7 ms·

Training like Tesla: An Experiment of the Mind

102 points by ztratar 14y ago

jmtame 14y ago
Makes me want to read the Tesla autobiography. Is there something specific you can do to improve your own mental creativity and ability to model things visually? I have always felt some type of barrier when thinking of ideas and I usually resort to paper to draw out wireframes. Also might help if you can dig up some research on this, to back up your thesis that its done by simply visualizing older memories in vivid detail. How long do you do it? How many times per day? Do you do it every day? All things I'm uncertain of if I'm going to participate in the experiment (which I plan on doing).
- ztratar 14y ago
  I think the exact process is going to evolve, so I don't necessarily want to bound myself artificially. I think I'll attempt 10-20 minutes per day to start and slowly ramp it up. Maybe I'll update the post as I go along.
ztratar 14y ago
OP here. Strange with upvotes but no discussion. I'm curious if anyone has tried anything like this before? I'd love some guidance or thoughts.
- bsenftner 14y ago
  Try starting with some random nonsense phrase you repeat in you mind for a period with your eyes closed. This clears your immediate references. After a period, you'll drift into an alpha brain wave state where you can willfully enter into a state of lucid dreaming. I got into this via an interest in trancendal meditation (sp?) and continued into other meditation styles. These days, I find that I can use this to visualize scenarios in my software projects at a depth that is difficult to explain with words.
  - ztratar 14y ago
    Hmm interesting. Tesla mentions that he would apply a small pressure to his eyes, which would then cause geometric shapes to appear and strange patterns to develop. The patterns put him in a different mindset whenever he saw them. Reading that truly hit me hard, since I did that while I was a kid. I didn't use it for any purpose though... I just thought it looked badass. Thanks for the tips.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- shib71 14y ago
  I've had the same experience as Tesla, though not so extreme as to cause problems. For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed extremely detailed "daydreams" where I explore worlds and meet people inspired by the books I read. I suspect this is fairly common in children, but I did it right through high school, university, and several years in the workplace. The real question is: how much benefit does having a strong and well exercised imagination have for a technical career? (I assume it's very useful for artists). I've found that software development gets a large boost. The more of the design you can hold in your head on once, the better the coder is able to anticipate the consequences of their decisions. When debugging, the programmer is able to see the entire state of the application that must have predicated it, experiment with a range of fixes, all before writing any code. I love this quote from The Tao of Programming[1]: "Sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke." [1] http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
  - jimmaswell 14y ago
    I'd imagine a strong imagination is great for the concept and design parts of engineering, but not entirely necessary if you're just building to a spec.
- kepano 14y ago
  I spent about two years dedicating my free time to experiments of this type. The most profoundly affecting exercise was training the left side of my body (I'm right-handed). I learned to write in left-handed mirrored script (Da Vinci style) and performed all sorts of everyday actions with my left hand. Amazingly, the more I trained my left hand the more my right-handed writing and drawing skills improved. Within a few months I found that I was able to switch back and forth between two very different modes of thought. My brain seemed wired differently. For a few months I could hardly put sentences together in speech, it was an odd sensation. Eventually though, I developed the ability to intentionally control which half of my brain was switched on. Science is all over the place when it comes to the left/right brain theory, but there is undoubtedly a level of truth to it. If you can learn to control it, it becomes a powerful problem-solving technique.
  - ztratar 14y ago
    That is extremely interesting. I'm also wondering if it was maybe some type of placebo effect. Maybe the modes were a mental manifestation...
- incision 14y ago
  >I'm curious if anyone has tried anything like this before? I'd love some guidance or thoughts. This is proving quite hard to articulate as I try to find a way to visualize it. To me... Thoughts are like threads to follow and your wall is faceted shell. Each of these facets carries a kind of gravity which pulls on your thread. Facets you have accepted without understanding appear solid, a barrier. When you run into one you have hit the wall. Facets where you have no concept are wide open and you're free to follow your thread, but you risk finding yourself adrift with no reference asking for your thread to become tangled. Facets where you have greater understanding are revealed to be a lattice, full of gaps to thread through and continue exploring. You don't "leave" the shell, there's always another layer that might be completely new or something you've passed through many times before. Imagination/discovery is the act of continually finding the gaps. --- Personally, I've always done a lot of visualizing. As an adult I've come to recognize close similarities to what I do in the visualization techniques of Stoicism and general thought experiments. One exercise I find quite useful is to avoid resorting to references for things I don't understand, to turn first toward visualizing how to create whatever it is that's puzzling me - to "search for the gaps" and see where I end up.
  - ztratar 14y ago
    Are you in the Bay Area? We should grab a drink or hang out. You just dove into an extremely similar theory I have.
    - incision 14y ago
      As I wrote that I was thinking it's the kind of topic that's best discussed in person. Unfortunately, I'm in DC, but with a little luck I'll end up out there eventually. I've visited several times and love it.
- ZirconCode 14y ago
  Hey, I really want to keep reading your blog, you seem just like the kind of person I'm aspiring to become. But there's one thing stopping me, your design seems really messed up. Sometimes lines of text only show top-half or bottom-half, and links can only be clicked on in the top-half. And yes, I'm using the latest chrome.
