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Probaway – Life Hacks

~ Many helpful hints on living your life more successfully.

Tag Archives: psychology

Sweeping UU sidewalks

13 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by probaway in Contentment, diary, habits, happiness, Health, Kindness, photography, policy, psychology, survival

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Carrying water, Chopping wood, Contentment, Diary, Epigrams, habits, Kindness, policy, psychology, Shoveling snow, survival

I just realized I’ve been doing some things beyond Chopping wood, carrying water, and shoveling snow. I’ve been sweeping sidewalks.

The photo above is of the UU front entrance, taken last week, as I departed for home. Notice the sidewalk isn’t covered with pine needles even though there are Ponderosa pine trees directly overhead. Almost every Sunday I sweep the needles, or in the winter clear the snow from this area, and occasionally along the paths to the car parking areas too.

There isn’t any payment for this needed task, and other people do tasks that are certainly more essential to the operations of our fellowship, but I do this. No one asked me to do it, and occasionally people will help. When the snow is a foot or two or three deep, people come to the rescue. It is a real challenge making paths out to the cars and there are several guys that pitch in and do the real effortful labor. The roads are contracted to be plowed, but not the paths; we do the paths.

Occasionally something special happens, and this morning was one of them. A boy  about three years old, whom I barely recognize because he is just one of the three hundred people who walk by, said, “Hi, Charles, thank you for sweeping the sidewalk.” He might have been prompted by his mom before they came close to say my name, but it was the kid who said it and probably added the thank you for sweeping, and that made me feel good.

Some of the adults do say thank you, and I appreciate that, but I am not doing the cleanup for the thanks; I’m doing because it makes everyone coming into this building have a more pleasant experience. And, in a small way, their seeing someone who is simply a member making it look and feel better is meaningful. It is better than if it were cleaned by someone paid to clean it. Out of sight, out of mind, like a rainy and windy act of nature washing the mess away and making it look clean in its own natural way.

When nature has its way, this area looks messy and I clean it up to civilized standards.

The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece – line 51

26 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by probaway in 7 Sages of Greece, Condensed thoughts, diary, Epigrams, habits, happiness, Health, Kindness, policy, psychology, survival

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7 Sages of Greece, Contentment, Diary, Epigrams, habits, happiness, Health, policy, psychology, research, Shun criminals and murderers, survival

I had a conversation this morning with my friend R about the Wisdom of the 7 Sages of Ancient Greece. He was bothered by line # 51, Shun criminals and murderers.  He was asserting that I was going to get a lot of blowback on all the brief precepts on the list. But he felt that #51 was the most repugnant. Those people don’t want to be put into a negative category and shunned. They are already under a social black cloud and their lives have already been made so difficult they were driven to acts that society considers so offensive they were punished. That punishment he considered enough and too much in most cases. Those criminals and murderers have suffered enough and should now be treated as well as other people.

My idea was to go back to the first suggestions. # 1 Seek and pursue goodness and # 2 Obey all laws. The basic idea running through the 147 suggestions is similar to the very first, # 1 Seek and pursue goodness. Thus, when a person is as good as we wise and sentient beings should be, then we would treat them according to # 15 Empower your friends for good deeds. That would include criminals and murderers if they were friends, but if we followed # 51 we would Shun criminals and murderers, and they would not be our friends. R would assert that everyone deserves to be treated well and everyone should be considered a friend. I would agree and say in line # 97 Give friendly greetings to everyone. And yet, if a person was a convicted criminal and murderer it would seem fair to apply # 116 Walk quietly away from hatred, and it would seem that a murderer had hatred going at some level to have committed so heinous an act. The same could be said for any crime that resulted in a criminal conviction.

The word shun is also used in line # 136 Be happy and shun debauchery. In that case, it is an excessive personal action that is to be shunned, not a person. In our personal actions, we are encouraged to # 12 Behave with discretion, #13 Bring honor to your family, # 14 Avoid improper actions. Debauchery is an excess of some sort and easily leads to difficulties. In every way # 17 Avoid all unnecessary risks. There are plenty of necessary risks in life but we can avoid some of the unnecessary ones, such as debauchery, known criminals, and murderers.

In the end, #91 Be kind to everyone, they have troubles too.

