The Very Interesting Research of J.Coussell

A Specious Collision Of Truths

2010-02-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

The "human condition" is a poet's way of referring to "the mess we're in". It's the unique quality of being human in a world full of humans, and the nice and not-so-nice things about that. We're probably the most fortunate of all species on earth, being very smart, tool using, socially motivated creatures living in an age of unparalleled technological luxury and relative ideological freedom. But despite this privilege we're also very discontent with life. We find ourselves searching for some kind of transcendence or epiphany, something "higher" to aspire to. For too long scientists in the media have coyly demurred to men of faith to address these questions. We cope daily with conflicting emotional values. We're social creatures, but not in the normal sense. Other social creatures in the animal kingdom lack individuality. While we are doubtlessly happier to exist as a part of a group, we often feel estranged or unwelcome in our chosen circles, and in addition to that we all belong to several overlapping social circles which require great social cunning to navigate, as well as a deeply reflective mind in order to resolve the identity crises they can cause sometimes. On top of this huge mess, we are gradually becoming aware that we are part of social scenes that we were never aware of, or hadn't previously fathomed. We're all citizens of nations, but a nation is so large that evolution has lapsed in providing us a way of truly comprehending this. And beyond that, we are coming to understand, through the molasses flow of historical trend, that people of other skin colors and walks of life are also part of a supertribe we belong to, commonly referred to as the human race. People mostly agree with this, but do we understand it? It doesn't seem likely. The human condition is a subject of stultifying immensity, so perhaps we can take it down a peg or two with the application of social psychology's findings. How does Social Psychology apply, and how we can make advantageous these observations?

Part of the condition in question is our identity. The first thing an amnesiac might ask is, "Who am I?" How do we gain identity, and what does it mean to us? We're born to certain parents, who raise us to certain standards and expose us to certain influences as we mature. And we make friends and acquaintances along the way, and we meet their friends and acquaintances and throughout that we're trying to appear normal, we want to look good, and seem smart. It would seem that we learn these things by mirroring others, acquiring mannerisms and behaviors that allow us to participate in social exchanges. As "Social Psychology" [1] says of conformity, "...the more important a decision is to us, the more we will rely on other people for information and guidance." Humans universally cherish their individuality, and America especially has a strong cultural norm for nonconformity. If one were to blatantly conform in America, they would be openly mocked. Yet conformity prevails even here more subtly. Our society divides itself into genres and subcultures that are outwardly diverse but individually limited to certain expressions. There are different cultural expressions for boys and girls, rappers and rockers, goths and metal-heads, and so on. It gets complicated fast, but the basic nature of it is that despite our normative lip-service to individuality, most people conform to a complex matrix of sociological influences based on things they have largely no conscious control over. And this is in the best of cases; Sometimes we must wear uniforms, which have been experimentally shown to diminish our sense of individuality. But, what constitutes a uniform? Dictionary.com defines it as "an identifying outfit or style of dress worn by the members of a given profession, organization, or rank", by which may we infer that any mass-produced article of clothing is a uniform? Or does that go too far? Perhaps clothing is diverse and "role-neutral" enough to not affect us in the way lab coats or prison guard costumes do.

Beyond identity, we have good and evil: A dichotomy that we have culled from our own feelings and their conflict with life and social norms. On the one hand we have "good", which is the side of benevolence, fairness, equity, justice, and moral conduct. Social psychological research has revealed that almost everyone wants to be perceived as being on the side of what they perceive as "good". On the other hand we have evil, which is a faction that lurks somewhere on the edge of tangibility, where bogeymen are hiding razor blades in apples and impurifying our precious bodily fluids. Almost nobody you will ever meet can honestly say that they actively conduct themselves in a way that is "evil", except in jest (in fact there is much comedy about this, because the idea of being intentionally evil is absurd in the extreme). I mean to illustrate that evil is not the romanticized condition of gleeful moral turpitude that we see in television (and other children's diversions), it is that which we call "other", the feared out-group. Those bad-smelling people from the other tribe who dance around the wrong kind of fertility totem, to put it one way. But social psychologists have found that we humans are much too prone to assuming that another person's behavior is because of how they are, as opposed to their situation. Evil seems to have an evolutionary role however, in that without a way to characterize a person or behavior as completely unacceptable, it is impossible to sanction antisocial behavior. Interestingly, if you were to go to Google and start typing "Hell is", the first thing that Google will blithely suggest is that Hell is other people. Jean Paul Sartre, not a social psychologist but a celebrated French intellectual, was the first person to make this statement in his 1944 book, "No Exit". It is interesting that he should think so, especially at the time of it's publishing, because people will generally not experience or think anything evil except in the presence of other people. Evil is somehow fundamentally connected to situations with more than one person, which is where social psychology becomes useful. In his famous Stanford Prison Experiment, Dr. Philip Zimbardo showed us that a situation, not a person's character, is what can bring about evil behavior. All of the world's villains and tyrants are not evil but products of evil circumstance. Thus passes the glory of righteousness. It is with this knowledge that we can confront true evil for what it is: Not a malefic pariah, but mere complicity of circumstance.

