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It's brutal, huh? The system needs fixing.

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19950901-0 00020.html

See, the military is already prepared for that answer. If you refuse a direct order in the field -- and make no mistake, when they come for you, it won't be in an office meeting -- you get shot on the spot.

It may come to that later, but unless there's been a recent change I'm unaware of, current standards of military conduct contradict your postulation. The Milgram studies on obedience and authority which explained how the holocaust was able to be carried out by ordinary people have changed the US Army's take on disobedience. From page 5 of the article http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200203 01-000037.html

"One important place where the lessons of Milgram's work have been taken seriously and acted upon is in the U.S. Army. Milgram's research and its implications are discussed in two mandatory psychology courses at the U.S. Military Academy. In 1985, the head of the academy's department of behavioral sciences and leadership wrote, "One of the desired outcomes of this is that our future military leaders will be fully cognizant not only of their authority but also of their responsibility to make decisions that are well considered and morally sound."

I highly recommend you read the article in full. Milgram's work is in my opinion one of the most important works in the history of psychology. And Hugh Thompson, Jr., a soldier serving in Vietnam, was awarded the Soldier's medal for disobeying superiors' orders and even having his squad turn their guns on them, for sake of doing what they felt was right, rather than what they were ordered to do. Wikipedia entry here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson,_Jr

And the actions detailed in Thompson's case don't quite match up with your postulation of

Let's say a particular group points their guns at the commander instead. What next? They sure aren't going back to the base to "get more supplies" -- they'll end up in a brig waiting for court martial while the action moves on.

And other whistleblowers like Samuel Provance have been demoted for their actions, but continue in service. Tony Lagouranis wasn't demoted for his whistleblowing actions. Joseph Darby was honored by politicians and some military personnel, while other members of the military disparaged him. So it's not nearly as clear cut as you assume.

To sum it up, back up your words with cited sources and examples or else your points, while interesting, hold no more water than those you're arguing against.

I believe you mean a Nation of Wimps. Definitely a good read.

While I believe, definitely, that it has to take work to master something, and that work is the defining characteristic of a grand master, it's also important to have some inborn ability.

Processing Power

The processing power of the system of neurons in the brain can be roughly evaluated by the number of events which may occur in this system per second. The number of neurons is about 10e+10 and their switching time is about 10e+2 sec, so the number of events per second is about 10e+12. This figure is comparable with the number of operations per second in massively parallel computer systems approaching the teraop barrier. Thus, the information processing power of the system of neurons does not drastically exceed that available through modern microelectronic technology. In the expanded construction suggested in [2] the number of binary events per second may reach 10e+23 to 10e+25. However, as in all massively parallel systems a problem arises whether a substantial portion of this estimated raw computational power can be effectually utilized.

Poster's note: Obviously, many of these connections are utilized for non-cognitive functions are are tied in to motor skills. I believe the original figure I quoted (10e+18) is meant to represent available capacity outside of pure maintenance functions (i.e., it does not include the neural equivalent of TCP overhead, etc. [depends on whether you're running WinDome or CerebRIX, actual mileage may vary depending upon the amount of OEM RAM you came with])

Come on... Laugh! You know it was funny ^.^

Memory Capacity

The capacity of the long term human memory is virtually unlimited. According to von Neumann [5], estimated by the amount of information which can be transferred to a human brain during its lifetime, the lower bound of this capacity is about 2.8× 1020 bits. To be stored in the brain of about 103 cm3 this requires density of informational storage about at least 3× 1017 bits/cm-3. The time of content-addressable retrieval is rather short and essentially independent from the amount of stored information. Once recorded, information in the brain is supposed to be retained permanently. Thus, images don't fade with time and can be easily recognized over decades.

This last is an oversimplifcation without solid root in neurobiology. Due to a browser crash, I lost what I'd just added here, but it is easily shown that the brain most certainly performs it's own regular disk-maintnance (delete old files, defrag, index and cross-correlate data, and delete cookies and other temporary files that have been determined to be irrelvant though indexing and defragging - such as excatly what you paid for breakfast at McD's last Tuesday or what color socks the bosses' secretary wore yesterday) and does not possess anywhere the necessary capacity to store in digital detail every event of every day.

From a PsychologyToday article:

"By the year 2020, your $1,000 personal computer will have the processing power of the human brain--20 million billion calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1,000 connections per neuron times 200 calculations per second per connection). By 2030, it will take a village of human brains to match a $1,000 computer. By 2050, $1,000 worth of computing will equal the processing power of all human brains on earth."