wilder 14y ago
I have never been able to consciously visualize (meaning: think in visual mental images). All of my conscious thought is in the auditory mode, though I know what it would be like to visualize as it happens occasionally in a dream. I have always wished more than anything to have such experiences while fully conscious (to see my mother's face and so on). There has been a fairly longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology about whether visual mental images even exist, yet when I discuss the issue with friends none of them can believe or understand that I lack imagery. I've read a fair amount without encountering real evidence that the capacity can be developed. I've certainly spent time trying, but possibly in the wrong way. A good place to start on the "mental imagery as simulation" literature is Kosslyn, e.g. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic561942.files/2009Moulton_PhilosTransRoyalSocB364_MentalImageryMentalEmulation.pdf http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic561942.files/2009... For an accessible window on the debate: http://www.edge.org/video/what-shape-are-a-german-shepherds-ears http://www.edge.org/video/what-shape-are-a-german-shepherds-... and http://www.edge.org/discourse/shepardears.html http://www.edge.org/discourse/shepardears.html Curious to lean whether HN harbors any non-visualizers.
- ztratar 14y ago
  Wow. My experience is drastically different than yours. I've almost always thought of things through mental imagery. It comes naturally to me (which really helped in calculus 3, haha). I can say that with confidence. Thanks for the link. I wonder how many non-visualizers are out there, too.
  - wilder 14y ago
    Sounds wonderful. The odd thing is that I can imagine what it would be like to have the sort of visual imagination that would be helpful in calculus. Unfortunately it turns out that imagined imagination is worthless for calculus.
    - ztratar 14y ago
      Haha. Imagine-ception.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
zwegner 14y ago
Pretty cool--I've been interested in finding new ways to exercise my mind recently. I have pretty bad ADHD/laziness, so it's hard to commit to doing such things regularly, but I'm hoping that meditation as well as these sorts of exercises will help with that. Another fascinating set of exercises (that I became aware of reading an article on Ithkuil, an invented language, that was on here a little while ago) is "deconcentration of attention". There's a simple website at http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/ http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/, which happens to talk about its applications to software engineering. It's somewhat similar to meditation, and focuses on harnessing the parallelism of the subconscious mind to think more non-linearly. It seems pretty out-there, and I'm not sure if anybody has really had any success with it, but just reading the exercises is quite intriguing to me (e.g. try to hear "red" in your head, visualize "red" without the word, and then try to feel "red" without visualizing it). Another exercise I thought of after reading the page (and which is quite hard for me, it turns out), is to count in your head without subconsciously speaking/hearing the numbers.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ztratar 14y ago
  This "deconcentration of attention" website is fascinating. Have you attempted any of the exercises?
  - zwegner 14y ago
    A few times, not nearly enough to experience any benefits of it. I'll try more from now on, promise! :)
    - BerislavLopac 14y ago
      Hmm, this is very interesting inde... Squirrel! ;-)
- dsfasfasf 14y ago
  >>pretty bad ADHD/laziness Is great that you at least admit that your problem is part laziness. I'm sure ADHD must be true for some people but I wonder if too many use it as an excuse for their failures. <half-joking>Even I've wondered if maybe I suffer from ADHD since is really hard to keep my attention on a project past the prototype stage. That is, once the last 10% starts. </half-joking> All joking aside, it feels almost like pulling teeth when working on that last 10%. Don't really know how to fix it other than to just force myself to keep at it.
sengstrom 14y ago
Tesla may have been grandiose not only in this thinking - his underdog genius certainly has kept that alive. Visualizing something you are thinking about (a problem you are trying to solve for instance) goes well beyond an obvious "image" of what is going on. As a coder you probably know what it feels to be in the zone when you are working on something that truly engages and challenges you - you have immediate access to all aspects of your project and your knowledge and experiences come effortlessly into play in figuring out the way forward.
luketych 14y ago
This is actually very interesting, I am glad this has been posted. As a kid, I would cover my eyes with my hands to create darkness, or sometimes put my face into a pillow or even do what Tesla did in putting a slight pressure onto my eyes with my fingers. I would start to see shapes and just be thinking I could change the color and contort these shapes. Strangely, I never knew how I did it. If I tried too hard it would not work, I would have to let my mind run on its own, and give it a slight nudge every now and then consciously. In college, when I was trying really hard to visualize a project I was working on I would do the same, I would put pressure on my eyes and try to make it as dark as possible so that I could see what I was trying to imagine, and it helped! I had no idea others do this as well, this is very cool. Some forms of meditation will be very useful for this I think.
- ztratar 14y ago
  Thanks! Wow -- didn't realize so many people tried the eye pressure thing. If I did it and you did it just because we thought it was cool, I bet there are a lot more people out there.
  - luketych 14y ago
    I'm curious, after looking at a computer screen for a little while and then closing your eyes do you ever see a rectangle that is the same proportions as the computer screen? It doesn't have to be a screen even, it can be anything. I have noticed that I will have an almost exact replica "burned into" my vision when I close my eyes. I can then (somewhat) manipulate this image in my mind. I've kinda thought that these changes in light (from whatever we are looking at) creates the initial image and then this image can be manipulated in the mind. I think that the retina or the parts of the brain that are involved in visual imagery must somehow be involved in these visualizations we are seeing (not the after image). It would be inefficient to develop a new skill from scratch, a big part of our brain is already dedicated to sight and imagery, so I wonder if we can somehow make use of the visual cortex to enhance our ability to visualize things? Need to find a way to hack into the subconscious..