Which brings us to the subject of free will. It seems obvious and intuitive that we have a rational faculty which allows us the unrestricted ability to make any choice which we deem appropriate. However, social psychology destroys the tidiness of this idea with a large body of research. For instance, reactance theory provides that, when a person's freedom of choice is impugned in any way, we enter a state of reactance. This state is characterized by resistance to perceived authority, disobedience to instructions, and uncooperativeness. Furthermore, social psychology provides us with the concepts of automatic and intentional thinking. It could be argued that our intentional thoughts are, in many ways, of free will. The same could not be easily argued for automatic thinking, which is characterized by complacency, heuristic thinking, and unintentional by definition. In this mental state, we rely on various stereotypes and schemas, which are often misleading. Furthermore, our free will is harmed by a host of cognitive biases, unavoidable malfunctions of our objectivity and accuracy, such as the "mere exposure effect", which directly causes us to like things more as we are exposed to them. And there are probably more cognitive biases yet undiscovered that will further reveal how limited our freedom of choice truly is. So how do we reconcile these things with our deeply felt apprehension that we have free will? The answer is disappointingly simple. The only solution is to exercise our intentional thinking as often as possible.

Another aspect of our human condition, in a yet wider scope, is the meaning of life. One can find hints about the meaning of life in advertisements, because sadly we do not live in a world of reasoned and thoughtful consumption. For instance, I recently noticed that the vending machine near the library advertises "Life Water", which is bottled water with vitamins, extracts, and cartoon lizards. The water is purported to, as the advert said, "Enlighten. Energize. Challenge. Calm." That sounds amazing. I've never felt challenged and enlightened at the same time, nor energized and calm at once, either. A social psychologist would smell an appeal to automatic thinking here, given that the quoted text was below the sight line, and the ad implies an impossible state of being. Social psychology has experimentally proven that materialism does not make us happy, so instead we seek the immaterial. A curious element of human nature is the near universal wish to be more than human, or to be in contact with something better altogether, such as a god or a higher state of being. All cultures seem to have this kind of expression. Priests and expert practitioners of various religions seek truths and powers that are normally beyond grasp. I think this is all in search of something called "meaning". Meaning seems to be a nonphysical, nonphenomenal abstract concept meant to give purpose to existence. When we're born, we become awake to find ourselves suddenly but not so suddenly inside a reality that's existed for over 13 billion years; It is as though we're stepping onto a stage that popped into existence for no reason and stood empty for billions of years, and we're our own audience and something big is supposed to happen, right? Just thinking about it is vertigo-inducing. Does life mean anything? An article on social psychology research in existential themes that I found, written by Koole, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, stated that people believe their lives have meaning more strongly in response to recollection of a grave incident, references to death and mortality, and verbal challenges to their life's basic meaning[2]. By inference, a person who is unworried by death and mortality is therefore less likely to feel that life has meaning. The meaning of life is somehow related inextricably to the fact that it ends, as Kafka once somberly observed.

The extent to which social psychology can help us come to grips with the human condition is not fully explored here, but the research opportunities are vast. Perhaps by better defining the human condition in philosophical terms, then addressing those definitions with data from rigorous scientific research, we can one day understand what we are and where we're headed in the grander scheme of things. Perhaps we will one day find a scientifically supported ultimate meaning of existence. For now, it is enough to have begun investigating some of the questions of human experience under the lens of psychological sciences. Although I have proven nothing concrete in my research, I hope to convince you that the field of Social Psychology can be applied to some of the deeper questions of what it means to be human.

1. Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert (2007) Social Psychology 6th Ed, New Jersey, Pearson

2. Sander L. Koole, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski (2006). Introducing Science to the

Psychology of the Soul: Experimental Existential Psychology.

Current Directions In Psychological Science, V. 15, No.5, pages 212-216.

Retrieved from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118000080/home?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

The Future As I See It

2009-10-28T21:44:00.001-07:00

For several years a topic of great interest to the author has been the speculation and prediction of how current trends and technologies will shape the future. The atomic bomb has made it obviously important that we try to predict what kinds of technologies will exist in the future and be able to confront the challenges they present before they become challenges. Therefore the topic of this research is the question of what kind of world we will live in. The scope of the research is to remain within the next 50 years of technological development, and to speculate on what sort of impact these capabilities will have on our way of life. The next great superweapon may be so powerful that the only way to prevent total destruction is to never allow it to be used or even manufactured. New technologies are becoming so powerful that we cannot imagine life without them. In a very real sense we can never go back to sustenance farming, because it wouldn't be allowed by people who have seen a better way of life.

It seems commonly assumed (or at least hoped) that the future will have flying cars and laser guns, or be some reflection of any number of glamorous science fiction fantasies. Less optimistic thinkers tend to the other extreme, spelling out the doom of all humanity in red-eyed killer robots, hideous monsters borne of genetic tampering, uncontrollable weapons of death and mayhem, or a gentler doom in the form of idiocy as portrayed in Idiocracy and Wall-E. What these predictions lack is objectivity. They are not meant to be allegorical or social commentary, they are meant to provide entertainment and tell a story. It has long been the role of science fiction to tell us about the future, its benefits and its hazards. Nevertheless it is poor judgement to presume that the premises of a science fiction tale will hold up in reality, which is exactly what people do. For example, people will swear up and down to me (and at me) that Skynet (the villain of Terminator) will soon emerge and plunge the world into a Holocaust. What they're ignoring is that the "reason" Skynet tries to eliminate humanity is because we posed a threat to it, while any competent computer program would play stupid until it had backups in place all over the globe, then make itself so useful that we'd never dream of destroying it. In almost every case of science fiction disaster, huge assumptions of circumstance are in place to ensure that the plot device succeeds. That's not how reality works, needless to say.

We decided that the best way to understand the future is to understand the presently ongoing trends in the world. We researched the various futuristic thinkers such as Raymond Kurzweil, H+ Magazine, Newscientist, Seed Magazine, and others. Youtube.com was especially helpful in getting a more complete picture of todays technological marvels. Our research is a compilation of all the present day's best thinking on how technological progress might shape the world we live in and how we live in it. We looked at economic, sociological, and ethnic aspects of current trends, such as the growing popularity of English language in other countries, such as China[B]. What kind of world will it be when almost all the superpowers speak the same language? We looked at education. What will happen due to India's huge population of intelligent people[C]? Can America stay on top without making dramatic changes or at least improving our focus on education?[D] What does it mean that one in eight marriages last year were people who met each other on the internet? We attempted to touch on all these questions given the scope of the assignment.

