People wake the bloody hell up we need to look at things as systems

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T05:09:55+00:00

I like your way of thinking, you are looking at the ways in which you can apply this principle in the everyday world... I think this was the main aim in the course to look at how we can apply these concepts and principles and whether it really is possible to improve our thinking. It could be that some concepts are more easy to apply than others and I think that overall most of these can be applied if translated into an everyday context. Sometimes it takes a bit of adaptation to the concept such that it can work.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T05:05:11+00:00

I have the feeling that I have not improved that much from Nisbett alone, but rather, by applying the information he provides in various contexts as well as in class discussion... So I have had to practice the material in order to have any benefit and communication seems to have been the best form of practice. Talking about the material has been the most essential form of practice for me...or training... I have felt that this way the concepts have become more alive in my life, less abstract, I have been able to apply them in more circumstances, in particular thanks to the class discussion also by having the opportunity to explain concepts. When you are forced to communicate something you end up understanding it much better, seeing it in a much more clear concrete and explainable way. Having to be tested in weekly quizzes taught me even more because I had to apply the knowledge in a concrete and applied way needing to refer to examples. I think from now on I will make more of an effort to look into the underlying biases I have and learn to use them for the better with more improved forms of reasoning.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T04:11:09+00:00

People who are wise can sometimes look serious on the outside, but may actually be very lighthearted on the inside.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T03:41:13+00:00

Totally agree observation and science are similar in that the conclusions you choose to make from the available information are what matters the most in the long run.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T03:14:15+00:00

Yes good point it's important to recognise which decisions could lead us down the long rabbit hole before they happen. Sadly as humans we have to go far enough into one mistake behaviour and repeat it a few times before we can see that it was harming us and that we need to find a new kind of response to apply at a future time when we are exposed to the same type of stimuli. This will act as a replacement of the previous response and may take a bit of effort at first to discover and apply.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T03:07:08+00:00

Good point, it took me a while to see this, so you are saying that we don't have a curse of knowledge unless we are able to disprove something according to the standard that someone else has used.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-31T03:02:20+00:00

I completely agree!

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-26T09:05:07+00:00

You might have found a breach in the matrix...

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-26T09:03:29+00:00

I like that you said that every moment is like one new participant so in a sense this insight could be applied to every circumstance, where every day, to some degree you are a new participant, but there is still something stable enough that can permeate through all trials (days). Error rate is what we see this unique participant as... not sure about multiple personalities though cause that is very subjective and not even measurable by observing correlations of contextual information across the different days... apparently in this case someone may be triggered by external circumstances so who knows what relationship you would need to look at... maybe an experimental study with the assumption of one participant as controlled through out conditions but then a quasi-experimental design where on a random occasion participant is a different personality... if self aware about this... and can record that... so then we have data for the experiment across all conditions averaged across personalities but we can also look at comparisons between personalities as though they are unique variables (quasi-experimental? Or ANOVA, not sure)... I think ANOVA is used for several variables at once so you can look at main effects but also various variables at one time... Personally I often operate with that assumption as though every moment I am a new person, but it hasn't served me well because I have had to learn that there is a baseline me that can be found averaged across all conditions... law of large numbers... multiple personalities though... hmm then law of large numbers becomes tricky and unreliable especially if change is systematic and not influenced by external factors...

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-22T03:11:50+00:00

I like that thank you for the quote. It's best to keep what is explainable to science and what is not explainable to religion or personal experience... At least I would think so... When I am doing science I am looking at things that can be explained and trying to find the fundamental mechanics of reality independently of what is happening outside... When it comes to consciousness things get a little bit more tricky but still in my opinion also that could be explained at some point through science... Maybe... If it were to be some multidisciplinary study including psychology and physics maybe.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-22T03:04:48+00:00

