The Power of Six

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Permalink Reply by Michael Doherty on December 23, 2009 at 5:22am

Yes Adrian and thanks for the feedback. I'm trying to use The Feigenbaum Scenario as a jumping off point for a discussion of David Grove's "The Power of Six" and it's implications for hypnosis, trance work and problem solving in general. One of the simplest yet elegant pattern is for the hypnotherapist to ask "And what's there now?" six times. This diagram models the client's process responding to this pattern, creating a hyperfocus on the symptom and a naturalistic healing response.

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Permalink Reply by Fable Goodman on December 23, 2009 at 6:06am

seven plus or minus two...

The answer may well be somewhere below the level of this line.

Love and hugs,

Fable

A number of classical studies in experimental psychology confirm that seven units or chunks (plus or minus two) is, in fact, a very common limit in human, sensation, perception, memory and performance (Miller, 1956). There are actually an infinity of physical wave lengths that make up the spectrum of ordinary light, for example, yet humans typically "chunk-out" or perceive only seven colors. Traditionally humans are regarded as having five basic senses but if one includes the more subtle varieties of kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensations the human number of conscious senses easily jumps up to seven but probably not much beyond that. Sperling (1960) found that people could remember about seven letters over a 1-second interval. He called this the iconic trace. Neisser (1967) found that the auditory trance, which he called echoic memory, had similar characteristics. Musical tone recognition has a similar range form the familiar octave scale to the more cerebral 12 tone scale. Is the number seven as a typical band-width in human such sensory-perceptual-memory studies and the seven chunks or paths we can see easily in the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence of Figure One simply a coincidence? Or is it another example of the seemingly unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in modeling human experience in the most unexpected ways? The upper limit of about 15 units in conscious human perception illustrated in the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence of Figure One is supported by Kihlstrom (1980). Kihlstrom found that 15 items was the upper limit for post-hypnotic memory in low as well as highly susceptible hypnotic subjects who apparently achieved that performance limit by different routes.

An intriguing indication that seven is an important limit in complex human conscious functioning was discussed recently by Hofstadter (1995) who reports that since early youth he played and practiced extensively with anagrams. How many arbitrarily arranged letters can one juggle in one’s mind simultaneously until they suddenly rearrange into a meaningful word? He says, "Six letters, yes, but ten, definitely not." The same range is evident in juggling physical objects as well. The world record for juggling is nine balls. Ronald Graham, chief scientist at AT&T laboratories is a gifted juggler who reports that he can juggle six balls consistently and sometimes seven "playing around" (Horgan, 1997).

Further evidence of the significance of seven in complex human conscious information processing is in the extensive use of subjective rating scales that involve human judgments about everything from sense-perceptions to emotional experience. Research documents that most rating scales used in psychological assessment and personality testing (Caprara et al, 1997), for example, can be optimized by requesting discrimination on scale of about seven points. Subjects are asked to judge how happy or satisfied they are with a particular situation or life experience on a five to seven point scale that runs something like "1. Extremely Satisfied, 2. Satisfied, 3. Neutral, 4. Unsatisfactory, 5. Extremely Unsatisfactory." Recently developed cognitive-behavioral approaches for assessing a patient’s response to psychotherapy use a seven point "Validity of Cognition" scale to check on how much conviction a patient has that they have been helped as well as a ten point "Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale" to check on how much their pain or psychological discomfort has changed during therapy (Rossi, 1996a; Shapiro, 1995). Research is now needed to confirm the relevance of the Feigenbaum point and period doubling sequence in this apparently optimal perceptual, performance and subjective judgment limit range of 7 to 15 chunks of conscious experience on the path from order to chaos in human awareness. Freeman’s (1995) research on the nonlinear dynamics of the sensory-perceptual dynamics of smell, for example, would be an important test case.

At present we can only speculate about a number of open questions about the explanatory power of the Feigenbaum point and period doubling sequence in human experience. We can only wonder whether the significance of the number seven in gambling and many ancient mantic and mystical belief systems could have the same source in the limitations in our conscious sensory-perceptual-cognitive limits of awareness that is illustrated in the bifurcation diagrams of the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence. Seven items are about as much as we usually can hold in consciousness so we feel we know them and we are comfortable with them. When consciousness has to juggle more than seven items, dimensions or levels, we experience the stress of the heightened arousal of our neuroendocrine system and ultimately failure as documented by the extensive data supporting the Yerkes-Dodson law discussed above. On a cognitive level human cognition seems to become chaotic, dark, fearful, unconscious and perhaps unreal when we must hold in memory and manipulate more than 7 to 15 factors at one time.

