the evolving mind

The above backyard flower is beautiful. Though the protruding, color-blushed tissue around its “private part” (its ground zero for sexual activity, be it via a kinky insect-intermediary) . . . and the inner yellow rim and darkness beyond . . . someone throw a bathrobe on that plant! It’s indecent.

Just kidding. Why are we not equally free to enjoy the beauty of human nakedness? Maybe because signs of sexuality are potent human stimuli and can motivate many types of behavior. Following or simultaneous to arousal arise a slew of potential social issues.

So while I would certainly advocate for less Puritanical attitudes about human nakedness in virtually all media, I’m not convinced the walking and talking variety of full nakedness would an element of an enlightened society. A groovy society, maybe. Would a garment-free society be high-functioning in most regards? I doubt it. Beyond protecting us from the elements, clothes are a good idea. No, not all in all regards. But at least some. I think.

Technorati Links: culture, sexuality

Man, wouldn’t that 42 inch plasma television make my life great(er)! Of course, I just may habituate to that change in my life after a number of weeks or months, and the new tv will no longer bring the satisfaction it once did. Hmm. A second home! That’s exactly what I need to make mine a good life!

Human beings can be materialistic for a number of reasons. One reason is that our possessions can function as status symbols. Yes, we are not only keeping up with the Jones’s, we’ve got it better! Another reason may be that possessions are concrete and specific. We can see, hear, feel, touch them. Attaining them is a more straightforward and simple matter than attaining, say, a state of mind.

What makes a life good? In a brief article over at the APS website (Association for Psychological science) I encountered this wonderful paragraph [source] -

So far we have learned from psychology that a good life includes experiencing more positive than negative feelings, feeling like your life has been lived well, continually using your talents and strengths, having close interpersonal relationships, being engaged at work and other activities, being a part of a social community, perceiving that life has a meaning, and feeling healthy and safe. And while these conclusions may seem like common sense, we as humans fall short on knowing just how to obtain and maintain these qualities.

As for as I know, neither Bloomingdale’s nor Walmart stocks their shelves with the above.

I find it interesting that all of the listed variables, aside from “feeling healthy and safe,” have a social component to them: either outright or as a contributing factor or context.

We are social animals. When our social life is good, we tend to be content.

Technorati Links: mental health, perception

The above NASA photo is stunning. Simply stunning. What is it? Not the sun. The sun’s corona. A thing in itself.

Technorati Links: cosmos, NASA

The science website, EurekaAlert! is the “global news service” of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. So I tend to expect more from what I find there. But, alas, I will encounter the occasional headline that makes me shake my head. Like this one:

Ants more rational than humans

Huh? Yes, human beings are far from consistently rational. Far from. But I’m not sure if ants are ever rational. My own, off-the-top-of-my-head, understanding of rationality goes something like this:

Rationality is the conscious weighing of information to come to an unbiased decision or conclusion.

The most important element of rationality is the conscious deliberation part. Sure, call someone afraid of flying irrational. You can be afraid of flying despite knowing there is relatively nothing to fear. However, emotional responses and behavior are one thing, sometimes a completely distinct thing from conscious deliberation. If thinking is an essential component to rationality, that is what we must highlight in evaluating how rational or not a person is. Same goes for any other species.

Do ants think, do they deliberate when confronted with two options? If we are going to refer to them as rational, or not, we probably ought to answer that question first.

Consider the following quotes from the news release about ants being more rational than human beings. I think you will see for yourself how the claim completely falls apart upon even a cursory level of scrutiny.

“This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint: most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony’s collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants. . . “

If ants know of only one option, how can they be said to choose and thus be rational? Also, it seems not individual ants are “rational” but that groups of ants behave rationally.

The authors’ insights arose from an examination of the process of nest selection in the ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus. These ant colonies live in small cavities, as small as an acorn, and are skillful in finding new places to roost. The challenge before the colony was to “choose” a nest, when offered two options with very similar advantages.

Notice the quotes around choose? The writer of the piece is apparently somewhat aware of the bogus anthropomorphizing going on.

What the authors found is that in collective decision-making in ants, the lack of individual options translated into more accurate outcomes by minimizing the chances for individuals to make mistakes. A “wisdom of crowds” approach emerges, Pratt believes.

Oh Lard. And human beings never come to better decisions when part of groups? I suppose that is why government always consists of single individuals working in isolation. But wait, it doesn’t.

Finally, in terms of ants being more rational, the comparison with human beings under similar circumstances just isn’t covered. So how can the ants be more? They can’t.

That is one heck of a bogus headline.

Technorati Links: cognition, critical thinking, semantics

Both of the above bougainvillea flowers could fit on the head of a penny. Together. But don’t stand too close. The plant’s thorns may get you.

The mauve (?) plant tissue, by the way, is not flower petal, but “bracts.” Wild.

Technorati Links: flora

It seems we now have a murder case to solve that stretches back 50,000 years plus. The statute of limitations is probably up, but inquiring minds want to know, “Who killed that Neanderthal?”

Here are the facts. A research team from Duke University have determined that the wound that killed a Neanderthal man came from a spear. Judging by the angle of the cut mark left in his “left ninth rib,” and other factors, the vic didn’t fall on his own weapon. Was it an innocent hunting accident? Or murder! [Cue dramatic music.]