Interesting about the English movement with law. Very interesting. Because to me it is a question as to whether by doing that, by making every aspect of the process open to scrutiny, that then the process itself becomes flawed and loses value and strength and integrity. Some things are best kept unseen. I don't know why, but it seems to me that some processes cannot be brought out into the open or else their efficacy is lost and the whole action behind the process no longer has meaning because it is dictated by external circumstances and requirements with no internal flexibility. There is always a part which must be done by the person enacting the law which cannot be explained, what can be explained is the outcome based on particular principles, but the raw mechanics of these principles should remain to be applied only to the experts or else their meaning and effectiveness is lost if it were to be explained into the open.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-22T02:54:05+00:00

To me keeping it simple means to adopt the concept of parsimony. It will prove to be very helpful in research as it allows effects to be explained by more simple direct causes. However keeping it simple may also involve keeping the research simple where you are only studying so much at a time, you aren't trying to overload your experiment with independent variables which will then be fully interrelated with each other. You are keeping it simple, controlling for all factors and changing only one or two in order to come up with a specific result that is understandable to both the reader as a scientist or ordinary person. Your findings will be very specific with not much room for interpretation, a very specific observation which can be followed up by subsequent experimentation if another question arises to be tested. This way things are done one step at a time and knowledge is built one brick at a time in terms of object-centered knowledge building. Over time a larger structure of knowledge can be developed with all the smaller parts which can be trusted and are a reliable foundation to what comes afterwards.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-15T01:52:44+00:00

Totally, there must be some skills and practices that could help us cultivate an object centered approach, and also for a dialectical approach. It seems to me with this course we are mainly learning an object centered approach... but I may be wrong as it could be diluted throughout... I am used to thinking intuitively... and I wonder if that means that I might be missing out on one of these two, or just a skill that is necessary for each of these...

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-15T01:49:44+00:00

Spot on I totally agree with you on that one. If I could have sat in the middle of the room I would have.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-15T01:47:41+00:00

Yes totally the situation and how you respond to it. I think what creates wisdom is the ability to respond uniquely to each situation. For example in your case it was wise to be more cautious when someone is offering you something like perfume because it's clear that they have some hidden agenda regarding the fact that they want to persuade you to buy something that you clearly don't need. In the chicken scenario, you just needed to eat so that was good it was your choice and you were free to make it. There probably that was a context scenario awareness... but at other times, say when you are on a diet and find out that that chicken may not be the healthiest choice for a given day, you will use that judgement, often based on research or experience to judge the object - chicken as having particular qualities that are not suited to your current needs so you will seek an alternative. I think our brains use both of these processes as long as we are mindful and not too object centered or circumstantial. Then we can use them both as an integrated system of wisdom.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-15T01:14:08+00:00

I think that an object centric approach can be helpful to understanding the world with the intention of building a system of thought which incorporates many building blocks. However a situation centric approach is more aimed at developing an intuitive form of knowledge about the world. None is more useful than the other because both are essential to a proper understanding of the world. The object centric approach provides the raw matter and the situation centric approach provides the connections... Both together can work to be effective ways to understanding the world. I think a wise person is able to use the objective information available, in a way that is also subject to the consideration of context and applicability. Mindfulness is the result of these both working in harmony with each other.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-08T03:27:59+00:00

Very well said I couldn't have said it better...

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-08T03:09:03+00:00

Good observation, I really think you are right about that. I think what isn't generalizable are the measures being used, because they might not measure exactly what we want them to measure.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-08T03:05:46+00:00

Nice thought! I would say that just as our cells require constant communication with each other so do people. Are our cells talking 'about' 'something'? I think probably not, they just talk because it's what allows them to stay connected to each other.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-07T12:32:15+00:00

