Glimpse - For People Interested in Language and the Brain

Neuroscience: Programming the Machine

2011-12-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

While we have seen a lot of discussion about whether we can effectively model the brain as a computer, there's plenty of evidence that brains do act like "black boxes": present a particular input and you will get a related output. How the input relates to the output may vary, but the two do seem related.

In this article from The Telegraph, we learn that an external stimuli applied to the head can produce a tic in the body that the owner of the body did not will, either consciously or unconsciously. This phenomenon is interpreted as evidence that we have no free will--if someone else can push a button and cause us to jump or dance, then we cannot have control over our own bodies. Extend this to our seemingly autonomic reaction to the verbal stimulus of an insult or a tear-jerker movie, and we do seem to devolve into the feared state of automaton.

I think this view lacks a critical dimension, namely time.

As I see it, yes, an input does produce an output, and perhaps even reliably so. But not necessarily the same every time, and certainly not the same for every person. The author quotes Professor Patrick Haggard of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience:

"If you see a light go green, it may mean press the accelerator; but there are lots of situations where it doesn't mean that: if the car in front hasn't moved, for example. The same stimulus sometimes makes me press the accelerator, but sometimes the horn. We are not one output-one input beings; we have to cope with a messy world of inputs, an enormous range of outputs. I think the term 'free will' refers to the complexity of that arrangement."

This seems to me to capture the heart of the issue. We condition our responses based on context. But how do we do that?

Here's where time comes into the picture, in my view. We *learn*, by trying, failing, trying, erring, trying, succeeding. Over time, we develop the black box mechanism that determines our outputs for a given input. We get programmed.

I would contend that we can reclaim free will, in part, by coming to recognize the time dimension and choosing how we become programmed. We can adjust our understanding of a situation, thus tapping a different pathway through our brains, producing a different reaction that might have otherwise occurred.

We do this by mindfully attending to the input-output process of our daily lives, by evaluating how we feel about the relation and the outcome of that relation, and by reinforcing, replacing or redefining the significance we assign to the input to modify the resulting output. Time provides us with our own personal psychology lab, if we will choose to use it.

Science and Naivete

2011-10-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

In this blog post on the Scientific American site, writer and former chemist Cassie Rodenberg asks if we would take a risk-free version of psylocibin, "magic mushrooms", as a "mystical experience", or maybe just for the fun of it. Setting aside for the moment the different perception my generation might have on the question, I was struck by her questions about the potential ramifications:

Would we still be ourselves then? Would this be a new, improved me or an artificial version? Would my mom still be herself if she lost her narrow Southern view of religion? I’m not so sure.

My first reaction to this was "What do you mean? and How do you know?" I'm not posing a deep philosophical argument about the self and how it develops. I'm simply talking about the rigidity of abstracting these questions suggest. Do you think you have developed without outside influence up until now? Do you think your reading, interpersonal experiences, diet, medical treatments, etc, had not an "artificial" effect on your existing "self"? Do you think your mom has not changed at all from what you imagine her to be based on your child's perceptions of her?

My second reaction was "How ironic that the author responds to the potential for increased "openness" by exhibiting a certain closed-mindedness about the self and what shapes personality."

Knowledge increases power

2011-10-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

This article from Physorg reports on research about the effects of hypothetical questions. Juries often hear hypothetical questions before they are selected, and Sarah Moore, University of Alberta Business researcher, found that these questions can plant a bias. Jurors told ahead of time that they might hear such questions and not to let them influence opinions are far less likely to absorb the intended bias.

Thomas Hobbes said "scientia potentia est" = Knowledge is power. The more you know, the more likely you can develop your own opinion rather than adopting an opinion someone else would like you to have.

Who, exactly, made Sarah Grunfeld feel bad?

2011-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

You might have heard about the recent Jewish scandal that wasn't wherein a professor at York University has been criticized for how he chose to illustrate a point that there is a difference between acceptable and unacceptable opinions in public discourse:

Reaching for an example, he settled on one that seemed beyond dispute.

"All Jews should be sterilized" is an opinion that is simply not acceptable, he noted.

A student in the class, Sarah Grunfeld, took umbrage at this "outrageous" idea (only the quoted part, apparently, not the part about how this is not an acceptable view...) and slapped the professor with a complaint of anti-Semitism.

She, and the B'nai Brith, are persisting in demanding sanctions, even though they have been told that a) Prof Johnston is Jewish, and b) IT WAS AN EXAMPLE OF AN UNACCEPTABLE OPINION!

Sadly her poor attention, flawed half-baked perception and unthinking irrational reaction are all reminiscent of the very prejudices that she claims to have suffered. She contends that her reaction was triggered by generations of inaccurate and unfair insults against Jews. So she adopts the loathsome behavior of her perceived oppressors and treats her professor to an inaccurate perception and an unfair complaint.

Rather than taking responsibility for her reaction to her own erroneous perception of his statement (um, maybe texting while listening to the lecture?), Ms. Grunfeld blames the professor for her dismay. According to the National Post article:

in a statement released wednesday evening [Grunfeld said] that it was Prof. Johnston's fault if she got the wrong impression and complaining that the university has failed to discipline him.

Alas, we have all done this at one point or another--heard with half a brain and reacted as if what we *think* we heard can "cause" us to feel pain. Some people believe that if you say something they find objectionable, it's your fault if they feel angry. Others think that if a person hears something they think is objectionable and they feel anger or shame or dismay, they produced their own reaction and could have reacted differently if they chose. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said:

Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I might amend that to "without your direct complicity via misplaced attribution of where your feelings come from!"

Seems to me that rather than attending classes on social sciences, which are clearly beyond her ability to follow, Ms. Grunfeld might want to start with some classes on critical thinking and cognitive behavior, where she might learn that how she "feels" about what others say is not "their fault", but rather her responsibility and hers alone. She might also learn to pay attention in class and learn to check her perceptions before reaching out to smack somebody else for her foolish and faulty interpretations.

Accuracy? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Accuracy!

2011-08-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

You gotta love journalists who can't resist making some interesting story just a *little bit* hotter for the reading public. Today's case in point: a report at GizMag about the discovery of a (pant pant) "planet made of diamond"! Now that would be news. We might even get a boost in the space budget if we could go after a "planet made of diamond", right?

Of course, the story itself tells a different story...

"With the planet likely to be made largely of oxygen and carbon, its high density means it is almost certainly crystalline, meaning that a large part of the planet may be similar to diamond." [Emphasis mine]

Oops. That's a lot of hedging, none of which made it into the headline.

Twas ever thus.

(edited to change "can" to "can't"--one of the banes of my existence is my uncanny ability to overlook the missing "n't"!

File Under "Unintended Consequences"

2011-08-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

This Physorg science article about the loss of beneficial bacteria also illuminates what I would consider a language problem. Early in the discovery and development history of antibiotics, researchers and doctors immediately comprehended that these medicines could save millions of lives by vanquishing what til then were unstoppable infections. In the time between the discovery of bacteria and the discovery of ways to kill bacteria, scientists focused on the ways bacteria threaten life at the expense of understanding how bacteria support life. The critical services bacteria perform for us, in our guts, in our soil, in our immune systems, etc., were unknown and unacknowledged. The medical profession has begun to recognize the negative consequences of trying to eradicate pathogens, such as "super-bugs" and rapidly evolving drug-resistant forms. This article describes another, less obvious but potentially more severe consequence--the permanent loss of strains of beneficial bacteria, which could contribute to the rising incidence of diabetes, bowel disease, asthma and obesity.

This qualifies as a language problem because due in part to the way bacteria were described in the previous century, the vast majority of people today equate "bacteria" with "bad". This has given rise to a huge and growing market in products that offer to eliminate "99.9%" of bacteria on inert surfaces as well as on our skin. People appear to believe that killing bacteria is a completely positive act, with no negative consequences. Marketing ignores, or perhaps hides, the broader definition of "bacteria" as including a spectrum of biota ranging from deadly in all cases to positive and critical for life in all case. This leads directly to the overuse of antibacterial products, since most people would agree that if killing bacteria is unequivocally "good", then killing MORE bacteria must be better. Unfortunately, it looks like killing bacteria may be the short road to killing ourselves....

Prepare for the Worst....

2011-08-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

Great cartoon that kind of sums up why I practice general semantics and related thinking processes:

Try to prepare for your spontaneous reactions

I think this will become my new "elevator speech" about gs!

"Being" a voter motivates more than a solicitation "to vote"

2011-07-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

Thisreport from PhysOrg presents a twist on the GS dictum we avoid identifying someone as "being an X". The researcher in the report significantly improved voter turnout in participants asked if they would "be a voter", versus those who were simply asked if they were "going to vote". Apparently people found it more appealing to imagine themselves as "a voter", while they found the idea of having to *do* something, ie, vote, less appealing. Food for thought for those of us who might want to influence the behavior of others.

Quote and comment

2011-06-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

We typically think of information as the source of knowledge and knowledge as the source of wisdom. But inevitably, as we process one into the next, we reduce the complexity and variety of the source to distill the product. We discard information that seems irrelevant to the knowledge we desire, and dismiss knowledge that does not seem to support the wisdom we seek.

At any given moment, we necessarily ignore far more than we attend to. We overlook far more than we observe. In many cases, we do not suffer for the oversight. But Eliot understood the critical importance of asking what we might have lost in those unattended moments.

While we physically cannot attend to every single thing in our experience, it seems likely that we can benefit simply from considering, at any given moment, what we might have missed, and ask ourselves if knowing something different might change how we act or feel or what we think we have come to understand.

Imagine a World with No Time

2011-05-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

If you have no words for a concept, does it "exist"? This story from Medical Express describes a tribe in the Amazon whose language has no vocabulary for time-related concepts--no yesterday, no age, no since, no longer, etc. While they are born, age, and die as all humans do, they do not talk or think about time the way most other cultures do:

For the Amondawa, time does not exist in the same way as it does for us. We can now say without doubt that there is at least one language and culture which does not have a concept of time as something that can be measured, counted, or talked about in the abstract. This doesn't mean that the Amondawa are 'people outside time', but they live in a world of events, rather than seeing events as being embedded in time.

Researchers attribute this difference in the language in part to the associated lack of numbers beyond four or five. If you don't have numbers, it's hard to quantify anything, including time.

What would it mean to think about your life, your family, your society, your activities, without thinking about the time something takes, the time your project is due, the sequence of a set of events, the numeric significance of age? What would a day be like if you didn't think of it as a day? How would you experience the company of your friends if you didn't think about time passing?

I think that psychology and neuroscience might suggest that if your native language includes words for time, you will have a hard time answering those questions. Language influence the connectivity in our brains. We think what we say, our language frames our thoughts, and vice versa. The older and more socially embedded the concept, the more fundamental it feels to us, and thus the greater the difficulty we will face if we try to step outside it or look past it and its implications.

