Oxford: thinking and reading
I have been investigating how to learn things, and am told that there is a ‘diffuse mode’ and a ‘focused mode’ that are relevant, and the diffuse mode characteristically arises when you are showering or exercising or something. I’m not sure this matches my experience—when I’m showering or exercising, I more often find myself having slipped into some kind of inane fantasizing mode, in which I daydream about saying things to people, or being a widely beloved musician.
I do however recognize an interesting and useful mode of vague thought when I’m reading. I start out paying attention to the words written, but then they sort of go out of focus and my mind approaches some other topic. I want to say it ‘ascends’ to it, because these thoughts often seem as if they are from up high where the topic can be properly seen, where it is easy to grab it and move it around and cut straight to the heart of it. This frequently leads to novel and useful thoughts. For instance I remember one time I was reading something and in the middle I realized that I had stopped paying attention but had come up with some interesting new-to-me consideration about how ethics worked (or was it consciousness? something like that).
Here’s a more typical example. Before writing this I was trying to read this two page paper about producing bright flashes of light. During reading it, my thoughts included:
vague potential plans to become good at learning lots of concrete things, and also to live in my current house for a long time, but to travel, and to be a competent traveler
a vague plan to go to Nepal, no wait Japan, no, but also not China, Thailand? Asia somewhere.
the concern that I would go to places in Asia with drugs that are legal in places I am used to being, but not there, and I get into trouble (e.g. apparently adderall?)
imagining of being on the plane and realizing that I have accidentally brought soon-to-be-illegal drugs with me
a vague commitment to not book travel to Asia without at that time doing something to ensure that I remember to deal with this issue at that time.
Sadness to do with my family somehow
The sense of the drawing room in the house where I grew up, and the garden through the window, and a sense of the pond in the back garden. The sense of an old dog that I used to have, somehow mixed with those images, though I think she was never there.
The thought of what old dogs are like, and something someone said about them.
That I haven’t done a thing about cryonics that I meant to do.
The plan to write this blog post, including I think some rehearsal of the content of this blog post.
An effort to perceive what these thoughts are like that I have when I’m reading, including observation that at the time they involved the sound of my voice speaking, but perhaps without particular words, though it was very clear what it was about, and something like images of for instance the pond and the living room.
Some feeling of rising unease, seemingly related to concern that these thoughts about what my thoughts are like, to put into a blog post about fantasizing about writing a blog post while reading, that I’m merely fantasizing about while reading about an entirely different topic, are in perhaps too complicated a situation, and something bad might happen to my mind.
I don’t have that much idea what the paper said.
I think failing to listen to a lecture can have a similar effect, under the right conditions.
Lately I have been interested in improving my reading skill, and on the lookout for things that might affect reading success. I wonder if engaging broad-ranging thoughts about other topics while I read is a problem. I’m not actually sure how often it happens. If it’s a major issue, then maybe that’s fine: if I knew that I read things half as fast as other people, but that I spend the extra time having interesting thoughts, I’d probably go for that, assuming they are interesting enough.
Do other people find unsuccessful reading particularly ripe for thinking about all manner of other things?
(Sorry if this post lacks sense. I’m literally falling asleep, which is another great time for having broad-ranging thoughts, though for me not very useful or inspiring ones, and the class of thoughts that is accurate views about how to do grammar are poorly represented.)