tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88330742024-03-12T22:31:40.328-07:00Dr. Mezmer's Blog of Bad PsychologySatirical and otherwise ironic comments on psychology, from the idiot who brings you 'Dr. Mezmer's Psychopedia of Bad Psychology' (500+ pages of stupidity) and 'One Track Minds, The Surprising Psychology of the Internet', available at amazon.com and for free a scribd.com. Also visit my new blog at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com wherein I take on bad technology.A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.comBlogger271125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-3589816008331228632012-04-18T07:47:00.002-07:002012-04-18T08:14:40.995-07:00Dream Jobs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the movie ‘The Matrix’, super computers at the time had to run on batteries, and since human beings had more of a charge to them then your typical Ray o vac battery. So they farmed crops of humans who were kept alive by existing in a virtual world consisting of a nine to five grind in a cubicle and no stock options. And so humans thrived in their real and virtual cocoons, and as the machines figured from hard experience, they would have it no other way. (except for those few who wanted a different reality, and live in a cave and eat pea soup for the rest of their lives. These folks were called neo-phytes).</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dream Jobs</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What with green energy and fracking, humankind has got this energy thing down for the time being. Although the battery problem is solved, the reality one persists, and that’s when the Matrix reenters, and in a good way if you like cubicles that is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According the most prognosticators on the subject, computing power is trending to infinity. This is particularly good for app creators, who with all that infinite power can model not just Duke Nukem, but the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke, and even lowly you. Called an ancestor simulation by the Oxford University professor <a href="http://www.simulation-argument.com/">Nick Bostrom</a>, Bostrom has surmised that if one of your descendents, and I mean just one, decides to emulate you to see what life was like in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, or perhaps get even with you for the mega trillions of national debt he has to pay back for your medicare, then very likely he can emulate just about everybody, and in every variation. In other words, if anybody in the future decides to run an ancestor simulation, then almost certainly YOU are living in the mind of a computer, and are a simulation! Even I cannot make this up, but ultimately I don’t need to if I am made up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Well, back to my dream job…………………</span>.</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-45608779022712897022012-04-17T18:01:00.000-07:002012-04-18T07:49:58.797-07:00Keys to your Facebook<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you want that dream job, dream
date, or dream bank loan, it used to be that there was only a minimal amount of
information you could cough up, and then you were sure it was carefully chosen
to not reveal the embarrassing facts that if better known would send you
packing or even packing off to jail. Presently, some employers are asking
potential hires to hand over your password to your Facebook or other social
media accounts so that your character, resume, personality, can be properly
inspected. This <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1826121/employers-want-your-facebook-password-now">controversy</a>
may be dampened by federal law, public outrage, or just saying no, but in the
end it’s probably all moot, as your privacy has likely already escaped. There is plenty of stuff out there to
embarrass you, only you don’t know it yet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>But you will.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Right now, if I wanted the scoop
on a competitor, a friend, or the next door neighbor, I would have to do a
laborious internet search, and then laboriously make some sense out of it. Not
anymore! For the software tools we use
from day to day, all that stuff can be brought to you automatically, whether you
ask for it or not. Consider the common customer relationship management
program. The CRM we use at our own company, called <a href="http://capsulecrm.com/">Capsule</a>, instantly goes out and grabs all the
social networking connections of any individual whose email you type in. So now you not only have their name but their
ugly mug to look at, and instant access to their social networking connections
that <i>you never asked for</i> in the first
place. This is somewhat scary, for what this means that someone else who has
that email can pull out all my social networking stuff and God knows whatever
else is out there about my life. Of course, my life is as pristine as the driven winter snow (i.e. I am boring), but very likely yours is not. It used to be
that only running for President would reveal your dirty laundry. Now your
laundry is all over the place, so if I were you I’d watch your sox life among
other things, or else create a fake facebook page!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">See also:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.theonion.com/video/report-every-potential-2040-president-already-unel,27963/">The Onion reports that by 2040 every potential presidential candidate will be unelectable due to Facebook.</a></span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-15970121674463551952012-04-17T17:26:00.002-07:002012-04-18T07:51:01.009-07:00Through a Google Glass Darkly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; text-align: justify;">In a phrase, the internet revolution may be summed up as a global movement, inspired by IT overlords to move our intelligence to machines while decreasing our intelligence by encouraging us to do mindless things. In other words, the internet is dumbing us UP and dumbing us DOWN.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His and Hers Google Glasses</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A case in point are a new software tool that will allow us to be omniscient in a robotic Terminator sort of way, and a new software app that will help terminate our intelligence. The latest such boon to man or should I say peoplekind is called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4" style="color: #6699cc; text-decoration: none;">Google Glass</a>, and brings Google two inches from your nose. The second, called <a href="http://instagr.am/" style="color: #6699cc; text-decoration: none;">Instagram</a>, helps you make your pictures look old or otherwise crappy. Jon Stewart on the Daily Show recently took note of this. His <a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-10-2012/the-social-networth---google-unveils-smart-glasses---facebook-buys-instagram" style="color: #6699cc; text-decoration: none;">take on it</a> is worth a billion virtual dollars!</span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-47858766600357698042012-04-17T10:05:00.001-07:002012-04-18T07:48:45.847-07:00Mr. Greenjeans and the Laptop Bunnies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;">For those of us who
remember the past, or when we had teeth, to learn about the latest good stuff
you had merely to turn on Captain Kangaroo in the morning. </span><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Greenjeans was the family farmer who would
daily bring warm and fuzzy creatures that we would want to adopt for some coin,
an idea that was later replicated by the web app ‘Farmville’ and virtual</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> b</span><span style="text-align: justify;">unnies, which can be purchased for some coin.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> When bunnies were a ‘Best Buy’</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back then, you could feel and
touch the bunnies close up before you made your buying decision, and the knowledgeable
farmer was right there to answer any of your questions. Of course, now we have smart phone apps that
can read the bar code on the bunnies, and allow you to find an identical bunny
at the factory farm for far less money and a better bunny warranty. Naturally, this
puts the family farmer out of business, and leaves your progeny wondering what
bunnies are actually like. However, at least we have bunny user reviews. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Looking and feeling is a user
experience that no amount of user reviews can replace. When shopping moves to the web and our brick
and mortar stores close, we are losing something price<i>less</i>. Presently, pricing apps promote judgment by hearsay rather
than experience. So, we will miss our experience with cuddly bunnies, laptops,
wide screen displays, hard bound books, and much more of what used to be called
a shopping experience. And our bunnies, like everything else, will live
somewhere disembodied in the cloud. </span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-90869939757673960132012-03-18T09:12:00.000-07:002012-03-20T09:21:42.698-07:00The Flow Experience: A Graphic Explanation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="line-height: 120%;">Flow Experience: </span></i></b><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">Discovered
by the psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi</span></i><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">, who defined it as flowing
experience where the self reaches undreamed levels of consciousness and an
evolved level of self-hood. It can also mean a high level of attentive arousal
during touch and go situations (e.g. rock climbing, auto racing) where you'll
likely lose your head along with your self and your consciousness if you don't
pay attention.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">Flow was coined by the psychologist Mihalyi
Csikszentmihalyi</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></a>
to describe the unique emotional state that parallels one’s complete
‘immersion’ in a task. As described by the psychologist Daniel Goleman</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">, “Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a
single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the
emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained
and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To
be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be
barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even
rapture, while performing a task.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></a>
These descriptions are of course metaphorical representations of the experience
of flow, and describe what flow is like rather than what it is. Because these ‘dependent’ measures of flow
have no empirical referent (What is the neurological equivalent of spontaneous
joy for instance?), one is left with the independent or antecedent variables of
demand and skill that elicit flow, which thankfully <i>can</i> be empirically defined. What is unique about these variables is
that they not only map to flow experiences, but also other emotional
experiences such as anxiety and boredom. Thus Csikszentmihalyi</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">'s model does not just represent flow, but a wide range of
emotional experiences. The question is, although emotion maps to demand and
skill, can demand or skill be manipulated <i>in
the moment</i> to elicit flow, or for that matter, any other emotion? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;">The Flow
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;">On
the surface, the graphical representation of the flow channel is simple to
understand. Just plot your moment to moment challenge against your moment to
moment skill, and voila, you can predict what your emotions are going to be.
For any particular task, the problem is that although demand moves up or down
dependent upon the exigencies of the moment, skill should be relatively stable
during or <i>within</i> the performance, and
only change, and for the most part gradually <i>between</i> performances. Thus, one may accomplish a task that from
moment to moment varies in demand, but the skills brought to that task are the
same <i>regardless</i> of demand. What this
means is that for any one performance set, skill is not a variable, but a
constant. That is, one cannot adjust skill against demand during performance
because skill can only change negligibly <i>during</i>
performance, or in other words does not move. Thus for performance that
requires any skill set, the only variable that can be manipulated <i>is</i> demand. For moment to moment behavior
the adjustable variable that elicits flow is demand and demand alone. But that
leaves us with figuring out what demand exactly is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;">A
demand may be defined as simple response-outcome contingency. Thus, if you do
X, Y will occur or not occur. It is thus inferred that demand entails a fully
predictable means-end relationship or expectancy. But the inference that the
act-outcome expectancy is always fully predictable is not true. Although a
response-outcome is fully predictable when skill overmatches demand, as demand
rises to match and surpass skill, uncertainty in the prediction of a
performance outcome also rises. At first, the uncertainty is positive, and
reaches its highest level when a skill matches the level of demand. This
represents a ‘touch and go’ experience wherein every move most likely will
result in a positive outcome. It is here that many individuals report euphoric
flow like states. Passing that, the moment to moment uncertainty of a bad
outcome increases, along with a corresponding rise in tension</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and anxiety. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_jBIlwhTw6xdtacMyDjZtj6DuS0nlQrxRCbbCWRVqBDj1NPKP6U3QSIJW_aub_0xNeVqN4QzTB4COapbUVRTvXQIDPDeToh9NnX0oGzC_fW-pHFGzUk3oUTDep3OsJQwtt24IrQ/s1600/Flow-channel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_jBIlwhTw6xdtacMyDjZtj6DuS0nlQrxRCbbCWRVqBDj1NPKP6U3QSIJW_aub_0xNeVqN4QzTB4COapbUVRTvXQIDPDeToh9NnX0oGzC_fW-pHFGzUk3oUTDep3OsJQwtt24IrQ/s400/Flow-channel.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Flow Channel</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;">Momentary
positive uncertainty as a logical function of the moment to moment variance
occurring when demand matches skill has never been used as a predictor for
flow, and is ignored in Csikszentmihalyi</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;">’s model because uncertainty by implication <i>does not elicit affect</i>. Rather, affect
is imputed to metaphorical concepts of immersion, involvement, and focused
attention that are not grounded to any specific neurological processes.
However, the fact that act-outcome discrepancy</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;"> <i>alone </i>has been correlated with specific neuro-chemical changes in
the brain that map to euphoric, involved, timeless<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 120%;">[iii]</span></span></span></a>,
or immersive states, namely the activation of mid-brain dopamine</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;"> systems, narrows the
cause of flow to abstract elements of perception rather than metaphorical
aspects of performance. These abstract perceptual elements denote information,
and can easily be defined and reliably be mapped to behavior, and most importantly, corresponding affect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">A
final perceptual aspect of demand that correlates with the elicitation of
dopamine</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> is the importance of
the end result or goal of behavior. Specifically, dopaminergic systems are
activated by the in tandem perception of discrepancy</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> and the predicted
utility</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> or value of end result
of a response contingency. The flow model</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> maps behavior to
demand and skill, but not only is skill fixed, so is the importance of the goal
state that predicates demand. However, the relative importance of the goal
state correlates with the intensity of affect. For example, representing an
endeavor that matches his skills, a rock climber ascending a difficult cliff
would be euphoric if the moment to moment end result was high, namely avoiding
a fatal fall, but would be far less so if he was attached to a tether, and
would suffer only an injury to his pride is he were to slip. Finally, the flow
experience correlates also with a state of relaxation, which would also be
predicted as choices in flow are singular and clear and involve no conflicting or stressful choices. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">The graphical model of the flow experience, like the Yerkes-Dodson model</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> that predates it, is
not an explanatory model because it does not derive from a neurologically
grounded explanation of flow. Secondly, it is not even a very good <i>descriptive </i>model because it imputes a
moment to moment variability in skill within a performance set that is not
characteristic of <i>any</i> single performance,
and because it ignores other correlations between moment to moment act-outcome
discrepancy</span><span style="line-height: 120%;"> (or risk) and affect
that are well demonstrated in neurological explanations of incentive motivation</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">. Ultimately, the flow experience purports to explain a key
facet of incentive motivation through an inductive approach that misrepresents
the dependent (skill) and ignores the independent variables (discrepancy) that
truly map to the affective and motivational experience that is flow, while ignoring the expansive neurological literature on incentive motivation. In other words, as a creature of metaphor flow
is good literature, but is not good science because it eschews the explanatory essence
<i>of</i> science.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://mezmer.blogspot.com/2005/04/in-zone-bio-behavioristic-analysis-of.html">Journal Article On Bio-Behavioristic Theory of Flow</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
Barrett L. F., Russell J. (1998) Independence and bipolarity in the structure
of current affect. <i>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, </i>74,
967–984<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
Goleman</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, D. (2006) <i>Emotional Intelligence</i>. New York: Bantam<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[iii]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
Meck, W. H. (1996) Neuropharmacology of
timing and time perception, <i>Cognitive
Brain Research</i>, (3)3-4, 227-242<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-60256952287821701492012-02-29T17:59:00.001-08:002012-03-12T07:19:21.518-07:00The debate over dopamine's role in reward: the case for incentive salience and ANGELINA JOLIE!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">(The article below by Dr. Kent Berridge on
incentive motivation is one of the most important papers I have read on
behavioral neuroscience. Nonetheless, when compared to other masters of
motivational literature such as Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar, one feels it needs
an extra 'something' to keep your attention on the printed word and of course remind you of the magic of dopamine as you navigate
through prose that is admittedly not as exciting as the 4th grade level
writing style of our two masters.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: the case for
incentive salience AND ANGELINA JOLIE!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Kent C. Berridge <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Received: 21 March 2006 /Accepted: 20 August 2006 / Published
online: 27 October 2006<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"># Springer-Verlag 2006/ unauthorized Angelina Jolie revision 29 Feb 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Abstract</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Introduction
Debate continues over the precise causal contribution made by mesolimbic
dopamine systems to reward. There are three competing explanatory
categories: ‘liking’, learning, and ‘wanting’. Does dopamine
mostly mediate the hedonic impact of reward (‘liking’)? Does
it instead mediate learned predictions of future reward, prediction
error teaching signals and stamp in associative links (learning)? Or does
dopamine motivate the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience
to reward-related stimuli (‘wanting’)? Each hypothesis is evaluated here,
and it is suggested that the incentive salience or
‘wanting’ hypothesis of dopamine function may be consistent with
more evidence than either learning or ‘liking’. In brief, recent
evidence indicates that dopamine is neither necessary nor sufficient to
mediate changes in hedonic ‘liking’ for sensory pleasures. Other recent
evidence indicates that dopamine is not needed for new learning, and not
sufficient to directly mediate learning by causing teaching or prediction
signals. By contrast, growing evidence indicates that dopamine does
contribute causally to incentive salience. Dopamine appears necessary for
normal ‘wanting’, and dopamine activation can be sufficient to
enhance cue-triggered incentive salience. Drugs of abuse that promote
dopamine signals short circuit and sensitize dynamic mesolimbic mechanisms
that evolved to attribute incentive salience to rewards. Such drugs
interact with incentive salience integrations of Pavlovian
associative information with physiological state signals. That interaction
sets the stage to cause compulsive ‘wanting’ in addiction, but also
provides opportunities for experiments to disentangle ‘wanting’, ‘liking’,
and learning hypotheses. Results from studies that exploited those
opportunities are described here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Conclusion In short, dopamine’s contribution appears to
be chiefly to cause ‘wanting’ for hedonic rewards, more than ‘liking’
or learning for those rewards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Keywords Accumbens. Reward . Opioid . Dopamine,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Basal forebrain . Aversion .
