Mental Strength Testing

What is a potentially effective method for strength building of mental capabilities?

To continue from my last post about ways to implement learning by using conscious awareness and subconscious drive to their advantages, another method for boosting mentality should be an aspect of strength building. By intentionally testing your limits in a controlled environment, with the confidence of capabilities to handle the circumstances, useful skills can be learned.

By mentally testing yourself, this should allow a simulation of a potentially risky situation, but to gain knowledge of the cause and effect of influencing factors. Besides the conscious knowledge, positive results of controlling the circumstances should additionally contribute to influencing your subconscious that controlling the situation is a positive result, therefore causing you to be more inclined to repeat that positive result of control.

As an aspect of “Self-Conscious Self-Coercion”, intentionally putting yourself in a difficult situation that tests your abilities to handle the situation, should create positive results, as long as the test is not too difficult. With the positive results, you can then implement the methods of “self coercion”, by being consciously aware of the positive result, and or by rewarding yourself, to influence your subconscious and steer you toward obtaining that positive control without you even knowing it in the future. In order to test yourself without making it too difficult (and potentially failing, with a counteractive result), you can analyse what your capabilities are at the present time, based off of past results. Then, place yourself in circumstances where you are confident you will be able to handle the test.

The test can often be circumstances which you dislike, but want to have better control over, so it will often take that initial conscious comprehension of intentionally testing yourself for the purpose of building strength. Also, it should take will power to overpower your subconscious preference, in order to force yourself into the testing scenario. 1 example is attempting to control social anxiety. I used to have fairly significant social anxiety, and subconsciously preferred to avoid social situations, as well as acted nervous while in social situations. After consciously analysing this annoying mental disorder of social anxiety, I hypothesized that conditioning myself could be an effective way to overcome it. Then, after intentionally putting myself in social circumstances, despite my subconscious or instinctual utter despise of such a setting, I slowly gained conscious knowledge of affecting factors, and perhaps more significantly, influenced my subconscious to associate positivity with a social environment, from repeated positive results.

After you’ve tested yourself successfully, you can incrementally increase the difficulty of the test. Each time you accomplish the intended result, you can consciously comprehend various factors, in their cause and effect on you or the other factors in the circumstances. This will give you valuable information to predict similar future circumstances more accurately, as well as potentially apply that knowledge to further testing of increased difficulty. The accomplishment of each stage of testing, should additionally make it easier to conquer the circumstances via subconscious desire to succeed, which will likely be a driving influence behind actions, even when you don’t know it. Subsequential tests of increased difficulty should build mental strength to control similar circumstances for the future. Even without increasing difficulty, testing should still cause similar (though, likely less) strength building, by repetition more strongly affecting subconscious drive, and consciously remembered causes and effects of factors.

Another example of mental strength building, could be; testing control over addiction. I’ve also done this myself with addictive substances, such as caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine. The tests involved intentionally subjecting myself to the substance, then quitting for a minimum time period. The quitting period would be the opposite of my subconscious desire (as addiction is virtually entirely subconscious appeal), so forcing myself into the dis-preferable quitting period of the test took some will power, but the success caused my subconscious to be more geared toward the ability to stop when I consciously decide to.

Intentionally putting yourself into uncomfortable circumstances is the contrary to your subconscious inclination, but using that as a test to consciously control the situation can be effective. Using a situation which you’re confident that you will be able to control, should cause a positive result of success, to counteract your subconscious drive to prefer control, as well as gain conscious knowledge of various causes and effects of the situations. Your subconscious is an important muscle, which can be worked out, to test and build strength.

Self-Conscious Self-Coercion

Considering the concept of the function of learning (as in my last post; Learning Learning”), which involves the 2 types, being subconscious and conscious learning, what effective methods can be implemented by utilizing both types?

Since the human mind seems to function by regularly using both types, there should be methods to effectively use each in its advantageous situation. Subconscious learning can be understood as basically, the experience of a scenario causing negative or positive feedback for the individual to avoid or pursue (respectively) those basic circumstances in the future. Whereas conscious learning can be understood as actively accessing multiple memories relative to the circumstances, to distinguish more accurate positive or negative factors within the scenario.

