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_________ _________ Dr. Vertegaal's group is also implementing these findings to facilitate user interactions with large groups of computers such as personal digital assistants and cellular phones. The eye contact experiment used computer-generated images from actors who conveyed different levels of attention (gazing at the subject, gazing at the other actor, looking away, and looking down). These images were presented to the subjects, who believed they were in an actual three-way video conferencing situation, attempting to solve language puzzles. The researchers concluded that people in group discussions will speak up more if they receive a greater amount of eye contact from other group members. There was no relationship between the impact of the eye contact and when it occurred. "The effect of eye gaze has literally fascinated people throughout the ages," says Dr. Vertegaal, whose paper, Explaining Effects of Eye Gaze on Mediated Group Conversations: Amount or Synchronization? was presented this week at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. "Sumerian clay tablets dating back to 3000 BC already tell the story of Ereshkigal, goddess of the underworld, who had the power to kill Inanna, goddess of love, with a deadly eye," says Dr. Vertegaal. "Now that we are attempting to build more sophisticated conversational interfaces that mirror the communicative capabilities of their users, it has become clear we need to learn more about communicative functions of gaze behaviours." Editor's Note: The original news release can be found here. Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued for journalists and other members of the public. If you wish to quote any part of this story, please credit Queen's University as the original source. You may also wish to include the following link in any citation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021122073858.htm In a message dated
11/25/2002 5:03:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, n.j.c.bannan writes: The
act of singing, when entered into such as to capture most efficiently
the flow of breath and the resulting resonances perceived both aurally
and as sensations in the hard tissue able to respond, also 're-sets
the face'. hb: very intriguing. nb: This is why I have found it so extraordinary
that the proposals as to musical origins of human communication, especially
language, which one finds in nineteenth century authors such as Darwin,
Helmholtz and Nietzsche, were barely carried on in, for instance, post-Saussure
linguistics, yet remain alive and well throughout twentieth century
voice teaching from the final publication of Garcia through to the synthesis
of science and practice one encounters in Sundberg and Thurman. I would
urge anyone wanting to develop their understanding of this phenomenon
to talk to an effective, scientifically-informed singing teacher. Linguistics
and social psychologists seem, by comparison, barely interested in the
means by which language is physically produced. So 100 years of research
has been inhibited by a prevailing orthodoxy which Science of the Soul
should prove to be a cul-de-sac. Nicholas In a message dated 11/25/2002 5:03:50 AM Eastern Standard Time, n.j.c.bannan writes: [snip] I would urge anyone wanting to develop their understanding of this phenomenon to talk to an effective, scientifically-informed singing teacher. Linguistics and social psychologists seem, by comparison, barely interested in the means by which language is physically produced. Yes. Modern linguistics is a very abstract & disembodied discipline - no doubt at least partially due to the influence of Chomsky and of the computer metaphor. For obvious enough reasons, clinicians are more interested in speech production. --
Crises of confusion and stress drive humans to seek out others with whom they can talk out their problems and get a sense of comfort-plus, if they're lucky, a way of solving the catastrophe du jour. The balance between the amygdala and the hippocampus produce the phenomenon of the extrasomatory extensions of self-going to others to interpret the uproar going on just a few inches behind the verbal brain. That, in turn, drives us into the web of the collective intelligence. In looking for a shoulder we can cry on, we contribute our confusion as a new bit of data the group can ponder and from which it can learn. Groups that learn this way out-survive groups that don't. And groups that learn this way succeed in building the most adaptive culture, the most adaptive system of overarching beliefs and the most adaptive kit of the micro-sayings that help empower the members of a society…phrases like "now we're operating on the same page," "he's not with the program," "I've got to get my act together," "shit or get off the pot," "she blindsided me," "he's jerking me around," "stop fucking with my head," and "out of the frying pan into the fire." Come up with the clichés that fit your situation and you may well be able to get the hippocampus off it's ass and put it back to work gagging that pain in the touchas torture-master, the amygdala. Lederman, Regina P., Relationship of anxiety, stress, and psychosocial development to reproductive health Vol. 21, Behavioral Medicine, 09-01-1996, pp 101-112 In a message dated 11/22/2002 4:59:28 AM Eastern Standard Time, n.j.c.bannan writes: [snip] nb: The idea of 'emotional space' whereby empathetic responses can transform through a kind of emotional 'Chinese Whispers' is quite important to my view of what happens in choral singing - and, indeed, in many of the forms of musical transmission represented both by both audience experience and active participation (Alf Gabrielsson is doing some good work on this). hb: neat. please send me any information you can on this. have you looked into the work on "emotional contagion"? Bill Benzon's Beethoven's Anvil hypothesizes that those playing music and experiencing it together are attuning their brains. The implication to me is that the waves, pulsations, web patterns or whatever we choose to call them going through individual brains may add up and produce an overarching pattern, an emotional sense of the group's identity, one that transcends individual emotion and thought but that each individual can feel, can sense, can bend and give in to, thus tuning the individual further into the collectivity and amplifying the uber pattern.