This seems to be a generally expected figure, though t

After dealing with many parents that recklessly have children with someone outside of their race, most of the doctors I know there strongly feel it is immoral to do so. If you do so and your child has serious health problems, what you did will have a serious negative consequence on your child.

That's an interesting position to take, seeing as one study said people of mixed race are rated more attractive, possibly indicating better health. (You'll want to google around, I pretty much just tried to remember a few terms from the article and picked the first result from a search that looked right. And hey, it was only one study, it might even be wrong. Though it does make sense, given that you're a lot less likely to hit a recessive genetic disease that way.)

What you say makes sense, though. I guess genetic diversity is good for the species as a whole, but bad for an individual needing an organ transplant.

We've all been tormented. It's agonizing. We've all tormented. The dorkiness of others brings out the "righteous" malice in us.

It's a basic social tendency, but it's unhealthy. On one side you have the promotion of groupthink, the creation of cliques, the fostering of a mob mentality where correctness is defined by conformity. On the other side you have the demolition of perfectly valid, even great individuals, and sometimes they pull a Columbine.

The right way to act is to start with values, like the well-being of people, and to promote those values with what you do. Tormenting others does not help. Fostering mob rule does not help. Conversely, hating yourself does not help.

Amazingly, I've seen a few individuals make the change. I don't know if halting the bullying or if recovering self esteem is harder. Neither is easy at all. It's just easy to get into the ugly dynamic in the first place, especially with how public education is set up. And just because you understand this doesn't mean you'll change. But it can only help:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-19950901-00 0020.html

Keep in mind that bullies are victims, too. Sounds like rhetoric, but check this out: A person's natural inclination is not to give pain to others. A bully experiences enough grief to ultimately break down their good behavior. We know it's not right to hurt others, but it makes us feel better to do it.

We all make mistakes, failures of various kinds, all the time. It's weakness not to stand up to bullies. It's weakness to dominate others to feel good. It's easy to make mistakes, but what's more important is that we care and that we try hard to do what's right. And that takes strength.

Here's an article about bullying:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-19950901-00 0020.html

If you want to seriously hurt your bullies or if you think it's okay to torment weaker people, you need to read this.

Some of the wording is anti-bully, but in reality bullies need caring for too.

Try a famous Development Psychologist named DeCasper. You can Google to your heart's content, but here's some information for you:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-640.ht ml

References? How about my wife, a published expert in prenatal development, who just happens to have a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from one of the best universities in the world. And no, I won't post her name here.

I actually read Graham's article . In a nutshell, I agree with Graham.

He isn't saying anything time management authors have not been saying for decades.

Instead of calling it "setting priorities" he renames it "good procrastination".

The big secret still left unanswered and what everyone wants to know is how to get over "bad procrastination", no matter how you decide to rename it.

I heard a comment recently that struck me as being insightful. That people procrastinate out of fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, perfectionism, etc.

Sounds intriguiging, I guess like everything else applying it takes work. I guess I will do that later ( ha ha ha ).

Here is an interesting pop psyche article I found out about that via google:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200308 23-000001.html

Well, I actually read Paul Grahms article...the whole thing. I think his points are spot on, but I think he is repackaging time management by calling it "good procrastination". At least time management as defined by Alan Lakien, one of the founders of time management (ISBN: 0451167724). Grahm describes "good procrastination" as putting off small, low reward tasks to do important big tasks. That concept is as old as the hills in time management where it is called "setting priorities". It isn't a revelation to anyone, what is a mystery is "why"? Why do I/you/people put off doing things they want to get done and know are important? I've read some interesting points that procrastination is a fear ( of failure or of success ) avoiding technique. It makes sense, when I avoid working on something I tend to sweep it under my mental rug, very fast, like I want to avoid even acknowledging what I am doing. Like a senator leaving a dominatrix's dungeon I found this article to be very interesting: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200308 23-000001.html

Got a reference handy? I may be reading this incorrectly, but Psychology Today published an article that appears to disagree with you.

FACT 5: IQ evens out with age

Imagine interviewing two biological siblings, adopted by two different middle class families, at age five and again at 18. Will their IQs be more alike when they are younger and living in the homes of their adoptive parents, or when they are older and living on their own? Many people reason that IQs will be more alike when they're younger because they are under the influence of their respective middle class parents. Once they are on their own, they may diverge as they become exposed to different experiences that may influence their intelligence differently.

