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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: The Varieties of Inner Experience with Russ Hurlburt

hurlburt
Inner speaking, inner seeing, feelings, sensory awareness, unsymbolized thinking. Do we all have the same inner experiences? And how aware are we of what we actually experience from moment to moment?

In this episode of Mind Matters, we interview Dr. Russell T. Hurlburt, a pioneering psychologist from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Hurlburt discusses his groundbreaking work investigating "pristine inner experience" - the unfiltered, moment-to-moment contents of our consciousness. He introduces his innovative method, Descriptive Experience Sampling, which aims to capture and analyze inner experiences with the aid of specialized beeper and an in-depth interview process.

This episode provides a unique perspective on the study of human consciousness and the complexities of inner experience. Dr. Hurlburt's insights shed light on the importance of understanding our internal mental processes and how they relate to our self-representations. Whether you're a psychology enthusiast, a student of cognitive science, or simply curious about the workings of the human mind, this interview provides valuable insights into cutting-edge research on consciousness and experience.

Running Time: 01:43:18

Download: MP3 — 142 MB



Arrow Up

The Upside of Adversity

marcus aurelius
A steady diet of adversity prepares one for both the low-level adversities of daily life but also for the metaphorical droughts and floods that push us to our limits of endurance and adaptability.

We all know the downside of adversity: it's tiresome, and if it pushes us up against our limits long enough, it can break us.

If my life is any indication, some of our adversity is outside our choosing and control, while other instances of adversity result from our own decisions and/or traits. We may take risks with the goal of advancing, and end up with adversity. We may choose a difficult path and find it far more arduous than we could possibly have imagined. Or we may have experienced success from the start, and be unprepared for the adversity that inevitably follows easy success.

Volcano

SOTT Focus: Whom The Gods Would Destroy...

The saying Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad, sometimes given in Latin as Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat (literally: Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason), has taken on an ominous resonance in today's world. As I sit here, reflecting on the chaos that seems to engulf every corner of our existence, it is hard to ignore the parallels between this ancient wisdom and the modern madness that rages unchecked across the globe.
Gods Destroy the World

Cassiopaea

SOTT Focus: Hyperdimensional Realities: A Scientific and Consciousness Perspective

aurora space
© ESA/NASANASA astronaut Scott Kelly and ESA astronaut Tim Peake captured this aurora photograph from the International Space Station.
After a long hiatus, I'm back, folks. And today I want to talk about something very basic that is important to me: Hyperdimensions. In recent times, with a number of UFO/UAP whistleblowers coming forward, the topic has taken on a new urgency.

Have a look at Ark's blog from 23 July: The Quantum Leap: A Journey Beyond Reality where he writes:
The term UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) has evolved into UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). These entities are no longer mere flying objects; they are elusive forms that defy our physical understanding. Despite the media's reluctance to embrace the term "hyper-dimensional," the public is gradually being conditioned for the extraordinary revelations that lie ahead.
Hyperdimensional realities represent a complex concept involving additional dimensions beyond the familiar three spatial and one temporal dimension. In scientific and metaphysical contexts, hyperdimensionality suggests the existence of higher dimensions that influence and interconnect with our observable universe. These dimensions are theorized to host forms of matter and consciousness that operate under different physical laws and principles.

Cross

SOTT Focus: Unraveling the Early Christian Narrative: From Paul to Mark

From Paul to Mark
© Laura Knight Jadczyk
The early history of Christianity, often shrouded in mystery and scholarly debate, is meticulously examined in Laura Knight-Jadczyk's work, "From Paul to Mark." This profound exploration delves into the historical, theological, and textual intricacies that shaped the nascent Christian faith, focusing on the pivotal figures of Paul and Mark.

Hiliter

Doodle nation: A linguist's notes on distracted drawing

george washington doodles
© Polly DicksonSome doodles by George Washington. Page from Everybody's Pixillated: A Book of Doodles by Russell M. Arundel, 1937.
Doodling today is not what it was. Or is it? Google "doodle" and you'll find the Google Doodle — what Google calls a "fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous" transformation of its logo by a team of dedicated Doodlers to commemorate significant, and not so significant, days: from the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank's diary to "Chilaquiles day." You will also find a long list of apps that take Doodle as their name, including the ubiquitous scheduling tool. This recasting of the word in the age of the internet takes us far from the freewheeling squiggles, squirls, and whirls decorating the margins of telephone books and notepads — which is, perhaps, what doodling once was, in some near-unimaginable bygone era, when we worked with pens and pencils on paper, and when our attention and our hands wandered in different ways.

