[lijok]

Amazing recount.

I was fortunate to learn in 2018, at a relatively young age, that my mental faculties are the most precious thing I have in life (after my wife ofcourse). It was a very simple accident; chasing a high I let my bike get too fast going downhill on a wet road, a car on the other side was oncoming, I break, the back wheel slips out from under me, I hit my head on the road (with a helmet on). A bruised knee, elbow and shoulder, bit of pain, no damage to the bike, so I get up and continue. 15 minutes later I get home, a sharp migraine sets in, and suddenly, I realize, I can't remember how I got home. In fact, I can't remember most of last week. Luckily an MRI, an OK from a doctor and a couple of weeks later my memory returns and I'm no worse for the wear.

In that moment, when I realized I couldn't recall how I got home, the worst panic I have ever had set in. I've had two close calls with drowning and was in a car crash in the past, and have never felt the panic I had felt in that moment, just sitting comfortably at home, realizing my brain no longer works. I wasn't scared I had a brain bleed or something and would die, I was scared I would lose my mental faculties.

Since then my outlook on life has taken a complete turn. I've become a lot more cognizant of how I spend my time and what issues I engage with mentally.

What we have is precious, it can dissapear in a second, on an otherwise perfect day.

[jongjong]

I had a similar moment when I was 16 and had my first migraine aura... Really bad one. I was looking at a billboard and I realized that I couldn't read anymore. Then I looked at people and part of their faces were missing from my field of view even though I was looking straight at them. Then I started feeling tingling in my fingers. I thought it was a stroke. No, just a bad migraine aura. I've had one every 6 to 12 months since though rarely as bad as that first one.

Coming to terms with the fallibility of your own mind is a valuable experience. I think it has helped me to be more rational. Once you accept that your mind can be dysfunctional, it becomes trivial to accept that your mind can be wrong. The way I see it, being wrong is also a temporary dysfunction of the mind.

[cjameskeller]

Wow, I've had this exact experience, as well! Two or three bad ones, with all the rest consisting of:

- a slight odd taste (this is my "early warning sign"), - then the vision loss (which is so hard to describe, because the missing portion doesn't become black/white/blurry/etc, it's just gone), - and sometimes the tingling fingers.

The worst one, which happened while I was in Spanish class at school, began with those symptoms, but then I noticed I couldn't understand the Spanish instructions on the worksheet we'd just been given, even though I'm usually good with languages. I went to read the English "cheater" instructions on the other side, and my ability to read & understand English drained away while I was in the middle of reading. I felt that something was very wrong at that point, and stood up to tell my teacher that I needed to go to the nurse, but as soon as I stood up, I realized I no longer knew how to transfer my thought into my teacher's mind (not only the ability, but even the concept of spoken language had vanished!) ...So I just sat back down and waited it out.

It is quite the experience...

[toss1]

>>a temporary dysfunction of the mind

Interesting

Seems the dysfunction could be either intrinsic, as in mis-processing data/information that is present, or extrinsic, as in not having or failing to obtain a suitable set of data/information on the topic.

Does this match your model?

[jongjong]

I believe it is a purely visual processing issue because, when I get a migraine aura, I can think and reason and communicate as normal. I walk normally too, I don't feel dizzy. It's only that parts of my visual field are missing. The missing parts seem to shift like blobs in a lava lamp so I can't just turn my eyes to 'look around them'. Also because visual info is missing (not blacked out or blurred out), it makes it impossible to figure out how much I should turn my eyes to look around 'it'... It's like a spacial distortion in my field of view. I wonder if this is a similar experience to dyslexia? Though for me it's only temporary and affects everything I see including faces... But who knows maybe dyslexics also have this issue but don't realize it because they don't know better?

I can still recognize people even though I can't see their face fully. It's like my subconscious is still seeing the full face.

[toss1]

>>It's like my subconscious is still seeing the full face.

Very interesting; that reminds me of a phenomena I learned about in a college neuroscience class, from studies of people who are cortically blind, as in their visual cortex is dead/nonfunctional, but their eyes and the rest of their brain work (e.g., from a brain injury localized to the back of their head where the visual cortex is located).

You can also present them with a forced choice test, such as a panel with big stripes either horizontal or vertical, and require them to say if it is horizontal or vertical. Of course the initial response is "I can't see it, so I can't say". But with a forced choice, they get it right something like 85% of the time — obviously far better than the chance results we'd get with blindfolded subjects.