You may never quite find a way to imagine a world with no time. But because you have language to think with, you now can at least imagine that the world might operate like that for someone. That's a step....

Context

2011-01-18T21:56:00.000-08:00

Actions speak louder than words, they tell us, but words create the context in which action unfolds.

--Christopher Hume, thestar.com

Coming Full Circle on Whorf

2010-12-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

With this interesting study on English and Mandarin speakers, the research on the influence of language on thought has come full circle. Researchers at Stanford have found that Mandarin speakers were far more likely than English speakers to view time vertically, with earlier events above later ones. They conclude that this is due in part to differences in the words used by the two languages to refer to time and events.

You'll no doubt recall that Whorf's original research focused in part on differences between of English and Hopi subjects in terms of how they spoke about and conceived of time. For years, linguists discounted and derided his findings based on everything from prejudice about the conclusions to claims that his work was shoddy and his conclusions self-motivated.

Now we have a modern, well-designed study that arrives at the same conclusion Whorf did-- that the structure of your native language can influence the structure of your thinking and conceptualization.

Now can we start taking the implications of that conclusion seriously and consider implementing changes in our educational system to accommodate?

Who will Reframe the Reframers for Us?

2010-12-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

In this report on people in the "stigmatized" role of debt collector, researcher Madeleine McKechnie found that reframing the way they describe their work helped these workers feel more positive and therefore stay in their jobs longer. They called themselves financial counselors or information detectives or negotiators. These substitutions in wording help them change their self-image and give them a way to feel helpful rather than predatory.

The researcher notes that "Not a lot of research looks at these professions that are necessary for a functioning society."

In the comments section after the report, one wag noted:

The author is using the phrase "functioning society" as a substitute for more accurate words so she can feel positive about the validity of her conclusions and continue disseminating propaganda as is necessary to maintain her role in a "functioning society."

Researchers catching up with GS

2010-12-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

A recent study in Europe has found that language has an effect on both verbal and nonverbal number processing in first-graders. The researchers looked at number comprehension in children who spoke German, Italian or Czech, and found that differences in how the language handles placeholders had a significant effect on how well the children comprehended two-digit numbers. Their conclusion:

The data corroborate a weak Whorfian hypothesis in children, with even nonverbal Arabic number processing seeming to be influenced by linguistic properties in children.

The more linguists study language in real-life settings, the more they achieve these kinds of results. Many recent studies have found similar results, and headlines often grudgingly acknowledge the earlier discoveries. The mention of Whorf in a research, rather than amounting to an academic kiss of death, now indicates a modern, forward thinking study. How nice.

Knowing What We Know (or Not)

2010-08-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

The movie "Inception" imagines a technology that allows agents to enter the subconscious of a target and manipulate their memories and thus their beliefs. David Sirota, in this Alternet article titled "A Lesson from "Inception": How the Right-Wing and Corporate Media Brainwash Americans" contends that our 24/7 mediation by politically-oriented media outlets produces a similar frame of mind. If we only hear things that align with our prior information and beliefs, we get to a point where contradictory evidence cannot make a dent. Sirota quotes Cal State Fullerton's Nancy Snow, who wrote in 2004 that:

today's most pervasive and effective propaganda is the kind that is "least noticeable" and consequently "convinces people they are not being manipulated."

Few things show more resistance to contradiction than a "fact" that we believe we discovered on our own.

As Wendell Johnson put it, we become our own "most enchanted listener". When that happens, we have less motivation to ask "what do I mean?" and "how do I know?" which increases the likelihood that we will not recognize the possibility or validity of contradictory information.

So what did you NOT notice today?

How We Change and How We Don't

2010-06-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

Montaigne wrote a lot about recognizing the differences among people, but this quote suggests he also understood that we ourselves do not maintain a single "self" over our lifetimes.

In GS readings, you might encounter the term RIOT, standing for Relative Invariance Over Time. This concept accounts for our ability to simultaneously recognize ourselves in baby pictures and in the mirror, despite the years between the two images. GS considers our "selves" to represent a different level of abstraction than our bodies at any given moment. RIOT represents a chain of evidence, if you will, that links that child to this adult, a chain we can grasp conceptually as a single entity due to our skill at categorization.

But while that gives us the ability to carry on from day to day and still pay the bills and visit the in-laws, we do well to retain an awareness of the underlying, less continuous, less consistent, less conceptual being that changes minute by minute and hour by hour. While the *concept* of "I" recurs every day as the "same person", the *fact* of "I" changes--we age, we fall ill, we learn a new skill, we forget an old friend. We think one thing one day and a different thing another day. We find ourselves unable to decide something because we can see both sides, or all sides, and part of us wants one thing and part wants another. We differ from ourselves.

That covers the first part of Montaigne's quote.

As for the second part, we face similar but different issues. RIOT accounts for our ability to recognize others as a) humans like us; and b) strangers or acquaintances. We can easily grasp the benefits of RIOT here--we can operate in our society without continually have to retest our perceptions of those around us.

On the other hand, when we do not retest our perceptions of those around us, we fail to detect changes that might have significance for our interactions with them. We do not notice that we may not agree on how to conduct civil discourse, how to govern, how to share resources, etc. Overlooking disagreements about how to do something in a shared environment usually leads to discord, disharmony, divorce, even war. After all, while we are overlooking differences, so are the other folks, and who decides which side of the difference "is right"?

More than anything, Montaigne wanted to encourage us to recognize that no "right" exists, to recognize that we do things the way we do them because we learned to from our ancestors, who learned from their ancestors. We revere our ancestors because they produced us and told us what to hold true to, but we have no basis for saying that what they taught us has any independent validity. And the other guys have just as many ancestors with just as many beliefs, equally without independent validity, but still cherished as true. So we differ from others too.

So, without thinking about this, we war amongst ourselves and we war within ourselves.

Can understanding the mechanisms for these wars help us avoid them? Perhaps, if we incorporate that awareness into our deliberations, if we account for both the RIOT and the changes it obscures, both within our selves and between us and others. If we know we cannot require ourselves or others to remain unchanged, if we accept that what we know and what we learned may not match up with what others know and learn, if we grant ourselves and others the leeway to change and differ, we have taken steps closer to a saner, more accurate map, and that seems like a good way to find our way.

Writing about Doing

2010-03-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

GIST Publishing and Multi-Dimensional Press announce the publication of Graymanship: The Management of Organizational Imperfection, by Bob Eddy. See more at the GIST website.

Drew Carey once joked, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." Surveys show that job dissatisfaction and cynicism are at an all-time high. Why have we let our jobs become so toxic? Bob Eddy's book, Graymanship: The Management of Organizational Imperfection delivers a mind-boggling, out-of-the-box approach that shatters common sense concepts about how to manage businesses and employees. Other books, focusing on one-minute leadership and relocating cheese, may contain interesting viewpoints, but they have not succeeded in reversing, or even lessening, the negativity of our work lives. What can we do about miscommunications, incompetence, disorganization, disruption, disobedience, inequity, disloyalty, politics, unethical behavior, conflict, and cynicism? We obviously need a deeper analysis of why we suffer these ills. Graymanship suggests that we take a new and different look at the assumptions we have bought into that keep us prisoners of old paradigms and worldviews. Eddy compares the Realist's black-and-white viewpoint that most of us grew up with to a more balanced Constructivist worldview that embraces shades of gray, shifting our language away from dividing and blaming, and toward more nuanced, results-oriented evaluations. With this new mindset, Eddy proposes 66 concrete actions that managers, employees and organizations can take to restore sanity and enjoyment to our organizational membership. "Graymanship works in the world because it reflects the queasy, hard to pin down, flexible reality we live in." Bill Conner, educational administrator. "It's professional, persuasive, provocative, surprisingly concise, and very, very readable." Dave Kimball, retired CEO.

The book will be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other major book sellers.

Words don't mean....

2010-03-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

The appropriately beautiful or ugly sound of any word is an illusion wrought on us by what the word connotes.
-Max Beerbohm, writer, critic, and caricaturist (1872-1956)

I might have said, "by how we have experience the word in use." As I understand it, words don't actually "connote," any more than they "mean." Instead, we encounter words as used by people in our environment, we observe the effect of the word on those around us, construct a meaning, and and we go on to apply the word in situations we believe similar to the original experience. Thus a given word may strike one person as beautiful and another as ugly, due not to the dictionary meaning of the word, but rather to the circumstances surrounding their experiences of the word in use.

But that explanation doesn't make for a handy little aphorism.

Word Magic Alive and Well in Utah

2010-02-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

This article in the UK Guardian reports on the passage of a non-binding resolution in the Utah State Assembly with quite amazing language encouraging the US EPA to cease all efforts to rein in CO2 emissions "until a full and independent investigation of climate data and global warming science can be substantiated."

First off, one wonders where they plan to look for scientists who have not already staked out an opinion on climate change. As I understand it, the vast majority of climate researchers, indeed, of scientists in all relevant fields, supports the conclusion that human activity has profoundly and negatively affected the world's environmental balance, and further, that the sooner we take action to reverse these problems, the better.

For example, the director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, Robert Stavins, recently told an audience:

Climate change is an important threat meriting serious attention by policy-makers in California and around the world.

According to Wikipedia's article on climate change concensus:

No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion since the American Association of Petroleum Geologists adopted its current position in 2007.

Utah seems unconcerned about their minority position. The final bill as passed contains a laundry list of "whereas" statements to support their conviction that the whole "global warming" thing is just a conspiracy by left-wing eggheads intent on tricking Americans into giving up their way of life, rather than a scientific effort to save both the planet and the world's economies from decline due to indiscriminate energy consumption and its aftereffects. For example (deletions from the original wording shown in bold):

WHEREAS, global temperatures have been level and declining in some areas over the past 12 years;
WHEREAS, the "hockey stick" global warming assertion has been discredited and climate alarmists' carbon dioxide-related global warming hypothesis is unable to account for the current downturn in global temperatures;
WHEREAS, emails and other communications between climate researchers around the globe, referred to as "Climategate," indicate a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate H. [ ~~and incorporate "tricks" related to~~ ] .H global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome;
WHEREAS, global governance related to global warming and reduction of CO2 would ultimately lock billions of human beings into long-term poverty....

This despite abundant information that the "warming" part of "global climate change" does not mean EVERY temperate EVERYWHERE will go up FROM NOW ON, and despite wide agreement in the view of many climate scientists that the "hockey stick" graph has NOT "been discredited."

Apparently a majority of the assembly believes that if you simply "say it isn't so", it won't be so.

