Mental Discipline
Memes on mental discipline, from fictional characters to scientific virtues.
Folksonomies: mindfulness mental discipline
Memes
23 MAR 2013
Emotions Happen, But Don't Let Them Cloud Judgement
let’s revisit
that initial encounter in The Sign of Four,
when Mary Morstan, the mysterious lady
caller, first makes her appearance. Do the
two men see Mary in the same light? Not
at all. The first thing Watson notices is the
lady’s appearance. She is, he remarks, a
rather attractive woman. Irrelevant,
counters Holmes. “It is of the first
importance not to allow your judgment to
be biased by personal qualities,” he
explains. “A client is to me a mere unit, a
factor in a problem. The emotional...Folksonomies: emotion mindfulness
Folksonomies: emotion mindfulness
1 
Another example using Watson and Holmes.
23 MAR 2013
You Can Choose Your Memories
In the earliest days of research, memory
was thought to be populated with socalled
engrams, memory traces that were
localized in specific parts of the brain. To
locate one such engram—for the memory
of a maze—psychologist Karl Lashley
taught rats to run through a labyrinth. He
then cut out various parts of their brain
tissue and put them right back into the
maze. Though the rats’ motor function
declined and some had to hobble or crawl
their way woozily through the twists and
turns, the animal...Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
We can cognitively choose what memories will be stored longterm and which to let go, but we normally operate on autopilot, allowing novelties into our longterm memory-space.
23 MAR 2013
Sherlock Holmes Guards His Mind
Holmes and Watson don’t just differ in
the stuff of their attics—in one attic, the
furniture acquired by a detective and selfproclaimed
loner, who loves music and
opera, pipe smoking and indoor target
practice, esoteric works on chemistry and
renaissance architecture; in the other, that
of a war surgeon and self-proclaimed
womanizer, who loves a hearty dinner and
a pleasant evening out—but in the way
their minds organize that furniture to begin
with. Holmes knows the biases of his attic
like ...He is keenly aware of how emotions can doom him, and is ever vigilant against letting corrupt memories into his mind to corrupt his judgement.
26 JUN 2012
Cognitive Rigidity
Experience may blind us from recognizing obvious solutions to problems. Research shows that physicians and health care professionals are likely to overlook the correct diagnosis in cases which do not match their experience [1]. Similar findings have been reported concerning difficulties in reframing clinical situations as experienced by healthcare professionals [2], [3], and difficulties of managers and decision makers in replacing existing procedures with new, improved and simpler ones [4]. ...Folksonomies: plasticity cognitive rigidity
Folksonomies: plasticity cognitive rigidity
When experience blinds us to possibilities it hurts our professional abilities and can even lead to cognitive pathologies.
26 JUN 2012
Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Cognitive Rigidity
Two experiments examined the relation between mindfulness practice and cognitive rigidity by using a variation of the Einstellung water jar task. Participants were required to use three hypothetical jars to obtain a specific amount of water. Initial problems were solvable by the same complex formula, but in later problems (“critical” or “trap” problems) solving was possible by an additional much simpler formula. A rigidity score was compiled through perseverance of the complex formula. In Exp...Folksonomies: meditation cognitive rigidity
Folksonomies: meditation cognitive rigidity
Demonstrated using tests with "traps" that can only be overcome with novel thinking.
26 JUN 2012
Vulcan Meditation
In any system of meditation, one can categorize the techniques endlessly.
One could divide them into active, passive, and waking, or make
distinctions between mental, emotional, and physical meditations. Active
meditation techniques require you to focus on some object to the
exclusion of all else - like a meditating on a symbol, a set of words or
an image. A passive meditation involves stilling the mind so that the
train of thoughts which occupy our consciousness so pervasively stop. The
su...Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
There are three types of meditation: intellectual, emotional, and physical.
26 JUN 2012
Labeling Emotions Helps Control Them
Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thoughts and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.”
When the team compared brain scans from subjects who had more mindful dispositions to those from subjects who were less mindful, they found a stark difference—the mindful subjects experienced greater activation in the right vent...Folksonomies: meditation mindfulness
Folksonomies: meditation mindfulness
An experiment demonstrating the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in calming emotional states.
25 APR 2012
Seeing VS Observing
I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his process of deduction. 'When I hear you give your reasons,' I remarked, 'the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled, until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours.'
'Quite so,' he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an arm-chair. 'You see, but you d...Folksonomies: observation mindfulness
Folksonomies: observation mindfulness
1 Sherlock Holmes explains the difference between taking your world for granted and observing it scientifically.
25 JUL 2011
Be Mindful of Experience
There remains simple experience which, if taken as it comes, is called accident; if sought for, experiment. But this kind of experience is no better than a broom without its band, as the saying is — a mere groping, as of men in the dark, that feel all round them for the chance of finding their way, when they had much better wait for daylight, or light a candle, and then go. But the true method of experience, on the contrary, first lights the candle, and then by means of the candle shows the w...Folksonomies: mindfulness scientific understanding
Folksonomies: mindfulness scientific understanding
Do not grope around in the dark, but light a candle of scientific understanding before venturing into experiences.
15 APR 2011
Controlling Pain with Meditation
In the study, a small group of healthy medical students attended four 20-minute training sessions on "mindfulness meditation" — a technique adapted from a Tibetan Buddhist form of meditation called samatha. It's all about acknowledging and letting go of distraction.
"You are trying to sustain attention in the present moment — everything is momentary so you don't need to react," Zeidan explains. "What that does healthwise is it reduces the stress response. The feeling of pain is a very blat...Folksonomies: meditation pain
Folksonomies: meditation pain
Highlights from a study of meditation being used to control the sensation of pain.
