u/Arbare

I’ve seen videos of people naming the subdivisions of all countries, which is incredible.

https://preview.redd.it/jqhoxbjbwp0h1.jpg?width=1764&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f2a438e737d73aea42f26fa5b922d6e19af5a38

They usually prove it by taking a test on JetPunk, but I assume they first memorized each subdivision at an atomic level.

For example, I memorized all 196 countries thanks to Anki, and sometimes I do free recall of all the countries from memory during my free recall sessions or on JetPunk. During those free recall sessions, I use the principle behind the method of loci: having a fixed mental route for recalling a list. I use the same mental route through the continents. Obviously, in the Americas, I start with Canada, the United States, Mexico, and then continue downward, so I have my own internal route. Over time, I became capable of starting wherever I want, but that is how you begin.

But I know for a fact that I would never have memorized them using whatever methods people use without Anki.

So my question is: has anybody achieved this with Anki?

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P.S. I mean all first level subdivisions of the world.

One of the mental activities that people with CDS engage in is rumination. I would say that rumination is a verbal mental activity that goes nowhere, and it often does not even begin with a specific topic. It is just “puff” and suddenly you are inside a repetitive verbal monologue, or even a dialogue with an imaginary person in your mind whom you are addressing.

But on the path toward being cognitively engaged with reality, and actually thinking, or engaging in a genuinely rational mental activity, something that surprises me is how incredibly hard it is. Not only because actual thinking clearly requires things like general knowledge and vocabulary, which many people with CDS may have underdeveloped due to being disconnected, but even more because of the general psychological policy of functioning in a certain way to deal with problems.

We are predisposed to solve problems through rumination, and because rumination shares a common denominator with thinking, namely that both are verbal, it can become very difficult to genuinely think. Yet thinking is literally the only means by which we can make decisions and move ourselves forward.

Something I have done is to allow myself to engage only in mental activities where there is a clear topic or purpose, even if it was not consciously chosen, but where there is always some form of conclusion.

Also, rumination usually revolves around topics related to social problems and life problems. For people without CDS, they tend to reach conclusions and then move on. They conclude things and continue with their lives.

So I would also presume that there is some lack of a philosophical root, or some deeper framework from which one can have enough certainty to conclude things and accept that one has already had the final word on a matter. Once that happens, there is no reason to keep going over it again and again.

I suppose that the ideal state is the opposite of its symptoms.
That is, to be cognitively engaged with reality.

So, if we look at it that way, and ask what we should strive for, we could say there are two things we should avoid:

• not being cognitively engaged
• being cognitively engaged with fantasy

An example of the first is blanking out.

Examples of the second are rumination and daydreaming. In both cases, I believe, from my own experience, there is some kind of fantasy content that we engage with as if it were real.

For example, you imagine having a discussion with the person whom you believe is the cause of your despair, telling them this or that. Meanwhile, you are sitting there dazed, with your laptop open and Excel open in front of you.

Or you are mentally absorbed in imagined scenarios, emotionally reacting to them as if they were actually happening, while in reality you are standing in the kitchen waiting for the vegetables to cook.

So the point is that, although I am not trying to propose a complete solution, I think it is important to have a goal, a direction to strive toward. And perhaps that goal could be realism: the principle of cognitively engaging with reality.

Therefore, the aim would be to become a realist. And when that begins to happen, or even while we are engaged in the never ending process of achieving it, we should take pride in it. We should also build self esteem on the fact that we are doing everything we can, with what depends on us, to achieve it.

The main issue is that, ultimately, reality does not carry the responsibility of bringing you back to the present. The reasons for engaging with it, and for why the stream of daydreaming overflows so much, are valid to understand and are part of the solution. But in the end, you cannot place a post-it note on reality that says, “Stop. Get back to reality.” At some point, it is on us to start tipping the balance toward being present more often than drifting into daydreaming.