Could we create a perfect society by tweaking two areas of the human brain? Citations of Serenity, Firefly and The Culture aside, I doubt even superhumanly intelligent beings can have a perfect society or utopia. Perfection is like infinity, conceivable, at least indirectly, but never reachable. I don't think any amount of social or technological fixes can achieve this. Having said that, I still think we should strive for it. Would humans be better with more powerful vmPFCs and insular cortices? I think the answer to this second question is only maybe, or yes in very specific contexts but no in others. I think the same is true of an enhanced vmPFC or insular cortex. Anyway, it's a very intriguing subject which I can rant and rant about, these questions having vexed me for far too long.
An Essay by Einstein -- The World As I See It "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving... "I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. "My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.
The Other Porn Experiment The widespread use of Internet porn is one of the fastest-moving, most global experiments ever unconsciously conducted. But it's not the only groundbreaking porn experiment going on today. Devastated by sexual performance problems or other crippling symptoms (such as morphing sexual tastes , loss of attraction to real mates , and uncharacteristic desire to isolate ), users are taking the initiative. They are conducting their own counter-experiments by the thousands. By stopping porn use and sharing their "findings" publicly, these guys are, in effect, the missing control group of non-porn users that researchers say they can't produce. Why do control groups matter? In the case of Internet porn, usage is nearly universal among today's young males. Informal control groups to the rescue At last, humanity has a way of comparing Internet erotica use with non-use on a wide scale. One active pocket of explorers is on www.reddit.com , a popular hangout for today's youngish Internet-savvy males.
Les faux souvenirs implantés chez l’enfant sont-ils des souvenirs ? 20 février 2012 par Frank Arnould Chez l’enfant, les faux souvenirs implantés correspondraient bien à des distorsions de la mémoire. Ils ne seraient pas la conséquence de leur sensibilité aux influences sociales. Les psychologues Elizabeth Loftus et Jaqueline Pickrell ont été les premières à réussir expérimentalement l’implantation d’un faux souvenir autobiographique complet chez des adultes. L’une des questions que soulève ce type d’étude est de savoir si les faux souvenirs implantés correspondent bien à des distorsions de la mémoire ou si les participants ne font que se soumettre à l’interviewer, sans croire une seconde à la réalité des détails qu’ils lui racontent. Pour départager ces deux points de vue, l’équipe néerlandaise dirigée par Henry Otgaar a mené une expérience auprès d’enfants âgés de 8 à 10 ans (Otgaar, Verschuere, Meijer, & van Oorsouw, 2012). Cette situation expérimentale a été adaptée pour être employée dans le paradigme d’implantation de faux souvenirs. Références :
The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 The end of 2010 fast approaches, and I'm thrilled to have been asked by the editors of Psychology Today to write about the Top 10 psychology studies of the year. I've focused on studies that I personally feel stand out, not only as examples of great science, but even more importantly, as examples of how the science of psychology can improve our lives. Each study has a clear "take home" message, offering the reader an insight or a simple strategy they can use to reach their goals , strengthen their relationships, make better decisions, or become happier. If you extract the wisdom from these ten studies and apply them in your own life, 2011 just might be a very good year. 1) How to Break Bad Habits If you are trying to stop smoking , swearing, or chewing your nails, you have probably tried the strategy of distracting yourself - taking your mind off whatever it is you are trying not to do - to break the habit. J. 2) How to Make Everything Seem Easier J. 3) How To Manage Your Time Better M. J.
Why You Should Be Glad You're Not a Vulcan Thank you for writing this Esther! I'm always having (and frequently failing) to try and and explain to people why we're not nearly as rational as we like to think we are—-and why we wouldn't want to be. Logic is great, but it also requires fairly complete information in order to be useful. Emotions highlight what's important (more literally, what's relevant) in reaching our goals—especially those goals hardwired by our evolution. Without that; without emotions; we wouldn't know what's important, and we wouldn't really care. Also, our economy would collapse... because no matter what economists claim, we are not rational utility maximizers, because our calculations of utility usually have very little to do with rationality.
Taoism The word Tao means path or way, although the original meaning in Chinese philosophy and religion is more abstract. Behind all material things and all the change in the world lies one fundamental, universal principle which is the Way or Tao. This principle governs everything, all change and all life. Behind the multiplicity and contradictions of the world lies a unity: the Tao. "Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way, Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world." From the Tao Te Ching Major Taoist Scriptures The Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tzu. "The Way that can be experienced is not true; The world that can be constructed is not real." Zhuangzi, written by the same name sage is a book of prose, poetry, humor and disputation. The Daozang or Treasury of Tao is considered as the Taoist canon. Teachings & Beliefs Tao is the flow of the universe, the force behind the natural order that keeps the universe balanced and ordered. Taoist Practices Lao Tzu
Top 5 Ways We Suck We are amazing, aren't we? Despite sending ships out of our solar system, and mapping the human brain and human genome, we believe in ghosts and Bigfoot (Bigfeet?), we think the head of our company is a moron, and we just know that we're the kitty's pajamas. But why do these pseudoscientific and other beliefs exist despite of decades of investigation resulting in no good evidence and tons of known and admitted hoaxes? 5: We lie to ourselves (cognitive dissonance) - We try to make our beliefs mesh. 3: We are incompetent (the Peter Principle) - This is the principle that in hierarchies, employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence--they receive promotions until they get too high to work competently, and stay stuck in a job that is just barely out of their range to perform well. 1: We make bad connections (mistaking correlation for causation) - When two things happen one after the other, we think the earlier one caused the later one.
Neuroscientists explore how longstanding conflict influences empathy for others (2/4 MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict - not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military. Those chance experiences got Bruneau, who taught high school science for several years, interested in the psychology of human conflict. "What are the psychological barriers that are put up between us in these contexts of intergroup conflict, and then, critically, what can we do to get past them?" Bruneau and Saxe are also trying to locate patterns of brain activity that correlate with empathy, in hopes of eventually using such measures to determine how well people respond to reconciliation programs aimed at boosting empathy between groups in conflict. Post Comments:
How extreme isolation warps the mind Sarah Shourd’s mind began to slip after about two months into her incarceration. She heard phantom footsteps and flashing lights, and spent most of her day crouched on all fours, listening through a gap in the door. That summer, the 32-year-old had been hiking with two friends in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested by Iranian troops after straying onto the border with Iran. Accused of spying, they were kept in solitary confinement in Evin prison in Tehran, each in their own tiny cell. “In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” she wrote in the New York Times in 2011. We all want to be alone from time to time, to escape the demands of our colleagues or the hassle of crowds. We’ve known for a while that isolation is physically bad for us. Yet some of the most profound effects of loneliness are on the mind. After only a few hours, the students became acutely restless. Distressing end
What cannabis actually does to your brain Like with all herbal remedies, they are just as serious as man-made meds but weed won't put a rational person in a psych ward. Yes, it can. I've seen it happen. There's also this episode of The Nature of Things (a Canadian science documentary program) that talks about it: [www.cbc.ca] [www.cbc.ca] Apparently there's a genetic marker that can cause an otherwise healthy, if sensitive person, to undergo a psychotic break with the overuse of marijuana. Ok, out of the millions upon millions of people who have used marijuana, how many do you know in a psych ward? If you are referring to folks who overuse, like alcoholics, drug addicts, quadruple espresso drinkers, pack of smokes a day smokers, or 10 hr internet surfers, then you are referring to individuals with problems....not a problematic substance. I agree genetically altering marijuana to be over stuffed with THC is bad, but a natural, untampered plant with it's original levels of THC is fine. I just ask, please stop blaming the marijuana.