.
- Tycho 5y ago
  Are there pet psychologists who can cure this sort of thing? (serious question)
  - thephyber 5y ago
    Behavioral-specialist trainers for dogs. Most dog trainers do most of their useful training on the dog owner, not the dog. The trainer gives the owner guidance and strategies for conditioning out these undesirable behaviors and the owner should continue training the dog for the duration of their relationship. There are classical conditioning strategies which can reduce stress/anxiety of the dog, increase the dog’s socialization / reduce reactivity to stimuli in the environment (like and unexpected touch), and increase the bond between dog and human. Obviously the more severe the trauma, the longer it takes to counter condition the stress response.
playpause 5y ago
I think trauma is different. It’s more like scar tissue in your psyche, caused by a specific event but affecting the shape of your thoughts and inclinations in general. Regret is conscious reflection on past mistakes, imagining how things could have been, etc. A bad experience can lead to regret, or trauma, or both, or neither.
joegahona 5y ago
How do you know what they're having is nightmares?
- bittercynic 5y ago
  My dog (who spent about 3 months in a shelter) sometimes "talks in his sleep", making sounds like he is scared/stressed about something. Other times he makes happier sounds while sleeping. It seems pretty clear that he's experiencing a range of emotions in his dreams, but I don't think it necessarily means reliving specific events.

RichardHeart 5y ago

Awesome comment.

laurent92 5y ago

And it’s the thirst for dodging those thoughts which leads a lot of us into passions, games, videogames and even workaholism, which then becomes its own condition. The addiction of investing in work in order to avoid thinking about the painful aspects of life.

KineticLensman 5y ago

> The spider weaves its web in perfect concentration I don't think you can equate the mental capabilities of a human in flow state with a spider following a set of instincts (hard-wired neural processes / behaviours). I'm not aware of any evidence that spiders can engage in any abstract thoughts about their web.

meowkit 5y ago
I wouldn’t equate them either, but its a nice comparison. I like the idea that my cat is constantly in a flow except when hungry haha. Flow state comes about when skill and challenge are maximized. There is an element of perception of both those axis which plays into it. Since we don’t know what the perceptions of non humans are its going to be hard to know if they experience any type of flow. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Model-of-the-flow-state-adapted-from-Csikszentmihalyi-2020-Perceived-challenges-and_fig2_343922792 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Model-of-the-flow-state-...
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  > I like the idea that my cat is constantly in a flow except when hungry haha. Alternatively, one could argue that 'sprint' predators like cheetah and Peregrine falcons are in flow-state when hunting (i.e. hungry) and in a non-flow state when resting between hunts / kills. Considering Peregrines, outside breeding season, they might only spend a few minutes flying per day and are then happy to perch on a secluded branch until they need to venture out again for their next kill. If there is a flow/non-flow distinction (and you are right, we may never know), I'd conjecture that flow starts when hunger exceeds a certain threshold and finishes when the bird is fed. Edit: I work with different types of raptors and can confirm that they vary significantly in their mental capabilities. Owls have relatively small brains because their skulls are full of eye and they are not easily trainable, compared with say a Caracara [0], which to my mind is the bird equivalent of a racoon: smart and pesky. I can imagine a Caracara having a greater flow/non-flow distinction compared with an Owl which is much more instinct-driven. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_caracara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_caracara
- 5y ago

pmoriarty 5y ago

"The spider weaves its web in perfect concentration, not stopping to contemplate, plan, or exercise executive judgement." This reminds me of reading about researchers feeding spiders flies laced with various drugs and observing how they weaved their webs: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/aa/ff/b1aaff36806e72cf2862174427f6e79a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/aa/ff/b1aaff36806e72cf2862...

nr2x 5y ago
I was literally checking if somebody had posted this as it came to mind immediately.
spookybones 5y ago
The caffeine web is particularly concerning.

bavila 5y ago

> Since neither the future or the past can be changed by obsessive thoughts in the present... Is this really true, though? The past certainly cannot be changed, but the future is not set in stone. If I spend my time obsessively thinking about what kind of person I want to be, what kind of career I want to have, or what sort of companion I want to have in life, then it seems reasonable that these thoughts will lead me to pursue different courses of action than I would have pursued had I _not_ spent all this time in such ruminations. And, ideally, such thoughts should lead to better future outcomes, if the actions born from such thoughts are well-reasoned. Granted, this may not necessarily be the case in all circumstances, and an excess in obsessions may potentially lead to detrimental outcomes. But I think our ability to feel anxiety can be a blessing, not just a curse, when we work through our anxieties carefully and productively.

wpietri 5y ago
For me the dividing line is in how productive the thought is. If the thought leads to new understanding and behavioral change, I'd call neither regret nor worry obsessive. That said, there's a bit of a definitional trick being played here by most people. In the just-released "The Tomorrow War", one character is portrayed as irritatingly obsessive about a science topic. Their detailed knowledge turns out to be useful later, at which point respect for him is portrayed. The judgment criteria shift in retrospect, even though the behavior is the same. A darker example comes from "Maus", a memoir about a Jew who barely escaped Nazi Germany. His pre-escape behavior in abstract could easily be described as obsessively worried. But in practice, the ones who were more "reasonable" went into the ovens. My takeaway from this is that apparently maladaptive behavior is often just adaptive to a different environment. That's certainly my experience.
teddyh 5y ago
> The past certainly cannot be changed Sure it can. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. This is because the past does not exist, as Alan Watts described.