23 JAN 2011
Attention is the Fundamental Literacy
Attention is the fundamental literacy. Every second I spend online, I make decisions about where to spend my attention. Should I devote any mindshare at all to this comment or that headline? — a question I need to answer each time an attractive link catches my eye. Simply becoming aware of the fact that life online requires this kind of decision-making was my first step in learning to tune a fundamental filter on what I allow into my head — a filter that is under my control only if I practice...Life online requires properly allocating our attention to maximize our productivity.
08 JAN 2011
The Samurai are Prohibited from Professional Sports
Gentlemen of honour, according to the old standards, rode horses, raced chariots, fought, and played competitive games of skill, and the dull, cowardly and base came in thousands to admire, and howl, and bet. The gentlemen of honour degenerated fast enough into a sort of athletic prostitute, with all the defects, all the vanity, trickery, and self-assertion of the common actor, and with even less intelligence. Our Founders made no peace with this organisation of public sports. They did not sp...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
A professional athlete is an "athletic prostitute," and the Samurai do not participate.
08 JAN 2011
The Samurai Must Be Alone With Nature One Week Each Year
But the fount of motives lies in the individual life, it lies in silent and deliberate reflections, and at this, the most striking of all the rules of the samurai aims. For seven consecutive days in the year, at least, each man or woman under the Rule must go right out of all the life of man into some wild and solitary place, must speak to no man or woman, and have no sort of intercourse with mankind. They must go bookless and weaponless, without pen or paper, or money. Provisions must be tak...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
The practice is intended to promote self-reflection and clarity of thought.
08 JAN 2011
The Regimen of the Voluntary Nobility
of the things that the samurai are obliged to do.
There would be many precise directions regarding his health, and rules that would aim at once at health and that constant exercise of will that makes life good. Save in specified exceptional circumstances, the samurai must bathe in cold water, and the men must shave every day; they have the precisest directions in such matters; the body must be in health, the skin and muscles and nerves in perfect tone, or the samurai must go to the doctors o...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
The samurai must speak with other Samurai to fend off "unsocial preoccupations" and "intellectual sluggishness" among other duties.
08 JAN 2011
The Samurai Reject Elaborately Ornate Religious Displays
The leading principle of the Utopian religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin; the Utopians hold that man, on the whole, is good. That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience, they hold, that you may refine by training as you refine his eye and ear; he has remorse and sorrow in his being, coming on the heels of all inconsequent enjoyments. How can one think of him as bad? He is religious; religion is as natural to him as lust and anger, less intense, indeed, ...Folksonomies: centrism voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: centrism voluntary nobility
Like over-eating or alcoholism, the Samurai view ornate religion as a form of gluttony, as they also see religion accepted with an uncritical eye.
08 JAN 2011
The Samurai, or "Voluntary Nobility"
I reflected. "What else may not the samurai do?"
"Acting, singing, or reciting are forbidden them, though they may lecture authoritatively or debate. But professional mimicry is not only held to be undignified in a man or woman, but to weaken and corrupt the soul; the mind becomes foolishly dependent on applause, over-skilful in producing tawdry and momentary illusions of excellence; it is our experience that actors and actresses as a class are loud, ignoble, and insincere. If they have not ...Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
Folksonomies: voluntary nobility
The voluntary nobility of H.G.Wells Utopia may not sing or act, as professional mimicry is undignified.
References
21 MAR 2013
Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Konnikova , Maria (2013-01-03), Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, Viking Adult, Retrieved on 2013-03-21Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: psychology mindfulness
Folksonomies: psychology mindfulness
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26 JUN 2012
"Mind the Trap": Mindfulness Practice Reduces Cognitive R...
Periodicals>Journal Article: Greenberg, Reiner, Meiran , "Mind the Trap": Mindfulness Practice Reduces Cognitive Rigidity, PLoS ONE, Retrieved on 2012-06-26Source Material [www.plosone.org]
Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
3
26 JUN 2012
Vulcan Meditation
Electronic/World Wide Web>Message Posted to a Newsgroup: Zook II, Robert L. (1997), Vulcan Meditation, Retrieved on 2012-06-26Source Material [syvak.wordpress.com]
Folksonomies: meditation
Folksonomies: meditation
1
26 JUN 2012
Brain Scans Reveal Why Meditation Works
Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article: Wenner, Melinda (29 June 2007), Brain Scans Reveal Why Meditation Works, livescience.com, Retrieved on 2012-06-26Source Material [www.livescience.com]
1
25 APR 2012
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Doyle , Sir Arthur Conan (1900), Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Retrieved on 2012-04-25Source Material [books.google.com]
1
17 MAY 2011
The Novum Organon, or a True Guide to the Interpretation ...
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Bacon , Francis (2005-11-30), The Novum Organon, or a True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature, Adamant Media Corporation, Retrieved on 2011-05-17Source Material [www.constitution.org]
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15 APR 2011
Even Beginners Can Curb Pain With Meditation
Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Cole, Adam (April 6, 2011), Even Beginners Can Curb Pain With Meditation, NPR, Retrieved on 2011-04-15Source Material [www.npr.org]
Folksonomies: meditation pain
Folksonomies: meditation pain
1
23 JAN 2011
Attention is the Fundamental Literacy
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Rheingold, Howard (January, 2010), Attention is the Fundamental Literacy, Edge Foundation, Inc., Retrieved on 2010-10-01Source Material [edge.org]
1
08 JAN 2011
A Modern Utopia
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Wells, H.G. (2004), A Modern Utopia, Project Gutenberg, New York, NY, Retrieved on 2010-11-01Source Material [www.gutenberg.org]
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