    - 14y ago
waterlesscloud 14y ago
There's a long passage in the Patrick Suskind's novel _Perfume_ that is an extraordinarily evocative description of the main character building an imaginary palace of smells. He also imagines "constructing" new smells, similar to what's described here. The books does an amazing job of evoking smells using only text. Highly recommended. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel)
lbk 14y ago
Have you looked into image streaming ? (It something like brainstorming with your eyes closed and describing all of it into a tape-recorder . Feels really akward .) http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm
gpcz 14y ago
Based on the friends and family that likes to bounce engineering ideas off me, it seems that a lot of people's imaginations are too optimistic -- we end up going in circles with what inevitably becomes the trade-offs or limitations in the design because they envision a "perfect" solution and contradict themselves as they try to get around it. It's frustrating for them when I start committing things to paper in front of them, because then they have to deal with the problems/contradictions their optimistic brain was avoiding. Do you know if there's a way to hone realism in imagination?
- luketych 14y ago
  That's where you need to implement your ideas and see what works and what doesn't. If you are the type of person that needs to know the truth and can't cover it up and hide from it then your imagination will eventually adjust to reality (as long as you are getting good feedback). For me, I like the example of creating music, or even coming up with jokes. If you only imagine music or jokes you will never know if they are good or bad and you will just keep getting more imaginative but in an unrealistic way. As soon as you actually write that song, and tell that joke then you get actual feedback. It's the feedback that you need to calibrate your imagination.
- ztratar 14y ago
  I love ideas and I love being passionate about them. When it comes to actual implementation, I'm a pretty pessimistic fellow. Thus, I'll attempt to apply the same rigor here. My goal is to actual develop a somewhat realistic imagination. That being said, I want to be able to turn it on and off. Dreaming unrealistic scenarios is half the fun, right?
- solistice 14y ago
  Know your facts and patterns. When I imagine something, i try to add specs to it in my head. This resistance in this circuit, this geometrical design in this circuit. Some thing, I won't know off the top of my head, so I'll go online to check references, look at other designs and then I'll add it to my mental repository of design elements. A lot of my friends think it's crazy that I can quote specs, dimensions and prices off the top of my head, but frankly, it's neccesairy. Let me walk through a rough example. I want to create a 8x8 RGB LED matrix which will display patterns. First off, the LEDs. Proably 5050 SMD RGB LEDs 0.05$ @1k. They go onto the top of the board, which leaves me the bottom for controlling circuitry. Now I have several options in my mental library on how to adress them. Adressing them individually via microcontroller pins, which would require 8x8x3 I/O pins though, which is expensive. How about multiplexing them then? Charlieplexing migh yield a saving of a couple of pins versus regular multiplexing, but it'll add in board complexity. So a regular multiplex, either using 8 NPN transistors and 3 8 channel LED driver ICs (Similar to the GLiP setup) or using a CPLD/microcontroller combo to generate the signals. I decide on the CPLD/microcontroller combo. I get out a piece of milimeterlined paper to draw up a couple of sketches for the LED routing, because it's a hell of a lot of connections, and I'd like to draw them on paper. In my head, i route 3 lines between each row for current source, and 1 down each column for current sink. I realize that they'll have to cross, and will take up some of the back side. Since I'm allready using that, I decide to make it a 4 layer pcb, adding 2 layers more of mental routing space. I could have also routed around everything, but that would increase pcb size and would be unsightly. Now I put the row traces onto layer 2, and the connections from the row traces to the LEDs onto layer 1 and connect them with vias. Then I turn my mind to creating a rough routing for the loose ends to the CPLD. I don't know which CPLD to use yet, so I just abstract it to a square in a certain location and route the traces there. This square is connected to a microcontroller. I kinda fancy the ATtiny1634, so I roughly know the pinouts, but I still abstain from routing it properly to the indefinite CPLD. Then I hook it up to a SD card and try to fit in the power traces somewhere. Layer 3 happens to come in handy. Now I do still need to figure out which CPLD will have the requisite number of gates, but I'm very close to completition of the circuit. The rest is some rudimentary calculations (resistor values) which I know will work out, so I don't have to worry much about them. When I engineer these things in my head, it's very similar to a rendering algorithm. First, rough shapes which are refined again and again till the image is as sharp as it could be. I utilize other designs as proof of credibility, and put them in later on, making some areas of the image redundant till completition. Somewhere along the line, I do need to switch to paper for some things (My mental wall is there), but most of the work I do in my head.
luketych 14y ago
I came across this article, don't know how legit it is but here it is anyway: http://speedendurance.com/2010/11/21/how-to-learn-and-apply-mental-imagery-visualization-techniques/#comments http://speedendurance.com/2010/11/21/how-to-learn-and-apply-...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jostmey 14y ago
It is important to have a wild imagination to generate wild ideas. But this will lead to insanity unless you takes these wild ideas and refine them. You have to continually iterate, going over your imaginative ideas and asking why they will not work. You have to apply rigor and reason over and over again until the wild idea starts to take shape into something new and useful.
- ztratar 14y ago