In a previous post “Conscious Conditioning”, I hypothesized 1 method, of utilizing conscious awareness and consideration for generally most new scenarios, to be aware of and focus on certain negative or positive factors of the circumstances. Doing this multiple times should cause the negative or positive feedback repeatedly, until the subconscious is manipulated to automatically take the beneficial action for that scenario. Once the subconscious is conditioned, reactions to that scenario can be faster than alternatively always using conscious analysis. This is likely a slow method of conditioning your subconscious, since being consciously aware of the negative or positive cause or effect of a specific factor, usually doesn’t create profound feedback for the subconscious to remember quickly and easily.

Another very similar method of consciously conditioning your subconscious, would be to intentionally reward yourself using an external element, rather than mindful internal focus on negative or positive factors of the scenario. Using an external source for positive feedback is likely to have more of a profound influence on the subconscious memory. The external source can be basically anything that you enjoy, which creates positive feedback for your mind. Examples: good food, alcohol, relaxing, fun video games, good music, or even nicotine. Using the similar methodology, of consciously analyzing an action that you do, to be aware of specific positive effects (that your subconscious would not be aware of, or have a positive reaction to) of that action, you can then use this specific method of implementing an external positive reinforcement element. While implementing this method, it may seem unobvious that you are changing anything, but that is because it’s a manipulation of your subconscious, of which your active comprension is not aware. An example of this method that I often use, is; after I complete 1 of these “philosophical” writings that I do, I intentionally cause positive feedback by having a beer or glass of wine, & or eating a tasty snack or meal. I consciously analysed that, I believe completing these writings is a positive action. Since my subconscious would not necessarily give profound positive feedback for this task accomplishment, I use an external source for more profound positive feedback, to manipulate my subconscious into the drive of pursue writing.

These 2 methods of self-coercion, should be an effective way to cause yourself to automatically pursue something which you’ve analyzed to be beneficial, or avoid situations which you’ve consciously determined to be harmful or less preferable. Once you’ve conditioned your mind, you will have that drive without even knowing it. With this subconscious drive, it is likely to also affect subtle influence on other actions to pursue or avoid that circumstance, where as you wouldn’t have consciously considered to take that direction otherwise. Being consciously aware of circumstances, of yourself, and of this concept, can be an effective method of self-coercion.

Learning Learning

What are the components involved in learning?

What advantages are there in the unique method of learning humans have?

As I derived some aspects of learning to be a benefit of freedom, in my last post; Free- Be, learning more about learning seems that it should be an important and relevant topic. If “learning” is considered to be basically, gaining relevant knowledge, then it should be the function which allows mostly any intelligence, intellect, and therein intended progression in this world.

The function of learning is gaining knowledge through personal experience or acquiring information. Gaining knowledge can be as simple of a process as any animal experiencing something, then saving that information as memory. The benefit of this simple knowledge is that in the future, with similar circumstances, the animal will react in a way of pursuing or avoiding the circumstances. Its reaction will be based on whether the memory of the experience resulted in positive or negative feedback, and likely cause a beneficial reaction to the circumstances.

The more advanced method of learning would be gaining knowledge through acquiring complex information (which excludes sensory input of personal experience). A single bit of information can perhaps be interpreted by an animal, such as a certain sound (communicated from another, of its species) communicates info to do a certain action, but acquiring multiple bits of information is mostly only done by humans. In order to interpret complex information, it seems an ability of advanced memory access is required, which likely only humans consistently use, at this point.

If more than 1 bit of information is being communicated, the individual needs to use active memory access to accurately access memories of multiple bits of information, before acting. Animals generally receive 1 bit of information, then subconsciously react based on memory of the closest resembling experience. With advanced memory access, humans can pause and access multiple memories, making the connection from 1 to the next, by simultaneously accessing the memory of a factor and its relative cause and or effect (based on my hypothesis of “consciousness” :). With this ability to actively access and connect multiple bits of memory, humans can interpret multiple bits of information. Ie. language.

With the advantage of language communication, we are able to learn by acquiring complex info, without the need for personal experience. We can interpret complex info by accessing multiple memories of that which each of the multiple bits of info are intended to be connected to. Using this advanced memory process, we can then learn by saving a new memory (in a way) of how each of the factors (represented by information) interact with each other.

The key effective function of learning by method of advanced memory access, is that we can comprehend the cause and or effect of anything, by actively accessing memories of any given factor, and the effect of that factor in it’s relative circumstance. With this gained ability, a massive advantage is unlocked for the potential to learn how any factor will affect its relevant circumstances. Therefore the potential is enabled, to access memories of information of how every specific factor within a situation will affect it, to then accurately predict the outcome, and make any decision which is most beneficial to the individual.

