It’s difficult to do this however, because of the interference of the ego. Often a person’s insecurities and racing thoughts will get in the way of clear thinking. This is especially the case when interacting with others because of the need to observe and understand other people’s reactions in real-time.

One method I have found which can help the thought process operate more effectively is to speak using a robot-like voice. Imagine that you are a robot (or artificial intelligence such as HAL 9000 or the Enterprise main computer) who has been tasked with a goal. Then speak to yourself using a very monotone, measured voice regarding the possible options. You might feel a little bit silly doing this, but you will find that it becomes difficult to get otherwise emotional when you force yourself to speak like this.

This method will not only allow you to consider various scenarios in a more organized manner, but the steady pace of thought will permit your intuition to contribute valuable insights to the process. It can also be used during intense discussions with other people, where careless words could result in emotional outbursts and result in arguments and failure to achieve the objective of the communication.

I suggest you try this method for yourself and observe the results. Perhaps as we move towards the future, more of humanity will see the value in approaches such as this which support more selective rational thinking.

This sad story still wasn’t the trigger for my game abstinence, though. I had been noticing for a while that I was finding fewer and fewer games that I enjoyed, even though I was buying more than ever (usually one or two every couple of weeks). It was almost like I was desperately searching for a high that would bring back the fun of the old classics like Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, the original Civilization, or Master of Orion. MOO nearly got me fired from my first real job when I stumbled into the office at noon after a post-dawn session purging the galaxy of the Meklar and Klackons.

No, the real reasons for this change are two-fold: in general, regular brainwave entrainment exercises have altered my thinking as I wrote about earlier; more specifically, a simple suggestion from Steve Pavlina’s blog about modifying your environment to help achieve desired goals.

Basically, I just deleted all the game-related Windows desktop shortcuts, which had taken up the entire display, and also deleted game-related sites from my browser favorites.

The difference this has made is astounding. I have not even been tempted to start up a game since I’ve done this. I used to check game sites many times every day. Now I realize how utterly stupid a lot of that was; it was just a habit that was reinforced by being faced with constant reminders of games games games.

I still love PC games. But now I realize that I was just robotically buying, playing and reading about them even when they were not really fun. The thought of all the time I wasted makes me sick.

I have read that once you do something for 21 days, then that is a key milestone because it means that you’ve installed a new habit or broken an old one (I have no idea if this is true or not). After 60 days without any games, I think I understand how to control this hobby and make it fun again. I’m going to restrict myself to fixed sessions of games that I really enjoy, like Rome: Total War and World of Warcraft. The great thing is, even after I’ve decided to give myself permission to play games again, I don’t feel an urge to start one up right away. I think I can even wait for Medieval 2: Total War to come out before I start again, and I’ll be free of worrying about future Mountain Dew-related “accidents”.

(Warning— amateur philosophizing ahead, please use caution!)

If there is 1 person in a room, most people would agree that there is 1 consciousness in the room. But if there are 5 people, does this mean there are 5 consciousnesses? And if 100 people, then 100 consciousnesses?

Another example: assume Earth is only populated world in universe. As Earth population grows, then consciousness is also growing in proportion? And if there was some catastrophe that eliminated all life on Earth, then the quantity of consciousness in the universe drops down to zero?

It doesn’t make sense!

Using a plural form of the word consciousness is awkward (consciousnesses? consciousnessii?). I wonder if this is a clue that there is no plural form of the thing itself.

Similarly, if all the people in the room leave the room, leaving only a chair and a table, then how many minds are left in the room?

To quote from Ervin Laszlo:

What we call “matter” is the aspect we apprehend when we look at a person, a plant, or a molecule from the outside; “mind” is the readout we get when we look at the same thing from the inside.

With no people in the room, then the chair and table still represent a form of consciousness, incomprehensible to use because its in a different manifestation that we aren’t in tune with, just like we cannot comprehend the mind of an insect.

The interesting thing is, if one assumes that there is no separate consciousness, isnt this how sociopaths think? They are unable to empathize with other people, to some extent they do not even believe that other people and their feelings exist. So does this mean that sociopaths have a better understanding of reality than the rest of us?

Maybe not, because sociopaths operate in the incorrect belief that they are the only island in the ocean, without believing that other islands exist. A more correct view would be that other islands exist, but understanding that each is connected underneath the ocean and their apparent separate nature is just an illusion.

When two entities are in conflict or competition with each other, the entity which has the ability to iterate through these loops faster has superiority. But the key is not that they are just doing more things faster. Instead, if one side can iterate through their loops fast enough, self-correcting on the basis of new observations each time, they can alter the context in which their opponents are making decisions. This is known as “getting inside the opponents loop”.

Once this occurs, the opponent will be making decisions and acting on the basis of a reality which no longer exists, leading to incorrect analysis and unexpected results. By forcing the opponent into an increasingly chaotic mode where they are constantly reacting to confusing signals, they will eventually be brought into a state of total collapse.

(This is my very simplified interpretation of Boyd’s concepts, I am still trying to understand them)

A question that arises from thinking of conflict in this way is:
in the current struggle which is variously called the “Global War on Terror” or “World War IV”, which side does a better job of cycling through OODA loops?