However, I think we get a glimpse into the heart of the issue in this "whereas":

WHEREAS, H. [ ~~the climate change "gravy train," estimated at~~ ] .H more than $7 billion annually in federal government grants, may have influenced the climate research focus and findings that have produced a "scientific consensus" at research institutions and universities;

Given the economic importance of oil and coal production in Utah, the "gravy train" slur that appeared in the original wording points, this clause clearly means to say "Keep your hands off OUR gravy train!"

In other words, the short-term economic boon of dirty coal and oil far outweighs the likely economic, health, social and scientific FUTURE disaster of filthy skies and a dying planet, as long as it holds off until after *we* die, right?

Applying Science to Science

2010-01-31T07:02:00.000-08:00

GS suggests that terms like "global climate change" and "economic depression" and "political action" fall into the category of large, multifaceted, heavily-laden abstractions lacking specific meaning when used generally without specific context. This can make it difficult to discuss various facets of those terms in a reasoned scientific way, since one person's "major polluter" may look like an "economic necessity" to someone else. Based on these over-under-generalized terms, our global society has found it difficult to come to grips with not only how to act regarding these issues, but whether to act at all.

This YouTube video offers an interesting, if somewhat simplistic, proposal:

Basically, the speaker demonstrates that we can come to a conclusion about whether to act without resolving the question of whether global climate change "is really happening" or not. He shows that, regardless of how you define the potential outcomes of the "is it real" debate, you can estimate the relative cost of acting or failing to act sufficiently well to decide which course makes sense.

While someone could attack the potential outcomes he assigns to various possible actions as oversimplified, his logic seems pretty reasonable and straightforward. If the worst risk of not acting appears to exceed the worst risk of acting, why would we not act?

Of course, one might answer, "because *I* face the risks of our acting now, while future generations face the risk of our not acting now." But that's an argument for another day.

For now, I would agree with the video maker: what's the worst that could happen?

Maybe this?

A Rare Notice of a Rare GS Idea

2010-01-16T04:21:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, somebody rediscovers or remembers some GS-related idea or practice and writes about it in the world press. Today's example comes from Oliver Burkeman, Life and Style columnist for the British newspaper, the Guardian, who writes a fair and generous article on the topic of e-Prime.

Burkeman appears to know his GS. He says:

in this anniversary year [of Bourland's original article on e-Prime], his eccentric vision deserves celebrating. Because in theory at least, E-Prime aimed at nothing less than using language to make our insane lives a little more sane.

While some of his explicit examples of e-Prime come out a little stilted ("To live or not to live, I ask this question" and "The Lord functions as my shepherd"), Burkeman's articulate posting shows he has a fairly competent handle on e-Prime. For example, he notes:

"I am a failure" feels permanent, all-encompassing, hopeless. Restating it in E-Prime – "I feel like a failure" or "I have failed at this task" – makes it limited, temporary, addressable.

and:

To think about and function in the world, Korzybski said, we rely on systems of abstract concepts, most obviously language. But those concepts don't reflect the world in a straightforward way; instead, they contain hidden traps that distort reality, causing confusion and angst. And the verb "to be", he argued, contains the most traps of all.

Burkeman also notes that neuroscience has begun to catch up with Korzybski's and Bourland's understanding of the connection between the words we use and the thoughts we think:

as cognitive therapists note, thoughts trigger emotions, and "finalistic, absolutistic" thoughts trigger stressful emotions.

Despite having used e-Prime to produce a clear and easy-to-read article extolling the value of e-Prime, Burkeman seems to dismiss his own point, when he says "in fairness Bourland never meant it as a serious replacement for English", as if someone promoting e-Prime needs an excuse for such wacky thinking.

In my view, any tool that exposes the biases and errors in understanding hidden in our day-to-day speech can only help improve communication. Most people reject e-Prime either because it makes writing difficult (it does, but only because you have to stop and think what you might really mean to say) or because it results in stilted, awkward phrasing (it can, but usually only while the writer unlearns the thought processes that rely on the far easier to-be structure.)

For example, Burkeman offers "The Lord functions as my shepherd" as an example of e-Prime. In my view, this only substitutes non-to-be words without actually rethinking the meaning of the sentence. I would suggest "The Lord guides me as a shepherd guides his sheep," which clears away the labelling of the original while exposing the actor and identifying the action.

That, to me, represents the value of a tool like e-Prime. In the years since Bourland's article, others have come to recognize that just rejecting "to be" doesn't quite cover the various pitfalls of unthinking speech. Allen Walker Read suggested using e-Ma, "English minus absolutisms", implemented by avoiding false-to-fact words like "every", "all", "always" and "never."

I prefer my own blend of these ideas, which one might call "e-MaP", English minus "to be", minus absolutisms, and minus "prescriptives", meaning words like "should", "must" and "need". To say "I must go to work today" obscures the choice I make. To say "I need a new car" obscures the fact that I can certainly live without one, but would prefer something new and shiny in my driveway.

Give it a try. You have only your implicit prejudices to lose!

Words We Use DO Make a Difference?!

2010-01-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

More corroboration of the connection between the words we use and the meanings we make comes in an article from the International Journal of Drug Policy, reported here.

Researchers developed two different texts about a man who was "having trouble keeping to his court-ordered treatment program requiring abstinence from alcohol and other drugs." In one version, the man is labeled as "substance abuser" while in the other, he is described as "having a substance-abuse disorder". These two texts were presented to mental health workers, after which the subjects were asked their opinions on how to treat the "patient".

The PhysOrg blog poster, apparently associated with Mass General Hospital, reports:

participants who received the paragraph describing [the patient] as a "substance abuser" were significantly more likely to agree that he should be punished for not following his required treatment plan. They were also more likely to agree with statements implying that that he was more to blame for his difficulty adhering to the court requirements.

The posting continues:

"We found that referring to someone with the 'abuser' terminology evokes more punitive attitudes than does describing that person's situation in exactly the same words except for using 'disorder' terminology," says John F. Kelly, PhD, associate director of the MGH Center for Addiction Medicine, who led the study.

GS has long made a distinction between the application of a label and the reporting of observed process-oriented conditions. As the researchers found, the label inevitably reduces the individuality of the person labeled, enabling erroneous or prejudicial inferences to cloud the evaluation of the situation. Conversely, the use of scientific terms and phrases that describe the behavior or actions of person provide some distance between the person and the behavior, allowing the evaluator to treat the behavior with less prejudice and inference.

What we say about someone or something can influence not only how others react, but how we ourselves react to the words we have just used. Awareness of this interaction, and the effects it can have, can reduce the potential damaging effects of inadvertent prejudice and improve the outcome of treatment.

As Kelly says, ""There's an old proverb that states, if you want something to survive and flourish, call it a flower; if you want to kill it, call it a weed."

Looking for Help with Burr Removal?

2009-12-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

When we reach a certain age (different for each of us, but usually in the early 20s) we feel pretty sure that we make up our own "minds" about what we think and believe. Thoreau thought differently (as he did about many things) and contends that our verbal skin provides a good surface for the prickly words of others. We bristle with these words without realizing, in many cases, where we picked them up. They just "seem right" and we defend them as our own even when presented with plausible evidence that we have picked up somebody else's questionable cockle burr instead of the wise fruit of experience plucked by our own hands.

Wendell Johnson encouraged us to ask two questions about beliefs: What do you mean? and How do you Know? While these can prove quite useful in conversation, we can also benefit from asking ourselves the same questions. If we have trouble explaining what we mean, or showing how we know, we might suspect the presence of a cockle burr. With that awareness we also acquire the ability to evaluate the belief and decide, deliberately, whether we want to keep believing or brush the burr from our "mental" clothes.

Change Happens

2009-12-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.
- G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, novelist, and poet, 1874-1936

Quote

2009-12-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Science Discovers the Organism-as-a-Whole-in-its-Environment!

2009-11-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

A recent study reported by Jeanna Bryner at Live Science feels a little less ground-breaking to me that it probably does to a lot of people. The study found that a physical puff of air directed at blind-folded listeners would affect their perception of a sound played simultaneously. The sound "ba", which we say without releasing a puff, was more often heard as "pa", which does involve a puff, when the listeners felt a puff somewhere else on their bodies.

The research observes that "we have brains that perceive rather than ... eyes that see and ears that hear" and views humans as "whole-body perceiving machines."

To those who have studied general semantics, this comes as no surprise. We learn about reacting as an "organism-as-a-whole-in-its-environment", which clearly implies interactions between the organism and its environment at many levels.

The study does help to substantiate the importance of experience in shaping the brain to uniquely perceive and understand the environment we humans find ourselves in most often. As the article's author notes, "we see and hear people speaking all the time ... so it'd be only natural to learn how to integrate what we see with what we hear."

Only natural, perhaps, but not so obvious.

Here's Something About General Semantics

2009-11-24T00:54:00.000-08:00

A new e-book, titled "Here's Something About General Semantics", recently hit the web and I'd say that the author has the requisite gs teaching experience to back up his abstractions. Steve Stockdale has studied gs since 1979, and has taught the subject extensively, both in his position as trustee and later as Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics, and as an adjunct professor in the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU.

Steve has compiled a readable and reasonable introduction to the basics of general semantics, derived from his extensive reading and study of the subject. He includes extensive video clips and well-organized teaching materials, as well as articles he published in ETC, as well as local and national news outlets.

The book reflects his penchant for well organized information, and admirably conveys his conviction that learning Something about General Semantics can help anybody reduce their misperceptions and mistakes and increase their communication skills. I agree with that conviction, and I find Stockdale's book the best introduction to gs I've come across.

"Redefining" a Word - Whose Job is it?

2009-11-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

On Nov 3, 2009, the voters of Maine passed a referendum repealing that state's gay-marriage law, passed by legislature several months earlier. This story on the ABC News website offered some very interesting (and probably somewhat unevaluated) comments on the language of the debate:

Ellen Sanford McDaniel, 35, of Fairfield, Maine, said she's relieved the referendum passed, rejecting gay marriage. "I don't feel anybody has the right to redefine marriage," she said....

But gay marriage supporters, like Carole Cheeseman Russo, 65, of Carmel, Maine, says, "...I just don't think anyone has the right to tell someone who they're allowed to love or who their allowed to marry."

From a gs viewpoint, I find it both telling and amusing that while these two women hold apparently diametric views on the gay-marriage issue, they agree, in effect, that "no one should be able to define (or redefine) 'marriage'".

If we can't tell ourselves what words mean, who can? On one side, who defined it in the first place? Only humans have language, and only humans decide what 'thing' a word refers to. On the other side, who tells us what we can and cannot do, if not the society in which we live--ie, us? We may not agree with the majority vote on a given subject, but realistically, we buy into the majority rule when we buy into the society. Yes, we can work to change that rule if we don't like it, and I presume both sides will continue to work this issue until people lose interest for some reason.