With our unique capability of comprehension, which unlocks the potential to accurately analyse cause and effect of any general situation in life, it seems it would be exceptionally self-beneficial to take advantage of learning and applying this advanced process of learning.

Free- Be.

What are the advantages of freedom of choice + action?

How much liberty is effective?

Continuing on the concept from my attempted distinguishment of effective regulations, in my post: “Reduction by Regulation”, freedom of choice can have it’s benefits, but should still be restricted to some degree, in the context of an effective society. It makes sense to have regulations to restrict the freedom of choice which will cause a reduction of the enjoyment of others (to a relevant proportion), but that restriction should be focused on the direct cause of the negative result, rather than generalizing the restriction for actions which only have a [potential] to allow a consecutive action that causes the problem.

It seems rational that freedom of choice should be maximized to those actions which only have potential for allowing a consecutive negative action, so that people are able to enjoy the liberty of taking those actions, in circumstances where they do not take the additional negative action. This maximization allows a wider range of actions for people to enjoy, therefore increasing the overall enjoyment.

With this extended freedom to take actions with some risk, or which are nearing the point of taking a consecutive negative action, an additional benefit would be the ability for individuals to learn. With more options of action, someone can learn physical and mental skills to deal with that scenario. In contrast, if someone lives in a “safety bubble”, they never gain physical skills to perform tasks, which would likely make their life more enjoyable for themselves in the future, and would also allow the potential to achieve more accomplishments, contributing to society (and therein enjoyment of others). Also, if the ability to mentally cope with situations involving risk or negative results, is never learned, then a future circumstance of negative results is more likely to cause trauma or other mental damage.

Besides physical and mental coping skills, there is also intellectual knowledge to be gained from a broader aspect enabled by freedom of actions + decisions. With the freedom to take more actions and make more decisions, someone can learn independently and effectively, the concepts of cause and effect which are involved. When taking any action in life, someone has the opportunity to personally observe the effects caused by the action they took. With any decision, they have the chance to take into account the resulting influence that their choice made. Understanding cause and effect, is just about the epitome of intellect, and increases accuracy of future predictions, and therefore accuracy of ability to intentionally cause preferable resulting effects. The concepts learned through independent trial, can be carried to other scenarios in the future, which involve variables that are relatable to the relevant cause and effect. Taking this into consideration, it seems profoundly valuable to have the opportunity to intellectually learn various concepts of cause and effect, which are relative to actions and decisions that are inherently available from increased freedom.

If a lack of liberty is taken in society, with a world of reduced allowance of actions, trends are built into people to perform an action or decision, solely on the prospect that they were told to, or that it is normal. With a habit of simply following orders or copying others, comes the lack of independent comprehension of reasoning, and the likeliness to blindly follow a negative commonality, simply because that is how the individual has been conditioned to function.

Besides the increased optionality of enjoyment of additional activities, freedom of choice seems to have significant benefits of; potential to learn valuable physical and mental skills, as well as gain intellectual comprehension crucial to progression. The concept of additional allowance to be free, is a freebie.

Reduction by Regulation

Are there any fundamentally objective regulations that should always be in place?

What is an effective limit for regulations on any given circumstances?

If there were objective regulations, then they would be relative to an action that all individuals “should” or “should not” take. By definition, a regulation is basically a rule outlining a specified action that should or shouldn’t be taken. As in my previous posts; “Served, but not Deserved” and “Titled but not Entitled” I distinguished that the concept of something that “should” be done, is subjective, unless outlined in context. There seems to be no actions that “should” be done, which are genrally objective, since there is no universally definitive agreement fundamental to general existence. Relative to existence, an individual always has the potential to disagree on a preference of intended goal, as the resulting effect of that action; which is the factor in question for whether it “should” be taken. An agreed upon intended goal is required, for an action to be objective in determining whether it should be taken. This concept carries over to the application of regulations, considering regulations describe that which “should” be done.

A common agreed upon intended accomplishment, which seems to be reasonable for a functional society, and for a common preference, might be; to allow the maximum enjoyment of all individuals. If this is taken as the context, then there can be an objective action to be taken in any circumstances, in order to attempt to accomplish the intended goal. Granted, it can be very difficult to determine the action which should be taken in order to accomplish this result, but this can be a contextual goal to base best estimates off of, for concepts such as Deserving, Entitlement, or regulations.