But according to data, this isn't true. As these siblings go out on their own, their IQ scores become more similar. The apparent reason is that once they are away from the dictates of their adoptive parents, they are free to let their genotypes express themselves. Because they share approximately 50% of their segregating genes, they will become more alike because they are propelled to seek similar sorts of environments. Genes may be more potent in making siblings alike than similarities in home environments.

They're different aspects of intelligence, some of which are not exercised by standard IQ tests.

Yeah, well that's just your second brain in action. I think this type of intelligence is more to do with giving Michael Jordon some credit for not being a klutz.

I know the US is low in quality of schooling, lower than the UK and most of Europe. I wonder if this could be factored in and result in different results for different countries?

For example, I'm told that when French students graduate their equivalent of high school at 18, they have the American equivalent education of an AA degree that they call a baccalauréat.

Perhaps in the U.S. due to the already IQ-lowering effects of long hours spent in front of the TV, the computer is a "step-up", but for European schools, long hours in front of the TV have not been the "norm", so adding computers there might be detracting from study & homework hours.

One of the latter stories on computers helping scholastic performance listed in the first paragraph talked, in particular about how it helped children in low-income families -- again, possibly pulling children into the computer rather than time spent in front of TV or doing other non-scholastic activities.

The center of this study focused on "problem solving" and ability to focus, though, as measures of Intellectual Function. Email and computer multi-tasking might indeed hurt this type of function.

It really might depend on what "activity" the computer-spent time is replacing, and how good of schooling the children in the area would have been getting before computers were available.

In a society or school where children spend It could be the computer, like many technologies before it, has an equalizing effect: having weakening effects on those who were stronger before their arrival but having help affects on those who were weaker before arrival.

I suppose the ability to randomly check email in the middle of a class might not be the greatest thing...but certainly, having a computer for use to store "facts" might improve "Intelligence" in those schools that required "rote" memorization of facts. I know I feel a bit cut off from part of my "brain", when I am disconnected -- can't just google up an answer or bring up a dictionary or calculator or measurement converter. It's a slow down to manually look things up, most certainly.

However, facts != intelligence. So schools that focused on problem solving and thinking for one's self, might suffer with the introduction of something (i.e. a computer) that provides easy answers.

L

You're saying that overly permissive parenting leads to lowered self-esteem? You lost me, there. If, as a sibling post to this one said, what you mean by permissive parenting is submissive parenting, avoiding confrontations with the kids, it seems like you'd end up with spoiled children, with inflated self-esteem, too damn full of their own egos.

People with low self-esteem aren't a threat or a problem to anyone but themselves. It's people with inflated self-esteem that are the problem.

--grendel drago

Recently read a good article on the issue of... well, people not being content with relationships, having unreasonable expectations etc.

http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-200403 01-000002.html/

"You are not doomed, you are not evil, and you are not alone. There are many of us (yes, us) out here who are carrying on our lives, realizing these desires within ourselves and committed never to act on them

I'd say hoarding is basic human behavior. It can even be altered by Brain Damage, suggesting a strong, hard-wired component.

So, this doesn't seem abnormal to me. Though it's interesting to imagine how humans will react to the ability to hoard more in the same or even less "space" as it's all information.

What do you think of
So maybe they already have evolved it. Maybe it's just not as developed (or the countermeasures have also developed).

Who knows maybe that's also part of evolution - which is why certain things evolve the way they do - because it's needed in the future - so it looks like creation to creationists ;).

Over billions of years animals getting a prescient gut feel - "this mate is not for me/ this mate is for me", so there might be a prescient sense. However you have to take into account the other animals who also have prescient gut feel out to eat your descendents too.

Coz AFAIK all the animals are kinda in the same boat and descended from the same ancestors, so any such sixth sense could be just because they're all linked - destinies intertwined. You might not get the gut feel that something is about to eat you if overall it's part of the big plan for you to be eaten...

Maybe we won't be able to be prescient with aliens from another world - won't know if the aliens are "staring at" us.

BTW if you're talking about psychic powers, I don't see why one should assume the "organs" involved should all be in this world. The interfaces maybe, as is the scientists are still scratching their heads over how the brains work etc.

When I last checked scientists don't even know what 90% of the universe's mass or energy is. So the stuff we consider normal is actually abnormal.

Also: scientists have NOT explained the very FIRST observation each of them ever makes- consciousness/self-awareness.

e.g. recursive future-sense.

The EFF is your "freedom to innovate" insurance policy. When you need to argue "Constitutional Rights aren't just the law, they're good ideas. Technological developments aren't just my job, they're a good idea" and you just don't have the time, money or the right words to say it right, the EFF says it for you, and says it very well.