Associative learning . Appetite Addiction, ANGELINA JOLIE!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Introduction</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Some questions
endure for ages, faced by generation after generation. Neuroscientists
hope the question, ‘What does dopamine do for reward?’ will not be among
them, but it still prompts debate after several decades. Fortunately, the
answers to the dopamine question are becoming better. A formal debate on
dopamine’s role in reward was held at a Gordon conference on
catecholamines in 2005. This article describes the incentive salience case
presented in that debate, and compares it to other hypotheses. A
debate stance can sometimes help clarify alternative views, and that
is the hope here. Therefore, this article is not an exhaustive review of
dopamine function. My goal is to provide a useful viewpoint and a critical
evaluation oalternatives and to point to new evidence that seems
crucial to any decision about what dopamine does for reward.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Dopamine’s causal role in reward</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">What does dopamine
do in reward? This is in essence a question about causation. It asks what
causal contribution is made by increases or decreases in dopamine
neurotransmission to produce changes in reward-related psychology and
behavior. In this article, our focus is on cause and consequence. How
to assign causal status to brain events is a complicated issue, but it is
not too much an oversimplification to suggest that in practice, the causal
question of dopamine’s role in reward has been approached in several experimental
ways. One approach is to ask ‘What specific reward function is lost?’ when
dopamine neurotransmission is suppressed (e.g., by antagonist drugs,
neurotoxin, or other lesions or genetic manipulations that reduce
dopamine neurotransmission). That approach asks about dopamine’s role
as a necessary cause for reward. It identifies what reward functions
cannot be carried on without it. A different approach is to ask ‘What
reward function is enhanced?’ by elevations in dopamine signaling
(e.g., elevated by agonist drugs, brain stimulation, or hyperdopaminergic
genetic mutation). That approach asks about dopamine’s role as a
sufficient cause for reward. It asks what reward function a dopamine
increase is able to enhance (when other conditions in the brain do
not simultaneously change so much as to invalidate hopes of obtaining a
specific answer). A third approach is to ask ‘What reward functions
are coded?’ by the dopamine neural activations during reward events
(e.g., by recording firing of dopamine or related limbic neurons,
measuring extracellular dopamine release, or neuroimaging activation in
target structures). This question asks about neural coding of function via
correlation, often in the hope of inferring causation on the basis of observing
correlated functions. Dopamine function is a multifaceted target, so it
helps to combine these multiple approaches. What does it
contribute to reward? Let’s put on the table the best answers that
have survived until today and evaluate each hypothesis for dopamine’s
role against the others. These include activation-sensorimotor hypotheses of
effort, arousal and response vigor; the hedonia hypothesis of reward
pleasure; reward learning hypotheses of associative
stamping-in, teaching signals and prediction errors; and the
incentive salience hypothesis of reward ‘wanting’. I will
describe each of these hypotheses in turn. Then recent
experiments that pit hedonia, reward learning, and incentive
salience hypothesis against each other will be considered.
Their results indicates that dopamine may more directly
mediate reward ‘wanting’ than either ‘liking’ or learning about
the same rewards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Activation-sensorimotor hypothesis</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Activation-sensorimotor
hypotheses posit dopamine to mediate general functions of action
generation, effort, movement, and general arousal or behavioral
activation (Dommett et al. 2005; Horvitz 2002; Robbins and
Everitt 1982; Salamone et al. 1994; Stricker and Zigmond 1986). These
ideas are captured by statements in the literature such as “Dopamine
mediates the ‘working to obtain’ (i.e., tendency to work for motivational
stimulus and overcome response constraints, activation for engaging in
vigorous instrumental actions).”
(Salamone and Correa 2002, p. 17) or “this dopamine response could assist
in preparing the animal to deal with the unexpected by promoting the switching
of attentional and behavioral resources” (Redgrave et al. 1999, p.
151) and “functions of the central DA systems could be explained in terms
of an ‘energetic’ construct (i.e., one that accounts for the vigor and
frequency of behavioral output) of activation.” (Robbins and Everitt 2006,
this issue). Those sensorimotor hypotheses have much to recommend them and
are supported by substantial evidence. Neuroscientists agree that dopamine
systems play roles in movement activation and control and attention and
arousal (Albin et al. 1995; Dauer and Przedborski 2003; Redgrave et al.
1999; Salamone and Correa 2002; Salamone et al. 2005). As an example from
the 2005 Gordon debate, Salamone and colleagues have convincingly shown
that low-dose neuroleptics shift choices away from effortful toward
easy tasks, even at the cost of a preferred reward. However,
activation-sensorimotor hypotheses are very general in scope, which makes
it difficult for them to explain specific aspects of reward. They do not
attempt to give clear and specific explanations of why rewards
are hedonically pleasant or learned about or sought after.
By extension to dopamine’s role in drug addiction and related disorders,
they do not attempt to explain why addicts become compulsively motivated
to take drugs again. To explain reward-specific aspects of dopamine
activation and of addictive drugs, we need hypotheses of dopamine function
that address more reward-specific processes themselves. In short,
activation, effort or sensorimotor function does not explain why dopamine
effects are rewarding, predictive or motivating—even though general
activation function may be valid and important. For the rest of this
paper, therefore, I will accept that dopamine does have
general sensorimotor-activation functions, and will not
challenge those hypotheses. But the discussion must move beyond them
for the purpose of understanding dopamine’s more specific contributions to
reward. We must turn to specific reward hypotheses of what dopamine does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBi1oV6s4IDBMzsDw0LUP6J9i-buFkfzfrnd2FtciIM30wbXD4Dvnxra6zuXe55KFcU8NhRUXwyQJE_bAROsHYBF8aCh9Dc57mU9GoJJqWlOld9MEAKfJLsmfrdPizRCKxjRxE5A/s1600/angelina5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBi1oV6s4IDBMzsDw0LUP6J9i-buFkfzfrnd2FtciIM30wbXD4Dvnxra6zuXe55KFcU8NhRUXwyQJE_bAROsHYBF8aCh9Dc57mU9GoJJqWlOld9MEAKfJLsmfrdPizRCKxjRxE5A/s400/angelina5.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Analysis of hedonia hypothesis</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The hedonia
hypothesis suggests that dopamine in nucleus accumbens essentially is a
‘pleasure neurotransmitter’. It was developed chiefly by Roy Wise and his
colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s and became a very influential view.
As Wise originally put it: “the dopamine junctions represent
a synaptic way station...where sensory inputs are translated into the
hedonic messages we experience as pleasure, euphoria or ‘yumminess’” (Wise
1980, p. 94). Continuing echoes of the hedonia hypothesis might perhaps
still be heard in more recent neuroscience statements such as “Clearly,
the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system is critical for psychostimulant
activation and psychomotor stimulant reinforcement and plays a role in the
reinforcing action of other drugs” (Koob and Le Moal 2006, p. 89) or
“The ability of drugs of abuse to increase dopamine in
nucleus accumbens underlies their reinforcing effects.” ............................<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Well, you get
the drift. For the real article, sadly without Angelina, go<a href="http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge%202007%20Debate%20over%20dopamine%20-%20incentive%20salience%20Psychopharmacology.pdf?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16885518&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum"><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>here.</a></span></i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-61963664799000777112012-02-25T13:14:00.002-08:002012-04-04T19:35:29.847-07:00Searching for Red Stockings: The Myth of Information Overload<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">As the
internet advocate </span><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10142298-16.html" style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Clay Shirky</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: red;"> </span>noted,
everybody who talks about information overload starts with the graph with the
telltale ascending line and the litany of the troubles it entails. As the line
informs us, information is increasing exponentially, and we can barely deal
with it intellectually and emotionally, or more and more often, we can’t. And
the solution? It is here that the
rallying cries diverge. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Scary Graph <span style="font-size: xx-small;"> (from Basex.com)</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">On one side
there is Shirky, who assigns the problem to filter failure, and why not? It’s a
reasonable thing after all to suppose that if we had better ways to sort out
information, we could cull the bad from the good, and be able to significantly
reduce the information we have to cope with daily. Search, social media, and e-commerce firms of
course concur, and are rapidly improving their search algorithms (using of
course information about you that you voluntarily or involuntarily port over to
them) so you can find what you need the
first time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">On the other
hand is the internet critic </span><a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/situational_ove.php"><span style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Nicolas Carr</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="color: red;">,</span> who
attributes information overload to filter success. In Carr’s opinion our
filters are working all too well, and the problem is that they are getting
better and better. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Thus, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">“….</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">The real
source of information overload…. is the stuff we like, the stuff we want. And
as filters get better, that's exactly the stuff we get more of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">It's a
mistake, in short, to assume that as filters improve they have the effect of
reducing the information we have to look at. As today's filters improve, they
expand the information we feel compelled to take notice of. Yes, they winnow
out the uninteresting stuff (imperfectly), but they deliver a vastly greater
supply of interesting stuff. And precisely because the information is of
interest to us, we feel pressure to attend to it. As a result, our sense of
overload increases.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Implicit in
both arguments is this premise: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">The information we want is the same as the
information we need.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">This is an
argument for the curing salve of better filters (to fine tune what we want,
since our wants are <i>finite</i>) or a call
for mass despair (because our wants are <i>infinite</i>,
and thus overwhelm us when they are invariably served by the web). This premise
derives from an assumption that in our hubris we are wont to make: that humans
are rational agents who know what they want and why.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">But what if
this was not true? What if we are at
root irrational creatures who delude ourselves into thinking that we know what
we want and why we want it? What if the information we want is more often than
not different from the information we need? If this is true, then to paraphrase
Shakespeare, our fate is not in the stars (or rather the cloud), but in
ourselves, because if the information that we want is often <i>not </i>the same as the information we need,
then we need to be aware of how to distinguish our wants from our needs and how
and when to constrain the former. In other words, for information overload, the
key is to understand how our basic motivations work. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">The question that
Shirky and Carr beg is thus elemental: <i>Why
is information of interest to us,</i> <i>because
it is important, or because of something else?</i> To answer this question, let us illustrate
how a basic search was performed over the last few generations by going to our
metaphorical sock drawer in search of red stockings.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">It’s 1912,
and you as t-shirt manufacturer want to begin a production run of commemorative
t-shirts of the Boston Red Stockings triumph in the World Series. As soon as
the game is over you receive an immediate telegraph of their victory, and it’s
off to the races to start production.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">It’s 1932,
and you as a t- shirt manufacturer want to get started with your commemorative
t-shirt run, and so you listen to the game on the radio, and upon its
completion, get to work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">It’s 2012,
and you as a t-shirt manufacturer want get to cracking on your production run
celebrating the Boston Red Sox victory, and you follow the sox from college
draft to preseason to all of their games through the World Series, and monitor
all the social and news media who have something to say about it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">In all three
time frames, the decision point happens in a second at a predetermined moment,
namely when (hopefully) the sox win. The narrative of how that final fact (a
sox victory in the final game) got there is irrelevant. No matter what era, the
decision point is concise, precise, and momentary, and gets to you on time
regardless of the media you use and irrespective of its background story. There is no need to follow the narrative that
describes the changing facts that get us to that point, as the point of the
last man flying out in the last inning is all we need. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">The
difference between the three eras is that in the first era we could not follow
the narrative that follows the sox on their way to the pennant, but in the
latter era we could, thanks to the rapidly declining </span><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 23px;">transaction</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;"> cost for information that allows us to perceive the changing flow or narrative of information. But following the latter comes at a cost. By following the progress of the sox we
become diverted from other things of value, and suffer regret. If these diversions are small scale and
populate our working day, they become distractions and cause us to lose focus
and attention. Finally, as we continually choose between distraction and
staying on course, we become tense and nervous. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">The metaphor
of ‘information overload’ would seem to apply here, as every frame of every
moment of the continuous narrative leading to the Red Sox pennant can and is
considered by the sox fan. However, like a strip of static frames in a motion
picture that give rise to a sense of movement or motion, the story is interesting
because of the novel ways the narrative changes, and it is the changes that
compel. Thus, although the ending is necessary for us to go about our business,
the story that leads to it is compelling not because of what it is, but how it
is continually transformed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">We can expand
our simple Red Sox narrative to the narratives embedded in all the things we do
that are being progressively revealed by the web. We need to know facts, but
what obsesses us is the narrative or story that brings us to those facts. The internet produces not just more
information, but more changing patterns <i>of</i>
information. We see not a picture, but a movie, not a note, but a score, not a phrase
but a speech. Moreover, we conflate the importance of the narrative with the significance
of its conclusion, or what we want with what we need. This is a dangerous
delusion, for the stuff we want depends upon the narrative or facts in motion,
but the stuff we need depends upon the facts sitting still.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">We can get
the facts we daily need in a half hour, but continually accessing the web to
see a moving stock market, an evolving middle east crisis, or what Uncle Charlie is up to
are never ending stories that excite us, engage us, but ultimately bring us
down. A narrative is of course still important if our behavior necessarily changes
in tandem. In this case the narrative is ‘feedback’. Thus, a quarterback’s
performance is determined by feedback during the moment to moment course of the
game. However, for the stadium audience, this feedback is entertainment, and
for those who attend to the ever expanding narrative on the game itself, an unnecessary
and harmful obsession.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 17.25pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">The Myth of Information Overload<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">As a
metaphor, information overload attributes the psychological effects of the
internet to what information <i>is</i> rather than how it is arranged, and ultimately the metaphor of information overload in inadequate because we are not overloaded with information but with ever evolving novel patterns of information or <i>narratives</i>. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">Because humans are above all novelty-seeking
creatures, novelty is enhanced not in the facts but in the stories they
tell. Our interest lies not only in the rational but in the abstract properties of information. So it is not information that overloads, but elemental aspects <i>of</i> </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">information, namely novelty that when produced in infinite </span><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 23px;">abundance</span><span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;"> by the web leads us to endless distraction, stress, and regret. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">Because the explanation for how the web influences us psychologically is
based on core assumptions on human motivation that are faulty, namely that we are rational actors, we proceed with
our daily lives under a dangerous illusion abetted unfortunately by the
perverse incentives of our media providers to keep us hanging onto the story
when the conclusion is all we need. Whether or not we can escape this illusion
and its dire consequences depends ultimately on not just a better story, but
also a better </span><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">explanation </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 17.25pt;">as to how
our minds actually work.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Finding a
better story to describe the emerging fact that wanting and liking aren’t the
same thing takes you to the seminal work performed by the
neuropsychologist </span><a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/"><span style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">Kent Berridge</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"> on the
topic, or </span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet"><span style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;">my own narrative</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 9pt;"> on
Berridge’s work and what it means.
