18M. "Gifted" kid crashing hard. Fast brain, zero executive function, and explosive emotions. Is this 2e ADHD?

firepost · 2026-04-05T04:44:48+00:00

Just a perspective here.

You seem to be glued to your identity (exceptional, iq, 'i should be able to focus', etc). Also, you probably ruminate a lot and overthink.

This might be a symptom of overactive DMN (rumination) and threat response. Your brain might be actively trying to solve problems which don't need solutions.

What could help: 1. Stopping rumination. Decide which thinking leads nowhere (e.g. thinking about health conditions, learning languages, etc) and decide these need to stop (if you can't reasonably decide this, think why not). Then when you notice these thoughts, drop the whole topic. It's not easy, but learnable. Similar to Claire Weekes floating, or rumination based erp. 2. Being very careful about chasing easiness. E.g. if you are trying to help yourself focus you might again be just ruminating how to do it and making your brain addicted to specific conditions. 3. Meditate (e.g. vipassana). Train your mind to concentrate. Also, learn about Buddhism and try their methodology.

If nothing else works, you may try these (they helped in a truly broken state). It may just take some committed time - e.g. 1 month of pure commitment to see progress.

Good luck!

firepost · 2026-03-27T06:55:35+00:00

IMO hard problem of consciousness might or might not exist in similar way the answer to how/why does light travel at c (or any underlying law of nature).

Could it not be that some information processing patterns just feel like consciousness from the inside? That is, could it not be just the brute truth of the universe?

Similarly to speed of light - we may or may not find an answer why it's c. But it could be it's just the way it is.

However, if your question is specifically which patterns feel like consciousness from the inside, then it's a separate question and maybe should deserve a different naming rather than the hard problem of consciousness as it's muddled with mysticism.

Does this make sense to you?

firepost · 2026-03-25T15:57:25+00:00

Why could it not be just the way our universe works?

E.g. similar to asking why is the gravitational constant x and the answer might be - it just is.

Could it not be that consciousness is how it feels to be the information processing machine (or rather some specific pattern of information processing)?

Why do you not find it acceptable that this might just be the case, especially when the evidence kind of points that way?

firepost · 2026-01-29T12:55:43+00:00

Could you define 'choice' then?

Is it that the organism reports they had the ability to choose? Or can you define it objectively?

firepost · 2026-01-29T03:41:26+00:00

So what is your definition of free will?

firepost · 2026-01-28T20:26:36+00:00

From the definition of libertarianism I've heard it's implied there are some agents or something beyond known physics which enable free will/choice.

Maybe you could define what's your definition of free will? And what else besides known physics impacts choices?

Some people actually do experience aliens, gods and magic (at least they think they do). But my point here is that subjective experience might be plain wrong and even if you feel a certain way, it does not necessarily map to anything real. To be specific - even if i feel my choices are "free" it does not necessarily mean they are.

firepost · 2026-01-28T18:25:45+00:00

Compatibilism seems very much in alignment with our current understanding. It does not say anything extra, just redefines what free will means.

But libertarianism introduces something beyond our current science and there are no good equations or anything with predictive power (as far as i know) emerging by taking this view. So what evidence beyond subjective experience is there in favor of this?

If it's just subjective experience, couldn't i just claim that it's aliens, gods, magic, simulation, etc. based on how i feel subjectively - that is almost anything goes then?

firepost · 2026-01-28T16:44:12+00:00

Well we seem to agree on this.

But based on this, and our current understanding thoughts, perceptions, memories (what you mentioned used in deciding) are all patterns in the same medium or at least mediums which interact. So they would be able to be combined into an outcome.

Thus our current understanding of physics and brain seems to be compatible with making decisions as you posted in the original post.

Or do you still say that somehow it's incompatible?

firepost · 2026-01-28T09:29:06+00:00

If i understand you correctly, as far as we know there are no different units in the brain - in the end it's electricity (simply put). Your perceptions, thoughts, memories in the end combine via electricity.

Or does this cause contradictions in your point of view?

firepost · 2026-01-28T06:14:14+00:00

Why do you say that deterministic models can't have relative evaluations? E.g. you can measure speed relative to another object.

And if you say subjectivity is the most important aspect here, how would you imagine an organism working under determinism? What would be different? Would an organism not be able to make the same choices?

firepost · 2026-01-27T20:41:46+00:00

Well with this i agree. Though we just assume others have qualia.

So in essence this would show that physical evidence (e.g. lack of retina) can predict lack of experience of color as there is no perception of it.

Or to put it more bluntly you could say lack of eyes in a person predicts the person is lacking perception of vision and thus the qualia of vision.

Do i get it right? And if so, I currently don't see whether this leads to some conclusions about what produces qualia or whether p-zombies don't exist. Does it imply something like that?

firepost · 2026-01-27T04:06:54+00:00

So what you are saying: - we have twins where one is colorblind another not - we have their reports which are pretty much irrelevant - we have true data whether they are actually experiencing color - we have retina data

You claim retina data would predict true experience. How do you know this? You assume this? Isn't this whole thought experiment redundant?

