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How to keep mind stable and calm


10 simple tips to keep your mind calm

We all are aware of numerous ways to take care of the body. But, what about taking care of your mind? Mental health is the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us.

When we practice good mental health habits, it is easier to handle stress and other problems. Read this article to learn about different ways to build good mental health.

1. Take care of your body
Our bodies and our minds are connected. When you take care of your body, you also take care of your mind.

2. Eat well-timed, balanced meals
Food is our fuel. It gives us important nutrients that help our bodies work. It makes sense that the better we eat, the better we work. Our brains work better, too. Research shows that the food we eat is a big part of mental health. Healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains give us the nutrients to work our best. Skipping meals can make you feel tired or irritable.

3. Watch out for too much caffeine.
Caffeine is the part of coffee and black tea that gives you energy. It is in other drinks and snacks, too. Caffeine can add to feelings of anxiety. It can also stop you from sleeping well.

4. Keep a check on sugar intake.
Eating sugar gives you a quick burst of energy. But when that energy is gone, you feel more tired. It can lower your mood and make you feel irritable.

5. Exercise
Exercise is good for your body. But did you know that it is also good for mental health? Exercise can help cope with stress, lowers anxiety, lifts our mood, boosts our energy, helps us feel good about ourselves, helps us sleep well. Just 30 minutes a day, three or four days a week is enough to see big changes.

6. Get enough sleep
Sleep has a huge effect on mental health. When we get enough sleep, it is easier to cope with stress, handle problems, concentrate, think positively and remember things. You know that you are getting enough sleep when you do not feel sleepy during the day.

7. Practice healthy thinking
Good mental health does not mean that we only ever have happy thoughts. Sad or upsetting things are part of life. Problems are also part of life. Good mental health means looking at the situation for what it really is.

8. Watch for thinking traps
The way we think about something has a big effect on the way we feel. If we feel like we can handle a problem, we often feel good. If we do not think that we can handle a problem, we often feel bad. Sometimes, we think that something is bad, even when it is not true. These thoughts are sometimes called “thinking traps.” They are traps because they are easy to fall into and can get us stuck and feeling bad.

9. Slow down
We all need to take time to slow down and relax. It is a big part of managing stress and enjoying our lives. When we do not take time to slow down, stresses can add up until we feel too overwhelmed to do anything. How you relax is up to you- Yoga, meditation, tai chi, and breathing exercises are suggested activities.

10. Take some time out to laugh
Meet and reconnect with your group of friends,  watch a comedy or check out funny videos online. Laughter therapy helps reduce anxiety.

11 Ways to Make Your Mind Calm and Peaceful

Many of us live with a level of persistent low-grade stress that becomes so normalised that most of the time, we don’t even realise it’s there.

While we might not be displaying obvious signs of stress, cortisol—the hormone associated with stress—wreaks havoc on our mental and physical health over the long-term. Therefore it’s important to make time to clear our minds and bring some peace into our lives, even if we’re not feeling particularly anxious.

Here are 11 suggestions you can use to make your mind calm and peaceful.

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Make time to meditate

Meditation has a number of positive effects on mind and body. It’s also deceptively hard, which is why many people try it once or twice but struggle to make it a regular habit. Meditation helps combat the physical and emotional affects of stress and has lasting benefits that affect your productivity, as well as your ability to relax. Set aside time to meditate for just 10 minutes a day over the next week or two and experience the benefits for yourself.

Focus on gratitude

When we’re facing a series of challenges, it can be easy to slip into tunnel vision and focus on what’s going wrong at the expense of noticing what’s going well. Even taking the time to write down just three things each day that we feel grateful for can help reinstate a balanced perspective on our day-to-day experience.

Notice internal judgements

While many of us fear judgement from others, the harshest criticisms we experience are often self-inflicted. Nothing clutters and stresses the mind like internal self-judgements, so pay attention to your thought patterns and notice when your inner critic rears up. Being aware of these thoughts as they occur is the first, and most important, step towards replacing criticism with calm.

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Practice self-compassion

Once we are able to notice our self-criticisms and judgements in the moment, we have a chance to practice self-compassion. This means acknowledging and accepting reality, and extending the same kind of compassion to ourselves that we would to a good friend in our situation. In doing this, we stop measuring ourselves against different standards compared to other people.

Distance yourself from negative self-talk and beliefs

We can’t necessarily stop ourselves experiencing negative self-talk and beliefs but we can distance ourselves from them. Using the phrase “I notice that…[I’m judging myself harshly for forgetting that file this morning]” whenever we identify a negative self-judgement or belief helps us see these beliefs for what they really are: opinions, rather than facts.

Set routines

Setting routines might sound like a recipe for boredom but it actually helps instil a day-to-day sense of peace in our minds. When we have set routines, we have less decisions to make during the day. This frees up space in our minds for bigger, more important tasks.

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Keep a journal

Journaling is a great way to get our thoughts out of our heads and onto paper. Writing down our most pressing thoughts and worries each day has a similar effect to talking to someone about them. By making time to journal, you’re giving yourself the chance to process your thoughts and feelings, and to express them in a safe, private space.

Create a to-do list

Similar to journaling, writing down your tasks and projects helps clear your mind. If you find that various activities and reminders keep popping into your head and distracting you from the task at hand, a system like Getting Things Done can help increase your productivity and your mental calm.