But I contend that both sides will do well to consider the underlying issue of how we make meaning and how those meanings rule our social contract.

Yes, we CAN redefine marriage, or any other detail of how our society works. It happens all the time. For example, back in the early 1900s, we chose, as a society, to redefine "who can vote." If we had not, these two women would not have had any say in yesterday's referendum in the first place.

And yes, what we decide as a society will determine what people "are allowed" to do in that society, whether they like it or not. That's how we protect ourselves from the behavior of others we find dangerous, disruptive or disturbing. If we did not decide on, and enforce, such rules, these two women might have come to blows or found themselves in jail for speaking out.

As usual, this reveals, at least to me, the multiple levels of meaning and meaning-making that goes on in humans. I might suggest this as the "moral" of this story:

Saying something doesn't make it so	(we define the meaning of words and one person's meaning may not match another's, and by definition, neither matches WIGO on the event level)
unless we say it together as a society.	(we accept the societal meaning of words and implicitly agree to abide by those meanings, unless we choose to try to change the society or the meanings.)

Or so it seems to me.

Evidence of the "cortico-thalamic pause"

2009-11-02T07:25:00.000-08:00

A post on the BPS Research Digest blog reports on research concerning facial expression that contends that expressions are BOTH universal and culture-specific. The research shows that the more universal expression appears first, followed a few seconds later by a more culturally-appropriate mask or adjustment:

Matsumoto and his colleagues believe that the initial facial reaction is triggered automatically by subcortical brain structures, before more culturally specific modification is applied by the motor cortex.

From this I think we can say that in those few seconds, the cortex engages and provides a different evaluation that the person-from-a-culture then applies to adjust their emotional reaction.

Matsumoto's research detects the replacement of one automatic reaction with another learned reaction that allows us to fit in with our culture. If we learn to do this simply by growing up in different cultures, can we learn to make deliberate pauses and adjustments that can help us choose our emotional reactions as well? Both gs and REBT say yes, we can. Both disciplines encourage stopping to think before reacting.

Can that alone change how we feel about an event? A report in the New York Times on research concerning the effect of our expressions on our mood suggests that it can.

In terms of this research, we can suggest that a deliberate effort to slow or suspend our initial emotional reaction to the automatic subcortical brain evaluation, followed by the deliberate choice to evaluate the event with the educated cortex rather than the more automatic parts of the brain, can produce more accurate, evidence-based meaning-making.

Quote, with gs update

2009-10-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

"The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred."
- George Bernard Shaw

While I love this quote and find it very acute and astute, I would probably change that to "A problem with communication...." Despite the pin-point accuracy of Mr. Shaw's observation, I think we have other problems in addition this illusion.

How Language Can Befuddle Us

2009-08-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

New York Times cartoonist Tim Kreider laments the difficulties of "finding happiness" in a recent post on his NYT Averted Vision - Happy Days Blog

While I understand the complaint, I don't relate with the evaluation. Language has befuddled us by allowing us to make "happiness" a NOUN, as if a thing, as if "it" "exists" and can be "found". And because we feel happy doing many different, disparate things, the noun "happiness" becomes muddy and complicated--do we "find" "happiness" when we love (another process that we have mistakenly made into a noun) "or" when we work? Does that mean love=work? If we sometimes feel sad when we love someone, have we "lost" "happiness"? What if we see a beautiful painting in an ugly place? Have we "found" "happiness" or "sadness"? How confusing!

Imagine if our language only allowed verbs and adverbs. Then we might "read happily" or "interact happily" or "work happily" but we could not fool ourselves into "seeking" "happiness"--no noun, no thing, just process.

As a thing, "happiness" seems to fill up the whole room and push every"thing" else aside when you "find" it, while its "lack" seems to leaves an unfillable hole. But do you imagine or hope to ever "find" "hunger"? No--you feel a sensation, hungry, at some times and not at others, regardless of what else you happen to be doing.

As a sensation, feeling happy resembles feeling hungry, or relaxed, or sleepy, or focused--all ongoing states that do not exclude other potentially contradictory sensations. In that light, we can start to see that we can feel happy right alongside feeling sad, or frustrated, or fulfilled, or accomplished, or lonely, etc. It's only a nasty trick of language that makes us think we can "find" it, rather than just feeling it here and now, or then and there, or not.

Either-Or Strikes Again

2009-08-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

In a report headlined "Is Parenting A Joy Or A Trial?", Science Daily describes an article that appeared in The Psychologist. The article described the results of a study concerning the relative emotional effect of having children. The study found almost no correlation between having children and being happy.

I find two different levels of either-or problem here.

Of course, one level concerns the Science Daily headline: "Is Parenting a Joy or a Trial?" My first answer, both from my experience as a parent and from my GS training: Yes. "Parenting" encompasses a life-time of experience, and to attempt to sum anything like that up into one of two gross categories amounts to gross foolishness, in my view. Most parents can recount a whole panoply of moments, from horrible to fabulous to excruciating to heart-rending to ecstatic, as a result of living with kids. And most non-parents have a similar array of experiences, resulting from different kinds of experiences but similarly emotional.

Of course the study did not reduce their subject to quite to simplistic terms. From the quotes from the researcher, it appears that the study looked at broader, averaging type indicators of "life happiness", and concluded that having children does not necessarily make people happier than those who have not had children.

On the other hand, in a neat bit of "blind sight", the researcher discounts the belief that children make you happy as "focussing illusion"--the idea that you focus on one aspect while overlooking others. Focussing illusions leave us open to disillusionment when "real life" presents those overlooked details in a way we can't avoid. The researcher suggests that we imagine parenthood as wonderful and then become disillusioned by the reality of it.

But it seems to me that some people might very well focus on the negative future possibilities and then become pleasantly surprised by the reality. After all, we know that having kids will cost money and time, but we may no idea how great it can make us feel to see them graduate from college or buy their first house.

As usual, it seems that the either-or approach fails to accurately represent the full spectrum quality of life experience.

A bit about book covers and the brain

2009-04-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

By now anyone not buried in sand or on a trek through the Antarctice knows the name Susan Boyle. If you haven't seen the Youtube replay of her performance on Britain's TV show "You've Got Talent", you might want to do so before reading on. Go ahead, I'll wait.....

Okay, back? If you think anything like me, you found the story interesting, inspiring, amusing and a little odd. On the face of it, the whole episode reminds me of my mother's admonition (echoed throughout my life from a jillion other sources) about the pitfalls of judging a book by its cover. Yep, she looks frumpy and yep, she doesn't do a great job of looking collected and alluring up there on the stage. We like our stars handsome and someone who doesn't fit has the temerity to aspire to stardom, we don't just dismiss her, we scorn her. Never mind that few in the audience would come off much better, we frumpy folk are supposed to know our places and not inflict our frumpiness on others, especially not on national TV.

Psychologists and neuroscientists have offered plenty of analysis of course. In this article from the NY Times, several experts note that this categorizing behavior runs very deep in the brain, reaching far back into our evolutionary history. Back then, we benefitted from a quick assessment of the stranger in front of us: are they good or bad, am I safe or in danger, can I eat it or have sex with it, etc. In modern times, we employ the same basic behavior to distinguish far less critical matters, like who's in and who's out, or who we want as leaders and who we can safely ignore.

As with so many other modern cultural co-optations of basic brain circuitry, we do not easily resist this compulsion to stereotype:

Scientists are finding that stereotypes are not simply stored and retrieved by the brain, but “are associated with general regions in the brain involved in memory and goal-planning,” Professor [David] Amodio [an assistant professor of psychology at New York University,] said, suggesting that “people recruit stereotypes to kind of help them plan a world that’s consistent with the goal they might have.”

The article goes on to note the research of Susan Fiske, , a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton,who found that:

The part of the brain that normally activates when you are thinking about people is surprisingly silent when you’re looking at homeless people...It’s kind of a neural dehumanization...But...the neural response is restored when people are asked to focus on what soup the homeless person might like to eat, something that makes one think about the person as someone with wants or goals.

In other words, the more we know about someone, the harder time we have not seeing them as "one of us", a human being.

I think this story tells us a lot more than simply to watch out for the dangers of judging by book cover. It demonstrates a few critical aspects of cognitive accuracy:

One: we get a more useful, accurate result if we base our assessment of someone on as many available facts as possible.

Two: we get more useful results when we recognize that our assumptions may interfere with the accuracy of our assessments.

Three: we get more useful results when we use available feedback to update our assessments when new information becomes available.

Need an Electronic Pause?

2009-04-14T20:19:00.000-07:00

Once again, neuroscience seems to have gained a new insight into an aspect of human brains that folks with general semantics experience have known about for some time. You tend to produce a more compassionate response if you wait a few seconds for the higher brain circuits to kick in and add reason to your evaluation. This story from Wired describes research that found that brain circuits involved in the experience of empathy take several seconds to activate. The rest of the story worries, probably with some good justification, that today's instantaneous communication modes, especially social networks like Facebook and Twitter, allow us to respond before we have had a chance to engage in a deeper emotional and rational evaluation.

One sentence in particular gave me pause: Empathy "...might even fail to properly develop in children, whose brains are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime."

The entertainment and communications industry have long denied that consuming their products can "harm" or even seriously affect the brains of viewers and listeners. This suggests otherwise--or at least, it makes it pretty apparent that what we do affects the shape and circuitry of our brains.

GS in the Media

2009-02-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

General semantics doesn't make it big in the entertainment world, despite some interest generated in the 50s and 60s. In Hitchcock's The Birds, Tippi Hedrin tells Rod Taylor she is taking a course in general semantics at Berkeley. In another movie, the name of which eludes me, we catch a fleeting glimpse of a structural differential on the wall of a bedroom.

So imagine my surprise when tonight's episode of Criminal Minds ended with this quote from Stuart Chase:

For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.

You just never know where these little tendrils go and grow.

RIOT with emphasis on the Relative

2009-01-22T13:06:00.001-08:00

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

In an era when few people ventured more than 20 miles from their birthplace, Montaigne strongly promoted the idea of travel as a way to see our foundational beliefs as simply one of many ways to look at the world. In the quote above, he reminds us that even our foundational beliefs may not have absolute invariance over time or in different contexts.

My mother would often answer a question by saying "I'm of two minds about that." I took this to mean that she recognized the difference between her and herself. I have found the phrase a useful reminder that even my strongest opinions don't reliably represent my strongest opinions, if you know what I mean.

Why Critical Thinking?

2008-11-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

I have not posted here since well before the election, and now we have a new president, one who speaks frankly and humanely, who apparently favors the "reality-based" approach to life. We teetered for a while on the possibility of having new leaders who exhibited their poor thinking skills in myriad ways.