When the MP/RI/XXAA / DMCA takedown letter arrives, 98% of other lawyers or civil rights groups are just going to hear "I work in technobabble, and now I'm being sued for neutrino transducer violations because of warp field coil incompatibility with carnivore but it really is a 4th amendment issue because of eiozh bhpaceog phshzt!..." when you call them up.

When you call the EFF up with your 'intersection of technology with legal rights' legal problem, the EFF will actually understand the issue and will want to help you. And, if they can afford to help you they will- but for that they need money. That means donations ahead of time. That's why you should support the EFF now. $2/week gets you the spiffy hat, or $2.09 /month the nifty bumpersticker AND 1st Amendment Rights carried into Cyberspace. Ask for 'Short' instead of Venti once in a while: you know you aren't supposed to have your caffeine all at once anyways. Or just drink regular coffee with cream and a little splenda. Not only do you save $, you'll lose #s (weight, not octothorpes). Protected rights & a smaller waistline: $2/week, $2/month. Best.Insurance.Ever.

Full Disclosure: I've met many of the EFF's staff, so I know how dedicated they are. Their staff attorneys aren't making much more than paralegals might make at the big corporate law firms. They're the not-profit, and We profit from their existance (are you listening- any encryption exporting companies? this includes You). So donate!

Loads of women like knitting, decorating and doing other kind of manual work that requires little to no interaction with other human beings.

Are you for real? If they knit, they prefer to knight in groups. If they're decorating, they're usually doing it with their friends, including the shopping for items beforehand. They even go to the bathroom in groups. By nature, women are social. You're actually arguing this? Have you even read any scientific research about it?

For starters, there's a small part of the male brain that becomes active when speaking and dealing with language. In females, the entire brain becomes active when they speak. The "father" of sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard University, said that human females tend to be higher than males in empathy, verbal skills, social skills and security-seeking, among other things, while men tend to be higher in independence, dominance, spatial and mathematical skills, rank-related aggression, and other characteristics.

From http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArti cle/PTO-20030624-000003.asp:

Women's perceptual skills are oriented to quick--call it intuitive--people reading. Females are gifted at detecting the feelings and thoughts of others, inferring intentions, absorbing contextual clues and responding in emotionally appropriate ways. They empathize. Tuned to others, they more readily see alternate sides of an argument. Such empathy fosters communication and primes females for attachment.

Men focus first on minute detail, and operate most easily with a certain detachment. They construct rules-based analyses of the natural world, inanimate objects and events. In the coinage of Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, Ph.D., they systemize.

Seeing a pattern here? It's not that women can't do what men do and vice versa, it's just that we're more inclined to certain focus areas. Geeks like us are more likely to latch onto introverted tasks. As I said before, I know lots of incredible intellectuals who are female, but they'd rather hang out with friends in person than spend their weekends alone typing dialog to some text names on IRC. These differences in the sexes are what make humanity diverse and wonderful.

Although "women's cultural thought processes" sounds like typical politically correct tripe, there really DO exist gender-specific differences in the way men's and women's brains work. Here is a sample snippett from this article:

Sex on the Brain

Gur's discovery that females have about 15 to 20 percent more gray matter than males suddenly made sense of another major sex difference: Men, overall, have larger brains than women (their heads and bodies are larger), but the sexes score equally well on tests of intelligence.

Gray matter, made up of the bodies of nerve cells and their connecting dendrites, is where the brain's heavy lifting is done. The female brain is more densely packed with neurons and dendrites, providing concentrated processing power--and more thought-linking capability.

The larger male cranium is filled with more white matter and cerebrospinal fluid. "That fluid is probably helpful," says Gur, director of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. "It cushions the brain, and men are more likely to get their heads banged about."

White matter, made of the long arms of neurons encased in a protective film of fat, helps distribute processing throughout the brain. It gives males superiority at spatial reasoning. White matter also carries fibers that inhibit "information spread" in the cortex. That allows a single-mindedness that spatial problems require, especially difficult ones. The harder a spatial task, Gur finds, the more circumscribed the right-sided brain activation in males, but not in females. The white matter advantage of males, he believes, suppresses activation of areas that could interfere with work.

The white matter in women's brains is concentrated in the corpus callosum, which links the brain's hemispheres, and enables the right side of the brain to pitch in on language tasks. The more difficult the verbal task, the more global the neural participation required--a response that's stronger in females.

