The first machines to be operated by remote control were for military use. For example, during World War I the Germans developed radio-controlled motorboats to ram enemy ships. During World War II there were remote-controlled bombs and other remote controlled weapons. When the wars were over, scientists experimented to find non-military uses for them. It was in the 1940s when automatic garage-door openers were invented, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the first TV remote controls were used. Now I’m hoping scientists will develop a remote control to help get us through our lives.
There are too many areas of our lives where we don’t have as much control as we should, and it is in these areas where it would be helpful to have a remote control. For example, wouldn’t it be great to use the “mute” button on the remote to reduce the noise in an especially rowdy restaurant? Or, to calm those who were engaged in a turbulent and rapidly escalating argument? We could use the “mute” button to have peace and quiet wherever we found ourselves—just point and click!
In addition to our numerous uses of the “mute” button, think how great it would be to have “fast forward” opportunities? We see a problem approaching, we simply fast forward our way past it. Or, when we are feeling tired and stressed, we fast forward through the hard times to a well-rested and comfortable aftermath. Students could fast forward their way through exams, reports, speeches, and talks with their teachers. Workers could use the same button to escape deadlines, meetings with superiors, and difficult presentations. In relationships, the fast-forward button would help us avoid conflicts, disagreements, hostilities, and any potentially antagonistic confrontations. For men, they could fast forward their lives through boring, repetitious, monotonous work days to those spectacular and unforgettable evenings with their spouse, a favorite sporting event, surfing the Internet, or playing video games. And women could avoid tedious work days, times with whiny, crying children, or attendance at required meetings or school activities. Just watch neighbors mowing their lawns and washing their cars in fast forward.
In the same way as we would have “fast forward” opportunities, we would have a “reverse” button, too. Thus, we could go back and enjoy once again, some of the wonderful moments. How about re-living those times when you thought of exactly the right words to say, or enjoying again an earth-shaking instant of great importance or immense satisfaction (a car accident in which everyone escaped injury, when you asked a partner to marry you, the words you used to win-over a client)? A reverse button would allow us to go back and savor, once again, a great meal, a magnificent sunset, or a unique artwork or piece of music. Also, it would permit us to study situations to see how we could improve, refine, or enhance them—not just to become better people but so that we could build an arsenal of appropriate responses.
Wouldn’t it be great if the “reverse” button on our remote was actually a “do over” button so that not only would it take us back in time, but it would actually give us as many second chances as we needed? I wonder, given a chance to re-write our own personal histories, or maybe just specific situations, would we let the same things happen? Would we make the same mistakes? Are we so locked into our own realities that things never change?
Our remote has many different channel selections. When you notice that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, by pushing a different channel, you can actually experience life on the other side of that barrier? Is the grass actually greener, or was that just an illusion? By pushing a different channel, the answer will become clear. Or, how about walking a mile in another person’s moccasins? Pushing a different channel will grant you 100% empathy, because you will now be the other person with whom you were empathizing. And if the shoe doesn’t fit, push the “return” button, and come back to your own reality—refreshed, or perhaps disenchanted, but with a whole new perspective.
Our remote has a timer, too. Just as we can set a television to turn itself off at a certain time, we can put time limits on what we experience. “I can only take just so much of that!”—but now you’ll be able to judge just how much that is, set the timer, and when the timer goes off, whatever it is, comes to a sudden and abrupt end. I don’t like conflict, but I want to hear what other people have to say. Set the timer, and give them two minutes to make their case. I don’t like shopping, but I just want to see what’s available. Set the timer, and give yourself thirty seconds to survey what’s available—then the picture goes off. Saves money, too!
There are three other buttons I want on my remote. The first is a “slow motion” button. Life comes at us too quickly. Sometimes we get too much information too fast. So you drive into a gas station for directions, you press the slow-motion button to make certain you understand. You are experiencing a moment of intense pleasure, a moment you know is soon to disappear for some time, press the slow motion button to prolong the gratification. You want the laughter, joy, or excitement to last just a little longer, so you press the slow-motion button to prolong the carnival ride of contentment and delight.
Taking the lead from computers, our remote needs a delete button, too, so that we can expunge unfavorable, critical, adverse, hostile, unfriendly, or unflattering events or remarks. In that way, we never have to be haunted by past circumstances. Mistakes and errors could be deleted immediately so that our blunders, goofs, bloopers, flubs, and gaffes would never be associated with us or with our history. We could experiment with our behavior, and if the experiment failed, it would be edited out of our past with a simple “click” as if it never took place.
The final button we need—this time taken from our word processor—is the cut and paste button. In this way, we could carry good feelings from one situation to another, especially conditions in desperate need of joy, happiness, or amusement. We could build new relationships by cutting and pasting from former ones or, in the same way, construct the ideal job.
