Stabile and I got off on a branch in this thread, musing upon the "extra wide" lens that some ADDers seem to have attached to the eyes of their minds. I said it was like "seeing a tapestry whole while others see colors one strand at a time" and several others agreed. Stabile added his own wry PS when he said "[b]Any thread can always be reconstructed from the view of the tapestry, but the converse is obviously not true"which earned a big grin and nod from me in return.

The question is whether this "extra wide" or "meta" style of thinking is a "hallmark" of ADD, as some have suggested, or if it is just one of many routes towards the expression of ADD symptoms.

I do agree with the suggestion that many ADDults are "meta thinkers" but it's not my impression that the converse is true, i.e. that everyone with a "meta mind" will have symptoms of ADD or even that this style is true of the bulk of ADDers.

Part of the problem is that we don't have a good lexicon yet for describing these conceptual differences, much less for doing empirical studies. Some of this division we all know exists intuitively used to be portrayed as the difference between left and right brain. Today we know that the brain is too complex a distributed system with too much individual variance to be clumped that simply. But granting all that leaves us without a clear simple way to describe what we see.

I find it helpful, personally, to strip off the classic labels and just look at the functions. It's pretty clear that people tend to have an innate preference for working "bottom up" from specific to general, while others work "top down" from general to specific. That, I think, is the essence of the difference we are trying to describe. Meta thinkers are on the latter side, seeing the broad outlines of disparate but connected things before diving into specifics, and as a result are quite often able to spot connections across domains that more tightly focused folks might completely miss while they dwell on specifics.

To a tighter focusing "normal," someone with a meta mind might look inattentive by comparison. However what's closer to true is one is focused on forests while the other is looking at leaves. It's only because "most" people look at leaves for more of the time that the meta thinker may feel "deficient" for his/her lack of detail. But meta thinking is not in itself 'disordered'; it's simply a natural and preferred frame of reference for those who view the world in that fashion. Both approaches to conceptual processing have their costs and benefits. There's no right or wrong any more than there is in being right or left-handed. There is just more and less common.

But even this is still not sufficient, I think, to describe how most ADDers differ from non. It simply describes one of a host of causes that can produce "inattention" as a consequence. In other words, while many meta thinkers may qualify as "ADD" not everyone with ADD has a meta-thinking preference. But many ADDers DO have that preference and it's a shame that we are not yet equipped to speak of it in schools and teaching or even when dealing with therapists and have a prayer they will know what we are talking about, much less find it relevant {wry grin}.

The closest book I have seen to deal with some of this is the one on visual thinking by Thomas West. But I prefer "meta" to "visual" as a distinction since "visual" suggests that all "meta" processing is pictorial which is not the case. Meta thinking can be in words or pictures or both. What it distinguishes it as a processing style is not if it's verbal or visual, it's whether the content is more abstract than concrete, symbolic rather than literal, and driven by relevance rather than rules. In short, this thinking style underlies some of our most creative times.

Tammy chimed in on this thread branch also to note that she didn't think it applied to her because she is a 'simple' person. That is another common misunderstanding . Because meta-thinkers frequently have a talent for systems analysis and chaotic complexity, people who are not drawn to complexity think it doesn't apply. To me, the core difference is simply between focusing wide or focusing deep. If you focus wide, you may also be good at parsing complexity and viewing systems wholistically, but not every wide-angle thinker will be.

This is probably my longest post to date! I hope it made sense and I'm happy for any feedback :)

Are you in part then dealing with left and right brain operations? Isn't the left brain more apt to analyze and logically step through something, while the right hemisphere is more holistic and whole picture oriented. If I'm off correct me -- I'm trying to see if I understand where you're going and at the moment cognitively things are a bit out of balance and I'm really living up to my screen name.:rolleyes:

I know for myself I'm wonderful at seeing connections and that is how I remember things by cross referencing and networking them in my mind. I am an abysmal failure and stepping through things in a linear manner. Case in point was my WAIS -- I got a perfect score on recognizing similarities but couldn't put the pictures in the right order. This is so bad that I struggle with puzzles designed for first graders and have to ask my husband help me figure out what order the pictures in my 2nd grade daughter's books should be in. However, ask me to assess a kid for learning problems and I can reference the appropriate information from a number of fields and present it in a cohesive whole without preparation. I taught pretty much the same way -- know the whole subject and then shoot from the hip. In college, I couldn't write a paper until I had the whole feel of it -- then I could sit down and write the whole thing at once with little effort.

Am I in the ball park of this discussion, or lost somewhere out in center field near the highway?

Scattered

People in general have a lot of trouble dealing with multiple levels of abstraction. As a computer programmer, I can verify this first-hand. Usually about three and smokes starts coming out of my ears. Impaired short-term memory probably makes this even harder.

Also, something one of my college English professors told me, and that I have observed myself, is that very smart people tend to make lots of leaps in their writing because they were obvious to them, whereas "normal" people would consider those leaps unsupported or even unconnected.

There are some really smart people on these forums, and probably on a lot of the online ADHD gathering places. So couple difficulty dealing with multiple layers of abstraction with a keen intellect and tendency to make logical leaps, and we get the intellectual lemurs, leaping from one thought tree to another high above the forest, covering a lot of territory but only rarely walking on the ground.

Heya Carla,

How about squidging meta-phor and meta-though(t) together (as a container for the whole left/right 'berainnn thang') ...?... fond memories back to your halcyon first posts here :-) ... meta-phor and meta-thor in Halcyon ... kinda' reminds me of Thor and Loki in Valhalla --- an interesting antisyzygy {g} - on both ... *the level* of Norse mythology, since Thor and Loki were 'brothers', - and ... *the level* platform on which we must stand in order to gain an understanding of the mind (ADDer (and nonADDer by default.))

Recognizing this antisyzygy is of indubitable unequivocal undeniable and absolute* [*at least partially :-)] importance ... as we look down from our vantage point in your avatar at our minds, and wonder ...well... 'What on Earth is that all about?' alongside the more rhetorical ... 'Wait a minute --- you are my Earth?'

So in the midst of my verbiage, I believe that I'm suggesting that left/right brain thought metaphors, visual and verbal thinking metaphors, meta-phor and meta-thor metaphors for thought, all represent a fundamental antisyzygy which we have the capacity to see through, through to the mechanistic basis which underlies these seemingly contradictory aspects of the same 'berainnn thang' ... that thang being thunking.

If possible, I wonder whether I might interject and highlight a problem that we may run into, the problem of engaging in a discussion with two slightly different definitions for metathought. This problem may bite us as this discussion progresses. I think, Carla, that your usage is a little closer to what I describe as mmmetathought (the individual's experiential perspective of using their mmmetamind), whereas Tom&Kay use the terms in this form, but also in a more absolute and less subjective(non-pejoratively) sense (MMMetathought and MMMetamind), however, interestingly, with a similarly definable core structure in both cases. In some ways, I view a structure containing all aspects of reality that we can possibly encapsulate as MMMetamind, and our own subset of this as mmmetamind, with mmmetamind and mmmind differing in only 1 noteworthy aspect.

So ... systems ... :-) ... would Mademoiselle care for an apéritif?

Just three, from a list drawn from this forum, a list with more entries than even the most expansive of wine lists in the most expensive of wine bars.

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25444


Originally Posted by Carla B.
... to process the world on that many levels of complexity simultaneously ...

This is a very important statement and neatly summarizes pretty much everything that I have been trying to get at ...
e.g.
... ADDers as 'systems' thinkers,
...

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23179

So when Pia mentions she wants to immerse herself in 'Systems Biology', or Tom points us to Weinberg's text on 'Systems Theory', ... , not to mention the frequent clashes between the top-downs and bottom-ups ...in all out gang warfare... well it kinda' makes sense.

... and would Mademoiselle care for ice in her vermouth :-)

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11832


THE WINNER is ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Originally Posted by Jenni4476
Maybe we should call it...Inability to Look at Details Independently of the Big Picture Syndrome

How very refreshing - the crackle of 'ice' rattling around our 'tif', melting in our 'ver-mouth.'

I have high hopes for this thread, Carla ...
:-)
... and am kinda' hoping that a series of short sharp tugs by ADDers famed for their 'creativity' ... might allow us to unravel the very fabric of rrreality, once and of course for ALL; RRReality can wait.

Or perhaps to put it another way ... in the finest of spirits, drinking the finest of spirits in this post, around the finest of spirits that have inspired this thread ... and if you guys will forgive the blatant plagiarism, that ...
... the ADDer thought process differs from its nonADDer counterpart in that we may take a selection of as many spun coloured threads as we choose, and then dreamily weave them, dreamily unweave them and dreamily reweave them, at will, into a tapestry of lllife, or rrreality, where the goal is to weave the closest fit that we can achieve to the TTTapestry (although perhaps here, Tttapestry might be more suitable).
We therefore can potentially "...see a tapestry whole..." "...while others see colors one strand at a time...", however we can also "...see a tapestry whole..." and if we want ... "...see colors one strand at a time..." ...because... "Any thread can always be reconstructed from the view of the tapestry."
The difference then between ADD and nonADD thought processes, resides in the observation that ... "...the converse is ... not true ..."

SB.

Are you in part then dealing with left and right brain operations? Isn't the left brain more apt to analyze and logically step through something, while the right hemisphere is more holistic and whole picture oriented. If I'm off correct me -- I'm trying to see if I understand where you're going and at the moment cognitively things are a bit out of balance and I'm really living up to my screen name.:rolleyes:

I know for myself I'm wonderful at seeing connections and that is how I remember things by cross referencing and networking them in my mind. I am an abysmal failure and stepping through things in a linear manner. Case in point was my WAIS -- I got a perfect score on recognizing similarities but couldn't put the pictures in the right order. This is so bad that I struggle with puzzles designed for first graders and have to ask my husband help me figure out what order the pictures in my 2nd grade daughter's books should be in. However, ask me to assess a kid for learning problems and I can reference the appropriate information from a number of fields and present it in a cohesive whole without preparation. I taught pretty much the same way -- know the whole subject and then shoot from the hip. In college, I couldn't write a paper until I had the whole feel of it -- then I could sit down and write the whole thing at once with little effort.

Am I in the ball park of this discussion, or lost somewhere out in center field near the highway?

Scattered
I think the left brain is the center of logical thought, as in dealing with facts and numbers, while the right brain contains the creative center of your mind.

I think the left brain is the center of logical thought, as in dealing with facts and numbers, while the right brain contains the creative center of your mind.



Hmmmm kind a bit like …. Toes, heal, foot, shin, fibula, tibia, calf, patella, which one is allows a person to walk the best…….. okay all are parts of the lower leg some parts play a minor roles while others play a more of a major role all need to work together for optimum performance!!!!!