A likely murder. So says not Gil Grissom, but Steven Churchill, a smarty-pants (in a good way) professor of evolutionary psychology at Duke. I wonder what actor we can get to play him for the television series I have in mind.

The extremely ancient incident occurred in what is now Iraq. While there was no way to dust for fingerprints, Churchill and four “investigators” -

used a specially calibrated crossbow, copies of ancient stone points and numerous animal carcasses to make their deductions.

But wait, here’s the totally cool, exciting twist: This was not a case of Neanderthal on Neanderthal violence, but Human on Neanderthal! It seems that only stone points made by our ancestors could have killed that dude.

[Red-line background score now.]

Great Grandpa (to the xth degree) did it!

Cool! Who said science is boring!

(Not me.)

[source]

Technorati Links: anthropology, evolution

Some plants are both beautiful and edible. In the case of the above ivy (I think it’s some form of ivy) the appeal to the eye and the appeal to the stomach may come not from different perspectives but by different species.

A tangential thought: I find it curious that people will sometimes say, “He/she is so cute, I could just eat him/her up!”

A bit weird, isn’t it? Here’s my half-penny, passing conjecture: Perhaps that tendency has something to do with the crucial human interest in “getting closer” to both loved individuals and potential high-quality foods. Maybe. Probably not. It certainly is an interesting dynamic, though.

Technorati Links: flora, semantics

I am a skeptic. In other words, I habitually exercise critical thinking skills. One of the things I typically scrutinize is word use. Words are the brain’s primary tool, and we do better work when we use them precisely.

So that is why my inner word-curmudgeon got his undies in a bunch over this article: Can brain scans read your mind?

First, can a brain scan “read”? Or are the results of a brain scan read by individual human beings?

While the article covered the possibility of future technology “reading people’s minds,” and current research using an fMRI to “revealing hidden thoughts,” the actual science was about something different. Something more precise.

Here’s the science -

In the study, 130 healthy young adults had their brains scanned in an MRI scanner at UCLA’s Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center while they performed one of eight mental tasks, including reading words aloud, saying whether pairs of words rhyme, counting the number of tones they heard, pressing buttons at certain cues and making monetary decisions. The scientists calculated how accurately they could tell from the fMRI brain scans which mental task each participant was engaged in.

Via a nicely blinded protocol, research assistants — the scientists, otherwise known as “people” — were able to determine what activity the subject was engaged in 80% of the time. Which is impressive.

But no, neither did the scanning device nor the scientists do any reading of thoughts. They interpreted brain scans so as to determine the type of mental activity the subject was engaged in.

There is a big difference. So no, there is currently no technology available that would be able to determine that Ted is thinking about his blonde co-worker and that dynamite yellow dress she wore on casual Friday. They might be able to determine that Ted was thinking (imagining or remembering) about something arousing. Perhaps. They might even be able to determine that the content was sexual in nature. I don’t know. But I certainly wouldn’t use the word “reading” to describe the process.

And that concludes episode #53 of The Tirades of a Word Curmudgeon.

Technorati Links: cognition, critical thinking, semantics

From my few months with a digital microscope I have discovered that nature is very hairy. Many plants I’ve looked at, for example, have small hairs on their stems and/or leaves.

And what of the above? Those look like hairs to me. What do they look like to you? Hint: x60. Answer below the fold.

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: biology, fauna, microscope, puzzle

My bad. I may have gotten something wrong. Fortunately, it wasn’t a fact but a conjecture. A mistaken conjecture is still worth noting, I think.

In a previous post I speculated about why the confirmation bias is such a pervasive problem in human thought and belief. Briefly put, it consist of the tendency to notice events and information that confirm your belief coupled with the failure to acknowledge events and information that could challenge and disconfirm your belief.

In How Bogus Beliefs Persist (I): Blondes Have More Fun I used a “net” analogy to describe belief and the apprehension of information.

If a belief consists of a neural network, an analogy can be drawn between beliefs and butterfly nets. When holding a belief-net, we are capable of catching those flitting bits of data that fit the net. But here’s the rub: How are we to catch relevant bits of data that don’t fit?

But the real issue my have more to do with cellular dynamics.

In “Why We Learn More From Our Successes Than Our Failures” at ScienceDaily a study into cellular changes involved in learning was described. (Remembering something — when it goes into memory –is learning.)

“We have shown that brain cells keep track of whether recent behaviors were successful or not,” Miller said. Furthermore, when a behavior was successful, cells became more finely tuned to what the animal was learning. After a failure, there was little or no change in the brain — nor was there any improvement in behavior.

And here’s come another speculation. I think dopamine may be involved. Perhaps a “hit” will generate in us more of a dopamine release than does a “miss.” Thus beliefs are easier to confirm than the accumulate the evidence needed to overthrow them. (Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in alertness and the experience of reward/pleasure. Addictive behaviors increase dopamine levels, temporarily). And so the confirming items stick with us more. Perhaps.

Maybe we need to drink more coffee when exposing ourselves to potentially disconfirming evidence.

Technorati Links: belief, neurology, perception