Kon5ole 5y ago

Your comment really clarified some vague ideas I've been thinking about lately. I found it inspiring. Thanks for writing it!

punkspider 5y ago

I think your comment made something click and it may just change my life. I'll try stick to being mindful of what you said: > The curses of the human condition are anxiety and regret, the conditions that render people unable to engage in the present moment. The former is characterised as being stuck in the future psychologically, and the latter is being stuck in the past. Since neither the future or the past can be changed by obsessive thoughts in the present, these psychological conditions are a recipe for unhappiness, because happiness can only ever happen in the present moment, which is lost. Hopefully it will have a positive effect on how I approach things, since anxiety/regret are the main things that affect my work, I believe. We'll see. In any case, even if there's no noticeable effect in the near future, I'm very happy I stumbled across your comment. Thank you very much!

throwamon 5y ago
If you think this is life-changing (and it is), you should definitely learn more about Buddhism. The part you quoted is literally "Buddhism 101" (just look up "Four Noble Truths"). And it goes much deeper than that.

acituan 5y ago

> Humans have a larger neocortex compared to other mammals, which gives them more storage, working memory, and computational potential than other animals. Computational cognition models are more and more replaced by embodied cognition models. Not only that, "computation-like" functions of human consciousness is by far not limited to the neocortex. Much older parts like cerebellum play a significant role in noise filtering for example. Just like we have adapted our tongues to a new purpose of speaking, we have been adapting the existing information processing machinery to perform higher level cognitive functions. Neocortex is not the add-on consciousness chip. > The curses of the human condition are anxiety and regret, the conditions that render people unable to engage in the present moment. I will object to this on the basis of being an overly romantic notion. The preoccupation with future and past is simply requirements for the predictive processing we have to do in order to have any agency in the world. Normally this is fantastically adaptive, and a requirement to fulfill our needs, which I presume is required for what you call happiness. (Not to mention this is not even a human-specific trait). Being genuinely stuck in past or future is the disease state of this otherwise adaptive feature, and because it is an emergent property of a complex adaptive system, it is harder get out of it because it resists that shift. Which is why one trick interventions like "be in the present" moment are likely to fail to get one out of those states in isolation. > What characterises flow state and mindfulness is total absorption in the present moment. We need to expand several notions here. Being in present moment is such a vague metaphor that it barely describes anything. A more apt description would be being in perfect conformity and harmony with the task at hand, being able to dance with it, being able to adapt to the challenges it throws at us. And it brings different criteria for flow state vs mindfulness; in flow state there is usually a sense of dissolving ego boundaries, there is a sense of being one with the task itself. E.g rock climbing. Mindfulness is a more complicated state, because the task at hand is tightly related to the metacognitive state of the person. There is usually much more ego awareness, because the focus is the ego content. The eventual aim is to gain flexibility over the ego content, and being able to shift the opacity of it (i.e. swiftly switching between thinking from "i am thinking this" to actually thinking it, and during that process more fluidly change the "it"). As such, I would agree animals could be in something that resembles the flow state, but can't really do mindfulness. > The dog and the cat and the cow and the horse, given physical comfort, do not seem to worry about the future or regret the past. I again find this to be an overly romantic notion. Just like I've mentioned, animals do have a capacity for learning, because it is adaptive to be able to undertake predictive processing. Which makes way to the "worry"s you mention. If you spend time with any animal that has PTSD, you'll immediately realize that they are stuck in a state of predicting harm that doesn't exit. That is an expensive, low precision state and not one of comfort. They can be trained out of their traumas, sometimes more easily than with humans, but they also can't do any of the rational/cognitive interventions that we could do. Basically you're advocating for a lower state of consciousness because our cognitive machinery can fail more drastically than other animals. I would agree with the second part, but not the first part. We have been developing a plethora of techniques to upkeep our psyches, mindfulness training being one (and remember one intervention alone can't do much with complex adaptive systems), we've been just not good at scaling the know-how over time and people, at least not in comparison to our default state of ignorance.

jimmygrapes 5y ago

My cat absolutely gets into a flow state when something triggers her to groom herself fully. Other than significant external pressure to stop (getting picked up and/or prevented from grooming) she will persist in grooming even if it isn't herself: my arm if I picked her up, a blanket if I relocate her, the air for a few seconds until she breaks out of the "loop".

wildmanx 5y ago

Sounds great, but your reasoning is not actually based in a solid scientific basis. It "kinda makes sense", sure, but is more anthropocentric than based on evidence. For the longest time people defined humans as "we're the only animals who can use tools; we're special". Nonsense, there are countless examples in the animal kingdom of tool use. "Oh but we're the only ones who can _make_ tools." Also nonsense. "Oh but only we can think ahead strategically!" Nonsense. "Only we have feelings". Nope. The whole "only we have anxiety and regret" is in the same ballpark. It's a claim without evidence. The connection with the neocortex is less clear than you made it sound, and the conclusion doesn't even hold up. Dolphins have a larger neocortical area. Not just by a bit, by over 50%! So let's keep the whole "humans are the only animals who ..." out of this which only serves to make us feel special. (And by extension is mainly used to exploit nature without regret. Whole religions are based on the concept of us being special and justifying atrocities against thousands of species.) Honestly it's absurd to think that only humans can experience flow. (Even disregarding that we don't seem to have a common definition of that state anyway, against which such claims could be tested.)