  I completely agree and intend to do just that. The imagination Tesla describes in his autobiography is one that translates very well into the real world. Maintaining that quality and cohesion with the real world is on of the primary metrics I'll be measuring against. Thanks for the input!
  - jostmey 14y ago
    Make sure that you goal is worthy of your time and energy. Seek to create something that will help you, other people, or will increase humanities knowledge of the world. Otherwise, you are wasting your life.
nullandnull 14y ago
I'll never understand why people link to Amazon when they can get it off the publishers or another site for free. http://www.teslaplay.com/auto.htm http://www.teslaplay.com/auto.htm
james1071 14y ago
You might want to check out image streaming. Summary:a brief daily exercise (10 minutes), which develops visual and verbal thinking. http://www.winwenger.com/ http://www.winwenger.com/ http://www.winwenger.com/welcomeim.htm http://www.winwenger.com/welcomeim.htm
Alexandervn 14y ago
Very interesting! For a long time I have a fascination for improving memory. It seems that visualization and memory are closely related, or even one and the same. Tony Buzan and Joshua Foer are authors that have written about this. They write about techniques to learn a deck (or decks) of playing cards, names of people, long numbers, etc. The 'roman room' is one of these techniques, that is used for long speeches; and was also used by people like Seneca. See here a clip of how it works to learn a deck of cards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo The essence of these techniques is that you must create the most vibrant or bizarre imagery in your head about the subject. Not only visually, but by using all the senses: smell, taste, etc. Da Vinci is also known for training his visualization skills by looking at an object for a moment and then trying to draw it from memory. I believe that is from Michael J. Gelb's book 'How to think like Leonardo'. (Which might not be the best source.) For how consciousness and how we see things works this video by Susan Blackmore might be interesting, because it discusses with how much (or less) detail we can see with our eyes open in the first place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdMA8RVu1sk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdMA8RVu1sk (from 40:00 or so)
madaxe 14y ago
This is pretty much precisely how I think. If I'm considering a complex issue, be it engineering or otherwise, I effectively stop seeing through my eyes and instead maintain a visual image, either literal or abstract, of that which I'm considering. It's very "intuitive", and can be applied to anything from relativity to simple mechanics to mathematics. Anything which can be boiled down to logical symbology, which is to say, practically anything. I can happily spend hours on end staring into the middle distance entirely engrossed in a labyrinth of thought - although this can get me odd looks on trains, as a frequent side effect is wild gesticulation, as though manipulating invisible objects. I've always thought in this fashion - it's not something "learned", rather more a byproduct of a hyperactive imagination, and probably has something to do with the fact that television, magazines, and anything visual were outright verboten in my childhood, the only entertainment available being books. You learn to visualise stories or described situations, and when reading, I don't see words on a page, rather an immersive cinematic view of the text at hand. All of that said, it landed me in hot water throughout my studies, as when you look at a physics or maths problem and write down the answer without any intermediate computation, one tends to be accused of cheating. On the note of memory - I have a poor episodic memory (struggle to recall what I did three days ago) but can recall abstract facts with facility, as its just a question of looking at the right mental image.
- solistice 14y ago
  That sounds exactly like my process of thought. Except for wild gesticulation, I rather trace the outlines of the object, which is less weird, but still gets me weird looks.
Radim 14y ago
A random thought: Is one opening himself to diseases of the mind, when practicing improving their "imagination" and "visualization"? Does making your mind a superior receptacle come with an increased risk of absorbing and processing rubbish? I am reminded here of a book I read long ago: An emotionally idiotic child, unable to feel compassion nor human empathy, was one of a few to survive a memetic "plague". This was a virulent disease of the mind that swept away most of humanity -- particularly the imaginative people, destroying them using the very facility of imagination and "openness" of mind.
- rubidium 14y ago
  Thinking is always a dangerous thing. But the benefits usually outweigh the risks. It is worth avoiding the rubbish though.
- anchovie_mnemo 14y ago
  I like to watch movies and tv comedies and adventures and ignore any stuff I don't like. I visit websites I like, VS anything else I just don't care about is vague and bland and ignorable. Simplest most powerful solution to your seeming dillemma: If a random thought feels bad, it's bad - stop it. If a random thought feels good, it's good - do it more. And I go out adventuring, with an open mind seeking out more feel good stuff.
- eadlam 14y ago
  I have a barely-related anecdote. I once tried to read two pages at a time (one with each eye) because I heard that the rain man was able to do that. So a grabbed a small paperback and focused one eye on either page (as one would do with a magic-eye picture). I was able to essentially line up two words at a time in my vision and alternate my focus between the two, but after about 20 minutes I started to get a headache, so I put the book down and went to the couch in the other room. I sat down and looked out my window which has vertical bars on it. My vision suddenly latched on to the vertical bars and began flickering between normal focus and the magic-eye focus. I started feeling dizzy, my heart rate sped up and I started sweating a little. I closed my eyes for some time and was able to relax but still had a strange headache for the rest of the evening. I felt fine the next day, but then a couple days later I was in a hotel with black and white tiled floors (diner style) and I had a sudden recurrence of my focus uncontrollably reacting to the pattern of the floor. It wasn't as intense as the first time, and it hasn't happened since, but it freaked me out.
vijayr 14y ago
The book mentioned in the article - it is incredible !! It is very short - I'd highly recommend it (just finished it). Thank you OP.

