Make our brains FOSS! Why can’t I just tell my brain that now is sleeping time and it will just sleep?!

  • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
    54·
    3 hours ago

    • Meditation is one way of getting control of your brain.

    • Yoga and Tai Chi is a way of control your brain by focusing on your body.

    • Recite a mantra is another way.

    • Daily routines is also an auto-pilot way of getting control of your brain. (This one is good if you have trouble getting asleep(

    You can train those methods consciously and understand the mechanics of how the controls work. Once understood and footpaths set (meditation, daily routines), you can switch between these controls if needed. Or force a thought reset (mantra)

    It’s not a secret and known since ages. It’s just that people are too lazy to train. And may be prefer the comfortable auto-pilot way of living.

    • MTK@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      5 minutes ago

      While I understand what you are saying, I think that labeling everyone who can’t keep a routine as “lazy” is a bit pointless, and very wrong.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
      2·
      36 minutes ago

      Meditation is one way of getting control of your brain.

      I suspect that most people who have a meditation practice would disagree with this assertion.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    19·
    6 hours ago

    You actually can modify your “software”, though there’s limits. Can’t really swap the kernel at all, and the OS is a bitch to alter, but the DE is totally doable. We even have bug fixers, called therapists.

    Now, deleting old programs is hard, but there are tricks to reset your clock, assuming the hardware is both functional and running a standard configuration. Some folks are just wired different, so playing with the clock results in blue screens at inopportune moments.

    • untorquer@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 hour ago

      This except the “software” you’re patching is actually hardware.

      Oddly enough, a not insubstantial amount of our runtime is done in the peripherals.

      Meanwhile we have many subroutines running in each cell with dedicated hardware and compute, and even these can be edited to some degree through psychological means as well as nutrition and exercise.

    • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      4 hours ago

      This is exactly what needs to be said. Thank you!

      When I did my 4 years of attachment therapy, and I gave it everything I had, I could literally feel the structure of my brain changing.

      Not thought patterns changing (which they did) I’m talking about the actual physical structure of my brain. New pathways were forged and old ones closed forever. It very much reminded me of how I could feel my brain developing when I was teaching myself to program at the age of 13-16… and thinking so hard that my brain felt like it was literally overheating.

      It’s a crazy experience to have as a human - to literally not be able to construct old thought, or emotion frameworks, because the physical structure required for them doesn’t exist anymore. To have memories reduced to “that happened” while no longer being able to recall any relevant details.

  • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
    2·
    3 hours ago

    What does it even mean to say “I own my brain”? What is this “I” that’s doing the owning?

    From my point of view it just seems like brain exists and that brain is having a subjective experience. The sense of self is just one of those experiences. It’s not real - there’s no self located within the brain. Atleast not that we know of.

  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
    52·
    9 hours ago

    Sorry, legacy code and technical debt. Please check in with us in ~2000 years or so, we might have the next minor bugfix version up by then.

      • very_well_lost@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        8 hours ago

        🎶 One hundred and ninety nine bugs in the code, one hundred and ninety nine bugs! 🎶

        🎶 *You take one down, patch it around, six hundred and forty-eight bugs in the code!*🎶

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        7 hours ago

        Looks back at the mountain of dead equipment that was used, tested, built, redesigned, failed or didn’t function in order to get to this point

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
      16·
      9 hours ago

      Patch Notes: Fixed a memory leak. But that caused the sleep Guage to overflow back to 0 constantly. Waiting for the next software upgrade in 10,000 years to fix it.

  • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
    19·
    8 hours ago

    You can train it but it requires a lot of boring manual entries and the model may deviate if you ever stop.

  • OneCardboardBox@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    16·
    8 hours ago

    There’s a JTAG port in the base of the cortex for pushing firmware updates. Problem is, we lost the signing keys back in the neolithic. Thag got crushed by a mammoth before we had a chance to invent written language and write documentation.