A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Teaching

23 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by probaway in Epigrams

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Bad examples, Epigrams, habits, learning, policy, psychology, Teaching

A Dictionary of New Epigrams

TEACHING

A teacher is a fool on stilts.

Give a hungry man a fish and he will give you a grudging thank you.

Give a man your fishing pond and some fishing equipment and he will sell your fish.

Your personal experience is your best teacher but it’s expensive.

One who refuses to learn will remain ignorant forever.

It is better to be ignorant of facts than fail to use those you have.

A man can concoct fabulous answers but reality has consistent questions.

A great teacher asks great questions.

Watch others carefully and learn from their good and bad examples.

I saw a group of young women with knee braces and crutches today.

I saw a man get out of his car door into close-passing traffic today.

Poor teachers work for little reward, bad teachers work for punishments.

The wisdom you must defend becomes your deepest teacher.

A good teacher’s wisdom stimulates some ennui and occasional laughter.

1 + 1 = 2 by definition.

Most wisdom is obvious.

Philosophers Squared – William James

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by probaway in Philosophers Squared

≈ 10 Comments

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Philosophers Squared, Practical philosophy, Pragmatism, psychology, William James

Go to the Index of 120 Philosophers Squared

William James (1842 – 1910) was the creator of American Pragmatism and functional psychology. It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

William James

William James, philosopher

Quotations from William James sourced from, WikiQuotes, GoodReads, BrainyQuote,

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.

I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!”

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.

difference

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”

Pragmatism asks its usual question. “Grant an idea or belief to be true,” it says, “what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?”

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one’s self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation; and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist of the inaptitude for these sacrificial moods, of which one’s own inferior self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and the victims.”

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: “There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important.” This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below.

Man’s chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities — his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if  she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition — it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind — yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs about us.

Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one’s self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence.

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

When all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary.

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature’s order altogether?

But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are ‘reliefs,’ occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. … In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan’s neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend’s figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us — they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.  Procrastination is attitude’s natural assassin. There’s nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task [Slack, is the getting well ahead of the personal demands, and if slack is the opposite of procrastination it will give energy and zest to life.]

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

To change one’s life:1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.

Belief creates the actual fact.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that thing, for the purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all.

The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity . … It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same.
The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before.
A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. ‘This sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without one is one of the commonest entries in conversion records.

I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow ‘scientific’ bounds. 

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

To spend life for something which outlasts it.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.


COMMENTS

The core of William James appears to be his development of the idea of self-control of one’s future habits by developing the practice of acting.

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

Belief creates the actual fact.

This last statement is obviously absurd, and yet it is the core of James’ belief system. If there was the tiniest fragment of testable proof of some part of a belief, then that would instantly fall into the known and would not require it to be labeled “belief.” Thus it is that all belief is untested, and most of it is un-testable and therefore might fairly be labeled with the indelicate term – bunk.

It is obvious that All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits, and we were physically present in the past, when our habits were formed; assuming the same processes are now available to us, we can to some extent modify those habits, or at least overlay them, with new habits of our conscious choosing. If you have sufficient self-control, which is modest at best, he is right. If you can change your mind, you can change your life; but of course for nearly everyone this is beyond their capacity, and they simply live from moment to moment with the habits they acquired unconsciously.

If you are in an environment where you can practice your chosen new role as your new self you can have some success at modifying your habits. If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. The key word is “act”. That is to pretend that you have the quality. If you are able to convince the other actors in practice or ordinary people around you that you have this quality it becomes easier to advance with the desired new habits. This technique generally isn’t available except in acting studios, or to some extent in personally practicing out loud mental simulations.

Where James falls off the bridge to a better life, for me, is when he moves on to religion. There he makes what were plausible claims when relating to daily affairs,  Belief creates the actual fact, into nonsensical claims about the unknowable. He acknowledges that there isn’t any proof of the validity of his religious points, other than that past civilizations at some time move on to better systems of generating belief, and then he claims through an evolution of religions to come to the present ones, which by his mode of thinking are therefore the most fit to exist in this world. The present religions are now here because they survived all the previous ones, and are therefore better.