102 points by ztratar 14y ago

Makes me want to read the Tesla autobiography. Is there something specific you can do to improve your own mental creativity and ability to model things visually? I have always felt some type of barrier when thinking of ideas and I usually resort to paper to draw out wireframes. Also might help if you can dig up some research on this, to back up your thesis that its done by simply visualizing older memories in vivid detail. How long do you do it? How many times per day? Do you do it every day? All things I'm uncertain of if I'm going to participate in the experiment (which I plan on doing).

ztratar 14y ago
I think the exact process is going to evolve, so I don't necessarily want to bound myself artificially. I think I'll attempt 10-20 minutes per day to start and slowly ramp it up. Maybe I'll update the post as I go along.

ztratar 14y ago

OP here. Strange with upvotes but no discussion. I'm curious if anyone has tried anything like this before? I'd love some guidance or thoughts.

bsenftner 14y ago
Try starting with some random nonsense phrase you repeat in you mind for a period with your eyes closed. This clears your immediate references. After a period, you'll drift into an alpha brain wave state where you can willfully enter into a state of lucid dreaming. I got into this via an interest in trancendal meditation (sp?) and continued into other meditation styles. These days, I find that I can use this to visualize scenarios in my software projects at a depth that is difficult to explain with words.
- ztratar 14y ago
  Hmm interesting. Tesla mentions that he would apply a small pressure to his eyes, which would then cause geometric shapes to appear and strange patterns to develop. The patterns put him in a different mindset whenever he saw them. Reading that truly hit me hard, since I did that while I was a kid. I didn't use it for any purpose though... I just thought it looked badass. Thanks for the tips.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
shib71 14y ago
I've had the same experience as Tesla, though not so extreme as to cause problems. For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed extremely detailed "daydreams" where I explore worlds and meet people inspired by the books I read. I suspect this is fairly common in children, but I did it right through high school, university, and several years in the workplace. The real question is: how much benefit does having a strong and well exercised imagination have for a technical career? (I assume it's very useful for artists). I've found that software development gets a large boost. The more of the design you can hold in your head on once, the better the coder is able to anticipate the consequences of their decisions. When debugging, the programmer is able to see the entire state of the application that must have predicated it, experiment with a range of fixes, all before writing any code. I love this quote from The Tao of Programming[1]: "Sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke." [1] http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
- jimmaswell 14y ago
  I'd imagine a strong imagination is great for the concept and design parts of engineering, but not entirely necessary if you're just building to a spec.
kepano 14y ago
I spent about two years dedicating my free time to experiments of this type. The most profoundly affecting exercise was training the left side of my body (I'm right-handed). I learned to write in left-handed mirrored script (Da Vinci style) and performed all sorts of everyday actions with my left hand. Amazingly, the more I trained my left hand the more my right-handed writing and drawing skills improved. Within a few months I found that I was able to switch back and forth between two very different modes of thought. My brain seemed wired differently. For a few months I could hardly put sentences together in speech, it was an odd sensation. Eventually though, I developed the ability to intentionally control which half of my brain was switched on. Science is all over the place when it comes to the left/right brain theory, but there is undoubtedly a level of truth to it. If you can learn to control it, it becomes a powerful problem-solving technique.
- ztratar 14y ago
  That is extremely interesting. I'm also wondering if it was maybe some type of placebo effect. Maybe the modes were a mental manifestation...
incision 14y ago
>I'm curious if anyone has tried anything like this before? I'd love some guidance or thoughts. This is proving quite hard to articulate as I try to find a way to visualize it. To me... Thoughts are like threads to follow and your wall is faceted shell. Each of these facets carries a kind of gravity which pulls on your thread. Facets you have accepted without understanding appear solid, a barrier. When you run into one you have hit the wall. Facets where you have no concept are wide open and you're free to follow your thread, but you risk finding yourself adrift with no reference asking for your thread to become tangled. Facets where you have greater understanding are revealed to be a lattice, full of gaps to thread through and continue exploring. You don't "leave" the shell, there's always another layer that might be completely new or something you've passed through many times before. Imagination/discovery is the act of continually finding the gaps. --- Personally, I've always done a lot of visualizing. As an adult I've come to recognize close similarities to what I do in the visualization techniques of Stoicism and general thought experiments. One exercise I find quite useful is to avoid resorting to references for things I don't understand, to turn first toward visualizing how to create whatever it is that's puzzling me - to "search for the gaps" and see where I end up.
- ztratar 14y ago
  Are you in the Bay Area? We should grab a drink or hang out. You just dove into an extremely similar theory I have.
  - incision 14y ago
    As I wrote that I was thinking it's the kind of topic that's best discussed in person. Unfortunately, I'm in DC, but with a little luck I'll end up out there eventually. I've visited several times and love it.
ZirconCode 14y ago
Hey, I really want to keep reading your blog, you seem just like the kind of person I'm aspiring to become. But there's one thing stopping me, your design seems really messed up. Sometimes lines of text only show top-half or bottom-half, and links can only be clicked on in the top-half. And yes, I'm using the latest chrome.