Hopefully both make for some interesting explanations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-35671336230924990382012-02-10T10:10:00.000-08:002012-03-12T07:21:34.887-07:00Feedback Overload<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Since the invention of writing, the written word has literally piled up. Indeed, from very early on, mankind has been overloaded with information. However, the problem posed by of information overload is not in a metaphorical stack of stuff, but in our relative inability of finding the needle of information we need in the haystack of information we don’t. Things like the Dewey decimal system, book indexes, and a helpful librarian barely addressed the problem until the invention of the internet search engine allows us to find our need, or in this case, needles. As the pundit Nicolas Carr opined</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindl.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">, the problem we confront today is not finding a needle in an infinite informational haystack, but finding an infinite stack of needles that all merit consideration. Nowadays, when we electronically search for any topic, we are provided with many similar bits of information that allow us to more precisely fine tune or correct the deficiencies of knowledge. This error correction or feedback function represents a progressive resolution of the discrepancies between what we do and don’t know. Feedback may represent unexpected changes in our progress to a goal and/or unexpected changes in our knowledge of the nature of a goal. Feedback of course is essential to learning, but consequential to that learning is the increased activity of midbrain dopamine neurons, and it is the neuro-modulator dopamine that enables the consolidation of memory as well as heightened alertness and attention on the task at hand. But dopamine also increases positive affect that adds momentary value or ‘incentive salience’ to behavior, but does not intrinsically predict the overall or long term goodness or utility <i>of</i> behavior. Put a bit differently by the neuro-psychologist Kent Berridge, “The brain results suggest that pure decision utility—and not predicted utility—is raised by activating mesolimbic dopamine systems</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindl.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">.” What this means is that the importance of the decision in the moment, or its ‘decision utility’ does not influence its long term or ‘predicted utility’. The implications of this are profound, for as the marginal utility of examining each informative ‘needle’ declines, the successive needles of information remain novel, and we continue to dwell on nearly redundant links of information not because they are useful but because they are new. In other words, whereas in the past impoverished feedback environments caused us to waste much time looking <i>for</i> information, the rich feedback environments heralded by improvements in web search lead us to waste much time looking <i>at </i>information! This means that we will be affectively and not rationally inclined to overstay our welcome on sites that not only provide us what we want and need, but infinite variations of the same information that we ‘want’ but don’t need. The problem thus is not information overload, but ‘feedback overload’, as the ever increasing amount and granularity of information feedback provides greater and greater detail that can increase the short term or moment to moment value of behavior to the detriment of our long term interests.</span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Information Search, CA 1960<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Information Search, CA 2011</span></b></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">This increase in the momentary incentive salience of behavior can be used to conform with (if not predict) practical ends, but its ultimate value depends upon <i>whose</i> practical ends. </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">For example, the ‘Khan Academy’ (khanacademy.org) is an online math tutorial that uses rich feedback embodied in badges, scores, hints, etc. to increase the decision utility of performing math exercises in service of the predicted utility of long term mastery of say, the mathematical calculus. On the other hand, a Google search also provides rich feedback including social network feeds, instant messaging, videos, helpful links, and now badges in the service of the predicted utility of Google, namely advertising. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Ultimately, the problem is not that we are lost in a haystack, but that we are proverbially resting on a bed of pins and needles with each pin needlessly diverting our attention. The notion of ‘feedback overload’ means we are neurologically inclined to overvalue the short term importance or salience of new information, and when new information scales in amount and availability, we begin to live for a moment that may not conform to our ultimate good. For the rich feedback mechanisms provided by the internet, whether it is social media of just plain search, the solution to this problem is not better filtering of information or better feedback (as this merely acerbates the problem), but less, and can only be accomplished by constraining what information you can see, or when you can see it. The simple solution is keeping your personal library and newspaper, and severely restricting your time with search tools (the internet) that work too well. As internet feedback trends to infinity in ever morphing detail and availability, this will be our only option to spare us a new dark age caused by being blinded by the light.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">For much more on feedback overload, take a look at my new e-book on the psychology of the internet:</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet" id="yui_3_2_0_1_1320342419452113" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet</a></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">References:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Berridge, K. and Aldridge, J. W. Decision utility, the brain, and the pursuit of hedonic Goals, </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><i>Social Cognition</i>, Vol. 26, No. 5, 2008, pp. 621–646<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/">http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/</a></div>
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Nicolas Carr, Roughtype (blog)</div>
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<a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/situational_ove.php">http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/03/situational_ove.php</a></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-39956966032035815172011-12-01T08:16:00.001-08:002012-03-12T07:19:41.345-07:00Lifehacking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">A </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">distractive world does lots of bad things to
our motivation, our intelligence, and our happiness. But even though we can’t
fathom the disease, each of its symptoms has a fathomable cure. So you tinker
around the edges of our real problems, and come up with nifty procedures that
like a set of wrenches in a tool box can be pulled out to solve any problem.
This finds its most awful representation in the helpful hints articles that
plague our discourse on human motivation. Indeed, a cottage industry has popped
up to take the little and consistent correlations of life and package them into
the equivalent of a set of Philips screwdrivers.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">So rather than understand the system, we are
content merely with hacking into the system, and making a fix is good enough
even though it is not nearly enough.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; text-align: left;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px; text-align: left;">The
problem with screwdrivers though is that you have to try quite a few before
they fit, which leaves you fiddling about the tool box since you have no idea
of how to explain your carpentry problem, which would of course narrow the
choice of screwdrivers to one.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 120%;">Now expand this metaphor to human motivation, and
you come up with the popular concept of ‘lifehacking</span><span style="line-height: 120%;">’. Originally
pertaining to short cuts computer programmers would use to be more productive, </span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">the same phrase has
expanded to any sort of trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method to increase
productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. Or, in other words, anything
that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called
a life hack</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; line-height: 120%;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">. The problem though is that shorn of
explanation, life hacking becomes itself a source of distraction</span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">. </span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">Ironically,
it was the blogger Merlin Mann, an early adopter of lifehacking, who recognized
this<i>. <o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">One of the weaknesses of lifehacking</span></i><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"> as a
weapon in the war against distraction</span></i><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">, Mann admits, is that it tends to become
extremely distracting. You can spend solid days reading reviews of filing
techniques and organizational software. “On the web, there’s a certain kind of
encouragement to never ask yourself how much information you really need,” he
says. “But when I get to the point where I’m seeking advice twelve hours a day
on how to take a nap, or what kind of notebook to buy, I’m so far off the idea
of lifehacks that it’s indistinguishable from where we started. There are a lot
of people out there that find this a very sticky idea, and there’s very little
advice right now to tell them that the only thing to do is action, and
everything else is horseshit. My wife reminds me sometimes: ‘You have all the
information you need to do<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></i><em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-left-color: windowtext; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 1pt; border-right-color: windowtext; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 1pt; border-top-color: windowtext; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 1pt; line-height: 120%; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;">something</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"> </span></i></span><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">right now.’ </span></i></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">or Mann, many of our attention problems are
symptoms of larger existential issues: motivation, happiness, neurochemistry.
“I’m not a physician or a psychiatrist, but I’ll tell you, I think a lot of it
is some form of untreated ADHD</span></i><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> or
depression,” he says. “Your mind is not getting the dopamine</span></i><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> or the
hugs that it needs to keep you focused on what you’re doing. And any time your
work gets a little bit too hard or a little bit too boring, you allow it to
catch on to something that’s more interesting to you.” (Mann himself started
getting treated for ADD a year ago; he says it’s helped his focus quite a lot. <span class="apple-style-span">Mann’s advice can shade, occasionally, into Buddhist
territory. “There’s no shell script, there’s no fancy pen, there’s no notebook
or nap or Firefox extension or hack that’s gonna help you figure out why the
fuck you’re here,” he tells me. “That’s on you. This makes me sound like one of
those people who swindled the Beatles, but if you are having attention
problems, the best way to deal with it is by admitting it and then saying,
‘From now on, I’m gonna be in the moment and more cognizant.’ I said not long
ago, I think on Twitter</span></span></i><span class="apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">—God, I
quote myself a lot, what an asshole—that really all there is to self-help
is Buddhism with a service mark.</span></i></span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">)<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; color: black; line-height: 120%;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title="">[ii]</a></span></b></span></span></span></i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><b><br /></b></span></span></span></i></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;">In my opinion, Mann is right on mark. Conforming to
and far antedating our recommendations, Buddhist practices require not changes
in the various styles of living, but a global change in life style. Like prayer
in the western world, Buddhist mindfulness</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"> and meditative
procedures require more than a little faith but are not dependent upon
religious faith, yet for those who are beset by distractions; they are an
answer to their prayers. As we have
seen, science would tend to agree, but the science of distraction</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"> must
necessarily emerge from an explanation of motivation, and it is explanation
that compels.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #fb5e53; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">bove is an excerpt from my new e-book on the psychology of the internet:</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;"><br style="background-color: #fb5e53; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;" /></span></div>
<div class="yiv300278801MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_1_1320342419452116" style="background-color: #fb5e53; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet" id="yui_3_2_0_1_1320342419452113" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444;">http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Interne</span></span></a></span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><br />
<div>
<br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Lifehack,
Wikipedia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx.doc#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Anderson, S.
(2009) New York Magazine, In defense of distraction</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-76449901763201704572011-11-30T14:07:00.001-08:002012-03-25T15:38:55.855-07:00Mindfulness and Wanting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;">Arguably, the primary cause of human
distress is when our deeds do not measure up to our desires, or when our short
term behavior does not correspond to our long term goals.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;">Put another way, a major source of our
unhappiness is that we often ‘want’ something that has long term or predicted
utility, yet end up ‘wanting’ something that has utility only in the moment, or
‘decision utility’ (e.g., when we surrender to distraction rather than complete
a more valuable task). To remedy the emotional discomfort this creates, we can
rationalize why we should not want something (like the fox disparaging the
unattainable grapes), or not appraise what we would otherwise have wanted (just
avoid thinking about the grapes). Thus if we reduce the value of what we want by
reappraising it or being merely mindful of it, we will be less desirous of it
and far less upset at its prospective loss.</span><br />
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">This latter concept of ‘mindfulness’
reduces wanting and the emotional problems that ensue due to wanting not by
reappraising events, but by not appraising them at all. Although rooted in
religious (Buddhism) and philosophical tradition (Stoicism), contemporary
explanations of mindfulness are based upon cognitive psychology and the
complementary perspective of cognitive neuroscience</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">.
Cognitive psychology implies that wanting correlates with non-affective mental
processes, and this idea conforms to the emphasis in cognitive neuroscience on
the cortical structures that comprise the rational or ‘rationalizing’ aspect of
the brain. Because wanting is a uniform
concept, the practice of mindfulness (as well as meditation for that matter)
uniformly reduces all wanting through eliminating or reducing the continuous
appraisal that is an elemental aspect of wanting. Thus in mindfulness everything
in the perceptual field is observed and not appraised. Because of this,
mindfulness practice generally occurs outside of one’s working day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The problem with this approach is that
when the perspective of ‘affective neuroscience’ is considered that gives far
greater prominence to the mid-brain systems that modulate affect, ‘wanting’ <i>always</i> contains an affective component
that represents the activity of sub-cortical structures, namely midbrain
dopamine systems that are activated by the cognitive elaboration of the novel
discrepancies between acts and outcomes, <i>and do not intrinsically predict the long term utility of outcomes</i> (i.e., as 'gut level' feelings they do not predict the future) <a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>.
Because of the ‘pleasure’ attendant with dopamine release, the value,
‘incentive salience’, or decision utility of behavior increases, and may
conform or dis-conform with the long term logical or predicted utility of
behavior<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></a>.
If they conform, then we have productivity, creativity, relaxation, and
‘happiness’, but if they do not conform, we have non-productivity,
non-creativity, stress, and ‘unhappiness’. Because wanting is comprised of
cognitive <i>and</i> affective components
whose ends may mutually conform or non-conform, wanting is <i>never</i> a purely cognitive event, and some types of wanting may be
good for you and others not so good. Hence, it would be more logical to be
mindful towards those wants that lead you astray than those that keep you on
the straight and narrow. In other words, it is best to be mindful of our
irrational wants than our rational ones. The problem is not to avoid appraisals
that may lead us to want, but to avoid those appraisals that lead us to ‘<i>mis-want’<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[2]</span></b></span></span></a></i>. Thus a
mindfulness strategy must focus on non-elaborative awareness of the short term
wants that dis-conform with long term goals<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[3]</span></span></span></a>.
In other words, to be not just effective but practical, <i>mindfulness must entail not the mitigation of wanting, but of
mis-wanting</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By non-appraising what we <i>should</i> be mindful of rather than what we
<i>could</i> be mindful of, we can expand
the applicability of<i> </i>mindfulness to
all our working day, and finally make mindfulness a mainstream procedure that
is universally embraced. By being
mindful of distraction or distractive thoughts but not our workaday behavior as
well as avoiding useless elaborative thinking or rumination, we can gain the
benefits of mindfulness without constraining our rational wants that populate
our day. Thus mindfulness can be expanded in scope to encompass <i>all </i>of our daily activities without
losing its therapeutic power to reduce and control harmful emotions. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because the activity of dopamine systems
is determined by anticipation and/or experience of unexpected changes in the perceived or elaborated <i>relationship</i> between act and outcome
rather than the outcome itself (e.g. think of the 'pleasure' in anticipating opening a present on Christmas and of opening it), if follows that non-elaborative awareness will
necessarily reduce dopamine activity, and therefore reduce the decision (i.e.
momentary) but <i>not</i> predicted utility
of objects or events<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">[4]</span></span></span></a>.