Links:
a comprehensive site related to Boyd - make sure to check out the “Patterns of Conflict” download, a 200-page PowerPoint presentation (also in PDF version). There is a lot of fascinating material on this site; if I had understood when I was younger that this was the type of work that could be done in the military, I would have been much more likely to join. Being a physical weakling and a bit of a worm, I opted not to do that.

Wikipedia entry for Colonel Boyd.

I was first exposed to Boyd’s concepts through an unlikely source, an MSDN article by Roger Sessions in which Sessions describes how lessons from Korean War jet-fighting can be applied to enterprise architecture.

One approach which has been developed and refined over many years by the Monroe Institute is called Hemispheric Synchronization, or Hemi-Sync. The human brain can be thought of a being composed of two different minds making up each hemisphere of the whole brain. Generally, higher level brain functions tend to prefer one side or the other, and in standard mode the brain exhibits an unbalanced level of activity across different regions.

By listening to Hemi-Sync recordings through stereo headphones, it is intended that the different regions of the brain are encouraged to operate in a more coherent manner. The idea is that whole-brain functioning combines the best aspects of the various regions. For example, decision-making could potentially be improved by being able to simultaneously use the intuitive, logical, emotional, verbal and mathematical areas.

I had been familiar with this concept for a while, but only within the past several months have I been regularly performing this type of brainwave entrainment. The catalyst turned out to be the iPod nano. Since getting a nano, I have typically been doing between one to two hours per day of brainwave synchronization through the use of Hemi-Sync recordings or binaural beats. This has had a measurable effect on my life; measurable because my thought patterns have been altered to the extent that my behavior has changed, but that is another story.

I have to admit that previously I had downloaded some MP3 files with this type of recording from file-sharing networks just to try them out. I listened to them on an iPod shuffle but because the shuffle does not have a display it was difficult to control the selection of tracks. Since some of the recordings put the listener into a deep relaxation state and can cause sleep, I did not want to use the hard-disk based “regular” iPod for fear that I might roll over on top of it after nodding off. The iPod nano solved this dilemma because it made it easy to select specific sessions for inducing certain mental states, and because it doesn’t have any moving parts or hard-drive, I could fall asleep on top of it and not worry.

Once I started listening to the MP3s regularly, however, I noticed that they were not the best quality recordings. One of the ways to tell if the audio is being played back as intended is to listen to one stereo channel at a time; each stereo channel should sound like a steady tone, but when the two steady tones are combined in your mind, a different, wavering tone is generated entirely in your mind. The MP3s I downloaded from file-sharing networks did not seem to have retained this processing because of the compression used to rip the audio track from CD. For this reason, but also because I realized that it’s kind of silly to copy/steal something that you then use for self-improvement, I don’t think it’s a good idea to depend on these MP3s, even if you just want to try them out. You will probably not get the intended effect from listening to them, and anyway it’s bad karma.

In order to experience the full effect of these recordings (which were still interesting) I purchased some original CDs directly from the Monroe Institute and experimented with different formats for importing them into iTunes and my iPod nano. I’m not an audiophile by any means but for my purposes the best balance between file size and sound quality seemed to be found by importing as AAC files with a bit rate of 192 kbps. Anything below that and there was a noticable drop in quality, and I assume the intended brainwave entrainment would not nearly be as effective.

One of the key concepts I got from the book is that yearly income is not nearly as important as net worth. Eker’s description of how wealthy people never talk about “getting a big raise” really drove this point home for me. A related point is that people who are wealthy make a conscious effort to keep track of their finances.

I have to admit that I’ve never bothered to be on top of money issues. Any success I’ve had in this area has largely resulted from luck and fortunate timing. For some reason I had a mental block against caring too much about this kind of stuff in detail. Reading Eker helped me realize that is really stupid.

So, the day after I finished the book I downloaded a trial version of Microsoft Money. I spent a Sunday afternoon setting it up with my accounts, time that I would have otherwise wasted playing a computer game. After setting everything up, I ran some of the reports that Money generates, and noticed that a significant percentage of my net worth was concentrated in a single stock. This stock was a “ten-bagger” and I had been very happy with it. I knew it was a big part of my portfolio but having it shown on a pie chart made it more real.

I’d always thought that people who lost their life savings in Enron etc. were dumb for risking everything on one shady company. But here I was doing the same thing, and according to MS Money, the company I was heavily invested in was releasing an earnings report in a couple of weeks. I suddenly got a very bad feeling about it all, and the next day as I was placing my $9 discount broker sell orders, I was muttering “Dump it” as if I were Gordon Gekko.

Well, based on the title of this post you can probably tell how it ends. After I sold, the stock slid ever downward, and when the earnings report came out, it dropped like a brick.

I never would have bothered to check up on that stock were it not for Eker’s book inspiring me to set up MS Money. That is the best return on $15 I’ve ever gotten, for sure. Since I’m still using the trial version of MS Money, that hasn’t even cost me anything yet .