The universality in the appearance of the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence in many complex systems have led to a number of highly speculative views about the possible significance of the Feigenbaum point for psychology, sociology and the humanities in general. Merry (1995, p. 37) suggests, for example, that the Feigenbaum point (about 3.7) is where systems cascade into chaos "where infinite choices create a situation in which freedom has no more meaning." We could generalize this to say that emotions, imagery, behavior and cognition and psychosomatic symptoms that have lost their meaning have somehow fallen into the chaotic regime within experiential space where our sense of reality teeters off the edge of comprehension or rationality. This suggests that beyond the Feigenbaum point inner subjective experience may fall into a sense of what is called unreality. Put another way, the Feigenbaum point may signal the division between primary process (irrational) versus the secondary processes (rational, ego processes) as defined in psychoanalysis. In this sense, the Feigenbaum point could represent a limit of our sense of voluntary ego control over our mental experience and behavior. The physicist uses the route to chaos as a way of describing turbulence in nature (fast moving water flowing over rocks, air turbulence behind an airplane etc.). Likewise the psychologist could describe the experience of confusion, disorientation and unreality as the turbulence of the mind moving past the Feigenbaum point into deterministic chaos.

Current cognitive science has developed these ideas further with research that documents how human ideas are grounded in sensory-motor experience and metaphor. This view is expressed by Lakoff and Núñez (2000).
"These metaphor studies mesh with studies showing that the conceptual system is embodied – that is, shaped by the structure of our brains, our bodies, and everyday interactions in the world. In particular they show that abstract concepts are grounded, via metaphorical mappings, in the sensory-motor system and that abstract inferences, for the most part, are metaphorical projections of sensory-motor inferences." (p. 101)

I now propose that the Feigenbaum point marks the transition between the explicit realm of conscious choice and behavior and the implicate realm of deterministic chaos on the unconscious level (Rossi, 1996a, 1997a, 1998b, 2000a). The Feigenbaum point is the limit of “subitizing” – the ability to tell at a glance whether there are 1, 2 or 3 objects in conscious (explicit) perception (Lakoff and Núñez, 2000). These 1, 2 or 3 objects in conscious perception correspond to the first, second and third bifrucation of the Feigenbaum Scenario as illustrated previously in Figure one. Peitgen et al. (1992) comment on the implicate (unconscious) and previously unknown aspect of how numbers operate in the iterative replays of nonlinear dynamics.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on December 23, 2009 at 6:12am

Hello Adrian,

Thanks for the belly laugh --

FYI -- I looked up the term bifurcation several years ago in regards to an article that I was reading about the myth of fingerprints... I haven't come across it again until today -- Freaking academics...

Thanks to your WTF and the additional information supplied by Michael D. -- I get it- His jumping off point is about NOTHING to the 6th power... WTF?

Love and Hugs,

Michael E.


Michael Doherty said:

Yes Adrian and thanks for the feedback. I'm trying to use The Feigenbaum Scenario as a jumping off point for a discussion of David Grove's "The Power of Six" and it's implications for hypnosis, trance work and problem solving in general. One of the simplest yet elegant pattern is for the hypnotherapist to ask "And what's there now?" six times. This diagram models the client's process responding to this pattern, creating a hyperfocus on the symptom and a naturalistic healing response.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Ellner on December 23, 2009 at 6:20am

Thanks Fable --

I needed that... =^..^=

Fable Goodman said:

seven plus or minus two...
The answer may well be somewhere below the level of this line.
Love and hugs,

Fable

A number of classical studies in experimental psychology confirm that seven units or chunks (plus or minus two) is, in fact, a very common limit in human, sensation, perception, memory and performance (Miller, 1956). There are actually an infinity of physical wave lengths that make up the spectrum of ordinary light, for example, yet humans typically "chunk-out" or perceive only seven colors. Traditionally humans are regarded as having five basic senses but if one includes the more subtle varieties of kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensations the human number of conscious senses easily jumps up to seven but probably not much beyond that. Sperling (1960) found that people could remember about seven letters over a 1-second interval. He called this the iconic trace. Neisser (1967) found that the auditory trance, which he called echoic memory, had similar characteristics. Musical tone recognition has a similar range form the familiar octave scale to the more cerebral 12 tone scale. Is the number seven as a typical band-width in human such sensory-perceptual-memory studies and the seven chunks or paths we can see easily in the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence of Figure One simply a coincidence? Or is it another example of the seemingly unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in modeling human experience in the most unexpected ways? The upper limit of about 15 units in conscious human perception illustrated in the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence of Figure One is supported by Kihlstrom (1980). Kihlstrom found that 15 items was the upper limit for post-hypnotic memory in low as well as highly susceptible hypnotic subjects who apparently achieved that performance limit by different routes.