  • thefartographer@lemm.ee
    11·
    7 hours ago

    you own it but also can’t really modify it

    Lemme introduction you to my friends: drugs, TBIs, and dementia

    • MTK@lemmy.worldOP
      51·
      9 hours ago

      I did hear something similar in the past, care to elaborate?

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
        16·
        8 hours ago

        Don’t just do it without serious research on the evidence for it and high confidence that your source knows what they’re doing. There are many types of mushrooms that are very poisonous, and collecting wild mushrooms isn’t something to play games with without appropriate education. And to make it better, there are a real number of AI slop books/resources muddying the water.

        But there’s a lot of evidence that even single doses have meaningful, lasting benefits.

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
        132·
        9 hours ago

        Psilocybin is basically an antidepressant, and anti-anxiety drug. Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in keeping it illegal bcz they can’t make money off it. You can literally find psilocybin on cow poo.

        • shneancy@lemmy.world
          8·
          8 hours ago

          unless you want to grow them yourself, then they require the most sterile environment

          in the wild tho? yeah cow shit will do :)

          • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
            5·
            6 hours ago

            Not particularly sterile, just sanitary. Grain starter needs to be pasteurized, trich needs to be removed from bulk spawn.

            I know lemmy hates reddit but r/unclebens will get anyone on the road to growing their own scooby snax. (Legal in Colorado, check local codes and laws, no refunds under any circumstances, do not bitch to me if you get busted)

        • TinidrilEnglish
          71·
          7 hours ago

          Psilocybin is basically an antidepressant, and anti-anxiety drug.

          Except that it’s totally not either of those things. In fact, it can sometimes cause panic attacks if taken ill advisedly.

          Psilocybin and other psychedelics reveal to us a lot of the inner workings of our minds. That can help people to correct unhealthy thinking when they are willing to do the work. That can lead to long term reduction of anxiety and depression, but only through addressing root causes.

            • TinidrilEnglish
              2·
              3 hours ago

              From the article you linked.

              researchers report that the substantial antidepressant effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy, given with supportive psychotherapy, may last at least a year for some patients.

              So, essentially what I said. There is a difference between an anti-anxiety or anti-depressive drug and a drug that’s useful in therapy to treat anxiety or depression.

              Anti-depressive and anti-anxiety drugs function on their own, but only so long as the drug is active in your system. Psychedelics allow self reflection to enhance traditionally non-drug therapies. They can even lead to the exact opposite results when used in an improper mind set or setting.

            • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org
              1·
              3 hours ago

              Still - take with care. Lost one friend to psilos & Lsd (he couldn’t adjust to reality anymore), another one lost to alcohol and the last one for all the other mixed shit. Waiting for the fourth lost soul.

              Not advocating being sober - I‘m older than 40 and happy that weed is legal in Germany now and sometimes a smiley pill. I‘m just saying - take it with care.

      • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        6 hours ago

        Others have said it more eloquently that I can but tl;dr:

        You know how you have an id and an ego in your thinking meat? A correct dose of one of the "right’ hallucinogens will just melt that pesky ego motherfucker. One doesn’t need to achieve ego death to receive benefits.

      • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
        2·
        7 hours ago

        There are as many “explanations” for the efficacy of psilocybin as there are models of consciousness. The one I like is that the drug causes an increase in neuroplasticity and that allows your brain to reroute its network more easily. I find it does great for helping me decontextualize experiences and strip them of the heavy negative emotional baggage some experiences have.

        I don’t know, I’ve heard it works well alongside therapy and having sessions to help integrate the experience. I usually just microdose and meditate with an intention a few timesin the week before a legit trip and let the drugs do their thing. Sometimes it’s unpleasant in the moment but I always start a timer when I dose so I have seen over the years that the unpleasant parts are only like 15 minutes to an hour of the 6ish hour experience. Those 15 minutes can feel like forever because it messes with one’s perception of time but even that gets less weird with practice.

        They are powerful little guys though. I went to church after my most recent trip because it felt really right. That was odd since I’m not a practicing Christian anymore although I don’t hate religion by any means I’ve just never gotten a lot out of it.