Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Konnikova , Maria (2013-01-03), Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, Viking Adult, Retrieved on 2013-03-21Source Material [books.google.com]
Folksonomies: psychology mindfulness Memes
23 MAR 2013
The Scientific Method is About the "Elementary"
When we think of the scientific method, we tend to think of an experimenter in his laboratory, probably holding a test tube and wearing a white coat, who follows a series of steps that runs something like this: make some observations about a phenomenon; create a hypothesis to explain those observations; design an experiment to test the hypothesis; run the experiment; see if the results match your expectations; rework your hypothesis if you must; lather, rinse, and repeat. Simple seeming enoug...Folksonomies: scientific method mindfulness
Folksonomies: scientific method mindfulness
1 
notes
notesEven academicians working in the most erudite realms of knowledge are working from a foundation of firmly-established elementary principles.
23 MAR 2013
The Watson/Holmes Modes of Thought
As Holmes reminds us,
“Like all other arts, the Science of
Deduction and Analysis is one which can
only be acquired by long and patient study
nor is life long enough to allow any mortal
to attain the highest possible perfection in
it.” But it’s also more than mere fancy. In
essence, it comes down to one simple
formula: to move from a System Watson–
to a System Holmes–governed thinking
takes mindfulness plus motivation. (That,
and a lot of practice.) Mindfulness, in the
sense of cons...Folksonomies: mindfulness
Folksonomies: mindfulness
1 notes
notesWatson is on autopilot, Holmes is mindfulness.
23 MAR 2013
Sherlock Holmes Guards His Mind
Holmes and Watson don’t just differ in
the stuff of their attics—in one attic, the
furniture acquired by a detective and selfproclaimed
loner, who loves music and
opera, pipe smoking and indoor target
practice, esoteric works on chemistry and
renaissance architecture; in the other, that
of a war surgeon and self-proclaimed
womanizer, who loves a hearty dinner and
a pleasant evening out—but in the way
their minds organize that furniture to begin
with. Holmes knows the biases of his attic...
1 He is keenly aware of how emotions can doom him, and is ever vigilant against letting corrupt memories into his mind to corrupt his judgement.
23 MAR 2013
You Can Choose Your Memories
In the earliest days of research, memory
was thought to be populated with socalled
engrams, memory traces that were
localized in specific parts of the brain. To
locate one such engram—for the memory
of a maze—psychologist Karl Lashley
taught rats to run through a labyrinth. He
then cut out various parts of their brain
tissue and put them right back into the
maze. Though the rats’ motor function
declined and some had to hobble or crawl
their way woozily through the twists and
turns, the ...Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
We can cognitively choose what memories will be stored longterm and which to let go, but we normally operate on autopilot, allowing novelties into our longterm memory-space.
23 MAR 2013
Emotions Happen, But Don't Let Them Cloud Judgement
let’s revisit
that initial encounter in The Sign of Four,
when Mary Morstan, the mysterious lady
caller, first makes her appearance. Do the
two men see Mary in the same light? Not
at all. The first thing Watson notices is the
lady’s appearance. She is, he remarks, a
rather attractive woman. Irrelevant,
counters Holmes. “It is of the first
importance not to allow your judgment to
be biased by personal qualities,” he
explains. “A client is to me a mere unit, a
factor in a problem. The...Folksonomies: emotion mindfulness
Folksonomies: emotion mindfulness
Another example using Watson and Holmes.
24 MAR 2013
Enthusiasm Improves Productivity
When we are engaged in what we are
doing, all sorts of things happen. We
persist longer at difficult problems—and
become more likely to solve them. We
experience something that psychologist
Tory Higgins refers to as flow, a presence
of mind that not only allows us to extract
more from whatever it is we are doing but
also makes us feel better and happier: we
derive actual, measurable hedonic value
from the strength of our active
involvement in and attention to an activity,
even if the activi...
1 And it creates a cycle of enthusiasm as our accomplishments increase our positive outlook on the task, increasing our focus.
24 MAR 2013
Imagination Builds On Our Experiences
...you can’t have a storage space that is
filled to the brim with boxes. How would
you ever come inside? Where would you
pull out the boxes to find what you need?
How would you even see what boxes
were available and where they might be
found? You need space. You need light.
You need to be able to access your attic’s
contents, to walk inside and look around
and see what is what.
And within that space, there is freedom.
You can temporarily place there all of the
observations you’ve gathe...Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
Folksonomies: knowledge imagination
1 notes
notesIt works within the confines of what we know and how we can work with that knowledge.
24 MAR 2013
Our Minds Demand Closure
In 1927,
Gestalt psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik
noticed a funny thing: waiters in a Vienna
restaurant could remember only orders
that were in progress. As soon as the
order was sent out and complete, they
seemed to wipe it from memory. Zeigarnik
then did what any good psychologist
would do: she went back to the lab and
designed a study. A group of adults and
children was given anywhere between
eighteen and twenty-two tasks to perform
(both physical ones, like making clay
figures, and mental one... 1 notes
notesWithout closure we are more likely to remember something, a lack of closure bothers us and motivates us.