To study emotion,
spirituality, and the brain, you have to study it in its natural context--a
social world in which the phantom presence of others haunts us even
when we are walking in isolation or fast asleep in bed. The brain is
a node in a social web. Howard Db We want you to focus on how the brain makes a mind..or what is in the physicality and physics and chemistry of the brain itself that impacts the formation of world view, value systems, vmemetic codes etc. etc. We want to show the relationship between the organic brain and the "evolution" of mindsets...survival sense, magical self, egocentric self, saintly self, strategic self, sensitive self, integral self etc etc. Most of the people in the session..about 70...come from the intangible, invisible, and so-called consciousness tradition. We are trying to show that both chemical and talk therapy will be useful.. The mind/brain question. The chemistry of culture. The impacts of chemistry and culturey hb; this is a wonderful mandate, one I will ponder mightily. Don, every chemical and neurobiological reaction in the brain is hooked deeply into sociality. No brain is an island. Even the private self is a mechanism that connects us to others--and to the superorganism, that vast cultural emergent thing. Pheromones, hormones, and synapses all make us part of a family and a team. Even the architecture of the brain is sculpted by our intercourse with others, a connectivity that begins while we are in the womb, continues when a newborn automatically focuses on its mothers eyes and the eyes of strangers, and procedes to make brain cells thrive when an infant detects smiles and makes them die when the baby senses frowns or worse, indifference. Does this approach work for you? Memes begin to take hold in the womb. From roughly the sixth fetal month on, the infant lives in a world of memewebs and emotional connection. Those are the shapers of its brain. hb: Amphetamines &
cocaine mock dopamine Eysenk's introverts
& extroverts Adaptive unconscious-we can feel good or bad without knowing why depending influenced by a pheromone we never smelled, a touch of the arm we never felt, or a layout of the room we didn't see look further into gnrh morphing in the waters of the womb changing a society
is going to involve playing the games subcultures play more than changing
a culture en masse Howard In a message dated 10/29/2002 2:08:39 PM Eastern Standard Time, Dpincus216 writes: Subj: Re: Jaak on Burger Kinds. Date: 10/29/2002 9:23:28 AM Eastern Standard Time From: jpankse Sent from the Internet No, no, no David. . . it is clearly the "burger-kind" module, since evolution can operate much more effectively on more general purpose functions, at least in the cortex, than on brand-name specific ones. Of course, Doug's points on the weaknesses of brain imaging are well taken, but every technique has flaws. Only the convergence of evidence, using multiple approaches, helps us see clearly. . . at least scientifically. Also, I note that Logothetis has an excellent argument that fMRI only detects inputs into an area and not outputs. Logothetis, N.K. (2002). The neural basis of the blood-oxygen-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging signal. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 357, 1003. Anyone who has done fMRI knows that group means often hide the true magnitude of individual brain effects, and averaging down to a few voxels only gets at some type of mis-leading epicenter for certain brain functions. For instance, in our own first fMRI study, just finsihed, sad music had no significant group effect on the human brain, even though each individual exhibited quite substantial individual changes. Still, some insights are emerging, as with correlations between areas, across individuals, suggesting generalizable functional causal relationships. Also, PET, in many hands, has been superbly effective in highlighting subcortical sources of emotions long highlighted by research on the brains of other animals (i.e., Damasio et al and Blood &Zatorre's work), with the most recent spectacular subcortical arousals during air hunger from Peter Fox's lab (two papers in PNAS, last year. . . can dig up exact refs if anyone is interested in admiring those massive subcortical arousals). One remarkable thing about all of the above findings is that when people begin to really feel the emotions, the cortex tends to become deactivated in many regions, as many subcortical areas gets increasingly aroused. Lovely! And that should be a big lesson for the fMRIers. . . as well as giving us some understanding, perhaps, of the kinds of Dionysian (old god!) experiences that Howard has described when masses of people move into the frenzy of a shared emotion. God Modules? I would not put it past neuro-evolutionary tinkering, that some kinds of group social-belief urges (at least for general motivations, such as the desire for meat, albeit not for arcane specifics, like the desire for Burger Kings) were constructed into the homonid brain as a way to insure group solidarity, which could more effectively ward of various dangers than mere individual initiative. By this, I have no wish to minimize the importance the importance of religious experiences, but to only indicate that our scientific knowledge about such matters, especially with the emergence of the half-truths of the new fMRI and PET phrenologies, is comparable to the following: A blonde was sitting in a law class when the professor asked her if she knew what the Roe vs. Wade decision was. She sat there for quite a while pondering this question and, finally, she sighed and said, "I think that is the decision George Washington made prior to crossing the Delaware river." Smiles, Jaak I think that he means the 'Burger King Module'. Skip the mayo. I would also like to second Doug's point about the imaging is biased towards the high energy cortex. Richard Lane presented data in New York last month 'finding' emotion in the cortex based upon his scans for exactly these reasons. You only see what your eyes will tell you. Best, David I also think, more seriously, that functional imaging has been BADLY oversold in terms of what it can really tell us about the neural substrates for almost anything. Not only it is completely correlative (not causal, even in the press releases by its most ardent boosters), but there is MUCH more individual variability in regional task activation than the functional imagers would have most of us know (which raises a host of disturbing questions most imagers would rather not get into); third, differential metabolic activations across tasks require