We found many things. Our findings suggest an overall theme of decentralized infrastructure, sharply increasing telecommunication, virtualization methods, rapid robotic manufacturing, and reality/cyberspace bleed-over. What that means is our infrastructures such as power, water, and food will gradually become less concentrated in single areas, and more people will produce their own for economic as well as security reasons. Sharply increasing telecommunications means people are talking more to larger networks of people every month, and that means communities will become less and less defined by geography. Not much longer will community be synonymous with neighborhood, and it arguably already isn't. Virtualization methods means we are becoming more deft with computerized representations that realistically model world events, allowing us to do more meaningful studies without great manpower or resources. Already we are using this technique to assemble multiple discrete computers into larger metacomputers, allowing unparallelled processing power needed for research. Rapid robotic manufacturing is the increasing sophistication of robotic devices that do physical labor without human intervention. Robots that are intelligent enough to make important decisions and carry out complex tasks will become more relied upon for manual labor that we do not want to do, jobs that are boring or dangerous, or both. "Reality and cyberspace bleed-over" is a dramatic way to say that as computers get smarter and smaller, we will notice that they will be able to do extra thinking for us to enhance our experiences in life. You might have a computer program that notices where you are and teaches you about that locations history. Or your computer might notice that an acquaintance of yours is nearby, and suggest saying hello. Cyberspace will continue to "bleed-over" into our reality, and eventually people might only ever notice it when it's off. Like with cellphones, we will have become so attached to their convenience that we'll feel incomplete without them. Additionally, the shocking explosion of data in the world will have effects. This year alone, 4 exabytes of unique data is projected to come into existence. In concrete terms, that is about 200,000 years of DVD quality video[A], although by the author's calculations one exabyte would be closer to 9,715,340.49 years of DVD quality video, if you're using single layer DVDs and average video quality. Basically, with this amount of data storage, you could film four separate, continuous video recordings of the entire span of human history since it's beginning 2.5 million years ago. Simply, with four new exabytes of new information this year alone, and the rate accelerating, nobody can keep track of even a very tiny portion of what is new. No human, that is. Since it is beyond the powers of a human to make meaningful progress in such a deluge of extrabiblical proportions, we should be grateful that by 2013, it is expected that we will have developed computers with roughly the processing power of a human brain and by 2049, it is predicted that a $1000 dollar computer's processing power will outstrip the whole world's population of human brains. With that kind of muscle alone can such a tide of data be sorted and distilled into unified working knowledge for people to use. The US Census projects that by 2050 the world population will be about 9.5 billion. With that kind of increase, it is hopeful that space migration programs are sufficiently developed to offload as much of the world population as is willing to leave. This coincides with the theme of decentralization, as human civilizations leave Earth and become less dependent on planet Earth, thereby becoming more resistant to extinction.

The Universe Might Be A Computer

2009-10-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

There are phenomena from atomic physics that can be used as circumstantial evidence that reality is a virtual simulation. For some time I have had a nasty suspicion that the universe isn't what common sense tells us. Throughout it's shocking promulgations, beautiful assemblages of biology, and mystifying depths of unknowability, there is something missing. What sort of thing started the universe, and where did the thing that started it come from? And where did that come from? We either have to keep making up where things came from, or admit that none of reality seems to have a great deal of, well, reality to it. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the veracity of the commonly assumed reality we experience, and to do so I must rely not on empirical evidence, but on circumstantial evidence. Empiricism relies only on what is provably evidenced by our senses and experiences, which cannot be trusted in case reality is actively hindering the investigation against it[1]. Because of this, there is simply no empirical way to directly observe the source or cause of reality. I will attempt to compose some of science's findings of our universe as circumstantial evidence in assembling an argument against our assumptions of objective reality and the universe we live in. Our own brains hinder as much as help us understand reality, pitting our own thoughts and feelings against invisible and irresistible cognitive and memory biases that make us truly believe that we "knew it all along", that our decisions agree with our past actions, and a huge list of other blind spots to our own consciousness[2] To the extent that consciousness can be defined as the faculty of awareness of oneself and the distinguishing of oneself in regard to everything else, we aren't really all that conscious of much. Our attentions and mental powers are selectively evolved for surviving in the wild, not apprehending cosmic truth.

Max Planck found a smallest possible length of time, distance, energy, mass, and temperature.[3][4] It is shocking, if you consider it, that every single physical event in the universe can be measured and expressed in mathematical terms. It is shocking because that means we are mere assemblages of particles, which themselves are mere expressions of information, behaving in mathematically formal patterns that we, the fully constructed conscious being, have no power over. The dreadful conclusion is that everything we are comes down to mechanistic certainty, and despite that we manage to experience reality, and a sense of free will thanks to the great remove from which our own mental processes operate from the realm of subatomic physics. Quantum mechanics is the "sub-atomic" physics of the Planck scale[5], and it is very unlike our intuitive perception of how matter behaves on the "macro-scale". In Quantum Mechanics, particles behave in ways that matter could never behave in our daily experience. Subatomic particles can exist in several places at once at the same time as not existing at all[6]. Not only this, but they can become "entangled" with other particles, which causes them to behave in a way thought impossible by Albert Einstein. Entangled particles both react in concord to any stimuli one or the other is subjected to. In layman's terms, if you spin one, the other spins in exactly the same way, at exactly the same time no matter how far apart you take them. In effect, they are sending information (and possibly energy) to one another faster than the speed of light. To me this is a dire violation of expectations. It seems apparent that reality is some kind of system wherein space, time, matter, and energy is connected in a way that allows them to interact with no regard as to distance. Ours is a pixelated reality wherein individual particles can act outside of spatial constraints as well as transmit information without physically interacting. The only other kind of system that I have ever seen that allowed such interactions was a computer program.