Exercise

It’s a well-known fact that exercise augments our sense of mental well-being. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, exercising for just 10 minutes can release endorphins, pain-killing chemicals that help induce a state of mental and physical peace.

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Experiment

Finally, it’s important to remember that everyone is different. What helps one person find peace and calm might have the opposite effect on the next. As you go about your day, notice the times when you feel most at ease and make note of what you’re doing at that time. Experiment with the methods above, as well as your own suggestions, and create your own list of activities that help your mind find clarity and relaxation.

how to learn to live life to the fullest - T&P

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we often lack the focus to become aware of all our experiences and truly understand what we want.

Alpina Non-Fiction has published Andy Puddicombe's book Meditation and Mindfulness, in which the author explains how not to lose yourself in the endless streams of information and momentary emotions. "Theories and Practices" publishes an excerpt from the book.

Andy Puddicombe
Alpina Digital Publishing, 2011

Although mindfulness requires constant effort, it, like meditation, requires a special kind of effort, natural and effortless. It is only necessary to notice every time when thoughts or feelings force you to distract from reality, and at the same moment redirect your attention to where it is required. Whether you're focused on the taste of the food you're eating, the movement of your hands opening or closing the door, the weight of your body in a chair, the feel of the water washing over your skin in the shower, skin-to-skin contact with your baby, the smell of toothpaste while brushing your teeth, or just a glass of water that you are now drinking. Mindfulness applies to any little thing that is given to you in sensation, without a single exception. It does not matter whether it is active and non-physical activities, whether you indulge in them at home or on the street, at work or during leisure time, alone or in company. If you are just starting to understand the idea of ​​engagement, all of this can be confusing at first.

People regularly ask me if they should now walk down the street with their eyes closed, focusing on their own breathing. No, please don't do this! So you can easily get under the car. Also, this is about general awareness, not about a specific process of meditation, so you should not close your eyes and focus on your breath. Remember: engagement means being fully aware of the current moment, understanding where you are and what you are doing. You will behave exactly the same as usual. All you have to do is stay on all the time, and the easiest way to do this is to choose a specific object and focus on it.

Every time you realize that you have forgotten about him, you simply return your thoughts to the object of your attention. One of my favorite examples is brushing your teeth. This action is familiar to everyone, it lasts no more than two minutes, while without explanation it is clear what exactly you are focusing on, and with a high probability you will be able to complete this process while remaining involved. And this will be a big difference from the usual way for most people to carry out this simple hygienic procedure - on full automatic, thinking about what to do next.

To fully understand the difference between the two scenarios, it must be experienced. Try what it is. Perhaps you can easily focus on physical sensations, turning them into a focal point. It can be the sound of a brush scraping over the teeth, the sensations that the steady movement back and forth causes in the hand, the taste or smell of toothpaste. If you focus on one single sensation, your mind will feel calmer. And when you calm down, you may well notice a habit of being distracted by an extraneous thought or jumping from one thought to another. Maybe you notice that you spend too much or, on the contrary, too little effort directly on the procedure of brushing your teeth. There is a chance that you will even register a feeling of boredom. All these observations are useful in their own way, because they allow you to see your own consciousness as it really is. This concentration reflects the difference between a stable, calm mind and a mind that is out of control. Let's look at an example. Suppose you are about to drink a glass of water. Instead of gulping down water, try focusing on the experience you get. Seriously, when was the last time you tasted the water you drink? As soon as you take a glass in your hands, you get information about the temperature of the water and the material from which the glass is made. You can pay close attention to how the hand moves towards the mouth, to the taste of water filling the mouth. By learning to listen to your feelings, you will be able to follow how water moves through the throat and further into the stomach. If at some stage you notice that your mind wanders somewhere far away, just refocus your attention on how you drink.

“Imagine what it would be like to be around someone who could give you their full attention.”

As you practice this approach in various situations, you will find that it is effective in calming the mind. Not only are you fully aware of the impressions you receive at any particular moment, you live life to the fullest in the full sense of the word, but you also calm down. And with peace comes clarity. You begin to understand how and why you think and feel, and why it happens the way you do. You begin to notice patterns and trends that are characteristic of your consciousness. As a result, you again get the opportunity to independently decide how to live. Instead of being mindlessly carried away by destructive, unproductive thoughts and emotions, you can respond to what is happening in the way that feels best to you.

Another popular question is how does this technique work in the presence of strangers? Wouldn't such concentration in the company of other people look like rudeness? These fears seem ridiculous to me: after all, such a question suggests that we are usually so focused on the words, feelings and emotions of others that we are not enough for anything else. You know, in reality, this is extremely rare. More often than not, we are so immersed in our own thoughts that we are not able to really hear the words of the interlocutor. Suppose you are walking down the street chatting with a friend. In principle, walking is an autonomous activity, and yet you spend some of your attention on not colliding with other passers-by, not accidentally entering the roadway, and so on. Only in those moments when you are not busy with relevant observations, you can switch your attention to communication with a friend. This, however, does not mean at all that you pay less attention to the interlocutor than usual - it simply means that you switch from one object to another with the necessary frequency, in this case from the environment to a conversation with a friend. In such a situation, your attention to your own thoughts and feelings will not be as complete as if you were sitting and meditating alone - at least at first, but the main thing is the firm intention to remain involved. The more often you practice, the easier it will be for you to practice and the more successful you will be able to keep your attention.