a resting or control state subtraction paradigm (what is the control state in the brain?, because resting isn't really resting as Raichle has shown), and fourth, the differential resting vs. activation paradigm is always going to favor cortex which evolved largely in a metabolically high energy milieu of warm bloodedness, vs brainstem regions, which evolved for the most part in the metabolically challenged phylogeny of coldbloodedness. There has never been a SINGLE functional imaging study that attempted to compensate for the huge differential metabolic jumps the cortex is capable of vs. the relatively puny differential metabolic activation states of say, PAG or VTA, the hypothalamus, or any number of brainstem nuclei. If they did, I suspect that our functional imaging studies would look very, very different. Additionally, functional imaging tells us less than one might think about the real distributed network of transiently integrated local systems that underpin a particular process, as brain regions can be activated but have primary inhibitory activity or primary activating activity on connected systems. Only combined with other methods, including particularly animal models, can the contributions and limitations of functioning imaging be made clearer. But it has been so brilliantly sold, and bought by many as THE technology for understanding brain function. Doug _________ ________ "In the Third Testament we take a different tack. We return the soul to the cosmos. And we make it central not just to religion, but to science. In a sense, we make the human spirit once again the center of the universe." Hb: Returning the soul to a picture of the entire cosmos, from its first Big Burp to its present pitting of humans against each other in war, has been my quest since the age of thirteen. It's also been my goal to liberate human will and wonder to turn this world ever more fruitful, ever more creative, ever more a nourishing nest for the sort of evolution that's produced by curiosity, passion, imagination, and invention rather than by the spilling of blood. Today we finally know enough about the nature that has birthed us to intone the truths of science in a way that makes the soul sing. With knowledge and emotion linked together we can have what the god of the old testament willed us--dominion over the earth and all we see--but dominion through collaboration, not through devastation. We can have the leaping, dancing will of Neitzsche. We can surf the waves of evolution and revel in our mastery, but only if we understand the churning crowds of molecules that make the tides on which we ride. The secrets of crowd power, of turbulence in flow, of swirls that made the galaxies and whirls that swamp and evelate the human soul; the secrets of revelations and of ecstasies, of depressions and of insecurities; all these have a cosmic connection, a parallel in bosons and in leptons; a root in atoms, molecules, and their connections; all these are the things I seek. Know the crowd to ride the crowd. Know the crowd to join it when you please. In the roiling of the crowds is the secret to the universe and the secret to our inner mysteries. With these words I offer you my creed. Howard _______________________________ Redfield had one
of the biggest-selling books of the mid-90s with his Celestine Prophecy.
In a follow-up volume (The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide),
the author clarified his novel's meaning. He called explicity for a
reversal of the materialist rationalism of the last 500 years and for
a return to the spiritualism of the Dark Ages. Only when individuals
turned in upon themselves and underwent spiritual change could humanity
undergo the millenial transformation awaiting it at the turn of the
21st century. In a sense, Redfield was right. For too long mechanistic
science had turned its back on numerous internal phenomena. Yes, pscychologists
and psychoanalysts had speculated about the world within our hearts
and minds since the late 19th century, when Sigman Freud and William
James began to probe the soul. But experimental psychology had soon
reduced the individual from a sentient being to a piece of machinery,
a Skinnerian black box. However that mechanism had changed dramatically
in the 1960s, when researchers covertly began diving into their interior
experience with the use of psychedelic drugs, and when imminent experimentalists
like Solomon Snyder had returned from their "trips" with insights
which they tested in the lab. By the time Redfield wrote, a rich body
of scientific information had revealed layer after layer of the soul
in operation--exploring emotions like jealousy, love, eros, depression,
rage and even the ultimate mystery: consciousness itself. But Redfield
ignored the mushrooming science of the soul, and lauded instead the
'80s fascination with crystals, shamanism, tarot, flying saucers and
other magic talismans. Like the helpless creatures of the dark period
he romanticized, Redfield wanted us to abandon our efforts at scientific
mastery and passively bathe in false hopes and our own internal stew.
Redfield was by no means alone. Nor did he intend to be. His second
book was written as the basis for workshops which would spread word
of his writing, increase his sales, and most important, reshape the
perceptions of those he reached to believe in such miracles as coincidence
and the beckoning of a hidden spirit manifest beneath the surface of
this world. The very coincidences which scientists and statisticians
had demonstrated arose from our tendency to focus on the one event out
of a thousand which by chance brings two things together at the same
time, Redfield wanted us to see as the hand of an invisible spirit.
He literally wanted to reintroduce the "suspicion"-ridden
modes of misperception from which the Renaissance had once freed us.
Crowed Redfield, "Freed from our 500 year long secular preoccupation,
we are now pulling together a consensus about our higher spiritual nature."
"Mysterious coincidences," he declared triumphantly, are "the
central feature of our whole new way of approaching life." This is a man with
a publicity machine and the meat to feed it. hb: I suspect that topology
or something of the sort may prove more useful. For years, I've been
writing about hurricanes in the brain--temporary but large scale whirwinds
of formful, integrated activity. Walter calls these things mesoscopic
patterns. And you've written about the weather in the brain. I suspect
we'll find weather maps up there. But one person's way of synching with
another's map may have an entirely different topography and topology.