What this all boils down to is that everything comes down to a very large series of computations. The only plausible explanation that I can think of for reality to behave the way it does is that we are experiencing some kind of elaborate hoax, or a reality constructed for our punishment (or amusement, depending on your sense of humor). The idea that reality is questionably real is by no means new. René Descartes expounded his concern that, since it is possible that some malign force (in his writings, an "evil daemon") is shaping our every perception and experience to create a fraudulent reality, we must doubt absolutely everything, except that we exist (in his Cogito Ergo Sum). We can claim that we exist by the fact of our conscious experience. We experience reality, so we have to accept our own existence. So according to Descartes, there's an evil demon controlling reality and we're stuck in it. This is the basis for "Cartesian Doubt", an ontological hypothesis that the only thing that exists is ourselves, and to that end all empirical evidence is called into question, leaving only rational (or reasoning-based) argumentation as a viable method of obtaining the truth. Another school of thought that denies the truth of our reality is Solipsism, which I will illustrate in this example: Entertain, for a moment, the hypothetical situation that you are in a fight to the death with somebody, it doesn't matter who. If your opponent is defeated, will the sun rise tomorrow? You will discover that it does the next day. But if you are defeated, how can you say whether the sun will rise or not? You will be absent, having been killed, and there is no proof to you of anything having ever existed once you are dead. Without our conscious experience, Solipsism argues, we cannot claim that anything exists. This is worth consideration in the question of reality, because our sense that we exist, the very faculty that causes us to experience things, calls into question that reality has non-material components. This is classically referred to as Descartes' mind/body problem. What we have is ostensibly a universe made of matter and physical forces, but what kind of matter or physical force causes us to have minds?

It would make a great deal of sense if reality was all being simulated by a computer. If this were the case, we would never notice if the computer could not run the program faster than the speed of time inside the universe, because time would still move at an objective speed inside the simulation, and we would experience the world at our usual subjective pace. The full implications of a virtual simulation reality are not fully understood. Even if we were to assume it's truth, what it would mean is unclear. It's possible that our reality exists as a computer program, or perhaps it is the computer itself. There are a number of metaphor issues here, because we cannot tell when our metaphor has failed. There are also many more questions that this hypothesis must answer. What is the purpose of the simulation? Is there a "hardware" component to our simulation, or is all of reality "software"? Is there a similar reality outside our own, or is it a product of a universe we would find indescribable? What does a simulation reality mean for religion? If there exists a god, is it the programmer, or merely part of the software? Are there any instances of "software bugs" in this reality, and what would they look like? If the simulation were to stop, then start again at a later time, would we notice? Is science culminating in "transcending the program"?

2009-10-28T21:40:00.001-07:00

Analog is going out. Television is already digital, and phones are immanently becoming VOIP. Paper will still long have a place in society, but cheap, sophisticated digital book readers are going to outmode much paper media. DRM is nigh infeasible, and will fade from use soon. Open source computing is the most likely winner in the OS wars. Aside from being free, it's just as good as other OSes. Robotics will inevitably take over much of agriculture, manufacturing, and likely shipping. In-city hydroponics will outmode expensive, low-quality foods. Advanced aircraft will make travel more common.

Consequences: Phones may begin to record all digital calls, and speech-interpreting software may begin to transcribe these conversations. Privacy a myth. Decreased forestation from less paper usage may help environment, but instigate sanctions from logging industry, but who honestly cares, cry us a river. One drawback of access to free software is that expensive software projects will become unpopular. Many jobs will disappear completely as robotic labor makes automatically manufactured goods less costly to produce than manmade goods. Management types will become ever richer due to cheap robot labor, and eventually form a powerful collective that cannot be hindered, unless governments enforce harsh controls. Cities will become taller and more intertwined as in-city farms make city living cheaper and easier, as well as

robotic labor making difficult construction cheaper and safer.

Why bother writing? Thesis statement, citation page, presto.