In this age of technology, scientists need not stop with remote-controlled garage-door openers and TVs, invent a remote to help me get through life. And while you’re at it, put on the remote a number of buttons for future use—so that I can program them whatever way I choose and whenever I need them. Maybe I’ll program one to make me a very wealthy man, another to bring me many new friends, and a third.....hmmmmmm.....maybe with the third I’ll program it to keep me forever young!
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At the SoberRecovery Community website, the classic Erma Bombeck (just after she learned she was dying of cancer) column, “If I had my life to do over,” is offered. It is a wonderful, short essay. Also, I is one that I quoted for more than 20 years in the college lectures I delivered. I have a copy of the original column for I loved it when I first read it. Read this one.
At the devpsy.orghttp://www.devpsy.org/nonscience/daisies.html website, there are two brief essays on the topic, “If I Had My Life Over - I'd Pick More Daisies.” One is by Nadine Star and the other by Don Herold. Both are interesting, fun, and provocative. They are worth a read.
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Copyright June, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Examining the paranormal helps us understand how the world works
There are many paranormal and supernatural claims. Psychics, astrologers, alien abductions, alternative medicines, ghosts, and life after death are just a few of them. But when people have personal experiences with any of these, those occurrences offer them a powerful and persuasive reason to believe in them, especially if they can’t explain them.
“The need to believe in phony wonders,” writes The Reverend Canon William V. Rauscher, “sometimes exceeds not only logic but, seemingly, even sanity.”
Many people have had psychic experiences or episodes with things that science cannot explain. Whether it is extrasensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts of the spirits of dead people, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, or channeling, seventy-five percent of Americans profess at least one paranormal belief according to a recent Gallup survey. The most popular is extrasensory perception, mentioned by 41%, followed closely by a belief in haunted houses (37%). Only 27% of Americans, according to the same survey, believe in none of these.
The poll showed no statistically significant differences in beliefs among people by age, gender, education, race, and region of the country; however, Christians are a little more likely to hold some paranormal beliefs than non-Christians (75% versus 66% respectively), but both groups show a sizeable majority with such beliefs.
The main question is why do people believe in the paranormal? The first obvious answer, given above, is that so many people have had personal paranormal experiences. A second obvious reason has to do with magical thinking. For example, if an athlete wears a certain piece of clothing and wins a game, magical thinking has to do with believing that that certain piece of clothing will bring him or her luck in winning future games. Actually, this belief is based on the fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc or “after this, therefore because of this” and is a form of superstition.
The third answer to the question of why so many people believe in the paranormal and supernatural is captured in the expression, “true-believer syndrome,” which was coined in a book of the same name by M. Lamar Keene. Keene describes a cognitive disorder characterized by believing in the reality of paranormal or supernatural events even after one has been presented overwhelming evidence that an event was fraudulently staged. Keene writes, “How can an otherwise sane individual become so enamored of a fantasy, an imposture, that even after it’s exposed in the bright light of day he still clings to it—indeed, clings to it all the harder?”
For many people, the will to believe at times overrides the ability to think critically about the evidence for and against a belief.
Yet another explanation, described by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer, is that the person’s belief in the paranormal or supernatural satisfies an emotional need that is stronger than the need for the truth. He writes, “This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength....He easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life.”
There may be no single answer to the question of why so many people believe in the paranormal and supernatural, but Michael Shermer, in his book, Why People Believe in Weird Things (W.H. Freeman & Company, 1998), offers readers twenty-five fallacies that lead us to believe weird things. In Shermer’s opinion, “most believers in miracles, monsters, and mysteries are not hoaxers, flimflam artists, or lunatics. Most are normal people whose normal thinking has gone wrong in some way.”
Some of the ways that people’s thinking has gone wrong are first, accepting anecdotes as proof. Stories do not make science unless they are supported by a great deal of corroborative evidence from other sources or by physical proof of some sort. Ten anecdotes are no better than one, and a hundred anecdotes are not better than ten. The problem with anecdotes is that they are told by fallible human storytellers.
Another way that people’s thinking goes wrong is accepting a belief based on the trappings of science. Scientific language and jargon means nothing without evidence, experimental testing, and corroboration. Because science has such a powerful mystique in our society, those who wish to gain respectability often gain it by looking and sounding “scientific.”
“If you want to do science,” Shermer writes, “you have to learn to play the game of science. This involves getting to know the scientists in your field, exchanging data and ideas with colleagues informally, and formally presenting results in conference papers, peer-reviewed journals, books, and the like.”
Another way that people’s thinking goes wrong is not understanding that the burden of proof falls on the one making an extraordinary new claim. They are the ones who have to prove to the experts and community at large that their belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts.
Scientific and critical thinking does not come naturally. It takes training, experience, and effort. In his book, Logic for the Millions (Philosophical Library, 1947), Alfred Mander said, “Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically—without learning how, or without practicing. People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge players, or pianists” (p. vii).
The paranormal is bunk; however, the key for skeptics and critical thinkers is to try to understand how others have gone wrong and how science is subject to social control and cultural influences so they can improve their understanding of how the world works.