However they'd both share a common beat--and perhaps a common fMRI--an
activation of the same brain chunks. One way to go may be to follow
the thread that Condon dropped and to use an antique method, electro-encephalography,
to see if a bunch of people at a wild party synch their brains. Let's
face it, you hit it on the nose when you hinted that at the very least
people dancing together have to share common muscle rhythms, and those
rhythms are generated by motor centers in the brain. Hence the motor
centers have to throb in synchrony. Lord knows what other areas those
motor centers recruit into the interlink between people, especially
when cued by the trappings of "letting loose" that are a part
of any party, fed further by the group mood, and shaped by a bit of
lyric, melody, and well-known subcultural way of interpreting the music.
bb: Beyond that, just the right mathematics appeals to young hotshots.
That was surely a part of the Chomsky¹s appeal; he made linguistics
a mathematical discipline in the image of the up-and-coming mathematics
of computing. We need to appeal to the mathematics of complexity, networks,
and evolutionary game theory. What I did in Beethoven¹s Anvil was
provide one or two key notions that take us a significant way to that
end. hb: I get very wary when mathematicians step in and impose an artificial
structure that obscures the facts. We need more Nikko Tinbergens--more
observation of natural things happening in natural environments. But,
heck, we need all approaches simultaneously. We are after very big game.
The walls between disciplines have to go down. And either/or games have
to go too. hb: be careful not to make Sue Blakemore's mistake. She's
made no mistakes from the point of view of PR and book sales, none at
all. And she is a delight as a human. But talking science with her is
painful. She's taken on a big subject but can only think of it in terms
of a micro-definition of imitation. Imitation is a broad spectrum subject--it
includes strange thinges like picking up on a general principle, say
writing, then reinventing it radically in a different culture, this
time with squiqqles that stand for the sound "c" instead of
the object "cat." Kroeber documented this form of building
on a hint. But it doesn't fit into Susan's defintion of imitation. So
despite its critical importance to mimetics, I'd imagine she can't take
the phenomenon on. On the other hand, we may be able to overcome that
narrowness with what seems at first like our big disadvantage. You are
able to narrow things down. I widen things to a degree that drives you
nuts. I don't know about you, but I get huge hunks of critical stuff
from your thinking. I imagine that you occasionally get something of
value from mine. We can cover far more territory because of our differences
than we could if we were each out on our own. In other words, narrow
to whatever degree you have to to get results. I'll widen to accomplish
my goals. And between us we'll cover more bases than we could alone.
hb: this is why we must do something i have no idea of how to do--get
your book established as THE textbook on music. Global Brain is being
taught at a course at The New England Institute. And both Global Brain
and The Lucifer Principle have been used as course material at universities
from Germany to Australia. Heck, the Lucifer Principle has even been
used as course material at high schools. But this is all by accident.
How to make it happen deliberately is beyond me. Howard But that¹s
enough for now. www.howardbloom.net Howard In a message
dated 11/19/2002 10:31:18 PM Eastern Standard Time, dsmith06 writes:
Perhaps the pertinent question is, why is religion such a hot topic
generally? Perhaps psychologists and neurobiologists are simply focussing
the light of the zeitgeist through the lens of their disciplines. Maybe
this question can be raised at the upcoming conference on Religion,
Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology that Rob Haskell and I
are organizing ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom Tuesday, November 19, 2002 10:52 PM Subject: Re: science's religious fascination An intense desire to study religious emotions through the lens of science hit me when I was thirteen and when I realized I was an atheist. I wanted to study the emotions in vivo--to feel them deep inside of me. I was sure they were in there ready to ignite even though my religion was scientism. It isn't the immanence of death that's led me to this fascination. It's a curiosity about life. Did any of the rest of us get hit with this sort of imprinting experience early on? Howard In a message dated 11/19/2002 11:16:31 PM Eastern Standard Time, shovland writes: A lot of these scientists are Baby Boomers like us, and are facing the same existential issues. Their parents are dying off at a faster and faster rate, and so are their peers. They have been kicked in the gut by the terrorism of recent years. In short, their souls are hungry, and their materialism or scientism is not providing much comfort. Many of them grew up going to a church of some kind, but their interest is not the same as that of people who flee back into the arms of mainstream religion. And it may be that their work has taken them to depths where the ideas they were taught in universities, the prevailing orthodoxy, is inadequate. Steve Hovland In a message dated
11/19/2002 11:06:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, waluk writes: Any idea
why religion has become a hot topic amongst psychologists and neurobiologists
hb: Some form of generational imprinting. But on what? What was going
on in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that riveted the emotions of our generation
of scientists to passions, spirituality, ecstasies, art, and belief?
What stamped these seemingly anti-scientific emotions into our awareness
when we were young? I suspect that imprinting points, passion points,
major moments in our youth have induced us to bring the full range of
human feeling from the shadows into the limelight of scientific attention.