Involvement in the present will allow you to fully remain "in the same room" with the interlocutor. One woman who came to my clinic told me how she uses this method to contact a child and how it helps her to truly be with him. According to her, although she had been close to the baby in the same way before, her thoughts wandered somewhere all the time. Only when she learned to really feel involved in communication with the child did she realize the fullness of their interaction. Experiences like these can have a truly limitless impact on our interactions with others. Imagine what it's like to be next to a person who can give you all his attention without a trace, and how nice it will be to give him the same undivided attention in return.

The beauty of mindfulness is that you don't have to spend extra time on it. You just have to learn to fully immerse yourself in the action that is being performed in the present, instead of wandering somewhere in an unknown distance. This is an answer to those who claim that they do not have free time to train their consciousness. A long time ago, I was told a story about an American meditation teacher who was studying as a monk in Thailand. He went there in the 1960s and 1970s, along with many others who were then following the hippie paths to Asia. During his wanderings, he became interested in meditation and decided that he was ready to spend all his time studying. After going to one of the most famous teachers in Thailand, he settled in a monastery and began his studies, eventually becoming a monk. His study schedule was very tight: he had to devote his time exclusively to studies and work. At the same time, meditation classes took about eight hours a day.

If you have never lived in a monastery, eight hours may seem like a long time. However, in such places they fly by in the blink of an eye. Of course, students also devote the remaining time to the training of consciousness - in the form of awareness of the present and the application of engagement to everyday affairs.

As this Asian travel route gradually gained in popularity, the monastery was visited by numerous Western tourists during this man's training. Some of them stayed there for several weeks and then continued on their way. Living in the monastery, they, of course, constantly entered into conversations with representatives of Western countries who lived there. In the course of such conversations, our monk learned that in neighboring Burma there are monasteries, the inhabitants of which devote about 18 hours a day to meditation. Enthusiastic and dreaming of making progress in the study of meditation as soon as possible, he began to seriously consider moving. But he could not overcome his doubts in any way: after all, the teacher who taught him was very famous and respected. For several months he suffered, unable to decide whether to leave or stay. He believed that he would achieve enlightenment more quickly by meditating for 18 hours a day in one of the Burmese monasteries. Indeed, in his monastery, he was constantly busy with work - he was engaged in cleaning, collecting firewood for kindling, darning monastic robes, and so on; it seemed to him that after all this he had practically no time left for meditation. In addition, he found school difficult, and he suspected that work was somehow interfering with his studies. In the end, he went to the teacher to warn him about his impending departure. He secretly hoped that, seeing his enthusiasm and enthusiasm, the teacher would give him the opportunity to stay and devote more time to meditation. However, when he heard it, he just nodded calmly.

“Each of us has 24 hours a day at our disposal, that is, the same amount of time that we can use in learning to consciously relate to reality”

The seeming indifference of the teacher angered our enthusiast. He sincerely did not understand what was happening. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m leaving?! he exclaimed.

“Okay, tell me,” the teacher replied, still indifferent.

— Because we don't have time to meditate here! the monk exclaimed. — In Burma, monks meditate 18 hours a day, while we only do eight. How can I make progress in my studies if all I do all day long is cook, clean and darn? We don't have time for anything else here!

It is said that the teacher looked at him attentively, but he asked the question with a smile.

— Do you think that you do not have time to be aware of what is happening? - he asked. “Do you think you don’t have enough time to understand?”

The student, immersed in an internal dialogue, at first did not even understand what he was talking about, and answered with irritation: — Of course. We are so busy with work that we have no time to be aware of the present.

The teacher laughed.

“So,” he said, “when you are sweeping the yard, you are not able to be aware of the process of sweeping? When you iron monastic robes, can't you give yourself over to the process of ironing? The meaning of mind training is awareness. You can be aware of what is happening with the same success when you sit with your eyes closed in the temple, as when you sweep the yard and your eyes are open at the same time!

The student fell silent, realizing how far his understanding of consciousness training was from the truth. Like many others, including myself, he believed that you can work on your consciousness only when you sit quietly and meditate. In practice, however, this process is much more diverse. The practice of mindfulness teaches us that we can use the same faculties of our mind in whatever we do. It doesn’t matter if we are engaged in manual labor or lead a sedentary lifestyle, engagement can be practiced just as well while riding a bicycle as sitting at home in an armchair. It doesn't matter what business we're in. Each of us has at our disposal 24 hours a day, that is, the same amount of time that we can use in learning to be conscious of reality. It doesn't matter if we are aware of physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, or their content - they are all different facets of awareness, for which we always have time.

Do you remember how you used to draw in elementary school by connecting a series of dots? Remember those pictures where the image was marked with a whole row of little dots? Usually they were so close to each other that you only had to draw a line on paper, eventually getting the feeling that you created your own, personal masterpiece. This dotted picture is a clear illustration of how engagement can become more than just a once-a-day meditative exercise. Take a blank sheet of paper and try to draw a straight line across the entire sheet. I think even if you have an excellent eye, your hand will still tremble a couple of times. If you are not strong in such exercises, there will be a lot of irregularities. This line is a visual representation of how you experience awareness throughout the day. Living the moment consciously, you feel calm, focused and meaningful in your actions. Do not forget: even if you do not experience positive emotions, you still feel some emotional freedom, perspective, stability of sensations. However, like the line you drew on paper, the idea of ​​constant awareness seems to many to be very shaky.