So it is with the brain…..

For those who prefer things written by “experts” I can speak your language as well and shall provide reference…….

Source:

“A Users Guide to the Brain”
John J. Ratey M.D.

Quote~~~~~~~~::=) (glasses)

Page 155-156

The motor system extends throughout the body, from neurons in the spinal cord to neurons in the brainstem and motor cortex. While a lot of brain talk has concerned the interaction between the left and right hemispheres, we really should bethinking more of the interaction between the front and the back of the brain---the sensory and motor divisions.

Page 205-206

Motor memory and skill learning are intimately interrelated. Interrupting either one of the systems interferes drastically with the other and like any other higher cognitive skill (such as language or emotion) motor memory is a global enterprise. Studies have shown that people who learn to sing or play a musical instrument benefit from the greater communication between the hemispheres. Playing a piano exercises the entire brain. As a result other cognitive signals fly faster and are read more accurately. This significant impact on a person’s mental acuity because the communication between the hemispheres becomes better than that of the average person.


Creative and artistic individuals do indeed posses higher levels of interhemispheric communication. The creative meanderings and patterns of the right brain are not enough for creativity; they must be joined with action or language (motor function) coordinated by the left hemisphere to be demonstrated to the world.

Other studies show that creative people also have a higher degree of cortical arousal.

A freebie: One reason motor function and memory are so closely linked is they are both coordinated by the frontal lobe; home of the brain’s executive function….. ~~~~~~~~(=:


Underlining bold I put there..

Hmmmm more movement memory stuff….exercise butt exercise brain!! Nope my brain couldn’t want me to wiggle in order to develop it self it had to be the lack of inhibition , executive function stuff…… out side of development thereof…… yep still stuck on that!!!

Hmmm for a wiggle worm I learn how to play interments rather rapidly...... I can hear the math in music, due to the dyslexia interfering with reading music (like words) I memorize the music piece over 60% the first time, 85% second time, third time I got it for the rest of my life (so far) YET I am told I am hyperactive because my executive function is screwed up??? I still don't "get it" :faint:

The brain is a global organ….. do we control it or does it instead control us…… the world may never know!


To me, the core difference is simply between focusing wide or focusing deep.


YIKES-- :eek: -- both??? I will see wide but various layers and angles some times at the same time causing me to seem confused or dingy because this is very difficult to communicate…linearly is about impossible….I see expanse and it will go “deep” almost instantaneously . ….. try to explain this while in constant motion!!!! I think best on my feet or at least with plenty of wiggle room!!!! A lot of people seem to feel they think better if they sit and think ( I don’t understand this at all) :confused: ?????

It takes only a moment or two before the various angles begin to appear several at once some times ( I can get lost in this from time to time :o )… I understand why many see me the way I do and have adopted the persona to allow them to keep their rrreality. Making others uncomfortable only causes the other person to shut down close off or become irritable- I see no need to “prove” or explain myself---takes too much time any way.

Besides I can figure out how to explain what I am seeing two dimensionally much quicker than explain my “vision” as I can speak “their language” also… it just takes a moment to narrow down and place into words. Thus the “slow to snap appearance”!


This is another way of explaining it……

the ADDer thought process differs from its nonADDer counterpart in that we may take a selection of as many spun coloured threads as we choose, and then dreamily weave them, dreamily unweave them and dreamily reweave them, at will, into a tapestry of lllife, or rrreality, where the goal is to weave the closest fit that we can achieve to the TTTapestry (although perhaps here, Tttapestry might be more suitable).

Ummmmm --yummy post, Tammy! :cool: I think you also sold me that I have to move A Users Guide to the Brain up to the top of my gotta buy list! The front and back of the brain rather than just side to side -- very interesting -- need to learn more. The music thing is even more interesting in that in develops better communication between the hemispheres. Along with exercise and estrogen the most likely suspect in my book for why my brain "kicked in" suddenly around eighth grade was music (band, guitar, and piano had been added to my life).

My question is, if music increases the connections between the two hemisphere (which I believe is thought to be a weak area for ADDers due to the fewer observed connections between the two in the corpus collasum) would that allow the left brain to have better access and be able to better analyze and convey the intuitive leaps of knowledge obtained by the right hemisphere. I mean how many times have you known something and had no idea how to explain how you knew it or even explain exactly what it is that you knew in a way others would understand. Would better communication between the hemispheres reduce that problem?

Scattered

LOL! I *love* all the thoughts you folks are spawning, and purposely held back a bit before I waxed on more myself. (I am working hard on my tendency to over-explain..)

Wow, sideflash, it just hit me (again) how the "overexplaining" thing so many of us wrestle with comes from just this conundrum , i.e. seeing more angles at once than most people do. We are soooo accustomed to having to slice, dice and reframe it before others can get the gist of what we mean. No wonder the more linear types sometimes think we are juggling a bunch of beads while losing the string.

Stabile, I loved your "antisyzygous" [just made that word up] response especially, even if, maybe only four of us on the forum would chime to that without a lot more translating. In a word "yes!" to a lot of what you said.

But now having started this thread, the need to ride the train of thought could not have come at a worse time in terms of things I must deal with offline. I shall take that interruption as a sign from the PTB that this should be permitted to perk in reader's mind first before I add a lot to it {wink} but I do look forward to getting back!

PS.. Yes, Ratey speaks to some of this in UG2B. He and I have had more than a bit of dialogue over the years in email and in person on these themes, and he sent me an advance of some UG2Btext for comment. For years we've both been interested in the "cross-hemispheric" thing and the possible role of the corpus c. in the "interference" of ADD-style thinking. But it's my personal sense that more recent anatomical evidence, including gender variations, are pretty much blowing a hole in the "classic" paradigms of left vs. right. So rather than use those labels myself or tie it to any specific geography, my kind of meta mind {g} likes to compare what seems to be happening functionally, as well as how it feels to folks internally.

PS2.. to Stabile and anyone else who wonders about my avatar.. I am afraid it's not as poetic as the "earth" falling out of a hole in that little guy's head, but now that you mention it, perhaps it should be! It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes. The full version includes a caption that says something like "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild"

However, now that you've given it even more substance, perhaps I should switch my own interp of my own cartoon :)

Stabile and anyone else who wonders about my avatar.. I am afraid it's not as poetic as the "earth" falling out of a hole in that little guy's head, but now that you mention it, perhaps it should be! It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes. The full version includes a caption that says something like "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild"Oh brother -- that's cool, but I thought it was someone about to eat a cantelope -- shows where my brain's at -- I'm not even on the same planet as other ADDers.:rolleyes:

Getting to bounce ideas back and forth with John Ratey really sounds cool -- wow. Okay, I've got a severe case of hero worship --- his book Shadow Syndromes finally helped me understand how I could make such a wonderful success and total disaster of my life. And since I need the whole picture in order to feel okay this explanation made a big difference to me -- suddenly the pieces fit and I could reinvest some of that energy that had been desperately trying to put my puzzle together back into living. Of course the chapter you wrote in Think Fast helped do something similar for me in providing a framework in my own brain to understand the polar opposites of being both hyperactive/impulsive and a daydreamy slug. When the pieces don't fit, my mind just won't let it alone until I find a framework where the picture does fit, so this kind of thing is a very big deal to me.

Scattered

Lots more to add, but if I might just throw in one other point about your avatar, and I'll continue to be Stabile for a while, with Tom&Kay's permission, of course ... :-) ...

Art permits an expression of 'something' which defies adequate expression using the standard tools of verbal or written language.

The best art gives the creative a feeling of a special something, and also ... others ... too, potentially.

Often, beyond the feeling that there's something very special about their art, there is no method for the artist to convey the root of those feelings using words ... ... ... for the creative, most likely, will not know the reason (the best art as the most inexplicably meaningful.)

I purposefully played with an interpretation of your avatar, but chose to leave out another interpretation ... which sits at one of the vertices of the triangle that envelops ADD.

Your avatar can be interpreted as an individual observing their own thought processes, that is, the brain on the floor thinking about ... dunno' ... 'being low' :-) whilst the pointy nosed dude that's looking down ... thinking about ... dunno' ... 'pulling his brain out of the gutter' :-).

The ability to fire off >1 thread of consciousness concurrently is the mechanism which we use to support the novel structure of storage of information which supports systems thinking.

So ... was it a dream? or did 'Stinky&Thinky' exist ...?...

ADDers (dream weavers) :


... the experiential perspective whilst one's mind is engaged in 2 (or more) disparate threads ... [of thought]*
http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24744

:-)

PS: "As Bob gives birth to another brainchild" ==
"In Java spawning a child thread" ==
"As Bob1951 firing off 2 or more concurrent threads of thought"

SB.

*added

It's intent was more mundane and wry; it was a brain drawn to look like a basketball, which in turn ties to my "bouncing brain" themes.

I thinks we may have us a basket ball team going!!!!!!!


Your avatar can be interpreted as an individual observing their own thought processes

Man SB that was a lot more complex than my interpretation.....

He lost is mind again......not sure if he should pick that thought back up perhaps leaving the thought "there"

...... okay another was some thing along the "dirty minded" track can't go there here!! ......

Well okay another is he is wondering who lost their mind not realizing it was his ownnnnnn…………. like that never happens in real life!!!!!!!!!!


Getting to bounce ideas back and forth with John Ratey really sounds cool --

Yea agreed is has got to be better than the conversation I am having to listen to now…..Dr. Ratey he would defiantly be of interest….

I find his work as closest to neutral... no negative twist... or positives.... he does insert his own line of thinking but it is "clear" not intertwined with the presentations of facts...... leaving room for the reader to draw conclusions of their own!!!! It is really about the brain has only a few short narratives about ADD!!!


My question is, if music increases the connections between the two hemisphere (which I believe is thought to be a weak area for ADDers due to the fewer observed connections between the two in the corpus collasum) would that allow the left brain to have better access and be able to better analyze and convey the intuitive leaps of knowledge obtained by the right hemisphere

Well this "naturally" occurring weak connection as described above would explain why I was three before learning to speak.... but doesn't explain why when I did begin talking I did so in full sentences with out the "one- two word" sentences most use as a means of bridging the gap between single word/ object and full communication in sentences conveying thoughts along with object naming......according to mom I went from a few words to full sentences in a very short period of time...


I literally remember seeing things I questioned... the most memorable one was when I was still sleeping in a crib my parents lived in a basement apartment. In my bedroom there was full length window across from my crib that was entirely under ground except for the top six inches. .which peeked out at the top of the ground.. I remember wondering ..what was I supposed to look at under the dirt??? the bugs?? If it rained was my room going to fill with water to the point I would wake up with my crib floating...but I had NO words to communicate the ideas until I was older!!!! Much older then the memory came up by way of conversation about the time period in general……. My ability to accurately describe the apartment we move out of shortly before my fourth birthday surprised my mother….heck I remember eating in a high chair.