But made that imprint on us? Was it the beat generation and its focus
on art, poetry and Zen in the 1950s? Was it the impact of the psychedelic
sixties and its hunger for Maharishis? Was it the 1970s hunt for Eastern
enlightenment that pulsed through books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance? I don't know. Morty Ostow, is a member of David Pincus'
list and a founding member of The Science of The Soul Initiative, a
group that I've been putting together. Dr. Ostow said in an email on
David's Visions of Mind and Brain list that we should keep personal
histories out of our discussion of the science of religion and art,
the science of emotional expression. Morty is an expert in religious
topics and their scientific connections. He's written or edited four
books that touch on the topic: Judaism and Psychoanalysis; Myth and
Madness: The Psychodynamics of Antisemitism; Ultimate Intimacy: The
Psychodynamics of Jewish Mysticism; and Jewish Mystical Leaders and
Leadership in the Thirteenth Century. But I think the key to Geraldine's
question--and to our real understanding of the the spirititual need--lies
in our biographies. It lies in the personal history that shaped our
emotional lives. When we put our personal histories together, we will
find a common theme. We'll see a zeitgeist in the making. And through
analysis of that zeitgeist, we'll see how the geist--the mass spirit--of
other generations may have been conceived. We may even find a lens to
which to see how a German holistic movement with concerns very similar
to ours arose in the 19th Century. Howard
Hb: it's in those moments that you find your soul, Clem. I've had them too, but only while performing. never alone. they're the power of collective attention or of inspiration pulsing through you. inspiration is a flame that comes from the others buried inside of us, others we've reinvented to forge our own passions and identity. ________
Even those who hate the star are tuned to him or her. Hatred is a form of attention and bonding. It makes the demon we despise a constant figure in our eyes, a measure we ape by inversion-by trying hard NOT to be what the star represents to us. Some of us are fans of a celebrity. Some of us are anti-fans. But each of us measures a small amount of what we are by where we stand with relationship to a star. I suspect that this, by the way, doesn't just apply to the stars of pop and film-to Jennifer Lopez and to Adam Sandler-it applies to the style and stance of science stars. A great many of us in the psychological sciences have been tuning ourselves to Steven Pinker in the last month or two. I've seen online scientific groups drop nearly everything they've examined in the past to argue the pros and cons of Pinker's latest book-The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Whether they like Pinker or not, a great many evolutionary thinkers and psychologists are currently molding their thoughts around the framework Pinker has built, and are using their opinions of Pinker to scaffold their public identity. Think of the impact Pinker, Lopez, and Sandler are having on the generation that's currently ingesting imprints that will guide it for the rest of its life. To those of us who are older, the infatuation with Pinker-loving and Pinker-bashing or with guessing who J-Lo will marry is a passing thing. To folks five years old, thirteen years old, and 21 years old, Pinker, Lopez, and Sandler are making a permanent impression. They're figures who the "young and impressionable" will measure themselves by for the rest of their lives. Pinker may be young to me, but to those reaching awareness during the current burst of Pinker-glory, Steven is an ancestral figure, an eminent graybeard in the making. Howard Retrieved December
05, 2002, from the World Wide Web How many times have you or a friend started a conversation with: "Have you heard the latest?" "Regaling colleagues with a juicy story is sharing a vital human resource -- gossip." When you see a person huddled in a corner with a friend telling him some piece of rumour about a common acquaintance, remember this is grooming. It is also gossip. It is letting him know he is important enough and liked enough to be trusted with a confidence. The subject of gossip is increasingly attracting the attention of social psychology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociolinguists and social historians. Even philosophers are being drawn into the debate. Numerous books, essays, articles and studies are published annually, and college courses are being taught on numerous campuses. At Oxford University they do not even camouflage the title of the academic course. It is simply a course on Gossip and attendance is at its maximum. British psychologist, Robin Dunbar PhD, in his latest book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, introduces a provocative theory of why humans came to have language. His argument, now embraced by many enthusiasts, is that verbal communication evolved from a need to indulge in small talk (gossip), leading to social cohesion and mitigating social conflict. It does what primatologists have long claimed grooming does for baboons. How language began has always fascinated us, and though his theory may be a trifle stretched, it will please the supporters of gossip. Geoffrey Miller proposes that language evolved as a courtship device, yet he agrees with Dunbar that language is mostly gossip, and embraces the theory that gossip is grooming. While mutual grooming of primates stimulates production of endorphins (the body's natural pain-killing opiate) it is highly likely that the vocal grooming of gossiping has similar beneficial, physical and psychological effects increasing serotonin in the brain. By gossiping we may be effectively giving ourselves the natural equivalent of small doses of morphine or amphetamines. Space technology brought with it the e-mail, fax, Internet, and the mobile phone, all facilitating our need to communicate and enjoy frequent "grooming". The mobile phone provided an antidote to daily pressures, functioning as a therapeutic activity, a stress- release in a modern fragmented world. The surprise in a recent study has shown that men gossip at least as much as women, especially on their mobile, the modern medium for gossip. Thirty-three per cent of men indulge in mobile gossip almost every day, versus 26 per cent of women. They gossip about the same subjects as women, but men prefer to call it "shop talk", revolving around work, sports and politicians. Women will not be surprised to learn that men tend to talk more about themselves than women do. All tabloid journalism
is an extension of the gossip network. Some, such as Edward Eggleston,
go so far as to claim that all "journalism is organised gossip".