Dick Cavett, long-time laser-like observer of the human condition, continues to marvel at the bizarre and disturbing following acquired by the defeated Republican candidate for vice-president. His articles on the subject draw flocks of commentors, some simply thanking Cavett for his wit and insight, others offering answers to his requests for help deciphering the inexplicable appeal of the woman. As one might expect, his readers in many cases write almost as articulately as he does and their answers sometimes come from unexpected angles.

The article on the NY Times website sports 15, count 'em, 15 pages of comments--all posted in a single day! Two of these, I think, will suffice here. Joel writes:

Her supporters love Mrs. Palin for advertising her mediocrity as a virtue. That perspective allows them to dismiss nuance, complexity and tolerance as partisan tactics.

And Richard observes:

Palin’s patter derives from her most extensive area of training: teen beauty pagent contestant.

A contestant is given 90 seconds to respond to a panel’s question. She prepares (is more likely is prepped) by assembling stock answers for rapid delivery.
Stock answers are crammed with words and concepts designed to overwhelm the questioners. As the latter are not a PhD panel, the range of acceptable and even “impressive” blurted replies is large.

Palin is captive of that speaking style. It would require psychoanalysis to shift her away from going into overdrive when questioned on a subject of any complexity.

Completely different in their perspective, but incisive in their application. We could use more critical thinkers like THAT in the government. Let's go find more graduates of the schools that produced THEM.

Terry Pratchett: I'm slipping away a bit at a time... and all I can do is watch it happen | Mail Online

2008-10-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

Author Terry Pratchett writes about his experiences with PCA alzheimer's with moving frankness. Because his rare form of Alzheimer's largely focuses on the loss of physical skills, he remains articulate and reasoned in his view. He strikes an important blow for cognitive accuracy in facing the world as it is and not as we wish it could be.

It is a strange life when you ‘come out’. People get embarrassed, lower their voices, get lost for words. Part of the report I’m helping to launch today reveals that 50 per cent of Britons think there is a stigma surrounding dementia. Only 25 per cent think there is still a stigma associated with cancer.

The stories in the report - of people being told they were too young or intelligent to have dementia; of neighbours crossing the street and friends abandoning them - are like something from a horror novel.

We can't find a cure for something we are afraid to talk about, right?

Pratchett's article seems to me like it could come straight out of a coursebook on cognitive accuracy:

What is needed is will and determination. The first step is to talk openly about dementia because it’s a fact, well enshrined in folklore, that if we are to kill the demon then first we have to say its name.

Pratchett has given $1 million pounds to help push research on Alzheimer's forward, and to break through the superstitious prejudice that most people still feel about this very physical disease.

To see the full report, Dementia: Out Of The Shadows go to www.alzheimers.org.uk, or the Alzheimer’s Research Trust www.alzheimers-research.org.uk

Two words

2008-10-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

Two simple words can end many a pointless argument: "to me". Consider Benjamin Franklin's observation:

Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so. It is not so. It is so. It is not so.

Imagine it recast with "to me":

It is so, to me. It is not so, to me......okay, let's go have a beer.

In my youth, my well-educated, Catholic family used a lot of Latin in normal conversation. One phrase stuck with me and blossomed much later when I learned more about "to me" and general relativity:

De gustibus non disputandum.

"In matters of taste, we cannot dispute." In other words, if you add "to me", you change from making a statement that others can challenge ("butter is good") to one they cannot challenge ("I consider butter delicious and healthful.") They may NOT consider butter delicious or healthful, but you didn't say THAT, you said YOU CONSIDER it so. To disagree with that, they would have to be inside your head, and they are not. They can only take your word on the validity of the statement--only YOU know if you actually consider butter delicious.

Applying this to your reactions to others offers an equally agreeable respite: if you simply add, out loud or sotto voce, "to you" whenever someone states their opinion as fact, you can simply accept their statement as one about their "state of mind" and moderate your reaction. You may disagree with the view they appear to hold, but you have no reason or motivation to disagree that they hold it. This can greatly reduce stress in otherwise stressful interactions.

Or so it seems, to me. ;-)

Who do you think you "are"?

2008-09-27T12:56:00.001-07:00

Paul Newman died today. I read some quotes from interviews he did and once really stuck out:

The light that you think you emanate is not necessarily the light that other people see.

At times like this, I realize that most of the valuable notions in general semantics do not represent radical, unheard of perspectives that no one ever thought before, although perhaps no one had ever pulled the ideas together and systematized them as Korzybski did.

Newman lived a highly challenging, varied life full of opportunities and advantages. This quote clearly says, to me, that no matter who YOU think you are, others see you differently.

We know this because we understand non-identity and to-me-ness and all the other gs formulations.

I think he knew this because he had the good sense to learn from his experiences, and apparently he learned the wisdom of relativity.

Why truth "is" never "true"

2008-07-28T07:26:00.001-07:00

Today I happened across this quote from Ernest Hemingway:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.

On the face of it, I think he means that a good story says something we can all relate to. Fine.

But it then occurred to me to ask why fiction accomplishes that better than non-fiction. And the answer jumped out at me: fiction can leave out all the stuff that makes things gray and imprecise and ambiguous.

So what does that say about "truth"? I think it says that "truth is what you get when you leave out the stuff that doesn't quite fit." In other words, when you dial the gray areas into black and white, then you have something you can make a solid decision about: black bad, white good. Which might explain why we find it so hard to pin down "truth" and why we argue about it so much.

In Levels of Knowing and Existence, Harry Weinberg devotes a whole chapter to discussing beauty. In a "beautiful" example of clear and unequivocal logic, he shows that the quest for "beauty" cannot possibly succeed, because "it" doesn't exist. He describes how we apply the word "beauty" to wildly disparate experiences for wildly different reasons, and says, in effect, that we use the word "beauty" when we experience a range of feelings, triggered by a range of experiences, but that no thing exists that we can call "beauty". I recall thinking at the time, that beauty is kind of like your "lap" or your "voice": it only "exists" while you are "using" it, because it has more to do with a moment and a process.

"Truth" falls into the same category: something can only "be true" as long as we narrow the object to something specific, for a particular person, for a particular time. No "thing" exists that we can call "truth". Only by a quirk of language does the word qualify as a noun, which tricks us into believing that it must, like other nouns, "exist" "out there".

In GS, we try to address this problem by "dating" and "indexing": "this is true at this time for this purpose" for example. But does that really address the problem? It still implies a certain amount of noun-ness, as I see it. We might do better to craft a new form of word, something that embodies "observer's semantic reacting".

Stephen Colbert's lovely coinage, "truthiness", comes close, by incorporating the inherent subjectivity of an observation of "truth" as seen in this definition from Wikipedia:

Truthiness is a word that U.S. television comedian Stephen Colbert popularized in 2005 as a satirical term to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

Granted some things seem to evoke the reaction of "truth" more reliably than others, but when every such event involves dimensions of perspective, time, and context, I don't see any "there" there that all people would agree on for all times and purposes.

So, in effect, "truth" is never "true", it only kind of "feels" or "seems" "true" "for now" "to me". Or so it seems, to me.

What Does It Mean To Be Alive?

2008-06-29T11:56:00.000-07:00

What Does It Mean To Be Alive?

Science Daily reports on a study that suggests that "knowledge is shaped by language." The study compared children who speak English with children who speak Indonesian, specifically in terms of how they classify things as "alive."

In English, the word "animal" can sometimes refer to all living beings, including humans, while at other times it refers only to non-human living beings. In Indonesian, the equivalent word unambiguously excludes humans. In the study, the two groups of children identified pictures of things as "alive" or not. Indonesian children easily included plants and animals in the "alive" group, while English-speaking children even up to age 9 often excluded plants. The researchers concluded that

"understanding the conceptual consequences of language differences will serve as an effective tool in our efforts to advance the educational needs of children."

"Conceptual consequences of language differences...." Where have I heard something like that before? Oh yeah, Sapir Whorf, anybody?

The Gentle Art of Deconstruction

2008-06-29T11:25:00.001-07:00

Tempting times reveal a richness of language
Author Ruth Wajnryb, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, pauses to savor how a little other-awareness can make a simple email message seem like a rich exchange of meaning. We get to listen in as she contemplates how much more a person can say simply by sharing words with a sympathetic friend. Along the way, she also provides an admirable model of self-awareness.

A Defender of Language Freedom Coagulates

2008-06-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

George Carlin died Sunday, June 22, 2008, at age 71.

A brilliant observer of human nature and an unblinking realist, Carlin's humor cut through all the bullshit that we humans like to believe about ourselves and reminded us that, at base, we are just more dust in a very dusty universe. His insistence on the right to say anything, anytime, anywhere, took his work all the way to the Supreme Court, who judged the noises he made as "indecent." How wonderful that he lived long enough to deliver those glorious, unfettered cable performances with way more than seven "dirty words"!

And how lucky we all are to have his many records and performance to study. A person could learn an awful lot about general semantics from this man who established, unequivocally that "the word is not the thing" (in all senses of the word! ;-)

From George himself, this epitaph: "Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning."

Morning light will be a little harder to come by for a while.

Goodbye, GC.

Science-deaf

2008-06-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

I admit I don't know much about CP Snow, but I find significance in this quote by him, which I came across today:

"It is more justifiable to say that those without any scientific understanding miss a whole body of experience;they are rather like the tone deaf from whom all musical experience is cut off and who have to get on without it."
- CP Snow (Writer)

Over the years, I have heard a number of people claim that hearing about or learning the science behind some wondrous phenomenon "takes all the mystery out of it", or "robs the event of its beauty" or "brings it down to heartless, cold facts."

Baloney! This quote by Snow gives me a new answer for future such moments--no, no, I can say, science adds the glorious soundtrack to the movie of life! If you learn *how* this thing happened, you ADD a dimension to the wonder you feel when you see it.

I have seen this subject covered elsewhere, of course, including in an excellent and moving article by Ann Druyan, widow of the late, great scientist and writer, Carl Sagan. The article first appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, and I had the privilege of reprinting it in ETC in January, 2006.

On further research, I find that Snow stirred up the academic world, at least in England, with a lecture in 1959 on this very subject, titled Two Cultures. This excerpt appears on the Wikipedia page for Snow:

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the law of entropy. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, 'Can you read?' — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.

This harmonizes nicely with something my friend, Ed Bailey, said to me in an email yesterday:

In court a judge will tell you real quick "ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating them."

Why is ignorance of the laws of science such a widely accepted excuse for violating them?

Why indeed?

Brain Fitness Program -- Part 3

2008-06-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

Learning happens all the time. How do we drive the right kind of learning?

1. Learning can only occur when we are in the right "mood".

We must be engaged in the task in order to trigger plasticity.

2. Change strengthens connections between neurons that are activated at the same time.

Things that happen together "go together" in our brains. Practice makes perfect by saving a combination of connections that "work" while casting off those that don't.