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There is a wonderful essay, “The Paranormal” by Remi which is well worth a read. The example used in the final paragraph is especially relevant.
At the website, LiveScience, the essay there, under the topic, “Culture,” called, “Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe,” by Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor, is informative and worthwhile. Britt says, “The bottom line, according to several interviews with people who study these things: People want to believe, and most simply can't help it.” There is a great deal of information in this essay, but it seems to boil down to one essential element: “‘Many people quite simply just want to believe,’ said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University. ‘The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations.’
-----
Copyright June, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.
“The need to believe in phony wonders,” writes The Reverend Canon William V. Rauscher, “sometimes exceeds not only logic but, seemingly, even sanity.”
Many people have had psychic experiences or episodes with things that science cannot explain. Whether it is extrasensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts of the spirits of dead people, telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation, or channeling, seventy-five percent of Americans profess at least one paranormal belief according to a recent Gallup survey. The most popular is extrasensory perception, mentioned by 41%, followed closely by a belief in haunted houses (37%). Only 27% of Americans, according to the same survey, believe in none of these.
The poll showed no statistically significant differences in beliefs among people by age, gender, education, race, and region of the country; however, Christians are a little more likely to hold some paranormal beliefs than non-Christians (75% versus 66% respectively), but both groups show a sizeable majority with such beliefs.
The main question is why do people believe in the paranormal? The first obvious answer, given above, is that so many people have had personal paranormal experiences. A second obvious reason has to do with magical thinking. For example, if an athlete wears a certain piece of clothing and wins a game, magical thinking has to do with believing that that certain piece of clothing will bring him or her luck in winning future games. Actually, this belief is based on the fallacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc or “after this, therefore because of this” and is a form of superstition.
The third answer to the question of why so many people believe in the paranormal and supernatural is captured in the expression, “true-believer syndrome,” which was coined in a book of the same name by M. Lamar Keene. Keene describes a cognitive disorder characterized by believing in the reality of paranormal or supernatural events even after one has been presented overwhelming evidence that an event was fraudulently staged. Keene writes, “How can an otherwise sane individual become so enamored of a fantasy, an imposture, that even after it’s exposed in the bright light of day he still clings to it—indeed, clings to it all the harder?”
For many people, the will to believe at times overrides the ability to think critically about the evidence for and against a belief.
Yet another explanation, described by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer, is that the person’s belief in the paranormal or supernatural satisfies an emotional need that is stronger than the need for the truth. He writes, “This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength....He easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life.”
There may be no single answer to the question of why so many people believe in the paranormal and supernatural, but Michael Shermer, in his book, Why People Believe in Weird Things (W.H. Freeman & Company, 1998), offers readers twenty-five fallacies that lead us to believe weird things. In Shermer’s opinion, “most believers in miracles, monsters, and mysteries are not hoaxers, flimflam artists, or lunatics. Most are normal people whose normal thinking has gone wrong in some way.”
Some of the ways that people’s thinking has gone wrong are first, accepting anecdotes as proof. Stories do not make science unless they are supported by a great deal of corroborative evidence from other sources or by physical proof of some sort. Ten anecdotes are no better than one, and a hundred anecdotes are not better than ten. The problem with anecdotes is that they are told by fallible human storytellers.
Another way that people’s thinking goes wrong is accepting a belief based on the trappings of science. Scientific language and jargon means nothing without evidence, experimental testing, and corroboration. Because science has such a powerful mystique in our society, those who wish to gain respectability often gain it by looking and sounding “scientific.”
“If you want to do science,” Shermer writes, “you have to learn to play the game of science. This involves getting to know the scientists in your field, exchanging data and ideas with colleagues informally, and formally presenting results in conference papers, peer-reviewed journals, books, and the like.”
Another way that people’s thinking goes wrong is not understanding that the burden of proof falls on the one making an extraordinary new claim. They are the ones who have to prove to the experts and community at large that their belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts.
Scientific and critical thinking does not come naturally. It takes training, experience, and effort. In his book, Logic for the Millions (Philosophical Library, 1947), Alfred Mander said, “Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically—without learning how, or without practicing. People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge players, or pianists” (p. vii).
The paranormal is bunk; however, the key for skeptics and critical thinkers is to try to understand how others have gone wrong and how science is subject to social control and cultural influences so they can improve their understanding of how the world works.
-----
There is a wonderful essay, “The Paranormal” by Remi which is well worth a read. The example used in the final paragraph is especially relevant.
At the website, LiveScience, the essay there, under the topic, “Culture,” called, “Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe,” by Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor, is informative and worthwhile. Britt says, “The bottom line, according to several interviews with people who study these things: People want to believe, and most simply can't help it.” There is a great deal of information in this essay, but it seems to boil down to one essential element: “‘Many people quite simply just want to believe,’ said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University. ‘The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations.’
-----
Copyright June, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Human limitations and then some!