Tabloid journalism holds us to a rigid code of right and wrong, much
more so than the proper press. Because, while it may be more ruthless
and cruel, it honours all the established ethics of behaviour. Do not
lie, cheat, steal, or kill, or you are held to task on the pages of
the tabloids. Research on human conversation has shown that about 2/3
of gossip is devoted to social topics, personal relations and personal
problems. A surprising finding is that only 5 per cent of gossip is
negative. While we gossip mostly about our friends and people around
us, celebrities, such as stars in film, TV, sports, royals, politicians,
because they are familiar to us through media inundation, become as
close to us as someone we know and should care about, e.g. figures like
OJ Simpson, Princess Diana, Bill Clinton -- and therefore we gossip
about them. Even in institutions of research and learning, at the headquarters
of multinational companies in their common rooms and restaurants, conversation
does not focus on matters of weight, such as politics, business or intellectual
and cultural issues. Most of these topics occupy 2- 3 per cent of conversation,
the rest is -- well -- gossip. Whatever the scientific theory, we gossip
because we enjoy it. Let's face it, gossip is fun! With all the studies
emphasising the beneficial effects of gossip however, we cannot dismiss
it as altogether harmless. The dark side of gossip is malicious, vicious
and negative directed to those who cannot defend themselves. It is distasteful,
compelling us to develop tricks of subtlety and skill appearing to be
sympathetic and charitable to the victim we are destroying. "Judge
not that ye be not judged" was not said in vain. Gossiping tends
to have a boomerang effect: "When you gossip negatively, you become
associated with the characteristics you describe, ultimately leading
these characteristics to be 'transferred' to you. You must watch out
for this "transference". There is no denying that gossip has
destroyed lives, broken hearts, wrecked homes, relations, friends and
communities. So while you can enjoy the endorphins of a gossip session,
it can curl its ugly head and bite. Remember the transference theory
and the boomerang effect. If you can't think of anything nice to say,
say nothing at all, for words can kill and so can gossip. The tongue
can manufacture poison for which there is no antidote. © Copyright
Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 Nov.
- 4 Dec. 2002 (Issue No. 614) Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/614/pe2.htm
But, as I mentioned in an earlier email, Einstein saw clear explanation AS A SCIENTIFIC IMPERATIVE. And Einstein was the ultimate scientist--an outsider, an oddball, a man who'd been written off as having a shabby and substandard mind, but a man with vision...a vision that stabbed through what Herman Melville calls "the pasteboard mask" on the surface of things and found a deeper reality. Unlike many of our colleagues, you, Paul, have a great deal to say. You have a unique form of vision. You can see math as clearly as others see their fingernails and their toes. You've been able to do this since you were a child. It's as if the rest of us only saw visible light, and you saw, with no difficulty whatsoever, infrared and ultraviolet light. Your vision would be dazzling. You could see at night. You could see the strange ultraviolet visions of a flowers signals, its critical information, that bees see. But you'd have to tell us blind folks what was clear to you, or you'd miss out on vision's reason to be. You'd fail to be what you can be--an antenna of human culture, a brilliant seer of new visions that add to the collective enterprise we call culture. Yes, you can choose to leave behind traces that only a few can read. But a mind like yours should never be lost that way. Never, Paul. Never. Your contribution would be enormous if you wrote in Discover Magazine vocabulary...in the vocabulary of the best science magazines of our era, Science 86 (from the AAAS) and The Sciences (from the New York Academy of Sciences). All of the following statements make my mouth water. But all call for clear explanation: pw: One does not need to introduce fermions-ex-deus-ex-machina at a higher level of organization in order to have the emergent behavior. That being said -- it HAS been tremendously convenient (both in Lagrangian systems and in network automata ala Wolfram) to have one specific higher-level concept -- topological charge -- embedded in the system dynamics, to make particle-like stuff emerge hb: now this, the following, is vivid English. Are you saying that a symmetry break--one in which two things are separated by a membrane, a firmament, a clear dividing line--is not the way this cosmos works? Are you saying that time exists precisely because of assymetry? That this cosmos has a tilt that runs from the past toward the future, with a little backward leakage? If you are, you are inadvertently supporting the elephant in the room, the theory everyone has been kind enough not to comment on because of its obvious amateur stupidity--The Toroidal Model of the cosmos, The Big Bagel. The Big Bagel calls for a kick that sends one universe spinning assymetrically in one direction, and another spinning assymetrically in the other. Together these two cock-eyed, assymetric planes of being make what I mentioned last night, a shape like a wok with its lid on. More accurately, they make a doughnut, a torus, a bagel. The angry kick of god is the big bang--a non-Hoylesian way of starting things. For those who don't know, Paul and I both grew up eating and breathing cosmology. The brilliant explainer who made things clear