DrmDoc

If you will, consider the number of instantaneously emerging thoughtful solutions to complex problems that ultimately weren't the solutions you thought they were. Isn't that a nature of conscious thought? Where solutions emerge, then are given conscious consideration to determine their appropriateness before implementation. Some are appropriate, others aren't. Instinctive responses are those responses we engage without such conscious consideration; e.g., the decision to run in the opposite direction of an explosion. When a solution emerges in your mind, it's the end result of your prior thoughtful experiences and considerations no matter how instantaneously that solution appears to emerge. Our prior thoughts, experiences, and considerations--essentially our memory stores--are the purview of our unconscious. Reasoning and problem solving is merely a process of conforming our responses to parameters previously installed and set by our conscious perception. Those fully formed ideas from our unconscious are merely those ideas that conform to the prior parameters of our conscious perceptions, in my opinion.

No, not without the focus and direction our conscious provides. Unconsciously, we are aware of a myriad of sensory experiences or stimuli (input) from a variety of sources. Our responses to that stimuli are mediated by our conscious perception of their immediacy and that perception of immediacy is determine by the prominence of our unconscious responses. We can't simultaneously respond to all stimuli, that would be an inefficient and likely ineffective expense of our mental and physical efforts and energies. Therefore, our unbridled unconscious responses are metered through the focalizing function our conscious attributes provide. However, there are occasions when our response are generated without thought and those occasions regard our instinctive responses, which are the responses we engage because of some immediate survival demand. Yes, indeed.

As I perceive, consciousness is comprised of two basic components in brain function, which are its conscious and unconscious attributes. In my view, our brain's conscious functions are how our overall consciousness interfaces our reality with its unconscious functions. Essentially, as I understand the answer to your query, conscious awareness serves as an interface between perceptual reality and our unconscious processes. Our conscious awareness filters and focuses our unconsciously generated responses, which can be scattered, inappropriate, and unfocused. If the question regards what is conscious awareness, it's the focal of our perceptual experience.

Indeed, thought responses that emerge without stimuli doesn't leave perceptual room for our full mental consideration of external stimuli. It's schizophrenia. However, when listening to our inner thoughts to the exclusion of external stimuli--as if in a sensory deprivation tank--what we hear emerges because of the void created by the absence of that stimuli. Essentially, in my view, this sensory void is a stimulus begging to be filled as if re-pressurizing a vacuum.

Yet more evidence of this administration's march towards totalitarianism. Trump suggests cancelling press briefings!

Give it a thought; as you acquire the language you are using to compose your thoughts, from where does that language come? How is its use in composition of your thoughts formed? You're not conscious of every single word you've ever learned until you are compelled to some response requiring their use. It is that compelling influence (input), in my opinion, that initiates and defines your thought responses--responses that remain submerged until called upon by the demands of some input. Our choices and decisions are responses, which aligns with and emerge from the efferent systems of the brain. These systems are exclusively reactive, which means that they do not engage without some stimuli or input. The reactive, reflexive nature of these systems gives us the illusion of some consciously directed selection process when that process merely involves pairing an input with a previous stored and appropriate output as defined by that input. If we take conscious cognition out of the process, our responses are merely a process of inputing the right codes to liberate an output.

We are all born, in my opinion, with some measure of outwardly perceived madness until we've amassed, via life experience, the unconscious perceptual filters comprising our mental barrier against inappropriate behavioral responses. These are the unconsciously accumulated behavioral filters we acquire as our brain develops and we mature. Either by defect of brain function or life experience, these unconsciously install filters may not properly serve our behavioral response needs. Consequently, aberrant behaviors arise from defects in this perceived process. The entire engine, using your analogy, essentially operates as a whole but uses filters to maintain peak and proper performance.

Ha!

I had a look and have to say that the jury's still out on this one. Correlation isn't causation and the sample is small. This needs more research.

I think if we accept consciousness as a manifestation of unconscious processes, then our conscious expressions and choices are also manifestations of those very same unconscious processes. Our realizations and conscious decisions all emerge from an unconscious process; therefore, the question we may ask is how do the results of this unconscious process pierce a perceived conscious/unconscious divide or barrier to become conscious thought? I try to reduce complex questions like this in to simpler terms rooted in my view of brain function. In my view, consciousness emerges from an interaction between our brain's afferent (input) and efferent (output) systems. Our thoughts and behaviors arise from our brain's efferent systems in response to the afferent stimuli we perceive. What this means is that what we think and do comes from something within in response to something without or perceived as external input. The unconscious processes that produce thought do not become thought responses without piercing an unconscious divide I perceive as a barrier against inappropriate responses to stimuli. Our thought responses to stimuli do not emerge as thoughts unless those thoughts somehow address the stimuli (input) that initiated our response processes. Consciously, you are making choices; however, the entire process is merely the responses arising from our unconscious systems. What we think and feeling emerges from an unconscious. What we perceive as a divide between our conscious and unconscious is not really so. I think of our conscious self like the peak of a mountain with our unconscious at its base. The entirety of that mountain encompasses the whole of consciousness.