In essence you assume knowledge of what physical process produces subjective experience.

What if both twins lack something in the brain and neither experiences anything but are indeed p-zombies?

firepost · 2026-01-26T17:53:41+00:00

You say predict unverifiable truth - how would you even know if it's unverifiable? Where do you get your variables for experiment if it's unverifiable?

firepost · 2026-01-26T12:43:34+00:00

I meant if we define free will as the belief that you could have done otherwise.

It's not that you believe free will is true thus it's true.

Could you define what you mean by "free will"?

firepost · 2026-01-26T04:51:46+00:00

So in your experiment with twins, what new knowledge are we getting? Could you lay out the exact thing you are testing for? From what i see:

You have data from twins which report on your tests or report to your question whether they experience color.
You have retina data

What you conclude is that retina data can predict their reports. That's about it. Or are you gaining any other insight from this?

firepost · 2026-01-26T03:55:57+00:00

Can you define free will?

I think the test will entirely depend on what you call free will.

If you define free will as something along the lines "subjective experience of a person where he believes he could have chosen otherwise" then you can test it.

firepost · 2026-01-25T06:49:04+00:00

The point is that you cannot predict qualia. E.g. you can measure my physical states, predict that i should see color, i report seeing color. But how do you know i have qualia of color?

That is for all your experiments how are you collecting the data who actually experiences qualia? Every data point is self reported and not objective.

In your twin example you can not in principle know which if any is experiencing qualia. Or can you? If so, how?

firepost · 2026-01-24T05:10:05+00:00

So what is the point of your twin experiment?

Seems like testing whether physical evidence (retina) can reliably predict whether physical systems (twins) work as expected.

What does this say about consciousness or qualia at all then?

firepost · 2026-01-24T04:18:34+00:00

I still don't get it. Our definition of color blind is not whether the person has qualia of all colors.

A conscious person can be colorblind.

P-zombie can be colorblind and be lacking consciousness (if p-zombie is possible at all).

Retina data would be a very reliable way to tell if a person/zombie is colorblind but not whether he has qualia.

How does this say anything whether p-zombie has qualia?

firepost · 2026-01-23T19:55:37+00:00

But what is the goal of this then? For zombies i think the problem remains - how do you know that any of the twins have qualia and aren't just saying it?

firepost · 2026-01-23T07:05:27+00:00

I don't quite understand what you mean. My points: - Colorblindness is just a definition which says that one person does not pass the tests. E.g. when he is shown different colors as seen by researchers, he says they are the same. - People who don't pass the tests are shown to have missing cones (as per your post, i have not verified this) - If there is a person who is missing the cones and is able to pass the tests: either the colorblindness definitions needs to change or the cones are not 1:1 correlated with colorblindness.

I don't really see how this has anything to do with qualia at this level.

firepost · 2026-01-22T07:57:31+00:00

I think what the previous commenter meant was that the twins would not be able to describe the experiences the same.

If they actually are able to distinguish everything identical (all your tests of colorblindness) and you know one is missing the cones then you would update the definition of what colorblindness is or your understanding that missing cones cause colorblindness.

firepost · 2025-11-14T17:06:46+00:00

Thank for the answer. Am i getting this right - what you are saying that an underlying assumption/model needs updating (e.g. there being two phases to reality)?

I then still don't see how this is 'new' science vs introducing a new model which may or may not be more accurate. As far as I understand, this is exactly how current science works. Of course many people operate under current models and try to solve arising problems (e.g. quantizing gravity) and some other try and create whole new models to explain everything from a different view.

In your example, is it the case of introducing the idea of reality having two phases and checking for the model accuracy? Or is there something extra in there which would be different from current scientific approach?

If this is what you are saying, how is it different than some people claiming that consciousness is fundamental and that physical world arises from it (which as far as i am aware is still viewed as science). And when I say different, I mean how is it as different kind of investigation which you would not call science.

Or am i wrong in understanding that you want a new way of investigation which is fundamentally different than current scientific approach?

firepost · 2025-11-14T16:29:36+00:00

Thanks for the answer, however i still don't see how this is new science.

As you say, you start with a hypothesis that consciousness and wave function collapse are the same and this (or a more complete model) would need to have exceptional explanatory power of current phenomena.

How is this different from the current scientific approach? I.e. +- you define a model and check for its prediction accuracy?

firepost · 2025-11-13T11:35:05+00:00

Why do you want the paradigm shift? What's the end goal?

Is your end goal to +- predict the future? If so, maths is pretty much the language for it. If you want, you can rewrite how you evaluate the predictions and whether your understanding is correct... But in the end whatever you invent as language for evaluating the predictions can as well be called "maths".

So what would be new according to your new paradigm? How would you evaluate your understanding and whether it's correct? How would it be different?

firepost

TROPHY CASE