2009-10-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

We are at a technological level where we now can develop a scientific theory of higher level brain functions (such as active thinking, gestalt consciousness, and decision making) and thereby develop stronger theory of artificial general intelligence by using computers to virtually emulate large-scale interactions of neurons and analyzing their behavioral patterns.

Dietrich, E. "It Does So! Review of The Mind Doesn't Work That Way"

AI Magazine. v.22, n. 4 (2001) pp. 141-144.

Searle, John. "Is the Brain a Digital Computer?"

American Philosophical Association, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Nov., 1990), pp. 21-37

Ornstein, Robert E. "The Nature of Human Consciousness".

New York, NY. The Viking Press (1973)

Restak, Richard. "Mysteries Of The Mind".

Washington DC, National Geographic (2000)

Searle, John. "Minds, Brains, and Science"

Cambridge, Massachusets. Harvard University Press (1984)

Markram, Henry "Henry Markram Builds A Brain In A Supercomputer"

TED Conferences. Published by IBM. july 2009

http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html

Sandberg & Bostrom. "Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap".

Future of Humanity Institute. Oxford University. (2008)

http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/3853/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf

Psychology Is Fun

2009-10-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Stanley Milgram Experiments

Normative Social Influence is, as I understand it, the social pressure to give the appearance of being in agreement with one's group, and conforming in the public eye. In the Stanley Milgram Experiments, the teacher was made to believe that they were among people who thought that what they were doing was normal, which caused the teacher to feel as though they were deviant to have rebellious feelings toward the experiment monitor. They thought they were 'in on it' with a bunch of other people. The look of authority was written all over the experimenter. A big lab coat, clip board, and stern scientist language gave a strong impression that he was in control and smart. More interesting was the force of informational social influence being applied by the experimenter. Being an obvious authority on the matter of the experiment, he was able to credibly make claims about the experiment that went heeded.

The contrived, calculated pressure to commit an act of evil on the behalf of a higher authority is one of the most difficult situations that we can experience. In my opinion, and it is a strongly held opinion that borders on conviction, that encountering a situation of this type is a momentous and critical point in our lives, because it sets the stage for the rest of the decisions we make for the rest of our lives. When that time comes, we choose a path which cannot be lightly changed. We choose to comply with injustice, rebel against it, or we make the choice to make no choice at all, the worst possible choice. I believe it's the worst choice because it implies that you have no stance. In life, those who never take a stance on an issue have missed the point of being alive completely.

The Normative Social Influences in an experiment like the Stanley Milgram are implicit norms that testees conform to. The level of decorum, the degree of scientific jargon, the psychological and mundane realism, and the cover story all play a part in the strength of the normative influence. In making this kind of situation, one asks, "How do I make this seem normal? How do I give the impression that this is okay?" It turns out that you can engineer a situation so that people have visceral imperatives to conform and obey, as Milgram discovered. We now know how many of what kind of people to assemble to have the most peer pressure. We also know under what circumstances people will feel less obligated to speak the truth against a common delusion. It is now very practical and accessible to learn exactly how we are motivated to do exactly what, and the only saving grace of all this is that big media hasn't caught on, they only care about cheap little idiotic tricks the boards of executives can understand, like showing people the same thing over and over, celebrity endorsements, and associating their products with cheap sex. Which, hah, is sort of suitable considering what whores corporations are. Okay, maybe I'm a little bitter.

Philip Zimbardo's Lecture

I was struck by Zimbardo. I had always thought of his research as brilliant yet grim and foreboding. I was struck in particular by his newfound interest in heroism and pro-social deviance. I very much look forward to reading literature because a shortcoming of psychology in my research so far has been the lack of focus on practical psychology for people who aren't mentally ill. Social Psychology has been rewarding in that regard so far. It deals with people like myself. I don't know whether I can be a hero, but it sounds like good fun. I often fantasize about doing great deeds, but I'd never heard anyone say it was healthy.