3. Neurons that fire together wire together. Components of activity that occur at the same time create connections. Visual input coordinates with memory and sound and balance, etc.

When we think of "farm", it activates a constellation of related ideas.

4. Initial changes are just temporary. If the outcome of an event is evaluated as good or important, we convert the memory to long-term. Doesn't have to be dramatic. It can also happen through repetition.

5. Brain plasticity is a two-way street. We can drive positively or negatively. Chronic pain and bad habits are plasticity in action. A malleable brain is a vulnerable brain.

6. Memory is crucial to learning. The model of what we want to do is held in memory and as we act, we evaluate the outcome against the model.

7. Motivation is a key factor in brain plasticity. Wanting to improve or master a skill makes the learning more likely and successful. The story of Pedro Bach-y-Rita recovering from a stroke gave insight into how the brain reorganizes and refines.

If we don't learn, we become boring. We seek comfort instead of novelty.

To learn, your heart must be healthy. The task should be challenging, but not too difficult.

Neuroplasticity is the default mode of the brain. We just need to take advantage of it by staying active and interested.

It's about living to the very end of life. More than half of us by age 85 can no longer maintain our independence and may be "non compos mentis".

Be encouraged to know that if you exercise your brain in the right ways, you will feel better and retain your vitality and independence.

--------------------------------------
Overall, I found this an accurate and informative program. They focused on general accepted aspects of current theory and explain most of them with clarity, if a bit simply. I'm a bit ambivalent about the "Fitness Gym" that the show promotes, mainly because I think one would get better effect from simply having lots of interests and pursuing them. One thinks of the writer or artist or musician who remains sharp, active and fully competent long past 85. But certainly for those who have not necessarily lived a very active mental life, a "gym" to regain the necessary skills probably makes good sense.

Brain Fitness Program -- Part 2

2008-06-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

The typical 30-year-old commands about 30,000 words. At 80, it's more like 10,000. But understanding brain plasticity can help us forestall some of that degeneration. It doesn't seem so much due to loss of neurons, as to loss of synapses and myelin, the covering on neurons that insulates them.

As we get older, the speed with which we think does slow down. If you then introduce distractors, you could look like you are having trouble: drinks, noise, anxiety, etc.

Older people have a fear of falling. Falling has more to do with brain decline than muscle loss. But when we worry about falling, we do things that contribute--we watch our feet, actually teaching our brain to use our eyes for balance instead of our ears. This is negative plasticity. If we repeat any behavior enough, the path becomes a "rut". One researcher used cognitive therapy with OCD people, telling them to ignore their burdensome compulsive thoughts and view them as "just my brain, not real." This mindful attention improved these patients as well as another group who got standard OCD drugs.

Attention improves our ability to change the brain. We learn what we attend to, and the more mindfully we do that, the better we do. But we also have to attend to new things in order to keep the brain growing and learning. Attending to the same old stuff doesn't contribute to learning. The effort should result in the release of neurochemicals that reward us for the effort. We feel better and have a "brighter" life. Routine tasks don't trigger the same rewards, and don't accomplish neuronal growth. It has to be new and challenging and interesting. We do get some comfort from the familiar stuff, but as we do, we lose the increased enjoyment that we get from learning new tasks.

One of the critical aspects of learning is memory, and the place essential to memory is the hippocampus. Loss in this area results in the inability to form new memories.

Brain-change--harnessing the potential of plasticity:

The show tells the story of a soldier who received a traumatic brain injury. Roger Taub discovered that you can challenge the patient's brain with specialized tasks and regrow some of the lost skills. This depends on neuroplasticity.

Concept of brain-span vs life-span. Plasticity allows the age of the brain to differ from the age of the body.

Another station break.

Brain Fitness Program -- Part 1

2008-06-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm watching The Brain Fitness Program on Public Television, hosted by Peter Coyote. The first segment focuses on brain plasticity. Despite what we have traditionally believed, we continue to build brain neurons and connections far into adulthood. One expert suggests that the old belief came from a backwards assumption that since the brain is so complex, it wouldn't make sense that we might just "throw more wires in there." Research appears to say that neurogenesis can be sustained or ramped up by *physical* activity--running or swimming, for example. Of course, some mental activities can keep things growing and connecting as well.

Children with cleft palates were believed to have "inherited" an inability to learn to speak. A surgeon discovered that if you fix the cleft palate, they learn like "normal" children. Turns out the cleft palate blocked their hearing so they couldn't learn to speak because they had an inadequate model. Fix their hearing and they learn language.

Brain injuries can sometimes result in reassignment of other regions to take over the tasks of the injured part. And regions responsible for tasks that we perform excessively can actually expand.

Our experiences create new synapse and strengthen existing synapses. Donald Hebb showed that neurons are co-strengthened when they co-respond (neurons that fire together, wire together.)

The next segment moves on to discuss the technology that reveals all this neuronal activity. Functional MRIs allow researchers to watch the brain as it actually perform tasks. This technology also tracks the flow of blood, which suggests which parts of the brain are active during a given task.

Changes that come about when we think new thoughts or perform tasks are what the brain was designed to do.

Pause for a station break. Give money to Public Television to keep shows like this on the air.....

Old but worth rereading

2008-05-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., jurist (1841-1935)

If I haven't quoted this here before, I've certainly quoted it elsewhere. For many years, I had it on my bulletin board at work, in the permanent corner, where I kept things that meant so much I consider them worth seeing every day.

To me this sums up a large chunk of what I believe about the world: context and purpose determine meaning, and each of us has a different context and a different purpose, so each of us develops our own meaning.

It's a wonder we ever communicate at all!

Looking for Something New

2008-05-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.
-George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

How to Think Before Speaking - wikiHow

2008-04-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

I've blogged this for two reasons:

1. I like what it says: a how-to for the "cortico-thalamic pause", or counting to ten, as my mother used to say. It makes good sense to do so, and the article offers some reasonable, concise ways to learn this invaluable skill.

2. I like the delivery mechanism, or at least the idea of it: Wiki-how, "The How-to Manual That You Can Edit". Another use of the wiki technology, which I have written about elsewhere.

Of course, as with all the wiki stuff I have seen, it behooves one to maintain a certain skepticism about the information, especially where it borders on "common sense". After all, "common sense is that which tells us the world is flat." (Stuart Chase, quoted in S. I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action.)

Outsourcing the Self

2008-04-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Alexander J. Hartman, a student of biology at University of South Carolina, draws cartoons in class and thinks pretty deeply about How Life Works, including this, to me, intriguing reverie on "outsourcing".

Science reports "too dry"?

2008-03-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a brief item in New Scientist reporting on a study made by linguist of typical "biomedical" research reports. The linguists state that the papers would be "easier to understand" if authors "used more sensory words".

The item concludes with this sentence: "However, Athar Yawar, a senior editor at The Lancet, thinks that any change would require a rethink of scientific method to incorporate sensory experience as well as its usual abstract concepts."

What do you think the linguists mean by "sensory words"? Can a scientific report benefit from more "sensory words"? Would you expect a substantive difference between such words and the kind of statements made in a typical scientific report?

What do you think of the idea of using them in this context, for this purpose?

Thinking Differently

2008-02-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

This NY Times article describes a new generation of anti-psychotic drugs that might actually treat cognitive problems as well as reducing hallucinations. The article focuses on Darryle Schoepp who ran the original trials of a drug that modifies glutamate uptake in the brain.

When asked what he would do if the larger trials failed, he said he would probably go out and have a beer.

"You have to define failure. If you collect information and it tells you what you need to know, you’re not a failure."

This beautifully illustrates two of my favorite principles:

How we define something largely controls how we react to it.
Scientists value negative feedback as much as positive, making them less vulnerable to confirmation bias.

On Cognitive Accuracy

2008-02-21T09:33:00.000-08:00

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
-Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

Just Semantics?

2008-02-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

From cartoonist Dave Coverly, creator of the Speed Bump comic strip:

Historical Quote

2008-02-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

Written history is, in fact, nothing of the kind; it is the fragmentary record of the often inexplicable actions of innumerable bewildered human beings, set down and interpreted according to their own limitations by other human beings, equally bewildered.

--Veronica Wedgwood, British historian and writer (1910-1997)

Semantisaurus?

2008-01-14T12:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Bruce I. Kodish for alerting me to this fan-art episode of Dinosaur Comics. T-Rex discovers general semantics and embraces his abstractions.

Word Magic on 60 Minutes

2008-01-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

I rarely watch 60 minutes because when I do, I almost invariably hear or see something so patently glib or glossy that I nearly explode. Last night, the TV ended up there for the last 10 minutes of the show, so I turned on the sound for Andy Rooney. He sometimes makes amusing comments amid his laconic meanderings. What I heard literally made my jaw drop.

He said, and I believe this fairly summarizes his words: "Jefferson" and "Roosevelt" were obviously presidential names, but what kind of a name is "Barak Obama" or "Mike Huckabee"?

Even if played as humorous, this amounts to a shameful glorification of Word Magic at its worst. Knowing that a goodly percent of his audience won't get his humor, I find it amazing that CBS allowed him to blather on like that. I hope they get a boatload of emails and letters, but I wonder if anyone else even noticed how stupid it sounds to say, in effect, "Washington and Lincoln had names that sounded presidential, but who would name an airport or a high school after somebody named 'Mitt Romney'?"

Quote

2007-12-19T07:55:00.001-08:00

A speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener.
-Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

It's OK to Say Sh@#$!# on TV

2007-06-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

It's OK to Say Sh@#$!# on TV

How is that we can say "excrement" without blushing, even though it refers to the same thing as "shit"? If it's the *shit* we object, shouldn't we ban "excrement" and 'feces" and "doodoo" and "poo" as well?

A word cannot be disgusting. It's just a noise. Shit can be disgusting, but if you need to talk about it, whatever word you use still refers to the same object.

Finally, mostly of the time when we say "fuck" or "shit", we aren't even talking about intercourse or excrement. We are saying "I don't care what they think" or "I think this is terrible food" or "that was an incredible dinner" or "ouch", etc. When I was a kid I got into big trouble for using the word "crud". I had no idea why, until my mother finally admitted that when SHE was a kid, "crud" meant the same as "shit". Can you imagine complaining about somebody saying "crud" today?

Words are only the tool for referring to what we want to talk about. They cannot be "bad" or "good" or "evil" or "disgusting" or "cool".

Quote

2007-06-05T08:29:00.001-07:00

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together.
-Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

Fellow Passenger on Spaceship Earth

2007-04-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process an integral function of the universe."
--R. Buckminster Fuller, designer, author, architect, inventor (1895-1983)

Quote on Self-Responsibility

2007-04-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
-Michel De Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

Quote on Communication

2007-03-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

--Joseph Pulitzer

This quote has the somewhat unusual quality of demonstrating what it advises--clear, enlightening prose to communicate an idea effectively. A lesson for us all.