Given the nature of brain function, not even consciousness is consciously generated. Consciousness arises from a confluence of unconscious brain functions, which is a confluence of neural activity that occurs below the threshold of conscious awareness. Therefore, all thoughts emerge from an unconscious process.

Today I learned about the history of cannabis. It's native to central Asia, dioecious, and only its females produce THC.

As I understand, negative mass should involve a repulse/attraction effect, where positive (+) mass is repulsed by negative (-) mass while (-) mass maintains an attraction to (+) mass. The overall effect causes acceleration as (+) mass is continually repulsed and chased by negative mass. However, the physicists discovery discussed in that SFN link describes a fluid that accelerates backward when the nature of a negative mass elements, as I understand, should accelerate forward towards repulsed (+) masses. I believe the video link I posted discusses that discovery's acceleration conundrum. Nevertheless, I understand the substance and its effects much better now.

Actually, there was quite a bit of discussion on that topic on CNN's Anderson 360 regarding the legality of such notifications by Comey. The consensus, as I perceived, was that such notifications to probably targets of FBI investigations, including the president, is highly improper--which is no surprise given Comey's improper interference during this past presidential elections.

Though I'm not quite sure it describes principles relative to negative mass, your video link certainly does provide an easy to understand example of "behaves unexpectedly." If it is indeed relative to the idea of negative mass, I now have a firmer understanding of that idea. Thank you.

Today I learned about negative mass and, by learned, I mean I have absolutely no understanding of the physics nor comprehension of what it is. The science is light-years beyond my understanding.

Unfortunately, Trump's Nixonian tactics hasn't fooled anybody other than his staunchest supporters who will likely remain under his Svengali-like thrall well after his, hopefully, imminent impeachment.

That's a like, I think I'll use that one. It seems to me that capitalism is around the corner everywhere.

If I understand correctly, your perspective regards ideas and thoughts that appear to emerge without conscious effort, direction, or interference. That perspective is analogous to being tapped on the shoulder and asked to turn and intake a different view of some focal interest; i.e., take in a new idea. From my perspective, there is no tap on our conscious shoulder by some unknowable influence (i.e., the unconscious) presenting us with a new perspective or idea. In my view, the conscious realization of that new perspective or idea is initiated by merely turning around without that shoulder tap and revisiting an old idea with a fresh, uncluttered perspective. Thoughtful solutions emerge from a conscious intake of all data with components that may have a lingering unconscious affect on our cognitive processes. New perspectives and ideas emerge from that data when we consciously take notice of that data's lingering effects, which involves making conscious connections between this emerging data as its extraneous components dissolve. Our conscious realization of new ideas that arise from accumulated data is analogous to noticing how cream rises to the top of our beverages. As I now understand, your perspective is that "Every gene, every mutation, is not and did not have to be useful." I agree; however, certain genes and mutations that do persist in a population may indeed have previously had a significant survival impact, IMO. Mutations such as cancer are endemic to the nature of cell replacement and persist because our cells have yet to adapt to our increasingly extended life. 60% of all cancers can be traced to natural mutations rather than lifestyle or carcinogens. Cancer persists as a cellular survival influence by compelling further adaptations against that mutation thus extending survival. Diseases happen in nature and sufferers who survive could pass on increasingly stronger genes.

If you have any doubts regarding the mindset of this administration, consider this Huffington Post article on the legal precedent Trump's Justice Department chose to support its illegal Muslim travel ban. Their reliance on segregationist Supreme Court rulings from an era of despicable racial discrimination and social intolerance is undoubtedly without the slightest visage of moral conscience. The ruling was wrong then and it's wrong now.

