Last year I posted a TED video by Daniel Pink on the science of motivation. This is the same talk but animated. I’d love to see more of these!
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On December 18, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 62/139… which declares April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) in perpetuity.
News last month about oxytocin helping autism patients’ socialization was quite intriguing. I hope research continues and helps as many as possible. Something so basic as a naturally produced hormone makes me wonder if early intervention could perhaps help? Oxytocin normally is produced through social contact. There are many reasons why someone might not produce enough.
Apparently the big thing this year is to wear blue? Okay. I’ll wear blue.
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While I like video games and found Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter an entertaining ride, I am skeptical when people describe video games in all glowing terms. Like everything, they improve specific skills. Also people are attracted to games in which they have specific skills.
For instance, girls are said to be attracted to games which tell stories and can create their own story. This explains the female attraction to Final Fantasy series with its hours of video between minutes of play. As the stories got longer, my interest waned.
Using a game to solve the world’s problems reminds me of the Last Starfighter. If you need me to go blow up a space ship, then I’m your guy. Solving global warming is far, far down my list of interests.
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You’ve read my previous posts on Dunbar‘s Number, right?
Go on…. I’ll wait.
Remember the one on Scoble and Facebook? Good. For a while, I fastidiously ensured my number of friends stayed below 150 because I took the idea of Dunbar’s number as a life strategy. Then I let it slip to 200 which I pared back down to 150. My laziness let it hit 500.
It appears Robin Dunbar is now studying Facebook users to see ‘if the “Facebook effect” has stretched the size of social groupings.’ He says despite the large number of friends people only interact with about 150 of them. Maybe like most of psychology, the subjects are college students who supposedly are almost all on Facebook. In the real world, most of the people with which I have regular interaction, exactly those Dunbar’s number covers, are not my Facebook friends.
My Facebook friends instead are my information buffet. Social networks are how we keep in touch with what is happening in the world. My information technology friends provide me what is happening in my career field. My photography friends provide me with useful tips for a big hobby. Also, the bigger our social network, the more opportunities for help from or being consequential strangers. Social networks are a strategy not a replication of the brain.
The term “friends” used by Facebook, I think, is a brilliant marketing ploy. People would much rather show up as my friend than my contact.
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Cannot believe I have yet to read NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children! It looks to have all the things I love: scientific studies debunking common assumptions, policy, school programs, etc. At least it is already on the wishlist. Also, I follow NutureShock on Twitter. A list of articles on the topic.
The first part on praise is something I passed around to several people. My parents were pretty good about making me work hard on things I’d given up on doing because I didn’t succeed easily at first. Seems like it would difficult for a parent to be disciplined not to ever praise innate qualities, so maybe it is okay once in a while?
The latter part of this on kids and sleep deprivation is interesting. I knew sleep really helped the brain. More than just the capability of male fruit flies to breed. For example, very tired people have worse trouble driving than those who are intoxicated on alcohol. It hadn’t occurred to me sleep deprivation would have consequences to learning.
Ashley Merryman: On Parenting from PopTech on Vimeo.
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When I read something like this, I start to question the validity of the method.
Psychologist Sam Gosling analyzed the Facebook profiles of 236 college-aged people, who were also asked to fill out personality questionnaires… surveys that were designed to assess not only how study participants viewed themselves in reality, but also what their personalities would be like if they had all of their ideal traits.
The Psychology of Facebook Profiles | TIME
The better experiment here is to have half the participants maintain a normal Facebook profile. The other half would create a profile demonstrating their ideal self. Then compare those against the Big Five questionnaire looking at both. The list of personality traits in the article “openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism” gives away the test used despite not explicitly named. Of course, I’m no fan of the Big Five.
Should the results match you can say Facebook reveals whatever the Big Five measures. However, I’d be uncomfortable saying any instrument measuring self-reported information accurately reflected anything about a person’s real personality.
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I found a discussion over brunch entertaining.
Apparently women sniffed teeshirts worn 2 days by males. Women preferred the shirts belonging to genetically dissimilar men. These are the good men because they ensure better MHCs in offspring. Unfortunately, the women on oral contraceptives preferred genetically similar men. Yeah. The latter women would prefer their brother, son, or father (all sharing 1/2 her genes) to any other men. The feared scenario is women marry men satisfying their preference for genetically similar men and in preparing to have children suddenly find their husbands revolting.