Hence it is argued that the ‘mechanism’ of mindfulness is the cognitive
inhibition of the rapidly changing and virtualized relationship of act and outcomes
that elicit the positive affect that for good or ill always distorts judgment,
and simultaneously engages cortical <i>and </i>midbrain
structures. Thus, <b><i>mindfulness ‘works’ by reducing dopaminergic activity through the
inhibition of the elaborative cognitive behavior that elicits it</i></b>. Or in
other words, mindfulness reduces not the rational but the <i>affective</i> component in judgment or ‘wanting’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The advantages of a dopaminergic based
explanation of mindfulness are numerous and compelling. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is
logical<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In its essence, mindfulness changes what
we want by modifying <i>how</i> we want,
therefore it follows logically that any explanation for mindfulness must be
rooted in the neuropsychology of wanting. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is
simple<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The neuroscience of wanting is detailed
and complex, but the description of its logical entailments is quite simple,
and requires but rudimentary knowledge of neural structures and processes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is
concrete<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead of a metaphorical description of
mindfulness that depends upon abstract cognitive behavior or the complex and
indeterminate interplay of myriad cortically centered neural processes, a
dopaminergic explanation of mindfulness is rooted in specific mid-brain
structures whose behavior is determinate and clear. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It informs
procedure<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By distinguishing between wanting and
mis-wanting, mindfulness procedure can be centered on mitigating those wants that
pull us in directions contrary to our long term interest, and result in regret,
stress, un-productivity, and unhappiness while keeping those wants that add zest, pleasure, and meaning to life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;">It explains</span></b><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mindfulness research almost exclusively follows inductive principles,
wherein mindfulness practice correlates with specific emotional, neural, or
behavioral states. But because mindfulness is still without an adequate <i>explanation</i>, it is far more difficult to
justify mindfulness, specifically when posed against the equally inductive
conclusions derived from personal experience, popular media, and even academic
research that argue that a distracted and mindless lifestyle is good for you or
at most a necessary evil.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">__________________________________________________________</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 120%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>A Note on Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction: MBSR</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">A truism in psychology is that if you are faced with a continuous dilemma between two alternative choices of equal value, your muscles will tense and you will be stressed. Specifically, if the </span><i style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">affective </i><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 18px;">value of a choice can be raised through its cognitive elaboration (imagining or looking forward to an email, a slice of cake, or other temptations) then it can create an artificial or affective dilemma that elicits tension, as you have to choose between doing the right thing and doing the dumb thing (e.g. doing your work rather than checking your email 40 times an hour). Contrariwise, if one can reduce the affective value of an alternative choice through being mindful of it (e.g. a email being just email or a cake just being a cake), then affective dilemmas can be reduced or eliminated, and you will become less stressed. Because an ever distractive world is full of affective dilemmas, mindfulness is a unique and sensible strategy to reduce stress, and demonstrates the predictive power of a dopaminergic theory of mindfulness. </span></span><br />
<div>
<br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://mezmer.blogspot.com/2009/08/damasios-somatic-marker-new-definition.html">For a formal interpretation of MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction) from a dopaminergic theory of mindfulness, go here.</a></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 120%;">[1]</span></span></span></a> For example, we become
incented to eat cake, go on a date, buy a car, etc. not only because of the
utility of doing such things, but also due to the cognitive elaboration of the
novel implications of doing such things. However, these novel implications do not predict the intrinsic value of the events they predicate.</div>
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<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 120%;">[2]</span></span></span></a> <span style="font-size: 9pt;">Mis-wanting represents distractive, addictive, or obsessive behavior
(e.g., excessive rumination) in which the momentary affective ‘urge’ to perform
mis-matches the objective or predicted long term value of that behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 120%;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> As an example, if you want to eat cake, the urge to do
so may conform to the predicted utility of eating if it is your birthday, and
dis-conform with the predicted utility of eating if it is not. Hence to be
mindful of a ‘cake only being a cake’ reduces regret when you do so to stay on
a diet, but ironically would <i>increase</i>
regret if eating a cake was a cause for celebration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/wanting.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 120%;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> As an example, suppose you accidentally run over my
cat. That of course is a bad thing, but as I ruminate on all the novel ways I
will take my revenge, dopaminergic activity will increase, thus making the
decision utility of taking vengeance a whole lot more important than the long
term utility of getting even. After all, a cat is just a cat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/neffk/pubs/Holzel%20mechanisms%202011%20PPS.pdf">[i]Holzel, B., Lazar, S., Gard, T.,Schuman-Olivier, Z. Vago, D., and Ott, U. (2011) How Does MindfulnessMeditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action from a Conceptual and NeuralPerspective. Perspectives onPsychological Science, 6(6),537–559</a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_421574958"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></a><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://www.lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge%202009%20Wanting%20and%20liking%20-%20observations%20%20Inquiry.pdf">Berridge, K. (2009) Wanting and Liking: Observations from theNeuroscience and Psychology Laboratory, Inquiry,52: 4, 378—398</a> <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/">(Kent Berridge web site, including this article)</a></span><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">More references:</span><br />
<span style="color: #0d0e00; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet">My e-book on the psychology of the internet, including discussion of mindfulness on pp. 143-151 and pp. 271-276</a></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">Below: video of presentation</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> by Richard Davidson and Kent Berridge on the neuro-psychology of happiness.</span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span><br />
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-26155348541390521592011-11-11T19:47:00.001-08:002012-03-17T19:15:42.660-07:00Dreams of a Popperian Machine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;">The future is not
only a long time coming, but an infinitely long time becoming. Whether
conceived as a static block or moving stream, the measure of time is what
occurs in time. It is in other words behavior. The future of the web, or the
information revolution, is determined by the exponentially growing capacity and
intelligence of our machines. But it may be envisioned that technological
invention can reach a point of unlimited, rapid, and exponential growth when
machines not only learn to be creative, but use that creativity to infinitely
expand their creativity and power. At that point, our ability to predict what
this entity will be like will disappear, similar to the disappearance of
physical laws when a star collapses to a single infinitesimal point, or a
singularity. This concept of a technological singularity</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;"> was
conceived by the futurologist Verner Vinge</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></a>
and later rigorously and exhaustively argued by the technological philosopher
and inventor Ray Kurzweil</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></a>.
Vinge believes that it was difficult or impossible to reckon not for the power
but for the motives of super intelligent machines, although Kurzweil</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%; text-align: justify;"> was a
bit more optimistic about the matter. This can lead to a cautionary tale that
if machines do something well, they may keep at it and keep at it until they
cover the earth with the bounty of their creation. They would become in other
words super intelligent idiot savants. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">The concept of AI as a sort of smart
mono-maniacal automaton that can spin out of control was put forward by Nick
Bostrom</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, who imagined an intelligent paper clip
machine<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[iii]</span></span></span></a>
that was obsessively fond of its creation, and multiplied in kind across the
earth until the planet was covered miles deep with paper clips. But the be all
and end all of progress in all of its branching implications is a more abstract
thing, and we see it as the essence of our own motivation to seek novel and
useful information. But empowering our use of information is explanation, and
it may be argued that at our core we live for explanations. For machines to be
useful to us and be useful for themselves, this need will be the same, and explanation
must be their existential reason for being. Certainly, it will have enough time
and space to think of and explain everything, and do it forever. From quantum
computers that use infinite parallel universes<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[iv]</span></span></span></a>,
or just our same old universe computing into infinity as it collapses into
infinity<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[v]</span></span></span></a>,
AI has all the time in the world, or should we say universes. So what would AI, or our explanatory
Popperian machine think about? Self
stimulation seems out of the question. It will not take pleasure in looking at
rectangles any more than finding pleasure in the not so geometrical shapes of
the human form. It will likely follow its programming, and seek instead to
create knowledge through a search for explanation, eternally discovered and
recovered. It will value process and not product and express it in the embodied
form of questioning minds. Its existence will be validated not by creation but
in the music of <i>creating</i>, and
instantiated in the most unlikely yet familiar form, us. And it may take form
in a solitary child asking why the sun rises or an astronomer pondering the
rise of the cosmos. Its heaven of heavens will be populated by curious people,
and for those who wish for the other place, it will be a land of tranquility,
beauty, and peace, with white swans flying to and fro as far as the eye can see.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Above is an excerpt from my new e-book on the psychology of the internet:</span></span></span></span><br />
<div class="yiv300278801MsoNormal" id="yui_3_2_0_1_1320342419452116" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet" id="yui_3_2_0_1_1320342419452113" rel="nofollow" style="color: #2198a6; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;">http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet</span></a></span></div>
</div>
<div>
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<br /></div>
<hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: left;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vinge, V. (1993) The Coming Technological Singularity:
how to survive in the Post-Human Era <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Kurzweil</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">,
R. (2005) <i>The singularity is near: when
humans transcend biology.</i> New York: Viking </span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: #5a5a5a; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[iii]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Bostrom</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">, N. </span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;">(2003)<b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"> </span></b><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">Cognitive, Emotive and
Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence</span></i><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">, 2(1) Int. Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems
Research and Cybernetics, 12-17</span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[iv]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Deutsch, D. (1998) <i>The
Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications</i>.
New York: Penguin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindO.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">[v]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Tipler, F. (1997<i>)
The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the
Dead</i>. New York: Anchor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-29141330787525460682011-10-22T10:58:00.000-07:002012-03-12T07:23:23.175-07:00One Track Minds: The Surprising Psychology of the Internet (new book from yours truly!)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Here's my new book, with twice the knowledge and only half the stupidity of my other stuff</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69880622/One-Track-Minds-The-Surprising-Psychology-of-the-Internet"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">One Track Minds: The Surprising Psychology of the Internet</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxtDcYnZHUBhqE7b5sPh7k7dxUfu7KZ4k1QpJ_3Fsqi2ltvwTiSzM2FwXA9P7eeIOElvaMEpKCFnsJ_U96dyhbKaWITpRfD08zIBhTfNBIfGAYeM2ESg3VrIPv6ra1KoQV1nMbg/s1600/train_tracks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxtDcYnZHUBhqE7b5sPh7k7dxUfu7KZ4k1QpJ_3Fsqi2ltvwTiSzM2FwXA9P7eeIOElvaMEpKCFnsJ_U96dyhbKaWITpRfD08zIBhTfNBIfGAYeM2ESg3VrIPv6ra1KoQV1nMbg/s400/train_tracks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 120%;">My book, in 1000 words (actually, 1,008 words)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">Occam’s razor</span></i></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><b><i>:</i></b><i>
Tool used by the medieval King Occam of Slovenia to cut the heads off
philosophers who rambled on and on. It was later used to describe the logical
principle that cut off rambling arguments and replaced with simpler ones,
although it may be argued that King Occam had the better idea.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One of the problems with books that have a
big idea is that the big idea can be easily communicated in a page or so, leaving
the writer with the problem of how to fill in the rest of his opus, which he
promptly does by adding the history of the middling ideas leading to his great
idea, the great implications of his great idea, repeating his great idea in
multiple variations, or just <i>explaining</i>
his idea to begin with. Given my own bright idea, this author decided to go
through the route of explanation, which if deleted from the manuscript, gives
you this page. So here’s the main idea of the book, served not by explanation
but analogy, which is thankfully much shorter.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So I present to you this tale that tells the
main idea of our book. Let’s say that you are a tailor, continually in need of
needles to pursue your trade. Consider
if you would a haystack, and the fact that for some reason your needles can
only be found in the haystack. An inefficient state of affairs to be sure,
resulting in your need to painstakingly go through a lot of straw to get to
your needle. Let’s say that in your wisdom you design a ‘search engine’ (i.e. a
big magnet on a string) that will allow you to sort through all that straw to
get to your needles. Passing the magnet over the haystack, you find not only
your needle, but <i>lots</i> of needles of
every color, form, and shape. The first needle does what you need, but each
additional needle is of interest also, but not as much. Nonetheless, you end up
spending much more time than you would like looking at all the fine needles in
your collection, which you eventually look back ruefully as a big waste of
time. In other words, whereas the haystack caused you to waste your time
looking <i>for </i>a needle, a stack of
needles caused you to waste your time looking <i>at</i> needles. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">But wait you say, isn’t looking at all those
extra needles rational as well, and represents a free and unfettered choice
guided by the fact that all those extra needles are of inherent interest? That’s a fine point if people behaved like a
computer, which they don’t. The analogy instead is more like a steam engine,
which has to get fired up before it can ever get going, and often can’t stop
when it does. Similarly, when we are faced with a demand for performance, the
mind and body has to prepare itself or get ‘fired up’ <i>for</i> performance, but stopping is another matter. Get in place to
run a race, and your muscles will tense to prepare you for a quick release, see
a plate of tasty food, and you will salivate to prepare for consuming the food,
and perceive a lot of novel and salient information, and your attention will
perk up so you can process that information efficiently. But when we pay
attention to novel information, do you stop when you’ve had enough? Well no.
That’s because perking attention is not a just a cognitive activity, but an
affective one as well, as our ability to consume information efficiently
depends upon a non-conscious reason to <i>want</i>
to stay on task, and that’s where affect comes in. In other words, to process
information effectively, we must ‘want’ to do so, and wanting ‘feels good’.
Thus to keep on task, our brains prejudice our immediate behavior in service of
an immediate goal, namely processing important information in a timely way, and
it does so by temporarily skewing the momentary importance or ‘incentive
salience’ of behavior. The brain does
this by releasing the neuro-chemical or ‘neuro-modulator’ dopamine</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"> that
modulates or changes (in this case increases) the rate of firing of arrays of
neurons in the brain. Dopamine</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"> increases the efficiency of learning,
increases alertness, and causes a positive affective state that spurs us on.