“Try to think of mindfulness as a quality that you can use throughout the day. Remember that you should give yourself completely to every task, whatever it may be. However, then you realize that you have a normal working day ahead of you, and you become depressed. You get out of bed, immediately trip over a cat and, cursing loudly, head to the bathroom. After breakfast, you already feel much better and think that, after all, the day is not so bad. But before you leave the house, you receive an email from your boss demanding that you work late today. “Of course, a little something - me!” you think. Leaving the apartment, you slam the door loudly, cursing to yourself.

When you get to the office, you find out that all employees, and not only you, have been asked to stay late at work, and you feel better. Then you see a large plate of cakes on the table. You smile, you are already drooling. “It must be someone’s birthday,” you think. “We should take a break and have some coffee.” But then the question of cakes begins to concern you seriously. You remember that you have been on a diet for quite a long time, which turned out to be very successful: in fact, should you eat these sweets? On the other hand, you are trying to learn to be kinder to yourself, maybe you should still allow yourself a single cake? You are completely confused. You want cake... no, you don't want it. This is how day after day passes, and the events that take place are accompanied by a series of ups and downs for you. Throughout the day, only one thing stays the same: your own feelings determine your mood. In the absence of awareness and understanding, the power of feelings over you is limitless.

Well, now let's try to imagine what is happening differently. Imagine that a sheet of paper has already been marked with a series of small dots, stretching from one edge of the sheet to the other. Each point is located very close to the previous one. Imagine that you need to draw exactly the same straight line on this sheet. I think in this case the task will be much easier. When you draw a line on paper, you do not need to think about how to bring it to the edge, it is enough to focus on a distance of a couple of millimeters from one point to another. It turns out that drawing a straight line is not so difficult! If we continue the analogy with maintaining awareness and, consequently, emotional stability, this news will seem very inspiring to us.

Instead of trying to stay engaged during your daily ten minutes of morning meditation and then trying to stretch it out over the remaining twenty-three hours and fifty minutes until the next exercise, try to think of mindfulness as a quality that you can use throughout the day. Remember that you should give yourself completely to every task, whatever it may be. This means that in no case should you think about where you would prefer to be, what occupation attracts you the most at the moment, and generally dream that something in your life will change, that is, give up a habitual way of thinking that drives you into incessant stress. Instead, you should only think about what you are doing at the moment.

Thus, realizing that the working day begins, you should not fall into depression. All you have to do is to become aware of how you reacted to the truth revealed to you by watching the emotions arising from this realization arise and disappear. If you stumble over a cat, you shouldn't swear: it's better to bend over and make sure that everything is in order with the animal. Think about your four-legged friend's health, not your own annoyance. Forgetting your disappointment, replacing it with a simple act of kindness, you will start the day in a new way. And then continue in the same spirit, moving from one task to another, filling each step with meaning, focus and understanding.

Human consciousness. Transfer can not be copied? / Habr

The health of a geek is, first of all, a healthy brain of a geek. Where is the geek in the brain of a geek?

In this article we will talk about a very burning (in every sense) topic - about our consciousness or self-consciousness or, one might even say, the soul - in short, about that innermost "I" with which we so do not want to part, even after living in the world long enough. We do not want to part to such an extent that we have built gigantic religious and philosophical constructions, and now gradually parting with them, we hope for scientific and technological progress, which will someday give us eternal life.

How a person came to such a life - he singled out his beloved from the world around him, separated the spiritual and the material, invented the gods and the afterlife, and why it all turned out that way - this is a very interesting story, but still a separate one, which can be told in the next once. Now I would like to touch on the practical facts related to our self-awareness, which to date, in an incredible struggle, neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists, armed with the latest technology with tomographs and encephalographs, have managed to snatch from nature.

Therefore, we will have to reject spiritual things, the astral, the transmigration of souls and the other world. Illusions, of course, are very attractive and science is not even needed. Behave well and you will have eternal life. But as NATURE magazine rightly writes:

“Both the human body and mind evolved from earlier primates. The way of human thinking testifies to such an origin as convincingly as the structure and functioning of the limbs, the immune system or the cones of the eye. We are talking not only about the mechanisms of the work of neurons, but also about such “higher” mental manifestations as morality. That the human mind is a product of evolution is not atheistic theology. This is an indisputable fact.

Is it possible today to take seriously the idea that the human mind is a "reflection" of the divine mind? It is extremely unlikely that a being capable of creating the universe could have a mind even remotely similar to ours. After all, our mind is arranged exactly as the mind should be arranged, which developed in an evolutionary way in an upright monkey, adapted to life in small, closely knit collectives in the conditions of the African savannah.


Why did I decide to post on the Geek Times? Well, how about. If any self-respecting geek is pressed against the wall, he will still admit that he would like to live “well, not forever”, but at least a thousand years. It takes a lot of time to solder arduinos, make whistles on a 3D printer, launch microsatellites into orbit. Again, an artificial woman - until you build it. Virtual reality, games, sound around, artificial intelligence, a trip to Mars - even a thousand years is not enough here. Tell a peasant from the Middle Ages that he will plow forever for the feudal lord and the Pope, so he will immediately run to drown himself. And we don't even have eternity. And most importantly, we want it to be WE there in the future, and not our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in which, allegedly, we will be present or some of our copies, created again by literate descendants based on our exhumed mortal remains by reading DNA . Well, my almost complete copy will live and delight the descendants. And I myself, who died, where will I be?