So what are effective regulations, to attempt to achieve this hypothetical goal for society?

In general, it seems regulations restrict people from taking an action which reduces the enjoyment for others. But to be effective for this goal, the regulation should restrict only the specific action which reduces others enjoyment. A “blanket-barricading” regulation is generalised to prevent everyone from performing an action which only has the [potential] to be used to take a further action that is negative (in the context). In this case, the generalized restriction prevents the enjoyment for some people, even though they would not have taken the consecutive action which is negative.

This seems to be a growing trend in society, of creating blanket-barricading regulations. For eg. if someone drowns in a quarry, in a public conservation area, the typical reaction seems to be to then make a regulation that nobody is allowed to swim in that quarry any longer. The idealism is to prevent future people from drowning (reducing their enjoyment & their families’), but the regulation restricts the enjoyment for all those who would take that initial action of swimming, but not take the consecutive negative action of drowning. Instead of a regulation which restricts enjoyment for others, perhaps the regulation should be focused on the problem of drowning. This is likely difficult to do, other than perhaps putting up signs, warning people of the danger. But, at least it would not be counter-productive in restricting alternate enjoyment. Freedom should be a fairly common preference for enjoyment, and therefore a component of the contextual intended goal of society.

If blanket barricade regulations are put in place, restricting freedom of particular actions, the individuals restricted from that action, are additionally prevented from learning skills and concepts related to that action. When learning these skills and concepts is prevented, the person is then unable to transfer that knowledge or those abilities to alternate situations. They are then more likely to fail or be harmed (reducing their enjoyment), in a future scenario involving relatable concepts, since they don’t have the applicable skills or knowledge.

For eg. if a regulation is put into place to require crossing guards to always stop traffic for children crossing the street, and the children must cross at that spot, the children may never learn the concept of giving cars the right of way, of the skills to judge when it's safe to cross. At another time, when there is no crossing guard, a child might just cross a road right in front of traffic (assuming this is normal), without the learned skills of independently awarefully crossing the street (I’ve witnessed this happen, at a crosswalk in front of my house...).

It seems logical that regulations should be heeded in the effect of their restrictions. If it’s a regulation which blankets generalized circumstances, only on the potential of a consecutive negative action being taken, then the side effect causing the restriction of the freedom of others, is counter-productive. Additionally, over-regulations are ineffective in the prospect that they prevent valuable learned skills and knowledge. Perhaps, in today’s society, the best implementation in the context of allowing enjoyment, should be regulation reduction.

Titled, but not Entitled

What does it mean to be entitled?

Is anyone legitimately entitled to anything?

By my understanding, to be “entitled” is the concept that an individual should receive a positive attribute, based on their figurative position, status, or accomplishments.

Similar to the concept of “deserving” (as I described in my previous post), being “entitled”, is based on the concept that someone should receive something. “Deserving” has more of insinuation, that the individual should receive something as a result of their actions, where being “entitled” insinuates that they should receive something as a result of their status. Their status or position, could be as a result of their actions (just like “deserving”), but could also be circumstantial.

As in my previous post, I distinguished the term “should”, to be subjective, unless in context. So in relation to “entitlement”, the prospect that someone “should” receive something, is opinionated, unless there is context which outlines parameters. If the context of the situation includes an agreed upon designation of status or position, respective to what they will be attributed, then by definition of the context, someone “should” receive something if they are in the designated position.

For eg. Sally is promoted to executive producer (whatever that might entail specifically :), and it has been agreed upon, between employees and company owner, that someone in the position of executive producer will receive benefits of an additional week of vacation. Within that context, Sally is entitled to and should receive that extra week of vacation.

Is there any generically objective positions in life, that are entitled to benefits that an individual should receive? If there was entitlement which is fundamental to the position of existing, there would have to be parameters which were agreed upon by all proponents. It seems there is no such parameters which are definitively agreed upon in the context of existing. Since the concept of “”entitlement” requires all individuals who are involved, to agree on the designations, there could always be someone or something that disagrees with the designations. For eg, you may have the belief that existence entitles the individual to a long and happy life. But, a crocodile did not agree to that designation, and would still kill an antelope, when it’s hungry, therefore disallowing something with the status of existing, to live a long life.