wilder 14y ago

I have never been able to consciously visualize (meaning: think in visual mental images). All of my conscious thought is in the auditory mode, though I know what it would be like to visualize as it happens occasionally in a dream. I have always wished more than anything to have such experiences while fully conscious (to see my mother's face and so on). There has been a fairly longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology about whether visual mental images even exist, yet when I discuss the issue with friends none of them can believe or understand that I lack imagery. I've read a fair amount without encountering real evidence that the capacity can be developed. I've certainly spent time trying, but possibly in the wrong way. A good place to start on the "mental imagery as simulation" literature is Kosslyn, e.g. http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic561942.files/2009Moulton_PhilosTransRoyalSocB364_MentalImageryMentalEmulation.pdf http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic561942.files/2009... For an accessible window on the debate: http://www.edge.org/video/what-shape-are-a-german-shepherds-ears http://www.edge.org/video/what-shape-are-a-german-shepherds-... and http://www.edge.org/discourse/shepardears.html http://www.edge.org/discourse/shepardears.html Curious to lean whether HN harbors any non-visualizers.

ztratar 14y ago
Wow. My experience is drastically different than yours. I've almost always thought of things through mental imagery. It comes naturally to me (which really helped in calculus 3, haha). I can say that with confidence. Thanks for the link. I wonder how many non-visualizers are out there, too.
- wilder 14y ago
  Sounds wonderful. The odd thing is that I can imagine what it would be like to have the sort of visual imagination that would be helpful in calculus. Unfortunately it turns out that imagined imagination is worthless for calculus.
  - ztratar 14y ago
    Haha. Imagine-ception.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

zwegner 14y ago

Pretty cool--I've been interested in finding new ways to exercise my mind recently. I have pretty bad ADHD/laziness, so it's hard to commit to doing such things regularly, but I'm hoping that meditation as well as these sorts of exercises will help with that. Another fascinating set of exercises (that I became aware of reading an article on Ithkuil, an invented language, that was on here a little while ago) is "deconcentration of attention". There's a simple website at http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/ http://deconcentration-of-attention.com/, which happens to talk about its applications to software engineering. It's somewhat similar to meditation, and focuses on harnessing the parallelism of the subconscious mind to think more non-linearly. It seems pretty out-there, and I'm not sure if anybody has really had any success with it, but just reading the exercises is quite intriguing to me (e.g. try to hear "red" in your head, visualize "red" without the word, and then try to feel "red" without visualizing it). Another exercise I thought of after reading the page (and which is quite hard for me, it turns out), is to count in your head without subconsciously speaking/hearing the numbers.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ztratar 14y ago
This "deconcentration of attention" website is fascinating. Have you attempted any of the exercises?
- zwegner 14y ago
  A few times, not nearly enough to experience any benefits of it. I'll try more from now on, promise! :)
  - BerislavLopac 14y ago
    Hmm, this is very interesting inde... Squirrel! ;-)
dsfasfasf 14y ago
>>pretty bad ADHD/laziness Is great that you at least admit that your problem is part laziness. I'm sure ADHD must be true for some people but I wonder if too many use it as an excuse for their failures. <half-joking>Even I've wondered if maybe I suffer from ADHD since is really hard to keep my attention on a project past the prototype stage. That is, once the last 10% starts. </half-joking> All joking aside, it feels almost like pulling teeth when working on that last 10%. Don't really know how to fix it other than to just force myself to keep at it.

sengstrom 14y ago

Tesla may have been grandiose not only in this thinking - his underdog genius certainly has kept that alive. Visualizing something you are thinking about (a problem you are trying to solve for instance) goes well beyond an obvious "image" of what is going on. As a coder you probably know what it feels to be in the zone when you are working on something that truly engages and challenges you - you have immediate access to all aspects of your project and your knowledge and experiences come effortlessly into play in figuring out the way forward.

luketych 14y ago

This is actually very interesting, I am glad this has been posted. As a kid, I would cover my eyes with my hands to create darkness, or sometimes put my face into a pillow or even do what Tesla did in putting a slight pressure onto my eyes with my fingers. I would start to see shapes and just be thinking I could change the color and contort these shapes. Strangely, I never knew how I did it. If I tried too hard it would not work, I would have to let my mind run on its own, and give it a slight nudge every now and then consciously. In college, when I was trying really hard to visualize a project I was working on I would do the same, I would put pressure on my eyes and try to make it as dark as possible so that I could see what I was trying to imagine, and it helped! I had no idea others do this as well, this is very cool. Some forms of meditation will be very useful for this I think.

ztratar 14y ago
Thanks! Wow -- didn't realize so many people tried the eye pressure thing. If I did it and you did it just because we thought it was cool, I bet there are a lot more people out there.
- luketych 14y ago
  I'm curious, after looking at a computer screen for a little while and then closing your eyes do you ever see a rectangle that is the same proportions as the computer screen? It doesn't have to be a screen even, it can be anything. I have noticed that I will have an almost exact replica "burned into" my vision when I close my eyes. I can then (somewhat) manipulate this image in my mind. I've kinda thought that these changes in light (from whatever we are looking at) creates the initial image and then this image can be manipulated in the mind. I think that the retina or the parts of the brain that are involved in visual imagery must somehow be involved in these visualizations we are seeing (not the after image). It would be inefficient to develop a new skill from scratch, a big part of our brain is already dedicated to sight and imagery, so I wonder if we can somehow make use of the visual cortex to enhance our ability to visualize things? Need to find a way to hack into the subconscious..
  - 14y ago

