u/samthehumanoid

Let’s talk about the dynamic between consciousness and the subconscious, and how this relationship isn’t what it looks like

Here is a situation which can help reveal the relationship between consciousness and the subconscious:

Someone asks for your top 5 songs on the spot, without warning - no matter how hard you consciously try, you struggle to remember even one song. But, if you were deep in the flow of a passionate conversation about music, songs would just be popping up in your consciousness without even asking, you could hear their tune, you could sing their lyrics, see the album cover

Both situations you might consciously want to recall something, but they are different outcomes. Your conscious effort made no difference, because “you”, your favourite songs, your life experiences, memories, passions, are all part of the subconscious

First, this tells us consciousness is at most on a need to know basis with the subconscious - it cannot freely delve into the subconscious, retrieving what it likes

And second, it tells the opposite is true, the subconscious has free access to consciousness - how else does it recall relevant information, or store it, how else do the deepest parts of you manifest in your decisions and actions?

This is a one sided power dynamic, if your consciousness and subconscious were coworkers, consciousness would find this alarming - it isn’t privy to the subconscious, but the subconscious sees everything it does!

It’s undeniable that conscious experience feels like we are the one in control, the observer - we experience our environment and react accordingly, it makes perfect sense at a glance

But we aren’t even experiencing all the weighing, consideration, cross referencing of our deeper subconscious…
consciousness is only privy to this intersection where subconscious and environment meet - it only experiences the “need to know” which subconscious projects to the surface, and it only experiences the environment from this one singular point - as vivid as it feels, consciousness IS a 2d, flat intersection of a 3d, deeper reality

Think about that parallel - we experience the world, but only our slice of it, while we can’t really imagine it we can understand there is a wider, objective reality behind our subjective reality. We just have a snapshot of the whole picture!

Considering this limited experience of reality, would you identify as the wider reality? Of course not, even those of us who believe in a form of nonduality can’t just identify as it at the flick of a switch

Well it is the exact same concept for “you”, you experience “you” but only a slice of it. There is a deeper “you”, the subconscious, which exists in the void outside of conscious experience

we only get a slice…do you see the parallel?

It’s undeniable that we feel like we are the consciousness, though!

For explanations sake, my name is Sam, and even though I believe in some kind of universal oneness, it’s hard not to shake the feeling that “Sam” is the consciousness I am currently experiencing.

But when we look closer like we have, it’s clear “Sam” actually exists outside of consciousness. Consciousness may contain a 2d slice of Sam, but that’s all it is. The Sam which is present in consciousness is just the bubbling surface, a flat reflection of a 3d image.

Another way of looking at it: Sam, the subconscious, has mistaken the mirror it is reflected in (consciousness) as itself. Sam cannot truly know itself because it exists outside of consciousness, it can only know its reflection.

Conscious experience is as much the world as it is “you”, it is an intersection of both, the meeting point where each can interact and know themselves.

You know those visitation booths in prisons, with the glass to see through and the phone to talk through it? Consciousness is that booth, it isn’t the human on one side, or the world on the other, it’s the intersection that BOTH can know themselves through, which I always feel points towards oneness. ❤️

I doubt this is easy to understand, it is manic and stupid, but thanks if you read

Anyone feel it’s really hard to bait a kick with footwork now? It feels like even if I somehow bait a kick from its crazy range (they lunge/teleport so far now) if I make it miss by a small amount (to counter them) it still hits me, even though it’s visibly missing?

Sometimes these ghost hits don’t even do damage, but they stunlock you/triggr an animation so they can carry on comboing or prevent your counter

It feels like punching range is a tiny bubble, and kicking range is the entire cage lol

Hi I’m a dumbass and a nut job so stick with me

I am a little obsessed with this one thing, I will do my best to explain it, and then I’d like to hear it you think it’s at all significant to yourself, meaningless, or totally wrong haha

Anyway, the thing I can’t get over is this; consciousness/conscious experience is not privy to the subconscious, but the subconscious can “see” everything in consciousness

I can’t get over the feeling that this relationship is revealing in some way

Let’s get on the same page first, what do I mean when I say consciousness: subjective experience itself

I believe that within your own consciousness, you can prove to yourself that the subconscious is “in control”, despite our intuition of being in control (or at least sharing the wheel with our subconscious)

I will try to word that better. an obvious example is maybe you were stuck on a problem, or trying to remember something and gave up, later on it just POP comes to mind as if it was being worked on behind the scenes

Whatever you are experiencing, the subconscious is obviously privy to…it’s formed of conscious experiences, it solves them, remembers them etc

but we can’t say the same for the opposite, and this really bugs me, its a power imbalance that my intuition of “my subconscious does some things, I do others” clashes with

Because I can’t just consciously delve into my subconscious, I can’t see all the inner whys and weights of every decision, sometimes were in a bad mood and we don’t even know why, and it turns out to be something that was bothering us, but we weren’t conscious of

fuck, if I try to remember my favourite film on the spot I suddenly forget every film I’ve watched!

