i have a shotgun too and i thought very similar things like what you said here :"feel like a failure for wanting out of this but trembling at the thought of what seems as easy as a gunshot. "but what if it happens to fail, but what if you end up feeling that split second of pain"
when i think about it logically it's 99.9% if i don't flinch practice a lot dry firing and there wont be pain. but still the previous programming of my brain the neural networks won't just go away and are there thousands of them to put doubt and fear against the few logical networks i thought of recently
when i put the shotgun to my head the battle in my brain intensifies. the logical neural networks say i have to do this for these reasons. but the many thousands of neural networks that were programmed into my brain previously say "it will be painful" "it could fail" and similar things. so since i haven't done it the fear networks have won. every experience creates a memory a rewiring of the brain a reprogramming of the brain , creates a new pattern in a neural network in a cortical column.
the battle in my brain is more won regarding any fears of an afterlife because there are more neural networks that believe there is no reincarnation no afterlife just Non-existence forever after Death. and i don't fear eternal Non-existence because i can't feel pain nor know or experience anything as before i was born
all this is just my opinion on how i think the brain works . a lot of it is on some reading i did on books like the thousands brains theory book. Eagleman's books like livewired, the Brain, incognito. and other books and websites.
i think the brain saves models of something after learning or experiences. these models are in neural networks in cortical columns .
In our most recent peer-reviewed paper published in Frontiers in Neural Circuits, A Framework for Intelligence and Cortical Function Based on Grid Cells in the Neocortex, we put forward a novel theory for how the neocortex works. In this updated blog about the Thousand Brains Theory of...
www.numenta.com
The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence proposes that rather than learning one model of an object (or concept), the brain builds many models of each object. Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but tens of thousands of models of everything we know ( imo including beliefs about objects concepts beliefs ideas) .
This is a book summary of Incognito by David Eagleman. Read this Incognito summary to review key ideas and lessons from the book.
jamesclear.com
Conscious thought has a surprisingly small impact on your life and most of your behaviors are driven by the unconscious mind. There are competing beliefs within your unconscious mind that are all battling for the single output of your conscious behavior. The complex interactions between your genetics and your environment determine the trajectory of your life.
There is a concept that a conscious idea is actually a collection of signals your brain picks up that all point in the same direction. Once the signal becomes strong enough, it becomes a conscious thought. If you brain gets a signal that points one way and another pointing a different way, then they sort of cancel one another out. It's like the brain needs enough unconscious votes before it generates a conscious thought.
