Book: Thinking And Eating For Two: The Science of Using Systems 1 and 2 Thinking to Nourish Self and Symbionts By Greg Maguire

not recommending the book but.......

https://www.scribd.com/book/4434344...-and-2-Thinking-to-Nourish-Self-and-Symbionts

 

Ah, a small glimpse into an inevitable future. And very few have actually looked into the "substance" of this work, how bad it actually is once you peel beneath the layer of sciencey rhetoric and appearances, exposing hollowness that is somehow confused for depth by those who simply take the conclusions at face value.

I'm curious about the follow-ups from this. Likely angry private letters, complaints to the author's department head or even dean. This has been the playbook, vexatious projection, and it's worked great so far.

 

What are the systems 1 and 2 referred to?
I have just finished reading a psych research book suggested on the forum about System 1 thinking (our automatic emotion-linked brain and System 2, the rational deliberate and slow, lazy mechanism.

Couldn't possibly be the same, no?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1222196308884082688

 

This is a pretty good explainer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM

Can't remember which is which but one is the stuff you can do without consciously thinking about it, knowledge and actions you have essentially internalized mechanically and intuitively, vs stuff you have to concentrate to be able to accomplish.

Learning is essentially the process of turning cognitive actions you have to concentrate on into knowledge you have internalized and can accomplish even while being distracted or thinking too much about. Like driving, you first have to concentrate a lot about all the things you need to do and check for but eventually turn it into a more or less autonomic process.

 

Ha! Well, good of the author to notice but I'm not sure we have much to discuss beyond the Crawley bit, atlthough it is very interesting. Though I am absolutely fascinated by the concept, it's just above my capacity. Programming involves quite a lot of that, but more as an applied practice than the theory of it.

 

Hm, interesting. Great that she is called out!

 

@rvallee
that was a fascinating video! thks for sharing. What I find so interesting about it is that as it presents "Gun" - the part of us that does all the automatic stuff we don't have to think about because we've done it so many times & it's become automatic... & "Drew" the part of us representing the conscious mind that has to deal with & put effort into learning new things... So while learning how to make a cup of tea, or drive a car, initially it's Drew that handles it - it requires huge effort, but then once it's been learned those tasks get passed of to Gun & can be handled with no effort whatsoever while thinking about something else....

When I got ME Gun went on strike. Occasionally when i'm very well rested things that have been automatic for yrs, are still somewhat automatic, but during PEM Gun doesn't exist - I cant remember how to do things, I have to concentrate incredibly hard on making a cup of tea.

I'd had mild ME for a long while without realising it & 'pushed through' it did more exercise etc, & then one day I was at work (as a teacher of a vocational subject) and my student called me over to ask me what the next step was, & I didn't know. This task that i'd done literally thousands of times & could do without thinking, I suddenly had no idea how to do it. I was able to gradually begin to work it out from the other info, but you would never know I had done it 1000 times before. I tried to drive home but had no idea how to drive my car... at which point I collapsed.
But it has struck me ever since that in PEM Gun disappears, I even have to think about how to walk - where each foot is supposed to go. And God help me if I try to think about something else while walking - that's a sure fire way to end up hitting the ground.

So what is it that makes Gun disappear and Drew have to do it all again, all the tasks previously passed off to Gun.... And Drew is drunk/exhausted?

I think Drs/researchers miss that, they think only about the fact that 'Drew' is very 'fatigued'... the worst bit is that on top of Drew's problems... 'Gun' has disappeared.

Sorry thats completely off topic to the book.
But I never had a way to explain it before, am going to save that video & show it to those close to me who don't understand why I get so grumpy when they ask me a question that I can usually answer easily...
They cant see that it's taking an inordinate amount of thinking energy to think through something that ought to be automatic & would be at a well rested moment... "I only asked you where you wanted your clean washing putting"..... They don't grasp the herculean task it takes to first determine what 'washing' means, then what 'clean' washing is, then what they mean by 'putting', then consider & remember all the rooms/places in my small house, then decide the pros & cons of each place, all as if they were completely new concepts.

 

Same. I would pretty much define the main effect of the cognitive deficit to essentially be shutting down access to the active system. Things I knew I can still usually do and pretty much in line with how automatic they are. But even that gets harder along with PEM, also mirroring finer motor movement. I generally have very fine motor accuracy, almost never drop things, but with PEM it's like my hand becomes a giant spastic thumb.

Which is very similar to pretty much any illness, cold, flu, serious hangover, whatever. I'm pretty sure that's a sort of universal sickness response that cuts down on energy demand by shutting down higher order thinking. I expect the same to be true of fibro fog, chemo fog and pretty much universally what we seem to find in the other chronic diseases, to a varying degree.

 

Yeah.
I can understand why the active thinking bit goes slow & stops working but I cant understand why in PEM there is no longer any 'automatic function' either - I can't even do the things that at my best require no active thought. And although I've had many other illnesses I never experienced that, where suddenly not only are the things that should be automatic, no longer automatic, but a lot of those automatic things appear to have simply fallen out of my brain - like I just forgot them all - like finding my way home for instance. I mean i'm never out alone but eg on the way to the Drs surgery I can tell someone who's unfamiliar with the route how to get there, but on the way back I have no idea how to get home - in a house/town I lived in for 50yrs (30 of them as a healthy). It's bizarre.

 

In my case during flares even breathing was not automatic anymore. Much better now.