Dopamine is the source of the common temptations that cause us stray from our
long term goals. The temptations of sex, eating, and other pleasures all
implicate dopamine activity. However, as the word temptation implies we
normally do not conflate the momentary temptation to eat with the long term
value of eating reasonably. In other words, temptation represents the urge to
take our pleasures in the moment without regard to their long term
advisability. Moreover, temptation can grow if we perceive more of what we
want, thus we are more tempted to eat when we are confronted with a sumptuous
buffet, have sex when we look at pornography, etc. Similarly, when we are presented with a rich
informative environment such as the web, the temptation to remain in that
environment increases, and we end up overstaying our welcome on sites that
remain affectively important even after their logical importance wanes. The negative results are manifold, and result
in regret and unhappiness over time ill spent, a disruption of attention and
memory due to constant distractive interruptions (e.g. checking email or social
media), and the anxiety and tension</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">due to
the constant indecision and confusion this brings to daily decision making.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;">So how can you deal with this problem? The
procedures are simple, starting with a radical reduction in distraction</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 120%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, but first you need a good explanation, or
understanding, hence this book. As with any important problem, explanation is
key, for without it one can be easily swayed by rationalization, demagoguery,
and outright fakery. In other words, my argument must not just seem right, it
must <i>be</i> right, and to be right it
must be clear, concrete, and above all easily testable or refutable. That is
the intended purpose and lesson of this book. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-65838595897600430482011-09-27T07:52:00.000-07:002012-03-18T11:36:42.171-07:00Patton's Rude Solution to a Final Solution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was 1944, and times were tough all over. These were hard times
for the workers of the Himmler Machine Works factory. There was negative energy
everywhere. Production was down for Tiger tank tops, the Panzerfunwagen SUV,
and the V-2 vacuum cleaner engine. The Mr. and Messrs. Schmidts of the Greater
Reich were simply not buying, and there was a real fear that these products
would simply bomb out, or just get bombed. In spite of doubling the moldy crust
allowance for their immigrant guest workers, and the placement of motivational
slogans like ‘Work will make you free’ on the barbed wire fences and guard
towers, worker productivity continued to fall, with ominous results for product
quality.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">Own the road and a few small countries in your Panzerfunwagen SUV</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Something had to be
done to get the workers concentrated at their campus. Thus there was great
anticipation when motivational consultants Marv Slugman and Micky Czikenfri
arrived to get the workers into the flow again. As leaders of the Positivity
School of psychology for the Jung at heart, Marv and Mickey went to work like
busy beavers, and interviewed all the workers, who candidly revealed under the
watchful eye of their guards that their malaise was due to not enough
positivity in their work. They were simply not looking at the bright side of
things, such as the evident promotional opportunities due to weekly worker
turnover, the free room, board, and showers, and the fact that they were
helping their company to achieve world market domination. Marv and Mickey
helped the factory commandant set up better employee selection procedures to
choose workers with high positive attitudes as they arrived at the train
station, and then got the rest in the mood with positive affirmations, positive
thinking, group whistling of Disney tunes, and delusional training sessions. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> Positive Psychologists Slugman and Patton </span></b></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, it was too
late for the Himmler machine works, as foreign competitors made a hostile take
over. As the American auditing firm of Patton, Eisenhower and Zhukov inspected
the new properties, they summarily lined all the higher and lower management
they could find, and had them summarily fired by a squad rounded up for that
very purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And as for Marv and
Mickey, they remained positive about the experience, and applied their wisdom
in the American workplace, which soon became the happiest and most productive
in the world.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-21106924150988523462011-07-30T11:09:00.001-07:002012-03-18T09:52:15.937-07:00Social Media, a New Turing Test?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">“The dominant social networks are fantasy games built around rigged avatars, outright fictions and a silent — and often unconscious — agreement among players that the game and its somewhat creaky conceits influence the real world. This pact is what distinguishes Facebook and Twitter from other fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons and L.A. Noire. And because of this pact, and because so many hundreds of millions of people participate in this pact, Facebook and Twitter</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> </span></i></span><em><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-style: normal;">do</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">have meaning and significance in the real world. Just as paper money is valuable because people who use it believe it’s valuable, Facebook and Twitter — right this minute — have value entirely because a whole continent’s worth of people believe they have value. So many players have invested so much trust in these games that they can’t afford</span></i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> </span></i></span><em><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-style: normal;">not</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"> </span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">to believe they’re paying off.” Virginia Heffernan</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">, New York Times July 24, 2011 (Opinionator, online commentary)</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">The importance of reality in choosing our incentives is presently made much more complicated due to the fact that the internet has virtualized incentives that can never be ‘cashed out’ to true social goods such as status, personal favor, or money. (Sort of like 'Monopoly' money replacing the gold standard) Consider this far fetched or very real scenario, depending of course upon your point of view. Everyone you know has been consumed by the cloud, and you are the last person standing. Outside of your normal amusements and curiosities, no human is around to provide you the incentive to do anything. And that’s a problem, because if no wants anything from you, whether is evidenced by individual or institutional mandates of collections of individuals, you ain’t going nowhere if no one wants you to be there. To get motivated, you need to arouse your animal spirits, and that takes more than individual choice but institutional design. Luckily though, in your isolation you have your own virtual reality emanating from voices in the cloud. For even though everyone has gone to the cloud, they kindly left you their IP addresses, and they want you to stay in touch. And so they poke you , IM you, and tweet you often to know that they care, and most often this is no more than the faint imprint of your stat sheet to let you know they visited. They are pithy in their praise, but that’s enough for you to blog, share, or otherwise spend you time with them. It’s inspiration from a thousand glimmers of attention from ‘friends’ you never knew you had. It all could be from an auto-responder of course, or the glancing attention of a bystander on the street who couldn’t be bothered. But you of course see more, and because you read more into these minute moments dutifully registered by your search engine you are transfixed by the constant tally of attention of a growing roster of friends, connections, contacts and followers who leave their mark in a word, or not even that. You have become in this virtual world a well connected, universally befriended, and consistently followed hermit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">To take measure of the scope of this illusion, consider this comparison to real life, when everybody looks at you and ‘remarks’. Walk down any busy street, and you receive a moment’s attention from passersby, gain the brief acquaintance of sales clerks, and infrequently chat with a friendly face who spares a minute and no more. If you monitor, tally, and even predict all this are your friendships greater or richer? Of course they are not because you know they are not. But if these nods of acquaintance are the virtual nods of a tape register, or a tweet, prod, or ‘like’, what is stopping you from inferring more? Indeed, because the motivations of our contacts are veiled, it is all too easy to surrender to the delusion that what is under the curtain is not just a contact but your best buddy. But how can we test this comfortable surmise?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Enter the Turing Test. The Turing test, envisioned by the cybernetic pioneer Alan Turing in the 1940’s, was a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. An individual engages in a conversation with one human and one machine, both hidden behind a curtain, and each providing verbal responses to questions. If the judge cannot reliably tell the difference between the machine’s responses and the humans, the machine is judged to be intelligent. However, intelligence does not just entail intelligent response, but intelligent action. Let’s say during the test you fall off your chair. The human behind the curtain can at once come to your aid, while the computer can only commiserate. After all, ‘he’ is just a talking typewriter. And this is where social media becomes surprisingly unsociable. Building virtual social capital depends upon the circles of friends you have, but to see if your virtual capital can turn into real capital turns on a simple iteration of Turing’s original mind experiment. This new Turing Test requires not that they respond intelligently to you, but whether they will come to your assistance if you proverbially fall off the chair. Put that mind experiment to the test and you will find that almost all the automated nods from your social media ‘friends’ just might as well come from automated bots or intelligent typewriters, because you get intelligence but no empathy, no understanding, and ultimately, no action from intelligent agents who will commiserate with you, and no more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Avatar for yours truly,</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">who will commiserate with you, for ten bucks<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">So where does this leave us? It makes us doubly doubtful about a distractive world that is not only useless, but indifferent. But it also leaves us with surveying the benefits of a distraction free world wherein we are just mindful of it all. (As I am sure, you the reader will comiserate!)</span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-21937586388562999312011-07-04T14:38:00.000-07:002012-03-17T19:51:52.946-07:00Why the French are still irritating twits!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A Lesson from an Alternate
History<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u1:p></u1:p>
</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 27px;">In 1941, American learned its lesson. War is bad, let's give peace a chance. And so then president Wibur 'sponge-bob' Milquetoast apologized to the Japanese, and found that the Nazis were equally reasonable and nice. </span></div>
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<span style="float: none; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: -webkit-center;">Thus we had peace
in our time, or well, at least peace in our backyards. And so the Japanese
civilized half the world's people by killing them. The Germans would have
repeated the favor for the other half, except the Russians had a few slight
objections, and rolled up through Germany and half of Europe, making the world
a socialist paradise. They stopped their tanks at the border of France.
They didn't go further for an obvious reason. After all, they were French. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 20.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And so the French
stayed Nazi, and as we all know about Nazis, they are indeed a mischievous
bunch. And so, as time went on French Nazis slaughtered and gassed their own
people, invaded Italy and occupied its pasta fields, and seized Switzerland to
get a hold of all that cheese. Naturally, the world responded, and drove the
evil French Nazis from Switzerland and Italy, but decided not to rid themselves
of the evil French Nazis by taking Paris. After all, they were French.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqQYAXWEIrYCyY_V-nxV2Hph_-AixyfNr1u-qqpfbyDrRnWD0hnJw_iQOPwDhgDvXozF9QmrKwlDhBPZXADCWBD_5Mta3DphNdDfgBRNLXBoGgcs8CdE1RnosWVAFleXH91ZC_g/s1600/spongebob.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqQYAXWEIrYCyY_V-nxV2Hph_-AixyfNr1u-qqpfbyDrRnWD0hnJw_iQOPwDhgDvXozF9QmrKwlDhBPZXADCWBD_5Mta3DphNdDfgBRNLXBoGgcs8CdE1RnosWVAFleXH91ZC_g/s1600/spongebob.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">President Sponge Bob</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91crvaFE8U2cAqqYDtSelSaOzxDK8rtgk9JeZi1VDHMunOO-lEgeRj5HaoQHgGlcIs3xKUFMABCsthrg-szxPIpYNjIWORBfwNlaPgBbI8wP9NdmoIMzZzPSNkYsyMZENxBLgsw/s1600/chaplinnazi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91crvaFE8U2cAqqYDtSelSaOzxDK8rtgk9JeZi1VDHMunOO-lEgeRj5HaoQHgGlcIs3xKUFMABCsthrg-szxPIpYNjIWORBfwNlaPgBbI8wP9NdmoIMzZzPSNkYsyMZENxBLgsw/s320/chaplinnazi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">French Nazi</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Around this time,
American found its balls after Catholic fundamentalists blew up half its really
large buildings. President Jon 'the Duke' Wainwright dispatched the Born Again
Christian Soldiers to root out the Catholic fundamentalists from their
monestaries in the mountains of Sicily. Then he noticed that the evil Nazis
continued their quest to build weapons that would annihilate all life as
we know it. This was not nice. And so the USA supported the separatist
Vichy-soiss people in the south of France, and built up a force of three
million troops in the principality of Monaco for an invasion. The world of
course was dismayed. Why in heaven would you want to go to war with a regime
that is despised by its people, threatens its neighbors, and builds weapons of
mass destruction to sell on E-bay? It would be interpreted by the Catholics as
an assault on their religion, and thus cause Catholic terrorism everywhere. The
world knew as well that this wasn't a war to liberate France, but an effort to
seize their cheese! Besides, these people were quite incapable of democracy.
They were after all, French! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;">President Duke</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;">And so,
America, in a very diplomatic way, said F*** you to the world, invaded anyways,
and in five minutes the French were free. The French people greeted the
Americans with wild approval and applause. Sadly, after three days, the
Americans began to be overcharged for their rooms and meals, and overall were
treated very rudely. The Americans then left en masse, vowing to never vacation
there again.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And
then the world said with a shrug. "We told you so! After all, they're
French!</span><span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u1:p></u1:p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-91491786628727545462011-07-01T07:34:00.000-07:002012-03-17T19:21:54.092-07:00Feedback and Explanation 1.0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Blocking:</span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> The concept derived from Pavlovian conditioning that associations or learning attributed to a stimulus will not occur if those associations are redundant or superfluous. For example, a lab animal may learn that a red light signals food. If a green light follows and just as reliably predicts food, the animal will not learn to associate green with the food, since prior learning 'blocks' the association. Blocking should not be confused with blockheadedness, which is characterized by an inability to learn new and better explanations to an event once the first explanation is fixed in your mind.</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">Explanation is critical, for if you only go by the correlations of nature, your predictions can go seriously awry. Oftentimes those correlations work consistently, and for our practical affairs universally (though not perhaps it may be added for the universe). Throw a ball into the air, and Newtonian mechanics will predict where it will land. Of course, Newton’s laws break down when you are considering the very tiny (Quantum physics) or the very large (General Relativity), but the Newtonian inductive (i.e. consistent un-falsifiable correlations prove the rule, as compared to the deductive approach that uses the rule to predict and falsify correlations) approach is a reliable solution to our practical problems, even though it is irrelevant to our cosmic ones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">When we get down to human nature however, explanation seems to be on the wane. For our practical affairs, it is now the correlations that count. They are easy and cheap to derive, and with the advent of data mining, we can find correlations upon correlations that would make even Newton blush. Now even without Newtonian equations, behavior can be predicted with pinpoint accuracy through the correlations found through the brute force of our computing power. With predictions like this, who needs explanations! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And so we don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This mindset is characterized by net denizens and wizards (Isaac Newton, who considered himself an alchemist first, was also a wizard), who have every confidence in their predictions, and have the gathered eyeballs and mega bank accounts to prove it. To illustrate this mindset in action, consider this recent article in by Thomas Goetz in Wired Magazine on ‘Feedback Loops’. Getting feedback not only informs, but it motivates, and getting prompt and regular feedback can get people focused, motivated, and aroused to do what they need to do. This is a simple and reliable premise vouched from not only all human experience but all recent iterations <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i> human experience. The internet in particular provides us with not only information, but also feedback as to the state of our behavior. Harness that power, and you can harness human motivation, presumably of course for the good. All well and good, except that there are negative correlations within the positive correlations that a data miner may overlook but a good theory or explanation <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">predicts</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Life is full of traffic signals<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Consider that blinking road sign up ahead that gives you your speed. The information is redundant, as you know your speed from a quick glance at your speedometer. Nonetheless, as the data show, this feedback motivates you to slow down, and even after the sign passes keep slowing down. However, as Goetz claims, this is due to the fact that ‘people are reminded of the downside of speeding, including traffic tickets and the risk of accident’ (as if the speedometer doesn’t!). So whether information feedback is redundant or non-redundant, feedback works. The implicit correlation and thus prediction nested in Goetz’s article is that non-redundant and redundant feedback have a sort of equivalency. The fact is though, they don’t. Humans and indeed almost all sentient creatures do not tolerate information redundancy, indeed they don’t have the time or computational space for it. In fact, redundant information is automatically blocked out through a well known process aptly named ‘blocking’. As an illustration, consider another road sign example. Suppose you see a traffic light turn red, and then ten seconds later a second brown light also turns on. Both red and brown light correlate with ‘stopping’, but only the significance of the red light will be remembered. The information from the other light is redundant, and is therefore blocked. So when the light turns brown, you will not stop because your brain blocked you from considering it. This blocking phenomenon holds for all creatures and all events, and forces another explanation for Goetz’s data, namely the fact that people may be slowing down because they perceive that the blinking road sign does not just give information you already know, but information you don’t, namely the greater likelihood that there is a cop around the corner. I may be wrong here, but that is a good thing, because as with all predictions coming from good explanations, this premise is imminently testable. For example, put that feedback on your speed on every billboard you pass, and see what happens!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But there is another prediction that comes from explanation, namely that novel or unpredictable events provide an incentive salience or importance to moment to moment behavior that depends upon how information is arranged, or to point, its feedback function. The neural basis and explanation of feedback is that we are responsive not only to the ends of our behavior but to the novel twists and turns that get us there. In other words, performance feedback works because it activates mid-brain dopamine systems that are sensitive to the novelty that is implicit in non-redundant feedback. But dopamine is not activated by redundant information, only novel info will do. Hence the motivating power of redundant information if refuted yet again, but this time from predictions derived from how explanations of how the brain actually works. In other words, it ain’t loopy feedback loops’, but the novelty that counts, or in the large the explanation that counts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-5748032833114299022011-06-29T18:44:00.000-07:002011-06-29T18:44:58.226-07:00Man's Social Evolutionary Tree<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: 'Century Schoolbook'; font-size: x-large;"></span><br />