to Paul was Sir Fred Hoyle, a man so good at making the most complex things clear to untutored minds that he had his own TV and radio shows in Britain. Hoyle was a terrific self-promoter--a very necessary thing if you feel you have ideas of importance to convey. But, most important, Hoyle was the creator and champion of the steady state model of the cosmos--a model in which matter is continually erupting from I'm-not-sure-where. I grew up fascinated by another great explainer--George Gamow, a creator andchampion of Big Bang theory. So Paul and I see the cosmos differently. We FEEL it differently. Why? Because of passion points, imprinting moments, glomming with all our energy onto role models who shape our very core and soul. This is transgenerational communication. I suspect that Hoyle, like Gamow, opened a cornucopia of thoughts of previous theorists and explainers and made them glisten for the two of us. Through these minds who were eager to bend and entertain us with their insights, we were given the works of Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes, Cantor, and a host of other ancestors. This is the sort of cross-generational communication that makes the weave of information in a social system perk. That's true whether the social system is a colony of a trillion intercommunicating bacteria, a community of bees, or a community of human beings. I also suspect some aspects of it are true in the community of atoms that make a mote of space dust, a galaxy, a bursting, photon-bleeding sun, and all the wonders the preceded humanity. But we are human Paul. You and I are the Hoyles and Gamows of my son's generation and of his sons too--if we choose to be. You can and must become a Hoyle. He's in your bones and ordering you to do for others what he did for you. And Gamow is doing the same for me. Howard >>FIQFT might be described as the following picture: >> >>"In the beginning, God created the universe. He created it in perfect >symmetrical harmony, >>symmetry following the ancient images of Euclid, for a four-dimensional >world. >>He rolled the dice endlessly to decide what to put where. >> >>"And then he looked out upon his work, and decided it was not good, >that it was >>like a hopeless Christmas tree. So he gave it a good kick, which spun >it around ninety degrees, >>and left the scene forever. >> >>"The direction where he gave it a kick we now call 'time.' The kick is >called a Wick rotation." >> >>In fact, most true FIQFT calculations (those which are not reducible to >the old second quantization) >>actually proceed by simulating this picture on a computer. >> >>It is interesting to ask whether this picture admits a truly axiomatic >formulation, >>I doubt that such an axiomatic formulation exists anywhere in the >literature, >>but I suspect it can be done after all. At least that's what I suspect >this week. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>In a message dated 5/23/2003 7:49:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, >paul.werbos writes: >> >> >> Hi, Howard! >> >> >>hb: Paul, it's good to have you back. >> >> >> >> pw: The original Lagrange and Hamiltonian formalisms were like >strict gradient-based local optima. Therte is some analogy between the >new FIQFT extensions and the simulated annelaing kind of mathematics >people use to try to overcome local minima... which is basically the >foundationof creativity in intelligent systems. >> >> hb: Paul, this sounds fascinating can you explain it to >me? What's FIQT? What's annelaing mathematics? What would be the >opposite of a gradient-based optima--aside from a gradient-based >minima.Can you tell me in word pictures? >> .howardbloom.net/reinventing_capitalism.pdf >> >> ================================== >> >> Sorry to have taken so long to reply. >> My first impression was that I needed to write something in >English, pedagogical, >> to elaborate on what a Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are. They have >been fundamental >> to almost all basic physics for some time. (Kurakin and Wolfram are >exceptions. >> SOME its-from-bits modelers would start out by trying to avoid the >usual reliance on Lagrangians. >> But... most high-power mainstream physicists would say the search >for the "theory of everything" >> is essentially the search for the true Lagrangian of the universe.) >> >> But... looking at your questions, maybe you did already did get the >basic idea... >> >> When I talked about a "gradient-based maximum" of a function f(x) -- >> I am thinking of a function f whose value is always a real number, >and a VECTOR x >> taken from an N-dimensional vector space -- >> I am thinking about a "local maximum of f." We could say that f has >a local maximum >> at point x if there exists some finite number u >0, such that f(x) >is greater than >> f(y) for ALL vectors y "close enough to x". "Close enough" is >defined to mean >> |x-y|<u. >> >> In fact, there is a huge literature out there in applied >mathematics on how to find >> minima and maxima of a function f. One of the oldest methods is the >"method of steepest descent." >> In that method, you start out with a GUESS x0. Then you calculate >the gradient of f >> at x0. The "gradient" is just a vector which points uphill... it >points in the direction >> where f increases most rapidly. You move uphill as far as you can, >generarte a new x, >> and keep repeating the process. This kind of gradient-based
>optimization will take >> you reliably to a LOCAL maximum
or minimum of f. But when you get >to the top of a foothill, >>
it will not tell you how to jump off that foothill to a bigger >mountain
nearby. The gradient doesn't >> tell you where the mountain is.