I also "pick up" musical interments rather quickly ever sense I can remember... according to mom I was born with perfect pitch..... out of tune pianos popular in back woods country churches during the early 60’s, sent me into screaming fits... she said I was three months old before she made connection between my sudden on-set of a screaming fit (which seemed to occure when we visited back woods counrty churches) and poorly tuned musical interments.... which by the way still make me want to have a screaming fit!!!!!

Had my mother herself not had the musical ability to know the panio was "off" she may have never made the connection!!!!

If my hemispheres were not communicating already these abilities would not have been some thing I was apparently born with..... I was born hyper active impulsive ADD..... I about as pure impulsive as 40 some thing years olds come in this space time continuum!!!

I kind of wondered if the communication between the two hemispheres wasn't what causes the decrease in dopamine flow to the frontal lobes thus appearing as deficient........

The brains plastic abilities to developed in variations could easily account for extra dopamine usage thus "to much up take up (up-take) of said neurotransmitter. Who is to say our "executive function” is located in the same place or operates in same chemical manner as those who don't have ADD. Obviously some thing works differently there is a bit more…..

Food is calling I am hungry plus Gary's company is talking to me. Judging by the sound of his voice and what body language I can see in my peripheral he is having a difficult time accepting the notion that I can type about dopamine usage in the brain and process the concept that he got 24 bags of Lipton tea bags free with large bottle of Rague spaghetti sauce. He says he bought three..... I am not sure if he is talking eight bags of tea for each bottle or 72 total tea bags for buying three bottles.

Now he is having an even greater difficulty with the idea of me typing and talking...so I guess I had better go and be polite to him as he is taking my continued typing as disinterest..... which is basically true but the recipe for politely showing disinterest in a subject when in face to face conversation eludes me..... I suspect the socially appropriate action would be to be disinterested with out outward movement of my hands…combines with ..intermittent use of my vision. Gee I hope I still remember this line of thought tomorrow......

People.... okay some people......The fact I am still verbally responding appropriately apparently is not enough to extend my willingness to listen to his rather bland discussion...... which wouldn't really bother me if I could just do so without the social expectation of attention being a single activity void of all others.....same &^$@!! ing problem I have had with humanity all of my life!!!!! Besides the irritation combined with increase hunger due to the aroma of fish is messing with my dyslexia.... words can be a P.I.M.A........ all the way around...weather in coming or out going!!!!

Nope NO ADD round here....I am never distrated nor do I ever get off subject even medications wear off and I have been up 32+ hours!!!! Sorry.....gotta go fish is calling........

You're not as 'simple' as you would like us to believe, Tam.
I know for a fact that you're highly intelligent.
And I'm not just saying that because I'm your friend, either. (0:
Nova

"Meta thinkers are on the latter side, seeing the broad outlines of disparate but connected things before diving into specifics, and as a result are quite often able to spot connections across domains that more tightly focused folks might completely miss while they dwell on specifics."



I played that game on here today- Answer and Ask a Question Game.
McCoffee posted a question that normally would've stumped me. It was 'what is the air speed velocity of a swallow?'

You know what I thought of...swallows..birds...airplanes.
Then I thought of all the different planes I've flown on- from cessnas to jumbos.
Then I thought of how that affects their travel speed.
And I laughed out loud.

So I answered his question with stating that it depends on how big the 'bird' is, or the type of swallow.

I went through all that in my mind first, in several seconds, to get the answer.

I don't know if this even relates to the concept of meta minds...but from reading the above paragraph that I pasted with this message..it sounds like it would..
If not, someone please correct me.


Nova

I think, Carla, that your usage is a little closer to what I describe as mmmetathought (the individual's experiential perspective of using their mmmetamind), whereas Tom&Kay use the terms in this form, but also in a more absolute and less subjective(non-pejoratively) sense (MMMetathought and MMMetamind) These are all great thoughts and thanks, SB! (Also thanks for waiting for me to have time to return to this)

I don't want to mangle any threadlines that went before, but when we are plowing new ground like this, I think it might be helpful to use terms that already have some currency in public awareness. Even if we need to refine their specific applications to suit the current task, that is easier, thinks me, than starting from scratch.

I am sorry I do not know what the "MMM" prefix suggests to you or Tom & Kay. But while I suspect I would like your intended meanings <smile>, would you mind if we tried to frame this particular thread such that even a newbie might get the gist? Let me take a stab at doing that:

"Meta" is an increasingly popular term in an increasingly complex world. By itself, the word conveys the sense of wide-angle view in which several constituent elements are knit into something larger. A common example for scientists is a "meta study" which looks at what a cluster of separate studies suggest when looked at together and compared with each other. I extrapolate from that general sense of it to use 'meta' and 'meta minds' to speak of one's personal interest in pattern-matching, domain-bridging, and "systems style" thinking, where wholes are emphasized.

In other words, if we used the classic forest v. trees analogy, "meta" would represent the study of forests instead of the study of trees, although "meta studies" combining data derived from several separate species of trees might be done in the pursuit of this "forestology" <gg>.

The question with which I began is whether we have the sense that people with traits of ADD also tend to be "meta" thinkers, with a distinct and continuing preference for this kind of wide-angle viewing?

Those of you who noted it are correct; this preference is often is spoken of as a "right brain" emphasis and it's helpful to note that if only to leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to some pre-existing frames for similar things. I just connect those dots and then move on when I discuss it because so many of those classic frames imply a more mechanistic view of the brain when, in fact, what happens inside that anatomy is being revealed as a compound, complex. and chaotic system in which the 'location' of functions is fluid and fast-moving and can vary widely from person to person. So for our purposes here, I proposed to dispense with the anatomy and just explore the experience of being a wide-angle thinker who is drawn to match patterns, connect the dots, and look for links and bridges across many elements that others may see as "separate."

In my experience, there is little conversation about the impact of having this kind of preference and so I am curious what others have experienced and what hypotheses they have formed over the years to explain themselves to themselves.

Examples: Do you consider yourself a wide-angle thinker, a "forestologist" in effect? Do you think it has been more of a help or a hinderance in learning? Do you think wide-angle thinkers fare better in schools (and universities) today then they did a decade or few ago? How big an asset or liability has it been for you in your career or in your personal life? Which side-effects of being a "forestologist" have felt like benefits overall and which facets have felt like obstacles that you still wish you could overcome?

Sorry I wasn't this clear when this train of thought first left my own station <g>, but thinking about how to knit your replies into some common themes is now helping me state it more clearly:)

--- his book Shadow Syndromes finally helped me understand how I could make such a wonderful success and total disaster of my life. And since I need the whole picture in order to feel okay this explanation made a big difference to me -- suddenly the pieces fit and I could reinvest some of that energy that had been desperately trying to put my puzzle together back into living. Yes! That was the particular genius of "Shadow" I thought (a book that deserved a lot bigger bounce than it had). As Ratey put it in some textbook passage he wrote about the same time, this shift of emphasis from "bad me" to "bad wiring" helped so many people come to terms with it all and move on to working on how to cope.

It's a bit disappointing, but not surprising, that all these years later people still seem to resist painting in shades of gray like this. They want to see a hard, fast, black-and-white line dividing ' normal' from 'not' and of course nothing about the brain or psychology is that simple and neat. Ratey was the first one writing "popular psych" (so far as I know) to really draw out and illustrate the "spectral" nature of all such things.

Color me a rebel <g>, but sometimes I cant resist taking the extra step of pointing out that all these dividing lines we draw are arbitrary distinctions anyway. Not because I think drawing those lines is a waste of time; one does need a way to define the boundaries for empirical study, most especially where meds (and children) are involved. But out of the lab and down in the trenches where people live, we need more talk, I think, about the differences between how patients and scientists may see the same things. Mental conditions are not "diseases" in the classic sense where you have it or you don't, and I'd love to see us get past the need to express it that way and reach a more nuanced place.

Ratey did an outstanding job of starting a bridge across that gap and it's my hope this more integrationist view will perk around eventually (she said thus underlining her own 'meta' approach to such things with another <g>)

Of course the chapter you wrote in Think Fast helped do something similar for me in providing a framework in my own brain to understand the polar opposites of being both hyperactive/impulsive and a daydreamy slug. When the pieces don't fit, my mind just won't let it alone until I find a framework where the picture does fit, so this kind of thing is a very big deal to me. Thanks much! You pulled out exactly what I hoped would be the primary point to stick from that early sketch of my own take on the whole thing, i.e. that both ends of a spectrum may look a lot alike on the surface but stem from opposite drives (e.g. both under and overfocusing = distraction, or depression can come equally from being over- or under-whelmed.).

This tendency of each pole to resemble the other is also the basis for all the quips about "antiszyzygy" that SB and I keep joking about. It is the formal name for what you see when both poles are "mirroring" and it is highly relevant, thinks me, to all the confusion about what we call "ADD".

"Meta" is an increasingly popular term in an increasingly complex world. By itself, the word conveys the sense of wide-angle view in which several constituent elements are knit into something larger. A common example for scientists is a "meta study" which looks at what a cluster of separate studies suggest when looked at together and compared with each other. I extrapolate from that general sense of it to use 'meta' and 'meta minds' to speak of one's personal interest in pattern-matching, domain-bridging, and "systems style" thinking, where wholes are emphasized.

In other words, if we used the classic forest v. trees analogy, "meta" would represent the study of forests instead of the study of trees, although "meta studies" combining data derived from several separate species of trees might be done in the pursuit of this "forestology" Sorry...been lurking..but thought I'd interject here. While I might agree that by SB's attempt to simplify the discussion he might have unnecessarily shifted or limited the scope and breadth away from it's intended course, I fear words that have become "popular" also run the risk of misinterpretation by different readers. For example, many consider "meta" to reflect a detached level of analysis that resides about and apart from the original material being studied, thus allowing for meta-meta and meta-meta-meta analysis. Essentially, each layer is studying the previous layer. So, I struggle when you refer to "meta" being the study of the forest versus the trees. While one could argue that the tree study would be a "micro" analysis and the forest a "macro" analysis, I think some, unfamiliar with the depth to which the waters and waves [smiles to SB UK] run in this group, might be lost, or at least confused, from the outset. In the common usage I have seen "meta", it might be an analysis of the micro and macro studies of the forest and trees, thus pulling out and/or synergizing the best of both studies, but being a unique and removed analysis all onto itself. So I struggle with "meta" being like the forest versus the trees. ADD'ers see the trees, sometimes in too much detail, but a few are struck with the patterns in the trees and their hyperfocus, ever willing to shift, often resides there.