But when some deeper passion is activated by a conversation, I’ll remember every film, in fact they’ll come to mind without me even consciously looking for them! I can’t just tap in and out of that knowledge, something deeper and “out of sight” does that.

I guess I feel like if consciousness and the subconscious were just two equal functions of the mind, they’d have equal power, no? But they don’t, one is totally in the dark on the others workings, getting fed on a need to know basis. The other can see EVERYTHING…

if you and your subconscious were coworkers, this relationship would probably alarm you 😂

I’ve always enjoyed the idea of consciousness as a sort of situation/control room for the mind, where all information across the various parts of the mind is pooled, prioritised, cross referenced etc. the function would be to take all that chaos and leave us with “the essentials” - conscious experience in this case would be the big screen in the control room, allowing all the different teams to share and access the vital information in one space

It would explain why it feels like your attention and ability to remember or engage with things are directed by something “behind the scenes”

I think we have this intuition that we, the conscious experience itself, are in control, or at least sharing control with our subconscious. Im not disputing that feeling at all, i feel it too, it’s undeniable.

but when we look closer at the power dynamic between conscious and subconscious it seems totally one sided to me, and doesn’t fit that intuition

So do you think it is at all revealing, do you even care, or should I take crazy pills 😂

For me, this isn’t about “I’m not in control, my subconscious is oh no!” It’s more, maybe I am my subconscious, and I have been mistaking the mirror i am reflected in for myself (consciousness)

As rich and beautiful as conscious experience is, in terms of who you are, could it just be a 2d “slice” of a deeper, 3d subconscious “you”

I know the quick answer is “very” lol

I’m not a huge boxing guy, I watch more MMA, so I’d like to hear from the hardcore fans and people who train

The fight that really made me think about this was the recent Usyk vs Rico - maybe my takeaway is wrong, but it felt like a lot of Ricos success (not to be reductive) was because Usyk couldn’t have prepared for him, and maybe Rico even came out in a style he’s never really used to kinda double down on that advantage?

Controversial stoppage and scorecards aside, I think anyone agrees Rico did better than he “should”, even considering he’s sparred elite boxers for a while, he shouldn’t have done that well against Usyk, right?

It really made me think - is the case that there are simply some natural/instinctive fighters, and some who really need mental preparation. Just how different would Usyk look if he could’ve game planned to the same level he usually does, and what do you think that says?

Do you think the ability to compete against a new person just off instinct is a “skill gap” that just isn’t tested in modern sports much now, given everyone has tape?

Are there any fighters known for the opposite - just making reads on the fly, fighting the same way regardless of opponent?

In MMA we have Jon Jones who’s fantastic at on the fly adaptation, but I think even he acknowledged the lack of tape on Aspinall (a guy with a lot of early stoppages) was a big advantage for him.

So yeah, are there any fighters/boxers who stand out for their methods of gameplanning (or lack of)? I know this is quite open ended but I’m interested in all of your takes

Does anyone else feel as if, hard to describe, but the underlying mechanical side of the game (dodges, damage calculation, the actual physics) is just totally disconnected from the animations/visual gameplay?

It’s like we’re playing the underlying game, and a bunch of animations that more or less match that are happening

That’s why you get “invisible strikes” knock outs and really hit and miss hitboxes

It’s great there are all these new animations, but the more I play, the more I can feel that there is a common underlying punch, or lean etc like “heavy hook” and just a variety of animations plastered over it, because often the animation simply doesn’t match the timing or position of the underlying strike/slip

You can see it most clearly in slow motion or in slow motion replays, you can actually see the hidden underlying hitbox hitting the fighter, and the animation is nowhere near, and so often the fist position just doesn’t match the hitbox rotation and impact, like it would even in ufc 4

Well, sometimes the animations all happen to be beautifully timed and allign correctly, and the game feels and looks great.

Unfortunately for me I just find the animations quite glitchy more often than not, head movement is especially bad, can any other of you guys feel that your “I frames” during head movement are totally out of sync with certain fighters animations while nicely timed with others ?