Deviation of History? Maybe Not...

2007-03-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

In The this Raw Story article about the movie 300 I came across this line:

Iran's [prime minister] has called foul over what it calls "deviation of history" but also because the Persians in the film were shown as "ugly and violent creatures rather than human beings."

I could not find an original source for the phrase "deviation of history" but it sounds like something someone might have said, or at least, a translation of something someone might have said.

But it does make one think, doesn't it? I assume the speaker of those words meant something like "This movie doesn't tell the story as we know it happened, ie, as it came to us in 'real history.' Therefore this deviates from history."

Surely they would have done better to say "we consider this portrayal of Persians an attempt to insult those of us living today who consider ourselves descended from the Persians who lived at the time this fictional movie takes place." This tells a more accurate story of their reaction, in my view, without the need to objectify "history" as if we have access to a single, verifiable, accurate account of what happened that would show this movie to be a 'deviation.'

Robert Anton Wilson was credited with the term Maybe Logic, which suggests that we limit our statements of "fact" with the word "maybe." For example he says:

Can you imagine a world with Jerry Falwell hollering “Maybe Jesus ‘was’ the son of God and maybe he hates Gay people as much as I do” — or every tower in Islam resounding with “There ‘is’ no God except maybe Allah and maybe Mohammed is his prophet”?

Can we imagine a world where movies use Maybe Logic to say "Maybe things happened like this," and people respond by saying "Maybe that's not what I learned about those events. Maybe what happened was something in between your story and mine, or something quite different. Maybe we'll never know."

And maybe if we talk like that, we won't get so angry at other people for having opinions. Because maybe doesn't seem quite so threatening, does it?

Why I am Not a Believer

2007-02-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
--George Bernard Shaw, playwright (1856-1950)

Avoiding Hardening of the Categories

2007-01-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

Comedian Steven Wright was confronted by a friend saying "Your socks don't match!"

Steven responded "Yes they do. I was going by thickness."

When my current partner, an composer/artist, came to live with me, he immediately started challenging my hardened categories.

One day I opened the kitchen cabinet to take out a glass. Jim had evidently put the clean dishes away earlier in the day. As a person who "likes" things in the Right Place, I had to stifle an annoyed complaint--the glasses and cups were "all mixed up."

However, as a person in love, I wanted to find a cautious, friendly way to make my complaint. So I looked closer, to ascertain the difference between his way and The Right Way, which involved function, not form--I keep mugs and cups on the left, glasses on the right, aligned by use, juice glasses first, then milk glasses, then tall tea glasses. This clearly represents the "natural order" for such implements. So where, I asked myself, had Jim gone so wrong?

At that point, I realized that he had used his artist's eye to group the items by color--blue glass mugs with blue drinking glasses, clear juice glasses with clear glass mugs, white coffee cups with tall white ice tea glasses. Color! He had grouped these things by color, something COMPLETELY UNRELATED to their function!

Instead of voicing my complaint, I laughed. I savored the moment, one that comes too rarely, when I come face to face with my hardened categories and have to grant their fabrication at my own hands. I took a glass, blue one, and closed the cabinet without correcting the arrangement. For the rest of the day, almost, I remembered that I could change my mind.

Mystery to History

2007-01-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
-Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

Douglas Adams on the Big Question

2007-01-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

"...man asks himself, 'If [somebody like me] made [all this], what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because ... man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. "
-- Douglas Adams

Up and Down Metaphor in Speech Sound

2006-12-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

From Echoes, the newsletter of the Acoustical Society of America:
Language is largely symbolic, but how we say something can be as important as what we say, according to an article in the 21 July issue of Science Now Daily News. Twenty four college students were asked to describe a dot moving across a screen. The students were told to use one of two sentences: “It is going up” or “It is going down.” The team found that when students described the dots going up, the pitch of their voice was, on average, 6 hertz higher than that of those describing the dot going down. The same thing happened when another 24 students read the sentences from a computer screen, indicating people change the sound of their voice according to directional information contained within words. Listeners readily caught these cues.

Hypocrisy on my Mind

2006-12-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

For reasons which won't appear here, I have thoughts about hypocrisy rolling around in my head, and recent reviews of Mel Gibson's latest bloodbath, Apocalypto, have struck a resonant chord. One might wonder if he intends to draw some kind of parallel between the brutal, gore-loving Mayan crowds and our modern, educated, but still unenlightened culture. Indeed, Mark Stephenson of the Associated Press tells us:

Mauricio Amuy, a non-Maya actor who participated in the filming of "Apocalypto," says the production staff discussed the theory on the set. "We know the Bible talks about prophecies, and that the Mayas spoke of a change of energy on Dec. 22, 2012, and it (the movie) is somewhat focused on that," Amuy said. "People should perhaps take that theory and reflect, and not do these things that are destroying humanity."

How illuminating, to me, that Gibson chooses to offer this high-minded lesson by creating a relentless gore-fest perfectly suited to the entertainment of today's youngsters, raised on Grand Theft Auto and Halo. And how convenient that he stands to make boodles of cash from the movie, if box-office returns from his previous effort, The Passion of Christ can serve as any predictor here. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

I also use the word hypocrisy to describe the behavior of a person who makes an adamant statement on one side of an issue while taking personal advantage of the other side of the issue. A person who, for example, says in private he will vote one way on an issue that I care about and then publicly votes the other way. This hypocrite has not only lied to me (or "changed his mind") about his intention, he has failed to set an example for others who look to him for leadership.

My abstraction, as the bible tells us to say....

Rethinking Age Terminology

2006-11-09T08:37:00.000-08:00

From Thomas Hine's The Rise & Fall of the American Teenager: "What was new about the idea of the teenager at the time the word first appeared during World War II was the assumption that all young people ... should have essentially the same experience, spent with people exactly their age, in an environment defined by high school and pop culture."

I'll admit I would have thought that the term "teenager" went farther back in our language history than just 60 or 70 years. This revelation got me thinking about good old hidden assumptions, this time in regards to age categories. Hine says elsewhere in the book that "it was primarily labor unions, in order to preserve jobs at the height of the Depression, who pushed for mandatory attendance of high school, thus creating "teenagers" as we know them--along with a presumption of immaturity and an imposed uniformity of experience on those teenagers." (quoted from Delancey Place, 11-09-06)

The last few generations have grown up with this idea of the immaturity of teenagers firmly embedded in their world view. What does it imply that we differ now so dramatically on this subject from several centuries of forebears? Does this new view represent enlightenment or myopia? Does it protect our children, or hamstring them?

Food for thought.

Where does meaning reside--in the thing, or in us?

2006-10-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

I receive a daily email from "Oregon Birders OnLine" which allows members to share birdwatching experiences and thoughts with others. Many of these posts focus mainly on birds seen, where and when, and a substantial number address issues of scientific behavior--field observation, identification techniques, fine points of species differentiation, etc.

As the list has expanded over the years, so has the range of interests expressed by subscribers. Occasionally, a brief spat will erupt between those who wish to spend a substantial amount of virtual ink on a particular point of ornithological importance, and those who experience birdwatching more as an absorbing and rejuvenating pastime. Of course, in between these two groups, the majority leans first one way and then the other.

In the midst of these discussions, sometimes quite heated, we get the occasional insight that, to me, seems so fresh and straightforward that all the strife becomes at once meaningless and worth having slogged through. Below is such an insight, from Paul T. Sullivan, birder extraordinaire, and a most sensible human being.

I offer it in its entirety. The argument to which it responded concerned the less than satisfactory data obtained from amateur birders who tend to cluster at "hot spots", leaving large areas "underbirded". Paul's response says as much about human language and how we make meaning as it does about birding.

--------------------------
I suggested earlier that our society should value scientific ornithology done by trained scientists, and be willing to pay for it. Another voice advocated putting teams of volunteer birders out in disciplined teams, perhaps a demonstration in a few select counties, to collect data on bird migration through the NAMC. To get good data, statistics would need to be applied to the resulting reports.

I think both these suggestions are wishful dreams. We will never have "enough" funding, "enough" trained ornithologists, "enough" good birders, "enough" coverage, "enough" discipline, "enough" reports, "enough" photos, or "enough" publications. (Well maybe we're close on the last two...;-) )

----------------------
This brings me to my question: What does 'UNDERBIRDED' mean?

Is 'underbirded' an attribute of the place, like a building that needs a fresh coat of paint? Does a local marsh or woods care that it is underbirded? Does it loose something for being underbirded? Or might it be just fine being that way?

Or is 'underbirded' a judgment on the way other humans behave, all flocking to certain sites and not others? In that case, is it a fault, a reason to lay blame? Are some other places 'overbirded'?

Or is 'underbirded' the expression of a WISH on the part of the speaker, a wish to get data about birds from locations where the bird population and migration pattern is not documented? Is it a WISH to have more data to add to "the body of scientific knowledge," to add the next new species to the official state list, or to "provide facts" to support land management decisions? Is it a wish to control the behavior of fellow bird enthusiasts?

The swamps of Arkansas and the Florida panhandle went "underbirded" for 50 years -- for good reason, they are inaccessible. Did the Ivory-billed Woodpecker care? Life went on in those swamps without the benefit of being "birded."

---
On the one hand, I hear voices that advocate for bringing more birders into the fold, and call for better education of birders so that they can identify dowitchers with more comfort. On the other hand I hear voices scolding birders for doing what they enjoy, chasing rarities, clumping up, and not going very far from their cars. These voices want birders to fan out, cover all habitats, and collect data and report it to them.

----
My point is this: YOU GET WHAT YOU GET. There will be some folks who follow a protocol-based approach to birds, some professional scientists, some government managers, some conservation activists, some casual folks who don't work at it too hard at birding, some who go for quiet walks in the woods and never report their sightings, some keen listers, some backyard feeder-watchers.

We will never cover it all. We will never put enough competent observers in the field. We will never distribute them uniformly across the landscape. We will never collect all the data and get it published.

There will be places that go "underbirded." It's always been that way, and that's OK.

Good birding, everyone,
Paul T. Sullivan

Allergic to Ideas?

2006-09-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
-Peter. B. Medawar, scientist, Nobel laureate (1915-1987)

How do we inoculate ourselves against an allergy to ideas? General semantics encourages us to keep an open mind, to strive for cognitive accuracy, to add dates and indexes to our evaluations so we remember that all things change all the time. With regular "treatments" of this antigen, we develop the ability to embrace new ideas and integrate them into our belief systems, instead of rejecting potentially valuable information because it represents some kind of threat to the existing structure of our ideas.