waterlesscloud 14y ago

There's a long passage in the Patrick Suskind's novel _Perfume_ that is an extraordinarily evocative description of the main character building an imaginary palace of smells. He also imagines "constructing" new smells, similar to what's described here. The books does an amazing job of evoking smells using only text. Highly recommended. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_(novel)

lbk 14y ago

Have you looked into image streaming ? (It something like brainstorming with your eyes closed and describing all of it into a tape-recorder . Feels really akward .) http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm

gpcz 14y ago

Based on the friends and family that likes to bounce engineering ideas off me, it seems that a lot of people's imaginations are too optimistic -- we end up going in circles with what inevitably becomes the trade-offs or limitations in the design because they envision a "perfect" solution and contradict themselves as they try to get around it. It's frustrating for them when I start committing things to paper in front of them, because then they have to deal with the problems/contradictions their optimistic brain was avoiding. Do you know if there's a way to hone realism in imagination?

luketych 14y ago
That's where you need to implement your ideas and see what works and what doesn't. If you are the type of person that needs to know the truth and can't cover it up and hide from it then your imagination will eventually adjust to reality (as long as you are getting good feedback). For me, I like the example of creating music, or even coming up with jokes. If you only imagine music or jokes you will never know if they are good or bad and you will just keep getting more imaginative but in an unrealistic way. As soon as you actually write that song, and tell that joke then you get actual feedback. It's the feedback that you need to calibrate your imagination.
ztratar 14y ago
I love ideas and I love being passionate about them. When it comes to actual implementation, I'm a pretty pessimistic fellow. Thus, I'll attempt to apply the same rigor here. My goal is to actual develop a somewhat realistic imagination. That being said, I want to be able to turn it on and off. Dreaming unrealistic scenarios is half the fun, right?
solistice 14y ago
Know your facts and patterns. When I imagine something, i try to add specs to it in my head. This resistance in this circuit, this geometrical design in this circuit. Some thing, I won't know off the top of my head, so I'll go online to check references, look at other designs and then I'll add it to my mental repository of design elements. A lot of my friends think it's crazy that I can quote specs, dimensions and prices off the top of my head, but frankly, it's neccesairy. Let me walk through a rough example. I want to create a 8x8 RGB LED matrix which will display patterns. First off, the LEDs. Proably 5050 SMD RGB LEDs 0.05$ @1k. They go onto the top of the board, which leaves me the bottom for controlling circuitry. Now I have several options in my mental library on how to adress them. Adressing them individually via microcontroller pins, which would require 8x8x3 I/O pins though, which is expensive. How about multiplexing them then? Charlieplexing migh yield a saving of a couple of pins versus regular multiplexing, but it'll add in board complexity. So a regular multiplex, either using 8 NPN transistors and 3 8 channel LED driver ICs (Similar to the GLiP setup) or using a CPLD/microcontroller combo to generate the signals. I decide on the CPLD/microcontroller combo. I get out a piece of milimeterlined paper to draw up a couple of sketches for the LED routing, because it's a hell of a lot of connections, and I'd like to draw them on paper. In my head, i route 3 lines between each row for current source, and 1 down each column for current sink. I realize that they'll have to cross, and will take up some of the back side. Since I'm allready using that, I decide to make it a 4 layer pcb, adding 2 layers more of mental routing space. I could have also routed around everything, but that would increase pcb size and would be unsightly. Now I put the row traces onto layer 2, and the connections from the row traces to the LEDs onto layer 1 and connect them with vias. Then I turn my mind to creating a rough routing for the loose ends to the CPLD. I don't know which CPLD to use yet, so I just abstract it to a square in a certain location and route the traces there. This square is connected to a microcontroller. I kinda fancy the ATtiny1634, so I roughly know the pinouts, but I still abstain from routing it properly to the indefinite CPLD. Then I hook it up to a SD card and try to fit in the power traces somewhere. Layer 3 happens to come in handy. Now I do still need to figure out which CPLD will have the requisite number of gates, but I'm very close to completition of the circuit. The rest is some rudimentary calculations (resistor values) which I know will work out, so I don't have to worry much about them. When I engineer these things in my head, it's very similar to a rendering algorithm. First, rough shapes which are refined again and again till the image is as sharp as it could be. I utilize other designs as proof of credibility, and put them in later on, making some areas of the image redundant till completition. Somewhere along the line, I do need to switch to paper for some things (My mental wall is there), but most of the work I do in my head.

luketych 14y ago

I came across this article, don't know how legit it is but here it is anyway: http://speedendurance.com/2010/11/21/how-to-learn-and-apply-mental-imagery-visualization-techniques/#comments http://speedendurance.com/2010/11/21/how-to-learn-and-apply-...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jostmey 14y ago

It is important to have a wild imagination to generate wild ideas. But this will lead to insanity unless you takes these wild ideas and refine them. You have to continually iterate, going over your imaginative ideas and asking why they will not work. You have to apply rigor and reason over and over again until the wild idea starts to take shape into something new and useful.