It all gets weak for me and I find myself preferring the Roman Stoics, whose secular “religion” was intentionally killed by Christianity; see the post on Hypatia. That brought on the dark ages for Europe which lasted for a thousand years, and in retrospect few people would consider that a positive social evolutionary growth.

James says, It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence; I heartily agree with that statement, however he then spends much of his energy speculating well over into the realm of Belief creates the actual fact, which by most rational observers would claim to be faulty well over into the realm of insanity.

Top Ten reasons not to worry about Doomsday.

01 Friday Aug 2008

Posted by probaway in happiness, survival

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

psychology, survival

Most people don’t think much about Doomsday even though it will probably be an important event in their life, like a birthday, or having a child, or dying. Because it seems like a worthwhile topic I have brought the subject up many times with my coffee shop friends, but most of the time people soon tune out or just walk away. Here are some of the usual responses to Doomsday.

  1. “Oh NO why didn’t someone tell me about this before …” ahhhhh … actually that never happened.
  2. “Those dirty warmongering arms dealing rats! They will do anything to make money.” That happens quite a lot. It always works to blame somebody else.
  3. “This is an unpleasant topic so let’s talk about something more interesting. Where are we are going to have dinner. Or the coffee doesn’t taste as good as it used to. Did you see … ???” Insert a movie or book or silly political silliness.
  4. “A major atomic war will never happen because no one is stupid enough to do that.” Yes, like Hiroshima never happened or even Nagasaki.
  5. “Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevents wars so we haven’t had one and never will.” To say the least there is lots of luck involved in this strategy.
  6. “The world is just too big, and too important to be destroyed.” On these subjects there is no one doing the measuring.
  7. “God wouldn’t permit it, because he loves humanity, and besides I am going to heaven when I die because I believe in – blat.” We all might wish this were true, but it would be helpful if there was some reproducible corroboration.
  8. “Our President has all the facts, and isn’t worried so why should I worry.” Our leaders are scared all the time, but they are carefully protected from showing fear, because it makes the public behave irrationally, and they start thinking.
  9. “Outside problems don’t interest me, when I am fully involved in my own thing.” That works quite well, until you and your thing vanish.
  10. “We will all be dead in a hundred years anyway, so why worry about the exact date or reason.” Actually a more realistic number is ten years.
  11. “I can’t do anything about it anyway, so why waste time thinking about it.” Actually there is quite a lot you can do, but it requires some thinking about it.
  12. “I focus on the good stuff, and I have some really good pot.” If that fails there is always some religious person to help you, for a small fee—like all your money, and your soul.
  13. “We have plenty of problems already, and don’t need to worry about that one until we get to it, and don’t bother me while I’m thinking about riding my skateboard down this staircase railing.” Duh.
  14. “I will do my job, and if everyone does their job, everything will be all right.” That’s a nice sentiment but millions of people’s jobs is to kill other people, they are called soldiers.
  15. “The Lifehaven project will give us a second chance.” OK but you have to do it, for it to work.

Okay, so I overshot the Top Ten a bit. It’s easy to do because there are infinitely more than ten reasons why not to worry about Doomsday. Just pick anything ridiculous that comes to mind, and promote it as a reason not to worry about Doomsday, and without doubt you will soon find you have plenty of boisterous supporters of your pathetic whine.


Do you have trouble remembering faces?

19 Saturday Jan 2008

Posted by probaway in Health, psychology

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

conference, face blindness, Health, Neuroesthetics, personal, prosopagnosia, psychology, trouble, vision

Today I attended “The 7th International Conference on Neuroesthetics” which was held on the University of California, Berkeley campus. The conference was primarily a series of lectures about facial recognition, and the lack of it by people with a condition called prosopagnosia, which is sometimes called face-blindness. Sometimes, these people acquired the condition by being brain injured in an accident and sometimes they are born with it.

An early report, “Quaglino, 1867 – “Mr LL, a 54-year-old bank clerk from Turin, a strong and healthy man … on February 28th, 1865 … fell unexpectedly on the floor, unconscious … He recovered after several days … I examined him a year after his stroke … At this stage, his near and far vision was excellent, and he could read even the smallest characters extremely well. As he joked, he could have hunted the tiniest birds from the tops of the trees. … he could not clearly discern objects presented to his left side (left hemianopia) … Of all colours, he could only distinguish white and black. Having presented him with a series of large characters in various colours, in fact, he failed to name any of the colours … He also noticed that he had completely lost the ability to remember faces, the facades of house, and familiar scenes. I remember, he said, the names of my friends when I meet them, but as soon as they have turned their backs to me, I no longer recall their features.””