An intriguing indication that seven is an important limit in complex human conscious functioning was discussed recently by Hofstadter (1995) who reports that since early youth he played and practiced extensively with anagrams. How many arbitrarily arranged letters can one juggle in one’s mind simultaneously until they suddenly rearrange into a meaningful word? He says, "Six letters, yes, but ten, definitely not." The same range is evident in juggling physical objects as well. The world record for juggling is nine balls. Ronald Graham, chief scientist at AT&T laboratories is a gifted juggler who reports that he can juggle six balls consistently and sometimes seven "playing around" (Horgan, 1997).

Further evidence of the significance of seven in complex human conscious information processing is in the extensive use of subjective rating scales that involve human judgments about everything from sense-perceptions to emotional experience. Research documents that most rating scales used in psychological assessment and personality testing (Caprara et al, 1997), for example, can be optimized by requesting discrimination on scale of about seven points. Subjects are asked to judge how happy or satisfied they are with a particular situation or life experience on a five to seven point scale that runs something like "1. Extremely Satisfied, 2. Satisfied, 3. Neutral, 4. Unsatisfactory, 5. Extremely Unsatisfactory." Recently developed cognitive-behavioral approaches for assessing a patient’s response to psychotherapy use a seven point "Validity of Cognition" scale to check on how much conviction a patient has that they have been helped as well as a ten point "Subjective Units of Discomfort Scale" to check on how much their pain or psychological discomfort has changed during therapy (Rossi, 1996a; Shapiro, 1995). Research is now needed to confirm the relevance of the Feigenbaum point and period doubling sequence in this apparently optimal perceptual, performance and subjective judgment limit range of 7 to 15 chunks of conscious experience on the path from order to chaos in human awareness. Freeman’s (1995) research on the nonlinear dynamics of the sensory-perceptual dynamics of smell, for example, would be an important test case.

At present we can only speculate about a number of open questions about the explanatory power of the Feigenbaum point and period doubling sequence in human experience. We can only wonder whether the significance of the number seven in gambling and many ancient mantic and mystical belief systems could have the same source in the limitations in our conscious sensory-perceptual-cognitive limits of awareness that is illustrated in the bifurcation diagrams of the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence. Seven items are about as much as we usually can hold in consciousness so we feel we know them and we are comfortable with them. When consciousness has to juggle more than seven items, dimensions or levels, we experience the stress of the heightened arousal of our neuroendocrine system and ultimately failure as documented by the extensive data supporting the Yerkes-Dodson law discussed above. On a cognitive level human cognition seems to become chaotic, dark, fearful, unconscious and perhaps unreal when we must hold in memory and manipulate more than 7 to 15 factors at one time.

The universality in the appearance of the Feigenbaum period doubling sequence in many complex systems have led to a number of highly speculative views about the possible significance of the Feigenbaum point for psychology, sociology and the humanities in general. Merry (1995, p. 37) suggests, for example, that the Feigenbaum point (about 3.7) is where systems cascade into chaos "where infinite choices create a situation in which freedom has no more meaning." We could generalize this to say that emotions, imagery, behavior and cognition and psychosomatic symptoms that have lost their meaning have somehow fallen into the chaotic regime within experiential space where our sense of reality teeters off the edge of comprehension or rationality. This suggests that beyond the Feigenbaum point inner subjective experience may fall into a sense of what is called unreality. Put another way, the Feigenbaum point may signal the division between primary process (irrational) versus the secondary processes (rational, ego processes) as defined in psychoanalysis. In this sense, the Feigenbaum point could represent a limit of our sense of voluntary ego control over our mental experience and behavior. The physicist uses the route to chaos as a way of describing turbulence in nature (fast moving water flowing over rocks, air turbulence behind an airplane etc.). Likewise the psychologist could describe the experience of confusion, disorientation and unreality as the turbulence of the mind moving past the Feigenbaum point into deterministic chaos.