Have you ever walked by a stockade-type fence, found a knothole in it, then looked at what’s taking place on the other side of the fence through that peephole? A great deal of our lives is framed by that example. That is, we obtain information about the world we live in through a very small antennae, mounted upon a tiny pedestal, and often pointed in a well-defined, carefully selected direction. And yet, despite these limitations, the way we view the world is dependent upon the information obtained through this single, small, and somewhat insignificant antennae. Knowing this puts all that we know and all that we think we know in proper perspective—and then some!
Through my many years of writing and teaching about public speaking, one of my goals has always been to impress upon students the limitations of much of their personal experience. A personal experience, although powerful in its ability to hold the attention of listeners (and this must be acknowledged), is rendered nearly meaningless in its ability to prove a point or as evidence to support a conclusion. For that, the opinions of credible people supported by facts and statistics are not just important but necessary. That is precisely what makes research and investigation so necessary.
Why is a student’s personal experience meaningless? Often, it is for the same reasons that one person’s point of view—eyewitness testimony—can matter so little in a court of law. In a court of law it counts for little and is often contradicted by other eyewitness testimony. It is just one person’s point of view and it is likely to be distorted.
How is it distorted? It is what we do with information that comes through our minuscule antennae that causes the problems. Most information comes to us in a random, unstructured manner. We must do something with it—modify it!—to make sense of it. First, we determine relationships: how does the new information relate to other information we are receiving and to information we already have? Look out the window where you are sitting right now. Can you view nature as if there were no structure? Our world, for us to understand it, requires organization, and when we get random, unstructured information from our world, as we do every waking moment, we organize it by perceiving relationships—relationships we form from things we already know and understand.
How do we organize the information from our meager antennae? First, because information often comes in small pieces, we try to put it into a larger context so that we can understand the pieces better. This is a process called enlarging in which we look for a frame of reference for the message or messages—a frame of reference from our perspective.
You can understand the process of enlarging, for example, when you notice a nonverbal expression emitted by someone with whom you are having a conversation. Suddenly, you detect an expression of sadness or grief. Immediately you start observing the whole nonverbal picture —the facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and vocal tones of the person sending the message—and trying to place the expression you have observed into that picture. The fewer the pieces of information you have received, the more enlargement must take place.
The second way we have of organizing the information we get from our very modest antennae is simplifying. Just as we search for a relationship between pieces of information and a larger framework into which we can place those pieces, we also look for ways to simplify complex or confusing stimuli. Complex stimuli are those we have difficulty understanding. We simplify information by finding patterns, an order (derived from all that we know or observe) that will help us make sense of the message.
For example, if you drive into a gas station to get directions, you might hear the attendant say something like, “You go up here to your first stoplight and turn left on Broadview. At your next light turn right. Then just after you pass Wiley High School, turn right, and the street you are looking for will be your next left.” As a simplifying response you might reply, “So, it’s a left, two rights, and a left.” We look for order in stimuli that will help us remember the essential information. It is an order established by our brain from our experiences—based on all we know and understand.
Stereotyping, the process of assigning a fixed label or category to things or people we encounter, is one method we have of simplifying information. All human beings employ stereotypes to deal with the tremendous flow of events around them.
The third method of organizing information from your diminutive antennae is closing. It is the process of filling in gaps between pieces of information. Although we think in unified wholes, we get information in separate scraps; thus, we must put information together to make it complete rather than fragmented. It is like filling in the pieces of a puzzle we are missing; to do it, however, we draw from what we already know and understand.
We probably engage in closing (or closure) more often than we realize. For example, how often have you completed a sentence for the person you were talking to? The more you get to know people, the better you know how they think, and the more often you will think ahead and close their thoughts—or think for them. Very close friends can say a great deal to each other with few words; without realizing it, they may depend on closure for their messages to get through. Just remember, however, we are the ones filling in the gaps.
Another example of closing is when you overhear others talking but are able to pick up only fragments of their conversation. From the fragments you fill in the rest of the conversation. Have you ever sat in a bus station, airport, or next to a busy sidewalk and made up stories about the people you observed around you? From a minimum of cues you put together a fairly complete story, making sense of the available information by closure. Though it may make sense to you, it is unlikely to be correct. It is a figment of your imagination, but if you were to act, you would respond based on what you think or you believe or you feel.
Then, when you add proximity and role to the mix of enlarging, simplifying, and closing, you begin to see why a single personal example may be wildly inappropriate, inaccurate, or simply, unjustified. Proximity is simply your nearness to the event with respect to where you are located, the time that the event takes place, or your relationship to the event or people in it. If you are a distance away, it is early morning and you are barely awake, and you have no relationship to the people involved, your viewpoint is likely to be distorted. And your role relates to your expectations, needs, attitudes, and beliefs about the situation; your role restricts how you perceive situations whether it is a job role, family role, sex role, friendship role, or any of a number of others.