The funny thing is, even now, where "I" is, no scientist can tell me exactly. And I haven't even died yet. But so far, the main versions of where a person has the center of his self-consciousness and what it is for scientists are as follows.

REGARDING WHERE

In the areas of the cortex located on the inner surface of the hemispheres: 1 - orbitomedial prefrontal cortex, 2 - dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, 3 - anterior and 4 - posterior cingulate cortex.

Northoff, Bermpohl, 2004.

Of course, this is unlikely to mean anything to a normal geek, but still. There is even a picture.

Perhaps the population of neurons that ensures the unity of consciousness is the so-called fence - a layer of brain tissue located under the cortex. It is connected with almost all sensory and motor areas of the cortex, as well as the amygdala, which plays an important role in the work of emotions and exchanges information with all these structures. And it is able to connect and coordinate the work of different parts of the brain, for the unity of conscious experience

So, by the way, Francis Crick himself assumed, the one who discovered the structure of DNA. Assumed until 2004. Then he died. It seems that he wanted to found an institute dedicated to the study of this fence, but how things are now is unknown.

Widely scattered throughout the cortex and thalamus.

Gerald Edelman, one of the leading theorists of the problems of the brain and consciousness.
Needless to say, I scattered our “I” with a generous hand all over the brain.

WHAT TO

So, what it is - self-consciousness, it seems to be.

The basis of human consciousness is awareness of one's own "I", awareness of self-consciousness.

It's not me, it's Eric Kandel, the Nobel laureate. In one sentence four times "consciousness" with different prefixes.

Consciousness is a combination of the results of various computational processes occurring in areas of the cortex of a higher order associated with the later stages of information processing.

Daniel Dennett is a modern philosopher.
Of course, weakly and without knowing what. However, it is difficult to expect anything worthwhile from philosophers.

Closed circular neural circuits.

Alexander Markov, our famous biologist. He has a whole page there, but just like a closed neural circuit - there is no specific conclusion, what the sentence is about: “But this knowledge does not bring us much closer to understanding where the “I” comes from, speaks for itself.

Simply sensory representations that gradually acquired certain qualities and properties to "make" handy portions as they were delivered to the central structure of the brain. As a result, highly organized representations arose that served new computational problems. And so these meta-representations over the main brain (well, which everyone, not just humans) developed into a secondary "parasitic" brain. And they developed precisely in humans, in order to create a more economical display of automated processes occurring in the “main” brain.

Vileyanur Ramachandran, quite famous comrade, doctor of medicine and philosophy.
Likes to lecture on the subject. It was Francis Crick who asked him to study the fence further, not to give up this business. But, apparently, in vain.

Consciousness corresponds to the fleeting, active and subjective sensation of working memory. And it arises not in one place, but from the preconscious, in a number of sections that form a network - a global workspace. For consciousness to gain access to information, preconscious information must be broadcast through the brain. Consciousness in this case is nothing more than a broadcast of preconscious information.

Bernard Bars is a cognitive psychologist and I also suspect the founder of BROADCASTING in IP network protocols.

This is generally an illusion of our brain: it hides all our connections with the material world and the social environment and creates in us the feeling of our own independent "I".

Chris Frith, famous British neurophysiologist (but not one of those British scientists).
Didn't understand anything? Naturally, this is the result of his entire book Brain and Soul. I can't quote it in its entirety here, for obvious reasons. But it is worth reading - about the illusions of the brain and how they can really explain the phenomenon of self-consciousness, it is written very to the point.

As they say, not much. And most importantly, it is not clear how to save it or, moreover, move it, if necessary, to another medium. But one thing is clear for sure - everything is within the shard, rests there on a material substrate and does not fly away to the mountain heights to the Creator after death.

In the meantime, a geek in a difficult situation can only be advised to freeze the kettle in liquid nitrogen. Of course, ice crystals will pierce everything in all the brain cells. So it remains only to hope for the technology of descendants, which, when defrosted, will correct the current curvature of the cryogenists. But until that time, the head part must also be kept at a low temperature, which, in general, is not a fact of what will happen, especially after some regular global financial shocks and bankruptcies of limited liability companies.

In the close range of 5-10 years, an alternative option can be expected. Why freeze your head if you can transplant it onto a healthy young body. Look how many bare-assed ones are running around the Earth in third world countries. Humanists will, of course, be indignant and demand the cultivation of headless clones, but practice will put everything in its place. The liver is not easy to grow, but the whole body even more so. We have to expect a tsunami of criminal medical tourism in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. And then another movie star or politician will say: “yes, I just do yoga and vegetarianism, so I don’t age.” And ordinary rich people will not say anything at all - "it is nobody's business". Donors are also fine (in the sense of their relatives), they gave the best young virgin for a transplant - then the whole village may not dry out for a year. By the way, it is much more profitable than obsolete human offerings to the gods

True, a problem still arises here - the acceptor's brain remains the same, already lived, and nothing prevents it from slowly degrading further. There will be such a Parkinson in the body of a young Schwarzenegger. But purely technologically, it seems to be already achievable. No wonder Dr. Sergio Canavero went to China. For the general secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and not only them, also want to live long. And criminals in China have been accustomed to dismantling for organs for a long time.