An extreme example of this condition is Lincoln Holmes who can see perfectly well – but he cannot recognize his own face.

People with prosopagnosia may have normal vision, but somehow they don’t have the ability to automatically assemble the various parts of their view of a face into a coherent conception of an individual face. It seems they have to intellectually assemble the various components of a face by looking at the various parts. But with their condition their brain doesn’t automatically click the images into a completely recognizable face. They can’t recognize their own friends by their faces but must look at some detail such as their clothes. For most of us this clicking together, and recognition of a friend’s face is automatic and takes place almost instantly. We see faces, and recognize many things about them instantly and without effort.

For example, a normal person would see a face when looking at this image, and if they knew the person instantly know who they were –

prosopagnosia-1.

but a person suffering from prosopagnosia would see something like this –

prosopagnosia-07 - face samples

or even worse. It is a bit difficult to communicate what they are actually seeing, and perceiving because their total view and acuity can be excellent; it is the assembling of the eyes’ images into a coherent whole automatically which is faulty, and their view it isn’t described as being blurry. For these people the image just doesn’t seem to stay assembled into an individually recognizable face, and they must use words to identify the face, and then remember the description to remember the face. For examplethe face  above might be described as: Full lower lip, drooping eyelid, exposed nostrils, arched eyebrow, slight wrinkle dropping from the corners of the mouth. Part of the problem is that that list of words becomes too long and difficult to remember, and also one must stop, and think up something that groups several unique items together. From a separate personal problem I developed Probaway-Habits. Perhaps those suggestions may offer some possible help. See numbers 24, 27, 40, 56, 59, 65, 68, 73, 168, 170, 174, 185, 192, 211, 213, 228, 229, 386. A blind friend of mine has developed a remarkable ability to identify people by their voice alone.

Jeff Hawkins‘ book On Intelligence (website) describes how all the brain areas are very similar in physical tissue, and tissue organization. It is the input from various locations, eye, ear, finger or nose that determines what the particular bit of brain does with basically the same type of electro-chemical input. At any given brain location the input goes through six layers of organization, and is in turn throughput to the next layer which in its turn creates organization, and is throughput to the next layer. There is a constant feedback looping to the various layers until a consciousness is presented. It is only the final organized data on the last level that becomes the information which becomes conscious to the person observing the original external event. With some persons with prosopagnosia there is actual injured brain tissue, or absent tissue, or non-functioning tissue in the Hawkins’ sense. It is still an enigma, but with active research there may be some helpful results developed. Some things of particular interest are: the impaired holistic processing of the face, in particular the loss of diagnosticity of the eyes and for some reason an increased reliance on the mouth region.

For me, with normal vision, what the lecturers described was similar to what I experience when I look at 3-D pictures without using a proper stereo viewing scope. I have to point my eyes consciously and separately to an infinity distance point, beyond the picture, but focus each eye up close. When I do it just right I see in 3-Dimensions. The wikipedia article on stereoscopy shows some pictures which you can look at to get more of a theoretical understanding of 3-D.

This is a separate issue from prosopagnosia but it may be helpful for you normally sighted people to get a feel of the problem the prosopagnosiacs are facing. If you look at the pictures below you can, if you have the ability, feel and see the stereo image click into view. This all happens in your brain more than in your eyes and you can feel it happen. With a person with prosopagnosia this same assemblage of parts of a face doesn’t appear to click into a whole perception of a face. Below is a face from the New York Stereoscopic Society.

Observe how your emotions and your brain feel a bit dazed and confused just a second before the images resolve into a stereo 3-D image.

3-D skull

Try and resolve this into 3-D and while you do try and feel your eyes and brain working. It is worth the effort, and there is more than one mental effect you will get.

If you can’t make that one work the one below may be a little easier.

3-D WWI airplanes

To get more on prosopagnosia go to:Macquarie University – the site has some perception tests.

The Wikipedia site on Prosopagnosia

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Berkeley Science review article on prosopagnosia.