Again, not attempting to undermine the wonderful discussion, but also wanting to ensure that the final product is communicable to those more acquainted with the shallower and calmer waters. The goal of the shared explanation of the tendency to take a "macro" view of the world, while also being exquisitely bombarded by the details of the "micro" view, when viewed at a meta level, could indeed be intriguing and helpful to all. Now I will return to lurking as I begin to again, as I have for a lifetime, attempt to be able to convey to others the incredible journey of discovery that has been and remains my inner pursuit.

Does anyone find anything Jungian/Rogerian in this discussion? Was Jung/Roger's search for the enlightened self (or sself) really just his ADD compelling him to dig deeper to explain how he was and had became as he was, and perhaps as we are becoming and have become? Think on that one a while if you will

Ratey did an outstanding job of starting a bridge across that gap and it's my hope this more integrationist view will perk around eventually (she said thus underlining her own 'meta' approach to such things with another <g>)
I like the idea very much of a more comprehensive taxonomy of the mindstyle, both for the benefit of meds and children, but also from a very selfish perspective that I think I can learn and grow the most from those who are closest to my particular strain of ADHD, but also from closely studying those closest to my style but slightly different. Such a taxonomy, in my mind, would be an attempt to "intergrate" all the flavors, while appreciating the key ingredients common to all flavors, but with the ability to better spot the likely "allergic" reactions some strains have to certain flavors.

Hopefully someone followed that one...

Examples: Do you consider yourself a wide-angle thinker, a "forestologist" in effect? Do you think it has been more of a help or a hinderance in learning? Do you think wide-angle thinkers fare better in schools (and universities) today then they did a decade or few ago? How big an asset or liability has it been for you in your career or in your personal life? Which side-effects of being a "forestologist" have felt like benefits overall and which facets have felt like obstacles that you still wish you could overcome?I think being a wide-angle thinker was a definate disadvantage in elementary school where things are very step by step, one thing built on another -- I struggled mightily there. In my master's program on the other end of my education, I think seeing the whole forest and how the tree branches interconnected to make a path threw the tree tops was a great advantage in covering a lot of territory in a comprehensive manner while avoiding some of the obstacles below.

Being an educator and a counselor (two master's - couldn't decide:rolleyes: ), most of my work has been with assessing in one form or another people's functioning -- there are so many tie in when discussing people -- early environment, genetics, health, lifestyle, education, learning styles, etc that being able to easily see the connections and help develop a cohesive treatment plan was valuable. When I ran a children's grief program for area school, I was able to easily see all the pieces that should be there and then build the program.

As far as what I would like to overcome -- while I'm very strong on seeing connections, I'm terrible at seeing what is there and putting it in order. Sometimes it would be nice to actually be able to follow directions, utilize a map on the road, or understand how the three pictures in my 2nd graders English book should be arranged! So a bit more strength in the linear step by step arena would at times be nice as would a better working memory and stronger executive functions. I could do more with my vision, if those things were operating at a higher level. Sometimes for very short periods of time the medication/hormone balance is just right and I get a glimpse of what life could be like, but alas it is always a fleeting glance.

Scattered

Darn --- this thread rocks, and I haven't the time to post a proper response, and so in tribute to Umin's lemurs, jumping from Carlas' to Kokos' adamantium-reinforced branches ... :-) ... caught in mid-soar ... by a buncha' scattered forestologists, each looking up from their very different perspectives, and seeing the same ...

Tipsy from life-affirming meadd ...?... :-)

meta-thinking ... meta-mind ... meta-letter once, took a while ... long q!

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/phpThumb.php?src=/uploads/brain_tree_copy.jpg&aoe=1&w=160http://www.andrewdelaware.com/images/BrainTree.jpg



Thanks Ian :-)


So, imagine a field with a set of equally spaced trees ... that grow slowly.

And then a field with a set of equally (same spacing) spaced trees that grow faster.

Then imagine a couple of chaps that sit on the tree crowns.

Every so often the two chaps need to talk to each other.

They jump down from the trees and run and meet on the ground.

They talk, and then return.

The 2 chaps that are sitting on the slow growing trees will meet sooner than the guys on the faster growing trees.

Until the crowns of the trees merge, and communication is possible by meeting up on the canopy.

Now imagine that the canopy rarely forms on the slower growing trees.

So, ADD as a developmental order.

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22322

SB.

I played that game on here today- Answer and Ask a Question Game.
McCoffee posted a question that normally would've stumped me. It was 'what is the air speed velocity of a swallow?'



Like my totally unmediated answer to this was depends on how well you chewed it first, and weather or not this would be a cooked swallow or was it raw!!!! A well cooked bird that was chewed would be easier to swallow there for have a higher air speed velocity…… So reading the rest was simply hysterical!!!!!!

Well I between giggles with the first idea I wondered about the air speed of swallow which would be spit!!!!

Well if you get a pretty good breath in bet you can get that sucker flying pretty fast.

Okay I was on sentence three by this time and then thought :confused:



You know what I thought of...swallows..birds...airplanes.
Then I thought of all the different planes I've flown on- from cessnas to jumbos.
Then I thought of how that affects their travel speed.
And I laughed out loud.

So I answered his question with stating that it depends on how big the 'bird' is, or the type of swallow.

I went through all that in my mind first, in several seconds, to get the answer


I can up with two answers, neither one was really right one I don’t guess but mildly entertaining any way!!!!! What was the right answer any way was there one?????


Okay that was a swallow the birds (types) ….. not swallow the birds (lunch)…..oops, which ties into spit some how makes the velocity of swallowing swallows faster (shrugs)


I don’t know if I have a mata-mind just one that is a tad off. I will try this medicated and see if there is a difference!!!!!

I think I am more easily entertained when off medications… the dyslexia is more entertaining any way. No meds means I am more apt to share the several off things I am thinking in rapid succession!!!



Hopefully someone followed that one...



Sure I am bi-lingual when I am not swallowing birds that are flying!!!!!



Sometimes it would be nice to actually be able to follow directions, utilize a map on the road,


It would be nice to be able to GIVE directions for a change…. I can follow the worse directions unfortunanitly I also give the worst directions my navigational system if as off as my humor!!!!!


I will answer the rest of Carla’s questions about the job stuff when I am being less ADHD!!!!

Okay because the answer to one is having problems communicating in a sequential form in a concise manner which is relevant to the question!!!!! Being off meds this just it’s possible..

Which reminds me do you propose these questions of strengths and weakness of when we are in an unmediated state or a medicated one for those of us who do take meds????….There is a difference which is pretty easy for most to see even through my words. What was the question??? I guess that would be a medicated state so the questions can be remembered from screen to screen!!!!

i'm sry but i need to catch up:

Also, something one of my college English professors told me, and that I have observed myself, is that very smart people tend to make lots of leaps in their writing because they were obvious to them, whereas "normal" people would consider those leaps unsupported or even unconnected. :confused: really?, because i do that alot and i was just told i was being an idiot

There are some really smart people on these forums i've noticed this too, this community kinda screams intelligence and creativing thinking thats probably why i love it so much, it's alot more stimulating that the traditional discussions that i seem to be surrounded by

How very refreshing - the crackle of 'ice' rattling around our 'tif', melting in our 'ver-mouth.'

I have high hopes for this thread, Carla ...
:-)
... and am kinda' hoping that a series of short sharp tugs by ADDers famed for their 'creativity' ... might allow us to unravel the very fabric of rrreality, once and of course for ALL; RRReality can wait. same here m8, i'm really inspired by this post and thoughts are whirling around in my 9 volt battery of a brain.

Hmmm for a wiggle worm I learn how to play interments rather rapidly...... I can hear the math in music same here, though i really don't like that sentence "i can hear the math in music" in fact i really really dislike it, something about it, i dunno what...math in music...i mean i understand what ur saying it's just i don't like math in music, yet i can't think of an alternative at the moment.


I memorize the music piece over 60% the first time, 85% second time, third time I got it for the rest of my life (so far) same here :D i went through 2 piano grades and passed them purely from listening because i couldn't sightread to save my life, now i can within reason but i still mainly learn through listening to the music, i seem to see the creative patterns and can predict easily whats gonna happen next.

The brain is a global organ….. do we control it or does it instead control us…… the world may never know! i would say that we are the brain so we control ourselves, the rest of the body is an extension of tools needed to keep us alive and to help us learn, eat...etc ;)

...but thats just my view, i wouldn't really pay attension to it since i'm not the sharpest knife in the draw.

I see expanse and it will go “deep” almost instantaneously . ….. try to explain this while in constant motion!!!! I think best on my feet or at least with plenty of wiggle room!!!! A lot of people seem to feel they think better if they sit and think ( I don’t understand this at all) ????? perfectly described, "i seee expance and it will go "deep" almost instantaneously" that applies to me as well.

It takes only a moment or two before the various angles begin to appear several at once some times ( I can get lost in this from time to time )… I understand why many see me the way I do and have adopted the persona to allow them to keep their rrreality. Making others uncomfortable only causes the other person to shut down close off or become irritable- I see no need to “prove” or explain myself---takes too much time any way.


Besides I can figure out how to explain what I am seeing two dimensionally much quicker than explain my “vision” as I can speak “their language” also… it just takes a moment to narrow down and place into words. Thus the “slow to snap appearance”!
what the hell?, ur reading my mind...stop it!, i'm not joking this is scarey :eek:

I mean how many times have you known something and had no idea how to explain how you knew it or even explain exactly what it is that you knew in a way others would understand. Would better communication between the hemispheres reduce that problem? all the time and i hope thats the case because i'm quite musically minded as it were and i would love it for once if i could actually say what i mean.

@ Carla B.:

i thought that the ball was the world and that since the the character had long legs and was looking not at the world i thought that it meant that we as the human race look to much into other things gazing way behond our situation where we are, and that we should lower our perspective so that we can truely see the world and realise how delicate it is so that we can save it from being destroyed...looks like i was way off huh?

Art permits an expression of 'something' which defies adequate expression using the standard tools of verbal or written language.

The best art gives the creative a feeling of a special something, and also ... others ... too, potentially.

Often, beyond the feeling that there's something very special about their art, there is no method for the artist to convey the root of those feelings using words ... ... ... for the creative, most likely, will not know the reason (the best art as the most inexplicably meaningful.) that, that right there shows what a true genious this guy is, now this:

Art permits an expression of 'something' which defies adequate expression using the standard tools of verbal or written language.

is perfection in a sentence, i will never be able to make that better and to me that is perfection.

