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On the contrary, I would argue that conscious attention is only focused on one of those subroutines at a time. When the ball is in play you focus in it, and eve

On the contrary, I would argue that conscious attention is only focused on one of those subroutines at a time. When the ball is in play you focus in it, and everything from your posture to racket handling fades into the background as a subconscious routine. When you make a handling mistake or want to improve something like posture, your focus shifts to that; you attend to it with your attention, and then you focus on something else. In either case, with working memory for example, conscious contents are limited to at most a basket of 6-7 chunks. This number is very small compared to the incredible parallelism of the unconscious mind.

necovek 1y ago
My point is that what we call conscious and subconscious is limited by our ability to express it in language: since we can't verbalize what's going on quickly enough, we separate those out. Could we learn to verbalize two things at the same time (we all do that as well with say different words and different body language, even consciously, but can we take it a step further? eg. imagine saying nice things to someone and raising the middle finger for someone else behind your back :)) As the whole article is really about the full brain, and it seems you agree our "unconscious mind" producing actions in parallel, I think the focus is wrongly put on brain size, when we lack the expressiveness for what the brain can already do. Edit: And don't get me wrong, I personally suck at multi-tasking :)
andoando 1y ago
What you consider a single thought is a bit ill defined. A multitude of thoughts together can be formed as a packet, which then can be processed sequentially. Intelligence is the ability to capture, and predicts events in space and time, and as such it must have the capability to model both things occurring in simultaneity and sequentially. Sticking to your example, a routine for making a decision in tennis would look something like at a higher level "Run to the left and backstroke the ball", which broken down would be something like "Turn hip and shoulder to the left, extend left leg, extend right, left, right, turn hip/shoulder to the right, swing arm." and so on.
yathaid 1y ago
There is a long tradition in India, which started with oral transmission of the Vedas, of parallel cognition. It is almost an art form or a mental sport - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhanam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhanam
- pakitan 1y ago
  Sounds very much sequential, even if very difficult: > The performer's first reply is not an entire poem. Rather, the poem is created one line at a time. The first questioner speaks and the performer replies with one line. The second questioner then speaks and the performer replies with the previous first line and then a new line. The third questioner then speaks and performer gives his previous first and second lines and a new line and so on. That is, each questioner demands a new task or restriction, the previous tasks, the previous lines of the poem, and a new line.
  - mapcars 1y ago
    The replies are sequential to adjust with new inputs, but the mental process to produce each new line has to do lots of computations
- srean 1y ago
  Mental sport - Yes. It is the exploration and enumeration of the possible rhythms that led to the discovery of Fibonacci sequence and binary representation in around 200 BC. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala#Combinatorics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala#Combinatorics
Garlef 1y ago
Yes . But maybe there's multiple such "conscious attention" instances at the same time. And "you" are only one of them.
me_me_me 1y ago
[dead]
smokel 1y ago
For all we know, there might be tons of conscious attention processes active in parallel. "You" only get to observe one, but there could be many. You'd never know because the processes do not observably communicate with each other. They do communicate with the same body though, but that is less relevant.
- perfmode 1y ago
  In this context, we differentiate between the conscious and unconscious based on observability: the conscious is that which is observed, while the unconscious comprises what is not observed.
  - smokel 1y ago
    No, what I was trying to convey is that there could theoretically be multiple consciousnesses in one brain. These are however unaware of each other. A person might have the impression that there is only one "me", but there could be tens, hundreds, or millions of those. It might help to get away from the problem of finding where the presumed singular consciousness is located.
    - whatnow37373 1y ago
      Then there is the beautiful issue of memory: maybe you are X consciousnesses but only one leaves a memory trace? Consciousness and memory are two very different things. Don’t think too much about this when you have to undergo surgery. Maybe you are aware during the process but only memory-formation is blocked.
      - mikelevins 1y ago
        Or perhaps they all leave traces, but all write to the same log? And when reconstructing memory from the log, each constructed consciousness experiences itself as singular?
        1y ago

necovek 1y ago

My point is that what we call conscious and subconscious is limited by our ability to express it in language: since we can't verbalize what's going on quickly enough, we separate those out. Could we learn to verbalize two things at the same time (we all do that as well with say different words and different body language, even consciously, but can we take it a step further? eg. imagine saying nice things to someone and raising the middle finger for someone else behind your back :)) As the whole article is really about the full brain, and it seems you agree our "unconscious mind" producing actions in parallel, I think the focus is wrongly put on brain size, when we lack the expressiveness for what the brain can already do. Edit: And don't get me wrong, I personally suck at multi-tasking :)

andoando 1y ago

What you consider a single thought is a bit ill defined. A multitude of thoughts together can be formed as a packet, which then can be processed sequentially. Intelligence is the ability to capture, and predicts events in space and time, and as such it must have the capability to model both things occurring in simultaneity and sequentially. Sticking to your example, a routine for making a decision in tennis would look something like at a higher level "Run to the left and backstroke the ball", which broken down would be something like "Turn hip and shoulder to the left, extend left leg, extend right, left, right, turn hip/shoulder to the right, swing arm." and so on.

yathaid 1y ago

There is a long tradition in India, which started with oral transmission of the Vedas, of parallel cognition. It is almost an art form or a mental sport - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhanam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avadhanam

pakitan 1y ago
Sounds very much sequential, even if very difficult: > The performer's first reply is not an entire poem. Rather, the poem is created one line at a time. The first questioner speaks and the performer replies with one line. The second questioner then speaks and the performer replies with the previous first line and then a new line. The third questioner then speaks and performer gives his previous first and second lines and a new line and so on. That is, each questioner demands a new task or restriction, the previous tasks, the previous lines of the poem, and a new line.
- mapcars 1y ago
  The replies are sequential to adjust with new inputs, but the mental process to produce each new line has to do lots of computations
srean 1y ago
Mental sport - Yes. It is the exploration and enumeration of the possible rhythms that led to the discovery of Fibonacci sequence and binary representation in around 200 BC. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala#Combinatorics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingala#Combinatorics

Garlef 1y ago

Yes . But maybe there's multiple such "conscious attention" instances at the same time. And "you" are only one of them.

me_me_me 1y ago

[dead]

smokel 1y ago

For all we know, there might be tons of conscious attention processes active in parallel. "You" only get to observe one, but there could be many. You'd never know because the processes do not observably communicate with each other. They do communicate with the same body though, but that is less relevant.

perfmode 1y ago
In this context, we differentiate between the conscious and unconscious based on observability: the conscious is that which is observed, while the unconscious comprises what is not observed.
- smokel 1y ago
  No, what I was trying to convey is that there could theoretically be multiple consciousnesses in one brain. These are however unaware of each other. A person might have the impression that there is only one "me", but there could be tens, hundreds, or millions of those. It might help to get away from the problem of finding where the presumed singular consciousness is located.
  - whatnow37373 1y ago
    Then there is the beautiful issue of memory: maybe you are X consciousnesses but only one leaves a memory trace? Consciousness and memory are two very different things. Don’t think too much about this when you have to undergo surgery. Maybe you are aware during the process but only memory-formation is blocked.
    - mikelevins 1y ago
      Or perhaps they all leave traces, but all write to the same log? And when reconstructing memory from the log, each constructed consciousness experiences itself as singular?
      - 1y ago