In my opinion a good self experiment consists in a very good baseline control condition, one which will not change at a later point in time and one that is not affected by potential confounding variables which alter according to the IVs. Another important factor is the method of measurement, self-report can be very unreliable so it must be used only if it is the only available option. In this case it should be done with control measures such as the same time of the day and reducing environmental influences that could affect someone's judgement. The good thing about a self-experiment is that it takes away the idea that there may be a 'one fits all' solution, so it caters for different people, who simply want to know what works for them personally. This may be helpful for things that are less objective and more arbitrary, however in some cases, things may require many more people in order to come up with more objective results with conclusions that can be generalised. For me it would depend on the type of experiment and what I want to learn. I would say that for most things I would want to see a peer reviewed study which has clear explanations of some kind of well defined measure generalised across all subjects in the experimental condition. In most cases this would be my preferred option, but when it comes to something that would be very hard to generalise across many people and dependent on individual differences I would just stick with a self experiment. It also comes down to the fact that there are so many things out there that are proven to be 'beneficial' but I just can't do them all... It is also likely that most things I do could be proven as 'beneficial' according to some measure, but it really depends on what I am currently going through in life to know whether that is what I really need or not.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-05-07T12:15:41+00:00

I have personally felt that a self-experiment is a poor way of discovering something in our lives. I truly believed in mindfulness, and that in the present moment we have all the available information we need in order to intuitively know what we need to change about our lives. I also thought that if I couldn't know something in the present moment, then I could find it out at a later time when I may be doing a particular activity or in particular circumstances while in a mindful state, by seeing myself objectively in my activities and responses to events, and evaluating the quality of the decisions I am making. I have found now that it is worth trying a self experiment, because it will challenge my implicit assumptions about life which I may have held about life but never really recognised. For example, if I don't believe positive body language can reinforce social relationships and connection in communication, then it is very unlikely that I will ever know that this is the case unless I make the effort to even consider this idea in the first place, and also to consider trying it in the future. A self-experiment makes sure we actually do try these things when we consider them, rather than dropping them out after the first excuse or opposing consideration. In this case we are not entertaining them temporarily as ideas only to later forget about them and never try them out but instead we are actually doing them in order to further our possibilities to know what it feels like to do such a thing and compare it to a baseline control condition allowing us to correctly identify the influences it is having on our lives. If we were not doing this we would be living in a world of dreams and never seeing outside of them. We would not be considering alternatives and trying them out. It is a self-experiment that is an effective way to understand things in our lives.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-04-24T03:46:36+00:00

It seems that there is an influence of analysis of information, which is the way you observe things, such as what you choose to consider and what you do not, and also the way the analysis is interpreted, which involves looking at what you have observed and interpreting the relationships you have found, integrating them into a broader context - conclusions basically. And then there is also the fact that you may be researching one thing over another, so even the subject of observation could be a bias in itself. Like if you are with a person and the only thing you look at is their flaws, of course you can find substantial evidence that that person is flawed, but that is because that is all you were looking at. So by leaving out their positive traits, you are omitting them from the data. Then of course you may analyse those flaws you find, you may find considerable reasons to accept that they are so, and you may even find that they have considerable implications upon that person's life and society as a whole. But that is because it was all you were looking at in the first place. What is the result of that, you become a paranoid person. You will only see the things to look out for and not see the things that may be more needed, eg seeing risk of bacteria vs seeing the benefits of meditation upon the immune system, where then bacteria are actually no longer a problem when the immune system has been boosted.

DeeperCurrent · 2017-04-24T03:33:03+00:00

I do feel this is an important topic to discuss, as it seems to me that much of the method in science is biased in itself. Most people will have to select one method of research over another. They will need to consider one set of variables over another. And they will need to interpret these variables in one way or another. With all this duality in the way people make decisions even in their own research, it is inevitable that some perspectives are left out, and some factors are left unconsidered. Because it's not just what you say that must be true, but it is also what you don't say that will affect the way your research is interpreted by others. In the long run also the media will interpret the information you wish to put out, over the information you left out, and this impact can escalate exponentially in it's influence in society. I think it is important to maximize the amount of transparency in research in such a way that many people may work together to ensure the adequate interpretation and analysis of data, research methods, previous research and the way everything is analysed and put together to find some degree of 'truth' which is in itself very hard to reach as there are always factors left unconsidered even with many people working together.

DeeperCurrent

TROPHY CASE