The brains plastic abilities to developed in variations could easily account for extra dopamine usage thus "to much up take up (up-take) of said neurotransmitter. Who is to say our "executive function” is located in the same place or operates in same chemical manner as those who don't have ADD. Obviously some thing works differently there is a bit more….. i've wondered this too and u just mentioning it makes me start to think maybe i wasn't being a tool, the ideals are swirling, i'll let u know if i can decypher any of them.

You're not as 'simple' as you would like us to believe, Tam.
I know for a fact that you're highly intelligent. Tammy u are very/incredibly intelligent, i find it odd how people can't seem to realise how intelligent they truely are, it puzzles me, it's really odd how people seem to put themselves down and don't reconise they're own intelligence, it confuses me so much, there has to be a reason behind it or something.


I played that game on here today- Answer and Ask a Question Game.
McCoffee posted a question that normally would've stumped me. It was 'what is the air speed velocity of a swallow?'

You know what I thought of...swallows..birds...airplanes.
Then I thought of all the different planes I've flown on- from cessnas to jumbos.
Then I thought of how that affects their travel speed.
And I laughed out loud. why did u laugh, it was a logical step and it makes alot of sense, airplane wings were kind of inspired by them,it was an intelligent step to solving the problem.

I fear words that have become "popular" also run the risk of misinterpretation by different readers. all words are interrupted differently for each reader, thats why people like to write lots to try and explain their angle and to show the reader their reason behind the words they've chosen in an effort to get them on the 'same page'because with misunderstanding comes irritation and people tend to shut themselves of from irritation so it doesn't develop futher.

Do you consider yourself a wide-angle thinker, a "forestologist" in effect? Do you think it has been more of a help or a hinderance in learning? Do you think wide-angle thinkers fare better in schools (and universities) today then they did a decade or few ago? How big an asset or liability has it been for you in your career or in your personal life? Which side-effects of being a "forestologist" have felt like benefits overall and which facets have felt like obstacles that you still wish you could overcome? ok the first question i don't understand (sry i'm kinda slow) i don't know why but it doesn't make sense to me, i mean i suppose in some ways i'm a wide-angel thinker but surely from seeing things in the 'grand scheme' of things couldn't one predict from there? (mayb i'm misunderstanding the word forestologist)....!!! oh!!!! forest-ologist i really misread and misunderstood at the same time :eyebrow:, sry (see told u i was a tool) i concider myself a wide-angle thinker that sometimes touches on being a "forestologist" u might concider me an owl if u will, since i spend time flying above the trees and dive down occationally for food (so i'm a wide angle thinker most of the time but i do occationally go into depth sometimes)....actually intersting side note i work better at night + i'm hardly sleep and i'm slightly on the nocternal side of things so an owls is quite a good choice for me.

2) me being mainly a wide thinker at university would have to say no i completely suck at the moment, i just simply can't 'see it' i mean i seem to get all the complex stuff they teach me and i struggle to understand the simple stuff, i see stuff as a whole i mean uni is great because they give lots of examples and i can look at them and break it down and i'm fine with it...maybe it's just simply a lack of intelligence on my part i don't know, i either get distinctions or bare passes and fails theres no imbetween with me it's either easily pass or fluke it or fail miserably.

3) i concider it a big advantage in some cases, mainly socially because i suppose a person with a personality (kinda stating the obvious there) is complex to start off with and i seem to analyse them from there, huh, maybe that could be why some people who do really well at school find it differcult to socialise because they're interacting with something intensly complex and can't break it down? (something to think about) but there are many disadvantages it's kind of even on both sides really in my opinion.

if i'm given a massively broad topic, i really enjoy it and can break it down, if i'm given something small and told to build up from it i find it incredibly differcult and i find myself trying to broaden it more which unfortunately isn't what the uni wants :(

each looking up from their very different perspectives, and seeing the same ... thought the same thing

Like my totally unmediated answer to this was depends on how well you chewed it first hahaha, very good (it took me a few seconds to get it though) very abstract answer, i love it lol

-----------------------------------------

ok....right...i've been kinda trying to avoid this thread and i'll tell ya why, from the title it seemed complex so i instantly wanted to read it, unfortunately i couldn't read it, i kept skipping and i found it differcult, but now that i've actually read everyones reply i feel like i've been missing out on something special, i'm really interested in this thread now.

anyway, i'm caught up to speed now...i think.

i'm just guessing here so don't shoot me just yet (gimme a headstart first)

could it be that we've evolved because of the ad(h)d?
and before u factual people start loading up ur guns! i'll quickly try and explain why i think this:

we evolve to our evironment correct? we're adaptable by nature yes? (eyes members like stabile and barbyma with they're guns of fact about to shoot through my ice thin reasoning) well could it be that because we get distracted so much we've adapted and as such link things and see multiple angles on things hense the whole wide-angle perspective, i mean think about it, people that can see things in detail and don't get distracted are used to being able to see something and research into it in depth where as we get distracted and can't so we've found a way to link things and see things from different angles....

i'm really having troubles trying to explain what i mean, can someone help me here? can someone sieve through the ramble?

i can't think straight my minds going nuts, gonna get some neurophen or something to sort this headache and come back to this and try and explain better.

(really really sry about the gigantic post, i think i should start issuing medal's to anyone that can read this fully)

:eyebrow::faint:

He never specified what type of bird/swallow, Meadd.
The size would make a difference in it's velocity (speed/how fast it's capable of flying).

So the only 'answer' is the one I provided. (0:

I was just showing you how my my train of thoughts 'worked', in order for me to come to the conclusion, that I did. (0:



Nova



"I can up with two answers, neither one was really right one I don’t guess but mildly entertaining any way!!!!! What was the right answer any way was there one?????"

I've already stated on here that I, rapidly 'think', with the two hemispheres of my brain.

I reason and create at the same 'time'. I know SB comprehends what I'm saying because we've discussed this..in him being my friend.

I've had many attempts to ridicule how I 'think' more than compliments..not on here-but in real life, and I'm not saying this as a way for fishing for compliments, either.

I'm stating this because when I don't 'think' in the same exact manner I am required to (how you are to think in a required manner is beyond me, but apparently, I am somehow)-but come to the conclusions to questions/hypotheses/theories, and used my 'formulas', it wasn't as accepted. (0:

It's like my 'thought' process is foreign to some..and it's therefore unacceptable.

I'm still going to 'think' in the same way I've always 'thought'. I don't know any other way to 'think', for hades sakes, LOL!

The question is:
How do you even begin to explain your 'thought process' to others when they're unable to comprehend it ?

Not on little subjects- but on bigger subjects/concepts/theories.

Is it even worth the effort ?


Nova

The question is:
How do you even begin to explain your 'thought process' to others when they're unable to comprehend it ?
hahaha, u see what u just said there? yeah, i've tried that, i've tried that a few times and i've given up trying (because it tends to end in ridicule) to in real life it's easier trying to describe things on forums because....i don't actually no why....

@ nova:

are u good at detecting lies or false praise?

cause if u are, it may prove differcult because u'll instantly detect if the person doesn't understand but tries to pretend to....i'm not saying u shouldn't it's just i've found it near impossible.

maybe if u try doing it in short bursts as it were, try to explain little things every now and again and build up from there...maybe that would work, i'm not sure but it u may find that a person who completely understands u isn't what u want at all.

sry i can't really help, i'll try better next time ;)

We’ve been busy. Glad to see everybody’s having some fun…


"Meta" is an increasingly popular term in an increasingly complex world. By itself, the word conveys the sense of wide-angle view in which several constituent elements are knit into something larger. A common example for scientists is a "meta study" which looks at what a cluster of separate studies suggest when looked at together and compared with each other. I extrapolate from that general sense of it to use 'meta' and 'meta minds' to speak of one's personal interest in pattern-matching, domain-bridging, and "systems style" thinking, where wholes are emphasized.

In other words, if we used the classic forest v. trees analogy, "meta" would represent the study of forests instead of the study of trees, although "meta studies" combining data derived from several separate species of trees might be done in the pursuit of this "forestology" <gg>.
Nope, that isn’t quite it. But oddly enough, it almost echoes the current mainstream mathematical view.


For example, many consider "meta" to reflect a detached level of analysis that resides about and apart from the original material being studied, thus allowing for meta-meta and meta-meta-meta analysis. Essentially, each layer is studying the previous layer…
That’s much closer to the reality of it.

Although the term ‘meta’ is seeing increasing use, it’s applied somewhat haphazardly. In this context, the term derives from the logical property ‘metarelationship’, first described accurately by mathematician David Hilbert.

‘Meta’ as Hilbert used it simply implies that the relationship is to form, rather than content. In this way it’s similar to the idea of class, and is therefore related to set theory.

To Hilbert (and Russell and Gödel and the others that followed) all metarelationships seemed to be equivalent, in the sense that they perceived a reality in which relationships could fall into one of two classes, ordinary or meta-.

That’s still a common logical trap, likely reflected in the view Carla is working at. The truth is somewhat different: all relationships are metarelationships. The meta- property refers to what level a relationship occupies in a hierarchy of metalevels.

The definition of metalevels may be derived from Hilbert’s use to differentiate between form and content. Statements about form tell us how something is structured, while statements about content tell us specific details about a specific structure.

There may be any number of different examples of a certain type or form of structure, but they will all share the metaproperty related to the common form.

These principles already have a sufficient terminology: what we’re describing is generality and it’s converse, specificity. So to go up to a higher metalevel in the hierarchy implies increasing generality, and to go down implies increasing specificity.

Statements belong to the metalevel that matches the degree to which they apply generally, to a class or classes of objects or conceptual abstractions. There are theoretically an infinite number of metalevels.

When we look at relationships between abstractions, we see two general classes: relationships between abstractions that occupy the same metalevel, and relationships that cross metalevels, i.e., the two abstractions occupy different metalevels.

The nature of the relationship is always the same; what’s added is information about relative metalevel. When two abstractions occupy the same metalevel, that information seems redundant, creating the illusion that there are two fundamental classes of relationships.

In turn, the observation that two distinct classes seem to exist creates the illusion that all metarelationships are equivalent. They aren’t; if we want to sort metarelationships, we have to assign each to the appropriate metalevel, or the significance of the relationship’s meta- property is severely compromised.

So relative metalevel is perhaps a more accurate term for the logical property known as the metarelationship. Either way, the sense of ‘level’ associated with the abstraction ‘generality’ is a gift of nature; as a logical property, the metarelationship is intrinsic to the nature of nature itself.

Our process of observation consists primarily of identifying patterns in our sensory input stream and noting patterns in their relationships to other patterns, either occurring simultaneously or previously stored. If we rigorously make note of relative metalevel when observing relationships, this information will be stored along with the rest of the information implied by our observation of a particular pattern.