In retrospect, I see we do have some agreement on survival traits. However, we defer slightly on the nature of the unconscious and I think that's because of a likely distinction in the basis for our views. My views are based on a perspective of how mind and aspects of consciousness likely evolved as suggested by our brain's primitive-to-contemporary functional developments. Those developments suggest that instinctual aspects of our behavior arose from elements in brain structure that evolved prior to the cortical developments that produce conscious thought. The parts of our brain that mediate our unconscious behaviors are reactive and do not engage thought as we might consciously do. What we might perceive as fully formed ideas from our unconscious may merely be our conscious interpretation of an unconscious reaction to an accumulation of sensory stimuli and information we have perceived and experienced. It's not our unconscious that produces those ideas, its our conscious recognition and interpretation of our unconscious perceptions and reactions that produce those ideas. Our conscious perception or awareness of having an idea is evident of that idea's conscious nature and origin.

According to this Time article, which contains a link to a UT SW Medical Center announcement, researchers have determined that a KROX20 protein is responsible for hair growth and that the deletion of a stem cell factor gene it affects causes graying. Enjoy!

I disagree, even adaptations that appear to have no current survival benefit (e.g., tonsils, wisdom teeth, etc.) persist because they were important to survival at some prior evolutional point. The introduction of new survival affecting influences (e.g., meteor strike) merely provide an environment that favors the most survival adapted species. Newly acquired adaptations can persist long after the need for those adaptations has vanished. As I understand the evolutional nature of consciousness, the distinction in conscious versus unconscious is analogous to proactive versus reactive. Conscious and unconscious are the only legitimate states of mentation our brain function produces. Subconscious, as a mental state, simply does not exist. Our unconscious mind emerges from our brain's most primitive functional state, which is instinctual and reactive. The behaviors we engage innately, instinctively, and without thought emerges from our unconscious. Conversely, the behaviors we engage thoughtfully with proactive, conscious consideration of outcome emerges from a function state produced by our brain's most recent evolutional developments. These two states are co-dependent with our conscious more dependent or subservient to our unconscious. This is a perspective supported by the functional distinctions of the brain structures from which our proactive and reactive behaviors are believed to emerge. We cannot be conscious without the functional support of those brain structures that produce our unconscious behaviors; therefore, we are both conscious and unconscious in consideration of the conscious choices we make.

I find myself arguing the survival benefits of suicide, which was not my intent and will no longer attempt to do. However, there's a general perception, not mine, of the suicidal as not having the fortitude to live on--there are some who could argue a societal benefit to that, but I will not.

Dreaming is a byproduct of our brain's metabolic needs in sleep in that those needs require increased neural activity and arousal in our brain during sleep. When we physically requires nourishment, normally we can't intake that nourishment when we are physically asleep in our beds. Similar is true for our sleeping brain in that its uptake of neural nourishment--serving its metabolic needs in sleep--requires a state of arousal, which is the state that produces dreaming. Our brain is the large consumer of our body's overall energy uptake and its energy needs must be met even in sleep. Our brain engages wakeful activity in sleep to increase the delivery of glucose rich blood-flow into its structure and to metabolize that energy source. The imagery we experience as dreams are a product of this arousing metabolic process in sleep. When our brain awakes during sleep to feed its metabolic needs that wakefulness arouses our brain's cognitive processes while our body physically remains immobile. Those processes merge our unconscious sensory perceptions with thoughts that linger from our conscious experience to produce dream content depicting the mental effect or influence of those conscious experiences and unconscious perceptions. Although our dream content may appear strange and absurd, they are actually perceptions that conform to the nature of thought (mental reality) rather than physical/material reality. We need to sleep because of the evolved nature of sleep. Sleep is mediated by the most primitive structures (thalamus and hypothalamus primarily) of our brain and it, sleep, likely evolved in ancestral animals as a means to conserve energy during periods of rest and between cycles of feeding. Dreaming likely evolved in brain behavior as our brain required more energy in sleep as it evolved more recent structures (cortex) relative to the thalamus and hypothalamus. What people should know is that there's no mystery to sleep nor to dreaming with a clear perspective of brain evolution and neuroscience. Quite true with dreaming, our brain is certainly attempting to impose a rational narrative on it nightly processes. However, I think those processes may not be as much about reorganization as they are about cleaning house. There's a lot of research and talk about neural reorganization in sleep and quite a bit of that about sleep being the source of the memory consolidation effect we believe we find upon arousal. Although sleep studies appear to support sleep's neural restorative effect, I don't believe that there's any reorganization in sleep that doesn't or can't occur when our brain is fully conscious particularly with memory. The evolved nature of memory formation, as I've described previously, suggests that its neural reorganization and consolidation processes require a waking-state brain that is fully sentient of its physical/material environment and active within that environment. I believe what primarily occurs in the brain during sleep, besides frequent uptakes of nutrient, is suggested by the glymphatic process and its restorative effects.