At the conference they said that it was previously thought that prosopagnosia was a very rare condition, but now that it is being researched it is thought that as many as two percent of the general population may have it. By the time people with the condition are adult they have usually worked out various strategies for coping with the problem. However, being isolated individuals they may not know that they have a treatable problem, and that there are techniques which others may have discovered which may be helpful to them. So, if you have trouble recognizing faces check out some of the sites listed above.

Dr. Strangelove: the movie was a morbid noir BOMB.

13 Sunday Jan 2008

Posted by probaway in reviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

airplanes, B-47, B-52, Dr Strangelove, H-bomb, Jack D. Ripper, movies, noir, psychology, WMD

Netflix came through with Dr. Strangelove overnight, so I got a reminiscence of my earlier life in the United States Air Force, in SAC (Strategic Air Command). The “Peace is our Profession” logo and poster was even more ubiquitous at McConnell Air Force Base, a real one, than at Burpelson Air Force Base, the fictional one in the movie.

Peace is our profession.

However, this slogan was almost absent from a Google image search. But in those good old days, late 50s early 60’s, it was on the dinner table place mats, on the napkins, on the walls, on the stationery, and everywhere else for that matter; I never noticed any on the toilet paper though. Often the slogan had a picture of a nice New England style church with a B-47 flying over it.

B-47 But, I didn’t find one of those but it looked sort of like this B-47 with a church under it.

The various Strangelovian characters are beautifully acted in an comic noir style, and they are loosely based on various real world participants. The general consensus is that George C. Scott’s character was based on the real SAC commander General Curtis LeMay; but I felt Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper was a much closer portrayal of LeMay. But, there is no need for me to quibble over these trivialities because all of the characters are simply fictional composites. The real pleasure is in the movie, and how its underlying horror is made into very funny dialogue. The visuals were quite accurate, with a few strange exceptions like the shadow of a visible B-52 is cast as a B-17, and the amateurish, model of a B-52, wobbling about over mountains in “Siberia”.

One disturbing thing for me was that the quality and consistency of the reasoning of the characters in the movie was much better than their real world counterparts. The real people were just as crazy as those portrayed, but they were constrained by regulations and, reality. I was there and knew some of those people pretty well. For example, one of the more bizarre events in my life as a pilot was late one night when a couple of drunken B-47 pilots came into my BOQ, and with a knife sliced up a map of the world I happened to have on my wall, saying, “I want to drop the bomb; I really want to drop the bomb – it would make me feel really good to drop the bomb.” That’s a direct quote which I found very easy to remember all of these years. I suppose a bomber pilot has to be willing to drop his bombs, but I don’t think it is desirable for him, or for the rest of us, for him to be eager to drop his bombs, especially when they are H-bombs.

It is probably a good idea to watch this movie every decade or so, just to keep ones sanity. Keeping in mind the sub-title – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

What do people really want – a Hummer or a Tata? ? ?

12 Saturday Jan 2008

Posted by probaway in automobile, habits, psychology, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

automobile, cars, ecology, economy, environmental, footprint, gas, habits, Hummer, mpg, politics, psychology, Tata, Tata Nano

Oh, the hypocrisy of it all. We Americans claim to be so dedicated to being environmentally conscious, and striving to leave a small environmental footprint, but those are words. A better measure of what Americans like, and where their values really reside is what they spend their money on. Words are easy, but money “costs” … well money; and generally it costs real physical, and mental effort to get the money. So that is what people are really putting out for their various necessities such as cars, be they giant gas guzzlers like a Hummer, or overly big electricity sippers like the Prius. When it comes to a truly efficient personal transportation, you can’t buy it in America; it just isn’t available. You can buy motorcycles, but they are terrible when it comes to passenger miles per gallon, and miles per fatality (but that’s another issue).

But now there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon and it comes not from the American cowboys in Detroit but from the Indians. Its called the Tata Nano and although it doesn’t cost much it gets double the gas mileage of the current American fleet.

tata_nano_4.jpg Tata Nano Wiki

Of course it isn’t as ugly as a Hummer and it probably won’t fly like one

Flying Hummer GM Hummer Wiki

but I suspect it makes a valiant effort, and could get you, and four friends from home to your jobs using less than one fifth the gas.

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