Remix.run Logo
Remix clone Hacker News
new | show | ask | jobsGithub
▲ creer 3 days ago

Interesting, you think the associations your brain comes up with during sleep are NOT thinking?

▲madaxe_again 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’d say it’s more like annealing. Sort, filter, compress, integrate.

Updates your models for the next morning, which is why the answer is there when it wasn’t before.

▲keiferski 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I assume most people agree with that framing. “Thinking” generally implies a level of consciousness or self-awareness.

“Let me think about this.” “I have to think on it.”

My brain regulates all sorts of processes unconsciously, like breathing, for example. I don’t treat those as “thinking,” so I don’t know why other unconscious brain activity would be either.

▲creer 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't know that most people think about that at all. For me, I have learned not to dismiss the remuninating, reordering, reframing that my brain performs without me deliberately reasoning line by line about it. Limiting my brain to deliberate line by line reasoning would be very limiting and costly.

"Thinking" to me is very much NOT just conscious reasoning. So much of what I think is not done consciously.

Indeed "let me think about it" is often simply giving my brain time to "sit on it", for another expression - only after which will I have enough mind time on the various alternatives for a worthwhile conscious decision.