Women have another heady advantage--faster blood flow to the brain, which offsets the cognitive effects of aging. Men lose more brain tissue with age, especially in the left frontal cortex, the part of the brain that thinks about consequences and provides self-control.

"You can see the tissue loss by age 45, and that may explain why midlife crisis is harder on men," says Gur. "Men have the same impulses but they lose the ability to consider long-term consequences."

Sexism is not the attempt to quantify actual differences in men and women. Rather, it's the inability to change your ideas when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the opposite of your ideas.

blue

Some semi-recent articles in Psychology Today and Wired.

Personally, I think the technique of reading EEGs off the scalp is going to be more popular, at least in the short term. It isn't invasive and it is much less expensive. Disclaimer: My masters thesis is on EEG classification for BCI, so I might be biased :)

(I hope those links are OK...Preview isn't working for some reason.)

Males typically act out in situations where they have lost the control over their own private economy of women, nice things, and social status. They rightfully or wrongly percieve that people that are in a better station in life have caused this when it is usually through their own moral choices that they find themselves desperate enough to commit violent acts. I think we should be careful though to reveal that poor or otherwise disadvantaged people do tend to concentrate in low rent areas where is seems they have been ghettoized; however, if we have even 10% inner city children going on to college in virtually the same cultural vortex (which seems to be the major influence besides genetics with parents running a distant third) we can have hope that as the prevailing "gangsta-pimp-hustler" idolation goes down perhaps the tides will bring in their ships that were always floating off shore that some of their peers learned to swim to.

The state of the Simpsons has created an influx of support from the academic arena. I've seen classes in college that solely discuss the psychological aspects of the Simpsons. Sounds silly? http://www.psychologytoday.com/current.asp

Milgram's study became the center of the first real discussions about the ethical responsibilities of psychological researchers with regard to their subjects (some of the subjects suffered from long term traumatic episodes due to thir participation). It led to the ethical codes of conduct followed today.

Ironically, this experiment would not be allowed to be performed today for the same reasons we would forbid the Nazi hypothermia experiments (an example of the behavior Milgram's study was investigating).

All this is true. However, in Milgram's defense, he was quite thorough in providing follow-up meetings with his subjects to debrief, and I think even offered psychotherapy if people needed it. Subjects often reported being shaken but wiser after the experiments, and were glad they had participated.

It is probably a good thing that today's ethical standards don't allow scientists to manipulate people like Milgram did. However, I can't help being glad he performed the experiments. He taught us stuff we need to know. Situational ethics? I don't know. I think it's more like, although it would be dangerous to let any psych*ist use Milgram's tactics, he himself had a legitimately urgent message and seems to have conducted the research in an ethical way. And have I mentioned that we really need educating in the dangers of too much obedience?

Incidentally, I just found an article explaining the infamous Milgram experiments, for those looking for the background on this.

By the way, it's nice to see another psych major on /.!

Au contraire Mon capitan! (pardon me =)
Pattern recognition has already reached a significant level of compexity but, what is not public at this moment is an integrated personality. A Machine Intelligence might even exist today, if it does you definately don't know about it and neither do I. To know of such a thing would very logically be a death warrent or at least permanent house arrest.
I think therefore I am. The prefrontal cortex is one of Gödel's islands of consistancy, reverse-engineering of that structure is well under way on many fronts: here, here, here and too many other places to mention. Gaming AI doesn't have a trillionish dollar distributed budget behind it simply because games don't generate that kind of revenue. Besides this hardware is woefully inadequate, a few very fast processor versus my billions of slow ones. I simply have more chances to stumble across something.
Hmm. So a compressed dictionary is the key to creating a true intelligence? Well! Step right over to those fine folks at Cyc who have been doing just that! To bad the darn thing is a lot more brittle than you or I. Although I really like the semantics they're developing - someday it could make good baby food for the real thing. I've spent many sleepless nights researching this field and the only thing I've learned is that there are a whole lot of distractions. The proof of that lies in the fact that HAL didn't come online on schedule.

The Night Angel

Only the fool would take trouble to verify that his sentence was composed of ten a's, three b's, four c's, four d's, forty-six e's, sixteen f's, four g's, thirteen h's, fifteen i's, two k's, nine l's, four m's, twenty-five n's, twenty-four o's, five p's, sixteen r's, forty-one s's, thirty-seven t's, ten u's, eight v's, eight w's, four x's, eleven y's, twenty-seven commas, twenty-three apostrophes, seven hyphens, and, last but not least, a single !