When people are offering a single, personal viewpoint of anything, it really caries very little meaning beyond what it is. It is an instance, anecdote, or singular example. In general, when it comes to viewing things, people are untrained, untaught, unschooled, unskilled, unpracticed, uninitiated, ill-equipped, ill-prepared, unqualified, nonprofessional, and inexperienced. They see what they see and nothing more. Much as you need to respect their point of view, and their willingness to share it, in the larger scheme of things, it is an example of our human limitations.
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At the website Cycleback.com there is a terrific essay that discusses perception entitled, “Movement Perception and Misperception,” by David Rudd Cycleback. Cycleback ends his first paragraph saying, “The human uses its complex mental template to make the final perception, or judgment of what is going on. The template was formed by experience, knowledge, genetic tendencies, physiological abilities (your visual template is literally blind to the ultraviolet light that birds see, and the infrared light snakes see), personal bias, aesthetics, etc. Often the final interpretation, or perception, is a correct representation of what is being viewed. Sometimes the perception is off."
At the Scientific American website, there is a terrific essay, “Limits of Perception,” by editor in chief, Mariette DiChristina. She begins her essay with a quotation by Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism : “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” DiChristina goes on to discuss the interference of “noise” in the brain’s functioning. It is easy to conclude that all perceptions are affected by “noise,” and it is “noise” that, in part, limits our ability to perceive accurately.
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Copyright June, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.
Through my many years of writing and teaching about public speaking, one of my goals has always been to impress upon students the limitations of much of their personal experience. A personal experience, although powerful in its ability to hold the attention of listeners (and this must be acknowledged), is rendered nearly meaningless in its ability to prove a point or as evidence to support a conclusion. For that, the opinions of credible people supported by facts and statistics are not just important but necessary. That is precisely what makes research and investigation so necessary.
Why is a student’s personal experience meaningless? Often, it is for the same reasons that one person’s point of view—eyewitness testimony—can matter so little in a court of law. In a court of law it counts for little and is often contradicted by other eyewitness testimony. It is just one person’s point of view and it is likely to be distorted.
How is it distorted? It is what we do with information that comes through our minuscule antennae that causes the problems. Most information comes to us in a random, unstructured manner. We must do something with it—modify it!—to make sense of it. First, we determine relationships: how does the new information relate to other information we are receiving and to information we already have? Look out the window where you are sitting right now. Can you view nature as if there were no structure? Our world, for us to understand it, requires organization, and when we get random, unstructured information from our world, as we do every waking moment, we organize it by perceiving relationships—relationships we form from things we already know and understand.
How do we organize the information from our meager antennae? First, because information often comes in small pieces, we try to put it into a larger context so that we can understand the pieces better. This is a process called enlarging in which we look for a frame of reference for the message or messages—a frame of reference from our perspective.
You can understand the process of enlarging, for example, when you notice a nonverbal expression emitted by someone with whom you are having a conversation. Suddenly, you detect an expression of sadness or grief. Immediately you start observing the whole nonverbal picture —the facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and vocal tones of the person sending the message—and trying to place the expression you have observed into that picture. The fewer the pieces of information you have received, the more enlargement must take place.
The second way we have of organizing the information we get from our very modest antennae is simplifying. Just as we search for a relationship between pieces of information and a larger framework into which we can place those pieces, we also look for ways to simplify complex or confusing stimuli. Complex stimuli are those we have difficulty understanding. We simplify information by finding patterns, an order (derived from all that we know or observe) that will help us make sense of the message.
For example, if you drive into a gas station to get directions, you might hear the attendant say something like, “You go up here to your first stoplight and turn left on Broadview. At your next light turn right. Then just after you pass Wiley High School, turn right, and the street you are looking for will be your next left.” As a simplifying response you might reply, “So, it’s a left, two rights, and a left.” We look for order in stimuli that will help us remember the essential information. It is an order established by our brain from our experiences—based on all we know and understand.
Stereotyping, the process of assigning a fixed label or category to things or people we encounter, is one method we have of simplifying information. All human beings employ stereotypes to deal with the tremendous flow of events around them.
The third method of organizing information from your diminutive antennae is closing. It is the process of filling in gaps between pieces of information. Although we think in unified wholes, we get information in separate scraps; thus, we must put information together to make it complete rather than fragmented. It is like filling in the pieces of a puzzle we are missing; to do it, however, we draw from what we already know and understand.
We probably engage in closing (or closure) more often than we realize. For example, how often have you completed a sentence for the person you were talking to? The more you get to know people, the better you know how they think, and the more often you will think ahead and close their thoughts—or think for them. Very close friends can say a great deal to each other with few words; without realizing it, they may depend on closure for their messages to get through. Just remember, however, we are the ones filling in the gaps.
Another example of closing is when you overhear others talking but are able to pick up only fragments of their conversation. From the fragments you fill in the rest of the conversation. Have you ever sat in a bus station, airport, or next to a busy sidewalk and made up stories about the people you observed around you? From a minimum of cues you put together a fairly complete story, making sense of the available information by closure. Though it may make sense to you, it is unlikely to be correct. It is a figment of your imagination, but if you were to act, you would respond based on what you think or you believe or you feel.