Is it possible somehow to rewrite our “I” and save it on a carrier, whether it be an artificially grown human brain or a silicon one? Questions, however, arise in what EXACTLY to read from the original and HOW to write to the media, not to mention HOW to make such a media. So far, we don’t even have the technological capabilities to carry out these processes in any way, which gives our spiritually advanced colleagues an opportunity to laugh and say, they say, it’s not so easy to extract a human soul and that only you know who can do it .

So, for a change, let's imagine that we have HIS capabilities. Or almost HIM.

Suppose we have mastered the art of teleportation. Well, how, they mastered it: in one booth you are sprayed into atoms, and in another on Pluto, they are recreated from local materials. In general, a long-known and even I would say, a hackneyed example. Yes, sir. And when the spraying device is broken, but the device responsible for the re-creation is not. Then you meet and look at each other in surprise. Or another forty people stamped by the recreator. He also, in turn, broke down, but in the other direction. And where is ONE unique human soul running between you?

It is clear that since the situation is theoretical, it will always be possible to say that the second device can recreate you, but the truth is only in the form of a corpse or, at best, a vegetable (not in the form of an eggplant of record size, of course, but in a state of living body, but in a coma). How can you check who is right? After all, even if you try to theoretically imagine the work of this recreator, you will involuntarily scratch your head. We are not a solid body, if we are recreated in layers, then everything will begin to pour onto the floor in the process. And how to copy simultaneously with the neuron itself its electrical state? After all, he is not just a carrier of information, but also part of the code itself. A simple example from today. Even from yesterday, when our specialists dismantled enemy chips in layers. The substrate itself can be copied. And how to copy the code written there? If we are dealing with a masked ROM, everything is not difficult there, copy yourself one to one. And you can’t copy FLASH like that, since you are removing a material carrier, but you also need to take into account the state of charge in a memory cell.
But the most important (and sad) thing is that, even after overcoming all these technological difficulties of cosmic proportions, you will receive only your copy, or even one body in a coma, as the supporters of the one and indivisible claim. No matter. You have at best transferred your identity to but not you personally to .

No, of course, for a real scientist, this option will do. I mean those luminaries who were not afraid to drink the contents of a test tube with cholera vibrio for the glory of science.
They do not care that their "I" will disappear along with the old body. The other "I" in the new body will continue to work. For the work of a scientist is the main thing. Yes, in general, for those close to you, and even more so, not close people, there will also be no difference whether you are standing in front of them or your exact copy. But for yourself, I think the difference will be significant, unless, of course, you are ready to drink a test tube of cholera to the glory of science.

And everything again brings us to the question, how are we such unique and special personalities, and then - time! our copy looks at us and says: “It's me Vasya Sidorov. And I need your passport and wallet." But the reality, as usual, is even worse. In fact, inside our heads, we are not alone either.

If scientists are right in their assumptions about the "I" distributed over some areas of our brain, then the isolation of these zones should, in theory, lead to the splitting of the "I" into several autonomous units, also, in general, personalities. To some extent, of course, they will become defective compared to the original “I”, but this will not prevent them from existing and being aware of the world around them. And scientists seem to be right, because when evil doctors, for some reason of their own medical reasons, break the connection between the right and left hemispheres of the patient (by cutting the so-called corpus callosum), they end up with two separate personalities, by the way, differently related to the performed operations on them. True, it is interesting that these personalities do not exist simultaneously - they change one another and, as a maximum, can only be vaguely aware of the presence of a second "I". Well, or they can come to the conclusion that there is another purely intellectually. Therefore, if you find at home a note signed by you, but about which you do not remember - think about it! Especially if it says

this.

(1) If the questions are meaningless, then you will not find meaning in the answers either.
(2) I am a living being.
(3) I live on Mars.
(4) I am in a unit of the so-called Army.
(5) The army intends to exterminate other living beings that live on Earth

For an easy experiment on how personalities can change, you can do it yourself by looking at the following picture.

The left hemisphere, based on a priori model, gives us the first hypothesis of what we see, let's say - a vase, since it is the left hemisphere that is excited when reacting to familiar objects. But then the right hemisphere notices something new, namely the contours of two faces. It slows down the left hemisphere through the corpus callosum and, being excited, builds its own hypothesis - now we see not a vase, but faces.

But since your corpus callosum is fine (hopefully), then the process of observing as a whole, you are doing as a whole person.

You can also change your personality by turning off or weakening the work of certain areas of the brain. For example, after drinking a liter and a half of vodka. But, of course, the person who will be released will still be the same. Many zones turn off in a dream and therefore, for example, you do not experience horror when you see a friend alive who, as you know for sure, recently died.

What does all this have to do with the preservation or transfer of our "I", you ask. A moment of patience. We must understand what exactly we must preserve.

To do this, we will conduct an experiment (alas, still imaginary), but, by the way, quite close to achievable by our technologies. Unlike the already mentioned teleportation. Let's not trifle with some areas in the brain, we will change the whole hemisphere.

The only thing that needs to be clarified first is whether a person can live with only one hemisphere of the brain, both with the right and the left. Just don't tell me that the vast majority of the world's population lives without both at all.

So, life without one hemisphere.

