"Applied Rationality Training Regime" #21: Executing Intentions

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January 21 brings us to Training Regime Day 21: Executing Intentions and that's all there is to it: just form an intention and execute it. Do that again. And again? Sure. That would be a "form-execute" cycle, sort of like a computer's fetch-execute cycle, especially since my understanding is that human memory is active and actually forms a memory rather than just fetching it. I take this as an exercise in mindfulness, trying to make a TAP more accessible to other parts of your mind, other selves and other stories. I've spent parts of today trying to do it, and it's doable.

It's not cost-free; if I try to walk along, making each step into a conscious intention-execution, I find that I can do it to a very limited extent, but it doesn't work well. If I try to exercise with dumbbells as I walk, as I do every morning, I'm abruptly unable to move properly with arms or  legs; I can think my body through the motion a little bit at a time, but it takes at least a couple of seconds per step. I suppose I'm interfering with one or more central pattern generators, circuits which work just fine as long as my conscious/verbalizing selves don't try to talk to them while they're doing their jobs. In this case, perhaps the highest application of rationality is to stay out of the way. Still, the CPGs are obviously to some extent trainable, and learning to walk (with or without rhythmic arm-swings) is precisely such training, and if all I can lift into my consciousness is the difficulty of this communication then I really ought to do that. 

It would certainly be nice to have a map of all the CPGs that thus facilitate and block my processing, an atlas of the whole brain (and a bit more than just the brain?). If I Google for "brain atlas" I find the first match is the "Allen Institute", and it just happens (you guessed it, right?) that today is Paul Allen's birthday. "You have a certain number of dreams in your life that you want to fulfill." Happy birthday...and happy dreams.