[retrac]

I once found a loved one in grave condition, without a pulse. What followed was like a surreal movie that has its frames out of order. I remember a thought of surprise at basically flinging furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my body at that point. I began CPR. Muscle memory is right. I was not really conscious throughout most of it.

One of the few things that resembles a thought during the entire episode is something like "you cannot think about this right now if you do you will collapse". A jumble of eternal instants. It dragged on. And on. And on. Eventually, very eventually, the paramedics arrived. I had another thing resembling a thought. I can collapse now. I can look away now. I have no basically no memory until the next day when I saw her, awake, in the hospital.

I know the day and time it happened. I checked the logs after. The paramedics took less than 5 minutes to arrive. But it was outside the normal linearity of my experience. It doesn't fit between the day before and the day after. For a while, the jumbled movie would play in my head, involuntarily. I think I was trying to make sense of it, fit it in, when it really doesn't fit. Experiences and memories I couldn't easily process because I didn't really experience them consciously when they occurred? Maybe something like that. It went away with time, and does not bother me these days, but descriptions of PTSD do make a lot more sense to me now.

[DoreenMichele]

I remember a thought of surprise at basically flinging furniture out of the way. Very much a passenger in my body at that point.

This is a known phenomenon called an amygdala hijack.

This emotional brain activity processes information milliseconds earlier than the rational brain, so in case of a match, the amygdala acts before any possible direction from the neocortex can be received.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

[somrand0]

> I was not really conscious throughout most of it.

I disagree. hear me out. I think you were just using a non-linguistic mode of consciousness.

We are far too accustomed to thinking and being (and imagining that we are) made out of words, or things that can be put into words. But I have chosen to believe that this is merely one amongst various others ways to think.

Language is a tool. A human being is not made out of words (from a language). Nonetheless, a lot of what we imagine ourselves to be is made out of words (from a language).

Let's not keep on making the mistake that what we are is something that can be *completely* put into words.

[bemmu]

Know the feeling of when you know what you want to say, but haven't yet decided the words to say that in (especially in foreign languages)? When it's something that you just have to do/think and not speak, you can resist putting it into words.

For example if you're thinking "I should go to the store and buy Christmas presents", it isn't really necessary to verbalize this with your inner voice, if you're not about to say that to anyone.

Personally I find this hard to do for more than a few moments; the habit of verbalizing is too automatic. Maybe those of us who say they have no inner voice are really good at this.

I guess the AI version would be to operate in a latent state instead of always doing the forward pass all the way to words.

[kirsebaer]

You must be doing this all the time because even if you verbalize some stuff you cannot possibly verbalize everything that is happening in your mind.

[parthianshotgun]

Any further reading for the uninitiated?

[chairhairair]

Wittgenstein