Jill Taylor has done post-mortem research on the brains of people with severe mental disorders. Samples were in short supply, and she traveled the country giving speeches urging people to donate the brains of their loved ones to study at Harvard. On December 10, 1996, Jill Taylor herself suffered a stroke: a vessel burst that supplied part of the left hemisphere of her cerebral cortex. The neurons lost their nourishment, they just floated in the blood. Gradually, the hemisphere almost completely turned off. But not at once.

After experiencing the first symptoms—paralysis in her right arm, lethargy, changes in her perception of her surroundings—Taylor made an unorthodox decision. “This is a unique chance, how cool! I will be the first neurophysiologist to study stroke from the inside." The woman seemed to take popcorn and sit comfortably in the front row: watch how the left hemisphere goes out, how rational thinking, speech, perception of time are lost. A few hours later she was admitted to the hospital. On the way, she finally turned off. Later, Taylor underwent surgery: they removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball. Then, in a few years, the functions of the left hemisphere finally recovered. And then Dr. Taylor was able to describe in detail what she remembered. From this description, a whole cultural phenomenon was born: the performance of Jill Taylor. This is a lecture, and a book, and a website, and a lot of TV interviews.

In fact, even before Taylor's speech, we knew what happens when the left hemisphere is turned off: speech disappears, verbal thinking and comprehension, the ability to read and control over the right half of the body. But all these observations were made by physicians when evaluating patients. Taylor's observations are from the inside and therefore invaluable. True, there is one problem here: at the time of the stroke, Taylor lost her speech, which means she could not formulate observations; her memories are a collection of images. The verbal description was born later. In collaboration with a Gestalt psychologist, Dr. Taylor was able to recreate the events of that day (virtually re-living them). This time she was armed with words.

The main thing that she highlights in her experience is not the loss of certain skills and abilities. Taylor describes the weight off one's shoulders when the experience of the past ceases to hang over a person. How does he relax and what harmony with the world does he acquire when the left hemisphere with its rational, speech, analytical perception fades into the background and the right hemisphere comes to the fore - emotional, holistic, living strictly “here and now”

There, of course, there are many emotional digressions (therefore, it is abbreviated), but what can you do, the author is a woman, although she seems to be a scientist herself.

There are actually many examples, but there is not enough space in the article.

And indeed, there is such an operation, it is called a hemispherectomy.

Plus countless cases of hemorrhagic strokes that completely turn off one of the hemispheres of the brain. Of course, there is little pleasant in them - paralysis of half of the body, violation of many vital functions, but for us the main fact will be that even if we lose one hemisphere, no matter due to a stroke or a medical operation, we do not lose our personality and waking up in the morning we can always determine that we are we.

TIC-TOE OR TARSON'S PARADOX

So, let's start the experiment. We take two identical twins. We draw a cross on one hand, and a zero on the other. Then, under general anesthesia, carefully remove both hemispheres from one and put them in a nutrient solution. Or we throw it away. We won't need them anymore.

No, not like that. We have some kind of Nazi medicine, only Dr. Mengele is missing. Let it be different. One Humpty Dumpty has fallen off a wall (or skiing like a Schumacher on a rock) and is in a vegetative state. And so, in order to bring their heartbroken parents back to life, the second twin is going to sacrifice one of his hemispheres for his brainless brother. Well, what, kidneys from twins are transplanted. Surgeons scratch their heads and agree (it takes place in the near future. Canavero is already in full swing transplanting the heads of rich Chinese onto the bodies of poor Zambians).

So now we have a pathetic and heroic background.

So, we draw a cross on one hand, and a zero on the other. Then, from the second twin, we take out only the left hemisphere and carefully (here the main thing, you understand, accuracy) is transplanted to the second. And then we wait for them (the twins) to wake up. Why they took twins as an example is understandable. They have everything the same there and there is no autoimmune reaction to the transplanted organ. The operation, of course, is complex, at the limit or even so far beyond the capabilities of modern medicine. But this is not teleportation.

Why did we do all this? And you imagine yourself in the place of one of these twins. But not the one whose whole brain was left on the side of the road, but in place of the second, from which only half was pulled out. And it turns out that you have one hemisphere left, and the second went to your twin brother. And on your hand you had a cross drawn, you yourself saw how it was drawn to you. And so, you finally wake up after anesthesia. Question - will you have cross or zero on your hand?

I would like to know the correct answer before copying myself.

Time for correct answers.