Quotes of the Week

2006-08-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
-- Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), composer

It is in changing that things find purpose.
-- Heraclitus (c. 540-470 BCE), philosopher

Why the Right is Wrong

2006-08-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

I found this message from Robin Meyers, pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church, Oklahoma City, quite special and inspiring. How about you?

Planning the Day...

2006-08-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
-E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)

The Science of Retaliation

2006-07-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

When we speak of consciousness of abstracting, we refer in part to the ability of humans to perceive that what they perceive does not "equal" what another might perceive in the same situation. As conscious abstractors, we recognize that our memories, beliefs and assumptions color what we extract from the world around us. We further recognize that this amounts to a problem, because we will necessarily see the unfolding of events differently than someone else participating in the same unfolding.

This NY Time article describes the science of retaliation, reported in a study on how we perceive causes and reactions. Apparently, we view our actions as justifiable reactions to external causes. But we view the actions of others as unprovoked actions without causes. Presumably both sides see things in this way, which means BOTH sides in a typical argument believe they have the corner on justification.

The article refers to numerous age-old revenge scenarios, like the religious battles in Northern Ireland, the clashes between Sunni and Shiite that go back to biblical times and so on. Certainly this study sheds some light on those behaviors.

But it also has much to tell us about our daily lives. When the guy beside you in traffic cuts you off, you probably believe that he did so because "he's a jerk" and not because, perhaps, he might believe that you have cut him off first.... When your partner flares at you over dinner, you might very likely marvel at how easily they fly off the handle "for no good reason", instead of wondering what you might have done to provoke the outburst.

If you KNOW that you judge your own reactions more generously than those of others, you have at least the possibility of considering what else you need to consider before responding to their actions.

In the Middle East, some have suggested that the "terrorists hate us because we have something good--democracy." Others note that those people we label terrorists might actually feel that we have made some very aggressive moves towards their livelihoods and their liberties, and might have some justification for standing up against what they see as an invasion.

If you blithely ignore the possibility that the other guy might have a rationale for his actions, you can minimize your responsibility for what comes next. This applies to battles over the breakfast table as readily as to battles over oil or territory.

Levels...

2006-07-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
-- Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)

Quote

2006-03-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other child.
-Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)

Quote!

2006-02-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
-Bertrand Russell

That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen; by Frederic Bastiat

2006-02-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen; by Frederic Bastiat: "Let us accustom ourselves, then, to avoid judging of things by what is seen only, but to judge of them by that which is not seen."

I'm never quite sure how to feel about libertarian economists like Frederic Bastiat. Perhaps I just need to read more, but I find his thinking interesting and his conclusions uncomfortable. This quote is one I find particularly appealing, however, as it seems to anticipate the "organism-as-a-whole-in-its-environment" concept of gs.

One Study, Many Headlines

2006-02-14T20:17:00.000-08:00

Today, papers across the country reported on a new study of hormone replacement therapy. Most noted that the researchers found "no overall difference in heart attack risk among women who took the hormone and those who did not. " The headlines, however, provide an interesting study on the vagaries of interpretation and the limitations of abstraction.

All of the following appeared on Google at the same time:

Final estrogen report finds no heart disease benefit
Heart benefit in hormone therapy: study
Study: Estrogen-Only Hormone Therapy Is Safe
Study: No Beneficial Link Between Estrogen And Heart Disease
Comforting News for Women Taking Estrogen
Little Evidence Estrogen Lowers Heart Disease Risk
Estrogen Might Help Prevent Heart Disease
Estrogen Therapy of No Value to Heart Health
Estrogen Might Help Prevent Heart Disease
Estrogen iffy in lowering heart risk

How can all these headlines refer to the same story? Well, of course, they don't, exactly. The negative ones focus on the overall finding across all age groups, which show no correlation between HRT and heart attack risk. The positive ones focus on the particular finding that HRT may reduce risk of heart attack for premenopausal women between 50 and 59.

An object lesson in the need to dig a little deeper and not just rely on headlines for one's definitive news.

Quote

2006-02-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

Voltaire may not have known about the idea that people don't "make" us do anything--we choose our reactions, whether consciously or unconsciously.

But his point still rings true. If you place your belief in someone whose words make "non-sense", you may very well act in ways you would never have otherwise.

Quote

2006-02-09T08:15:00.001-08:00

Why should I give them my mind as well?
-Dalai Lama (1935-)

The Dalai Lama was asked if he was angry at the Chinese for taking over his country. His response, above, demonstrates a critical lesson that many may see but not everyone will understand.

When someone imprisons us or takes away our possessions or our homelands, we may have little or no power to stop them,

When we react in anger or become despondent, we hand over control of the one thing they cannot control without our complicity--our emotional/rational response to our situation.

Insight on Language Manipulation

2006-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

This article in the Central Daily (copyrighted by the Philadelphia Inquirer), by two writers from American University's Center for Global Peace, presents a surgically sharp insight into the "cartoon crisis" raging across the globe right now. Most of us see this as a clash of cultures. These writers see this as an orchestrated and opportunistic manipulation of human emotions for protection of a controlling elite.

I wish I'd written it.

Quote on Relativity

2006-01-31T06:22:00.000-08:00

The satiated man and the hungry one do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread.
-Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273)

Quote, Exclamation Point

2006-01-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

True.....1/2 True.......False

2006-01-11T21:21:00.000-08:00

Where do we imagine the line exists between fiction and nonfiction? Not quite where we used to believe we did, it appears.

And then there's the question about what we *claim* about what we write. Some of us seem to use a bit more poetic license than others....

On the other hand, how much of our personal memories "are" true, half-true or false? How much of what we *know* turns out false when examined more closely?

For much of my life, I had a vivid memory of playing "circus" with my siblings, especially one moment where they put me in a "cage" of chicken wire and I pretended to be a lion. One day years later, I came across a photo from that day, depicting this vivid memory exactly as I remembered it. Did I "really" remember it or had I only seen the photo at some point and converted THAT experience into a personal memory? How many other of my vivid personal memories qualify as borrowed, triggered or implanted?

Year Without Journalism?

2006-01-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

Citizen journalism--sounds like an idea straight out of the sixties. "We know what we want to hear about--just let us do the driving!" The children of the children of the sixties have come close to making many of their parents' dreams come true and citizen journalism seems on the brink of success as well.

But, as this article from the Chicago Reader (via the Tucson Weekly) says so eloquently, where does the stuff of citizen journalism come from? Do we, the citizens, go to the places where our stories take place? Do we, the citizens, meet the deep-throated informants and make the connections between the laundry and the money? Or do we mostly read the work of "non-citizen" journalists and then gather the pieces into our own personal mosaic of news?

Don't get me wrong--I strongly believe in one must participate in one's own education and edification. I just don't want to lose sight of the fact that we all stand on the shoulders of those around us (oh there's an image for you).

No citizen is an island.

Remembering-as-an-organism-in-its-environment?

2005-12-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

From Science Magazine comes this report on new insights into how we remember:

Recent advances in analyzing the large data sets collected during functional brain imaging studies have revealed patterns of neuronal activity that can be associated reliably with the recall of remembered stimuli. After seeing pictures or listening to sounds, subjects are able, when prompted, to retrieve or reactivate their memories of these items, and brain scans taken during the retrieval period are similar to those taken when the same items were studied directly. Polyn et al. (p. 1963) now show that reactivation of such stored representations occurs prior to a verbal report of recollection in a free recall paradigm, where subjects were not prompted to remember specific items, but were reporting which of these items "resurfaced" in their memory and when. These results provide support for the theoretical framework of shifting brain states in dynamic cognition.

Science 23 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5756, p. 1865
DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5756.1865i

Change Happens

2005-12-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
-William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)

First post since August???

2005-12-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Where has the time gone? I'm back with a lovely quote from Democritus:

By convention there is color,
By convention sweetness,
By convention bitterness,
But in reality there are atoms and space.
--Democritus (c. 400 BCE)

Words to live more by

2005-08-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.
-Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)

Words We Like

2005-06-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

'Tis with our judgements as our watches: none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
-Alexander Pope, poet (1688-1744)

Yet another quote

2005-05-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
-John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Quotes

2005-05-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay.
-E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)

He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.
-John Ray, naturalist (1627-1705)

Quote

2005-04-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Faith" means the will to avoid knowing what is true.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

What's in a Name?

2005-02-26T08:33:00.000-08:00

Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect

You've done it, no doubt--called somebody a "birdbrain". I bet you didn't know you were conferring a compliment on them! Here's an interesting report on recent research showing that birds' brains are at least as complex and inventive as those of chimpanzees.

I found especially interesting this refreshing insight into the power of language, in a statement by Dr. Erich Jarvis, one of the leaders of the consortium that produced the report: "Names have a powerful influence on the experiements we do and the way we think." While much attention focuses on "experimenter bias" and the idea that a scientist might subtly influence the results of a test towards a preferred outcome, Dr. Jarvis addresses the question of the bias that exists even before the experiment begins. If we only use one set of terms for phenomena that are similar but not identical, how much real-world information do we miss because we have not words to describe it?

This ties in nicely with a theme I have pursued lately, stimulated by my reading of Lakoff's Metaphors We Live By and The Silent Language by Edward T. Hall. While gs talks a lot about bringing our personal history into our interpretation of words, these two books cast a new (to me) light on the mechanisms for that process.

Using metaphor in daily language (something we do constantly but usually without awareness) gives us a built-in set of familiar meanings for unfamiliar concepts. For example, suppose I say "Bob purred with appreciation as the sports car pulled up." You know Bob is not a cat, but you know what "purr" means so you hear a sound in your mind that approximates what Bob did. You also know that cats purr, and when they do, they indicate contentment, they might stretch appreciatively or rub against you. From that, you might imagine some physical action that Bob takes to further show his appreciation, maybe slapping you on the back and pointing. Purring allows cats to communicates a certain emotion and, metaphorically, Bob communicates a similar emotion.

Similarly, if I call you a "bird-brain" you use the constellation of meaning that surrounds your understanding of birds to interpret the phrase and assign related meaning to it. How can a scientist conduct serious research on soemthing as silly and frivolous as a "bird-brain"? You see the problem.

Much of these metaphoric constellations remain completely hidden from our consciousness. Hall describes the deep structural changes that occur in our brains as we grow up and learn our native language and culture. While we all understand how our language divides us from those who speak a different language, many of us will find it a surprise that the division runs just as deep over such simple cultural habits as time sense, personal distance and eye contact. Lakoff extends this disconnect to the metaphors we use.

For scientists, this means overcoming not just the stigma of a word like "bird-brain" but also, for example, the cultural estimation of the value of other species. In some cultures, not only does the word imply insignificance, but society's view that birds primarily represent food adds an additional layer of unconscious stigma that neither the scientist nor the society as a whole even recognize.

The subject of how our descriptions can influence how we value work deserves more thought and research.

Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respectbirdbrain.htm