It seems, simply having the status of existing, does not necessarily entitle any individual to anything. But, this also doesn’t mean that nobody has entitlement from anyone, in any situation. It means, the only entitlement that should be rationally expected in life, is receiving something within context, from other individuals whom have agreed to those parameters. There can be numerous elastic parameters of entitlement in life, which includ different people at different times, based on their comprehension and agreement. It can be very difficult to determine who should be included for entitlement within specific context, since it is based on their agreement to the outlines of that entitlement.

Perhaps it can be beneficial to keep in mind, that general existence does not fundamentally entitle anything. Existing in the 1st place, could be considered receiving a positive quantity of something, since without it, there would be zero. To assume that receiving something (existence) entitles us to something more, seems like a misunderstanding of concept, and false assumption. In life and society, we might want to assume that we have a certain status, and expect to receive something for it, but all it takes is a differing opinion (or no opinion at all (from an inanimate object (as a result of cause and effect))) to negate legitimate entitlement.

In a lot of cases, we might be titled, but not entitled.

Served, but not Deserved

Does anyone objectively deserve anything?

If we assume “deserve” means that someone should receive a positive or negative return, then the positive or negative would depend on whether the individual’s actions were positive or negative. Whether or not someone “should” do or recieve something, tends to be subjective, or based on the context of the intended accomplishment.

Perhaps if the context is with an agreed-upon intended accomplishment, then there can be an objective action that “should” be taken. Therein, someone “should” do a certain action, rather than another, based on the contextual intended accomplishment. For eg. the agreed upon intended accomplishment could be to allow the most people within a town, to experience the maximum enjoyment of their lives. Within that context, someone “should” refrain from hitting random people with a baseball bat. It would (without a reasonable doubt) reduce the enjoyment of the people who get hit by the bat, and counteract the intended accomplishment.  

So within some contexts, someone “should” receive something, and would therefore “deserve” something positive or negative, usually relative to their actions contribution toward the agreed-upon intended accomplishment. If someone does something which is a positive contribution, they hypothetically deserve something positive in return. But how much?

If all individuals contributing a positive quantity toward a goal, received an equal quantity of positive return right away, then there would be no accomplishment. The goal would not be accomplished, since any progress added by individuals, would then be returned to those same individuals, causing no overall increase toward the goal. For eg, if a city wanted to raise money to build a bridge, and when anyone donated, the city then gave back the same amount of money to the donator, because they “deserved” to receive something positive in return, then the city would never reach its goal of raising enough money for the bridge.

So for it to be an advantageous concept, an individual should “deserve” less positive in return for their contribution. There could potentially be an equivalent or even bigger positive return, while still making progress, but only if the return is delayed to after a point where the goal has been reached. This would work, if the overall goal allows an increase of positive attributes. If more money was returned to the contributors, than they donated, after the bridge is built, there could still be overall gain, if the bridge allows the city to make more money by trading with a neighboring city. But considering gain after the goal, would be extending the context to include future gain. If the context includes that future sum gain, then the individual is still receiving less in return, than the overall gain.

Perhaps the general concept of “deserving” can be described as; a positive return should be given, for positive contribution. How does this apply to the context of general life and existence?  

Something rather than nothing is positive because, nothing would be zero, and something is a numerical positive quantity. So within the context of life, if existence and consciousness is considered to be a positive, which each individual has received, then is a positive return “deserved” to be given back by each individual? If the concept of “deserving” is believed to be applicable within specific contexts throughout life, then it seems logical that it should be applicable to the context of overall life and existence. Therefore, it seems that everyone should give a positive return, relative to the amount of positive which they received from existence and consciousness (if they believe in the concept of deserving).

Perhaps the evaluation of amount of positive, received from existence, is up to the estimate of the individual. If the amount of positive is considered to be substantial (as I would consider), then perhaps the amount that the individual deserves to return, for the receival of consciousness, easily outweighs any amount of contextual positive they might consider they “deserve” throughout life. Without each person's receival of existence, they would never have been able to make any positive contributions, or “deserve” any return, within those specific contexts that occur in life. In a way, it seems any contributions made by an individual, could be credited to the contribution of their initial receival of existence, so any positive return could also be credited to a return for receiving existence in the first place.  

Within context, it seems positive return can be deserved for contribution. But from my perspective, in the context of life, the return can never be enough, which is deserved for receiving the positivity of existence in itself. Any positive received within circumstances in life, can ultimately be credited to the receival of existence by that individual, rather than credited to the individual themselves. For, without existence, there would be no positive whatsoever. In the context of overall existence, for any individual; positives are served, but not deserved.