We all routinely classify the patterns we store in a hierarchy organized according to any generality of form we may be able to perceive in the pattern. Adding the information of relative metalevel gives us an additional organizing principle with which to organize our internal store. It might not seem like much of an addition, but it can ultimately lead to an entirely different form of storage with significantly different properties in use.

It can also increase the complexity of any particular bit of information stored, so that the resulting logical representation of that information may be significantly more detailed than that stored without the benefit of details of relative metalevel.

The form of the logical structures built with the additional help of knowledge of relative metalevel may be applied to some surprising areas. We don’t just depend on logical models to store conscious information in an organized way; we also build models that define various aspects of our fundamental nature, such as those that define our behavior in basic ways.

So the question of how a person might be different if s/he uses relative metalevel to help organize stored information can be exceedingly complex. We have several different classes of storage that might be affected, including at least two on the level of conscious awareness.

And on the conscious level we can directly affect how we’re going to organize information, and we can further decide whether we’ll reveal how we choose to do it.

This raises the possibility of many different classes of ADDers, some of whom use relative metalevel to help organize information relatively openly, some that use it more clandestinely, and some that only use it incidentally to model deeper forms of information that define behavior in fundamental ways.

There are other differences that may occur on a larger scale, over a relatively long period of time. There is a threshold event than can occur, in which the form of all information of a certain type coalesces in to one completely interrelated structure, which we refer to as ‘the metamodel web’.

A metamodel is simply a logical model in which the metarelationships of the elements of the model are completely expressed within the model. It’s possible to have a metamodel that is completely expressed in terms of its metarelationships, with all ordinary elements (what we would normally think of as the actual information content of the model) implied, rather than expressed directly.

That’s not such a difficult concept as it night seem; think of defining your house as the one next to the pink, square house that sits on the corner of the block next to the one with the railroad station and you’ll begin to get the idea. Follow that exercise to completion and you can do away with house numbers entirely.

What you get is a rich, interrelated structure: the tapestry. By working our way through the structure and counting as we go can recreate any individual house number. All we need to know is where #1 sits; we don’t even need to save the ‘1’.

So we intentionally misstated things a bit when we talked about seeing the threads as compared to seeing the whole tapestry. We didn’t want to make too big an initial leap; the truth is, we can throw away the threads themselves, and still retain the tapestry and all the information the threads originally represented.

A ‘metamodel’ as originally defined to present these ideas in the early Nineties served as a kind of class definition. We described a ‘metamodel’ as a model that was used to define models of a particular type, which in turn were used to define specific details in a particular situation. We talked about models, metamodels and details, and the hierarchical relationship between them. Metamodels define the general form of a class of models; individual models are then applied to define specific details.

That distinction was created to emphasize the nature of the metarelationship, and also to show the derivation of the formal structure of the metamodel web. Immediately upon presenting the structure, the true nature of the metamodel is revealed: all models are also metamodels; all models are also details of higher level metamodels that define the metamodels defining them, and so on through infinite levels.

Thus all nodes in the metamodel web are simply metamodels; it’s our view that changes as we move around in the hierarchy to use the models it holds.

The triplet metamodel <=> model <=> detail slides up and down through the infinite levels of the web, always aligning on the current model and level in the correct way to support how you need to think about the information stored at the particular node of interest.

If you’re considering the details of the model that occupies the node, the model on the next higher metalevel represents the defining model for the form the details take. If you’re using the model to define the form of the model in the next lower metalevel, the model in the next higher metalevel is the metamodel that determines the form of the model you’re considering.

Formally the web consists of the simple combination of the individual relationship triplets associated with each metamodel, or node. Any node may have a theoretically infinite number of metarelationships defined on it, connecting it to a theoretically infinite number of other metamodel nodes.

The metamodel web has its own form, of course, described by a metamodel occupying the appropriate metalevel. That form is directly observable, implying that we can ‘see’ structure in the web where we haven’t yet built any. By speculating carefully about what the apparent structure implies, we can ‘know’ things we’ve never encountered.

This should be recognizable as another common ADDer trait. There are other ways of explaining this phenomenon: the structure of the web has a certain sense to it, so that one connection isn’t usually radically different than its neighbors. We can model all possible metamodels (all possible models for any phenomenon) as a virtual ‘sea’ of metamodels, in which the rules of what connections are sensible gives us an immediate take on whether a particular model is likely to be accurate.

Thus, ADDers using a web may in fact appear to be arbitrarily judgmental, seemingly reluctant to consider models that seem perfectly reasonable candidates when considered alone. There are other implications of these ideas that are obviously related to ADDer traits, but four pages are enough for now, and we have to leave something for y’all to have fun with.

Besides, we have yet to talk about why we are able to do this trick, although SB has already let that cat out of the bag. (grins…)

--Tom and Kay

I think the left brain is the center of logical thought, as in dealing with facts and numbers, while the right brain contains the creative center of your mind.
It might be interesting to hear why you think that, if you know. I’m afraid it’s not anything like what’s actually happening in your brain. As far as we know, there’s little substance to this idea, a sort of modern scientific urban legend.

What happens in our brains at the levels we recognize consciously is defined entirely by logic. While there are functional areas in the brain, some of which occupy one hemisphere or the other, it’s extremely unlikely that a functional propensity for ‘art’ or ‘rationality’ would arise in different places.

Different as they might seem, they’re both the same sort of high-level abstract conceptual object. Your experience of being artistic or rational derives from the same areas of the brain.

In the same light, we believe Ratey’s observation of the involvement of the whole brain in the activity of playing the piano is somewhat of a red herring. Every part of the brain has a purpose, and piano playing is a complex activity, making some use (evidently) of most of those purposeful areas.


T&K

Stabile,
I've tried to explain to people that the 'fake' smile that occurs when you take a posed photograph of them, occurs in the same region of the brain as when you're required to play a piano without taking previous lessons..and I explain to them that it's better if they just let me capture their 'smile/photos' without a pose...but I can't explain it to them, in scientific terms...and they're always left frustrated with 'posed smiles' of themselves, and always complain later.



"In the same light, we believe Ratey’s observation of the involvement of the whole brain in the activity of playing the piano is somewhat of a red herring. Every part of the brain has a purpose, and piano playing is a complex activity, making some use (evidently) of most of those purposeful areas."


Sorry if this is thread derailment again.... (0:


Nova

I hope we don't spend two pages on brain physiology here...lol...the intuitive, anecdotal explanation of forestology is far more interesting to me. Just my two cents.

All contributions add to the sum total... (0:

I wish more people would state how they 'think' on this thread.
Not just in one or two words, either.
I think that would be fascinating.

Nova

I hope we don't spend two pages on brain physiology here...lol...the intuitive, anecdotal explanation of forestology is far more interesting to me. Just my two cents.
Yeah, that was just setting a foundation. We like the more poetic expressions ourselves, but we want to be able to have a direct line back to the ground, because we can.

We literally mean this is an accurate description of what is going on logically in our heads. This is where we wound up by taking the path we’ve already described too many times.

These structures are models of knowledge representation (actually, complex abstract conceptual objects, what we manipulate when we think) developed with lots of help, then painstakingly derived directly from basic neural function, and then validated through application.

We’re pretty happy with them so far, and it will be extremely surprising to some pretty smart people if they don‘t stand up for a lot of years.

Now, back to the Doctor’s Smarty Artsy Communal Expression and Collaborative Linguistic Exercise, and points East…

All contributions add to the sum total... (0:

I wish more people would state how they 'think' on this thread.
Not just in one or two words, either.
I think that would be fascinating.

Nova
Obviously enough, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing all along. I guess you meant them other guys… (grins…)

For us the critical issue has always been whether our description fits everyone else; relative models just aren’t good enough. Understanding yourself is cool, but understanding yourself in a way that is general enough to allow you to understand others, well, that can really make you an outsider.

Examples:
1
Do you ... ? Do you ... ?
2
Do you ... ? How big an ?
3
Which side-effects .... ?
4
Which facets have felt. ?

1
..1...2...3...4..
2
Army Dreamers
3
Katherine Bush
4
Never For Ever

1
Two lines facing doublets left corsets bright
2
banquetting hall bustle, fire roaring dogs chained
3
Baron Baroque claps
4
...Silence...

1
drum
2
tenor recorder
3
bassoon
4
lute

1
d&c turn to right
2
one step forward
3
d&c turn to left
4
d-bow c-curtsy

1
Little Adder dreams a lot
2
wet sky dry water, and flying through
3
sleeping with the projector off
4
projector whirring is what heshe-sees true
5
daydreaming clicks it off, little ADDer feeling high, deep blue
6
keep it off, unplug disassemble, for sure, if we'd give lil'ADDer green light to

1
d&c one step forward
2
clap
3
d&c one step back
4
d-bow c-curtsy

1
What should he do - should have been a forester?
2
...raised narrow lens wasn't allowed to be a wide angler
3
What should he do - should have been a farmer?
4
...hasn't not never been doesn't not ever seen green

1
d&c turn to right
2
one step forward
3
d&c turn to left
4
d-bow c-curtsy

1
What should he do - should have been a hunter?
2
...no joy of the kill, what're we hunting, why?, how? ---No...?--- surely we do???
3
best do something safe, 'non-linear' ADDing things, arithmetic 'linear' accountancy?
4
-oh what a waste of ADDer dreamers?

1
d&c one step forward
2
clap
3
d&c one step back
4
d-bow c-curtsy

1
-what a waste of ADDer dreamers?
2
-oh what a waste of ADDer dreamers??
3
-what a waste of ADDer dreamers???
4
-oh what a waste of ADDer dreamers??

1
d&c turn to right
2
one step forward
3
d&c turn to left
4
d-bow c-curtsy

SB.

1
ADD da da da da da da
2
da da da ADD da da da
3
ADD da da da da da da
4
da da da ADD da da da... ... ... ...

1
d&c turn to left
2
three steps forward
3
d&c turn to right
4
d-bow c-curtsy

...reprise...

:-)

Examples: Do you consider yourself a wide-angle thinker,

I try not to think about thinking at all….gives me a head ache…..

I think differently…..not that I by any means claim to know how others think, there reaction tells me I am odd!!!!


'what is the air speed velocity of a swallow?'

A well cooked bird(a swallow) that was chewed would be easier to swallow there for have a higher air speed velocity (yep while it's going down the old hatch=swallow)

I wondered about the air speed of swallow which would be spit!!!!