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</div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the beginning, man was brutish, nasty, quite stupid, and a poor conversationalist. Cro-magnum man, as we was known, soon found out that such appearance and demeanor did not bide well with the ladies. So, before he could evolve such things as manners and brains, he relied on the next best thing, and made it with the ladies by, well, making off with the ladies. This rather rude sort of behavior soon invoked much peer pressure, which soon turned into evolutionary pressure. Man thus evolved a larger brain that allowed him the means to entice (and often con) the ladies with pretty phrases and even prettier promises. As man discovered the seductive powers of language, he became cultured. Another offshoot developed which celebrates the more macho qualities of the homo sapiens. This sub-species, several of which have been excavated in Hawaii, have been dubbed cro-magnum P.I.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although most biologists trace man’s lineage to ape-like primates, a less supported school of thought has seriously contested this notion, and presumes that man did not evolve from primates at all, but from a line of very ancient major appliances. This line of reasoning derives from the work of Ingemar Crawdadski, who in his excavation of the Jellystone rift in Wyoming discovered the partial remains of ancient appliances near fossilized campsites, barbecue pits, and volleyball poles. Since no human bones were found amid the remains. Crawdadski was forced to conclude that our common ancestors included Proctor-Silex toaster ovens and port-o-lets. Crawdadski was latter committed in 1987.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As man evolved, he reveled in his newfound wisdom, and lest the female of the species get a hold of that wisdom, and spoil all his newfound fun, he consigned her to a life of knitting, bread kneading, and baby making. This was the age of classical Greece, where in the words of the great philosopher Plato, "a woman is just a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke". So by being kept thoroughly ignorant, women learned their place. Unfortunately, although woman was now docile and submissive, she was also stupid, and nothing puts a greater damper on a night out on the town than a stupid date. The classical man of course had a cure for this, and developed several genetic offshoots that could adapt better to this barren social scene. These sub-species were called homo-intoxicus and hom-sexualis.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Homo-intoxicus and homo-sexualis have preserved the Greek way to this day, and continue to survive in various socio-economic niches. Homo-intoxicus can be found gathered in various ‘fraternity’ houses that border college campus’s, while the homo-sexualis’ favorite environment is select wateringholes in major cities. Both species congregate among themselves for mutual support and comfort, but for very different reasons that the reader may easily infer.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Classical man soon tired of his intellectual pretense and reverted back to the brutish good old days, when a man was a man and a woman wondered why. Woman took a dim view of these rude carryings on, since after all, these were the dark ages. As the fashions of civilizations changed, man rediscovered religion, and discovered social diseases. These discoveries spurred great feelings of guilt when he was among the ladies, so he remedied his bad feelings by simply removing the ladies. Out of sight out of mind was the motto, and Puritan man, as he was known then, could get about his business with the sure knowledge that the evil temptations stimulated by the female form could hardly arise if she were shrouded, cloistered, and otherwise put in domestic storage.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Over the centuries, Puritan man mellowed considerably, and the final variation of this sub-species endures almost to this day. This subspecies was the evolutionary by product of a frightful era when men want about in armored contraptions that seemed like motorized dinosaurs, and crashed into and pulverized each other for God and country. This was of course the ‘modern’ era, when man covered himself with mud, rubble, and glory. All that glory somehow made is seem worthwhile, and whether a man was a conquering hero, or if he was a German or Japanese, a conquered hero, you could be sure that the ladies in their general relief certainly weren’t going to give him a hassle when he came marching home. The post-war man, which we shall call G.I. Joe, took his wartime lessons to heart, and became a captain of industry who lorded over this family like a benevolent despot, and lived in a home which also doubled as his castle.</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="JUSTIFY"></div><div align="JUSTIFY"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All was well with the world until G.I. Joe, benevolent and ingenious fellow that he was invented such wonderful little devices such as toaster ovens, washing machines, and frozen food. Women suddenly had a lot of free time, and through a seemingly innocent pursuit of education, they became increasingly restless, and began to present a lengthening series of demands to their erstwhile lord and master. Soon, peasant revolts spread throughout the land, and a high divorce rate caused many a castle to crumble to the ground. G.I. Joe refused to change his haughty and dominating posture, and surrender his throne to those female upstarts. Although he had hardly changed, he became known now as the Male Chavinist Pig, and soon many women avoided his company for less porcine and more sensitive mates. Now women, by virtue of their growing power and influence, took charge of the evolutionary tree, and selected men who were sensitive, considerate, had tiny little testicles, and who looked like either Alan Alda or Phil Donahue. However, the most intelligent women were too busy creating their own little castles to find time to mate, and pretty soon the world was filled with the offspring of sensitive men and stupid women. By the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, mankind has completely dies out, leaving behind a rich legacy of culture, and of course, major appliances. And so, the wheel of evolution came totally around, and the process began anew.</span></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-46529074970352653462011-06-11T11:23:00.000-07:002012-03-17T19:23:31.538-07:00Information Overload: The Anatomy of a Delusion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">Sometimes the proper use of a product is ignored, owing not to a lack of awareness of its effectiveness, but to a lack of an explanation of how it works. For example, in 1839, draping your bed with finely woven gauze curtains was known to ward off malaria. Malaria, which means bad air, was generally considered to live up to its name, and be the literal result of well, bad air. Thus, hanging curtains around your bed presumably filtered the air, and thus helped prevent malaria. Nonetheless, going beyond mere curtain hanging to properly covering your bed with curtains didn’t catch on until a proper explanation of malaria was at hand that suggested as a matter of course the preventative measure of mosquito nets. But this didn’t stop another invention that stopped malaria just as well by treating it was thought, all that bad air. The invention was the inspiration of early 19<sup>th</sup> century Florida physician John Gorrie, who in an experiment sealed off a room and conditioned the air with a special device of his own invention. Of course, conditioning the air wasn’t the cause of malaria, but it had the incidental benefit of cooling it, and air conditioning lived on because it made you comfortable, and not because the system incidentally didn’t allow mosquitoes in. The explanation of mosquitoes as the carrier of malarial parasites resulted in the better use of available procedures that stopped mosquitoes, namely mosquito netting, and it provided the source of new procedures that stopped malaria (e.g. fumigation, swamp draining) as well as explaining why other procedures worked (e.g. air conditioning systems) and why other procedures of the day (e.g. <span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;">handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar; garlic worn in shoes</span></span>) that seemed to work, didn’t.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">John Gorrie’s ‘Bad-Air’ Conditioner<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now consider a modern malady that doesn’t kill you, but manages quite well to kill your time. This is the modern bane of ‘information overload’. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Information overload refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information”</i> (Wikipedia). A logical problem with this definition is that we have always been in the presence of too much information, as a simple walk through any library can demonstrate. Before the internet, navigating this wealth of information was rudimentary and difficult. You used a card file to determine what you needed and walked around different book stacks to find it. Invariably what you found was often not exactly what you needed, but it had to do because the transaction cost for information, namely rifling through card files and roaming book stacks simply was too high. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the internet age, our filters are immeasurably better, and we can get information tailored to fit our request, or employ intelligent agents that use a mere history of our internet behavior to find the information we need. Moreover, we can get this information for a negligible transaction cost, or for free. The problem is as any web search demonstrates is that we are handed with many <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">variations </i>of the same information, or information that is nearly redundant. In other words, different variations of the same information in different sites essentially restate the same information. For example, perform an internet search for ‘high gas prices’ and you will get a score of links to different articles that discuss high oil prices. If we were rational agents, we would read one or two articles and then cease, knowing that the marginal usefulness or utility or reading a third or fourth article decline markedly as they would restate the same information and generally arrive at the same conclusions. But the fact is we don’t. Indeed, we may read many more articles on the topic and even far removed from the topic, and then come back to the web after a few hours to read more. The same goes for any matter of internet searching, whether it is social media, email communications, or just looking up a sports score.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ultimately, the problem of information overload derives from the implicit assumption as to what type of information is actually overloading us, and what overloading means. To gain our attention, information must not just represent random correlations between events, but rather correlations between events that have predicted value or utility. But information also has a degree of novelty, and it is the integration of novelty and utility and not utility alone that determine the importance or ‘incentive salience’ of moment to moment behavior. Utility and novelty are integral aspects of information, and even if information has marginal utility it still becomes an object of desire if that information is novel. Thus an individual may initially access his email because its utility far outweighs the novelty of discovery, but by the fortieth time in the day that he checks his email, the novelty of the act far outweighs its utility. Moreover even if we know the behavior has low utility, we often keep on searching. In addition, we are affectively primed to search for new information by in effect (or perhaps in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">affect</i>) looking forward to accessing our email, social network, news feed, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The concept of information overload implies that we are deciding between an abundance of information that is of uniform utility, but this is not true. Because of well honed filtering systems provided by the web, we can generally find what we want quickly. The problem is that the internet generates nearly redundant information that is distinguishable not by its usefulness, but by its novelty. In other words, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">we are not overloaded with information that is primarily useful, but are overloaded with information that is primarily novel</i>. By generating infinite variations of the same information, the internet primarily generates not useful but novel information, and the overload is not in the information we want and need, but in information we want <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">but don’t need</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So the problem, as the example of Gorrie and his air-conditioner demonstrates, is that ‘information overload’ like ‘bad air’ is false cause for a very real problem, mainly the web as a source of distraction rather than value. So the real solution is not to create better filters, since they ultimately don’t matter, but rather to limit our access to the web to those times when it logically means something, not when it doesn’t. In other words, the solution is not found in better filters, but in merely draining the swamp.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-9508606902880672152011-05-30T20:24:00.000-07:002012-03-18T09:52:59.588-07:00Look into my eyes!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is the stuff of cheap Las Vegas acts, anti-smoking or weight loss scams, or bogus self-help books. It is ubiquitous and special, wholly inexplicable and near magical. It requires special words and procedures, engages a unique mental state, and allows one to transcend human nature itself. A heady resume for a process that does not exist.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Franz Mesmer invented it, though magnetism was his thing. An 18th century charlatan, Mesmer convinced a gullible public that the newly discovered magnetic force was just the thing to cure whatever ails you. Just pass yourself under a powerful magnet, and a harmonious 'fluid flow' would be achieved, hence removing the 'obstacles' that caused disease. Funny thing though, many of his patients actually found their symptoms alleviated, and more than a few thought themselves cured. Since diseases tend to run their course, treatment or no treatment, and since illnesses tend to get worse if we ruminate about them, it was no surprise that the resulting placebo effect would be interpreted as representing something much more profound. If Mesmer was known for the placebo effect, his inadvertent contribution to medical knowledge would be much more obscure. However, he included one more element that added his name to the lexicon, and a procedure and process that has retained its credibility to this day.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">To be mesmerized, or in more modern terms, 'hypnotized', was an integral part of Mesmer's therapeutic procedure. As an adjunct to the devices (which included magnets and even a glass harmonica!) that helped to achieve the right fluid flow, a trance state purged the obstacles causing the impairment of disease. The delirium and convulsions followed Mesmer's artful suggestions, resulting finally in a relieved patient and a practitioner bowing to applause. This made for great theater, as Mesmer and his patients unknowingly became the precursor to every hypnotic act, both stage and therapeutic to follow.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">...before Dr. Phil, there was Mesmer</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The postulation of a hypnotic state follows the fact that given the right setting, people can do some remarkable things that cannot be accounted for by the normal mental processes that we believe have governance over our behavior. Indeed, without the novelty and mystery it would scarely be a process at all. Give a suggestion to a family member to mow the lawn, and whether they listen to you or not, it's no great shakes. However, if out of frustration you told some loved ones to jump in the lake or play in traffic, it would be a remarkable thing if they took you up on the offer. Of course, incongruity is relative, as your kin may have their own reasons. But hypnosis is more than a mysterious process that produces mysterious behaviors. Hypnosis also includes a set of procedures that induce it, and a unique mental or 'trance' state that opens the mind to suggestions. But is a trance state necessary for suggestion to take place or be more effective?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Fortunately, this is a very testable premise. Consider a rabbit's foot. If rubbing a rabbit's foot grants you luck, extra motivation, or God's grace, than all you need do to prove the effectiveness of rabbit's feet is to compare one group of people who rub rabbit's feet to another group that does not. It the group that rubs rabbit feet is significantly more successfuly, lucky, or is able to walk on water, then there must be something to rabbit's feet. On the other hand, if there is no difference between both groups, then it is safe to say that rabbit's feet have no special power.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is precisely the approach the psychologist Theodore X. Barber employed in a review of an exhaustive series of experiments that controlled for different aspects of the hypnotic induction procedure among thousands of subjects. In his 1969 book 'Hypnosis: A Scientific Approach', Barber found that the sole element that accounted for hypnotic behavior, from seeming past life regression to increased sensory acuity to suggested anti-social behavior, was information derived from the experimental session that translated into positive expectancies for performance. Barber found that<i>all</i> of the behavioral phenomena normally associated with hypnosis could be produced among normally awake subjects, given the proper motivation of course. A 'trance state' was simply the behavioral equivalent of rubbing a rabbit's foot, a voluntary hysteria that was no more biologically rooted to extraordinary behavior than the magically productive hysterics of a crying child. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Although Barber and succeeding researchers on hypnosis demonstrated that information could elicit a staggeringly wide repertoire of behavior, these behaviors often extend beyond the more limited scope of what common sense informs us of our true capabilities. Hypnotic behaviors not only extend to commonplace voluntary behaviors, but to involuntary behaviors that otherwise seem immune to conscious control Suggested physiological effects such as hallucinations, blindness, analgesis, etc. are all beyond the pale of our voluntary control and beyond the scope of common sense. Hence one must either question common sense assumptions about behavior, or defer this complex question in favor of a special process that places an invisible mental gear in one's brain to make it all work. Given a historical ignorance of the neuro-psychological processes that map to environmental information, it has been easy to refer extraordinary behavior to special processes. Thus, hypnotic states come in from the back door as a cipher for special processes that we cannot yet grasp.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">So, the invocation of a hypnotic state, like a miracle that saves the equation, allows one to still make predictions, if you accept of course poor predictions. But because it denotes no demonstrable neurological processes, as an explanation it is impossible. Indeed, no neural state has ever been identified that can account for the extraordinary capabilities of people when confronted with information that is phrased just right. Nor is one needed, since the problem, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, or more concisely, in the very way we perceive our worlds.