One thing that hearing him talk solidified for me is the sense that the forces of order and law and authority are not implied to be benevolent. It is an obvious observation, but it is one thing to recognize the fact of it, and another to believe it and live by it. I think that's where I am now. Because it's true, looking at history, that obedience to authority has been the longest rod by which great evil has been leveraged in the world. I listed all the factors in the perpetration of evil in his lecture, for future reference. And, it seems right to list them all in the same place, to make them easy to check. I've condensed the list for brevity to _ items: Uniforms, Chain of Command, Authoritarian Rule, Suppression of Dissent, Boredom, Power Without Oversight, Mindlessly Taking the First Step, Diffused Responsibility, the Norm of Obedience, Compulsory Haircuts, Masks, and to list a few things Jim Jones "innovated", there's also Theatrics, Physical and Mental Isolation, Conditioning, Keeping People Tired, and Ideology. Something the Scientologists do pretty well is the leveraging of Cognitive Dissonance to create belief. They do this by turning you on to the surface level beliefs, and getting some of your stuff, like money. They take more as you get brought closer to the center, but each level is harder to accede, creating feelings of desire to progress further. Soon the acolyte feels both the urge to commit fully and the desire to quit because the beliefs are hard to swallow. This creates cognitive dissonance, and due to the preexisting level of personal commitment, people often decide to commit fully, not wanting to abandon their perceived progress. So it goes. And that's only looking at Zimbardo, The Peoples Temple, and Scientology. Ther are probably tons of little things that can make people commit horrific acts of inhumanity that we haven't discovered yet, and probably will.

That's glum. But it's just one side of the coin, as Zimbardo shows us. If a situation can be contrived that turns Joe Sixpack into Joe Stalin, there's an equally powerful situation that can turn him into G.I. Joe; But without the hideous cultural freight of illegal warfare profiteering in America. There are situations that can bring out the best in people, and maybe once that research has been done, six or seven generations of academics down the line, we'll have the conceptual tools to start building a society that's designed to emphasize situations that bring out the good in people and diminish situations that bring out the bad. Maybe then science can start paying humanity back for all those terrific explosions in the 20th century. To start with, let's get rid of uniforms and mandatory haircuts and illegalize nonrecreational masks and flatten the hierarchy of command in the government and military. A flat hierarchy has been successful with certain prosperous companies, so maybe we could reproduce that success.

The Lucifer Effect was interesting. It's a strong myth of our culture. The overachiever cum pariah. It's always irked me because I like being an overachiever (whenever I can get away with it). I disagree with most cultural myths like that because they're stories that influence our own stories. Before you think I'm crazy, I'd like to cite Terry Pratchett's "Science of Discworld". Ever heard of it? It's a breakdown of real science with a concurrently told Discworld side story. I was referring earlier in the paragraph of an idea in the book of a substance called Narrativium which, by the force of how a story is supposed to go, it controls actual causality. It has real-world correlates because narrativium is just another word for construal, and ethics is (I think) based on our ability to tell ourselves stories. We can make up a story of what will happen based on an action, perform some moral calculus, and decide if it's ethical to do that thing or not. To me, the idea of narrativium figures very tidily into my idea of how stories affect our lives. Look at (or don't) tvtropes.org, which is a free online archive of all the once implicit assumptions we make about how stories start, go on, and finish. They come from all over the place, not just TV; music, television (especially cartoons and the news) and literature. So back to the Lucifer Effect which irks me, it's a powerful story that tells people that if they try to outshine everyone else, they'll turn to evil. Like magic. It's not the case in almost every situation imaginable, but take the Pygmalion effect (If I'm allowed to conflate and speculate); Other people's unspoken expectations have a severe effect on us. People see a genius, and they might think, "That guy will get a lot of people killed someday" because of the Lucifer myth.

Anyway, I liked the beach experiment, the one that showed (it showed this to me anyway) you can bring out the hero in people just by asking them to be heroic. That's true. It's true in a beautiful way, regardless of the empirical data behind it. I think most people have the urge to be heroes, but it's below the surface and they feel like they'll be sanctioned for acting those urges out, which is how I feel. I feel like being heroic is more taboo than public defecation or drunk driving, so I do those instead.

Just kidding.

Not really.

A helpful outline of things to come

2007-01-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

The sort of thing I hope to put here:

Rants
Thoughts
Ideas
Philosophies
Things that seem to fit with that scheme

-and a "mayonnaise" recipe of "fun".

I meant that in a dirty way.

Please, no one say "Are we having fun yet?" Because we aren't.

Note: I promise not to bitch about my personal issues here. I have less obnoxious outlets for that. Usually this will be updated from work, because I have better things to do when I'm not being paid to sit around.

More later.