Well if you get a pretty good breath in bet you can get that sucker flying pretty fast

That is how I think…..swallow= food, spit, bird 5……6…….7………..8


So the only 'answer' is the one I provided

??????????????........ :confused: ..........man I thought all things in life came with at least three. :confused: How can this be a three dimensional universe with only one answer?????????????????????????? :faint:



Do you think it has been more of a help or a hindrance in learning?

Both… some times a help some times a hindrance…..most times just the way it happens!



Do you think wide-angle thinkers fare better in schools (and universities) today then they did a decade or few ago?

Not if their talkative, like to move, or have dyslexia If you have all three + school=aspirates

I have never been able to formulate a different brain in which to compare better or worse ??????


How big an asset or liability has it been for you in your career or in your personal life?

Again both some times “knowing” stuff about people can come in handy other times it is pretty painful……

Understanding thing differently that MOST can be a lonely feeling……

Even when I am right no one listens…….


have felt like obstacles that you still wish you could overcome?

.what good does it do when no one is helped??????

Frustrating…….confusing………???????



Once in a while some one understands or at least doesn’t laugh then it is okay…….

Sharing mental pictures is cool…… that is fun stuff……. Not as lonely!!!!!!!

My Career seeing the dimensionally can be an asset, plus no one expects me to sit down or shut up…….


felt like benefits overall

.I can “hear” the non-verbal….. I think my patients like that. Being able to communicate via “chi” is really cool to……….the things others get because they see only one surface my thinking is about the same it is when others think some symptom is one thing but I can “feel” connect and discover what the non-verbal can’t say I can be their mouth…..then it is a good thing to be me……. I helped some one…………..makes a difference a big difference!!!!!!



Often, beyond the feeling that there's something very special about their art, there is no method for the artist to convey the root of those feelings using words ...

I can see music and hear a painting……..good or bad??? I don’t know, really never thought of it as either just as being!!!!!!!!!!!



In my experience, there is little conversation about the impact of having this kind of preference and so I am curious what others have experienced and what hypotheses they have formed over the years to explain themselves to themselves

Accepting myself is a lot more peaceful and tranquil than beating my self up for not being like every one else…….years of self inflicted beating caused much pain ……bad attitude yet nothing changed…………..I was still me?????? What could I do?????????????

Accept me as being me……..change attitude…ALL this are made of atoms: positive, negative, and neutral<----------- including meadd823!!!!

I quit being the dark cloud in front of the silver lining and began absorbing light from the silver lining Change attitude change life from the inside out not the outside in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tired of life not changing me I kept me weird goofy me so I decided to change it by laughing at the goofy and using the weird to make others smile…I am much like the rock impacts to waters surface and then disappears from site leaving the ripples of the waters so I am in the lives of others…….what kind of ripple do I want leave behind when I am gone??????? <-------->meaning of life to me!


same here, though i really don't like that sentence "i can hear the math in music" in fact i really really dislike it, something about it,


It’s the feeling of math like in classes………math is not class but language!!!

Music is timed all time = math------universal math=language

Sound wave frequency = math<------------music like.........


1
..1...2...3...4..
2
Army Dreamers
3
Katherine Bush
4
Never For Ever

1
Two lines facing doublets left corsets bright
2
banquetting hall bustle, fire roaring dogs chained
3
Baron Baroque claps
4
...Silence...

only for one quarter beat………….then breathe in


For years we've both been interested in the "cross-hemispheric" thing and the possible role of the corpus c. in the "interference" of ADD-style thinking. But it's my personal sense that more recent anatomical evidence, including gender variations, are pretty much blowing a hole in the "classic" paradigms of left vs. right


MEI got a.................
Dyslexic , female , ADHD (complete with "H" factor) brain! :eek:

(stupid censor thing) Hoa rse of a different animal!!!!!!

“A Users Guide to the Brain”
By John J. Ratey M.D.
Quote***
Page 283
Studies have shown that part of the cause may be relative impairment of the magnocellular visual cells in the geniculate body a way station in the thalamus as information passes through there on it’s way to the cortex.

Page 284

Dyslexia occurs much more frequently in boys than in girls, perhaps because girls more efficient corpus callasum makes them better able to compensate for dyslexia, so that the disorder often goes undetected.
***End Quote



we can ‘know’ things we’ve never encountered

Equations must add up exact or what is heard is noise not music……I was born knowing the difference!!!!

Like seeing physics, knowing dyslexic brains work, different (no matter what more educated people say<-----read the John Ratey thing today knew the information in debates three months ago perhaps I have known all my life)

Movement and thought intertwined with emotion=conciseness=being x experience =being meadd823 :eyebrow:



All contributions add to the sum total...

(grins) :D

The answer is: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

Tammy, quoting Ratey:

Dyslexia occurs much more frequently in boys than in girls, perhaps because girls more efficient corpus callasum makes them better able to compensate for dyslexia, so that the disorder often goes undetected.
Too simplistic, too much about the trees and not enough forestology…

Which let’s talk about some more.

The idea that we have a wider view isn’t wrong, but it’s not right enough.

The differentiation of a wider view from a narrower one makes them seem equivalent, and in terms of our ordinary experience that makes sense. We’re built to perceive the world with constant resolution, so a wider view really contains no more information than a narrower one.

But our brand of ‘wider’ is different. The truth is we can’t characterize it accurately as a change in scope or perspective, like twisting the ring on the lens of a camera from telephoto to wide angle.

Maybe we could define it better, as a form of integration of details from all possible narrow telephoto views. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story: as we integrate all that information, implicitly breaking the normal limitations on our perception (no more constant resolution), we add something extra that no wide or narrow view encompasses.

We have the privilege of seeing patterns in how this vast sea of information is organized on every scale, from the narrow to the wide. Pick an arbitrary scope, a view perhaps neither wide nor narrow. We see the interrelationships that are significant on this level, perhaps the natural organization of a copse of similar species within the forest.

Move out a bit, a little wider, and we see how a local copse of evergreens interacts harmoniously with the broader deciduous character of the main forest, and so on. Patterns of interrelationships at all levels, and (more importantly) patterns in how those patterns are related, from level to level.

No arbitrary static view can give us a sense of those patterns, which allows us to predict where we should look for low-level details in a new, unexplored corner of the forest. An ADDer is always saying things like “This blackberry thicket serves the same function for this local tertiary oak grove as the evergreen copses serve for the newer maple and poplar growth.”

Once that is said, anyone can pick it up. There are many specialized areas of knowledge characterized by forays into the wild to bring back this sort of knowledge, that can subsequently be applied without need for our narrow-to-wide-and-everything-in-between-in-relationship view.

One more point about our special type of forestology: nothing is free.

We dramatically improve the resolution of our view, but we don’t really change the fundamental apparatus. We look at the whole forest and see it as an incredible mass of detail with maximum resolution at the lowest levels, integrated and organized hierarchically.

It takes a long time to pour all that information in and organize it, more than we normally expect a student would require. And it requires a kind of exploration of what we‘re trying to understand that isn’t normally evident as a requirement of understanding; the information we need, and the opportunity to observe it, are usually missing from the normal educational experience.

So if we’re going to go out and explore the forest and understand it the way we feel we need to, we’re probably going to have to do it ourselves.

This is about a page late, but relates to the idea of two pages of brain phsyiology from page two...LOL



Stabile...I wasn't directing my comment to your metamodel explanation. I actually enjoyed your post and tend to agree strongly that the mind, and probably to an attentuated level in the ADD mindstyle, creates logical mappings for nearly everything we encounter in the world. I also like the idea of the ADD metamodels creating a more logical web upon which we are more readily able to quickly, and in most cases, more accurately, assess the whole my overlaying the immediate visual content across one of our mutple-level webs. Makes a lot of sense as to why we see patterns so much more readily and easily than the average Joe. We've already built a pretty elaborate infrastructure for new information to be assimilated onto, compared to, and/or put through our instant analysis system. Good and interesting reading.

I was referring to, what I would call the "theoretical soft-science masked as hard science" discussions that have sometimes overrun other threads. While I commend those making strides toward a greater understanding of actual brain anatomy as tied to function....I'll just leave it at that, but the comment was NOT directed to your longer post.

Too simplistic, too much about the trees and not enough forestology…

Which let’s talk about some more.

The idea that we have a wider view isn’t wrong, but it’s not right enough.
I always have to smile a little when I read someone who is simply stating their own viewpoint, but in a manner that a soft-skinned original poster might find rather devaluing. I KNOW that Stabile does not mean or intend any slight, but Tom and Kay are just very enthusiastic about their beliefs, but it does make me smile!! :)

The differentiation of a wider view from a narrower one makes them seem equivalent, and in terms of our ordinary experience that makes sense. We’re built to perceive the world with constant resolution, so a wider view really contains no more information than a narrower one.

But our brand of ‘wider’ is different. The truth is we can’t characterize it accurately as a change in scope or perspective, like twisting the ring on the lens of a camera from telephoto to wide angle.

Maybe we could define it better, as a form of integration of details from all possible narrow telephoto views. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story: as we integrate all that information, implicitly breaking the normal limitations on our perception (no more constant resolution), we add something extra that no wide or narrow view encompasses.

We have the privilege of seeing patterns in how this vast sea of information is organized on every scale, from the narrow to the wide. Pick an arbitrary scope, a view perhaps neither wide nor narrow. We see the interrelationships that are significant on this level, perhaps the natural organization of a copse of similar species within the forest.

Move out a bit, a little wider, and we see how a local copse of evergreens interacts harmoniously with the broader deciduous character of the main forest, and so on. Patterns of interrelationships at all levels, and (more importantly) patterns in how those patterns are related, from level to level.

No arbitrary static view can give us a sense of those patterns, which allows us to predict where we should look for low-level details in a new, unexplored corner of the forest. An ADDer is always saying things like “This blackberry thicket serves the same function for this local tertiary oak grove as the evergreen copses serve for the newer maple and poplar growth.”

Once that is said, anyone can pick it up. There are many specialized areas of knowledge characterized by forays into the wild to bring back this sort of knowledge, that can subsequently be applied without need for our narrow-to-wide-and-everything-in-between-in-relationship view.

One more point about our special type of forestology: nothing is free.

We dramatically improve the resolution of our view, but we don’t really change the fundamental apparatus. We look at the whole forest and see it as an incredible mass of detail with maximum resolution at the lowest levels, integrated and organized hierarchically.

It takes a long time to pour all that information in and organize it, more than we normally expect a student would require. And it requires a kind of exploration of what we‘re trying to understand that isn’t normally evident as a requirement of understanding; the information we need, and the opportunity to observe it, are usually missing from the normal educational experience.

