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Comment by miloignis | Hacker News Reader

I think I have experienced something similar, where I have to find the right configuration for some pattern, sometimes grounded in like how my sheets and blanket wrap around my body in order to create or fix some dream machine. It's not a fully formed concept, but I'm trying to fix it and arrange the pattern in my mostly-sleeping state - it's always impossible and I have to recognize what I'm doing, fully wake myself up, and then try to go back to sleep to get out of it.

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Yes. I get this. It's kind of a problem some time. My brain gets trapped in a loop of trying to solve some puzzle or system of constraints, but none of it is based on anything. I couldn't even describe it. It's more like patterns of faux-logical systems.

When I recognize it happening, I can usually snap out of it.

Agreed, doing matrix multiplication of Star and Pyramid makes no sense. Tho usually I do not wake up enough to stop.

Loop is the right word for me. I’ll suddenly get stuck in a loop of subdividing a cube into smaller cubes over and over, or squaring a number over over. Never accurately, just…visually? It’s happened to me twice, both times when I was quite sick. It’s absolutely terrifying and feels like my mind is broken beyond repair. I’m getting upset just thinking about it.

I experience exactly the same thing, with me it happens when I am very tired. When I was younger (<10 yr) it made me really afraid. I can remember a new years eve that I was so tired and scared that I was literally terrified and hid in the corner of the room and my parents did not know what was happening to me.

Now I know what is happening and I just take it as a sign that I'm very tired. It's comforting to see someone else describing the same thing that is happening to me.

My "logic puzzle" is moving endless amounts of large, heavy cubes in holes that keep on appearing when I fill them. The visual aspect is only a part of it, the emotional feeling of the endless task is another.

For what it's worth, I instantly see very complex patterns in the visual test.

Yes, this happens to me when I'm very tired. The worst is when I'm about to fall asleep, but this thought pattern keeps my brain just active enough to prevent sleep.

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