Mindfulness practices improve our ability to recognize error.
A recent study shows this by monitoring brain activity with an EEG.
The EEG can measure brain activity at the millisecond level, so we got precise measures of neural activity right after mistakes compared to correct responses. A certain neural signal occurs about half a second after an error called the error positivity, which is linked to conscious error recognition. We found that the strength of this signal is increased in the meditators relative to controls,” said Jeff Lin, co-author of the study linked just below. [emphasis mine](link to quote: How meditation can help you make fewer mistakes)
Few Buddhists will be surprised at the general findings of this study.
Error recognition is what first got me to read about this study.
The findings became even more interesting to me when I saw the statement about the one-half-second error positivity response in the quote above.
Error recognition or the recognition that one might be making an error is key to successful FIML practice.
The second key is to act on our recognition quickly, within a few seconds if possible.
I have always figured it takes about a half second more or less to feel a slight disturbance that tells us we might be forming a wrong impression about what someone is saying or doing. That we might be making an error.
It is this disturbance that tells us it is time to do a FIML query. Virtually every time I do a proper FIML query I find I am either flat out wrong or wrong enough to want to revise my original impression.
In the past, I have called the slight disturbance mentioned above a “jangle,” a term I don’t really like because it makes the response sound stronger than what it is. I suppose I could refer to it as the “error positivity response,” but that would require an explanation every time I used it.
[Edit: I have decided to solve this problem this way: A jangle is basically a trigger. The word jangleis usedrather than triggerbecause the word trigger normally places too much responsibility on the speaker. A jangle should be understood as an internal emotional or psychological trigger that the listener 100% owns until it has been queried about. In most cases, partners will find that their jangles largely or entirely belong to their own psychologies and not their partner’s.]
In Buddhism, a jangle is probably the second of the five skandhas—sensation.
Buddhist practice will definitely make you more aware of the second skadha or “error positivity response.”
By being aware of this response in conversation with a trusted partner, FIML practice helps us take our mindfulness to a new level by providing us with the opportunity to ask our partner about their intentions. In this way, we check our own mental work for error.
If this is done quickly enough to preserve clear memories of 1) your “error positivity response” and 2) your partner’s memory of what was in their working memory at that moment THEN you both have one of the few psychological facts you can both be sure of.
Facts of this sort are not just psychologically of great significance, they are also of philosophical significance because they really are one of the very few fact-types you can truly know about your own idiosyncratic existence; your own very weird being.
I believe this is why the Buddha emphasized the importance of the moment.
FIML practice explodes the moment or expands it to include more reliable information (your partner’s input). And this allows both of you to do a really good analysis of what just happened, what that moment entailed.
And doing that many times, will help both of you see how you really are. It will help you break fee from erroneous psychological frames or theoretical misinterpretations of any type.
Former chief of staff of the Ukrainian Army’s elite Azov Brigade Lieutenant Colonel Bogdan Krotevich has claimed that Ukrainain forces in the disputed Donbas regions are facing an increasingly catastrophic situation, with Russian units poised to achieve two major encirclements.
“I honestly don’t know what exactly you are being told, but I can tell you: the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka line is, without exaggeration, a complete f**k up.
And this f**k up has been growing for a long time, getting messier every day,” he stated in an open letter to President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 11.
Pokrovsk has been surrounded by Russian forces, while Konstantinovka is facing semi-encirclement, he added, sharing a map which he claimed showed the situation in the area, which corroborated media reports of a major Russian breakthrough to the north of Pokrovsk.
One of the alleged aggressors in the viral Cincinnati brawl has been hit with a federal charge, according to authorities.
Montianez Merriweather, 34, was accused of being the ‘catalyst’ in the July 26 beating in downtown Cincinnati that left six people injured and caused widespread outrage on social media.
Across the US, drinking rates have plunged to their lowest level in 90 years.
Only 54 percent of adults said they had a drink last month, according to Gallup data.
That’s the lowest level since the polling group began collecting the figures in 1939.
Only 46 percent of Republican voters reported having any alcohol in all of last year, a one third drop from 2023.
By comparison Democrat drinkers only decline by five percent in the same period.
‘Americans’ drinking habits are shifting amid the medical world’s reappraisal of alcohol’s health effects,’ Gallup said of the findings.
‘After decades of relative steadiness in the proportion of US adults who drink, [we have] documented three consecutive years of decline in the US drinking rate as research supporting the ‘no amount of alcohol is safe’ message mounts.’
Listening to the ranting of a friend who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), I am struck by two things:
he gives reasons for his anger
his reasoning or abstract understanding of his predicament is ridiculous
(His rant was recorded and sent to me by a third party who is trying to help.)
With that as a starting point, consider the various ways abstract reasoning or solid abstract paradigms can compensate for or mask mental illness. Not all of it is pretty.
For example, serial killers often mask their illnesses for decades by holding fast to the appearance of normalcy while secretly indulging their madness.
Less bad are career criminals who act with savagery in less direct ways, through hit men, poisons, theft, fraud, and so on.
There is a wide spectrum between serial killers and normally inoffensive people.
It is reasonable to see all cultures as fundamentally abstract paradigms that mask and allow for madness among large groups of people.
A culture, after all, is nothing more than a Lowest-Common-Denominator system of communication; an LCD semiology. Consider how many cultures are grotesquely narcissistic.
Personality is much the same whether it conforms well or not to whichever cultural semiology it inhabits.
From this point of view, enshrining diversity only ensures a wider array of mad people. Identity politics is the same; just more ways for mad people to function, more room for them to run free; more abstract paradigms to mask their underlying chaos.
That is a decent modern restatement of the First and Second Noble Truths: life is suffering because we are crazy.
The Third and Fourth Noble Truths tell us that the way out of being crazy is to use our reason better; to understand why we are crazy; that clinging to LCD semiologies can’t ever work.
A philosophical psychologist might rightly say that a mad mind open to reason will gradually become well.
My friend with BPD can reason, but his reasoning is really bad. It’s selfish, marinated in anger, and not open to contrary views. But even he can do it if he clings to reason and evidence.
Abstract reasoning and paradigms such as Buddhism, science, other religions, atheism, psychology, or philosophy can lead us out of madness if we use them diligently.
Diligence or perseverance is one of the most important virtues in Buddhist practice. Wisdom is the most important. Compassion is probably the most famous Buddhist virtue but compassion without wisdom or diligence is not good and can even be dangerous.
Indeed, my BPD friend frequently and loudly demands unreasonable compassion from others. And that is one of the most obvious flaws in the way he thinks about himself, the way he reasons.
American Buddhist Net 