So if we’re going to go out and explore the forest and understand it the way we feel we need to, we’re probably going to have to do it ourselves.
Although this may sound rather pompous and self-important, and I DON'T mean or intend it to, but I want to commend you on the clarity with which this post was written. Yep, while others may say all your posts clearly and pointedly explicate your vision of this mindstyle, this is by far the most clarity and least amount of circuity that I have observed. Bravo! And as for the substance of your post, I concur and would argue that your description is perfectly on point. I agree that's how a well-developed ADD'er incorporates the constant data stream so efficiently. Efficiently is of course an ironical word to use, because as you mention concerning the current educational process, we often require eccessively more data and information before we can process new material, but once the model has been formed, we can much more efficiently process or solve similar problems. Again, very impressive post.

Tammy, quoting Ratey:

Dyslexia occurs much more frequently in boys than in girls, perhaps because girls more efficient corpus callasum makes them better able to compensate for dyslexia, so that the disorder often goes undetected.
Too simplistic, too much about the trees and not enough ADDer forestology…

What most current theory misses is exactly what makes our view different from just taking in a wider angle.

The brain is exceedingly complex, way too much organization to encode in DNA. This was a problem for us, because much of what we see in the conventional view assumes that we can speak meaningfully about such things as the difference between the female and male corpus callosa.

Whatever difference there is beyond the very simple initial structural definition must be considered due to a kind of learning process. Whether we should take the result as arising from simple or complex factors can be judged by looking at the level on which the difference has significance.

Dyslexia is a phenomenon that occurs at an extremely high level, and any associated differences in the male and female corpus callosa must be considered due to a complex interaction between the effects of high level experiential differences and the gender specific physical differences that might exist.

Even that last is a bit too much; there is no valid way to imagine the state of a pristine female brain, separated from the effects of the interactions that differ by reason of gender. The entire organ develops in a kind of bootstrap process, each successive level of sophistication feeding back to contribute to the next.

Thinking about what a normal adult brain would be like without that process isn’t useful, because no such organ could ever exist. Any view of the brain must always implicitly include the contributions of processes that can properly be characterized as learning, regardless of how low the level of function seems to be.

There’s another way to express this: we make choices, even for many of those things we assume are rigidly defined by our genetic heritage. We ADDers are becoming aware of some of the choices that have been historically made for us by circumstance.

As a result, we’re gaining the opportunity to control them, and ourselves, in ways never before imagined.

Some opportunity, eh?

--T&K

Although this may sound rather pompous and self-important…
It doesn’t sound that way to us at all. You’re just trying to find a resonance that is in tune with what you’ve already established, and know to be true.


…and I DON'T mean or intend it to, but I want to commend you on the clarity with which this post was written. Yep, while others may say all your posts clearly and pointedly explicate your vision of this mindstyle, this is by far the most clarity and least amount of circuity that I have observed. Bravo! And as for the substance of your post, I concur and would argue that your description is perfectly on point. I agree that's how a well-developed ADD'er incorporates the constant data stream so efficiently. Efficiently is of course an ironical word to use, because as you mention concerning the current educational process, we often require eccessively more data and information before we can process new material, but once the model has been formed, we can much more efficiently process or solve similar problems. Again, very impressive post.
Thanks, and thanks for letting us see a bit better how your web is tuned, what notes resonate in its structure.


I always have to smile a little when I read someone who is simply stating their own viewpoint, but in a manner that a soft-skinned original poster might find rather devaluing. I KNOW that Stabile does not mean or intend any slight, but Tom and Kay are just very enthusiastic about their beliefs, but it does make me smile!!
Ya’ mean like being careful to state these are only beliefs, rather than the result of years of rigorous research? (grins…)

We don’t mean to demean or slight anyone, of course, and we hope that still goes without saying.

Don’t be misled into believing these ideas aren’t capable to standing up under rigorous scrutiny, or that they haven’t already done so. When we say that information in your brain has a certain logical structure, we’re not foolin’ around.

What you need is a way of seeing what that means that doesn’t contradict what you’ve already established as true. So we cast about, from abstract neurology to forestology (a new word for our spell checker, joyjoy), until we find the right key.

We are certain that the structural organization we describe is real. The number of smart, critical people who have already accepted the definitions as we present them is what makes us comfortable presenting them here.

The really interesting questions arise in considering how the difference in the two organizational forms affects our experience of being. We’re pretty well zoned in on the basic skeleton of the overall structure, certainly enough to be able to keep an earnest discussion of ‘metaminds’ on track.

We understand the reasons for the impressions that give rise to the description of the tapestry. We understand how that is related to AD/HD. It’s not a simple subject, in part because we don’t all use the newer structures in every way possible.

In a sense some of us are hanging halfway between normal and ADDer; in a way, that’s not such a bad description of everyone on the planet. It makes for interesting resistance to new ideas sometimes, even from within the group expressing personal interest in them.

We can’t take that personally, because it’s exactly what our theoretical models predict. If there wasn’t some resistance, we would have to go back and figure out what we missed, refine the models to better fit the reality (for the umpteenth time), and try again.

But so far, everything we’ve experienced here is right on the money. Nobody’s reaction has ever been unexpected, even those rare ones that sting a bit. None of that here, though…

Ya’ mean like being careful to state these are only beliefs, rather than the result of years of rigorous research? (grins…)

We don’t mean to demean or slight anyone, of course, and we hope that still goes without saying.And I knew this, it's just also very easy, I see myself doing it all the time, where we unintentionally, likely because of our own confidence in what we are saying, suggest ours is the only "correct" answer. Of course by inference, then, suggesting others are "incorrect".


In a sense some of us are hanging halfway between normal and ADDer; in a way, that’s not such a bad description of everyone on the planet. I have offered that I think every man, woman and child is "somewhere" between, not necessarily half-way, every condition listed in the DSM-IV and other conditions yet to be catergorized. Only those whose symptomology slides far enough on the continuim generally get recognized. I refer to this as the Continuim of Mental Health. Thus, while we are all a little "crazy", it's just a matter of degrees and in many areas, we are indeed normal.

I am also in the perceived minority of those who would never give up my ADHD even if offered a "cure". I can point to an excessive number of strengths and unique talents that I know have a foundation in ADD that I would risk losing for such a "cure". I like it somewhere between those who really are still working to manage the beast called ADD and whatever the hell "normal" is. It allows me to entertain any subject of interest, there is nothing I couldn't accomplish if sufficiently interested and motivated, but I also have learned to accept the weaknesses that are simply me and my ADHD. I suspect some of you are also in that minority.

Alright, back on track. In continuing discussion of forestology, linked at least in my ADHD mind and perhaps consistent with the Stabile metamodel, does anyone else have the uncanny ability to determine what a strange sound was or originated from, what a wierd message on your answering machine likely means or why it was left, or other events that seem to defy immediate explanation? Sometime falls in the house, my wife says, WTF, my "web" sorts out the sounds against the stored auditory bank and says, oh, yeah, that's our son dropping his deoderant onto the heat register. Those kind of things? If off-topic, apologies. :o

So are you agreeing or disagreeing..or confusing me ? (0:

Sorry if this again is thread derailment, but if you can somehow find a way to identify with this post, Kokomo- you might find an answer to the question you seek.
You just have to look beyond the title of the topic...

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=265318#post265318


Nova

Easier answer than Dx's post... I generally agree with Stabile. Neat concept. Of course Stabile would argue all their ideas are neat, I am just only willing to consider those I already have accepted in my own mind.

We’re pretty well zoned in on the basic skeleton of the overall structure, certainly enough to be able to keep an earnest discussion of ‘metaminds’ on track.


Okay how does one know if they have a "metemind" or one that is just a tad "off"?????

I mean I followed Nova's link about two hours ago...responded to that thread then popped over to another section to see if a question I asked has been answered, which reminded me I needed to order daughters medication, this is one that can be done on-line.....wrote daughters reminding her to pick up medication then wrote my self one to re-remind daughter and father tomorrow about medications again.....

Cleaned out mail box wrote another private e-mail and then came back here to general.........glanced at the title to this post only to remember I forgot to post ....then five minutes went by before I remembered the question I meant to ask which is how would any one know if they have this metemind or just a tangled up ball of confusion...although I do not feel confused......I feel finished.......or perhaps the difference between a meta mind and a weird sense of humor......????????

I think I have read three different descriptions and some things match but some do not........the forest /tree thing.....the web model....Kokomo's thoughts along with Nova's

I don't feel like I see a forest or a tree but both the forest and the trees some time I get tired of trees and decide to see if there are any interesting bugs crawling about.....maybe a view of the clouds.....I could check it out from a swallows perspective (which would have to be done before I swallow the swallow)

Now I have meal, a forest and a WEB??????? Metamind of that I am unsure?????

Kokomo----did you know your writing style changes according to the post... I mean every ones does to a certain extent but not quiet as radically as your does!!!

I mean one post I read your wrote like you were young maybe teens, the next one sounded like you were in your mid-thirties, this one sounds like you are neither but very well educated.....I was totally thrown by an interpretation you did of one of SB's which you did very well because it referred to some thing I wasn't a part but apparently you and SB were so you got actually more out of it than I did......good long term memory SB has by the way quite impressive......

Kokomo….we all change style to match the over all tone of the thread, to an extent but I have failed to see any one be as flexible as you when it comes to writing style!!!!

You don't evolve it the way most do over time I mean you can literally go from ten to forty in responses posted less than an hour of each other!!! That is very unique I am intrigued!!!!!

Think the medications wore off they do that some times!!!

Oops moderator off topic now which was????????

Meadde...I am not sure why my writing style changes so much. I will concede that I am a chamelion in many respects, but on these boards, I don't think I consciously attempt to be. I usually try to stay within the tone and tenor of a thread simply because I am keenly aware of my own ADHD desire to drift and link other topics onto whatever is being discussed so I resist. As for appearing different ages, I guess I have always felt in some ways that ADHD makes you feel a little bit like a multi-personality sufferer must feel. Before anyone calls 911, let me explain that one a little.

There is a part of me that is very mature, very conservative, level-headed and fits the role of a counselor/attorney very well. There is also a part of me that, at least on these boards, feels like a kid in a candy shop who gets over-sugared by some posts and begins bouncing around the room. There is another part of me that is arguably the intellectual who probably wishes the rest of us would have went on to get a PhD instead of the law degree. That part of my very much misses the process of designing hypotheses, setting up experiments, researching the relevant prior work, etc. So I think threads like this one bring out some of that part of me. There are several other parts, the soccer coach, the fanatical father, the overly sensitive male, etc, that all come out at different times depending on the topic. While I probably use a ton more "impression management" in the real world, I fear you're seeing the vast number of "sides" that I can display here, unfettered and unchecked. The basic me, rarely argue unless it's critical, always questioning, defending others...I cannot ch