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">To our common sense time and motion are absolute, fixed things. However, as Einstein demonstrated, this reality is an illusion, since physical constants vary depending upon what observer you measure them against. Thus a car may be moving relative to the perspective of one observer, but is immobile relative to another driver keeping pace. But relative things encompass not just the physical, but the behavioral, as goodness and evil, the extraordinary and mundane are dependent upon your experience and knowledge. The authority of a hypnotist may have an individual run a gauntlet of fire, act foolishly or immorally, and be none the concerned because of it. Yet similar behavior can be similarly produced by authority figures given credence by government or religion, and we likewise would be unconcerned with facts of our behavior that we would otherwise have found repugnant, embarassing, or morally wrong. As authority perceived moves from the implicit and nonconscious (the hypnotist) to the explicit and conscious (a commanding officer, religious leader), behavior itself moves from the remarkable to the commonplace, and the causes of behavior from the special to the mundane. Thus, an individual is hypnotised when indifferent to fear or pain if he runs a gauntlet of fire, but is merely heroic if that same gauntlet is a beach in Normandy in 1944. Remarkable behaviors engender remarkable causes, and just as heroism is not a 'thing' that requires a special mental process or module, neither are hypnotic events that are essentially as remarkable.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Were these men hypnotized?</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3333cc; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">When one does not look too closely at behavior, mental processes can multiply like rabbits, an one is forced to confront a verbal zoo of inferred processes from hypnosis to intrinsic motivation to 'flow' that upon closer inspection actually emerge from simpler, more rudimentary events that engage brain and body. The popular acceptance of such simple (and often simpleminded) reasons for behavior don't require much thought, but if we do perchance think about them, our first instinct is to keep hypnotists and psychologists employed, who obligingly sustain our trance of ignorance that ironically needs no special name. Or perhaps, we can use the congealed pudding like stuff between our ears, and think. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-88714398740184077742011-05-30T20:12:00.000-07:002012-03-17T19:20:59.295-07:00Idiot Savant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Idiot Savant: An individual who exclusively focuses on the mastery of one aspect of performance (doing math, playing the piano) to the exclusion of all other skills, both technical and interpersonal. Known in less severe cases as nerd savants, idiot savants are to be distinguished from those folks who focus on all aspects of performance and are masters of none, but think they are savants in one way or another. They are known as 'that bunch of idiots' or more formally as religious fundamentalists or Republicans. (from Dr. Mezmer's Dictionary of Bad Psychology)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">As an individual who has a decidedly more than passing interest in psychology, my penchant for thinking about it all the time does call into question my ability to act and think about other important things, such as taking out the garbage. So regardless of whether my musings on the topic merit a Nobel or booby prize, my wife will think that as a man about the house, I am a total idiot. Which brings me to man's special genius and perhaps handicap, namely his ability to focus on one thing to the exclusion of almost everything else, and to do so forever. Isaac Newton was so accursed, and attributed his development of the calculus and the laws of gravity to simply thinking about it, constantly. Of course, he also thought constantly about the alchemical disciplines that aimed to discover how transmute lead into gold, and it is here that posterity has judged him not as a savant, but as a total idiot.</span><span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">When we constantly think about any topic, we will master that topic, and amaze our friends with our intellectual acumen, if of course they care to listen. Mozart, Newton, and Einstein did this to popular and intellectual acclaim, but unfortunately male obsessions are a bit more mundane. So what do us guys have in mind for the future monomaniacal edification of the world? Usually it has something to do with recounting baseball statistics, reaching the fiftieth level in Dungeons and Dragons, or recalling all the episodes of Star Trek. Of course, we keep this special genius secret, partly because of modesty, but mainly because no one cares. Which brings us of course to real idiot savants, which is an unfortunate and pejorative name to give to those individuals who through a quirk of nature are neurologically attuned to focus on inconsequential acts that in their perfect execution become quite extraordinary. Whether it be the ability to perform unerring mental calculation, play the piano by ear and with note worthy perfection, or just remember what one had for breakfast for all the days they have lived, idiot savants are too relentless in their quest for a single minded perfection. In fact, by being single minded, they have no mind for anything else, hence the unfortunate term idiot.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The curse of genius and madness is that both are single minded things. Whether it is displayed in obsessive compulsiveness, addiction, or autism, to call it good or bad, creative or merely stupid depends ultimately upon the acclaim of others. It does make sanity a relative thing, and renders our judgment on the poor souls who think a bit too straight to remember their manners or when to take out the garbage to be, well, the mere opinion of an idiot.</span><span style="color: #006633; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-81178514362544048342011-05-30T20:00:00.000-07:002011-05-30T20:00:29.452-07:00Branding in Psychology<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Some years back, a bunch of guys got together one evening and stomped out a pattern in a wheat field using nothing more than some string (for measuring) and a few pieces of board (to press down all that wheat). From the air, the design looked otherworldly, and it thus became notorious and interesting because of all those otherworldly explanations (space aliens, psychic forces) that could account for it. No one paid much attention to the fact that a bunch of guys could do this with only a few impromptu hand tools. Rather, the space aliens got all the press, and continued to get the press even when the guys confessed to their prank. It goes to show that common sense is <i>not</i> where the hype and money is, since after all sensible thinking is free and easy to all. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The point is that although people could easily have created crop circles, a bunch of space aliens could <i>also</i> have created crop circles. So unless those circles left a mark (e.g. a cotton tag saying 'Kilroy was here') that couldn't have been the work of Mork from the Planet Ork, the crop circle argument would revolve endlessly on the unlikely (to say the least) possibilities that it wasn't due to a group of guys out on a lark.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
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</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">The reason of course is simple. Occam's razor, which accepts the simplest (albeit not simpleminded) solution as invariably the right one, doesn't hold if you have razor blades to sell. Thus, although a human cause is the most likely cause by far, common sense and common causes are not quite marketable things. If you are an academic type trying to make a name for yourself, space aliens are a better route to attention, funding, publication, and most importantly, tenure!</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">When we turn from bad science to bad social science, we find as well that bad psychology more often than not does not take the obvious explanation but rather the complicated one. Moreover, even if you can vouch for the obvious facts of behavior through simple prose or replicate them with simple procedures, you're still going to find some nay sayer who adduces it all to obscure psychic, neural, or other mentalistic forces, and will ignore your objections to boot. But even if the facts were plain and evident to all, it can still be bramded with a special name, and made to seem important and new.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In advertising terms, marketers have a word for it: 'branding'. Branding is why you buy Bayer aspirin, Perrier spring water, and Exxon gas, even though you know the generic equivalents are just as good. Branding is also why you listen to stock market analysts and self-help gurus, even though you know that the advice you get is no better than what you can get from a dartboard or your mother, and for that matter for free.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Branding is all over the place in psychology, and the true crime is that psychologists are loath to admit it. At least you can look on the label of ingredients or read Consumer Reports to know if you're being conned. Take psychotherapy for instance. Repeated studies have again and again demonstrated that a talking cure for the common problems of living is no more effective than the advice you can get from a relative or a trusted friend. Nonetheless, the myth is still propogated that psychologists possess some arcane wisdom that others don't that can guide us through the travails of life.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Other examples include the postulation of unique mental states from intrinsic motivation to 'flow' that have a separate detached existence in the human psyche, like some sort of ghost in the machine. This 'mysterian' trend in psychology exalts in the mystery of human behavior, and finds profit in making as much of it as mysterious as possible. Since we busy folk don't have the time or inclination to investigate these mysterious forces to make sure they're true or not (Scott Adams of 'Dilbert' fame had a word for those folks of easy intellectual virtue: in<i>duh</i>viduals), we believe and buy into the glossy and ubiquitously marketed concepts that make common sense into something special, unique, and copyrighted!</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">So what's a poor consumer to do? Sadly, mysterian psychological states have no FDA label, no warranty expressed or implied, and most importantly, no real explanation that is based on real, tangible, and observable neural events that make them be. Brewing up concepts (meditative consciousness, flowing state, intrinsic award) that are untethered to real neurological states, mysterian psychologists get away with it through an intellectual sleight of hand that substitutes metaphor for reality. But there is hope. In the case of biology, in spite of branding and good word of mouth, patent medicine, faith healing, bloodletting, and assorted medical quackery lost their market when common folk grasped the simple metaphors that describe how bodies work. In contrast to biological reality, psychological reality is a brain 'in action' that up to now has resisted the easy metaphors that have rendered complex concepts such as disease and infection so easy to grasp. With the rapid advance of neuroscience, new metaphors are arising that describe how brains work, and thus the same revolution will happen, and many psychological concepts in vogue today will be tossed out into the intellectual junk heap. But even then of course, for crop circles, psychotherapy, or even disease, knowing the true explanation will never extinguish the romance of space aliens and alien psychological forces, and the public need for those charlatans who will tell us about them, for a fee. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-81596016736255650322011-05-26T09:09:00.000-07:002012-03-17T19:27:11.784-07:00Procrastination and the spell of danger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;">Procrastination:</span></i></b><i><span style="color: black; line-height: 115%;"> the abiding problem of getting things done in time or at all, which will soon be cured by our leading psychologists as soon as they get around to it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">When we go to the movies, it’s often in the nick of time before the feature starts. And when the feature does start, we take pleasure and excitement in watching folks do things once again in the nick of time. Consider the proverbial time bomb. It is a metaphor for plot lines like getting the girl, solving the crime, averting the fire, saving the planet, and of course defusing the bomb when there is literally no time to spare. Miss the deadline and there will be a proverbial or actual explosion that will render the hero and all the good things he stands for into a pile of dust. That’s what makes drama so dramatic, the fact that the outcome is always uncertain until a resolution comes in the nick of time. Identifying with our hero in the cinema means putting ourselves in his place, and this cinematic empathy can drive us to tears, horror, disgust, or delight, but underscoring it all is a need for our undivided attention. The easiest way to do that is to literally wait until the last minute, or preferably, the last second. But that of course is courting danger, and danger is something that we presumably are instinctively geared to avoid or flee through the intervention of a ‘hard wired’ stress response, with the result that danger would be something we would continually want to avoid. But we don’t, and that’s the rub. The fact that we wait until the last minute to get things done means that we are actively putting ourselves into stressful or near stressful situations that we by all accounts should wish to avoid, but how can this be? Like a moth to the flame we are at once attracted and repelled by danger, but the problem and irony is that we couldn’t be motivated to do things otherwise. Danger increases risk, and risk embodies the prospect of uncertainty, and it is precisely this fact that makes us attentively aroused and more attuned to the task at hand. But with it, we are also incented to stay the course of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being</i> uncertain. That is the property of the neuro-modulator dopamine, which primes us to be alert and imparts incentive value to moment to moment behavior. But because dopamine only increases the value of momentary behavior, it can act at cross purposes to our long term interests. Hence we often procrastinate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to be</i> attentive, a state of mind that is dependent upon the uncertainty of the moment but ignorant of the long term prospects of behavior irrespective of their danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">Motivation is da bomb!</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">But what is procrastination? Simple definitions of procrastination mean to postpone activities until another time. Of course, that by definition covers everything you postpone, whether it’s logical or not. So if to order our daily schedule means to do one thing in deference or postponement of another, that means that our whole life is spend procrastinating, which is absurd. A better definition is provided by the Oxford Dictionary, which holds that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Procrastination is a postponement, often with the sense of deferring though indecision, when early action would have been preferable," or as "deferring action, especially without good reason." </i><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindH.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[i]</span></span></span></a> The concept that procrastination is an inherently unreasonable thing has been echoed by many pundits who concur that procrastination is the irrational delay of behavior. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 115%;">At root however this definition is nonsense, for even irrational behavior must have a reason to be. It’s only when behavior doesn’t fit our prized model that we curse the agent rather than the explanation, but the faulty explanation always loses. Consider the behavior of the solar system. The fact that it didn’t conform to the model that put the earth in the center of the universe didn’t make the planetary motions irrational, and even faulting God for bad design principles couldn’t escape from the fact that the world worked in mysterious but not irrational ways. As creatures who embody the natural world, the conclusion is the same. Humans act in mysterious but not quite irrational ways, and behavior must serve reasons both obvious and subtle, as there is nothing nutty under the sun. The point therefore is not to decry the unreasonableness of procrastination, but investigating why for us common folks procrastination is often not an unreasonable but a necessary and rational thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Consider the fact that we don’t work when we are sleepy, hungry, or are under the sun, and generally wait until a time when we are rested, sated, or in the cool of the evening. We do this because at a later time we can work faster, more comfortably, and with more alertness and attention to our job. In these cases, ‘procrastination’ is rather a justifiable delay. Procrastination can also be a reasonable thing if we consciously or non-consciously postpone an action in order to inject an element of risk into behavior. Since risk increases dopamine release that corresponds with positive affect and attentive alertness, procrastination can actually increase the effectiveness of behavior. In other words, procrastination is a reasonable thing if it represents the non conscious manipulation of affect to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">increase </i>effectiveness, whereas procrastination due to distraction or fear (e.g. postponing a trip to the dentist) simply reduces effectiveness. Doing things effectively means doing things <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">affectively</i>, and that often means acting just in time. Ultimately, the non-reasonableness of behavior is an aspect of everything we do because motivation requires activation, and this means affect. In other words, to be effective we must be affective, and affect never falls within ‘good reason’ unless there is good reason to manipulate affect. Ultimately, procrastination implies irrationality, but irrationality occurs when we ignore reasonable causes, and when affect is left out of the picture of human behavior we are left confused and needful of a title to describe how timeliness of behavior cannot be predicted by the reasonableness of behavior.</span> Thus procrastination is not an artifact of behavior, but of our ignorance of how motivation works. </span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-55503820301810118272011-04-11T05:58:00.001-07:002012-03-17T19:25:59.013-07:00The Email of Damocles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="color: black;"><span class="apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14px;"> As Damocles sat feasting in the palace, he happened to glance upward and was horrified to see a sharp sword hanging above him by a single thread. "Are you surprised?" said Dionysius. "I came to power by violence, and I have many enemies. Every day that I rule this city, my life is in as much danger as yours is at this moment."</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14px;"> –Cicero, 60bc</span></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consider an individual at a computer keyboard. Typing a document at length will result in the sustained use of the musculature from one’s hand to one’s back, and a feeling of fatigue and pain will be caused by the overuse or stress caused by using the musculature. The cure of course is to taking intermittent breaks from typing. In this case, demand did not cause one’s muscles to give out, but rather the demand to perform <i>in a certain way</i>. Thus the ‘repetitive stresses’ that cause muscular fatigue and pain are minimized by regulating <i>how</i> we perform a task, and not by controlling what that task is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Now consider an individual who is rapidly switching between two or more incompatible tasks. This multi-tasking again correlates with muscular tension, fatigue, and pain</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[i]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">. The obvious solution is to refrain from excessive task switching and to perform one task at a time, undistracted by competing choices. An implicit assumption underscoring this opinion is that the stress induced by multi-tasking represents a reaction akin to fear that engages an adrenaline fueled reaction for fight or flight. The second assumption is that task switching <i>itself</i> causes stress. That is, because stress occurs while you are task switching, therefore it occurs because <i>of</i> task switching.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Unfortunately the experimental data belie both of these conclusions. For demands that result in task switching, increased muscular tension is the correlating response, and if sustained results in muscular exhaustion and pain. Representing the debilitating effects of sustained (even slight) tension, this ‘Cinderella effect’ </span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[ii]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> </span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[iii]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> </span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[iv]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> is precisely the same effect that afflicts our computer typist, and moves the cause of stress to specific and easy to observe neuro-muscular events. Secondly, neuro-muscular activation does <i>not</i> follow task switching, but the <i>anticipation </i>of task switching. Again the supporting data are unequivocal. For the literature of ‘choice-choice’ behavior from the animal experiments performed by Neal Miller</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[v]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> in the 1950’s to the experiments on choice behavior on humans conducted in the 90’s by Antonio Damasio</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Art/Desktop/One%20track%20mind/onetrackmindE.