Current cognitive science has developed these ideas further with research that documents how human ideas are grounded in sensory-motor experience and metaphor. This view is expressed by Lakoff and Núñez (2000).
"These metaphor studies mesh with studies showing that the conceptual system is embodied – that is, shaped by the structure of our brains, our bodies, and everyday interactions in the world. In particular they show that abstract concepts are grounded, via metaphorical mappings, in the sensory-motor system and that abstract inferences, for the most part, are metaphorical projections of sensory-motor inferences." (p. 101)

I now propose that the Feigenbaum point marks the transition between the explicit realm of conscious choice and behavior and the implicate realm of deterministic chaos on the unconscious level (Rossi, 1996a, 1997a, 1998b, 2000a). The Feigenbaum point is the limit of “subitizing” – the ability to tell at a glance whether there are 1, 2 or 3 objects in conscious (explicit) perception (Lakoff and Núñez, 2000). These 1, 2 or 3 objects in conscious perception correspond to the first, second and third bifrucation of the Feigenbaum Scenario as illustrated previously in Figure one. Peitgen et al. (1992) comment on the implicate (unconscious) and previously unknown aspect of how numbers operate in the iterative replays of nonlinear dynamics.

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Woods on December 23, 2009 at 6:36am

Fable,

I should most definitely have NOT read that before consuming my morning coffee. :)

Kelley

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Permalink Reply by Michael Doherty on December 23, 2009 at 6:38am

Hi Michael,

Well, "NOTHING to the 6th power... WTF?" goes over my head.

I'm proposing the diagram as a model for what's going during hypnotherapy. Here's another relevant diagram from Eric Kandel, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in memory, in his book "In Search of Memory."

Basically, Kagan's laboratory animals learned faster when there were visual cues such as the ones on the wall above. And he was able to document increased neurogenesis (the making of new brain cells) as a result. I try to create a similar scenario with clients while running Grove's Iterator pattern.

Now this Iterator pattern can elicit a quite intense experience for a client. Many have reported a need for a nap afterwards and some report improved nighttime sleep. It is at night that most neurogenesis occurs. I am no longer satisfied with myself unless a client, leaving our session, gets has a good night's sleep and awakens refreshed ready to pursue their action plans discussed in the session.

Michael Ellner said:

Hello Adrian,
Thanks for the belly laugh -- FYI -- I looked up the term bifurcation several years ago in regards to an article that I was reading about the myth of fingerprints... I haven't come across it again until today -- Freaking academics... Thanks to your WTF and the additional information supplied by Michael D. -- I get it- His jumping off point is about NOTHING to the 6th power... WTF? Love and Hugs,

Michael E.


Michael Doherty said:

Yes Adrian and thanks for the feedback. I'm trying to use The Feigenbaum Scenario as a jumping off point for a discussion of David Grove's "The Power of Six" and it's implications for hypnosis, trance work and problem solving in general. One of the simplest yet elegant pattern is for the hypnotherapist to ask "And what's there now?" six times. This diagram models the client's process responding to this pattern, creating a hyperfocus on the symptom and a naturalistic healing response.

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Permalink Reply by Doreen Cohanim C.Ht on December 23, 2009 at 7:31am

Great Information Guys,

lol, not that I didn't know all that or at list heard about it in many wonderful seminars and conferences I have attended... wtf, lol, for some reason it is funny to type it now, when before It use to get me very upset to a point that I have stopped all communication with my son, lol, gosh sometimes I wander why I am making such a big deal of the statement wtf...

All the best,
Doreen Cohanim C.Ht,HBCE

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Cole on December 23, 2009 at 11:14am

Where is Walt Potter when you need him...

Mitchell Feigenbaum Is a well known Mathematician , known best for his work in complex non linear systems behavior. There are points in such systens where the system changes from one behavior to another... Ie when a fluid goes from Laminar flow to a turbulent flowl. Those points are called bifurcation points. ie points where the accummulated influence of all system variables makes one behavior unstable and a second stable, Feigenbaum's work is very important in Chaos theory.

My take here is that Rossi was using Feigenbaum's work to explain the most complex syetem he had ever encountered. The Human mind, Without a bit more input It would difficult to read Rossi's mind however one could speculate that he was showing that the more complex processes live in the relm of the "infinite domain of unconcious deterministic Chaos"

Fable did a great job of correlating what we know today in "real" space with Rossi's "Topologial virtual mind space"



Hugh Cole
Making them dizzy one post at a tine.