ztratar 14y ago
I completely agree and intend to do just that. The imagination Tesla describes in his autobiography is one that translates very well into the real world. Maintaining that quality and cohesion with the real world is on of the primary metrics I'll be measuring against. Thanks for the input!
- jostmey 14y ago
  Make sure that you goal is worthy of your time and energy. Seek to create something that will help you, other people, or will increase humanities knowledge of the world. Otherwise, you are wasting your life.

nullandnull 14y ago

I'll never understand why people link to Amazon when they can get it off the publishers or another site for free. http://www.teslaplay.com/auto.htm http://www.teslaplay.com/auto.htm

james1071 14y ago

You might want to check out image streaming. Summary:a brief daily exercise (10 minutes), which develops visual and verbal thinking. http://www.winwenger.com/ http://www.winwenger.com/ http://www.winwenger.com/welcomeim.htm http://www.winwenger.com/welcomeim.htm

Alexandervn 14y ago

Very interesting! For a long time I have a fascination for improving memory. It seems that visualization and memory are closely related, or even one and the same. Tony Buzan and Joshua Foer are authors that have written about this. They write about techniques to learn a deck (or decks) of playing cards, names of people, long numbers, etc. The 'roman room' is one of these techniques, that is used for long speeches; and was also used by people like Seneca. See here a clip of how it works to learn a deck of cards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-xl7_hdWZo The essence of these techniques is that you must create the most vibrant or bizarre imagery in your head about the subject. Not only visually, but by using all the senses: smell, taste, etc. Da Vinci is also known for training his visualization skills by looking at an object for a moment and then trying to draw it from memory. I believe that is from Michael J. Gelb's book 'How to think like Leonardo'. (Which might not be the best source.) For how consciousness and how we see things works this video by Susan Blackmore might be interesting, because it discusses with how much (or less) detail we can see with our eyes open in the first place: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdMA8RVu1sk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdMA8RVu1sk (from 40:00 or so)

madaxe 14y ago

This is pretty much precisely how I think. If I'm considering a complex issue, be it engineering or otherwise, I effectively stop seeing through my eyes and instead maintain a visual image, either literal or abstract, of that which I'm considering. It's very "intuitive", and can be applied to anything from relativity to simple mechanics to mathematics. Anything which can be boiled down to logical symbology, which is to say, practically anything. I can happily spend hours on end staring into the middle distance entirely engrossed in a labyrinth of thought - although this can get me odd looks on trains, as a frequent side effect is wild gesticulation, as though manipulating invisible objects. I've always thought in this fashion - it's not something "learned", rather more a byproduct of a hyperactive imagination, and probably has something to do with the fact that television, magazines, and anything visual were outright verboten in my childhood, the only entertainment available being books. You learn to visualise stories or described situations, and when reading, I don't see words on a page, rather an immersive cinematic view of the text at hand. All of that said, it landed me in hot water throughout my studies, as when you look at a physics or maths problem and write down the answer without any intermediate computation, one tends to be accused of cheating. On the note of memory - I have a poor episodic memory (struggle to recall what I did three days ago) but can recall abstract facts with facility, as its just a question of looking at the right mental image.

solistice 14y ago
That sounds exactly like my process of thought. Except for wild gesticulation, I rather trace the outlines of the object, which is less weird, but still gets me weird looks.

Radim 14y ago

A random thought: Is one opening himself to diseases of the mind, when practicing improving their "imagination" and "visualization"? Does making your mind a superior receptacle come with an increased risk of absorbing and processing rubbish? I am reminded here of a book I read long ago: An emotionally idiotic child, unable to feel compassion nor human empathy, was one of a few to survive a memetic "plague". This was a virulent disease of the mind that swept away most of humanity -- particularly the imaginative people, destroying them using the very facility of imagination and "openness" of mind.

rubidium 14y ago
Thinking is always a dangerous thing. But the benefits usually outweigh the risks. It is worth avoiding the rubbish though.
anchovie_mnemo 14y ago
I like to watch movies and tv comedies and adventures and ignore any stuff I don't like. I visit websites I like, VS anything else I just don't care about is vague and bland and ignorable. Simplest most powerful solution to your seeming dillemma: If a random thought feels bad, it's bad - stop it. If a random thought feels good, it's good - do it more. And I go out adventuring, with an open mind seeking out more feel good stuff.
eadlam 14y ago
I have a barely-related anecdote. I once tried to read two pages at a time (one with each eye) because I heard that the rain man was able to do that. So a grabbed a small paperback and focused one eye on either page (as one would do with a magic-eye picture). I was able to essentially line up two words at a time in my vision and alternate my focus between the two, but after about 20 minutes I started to get a headache, so I put the book down and went to the couch in the other room. I sat down and looked out my window which has vertical bars on it. My vision suddenly latched on to the vertical bars and began flickering between normal focus and the magic-eye focus. I started feeling dizzy, my heart rate sped up and I started sweating a little. I closed my eyes for some time and was able to relax but still had a strange headache for the rest of the evening. I felt fine the next day, but then a couple days later I was in a hotel with black and white tiled floors (diner style) and I had a sudden recurrence of my focus uncontrollably reacting to the pattern of the floor. It wasn't as intense as the first time, and it hasn't happened since, but it freaked me out.

vijayr 14y ago

The book mentioned in the article - it is incredible !! It is very short - I'd highly recommend it (just finished it). Thank you OP.