Then, when you add proximity and role to the mix of enlarging, simplifying, and closing, you begin to see why a single personal example may be wildly inappropriate, inaccurate, or simply, unjustified. Proximity is simply your nearness to the event with respect to where you are located, the time that the event takes place, or your relationship to the event or people in it. If you are a distance away, it is early morning and you are barely awake, and you have no relationship to the people involved, your viewpoint is likely to be distorted. And your role relates to your expectations, needs, attitudes, and beliefs about the situation; your role restricts how you perceive situations whether it is a job role, family role, sex role, friendship role, or any of a number of others.
When people are offering a single, personal viewpoint of anything, it really caries very little meaning beyond what it is. It is an instance, anecdote, or singular example. In general, when it comes to viewing things, people are untrained, untaught, unschooled, unskilled, unpracticed, uninitiated, ill-equipped, ill-prepared, unqualified, nonprofessional, and inexperienced. They see what they see and nothing more. Much as you need to respect their point of view, and their willingness to share it, in the larger scheme of things, it is an example of our human limitations.
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At the website Cycleback.com there is a terrific essay that discusses perception entitled, “Movement Perception and Misperception,” by David Rudd Cycleback. Cycleback ends his first paragraph saying, “The human uses its complex mental template to make the final perception, or judgment of what is going on. The template was formed by experience, knowledge, genetic tendencies, physiological abilities (your visual template is literally blind to the ultraviolet light that birds see, and the infrared light snakes see), personal bias, aesthetics, etc. Often the final interpretation, or perception, is a correct representation of what is being viewed. Sometimes the perception is off."
At the Scientific American website, there is a terrific essay, “Limits of Perception,” by editor in chief, Mariette DiChristina. She begins her essay with a quotation by Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism : “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” DiChristina goes on to discuss the interference of “noise” in the brain’s functioning. It is easy to conclude that all perceptions are affected by “noise,” and it is “noise” that, in part, limits our ability to perceive accurately.
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Copyright June, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Cleanse your mind of these thoughts
There are many thoughts that are unnecessary and just take up space in our brains, space that could be better utilized for productive positive thoughts, dealing with everyday problems, planning for the future, and contemplating all the past good memories. It wasn’t until I read the wonderful book by Thomas Kida, Don’t believe everything you think: The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking (Prometheus Books, 2006), and a book by Damian Thompson called Counterknowledge (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), that I began thinking about this topic.
I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Kida and Thompson for these thoughts and for their support. I have borrowed heavily from these books, and I have avoided quotation marks for ease of reading—but, be clear about this, these are their thoughts, not mine.
The first big time waster is any beliefs you may have in fortunetellers, palm readers, and astrologers. The last “big name” to give credence to astrology, of course, was Nancy Reagan, who consulted an astrologist whenever deciding President Reagan’s schedule. Beliefs in any of these is pure nonsense.
One trap that we fall into is believing in stories rather than in statistics. I am continually telling people that when you hear of an accident, shooting, robbery, baby’s death, or any other extraordinary event, there often follows a law, ruling, or mandate designed specifically to prevent other similar accidents, shootings, robberies, or deaths. So, you have one incident that makes the news—an anecdote—and people scurry to prevent other similar instances when, often, these examples are rare, exceptional, or unique. A teenager holds up a small grocery store, and suddenly you have a curfew in the neighborhood designed to keep teenagers at home after dark. Another good example is when you hear of a recall of a certain model because of problems incurred by a small number of people, and you avoid purchasing any car made by that company.
The second area where we can cleanse our mind is in any intention we may have regarding talking with the dead, facilitated communication, therapeutic touch, and dowsing (a technique in which an individual holds an object, like a Y-shaped tree branch and walks around the land in search of water. When the branch twitches, it’s taken as a sign that water is below.) A belief in any of these is ludicrous as well, and yet bright, capable, highly trained people hold extraordinary beliefs such as these that have little or no credible supporting evidence.
A third area where a significant number of people believe in something where there is little or no credible evidence to support their beliefs, and the beliefs are contradicted by hard evidence, is that there is such a thing as extrasensory perception, that houses can be haunted, that people are sometimes possessed by the devil, that there is such a thing as telepathy—or communication between minds without the five senses—that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth, that there is such a thing as clairvoyance—or perceiving things not present to the senses—and that reincarnation exists.
Another area where you can cleanse your mind is any beliefs you have in graphology— analyzing a person’s handwriting to determine what kind of person he or she is. Research shows that graphology is totally useless, but you may have been denied a job if a graphologist said your handwriting indicated you are untrustworthy.
A fourth area where cleansing can take place is support of a large number of commonly held beliefs. For example, that humans use only 10 percent of their brains, the blind develop supersensitive hearing, crime and drugs are out of control in the United States, low self-esteem is a cause of aggression, religious people are more altruistic than less religious people, opposites attract, or if you’re happy in your job, you will be more productive. There is no research to support these ideas.