This is a practical issue of >pervasive relevance in engineering
>> and in physics, and even in evolutionary theory. In my view,
it is >of pervasive importance >> to understanding why humans
often seem highly irrational; many >cases of human irrationality
are >> really just cases of lack of creativity -- lack of ability
to think >or work one's way out of a kind >> of local optimum
in behavior. >> >> Notice that I am talking about a function
f(x) which is >"deterministic" -- no white noise >>
in the discussion so far. >> >> Classical physics used Lagrangians
and Hamiltonians in a >deterministic way. Thus even in Lagrange's
>> version, when he thought the universe was maximizing something,
he >was really just using >> the assumption that the universe
finds a local maximum. But in the >theories we have >> used
for a long time, it is not even a local maximum or minimum but >a
kind of "saddle point," >> which looks like a mximum
in some directions and a minimum in others. >> >> --- >>
>> Then add noise. >> >> Simulated annealing is one
of many methods now used to >> look for a true global optimum
-- the peak of the highest mountain >-- for a function f which may
>> have many local optima. It is like a gradient serach but with
white >noise deliberately added, >> in order to encourage a
certain amount of exploration. (Many >believe that "novelty
seeking" in humans >> is likewise a kind of genetically-programmed
tilt towards a kind of >exploration...) >> >> Functional
INtegral Quantum Field Thoery (FIQFT) looks a lot like >classical
Lagrangian field theory, >> BUT WITH white noise added!! As if
the universe were maximizing BUT >doing some simulated annealing!
>> The simulated anneating would allow it to "tunnel"
from one local >maximum to another. >> >> But.. it's
not so simple. It's LIKE what I just said, but factors >of "i"
thrown in in ways >> that make it incompatible with any notion
of reality (or even with >axiomatic >> mathematics, last I
heard). >> >> FIQFT is basically today's most orthodox modern
latest formulation >of quantum mechanics, >> the "language"
in which the theory of everything is assumed to be >written. >>
The mainstream idea today is that the theory of everything equals >FIQFT
plus >> the choice of the appropriate Lagrangian. >> >>
But I myself am not entirely mainstream. I suspect that we can do a
>bit better than today's FIQFT, >> particularly in how we explain
the process of quantum measurement >and the role of time. >>
>> Best, >> >> Paul Prince at the age of five seeing his jazz-piano-playing father onstage during a rehearsal, centered in the spotlight and surrounded by beautiful young women? There's a sexual component to all these experiences. There's an emphasis on being at the center of mass emotional attention. And there's a knowledge--even to a five year old--that the person he's imprinting on embodies the essence of sexual attraction--sexual attraction taken to the point of mass female hysteria. Did the world conquerors of the first few generations of Moslems after Mohammed's death imprint on something similar? Did Arab kids imprint on the verbal tales of other Arabs who had gone from living in the dusty, dry cities of Mecca and Medina to luxuriating in Persian and Byzantine palaces with harems of hundreds of girls? Did other young Arab boys imprint on tales of the desert bedouins who had lusted for conquest and had often landed the same sort of prize? Does the idea of 70 virgins fired with all of their might to serve the sexual organs of a teen Palestinian drives him to become a suicide bomber today? Is this why Palestinian mothers find their kids willing to dress as suicide bombers starting at that golden imprinting age of five? Kids at the age of five, Freud tells us, are highly sexual. My blond and pretty daughter, at the age of five to seven, went down the street to visit a blond little boy and, I later discovered, locked herself in the closet with him so they could take their clothes off and compare their body parts. Other kids "play house" or "play doctor" to gain the same experience. Then came yet another imprinting age in my daughter--when she hit the age of twelve and asked me where I kept the set of books that Maurice Girodias had given me. Girodias was the master-publisher of pornography. He'd been the first to publish the books of Henry Miller and Vladimir Nabokov. He was known for his boldness and his superb taste. I'd visited him several times in my early days of fieldwork in mass behavior. At that point may "in" came from founding a commercial art studio, so I made many an appointment to show Girodias my artists' portfolio. Girodias became very fatherly and one day gave me a complete set of one of his book series--erotic novels all in covers of pink. Where were the pink books, my daughter wanted to know. She and a female friend pooled their allowances and purchased a copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask. They read the paragraphs over and over the way monks study the Bible. Then they pooled their cash again and bought The Happy Hooker. I, by that time, had managed to sneak even further into mass culture. I was the editor of a rock magazine. When my daughter learned that Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker herself, was in my office, she went nuts. She called and called begging me to introduce her to Ms. Hollander. My daughter even swore she would make the ultimate sacrifice. She'd give up the sex idol she'd imprinted on at the age of five--Paul McCartney--give him up totally, if only I'd give her a word with her new role model, her role model of her puberty, the human at the center of her new Passion Point. Were there pheromonic elements in these experiences? Yes for some--like getting naked with the boy down the street. No for others. But were the old pheromonic hooks from the days of suckling playing a covert role even in the visual and literary passions of these kids? I suspect that youngsters masturbating establish a ritual location and a ritual way of courting and satisfying their sexuality. We hear of bathrooms being used for the masturbators' privacy. Does the odor of the room, the smell of the Playboy magazine, or the odor of a Joan Jett poster become a permanent cue that rouses sexuality? What role do pheromones play, if any, in the odor of a magazine? What roles do pheromones play in a ritual in a bathroom, a bedroom, or a bedroom walk-in closet filled with a mother's rich variety of shoes? The answer could be that there are pheremones all over the place in a bedroom, a bathroom, or a |
