Roaming intelligence

[martinjs]

I quite often find that I procrastinate; I put off doing stuff even though I know it will get me into trouble.

I think this is an AS thing.

Consciously, you know that you can't avoid the inevitable; it will get you one way or another.

But the AS mind refuses to accept this. It holds stubbornly to its plan, as ever.

I have a theory about this. I think that what AS does is it actually involves having a mind that contains a kind of roaming intelligence, which inhabits various parts of the mind at different points in time. When it inhabits part of your mind, brilliant innovation will happen in that part of the mind. But when it moves on, that part of your mind becomes a bit like a sort of "cargo cult" - it sticks rigidly to all of the rules laid down by the intelligence, but is unable to adapt them or understand their logic, because the intelligence has moved on to another part of your mind. They remain as fossils of one of the roaming intelligence's previous incarnations. And so, that part of your behaviour becomes stereotyped.

One of the effects of this is an apparent extreme stubbornness - an absolute unwillingness to change habits; and rigid adherence to rules that may once have made some sort of sense, but no longer do - or perhaps that you imagined at some point would make sense, but actually never did.

Edited April 8, 2014 by martinjs

[martinjs]

What's interesting is that I think it may under certain circumstances be possible to "trick" your roaming intelligence into revisiting part of your mind that it has hitherto avoided going back to, perhaps renewing the logic there and updating it in line with changed conditions.

 

In fact, I think having AS can be seen as being like a kind of computer program, whose "source code" is littered around the mind. Like any large computer program, it can become hard to manage all of the sources and their interactions with and dependencies upon each other. But I think maybe all it sometimes takes is a bit of willpower, and the necessary peace and quiet to sift through it all.