Also, you can cleanse your mind by removing beliefs you may have in such topics as Atlantis, bigfoot, UFOs, Bible prophecy, psychic powers, religious images or patterns seen in unrelated objects, near-death experiences, miracle diets, creationism, paranormal phenomena, or the existence of ghosts. Anytime you hear a comment from someone who has witnessed an event —whatever it is—and says, “I knew right away it was a ghost/miracle/fairy/or whatever, because there is no other way to explain it,” you can rest assured that the claim is bogus, and the speaker is naive. As I said earlier in this essay, we love stories. A discussion of the contribution the media make in fostering beliefs in the weird and bizarre would offer material for a whole book.
There are a number of other beliefs, too, that you can discard. Breast implants cause serious disease. It isn’t true now, and it never was true. All anecdotal evidence. Levitation is not supported by evidence. Not a single death or serious injury has occurred from kids eating Halloween candy received from strangers. No poisoned candy or apples containing razor blades. Classified under pseudoscience is a whole range of activities related to parapsychology (some mentioned previously) such as extrasensory perception, telepathy (reading other’s minds), clairvoyance (perceiving things not present to the senses), and precognition (seeing the future). None of it exists; none of it is true.
How can you deal with falsehoods, fabrications, half truths, and lies? Kida has some suggestions, and they fall under the heading, “Think like a scientist.” First, keep an open mind, and be skeptical of any unsubstantiated claims. Second, make sure a claim or belief can be tested. Third, evaluate the quality of the evidence for a belief. Fourth, try to falsify a claim or belief (e.g., look for disconfirming evidence). Fifth, consider alternative explanations (even chance or coincidence). Sixth, other things being equal, choose the claim or belief that is the simplest explanation for the phenomenon. Seventh, choose the claim or belief that doesn’t conflict with well-established knowledge. And, eighth, proportion your belief to the amount of evidence for or against that belief.
No, there is no way to totally cleanse your mind, of course, and we will always be guilty of holding some false beliefs. Sometimes it’s just fun to consider ideas you know are clearly false or outrageous. Sometimes they just make you feel good. Sometimes, too, you just wonder how in the world someone could believe something like that? At least you know now that there are about 30 beliefs you never have to think about again. It’s a start to a cleansed mind!
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Nick Arizza, a medical doctor, has written a delightful essay entitled, “All your problems are based in false beliefs at ezinearticles.com, in which he discusses all the cleansing that can occur when you are freed of your false beliefs: “a feeling of lightening (i.e. a sense of buoyancy and an inner sense of radiance), feelings of relief, feelings of joy and contentment, feelings of self confidence, self esteem and self confidence, feelings of grounded ness and feelings of being more present in one's physical body than ever before.” Now that’s cleansing!
At trans4mind.com, Peter Shepherd has written an essay on “False beliefs,” in which his main thesis is: “Just recognizing your own particular false beliefs is the first and most important step toward letting go of them, to de-programming yourself. Next you need to re-evaluate your deeply-held belief and see if you'd like to revise it.” Shepherd offers a number of suggestions for cleansing your mind.
A third essay, this one by Julie Jordan Scott, a Life Purpose coach, writer, and speaker, at the website topachievement.com, in an essay entitled, “Taking Action to Eliminate False Beliefs,” takes a similar tack as the two authors above, and after a number of recommendations for dealing with false beliefs, she concludes: “Choose today to eliminate false thinking from your mind's vocabulary. When you "hear" your thoughts walking that path of inertia, take the power away from them. Say STOP! Replace this false belief with a Truth. Take action on truth. Watch the amazing course that flow unfold before you.”
-----
Copyright May, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC
I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Kida and Thompson for these thoughts and for their support. I have borrowed heavily from these books, and I have avoided quotation marks for ease of reading—but, be clear about this, these are their thoughts, not mine.
The first big time waster is any beliefs you may have in fortunetellers, palm readers, and astrologers. The last “big name” to give credence to astrology, of course, was Nancy Reagan, who consulted an astrologist whenever deciding President Reagan’s schedule. Beliefs in any of these is pure nonsense.
One trap that we fall into is believing in stories rather than in statistics. I am continually telling people that when you hear of an accident, shooting, robbery, baby’s death, or any other extraordinary event, there often follows a law, ruling, or mandate designed specifically to prevent other similar accidents, shootings, robberies, or deaths. So, you have one incident that makes the news—an anecdote—and people scurry to prevent other similar instances when, often, these examples are rare, exceptional, or unique. A teenager holds up a small grocery store, and suddenly you have a curfew in the neighborhood designed to keep teenagers at home after dark. Another good example is when you hear of a recall of a certain model because of problems incurred by a small number of people, and you avoid purchasing any car made by that company.