"Doodling" describes an activity of spontaneous mark-making by an agent whose attention is at least partially directed on something else. It's the doodle's apparent spontaneity and whimsy, but also its complicated relationship to attention — that most anguished-over of modern commodities — that makes it ripe for exploitation by the marketing strategies of app-based companies. That is: the doodle is usefully positioned, around the edges of our work documents and our conscious thought, to help us think about how our minds wander and about what those forms of wandering might yield. In a self-styled "doodle revolution," which she introduces in a TED Talk and a book, Sunni Brown, founder of a "visual thinking consultancy," explicitly attempts to capitalize on doodling's wayward energies. Brown praises the potential of doodling for the workplace, coining a technique that she calls "infodoodling" as a tool for honing the attention of workers and thus increasing their "Power, Performance, and Pleasure" (plus, presumably, productivity — and profit). The goal is to "unlock" the potential of "visual language" to realize the full potential of our brains and "to help [us] think" in different ways. Brown's self-styled revolution sits within a broader trend toward rehabilitating the act of disinterested drawing, as a kind of salve to our frayed modern attention spans. The doodle-curious consumer will find online a baffling array of derivative self-help- and wellness-flavored "guides" to doodling, full of promises to help us "Discover [our] Inner Whimsy and Find Moments of Mindfulness," as the Daily Doodle Journal has it, or to "enhance your creativity," according to another notebook of the same name. Doodling, or: how to cash in on the mind at play.

Family

Cancel culture is 'killing mental health'

cancel culture
© Getty Images / bunhill
On a podcast recently, UFC CEO Dana White compared cancel culture to the 1980s when LGBTs remained "in the closet," unable to be their true selves. Back then, White argued, coming out could destroy your life. Three decades later, cancel culture is taking a similar toll.

White's message resonates with millions of people today. It's also consistent with new data on the subject of free speech and expression. Heterodox Academy just released their 2024 campus expression survey. It found that 45% of students were reluctant to talk about politics. Another study from the Freedom Economy Index found that high percentages of people believe that being "discovered" as a Republican will harm their career.

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SOTT Focus: MindMatters: Do NPCs Have an Inner Monologue? Discussing the 5 Pristine Inner Experiences

npcs
Self-talk. Visualizations. Bodily awareness. Unconscious thought processes. In our day-to-day course of existence our minds assimilate, respond and react to any number of stimuli from within - and without. But how often do we stop to consider just how we do this and what faculties of apprehension are actually put to use? And do we even have a framework, vocabulary and level of awareness from which to do it?

Inner speech (inner monologue), inner vision, sensory awareness, emotions and unsymbolized thinking are all categories that, according to psychologist and researcher Russell T. Hurlburt, can help one come to know what one's "pristine inner experience" is. Along with such a framework and the research inspired by it come many questions. What does it mean to be "in the moment"? Do all people use all categories of inner experience with the same frequency? How are we used to describing our inner experiences to ourselves and to others? Were personages like Gurdjieff on to something when he encouraged people to observe themselves?

Join us this week on MindMatters as we question the many assumptions, presuppositions, and mediations that come between cognizance of individual inner experience, and a relative state of unawareness regarding just what makes us tick.


Running Time: 01:36:09

Download: MP3 — 132 MB



Cassiopaea

World War 100: The survival of humanity depends on which theory of mind is correct

Terminator
© Sony Pictures Releasing CIS
It is July 5, 2024, and America and Europe are theaters for total cultural war between the progressive postmodern elite that dominates the West and the insurgent populist resistance. This culture war has spilled over into every facet of our lives — in America at least, it is virtually impossible to watch a movie, read a comic book, turn on the television, or listen to a comedian without being confronted by the culture war.

While this culture war is waged on our TVs and mobile phones, another war, a real war, is taking place, between the World Ocean and the World Island, between America and its allies on one hand, and China and its allies on the other. The two dominant powers have yet to directly enter the war, but their allies in Ukraine and Russia are fighting a near-total war with casualty rates similar to those seen in World War I. Both sides have decreed this to be an existential struggle, and it threatens to explode into World War III at any moment. If it does, the possibility of global thermonuclear destruction manifests.

What is remarkable about the possibility of World War III is that, even if we don't annihilate ourselves, it might still be the last global war ever fought by human beings. The fourth war, World War 100, might be fought by AI. Artificial Intelligence has already begun to transform society, and many of the scientists, engineers, and scholars who are working in the field believe that this is just the beginning of a machine learning tsunami that will be so enormous that AI will, sooner or later, virtually replace humanity.

Yoda

Best of the Web: The perversion of mental health practice: Woke capture of clinical & counseling psychology

wokeness woke meter politically correct
The curious case study of Dr. Helen Hsu, PsyD, "Rematriating Psychology," and how it illustrates the near-complete encroachment of cultural Marxism on western psychological science and practice.

The field of psychology has been hard hit by the shift in radical political ideology geared toward "dismantling" or "decentering Eurocentric" values, "rematriation" and "decolonization." A simple google search of these terms will bring up a slew of recent articles with most of them published within the past decade or so.

In this article, we first describe the underlying ideology of this recent movement and use an example of a recently-elected midlevel functionary of the American Psychological Association to frame the discussion.

Then we describe the potential harms this movement has to the validity of psychology and the public trust.

Finally, we will finish with highlighting the value of retaining the values of sound, rigorous scientific principles, rationalism, objectivity and why it is foolish and ultimately antithetical to psychological or clinical science writ large to dismiss these values as "tools of oppression," "white supremacy," "whiteness," or other nonsense that's fashionable today.