Flashes of Nondecisionmaking

Yes.

There's a related process of confabulation where, not only do we placidly go along with what we're doing under the default assumption that we chose to do it, but we retroactively edit our memories of having intended to do things to bring them in line with what we subsequently did, and otherwise to create the illusion that we're in control.

Recovering from major brain trauma is a particularly vivid way to experience one's conscious self "taking credit" for things that it has nothing at all to do with, IME. I have a lot of amusing-in-retrospect memories of experiencing "Hey, I just figured out how to do X! Aren't I clever!" for Xes (like being able to move my leg) that had nothing whatsoever to do with "figuring out" anything.

I believe now that we're constantly in nondecisionmaking mode. We're constantly running patterns or taking actions without conscious command or choice, similar to blood running from a cut.

This is one of the main theses of The Power of Habit.

When a rat first navigates a foreign environment, such as a maze, its brain is full of activity as it works to process the new environment and to learn all the environmental cues. As the environment becomes more familiar, the rat's brain becomes less and less active, until even brain structures related to memory quiet down a week later. Navigating the maze no longer requires higher processing: it has become an automatic habit.

The process of converting a complicated sequence of actions into an automatic routine is known as "chunking", and human brains carry out a similar process. They vary in complexity, from putting toothpaste on your toothbrush before putting it in your mouth, to getting dressed or preparing breakfast, to very complicated processes such as backing one's car out of the driveway. All of these actions initially required considerable effort to learn, but eventually they became so automatic as to be carried out without conscious attention. As soon as we identify the right cue, such as pulling out the car keys, our brain activates the stored habit and lets our conscious minds focus on something else. In order to conserve effort, the brain will attempt to turn almost any routine into a habit.

Funnily enough, we can control our bleeding more directly. .

Think vasoconstriction. If you can learn how to access your bodies ability to use vasoconstriction it can work pretty well. I've met a guy that knows how to think bleeding away (while he was awake at least, he would start bleeding again in his sleep). I've also used suggestion to help stop my girlfriends bleeding to surprising success (the doctor asked why the cut hand was so cold!).

While the main point of "you can't just bark orders all the time" stands, it does point out anther avenue for turning indirect work into a fairly direct avenue through being more aware of what your body functions feel like so that you can communicate with them.

Can you please reformat this post so that it uses the default LW font?

Related:

Zen sometimes emphasizes this: Instead of emphasizing the content of sitting, they emphasize the act of sitting. You can’t complete the act of sitting; it’s ongoing, and you have to be with that process.

You can’t really complete life, either. Objects, goals, content keep coming up. And that’s fine. Work with those objects, use them, think about them, manipulate them when you can. But you can’t complete life. There’s no winning move. So can you viscerally, tangibly, deliberately, feel into the act of living, spend some time taking the reins of the usual automaticity, moment to moment, and feel into the process, the how of how you’re living. Or, feel into the how of how you’re approaching a particular act of living (taxes, job, etc.)? And guide that “how”? Adjust its trajectory a little bit, for the better? The quality of the process? Adverbs: Cleanly, gently, impeccably, lovingly, more relaxed, more ethically, more willingly, more open, more aligned… whatever palette, whatever wordless qualities you want to draw upon, or feel into, or call out to you, or you’re drawn towards…

"We may think we are doing -- indeed, we think we are doing at every moment -- but IT is doing. Our mechanical being is doing" -- Maurice Nicholl.

But we can't simply say "Body, I command you not to bleed" nor "I choose not to bleed" if we are, in fact, bleeding.

But what if we ain't got time to bleed?

Also, I have never considered my circulation to be a particularly personal thing. Perhaps this is because my circulatory system is so similar to everyone else's. However, your point holds for other things that I (and I suspect others) do consider personal, like emotions and personality. People have long-term influence on them, but typically lack immediate control.

Yes, indeed, we don't always have conscious control over the same set of things over which we intuitively believe we have conscious control. That's the foundation of (among other things) the difference between System 1 and System 2 in the biases literature. It's also (as Kaj_Sotala noted) one reason habit is such a powerful influence on human behaviour, and the reason things like drug addiction exist. But how could it be any other way? Brains aren't made of magical-consciousness-stuff, they're physical, modular, evolved entities in a species descended from lizards.

I'd be interested in hearing more about the methods you've found effective for noticing the semiconscious decisions that you're making and how you've evaluated their effectiveness.

I've had more flashes of awareness, seeing myself running mechanical patterns during times I normally wouldn't have noticed them. Briefly, here and there. I've been sometimes able to radically course correct and do something entirely different. Othertimes, I try and fail to do something different.

Has happened to me different times and I tried to achive that presence of mind more consistently. Obviously, that it's not even far easy: my current approach is to use this approach and my results are inconsistent. But I'm keeping track on those moments, maybe I'll get some results in the long run.

Feedback: This post would benefit a lot from references to the relevant science, e.g. ego-depletion theory, the science of habits, the Systems 1 and 2 described e.g. in Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, and so on. And corresponding discussions on LW. Or even just from name-dropping them!

Right now this post sounds more idiosyncratic than its contents should be, right up to the title of the post.

Yep, I think the standard approach to self-improvement is just to apply a lot of effort, try harder, etc. and see if you can self-improve that way, but in reality your brain is a complicated system that requires intelligence, self-awareness, note-taking, etc. in order to hack.

I noticed the same thing recently and have been trying to pay attention to how it works. Meditation increasing agency is something I've noticed as well.

The other useful thing I've discovered is that if I take the daily review that I used to do at the end of the day ("how did today go? what went well? what could have gone better?") and write things down as they come to me during the day--and try to think of things to write down as stuff is happening--this seems to push me more towards agency-mode and waking-up. (Unfortunately it's often inconvenient to take things and type them out in the moment. I'm working on streamlining this.)

This seems well below the standard often reached here. The writing seems very sloppy and telegraphic... for instance, of course we can say and think 'Body, I command you not to bleed'! It just won't do anything.

And: 'At the same time, there's a view that we have full control and choice over our actions in a given situation.' - This seems a bit like a strawman. What's the view exactly? Who has ever held it? And why should not being able to stop bleeding at will constitute a counterexample? No one normally classifies bleeding as an 'action'.

And regarding the two 'takeaways': you acknowledge that the first is probably not very new or important, and the second, as you've summed it up (second last paragraph), seems incredibly trite. We can't choose to not bleed. OK. Things that seem like choices aren't always so. OK, that seems true too, but also trite, and the bleeding thing doesn't seem like an example: who ever thought you could stop bleeding at will, who ever thought there was any choice?

I think Lesswrong can do better than this.

Heh. This is the old discussion about freedom of will.

The correct answer to the question of freedom of will is "shut up!" :-)