The second area where we can cleanse our mind is in any intention we may have regarding talking with the dead, facilitated communication, therapeutic touch, and dowsing (a technique in which an individual holds an object, like a Y-shaped tree branch and walks around the land in search of water. When the branch twitches, it’s taken as a sign that water is below.) A belief in any of these is ludicrous as well, and yet bright, capable, highly trained people hold extraordinary beliefs such as these that have little or no credible supporting evidence.
A third area where a significant number of people believe in something where there is little or no credible evidence to support their beliefs, and the beliefs are contradicted by hard evidence, is that there is such a thing as extrasensory perception, that houses can be haunted, that people are sometimes possessed by the devil, that there is such a thing as telepathy—or communication between minds without the five senses—that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth, that there is such a thing as clairvoyance—or perceiving things not present to the senses—and that reincarnation exists.
Another area where you can cleanse your mind is any beliefs you have in graphology— analyzing a person’s handwriting to determine what kind of person he or she is. Research shows that graphology is totally useless, but you may have been denied a job if a graphologist said your handwriting indicated you are untrustworthy.
A fourth area where cleansing can take place is support of a large number of commonly held beliefs. For example, that humans use only 10 percent of their brains, the blind develop supersensitive hearing, crime and drugs are out of control in the United States, low self-esteem is a cause of aggression, religious people are more altruistic than less religious people, opposites attract, or if you’re happy in your job, you will be more productive. There is no research to support these ideas.
Also, you can cleanse your mind by removing beliefs you may have in such topics as Atlantis, bigfoot, UFOs, Bible prophecy, psychic powers, religious images or patterns seen in unrelated objects, near-death experiences, miracle diets, creationism, paranormal phenomena, or the existence of ghosts. Anytime you hear a comment from someone who has witnessed an event —whatever it is—and says, “I knew right away it was a ghost/miracle/fairy/or whatever, because there is no other way to explain it,” you can rest assured that the claim is bogus, and the speaker is naive. As I said earlier in this essay, we love stories. A discussion of the contribution the media make in fostering beliefs in the weird and bizarre would offer material for a whole book.
There are a number of other beliefs, too, that you can discard. Breast implants cause serious disease. It isn’t true now, and it never was true. All anecdotal evidence. Levitation is not supported by evidence. Not a single death or serious injury has occurred from kids eating Halloween candy received from strangers. No poisoned candy or apples containing razor blades. Classified under pseudoscience is a whole range of activities related to parapsychology (some mentioned previously) such as extrasensory perception, telepathy (reading other’s minds), clairvoyance (perceiving things not present to the senses), and precognition (seeing the future). None of it exists; none of it is true.
How can you deal with falsehoods, fabrications, half truths, and lies? Kida has some suggestions, and they fall under the heading, “Think like a scientist.” First, keep an open mind, and be skeptical of any unsubstantiated claims. Second, make sure a claim or belief can be tested. Third, evaluate the quality of the evidence for a belief. Fourth, try to falsify a claim or belief (e.g., look for disconfirming evidence). Fifth, consider alternative explanations (even chance or coincidence). Sixth, other things being equal, choose the claim or belief that is the simplest explanation for the phenomenon. Seventh, choose the claim or belief that doesn’t conflict with well-established knowledge. And, eighth, proportion your belief to the amount of evidence for or against that belief.
No, there is no way to totally cleanse your mind, of course, and we will always be guilty of holding some false beliefs. Sometimes it’s just fun to consider ideas you know are clearly false or outrageous. Sometimes they just make you feel good. Sometimes, too, you just wonder how in the world someone could believe something like that? At least you know now that there are about 30 beliefs you never have to think about again. It’s a start to a cleansed mind!
-----
Nick Arizza, a medical doctor, has written a delightful essay entitled, “All your problems are based in false beliefs at ezinearticles.com, in which he discusses all the cleansing that can occur when you are freed of your false beliefs: “a feeling of lightening (i.e. a sense of buoyancy and an inner sense of radiance), feelings of relief, feelings of joy and contentment, feelings of self confidence, self esteem and self confidence, feelings of grounded ness and feelings of being more present in one's physical body than ever before.” Now that’s cleansing!
At trans4mind.com, Peter Shepherd has written an essay on “False beliefs,” in which his main thesis is: “Just recognizing your own particular false beliefs is the first and most important step toward letting go of them, to de-programming yourself. Next you need to re-evaluate your deeply-held belief and see if you'd like to revise it.” Shepherd offers a number of suggestions for cleansing your mind.
A third essay, this one by Julie Jordan Scott, a Life Purpose coach, writer, and speaker, at the website topachievement.com, in an essay entitled, “Taking Action to Eliminate False Beliefs,” takes a similar tack as the two authors above, and after a number of recommendations for dealing with false beliefs, she concludes: “Choose today to eliminate false thinking from your mind's vocabulary. When you "hear" your thoughts walking that path of inertia, take the power away from them. Say STOP! Replace this false belief with a Truth. Take action on truth. Watch the amazing course that flow unfold before you.”
-----
Copyright May, 2010, by And Then Some Publishing, LLC
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