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">[vi]</span></span></span></span></a><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">, tension and anxiety occur as a precursor to choice, and act to influence choice itself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The implications of this are striking. Primarily, the reduction of multi-tasking would become a half solution for on the job stress. Instead of reducing multi-tasking, one must eliminate the <i>anticipation</i> of multi-tasking even <i>if</i> multitasking never occurs. This may be illustrated by adapting an age old story. Say for example your Uncle Damocles arrives for evening dinner. A talkative and irritating sort, you decide to hang a sword above his head held in place by a hair. As the dinner progresses, Damocles will have to consider from moment to moment the decision to stay at the dinner table and risk a bout of sword swallowing, or leave the table and miss swallowing dessert. Now put Damocles in a business office, and give him access to an always available internet, and the anticipated and continuous dilemmas of checking email versus working will likely occur, and result in tension and stress. Whether he switches often or infrequently between tasks is immaterial, as it is only his anticipation of making moment to moment choice that matters. Add to this the anticipated instant messages from the boss, and of co-workers dropping by your office to chat about irrelevant topics, and you can see how you become not a model of efficiency, but a ‘harried housewife’ who is on edge because she doesn’t know where the next distraction is going to come from. Ultimately, we cannot escape the pressures of life, where we have to anticipate performing multiple tasks despite our best intentions, but we can control anticipating the inadvertent and unnecessary interruptions that in this ever connected world stress us out. Put in other words, in the world of the internet, by turning your connections off, you can adjust your seat and remove the sword dangling above your head.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-19032824714916334162011-04-08T05:52:00.000-07:002012-03-18T08:53:33.720-07:00Creativity Pt 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Creativity is an adverb, not a noun. It is an aspect of a thing rather than a thing itself. In this regard, creativity is a relative and not absolute concept, and is no more real than virtue, goodness, or beauty. Nonetheless, creativity is a particularly attractive concept for pop and humanistic psychologists because like free will, consciousness, death and George Bush’s brain, it is full of import but near empty in detail, and hence does not demand detail. Because creativity can’t be defined, psychologists feel free to define it in any which way they can. This of course leads to innumerable articles and fat books, but it also leads to an immediate conundrum. How can you teach someone to be creative and the motive to be creative when the very definition of creativity denies that there are clear rules involved? Better to deny creativity itself than to deny that remarkable behavior and the motivation that underlies it follows rules that can in large measure be discerned. This is a harsh but nonetheless necessary statement, since all arguments on creativity ultimately miss the point that that the effort to define an indefinable term is ultimately a Zen exercise, not a scientific one.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now, how mankind invented the wheel or for that matter, eighteen-wheelers implicates thinking, or the processes and events that constitute and instigate those processes. However, the thinking process becomes a creative process depending upon the perceptual prism that you use. The first perceptual lens you employ is whether the product of a thinking process has any importance. This of course is a particularly relative thing, since the music of Britney Spears may be regarded as an artistic testament to the ages for a thirteen year old girl, but may be regarded as a mere noise to a Hottentot, or not even that. Compounding this fact is that creativity is dependent upon our estimate of the rules and motivation (or lack thereof) one relies upon in the act of creation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consider the relative importance of, well, relativity. Einstein, who himself noted that estimates of his own genius were relative to how ignorant an observer was of the references he used, has been long recognized as the supreme exemplar of the creative mind. If relativity was a paint by numbers creation, a mere set of theoretical inferences easily and logically derivable from other people’s work, then Einstein would be regarded as no more visionary than an accountant who creatively balances the books. If Einstein hid his references well enough, or surprised his peers with the novelty of his logic, then he would be a creative artist indeed. Couple that fact with the knowledge that the patent office that he worked for did not commission him to think up such great thoughts, leaving him to his own scant resources, then Einstein approaches the acme of all creative genius, the ‘starving artist’.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Einstein that comes down to us created hypotheses of surpassing value, and all with little regard to the inbred conventions and conventional wisdom of the time, and with no more motivation than the inner need to know. Thus Einstein vaulted from meek patent clerk to exalted genius because he not only created something new and important, but because he did it outside of the standard ‘rules’ of the game, and he did it for free.</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Figure 1. The Matrix of Creativity</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But let’s say that Einstein’s mentor Ernest Mach beat Einstein to the punch with his own version of relativity. Despite his independent confirmation of the fact, Einstein would soon be relegated to a mere cipher in the history of accomplishment, much like Newton’s own regard of Leibnitz’s independent invention of the calculus, or like the second guy who soloed in an airplane across the Atlantic. If Einstein played by the rules to get to his hypothesis, he would be a mere accountant. If he still broke the rules, then he would be an artist all right, but of no more remark than a fellow who designs tattoos. And finally, if he was self-motivated, then without his patent office job to fall back on, he would be regarded as no more than a hobo, although a hobo with an ability to do the math.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ironically, understanding and knowledge is the great killer of creativity, for when we will finally know all the rules, motivators, and facts, then all remarkable titles like virtue and creativity are dispelled by the commonplace, yet we will continue to take our pleasures like contented accountants in the twilight of the race.</span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8833074.post-17540161313837091812011-04-08T05:49:00.000-07:002012-03-18T08:53:57.102-07:00Creativity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: maroon; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Italy for thirty years under the Borgias had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but produced Michelangelo, DaVinci, and the Renaissance. And Switzerland had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: maroon; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Orson Welles from the 1949 motion picture "The Third Man"</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Life was brutal, short, and demanding in every way; and all you could look forward to were problems. Ironically, problems were the good part. And life didn’t start out easy either. Born with a flaw, and you were put on a ledge to die of exposure. Born female or on the wrong side of the tracks, and you became child bearing chattel, or worse, just chattel. For the lucky few, who amounted to just 40,000 or so, life was the ultimate do it yourself course. There were no enclyopedias, few books, and nature was explained through tall tales, or failing in that, merely improvised. Computers, phones, TV’s, or even printing presses were not even dreams. Libraries had at most just a few dozen manuscripts, and when you said scroll down, it was that scroll, down there. Your peers were ornery, greedy, and selfish, and coveted their neighbors goods, wives, and just about anything that wasn’t tied down.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So what could possibly be the saving grace of this mean and miserable world? It was that people wanted things from you, and survival demanded even more. With no police, you learned how to defend yourself. With no lawyers, you had to learn to speak for yourself. With no entertainment, you had to create your own. With no philosophy, you had to think for yourself. With no science, you had to make up your own hypotheses. With no professional sports, your strength and dexterity would be tested. You had to use your wits, survive by them, or die if they failed you.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Life was nothing but problems, but problems by their very nature imply solutions. If you can think or imagine a way out, you will keep alert, aroused, and ready to create ever new and different solutions. In difficult times, creativity after all finds a way. And what serves for the memory of posterity? It is hardly the problems. Rather, we salute the solutions, which are fixed in cultural memory as monuments of art, music, literature, philosophy, or stone. But what is to be said of the origins of the problems themselves? Could it be inspiration, character, a heavenly muse, or maybe just the water?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps that is the half-legacy of Ancient Greece. The products of inspiration come to us as literary and artistic fossils, but the environment that nurtured them is burned away, and exists only in pottery shards and tumbled marble columns. And like fossils, we know them mainly from museum trips and coffee table books. The Greek world is dead, skeletal, fit for the musing of scholars, but meaning nothing to a workaday world that could hardly be distracted.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Greek science is outdated, its dramas unplayed, its art pinned to walls and shelves like dead butterflies, and its philosophy mainly the stuff of college courses. But why in heavens do we love and admire it, and why would many of us give our eye teeth to sit around a rock to hear Socrates argue, Plato expound, Demosthenes orate, or witness a drama by Euripedes? It certainly isn’t the setting, for there are lots of places to be found without phones or working toilets without having to jump into a time machine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It is because you want to be mixed with the human bustle, a time of a flux of ideas, of demand, of competition. And the Greeks were nothing if not competitive. In fact they put an element of competition into everything they did. Like a gambler who would take bets on whether the sun would rise again in the morning, the Greeks made learning, entertainment, and art a competitive affair, and reveled in the intellectual competition involving ideas, art, politics, and science.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now the Greek ‘experience’ was a brief moment in history, isolated in a small rocky peninsula the size of the state of Maine, and driven by a privileged social class who would scarcely populate a medium sized American city. But the marvel is not what they created, but the broad possibilities of creation even when creation is compelled for and by a few. Whether the Greek drive to create was due to an accident of geography, social tradition, economic or military competition, it speaks volumes for the capabilities of the human mind when the mind is set upon to solve problems.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The great artistic accomplishments of Greek civilization, as well as the Renaissance, and Elizabethan civilizations that followed were created by relatively small communities made isolate by social stratification, geography, or national persona. That these communities demanded much, and ever sharpened their expectations, underlined a social ethos that valued the <i>creation</i> as well as resolution of problems. But these cultures are but exceptional players in the cultural tapestry of history. Society as a whole generally abhors any problems outside of the ones that impede survival. Generally, it’s best to keep problems to a minimum, an unspoken wisdom that is accepted to this day.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But what do we mean by a ‘trouble free’ society? To find its exemplar, let’s move forward hundreds of years into the future. In these more modern times, one superpower spread across the continent. Governed by a cantankerous and corruptible senate, ruled by sound laws, and unified by a common language and good roads that allowed one to travel from sea to sea without a stoplight. It had its own civil war before it was united under an august hand to enter a golden age of prosperity, and was pestered and inspired by a Christianity that was very fundamental. Along the way, it secured its freedom after fighting a series of wars with the Germans, and kept armies in central Europe to keep the peace. As time went on it needed more immigrants to keep industry and agriculture humming, and secure in the knowledge of their own greatness, its people settled back to enjoy themselves.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Its entertainment was simple, violent, and on the whole moronic. The theatres were emptied by the lure of nonstop sporting events, and vainly tried to lure the masses back by plots that included a lurid mix of sex and violence. Gambling was everywhere, pornography flourished, and it was a fashion among ‘holy’ men to predict the end of the world. No one wanted anything from you except a day’s labor. Value was denoted in what you could produce, everything else was mere diversion. Economic value was thus the measure of man. Sports and military heroes were idols of the general public, and intellectuals stayed in their circles, and barely nudged common opinion. It was a society that largely forgot its past because it had none. Its cultural accomplishments were as empty and ephemeral as yesterday’s fall TV schedule, but without memory, even transitory pleasures could seem important and eternal. So the illusion went on for hundreds of years, and when this society exhausted itself on its own banality, it was replaced by cultures that were similarly driven and dissatisfied by a quest for ‘no problems’.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This example of a problem free society was of course Rome in its ‘golden’ age. From 27 BC to 180 AD, the Roman Empire spanned a continent, and was a thousand times richer, more populous, and secure than Periclean Athens. But for all its potential, the two hundred-year golden age of Rome was a cultural desert, and all that comes down to us from an empire that lasted in told some 700 years is a tiny scattering of writers, a talent for engineering, and a penchant for big government. This of course may be an elitist condemnation. After all, perhaps bread and circuses are the way to go. Certainly the race, if the measure of its mind was gauged by the preponderance of current tastes, would gladly sacrifice a Mozart symphony for an album by Britney Spears, and a Michelangelo sculpture for the sculpted frame of a new SUV.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We are as cavalier and negligent with the totems of our culture as the Middle Age Italians who dug up and burned ancient statuary for their lime. And like rain forests, we would nonchalantly burn them to ash if they afforded us a moment’s warmth. The reason of course is that we have never learned to see anything in them, or note the problems they pose to us. But why in heaven would we do so if we already know the answers, or more importantly, if no one demands answers from us?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A popular culture that bestows the title of ‘artist’ or ‘philosopher’ to every garage trained drummer, romance novelist, abstract painter, political pundit, or pop psychologist ultimately displays not its interest, but its indifference. When the problems of existence and of beauty are reduced to platitudes, simple maxims and redundant formulae, then all we have left is bread and circuses. Whether the products of popular culture are right or wrong, beautiful or ugly is really not the point. It is rather that as they fail to challenge us, they rapidly fade to dullness. And creativity, by definition, is a very stimulating thing. But again, creativity is not quite the word for it, because creativity does not exist.</span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The World as DVR</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consider a DVR. We know its purpose, generally, but knowing all that it can do and how it works is a different matter. Let’s say that we get one of these devices as a gift. Would we be the better for it if it came with instructions, or if it did not? Of course, we would all generally answer in the affirmative. Better to know how a machine works rather than trouble ourselves with figuring it out on our own. So instructions in hand, we quickly learn how to schedule and record programs, record from our video camera, skip commercials, and use the remote control. Without the instructions, it’s an entirely different matter. We are forced to rapidly note the correlations between pressing this button and that, and the mix and match of different features and their infinite permutations. In the first case, using a DVR is an easy and explainable thing, and all of its different functions can be mapped to a list of simple instructions. In the second case, the DVR is a difficult and perhaps incomprehensible thing, and how we come about learning its uses and how to use it derives less from method than inspiration. In the first case, understanding follows from the rote memorization of rules, and in the second case, understanding can only be the product of a creative mind.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If all the products of culture from assembling bicycles to composing symphonies could be derived from lists of rules, then we would be no more justified in labeling them creative than we would the calculated sum produced by an adding machine. Whether the results of the calculation were new, beautiful, useful, or even revealed the nature of the cosmos and existence itself, they wouldn’t be creative because the process behind that calculation would be known. So creativity is at root an unintelligible and vicarious process. Ordinarily, unintelligible processes are something we shun, as common sense tells us we should. But evolution has conspired to imbue in us an abhorrence of listless and all encompassing knowledge. Better to be uncertain about things, and about the future, since uncertainty multiplies the possibilities, and it’s the possibilities that enthrall.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Creativity is the indeterminate and stimulating aspect of problem solving</i>. Creativity is indeterminate because we can’t distill it to a distinct set of rules, but must shift between various cognitive strategies for success. Creativity is also stimulating when that shifting between cognitive perspectives is demanded. Thus we can value and long for the demanding attention from our peers, and have nostalgia for the character of long dead civilizations, even if their cultural product has not lasted the test of time. Creativity is not a noun, but an adverb, not a thing, but a shading of a thing. It does not exist as a faculty of mind, but is rather an aspect of our motivation to think and behave.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We focus on creativity, but creativity is an illusion. Our real attention must be on motivation. Creative figures from Isaac Newton to Stephen King attributed their accomplishment not to rules, but to obsession. To incessantly think about physics, music, or writing requires no inner muse or child, no humanistic platitudes, no abstract economics, no lure of posterity. There’s no obscure anthropological, sociological, or psychological force, no divine spark, and no mystery. Creativity is just the product of a culture’s celebration of creation in all its forms, from knitting a quilt to composing a symphony. It is why Shakespeare wrote, and Mozart composed, and Galileo looked to the skies. When everyone wants something from you, from a short story to a home run, you’ve just got problems, and problems are the real meaning of life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Oh yes, and the cosmos? Consider it God’s gift, instructions not included, and much assembly required.</span></div>
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">more scribblings available at vbsneworleans.blogspot.com</div>A. J. Marrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15084931921743723515noreply@blogger.com0