Our mothers were on to something when told us to always smell nice. Preventing women on birth control from smelling who we really keeps us from getting judged down inappropriately. Well, really the game we play is not letting the other side have too much information.
P.S. The same study almost found significance to single women preferring genetically similar men. That really would make news.
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The first couple TED videos I watched didn’t impress me. A few weeks later, I saw this post from Sam about the top 10 TED videos. Sam is one of those people who reserves good for the truly special so I made sure to watch them. This video was the first on that list and occupied me as I watched it about once a day for a week. (Admittedly I didn’t get around to it until a few months later.)
B&N suckered me into buying the book My Stroke of Insight by setting up a table for interesting topics. Smart because I nearly dropped a couple hundred dollars that day. Anyway, I gave it as gift to Mom. Family conversations and book gifts about random miscellaneous topics is why I blabber so much about random miscellaneous information. No, I had not read it before I gifted it. So… Now I am reading it. I do like the book.
Alexis told me she knows someone else who is reading it. She has exams so I recommended she at least watch this video. I figure the invitation should be more global.
I’m kind of hoping to have a stroke now.
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In the Q&A, Stuart Brown, co-author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the
Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, rejects the idea play is a rehersal for adulthood. Stopping an animal from playing doesn’t prevent the animal from being a successful predator. REM sleep provides the rehearsal needed for learning. Play is the next evolutionary step. The video is a little too heavy on repeating the same generic idea over an over with different examples. However, they are amusing examples.
The types of play Brown references usually involves multiple individuals in a social interaction. This play teaches survival skills like socialization, adaptation, flexibility (our selfish genes at work).
The origin of this play research was in identifying the next Charles Whitmore, the University of Texas Tower sniper. In studying mass murderers, he found Charles and others like him consistently grew up in environments where play was not allowed. By not playing these children developed into dysfunctional adults.
I found a particular claim quite interesting. “The opposite of play is not work… It is depression.” That is almost word for word out of his book on page 126, which Google Books has a copy. Later he better explains the part about play and work are not in opposition:
The quality that work and play have in common is creativity. In both we are building our world, creating new relationships, neural connections, objects…. At their best, play and work, when integrated, make sense of our workd and ourselves. (Play, p.127)
This agrees with Adam and Jamie from the Mythbusters to Moira Gunn for the Commonwealth Cluf of California about their work. Just look at Adam’s face before triggering a test on any episode. The complete and total joy is a testament to the power of dopamine.
I think the opposition to depression involves movement which is exercise. Exercise produces serotonin which is crucial to fighting off depression. So my work, sitting in a cube all day long problem solving is good for dopamine but not a producer of serotonin. However, a good game of tag would produce both dopamine in anticipating tagging a playmate and serotonin from the movement. (Why can’t work be more like tag?)
If Dr. Brown is right, then suppressing the rough and tumble playing children enjoy is the best way to place in society malfunctioning adults who are more likely to be violent. Things like recess (just half an hour) during the day will keep our prisons less full 20 years later. <sarcasm>Maybe the No Child Left Behind meant all the children will end up in prison?</sarcasm> More likely children will fit their play in less supervised situations and get their fill.
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I was attracted to this video because a while ago I read Daniel’s book: A Whole New Mind. Take the concept that simple, clearly defined jobs will move to overseas. So to succeed in the United States, children need to be learning conceptual skills and become the people inventing the work doled out to overseas workers. Let’s ignore that overseas workers are more than capable of conceptual work like our kids.
The pervasiveness of functional fixedness perhaps explains why I have a job. (That and I’m not a gestault pscychologist.) The web comic xkcd recently posted a flowchart on how to become a computer expert where the pick one at random is overcoming functional fixedness. Much of what I do is figuring out non-intuitive issues and document a way to make it work aka a workaround.
I like his list of what economists say are good motivators to replace monetary incentives. The opportunity to get incentives like these drew me to this project. Of course, we don’t have the levels of autonomy Pink describes. Baby steps! Can you see your employer allowing the employees to spend one day a year working on whatever the employees wish to deliver a new product? Some autonomy in a group I work with here resulted in Yaketystats.
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
My favorite quote:
Traditional notions of management work great when you want compliance. If you want engagement, self-direction works better.
So this video is why this week I’ve been talking about how compliance sucks. :)
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