Although, probably, they cannot be formally called correct. The situation is hypothetical and therefore the answers will be the same - hypothetically correct. From the position, so to speak, of today's science.
The bottom line is that, as we have seen, the consciousness that arises in our head is based on a material substrate, on the physiological tissues of the brain. And when our twins come to their senses after anesthesia, it is in some sense reminiscent of restarting the operating system on the computer. The "uploader looks" what he has available for downloading - the left or right hemisphere and gives the appropriate information to the output, who we are. And if our twin donor remains, for example, with the left hemisphere, then he wakes up, in a good mood and is only a little surprised that he cannot move the right side of his body. The doctor sitting next to him reassures the patient, says that control over the right side will soon be restored (with the latest means of modern neurosurgery) and then offers to remember what actually happened to the patient. Our donor remembers the whole story and observes with satisfaction the cross on his arm, which, as he remembers very well, was put on his arm before the operation. “But what about Petya, my brother?” he suddenly asks.
But Pete is worse off. In addition to left-sided paralysis, he finds himself unable to speak (because Broca's speech field is left with the donor) and also does not quite adequately understand the doctor's speech. That is, simple things like “look at me” or “wiggle your finger” are still perceived, but long phrases and abstract questions are drowned in some kind of incomprehensible chaos due to the absence of Wernicke's zone. And for some reason they drew a circle on the hand and, moreover, they constantly ask: “do you know where he is from?”. Yes, I don’t understand where I’m from at all and it’s very annoying!
Nothing can be done, the right hemisphere is very emotional.
Now let's imagine that we left this hemisphere to the donor, and Petya was presented with the left one. Actually, nothing will change for the donor, except for one circumstance. “Why do I have a zero on my hand?” he asks indignantly. “By the way, where is Petya?” “And Petya, it’s you now,” the doctor will say. And an ominous silence will fall behind which the patient will inevitably arise and sequentially go through all five stages of accepting the inevitable - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance itself. “But that vicious, inarticulately mooing and waving with his left hand patient in the next bed - does that mean me too? "- he will ask quietly and the doctor will nod his head restrainedly.
And what is all this for? Moreover, our consciousness, and even the proud self-consciousness of our “I”, is actually secondary to “hardware”, the material substrate on which it is written, as one would expect. What the loader reads from the substrate, from the read-only memory, from the “screw”, that is what we are. And if, for example, the old Alzheimer or the evil woman Chorea Hattington comes to a person, then the “screw” begins to crumble and gradually the loader begins to have nothing to read and the “I” of the person falls into oblivion from which there is no return.

Try to get used to this thought. A good illustration would be the story of Lieutenant Colombo. No, not the movie hero himself, but the actor Peter Falk who played him. In old age, due to the progressive Alzheimer's disease, the actor gradually forgot who he was. But then I remembered that he was an artist with the same name, but with a different biography. And his last "I" dissolved in nirvana shortly before his death was the "I" of the artist. Why did it happen so? Yes, because Alzheimer's disease, destroying the brain, gets to the visual zones and areas of the brain associated with them the last. Falk was indeed an excellent artist, in addition to being an actor. But the "I" of the actor Peter Falk began to weaken, while the "I" of the artist retained its cognitive reserve.

And he "remembered" that he was actually an artist.

He had never heard anything about Lieutenant Columbo, and the news that he was called a movie star, a dramatic artist, genuinely surprised him. Perhaps Mr. Reid is mistaken or confused the address ... Here, in this house, there are no Colombos and never were. However, maybe we are talking about previous tenants? It's worth checking with Shera - the wife knows everything. For the past hundred years, Peter Falk has been working as an artist and lives on the money he receives from the sale of his paintings. He has a wife and dogs. Health complaints? Of course, how could it be otherwise in his advanced age?! He does not remember what medications he takes - everything lies on Shera. Often the pressure jumps, sometimes the appetite disappears, sometimes the head hurts very much. His wife no longer lets him go for a walk alone - since one day, according to her stories, he got lost and scared people. But all this is nonsense, to which he has not paid attention for a long time ... Is he happy? Yes, very happy. After all, his paintings are bought, and his small family, at the very least, but still manages to make ends meet.

So, our "I" is an illusion created by the brain in the process of downloading, scanning (call it whatever you like) of itself. As soon as changes occur in the relevant areas, no matter under the influence of a drug, love or age, our “I” will immediately change. Moreover, the left hemisphere will immediately invent a plausible story for itself, explaining to itself why and how this happened (but this is a separate plausible story, which we will talk about later).

But these are all details, the main conclusion that we can draw is that, theoretically, consciousness can be copied, since the substratum is material. But it can't be transferred. On the basis of a new material base, only a new consciousness will arise. And if we destroy the old carrier or he himself dies of old age, then he, naturally, will no longer be able to create a pattern or illusion of his subjective "I".

But what if we want to keep our illusion in a different way? Suppose, with the help of some new technologies (by the way, already far ahead of today's ones), we will change our neurons one at a time, replacing the biological substrate with a silicone one. In the entire human brain, there may be on the order of 100-200 billion neurons, but as they say, this is mainly the cerebellum. In the cortex responsible for consciousness and in the stem nuclei responsible for the self (turtles also want to have individuality) there are already significantly fewer neurons - ten, fifteen billion. Here we will deal with them for now, and the cerebellum will be replaced by an advanced version of the gyroscope and accelerometer MPU6050.

True, if you change neurons one at a time, then the whole process will take about five hundred years, even for only fifteen billion neurons. Therefore, you will have to accelerate to 500-1000 replacements per second. A year later, voila, we have a silicon brain and our "I", as if it did not disappear anywhere. The only thing is that you have to carry lithium batteries on your back and there was a feeling of “electric hunger” at the sight of a outlet. Well, you can fry fried eggs on your head when you start to think hard.
Now imagine that all this replacement was made not in a year, but in an hour, while you, let's say, were just snoozing on the couch. But essentially nothing has changed. The time interval itself has no meaning. Year or hour, it doesn't matter to the bootloader. He downloads what is available to him and from this we arise.

So, from a pessimistic point of view, our consciousness is only an attribute of the material world. It is born anew every time and every time it is a little different. Even after awakening from sleep, it is different, because your neurons do not last forever, and there will be no new ones.

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