It turns out that (at least the working understanding at the time) is that the brain has different circuits that use info from the optic nerve to tell the eyes where to track and look. E.g., this will get the eyes to track moving objects, or focus along the edges, etc. When those are still working, the brina can still somehow subconsciously access some of that knowledge from those different brain areas.

I wonder if this is relevant to the phenomena you described?

[balder1991]

I have these auras ever since young too, but it’s somewhat rare and for me it’s quite related to anxiety. It always lasts like 6-7 minutes in which I usually stop doing whatever I’m doing and prepare for a mild headache following it.

[Workaccount2]

+1 for wearing a helmet. I see so many people riding (both bicycles and even motorcycles) without one. Totally insane since even a minor accident can turn you into a drooling blob with an otherwise minor bump on the head.

[hwbehrens]

Like the GP (and most people, I assume) I really value my mental faculties, but more relevant in my opinion is that in terms of time and often money, your collective knowledge and education is probably the most expensive thing you've invested in. To not do the bare minimum to protect that investment is incomprehensible to me.

My friends will buy ergonomic keyboards, standing desks, monitor arms, etc. to keep them healthy and productive (which is important), but not wear a helmet because "they look dumb". Without a working brain, none of that other stuff will matter! I always ask them, 'Are you expecting to find a partner while you're on the bike? Who are you trying to impress?'

[sfn42]

Do you really want a partner whose criteria is doing dumb shit? I mean if a woman doesn't want me because I wear a helmet I figure that's me dodging a bullet

[anal_reactor]

> but not wear a helmet because "they look dumb"

It's not about looking dumb. It's about ergonomics. Sure, helmets make cycling marginally safer, but they also make it considerably more tedious, which results in people simply deciding not to cycle at all, which results in decrease of both public health, and safety of cyclists.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/26subr/til_t...

[D-Coder]

"There are only two kinds of paranoia: Total... and _insufficient_."

[tim333]

There are a number of factors with cycle safety. Going slowly can have a similar risk level to going faster with a helmet. You can wear a helmet and still end up like Schumacher.

I just got off my bike in London, no helmet but typical speeds of 10 mph or so. Most cycle deaths here are crushed by trucks where a helmet doesn't help much.

[cowthulhu]

I'm not arguing that speed plays a factor, but you should still wear a helmet.

I know two people who had brain damage (like, serious damage that persists years later) from low speed falls - one was literally standing still, and the fall sent them to the hospital for a week. The other one was low speed, just starting off after stopping at the bottom of an uphill section. Not sure the exact details of what happened, but same story - fall -> hospital -> permanent loss of cognitive abilities and some change to personality.

Totally agree that if a truck runs you over, helmet probably won't do much. But a helmet will totally be the difference between an embarassing fall with a few minor scrapes, and one of the most (negatively) impactful moments of your life.

[tmnvix]

Would you argue that the woman in the article should have worn a helmet?

[cowthulhu]

The woman in the article was driving a car, so no?

[cainxinth]

> What we have is precious, it can dissapear in a second, on an otherwise perfect day.

Family friend was an accountant in NYC that used to ride around on a scooter with no helmet. Fell and hit his head one day and literally lost the ability to do complex math, permanently.

[FredPret]

Human cognition belongs on the timeline of significant events in the evolution of universe.

We may be only in the tiniest of corners (for now), but probably nothing beats it in complexity (... for now).

[Helmut10001]

If you ever observed animals, e.g. just observing how chickens socialize, it becomes absolutely clear that they have similar cognition and perception than humans.

[homefree]

Parrots are a more fitting example imo, 300 million years of separation and they have complex cognition that evolved independently.

Crows are also quite smart too.

[Solvency]

my 3 chickens have deep and complex social dynamics all while being able to pinpoint grains of quinoa off the ground faster than a robot while being able to spot the faintest outline of the tiniest potential threatening hawk 2 miles away in the sky, fully discerned from various crows flying around that don't phase them at all. their little brains are processing far more than me.

[chankstein38]

I don't know how scientifically factual this is, it was presented as such but it's hard to believe it in a literal sense but there's a Benn Jordan video called "How The World SOUNDS To Animals" about how different animals perceive time differently. Like flies perceive life many times more slowly than we do which is, allegedly, why they seem to get away when we swat at them, no matter how quickly we move.

If that's true, I'd expect they just perceive time more slowly than we do which is why they're able to appear so much more quick. I still agree they've got a lot going on in those brains I just think this aspect of it is interesting!