Ps Micheal The mathematical model of a finger print that results in the "CSI Positive match found moment on TV" relies heavily on the location of branches or bifurcation points on the fingerprint "tree".

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Permalink Reply by Walt on December 24, 2009 at 4:21am

Hugh and all,

I had drifted to another topic and wondered where everyone had gone!

You've described Feignebaum and his work well without me. The applications are numerous. However, I'm very shy about making the kind of connections that Rossi is proposing. To give him his due, he's proposing that we look for connections. To make these kind of connections work is a sign of brilliance, it's what drives scientific progress.

I'll do some cutting and pasting, taking words from one context and putting them into another.

*************************

The Feigenbaum Scenario in a Unified Science of Life and Mind
Ernest Lawrence Rossi

In exploring the possibilities for creating a model of the creative cosmos, it is important to seek mathematical models that can express the common relationships unifying the sciences of matter, life and mind.

We explore the possibility that the Feigenbaum scenario can be extended to experiences of mind, sensation, perception and human behavior as well.

We conclude that a major function of consciousness may be to transform the non-linear, irrational, unconscious and difficult to predict dynamics of unconscious nature into the more linear, rational and predictable psychodynamics that make human experience and social life possible.

.........

When we attempt to step beyond the narrow limits of the linearization function of our current level of conscious we fall into conundrums and paradox. This leads to the deep epistemological speculation that the boundary conditions of the linear, rational world view of western consciousness are being outlined by many of the most famous paradoxes of our century: Bertran Russell’s paradoxes of logic and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Turing’s Halting Problem, the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics and the dynamics of chaos in the Feigenbaum Scenario of a unified science of matter, life and mind. (There are some beautiful, disconnected ideas here. Names of powerful figures.)

The new sciences of Self-Organization and Adaptive Complexity model human nature and consciousness as a non-linear dynamic of ever-shifting states evolving on the critical edge of deterministic chaos. A major function of consciousness may be to transform the non-linear, irrational, unconscious and difficult to predict dynamics of unconscious nature into the more linear, rational and predictable psychodynamics that make human experience and social life possible. (It's really not clear to me what this could mean-- stringing together metaphors.)

***********************
We do the same type of thing during the hypnotic process--appeal to higher authority where possible. Stringing ideas like these together induces a trance state in the reader. With this I'd be careful.

But I may be out of touch with what's going on here. I'm the kind of mathematician who studies the large but finite realms and computation on countable domains. Remember:

Continuity is a useful metaphor for and a wonderful approximation to the discrete world we live in.

Walt

Hugh Cole said:

Where is Walt Potter when you need him...
Mitchell Feigenbaum Is a well known Mathematician , known best for his work in complex non linear systems behavior. There are points in such systens where the system changes from one behavior to another... Ie when a fluid goes from Laminar flow to a turbulent flowl. Those points are called bifurcation points. ie points where the accummulated influence of all system variables makes one behavior unstable and a second stable, Feigenbaum's work is very important in Chaos theory. My take here is that Rossi was using Feigenbaum's work to explain the most complex syetem he had ever encountered. The Human mind, Without a bit more input It would difficult to read Rossi's mind however one could speculate that he was showing that the more complex processes live in the relm of the "infinite domain of unconcious deterministic Chaos"
Fable did a great job of correlating what we know today in "real" space with Rossi's "Topologial virtual mind space"



Hugh Cole
Making them dizzy one post at a tine.

Ps Micheal The mathematical model of a finger print that results in the "CSI Positive match found moment on TV" relies heavily on the location of branches or bifurcation points on the fingerprint "tree".

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Permalink Reply by Hugh Cole on December 24, 2009 at 5:55am

Walt,
Thanks for the cut and paste of some of the original text, briefly... Your misgivings are coming from the same place as mine. Rossi is looking at a qualitative phenomena in Human Conciousnes.and trying to model it Quantitatively. I salute his insights and his efforts, but it doesn't hold water, If there was such a thing as matho-babble he would have had a Times best seller but nothing more concrete than that. A cleverly drawn decision tree... is still a decision tree. An unlimited domain connected to a mutually exclusive limited domain ,,, by definition is not unlimited,
But ... I agree with Adrian it's a great discussion and it gives insight into Rossi's mindset. I personally wouldn't think of unconcious "processes" as chaotic. On the contrary they are highly structured, governed by rigid but not immutable rules. It is those rules that we as good hypnotists deal with.


Hugh Cole
Making them dizzy one post at a time.

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