24 MAR 2013
Benefits of Even Casual Meditation
In 2011, researchers from the
University of Wisconsin studied a group
of people who were not in the habit of
meditating and instructed them in the
following manner: relax with your eyes
closed and focus on the flow of your
breath at the tip of your nose; if a random
thought arises, acknowledge the thought
and then simply let it go by gently bringing
your attention back to the flow of your
breath. For fifteen minutes, the
participants attempted to follow these
guidelines. Then they were broken...Folksonomies: science meditation
Folksonomies: science meditation
Even introductory mediation pushed practitioners into the left-brain(?) and positive/approach-oriented emotional states.
29 MAR 2013
Overconfidence Breeds Error
In one classic demonstration,
clinical psychologists were asked to give
confidence judgments on a personality
profile. They were given a case report in
four parts, based on an actual clinical
case, and asked after each part to answer
a series of questions about the patient’s
personality, such as his behavioral
patterns, interests, and typical reactions to
life events. They were also asked to rate
their confidence in their responses. With
each section, background information
about the case i... 1 notes
notesThe more a person knows about a subject, the more likely they are to make mistakes in judgement.
29 MAR 2013
Learning New Langugages Instills Brain Growth
Even something that has been
traditionally seen as the purview of the
young—the ability to learn new languages
—continues to change the landscape of the
brain late into life. When a group of adults
took a nine-month intensive course in
modern standard Chinese, their brains’
white matter reorganized progressively
(as measured monthly) in the left
hemisphere language areas and their right
hemisphere counterparts—as well as in
t h e genu (anterior end) of the corpus
collosum, that networ... 1 notes
notesAdults who learned Chinese showed white matter reorganization in their brains.
29 MAR 2013
Belief VS Evidence
Our own view of what is and is not
possible in reality affects how we
perceive identical evidence. But that view
shifts with time, and thus, evidence that
might at one point seem meaningless can
come to hold a great deal of meaning.
Think of how many ideas seemed
outlandish when first put forward, seemed
so impossible that they couldn’t be true:
the earth being round; the earth going
around the sun; the universe being made
up almost entirely of something that we
can’t see, dark matter and... 1 notes
notesMany great minds have been taken in by supernatural ideas.
29 MAR 2013
The Growth Mindset
In a recent study, a group of
psychologists decided to see if this
differential reaction is simply behavioral,
or if it actually goes deeper, to the level of
brain performance. The researchers
measured response-locked event-related
potentials (ERPs)—electric neural signals
that result from either an internal or
external event—in the brains of college
students as they took part in a simple
flanker task. The students were shown a
string of five letters and asked to quickly
identify the midd...Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
1 notes
notesUnderstanding that intelligence is plastic and improvable increases performance on certain tests.
24 MAR 2013
Video Games Improve Attention
When we want to engage, believe me,
we can. And not only will we then make
fewer mistakes of perception, but we will
become the types of focused, observant
people that we may have thought we were
incapable of becoming. Even children
who have been diagnosed with ADHD can
find themselves able to focus on certain
things that grab them, that activate and
engage their minds. Like video games.
Time after time, video games have proven
able to bring out the attentional resources
in people that they n...Folksonomies: attention video games
Folksonomies: attention video games
And that attentional improvement rolls over into other areas of life.
21 MAR 2013
Childhood is Naturally Mindful
As children, we are remarkably aware. We absorb and process information at a speed that we’ll never again come close to achieving. New sights, new sounds, new smells, new people, new emotions, new experiences: we are learning about our world and its possibilities. Everything is new, everything is exciting, everything engenders curiosity. And because of theinherent newness of our surroundings, we are exquisitely alert; we are absorbed; we take it all in. And what’s more, we remember: becau...In our youth, we are curious and attentive to every detail surrounding us, not yet distinguishing by the usefulness of the information. As adults, we take everything for granted, ignoring the familiar and walking through life in a mindless state.
24 MAR 2013
Directing Focus
When psychologist Peter Gollwitzer
tried to determine how to enable people to
set goals and engage in goal-directed
behavior as effectively as possible, he
found that several things helped improve
focus and performance: (1) thinking
ahead, or viewing the situation as just one
moment on a larger, longer timeline and
being able to identify it as just one point to
get past in order to reach a better future
point; (2) being specific and setting
specific goals, or defining your end point
as discre...Folksonomies: mindfulness focus
Folksonomies: mindfulness focus
Peter Gollwitzer's rules for maintaining focus.
24 MAR 2013
Attentive States of Mind
Whether you think of it as a sin, a
temptation, a lazy habit of mind, or a
medical condition, the phenomenon begs
the same question: why is it so damn hard
to pay attention?
It’s not necessarily our fault. As
neurologist Marcus Raichle learned after
decades of looking at the brain, our minds
are wired to wander. Wandering is their
default. Whenever our thoughts are
suspended between specific, discrete,
goal-directed activities, the brain reverts
to a so-called baseline, “resting” state...Folksonomies: attention mindfulness
Folksonomies: attention mindfulness
Why is it so hard to maintain? The brain has a default "resting" state of inattetiveness, multitasking confuses our attentiveness.
