Everything presented on the previous page is drawn from the research and publications of neuroscientists. What follows is the ways in which, in the Odoki Method, we apply those principles.
Validation of Predictions
If I show a bottle to someone, and say it is a cup, they are likely to correct me. Thus, it is relatively easy to validate predictions about external objects. The same does not apply to interoceptive predictions. If I say I’m experiencing anxiety, other than my words and behaviour, you’ve not got a great deal to go on. You are not experiencing the same sensations as me, so you really can’t validate my prediction in the same way as you might for external objects.
The result of this is that we make far more incorrect predictions internally than we do externally. This is, surprisingly, a normal part of how our brains tend to work.
Incorrect Predictions Cause Suffering
Yet, when a prediction is incorrect, it becomes less effective, and likely causes some degree of suffering. Imagine trying to drink water with a piece of tissue paper. It would be deeply frustrating.
Yet, we tend to persist with internal incorrect predictions. And they cause us to suffer.
Prediction Stacks
We can make predictions on the basis of (internal) sensory experience. We can also make predictions on the basis of other predictions, and predictions on the basis of those, and so on.
If I show you a magic trick, you perhaps laugh, but that’s the impact.
If, however, you see through the prediction at the bottom of a stack of predictions, your brain will have a lot of work to do to reform all of those predictions.
And this is precicely what the Odoki Method aims to do, using a technique that we call Inference Challenge.