[wongarsu]

Humans have reaction times on the order of 100-200ms. But interestingly if you measure reaction by you moving your hands or torso about 10%-20% of that time is just the time it takes for the signal to travel from your brain to the right muscle. Nerves aren't all that fast. That's why many reflexes happen outside the brain, closer to the relevant body part.

With that in mind, it would make a lot of sense if time perception scaled with body size. If you are a big elephant signals need to travel very far, and your muscles have to overcome a lot of inertia. If you can't react quickly anyways you don't need to perceive time as quickly. A fly has little inertia, fast signal times because of the short distances, fast processing because there just are fewer neurons, so there is more advantage to perceiving time more quickly

[Helmut10001]

I can imagine the same would apply to any Super-intelligence. To the singularity, time would simply pass immensely slow because of the parallel computation power, which to us humans on the other hand would look super intelligent.

[chankstein38]

That's a really interesting way to put it! Thank you! That makes a lot of sense!

[prewett]

Flies feel the rush of air from our oncoming hand and get out of the way, just like we look up from our book (phone, these days) when we feel air from the oncoming subway train we are waiting for.

The secret to killing flies is that they have to fly up first before they can fly away, so you (slowly) put your hands in front and behind them and "clap" them. They feel the air and lift off, right into the center of your oncoming hands.

[FredPret]

Your chicken has a small neural net tuned for hawk-watching and speck-pecking. This can be extremely fast and efficient; just don't ask it to compute an integral or invent the diesel engine or understand a complex web of social relationships or remember its cousin's birthday.

[DiggyJohnson]

Why would you expect the last sentence to be true? Wouldn't you expect the brains of chickens to be vast, and yours to be even more so?

[yawpitch]

Why, precisely? Larger volume?

Don’t know about you, but over the years I’ve met a lot of humans that can’t obviously outthink a higher-end chicken.

[DiggyJohnson]

I was asking seriously. But yea, I think there seems to be aspects of human intelligence not shared by our chicken cousins. Both are remarkable, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to believe a chicken is smarter than a human besides misanthropy.

[yawpitch]

> but probably nothing beats it in complexity

Spend a little while seriously watching an octopus, and you may move that needle.

[sva_]

They're very intelligent for sure, but their neurons are also a lot bigger. About 500 million neurons in an octopus (whole body) vs 86 billion in a human (just the brain.)

[yawpitch]

Size and quantity of neurons isn’t known to determine intellectual capacity, plus for all we know that’s just RAM… they live a few years, max, we live considerable longer, maybe they literally don’t need as much long term storage to fill with, for example, misplaced nostalgia for 1980s toy commercials?

[skeaker]

I would argue that having so much capacity for memory retention that our brains can spare space on frivolous things like that is marvelous in and of itself. Retention of information is arguably as important as the capacity for information. Humans passing down stories for generations, then inventing the written word to preserve ideas for years and year, is itself a beautifully complex thing.

[yawpitch]

Marvelous, certainly… unique, not necessarily. Some corvids appear capable of passing down skills (tool use) and memories (which humans have harmed previous generations), and just because we lack the ability to understand their stories doesn’t mean dogs, birds, and octopi aren’t passing down just as immense and marvelous communal knowledge via scent, sound, and touch.

As for the written word… I’d call that a running experiment. It’s capable of beauty, certainly… but it’s also capable of Meta (née Facebook) and X (née Twitter). Of course the fact that we can readily coin new terms for new situations — I hereby dub the use of X by its current owner _muskturbation_ — is intrinsically complex, but I’m not sure it isn’t also a direct pathway to both babble and Babble and, ultimately, species-ending atrocity.

[jtolster]

Are you intimating that an octopus is more complex than human cognition? Or just that an octopus is complex?

[yawpitch]

I mean that it appears that octopus “cognition” — dangerously a word we control and can easily twist to only apply to us — is almost necessarily more complex than human cognition, if for no other reason than they seem to have distributed their “thinking” — another dangerously solipsistic word — into their arms and out into their body, well away from merely their brains.

[spacetimeuser5]

>>realizing my brain no longer works.

So is it really you realizing your brain no longer works, or part of the brain with ownership of the rest realizing its brain no longer works?

P>S> To get still a full spectrum, let's not forget (rather rare) cases when people with 80%< of the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid due to hydrocephaly were able to do uni math or work as accountants.