27 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
Emotional Contagions in Social Networks
These results highlight several features of emotional contagion. First, because News Feed content is not “directed” toward anyone, contagion could not be just the result of some specific interaction with a happy or sad partner. Although prior research examined whether an emotion can be contracted via a direct interaction (1, 7), we show that simply failing to “overhear” a friend’s emotional expression via Facebook is enough to buffer one from its effects. Second, although nonverbal ... 1 
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notes22 NOV 2017 by ideonexus
Get Away from the Metaphorical Understanding of Meaning
Propositions are supposed to be idealizations, rather like numbers or vectors or some other abstract formulation. It looks at first very powerful, and for some purposes it’s very useful. But it takes you away from enlightenment because it gives you this false sense that you haven’t understood something really until you’ve figured out how to articulate, how to point to, how to identify the proposition that a particular meaningful event has. No. There are all kinds of meaningful events th... 1 notes
notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
It Takes a Network to Defeat a Network
...the 9/11 attacks were carried out by one network on another network: al Qaeda against the U.S. financial and political system. Yet it was not the immediate damage of the terrorist attacks that inflicted the real cost on the United States so much as the unintended consequences of the national security state’s response. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in August 2002, before it was even clear that Iraq was to be invaded, the political scientist John Arquilla presciently pointed out the fla... 1 notes
notes30 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Whole Earth Catalog Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this p... 1 notes
notes26 APR 2016 by ideonexus
Hacking is Playful
Also central to the Hacker Ethic is playfulness. At a 2006 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Matt Webb and Ben Cerveny wrote, “Hacking is a playful act. In a primal sense, play is the investigation and experimentation with borders and combinations” (O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, website). Despite early, highly structured approaches to computing in mainframe laboratories in the mid-twentieth century, a computing culture of iterative experimental hacking has evolved th... 1 notes
notes05 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
The Stress of Cold Temperatures Extends Lifespans
In 1986, John Holloszy of Washington University immersed his lab rats in shallow, cool water for four hours each day. They burned so many extra calories that they ate half again as much as control rats, but weighed less. The cold rats lived 10% longer, on average. Holloszy framed his report on this experiment not as a hormetic effect of cold exposure, but as a refutation of the “rate of living” hypothesis.
In 2006, Gordon Lithgow of the Buck Institute for Aging Research exposed lab worms...Folksonomies: longevity
Folksonomies: longevity
1 25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Simon Baron-Cohen: Radical Behaviorism
The central idea of Radical Behaviorism—that all behavior can be explained as the result of learned associations between a stimulus and a response, reinforced or extinguished through reward and/or punishment—stems from the early 20th century psychologists B.F. Skinner (at Harvard) and John B. Watson (at John Hopkins). Radical Behaviorism came under public attack when Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (published in 1957) received a critical review by cognitivist-linguist Noam Chomsky in 1959 ... 1 notes
notes27 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Connect to a Child's Left-Brain Before the Right
when a child is upset, logic often won’t work until we have responded to the right brain’s emotional needs. We call this emotional connection “attunement,” which is how we connect deeply with another person and allow them to “feel felt.” When parent and child are tuned in to each other, they experience a sense of joining together.
[...]
It’s also crucial to keep in mind that no matter how nonsensical and frustrating our child’s feelings may seem to us, they are real and imp...A strategy for dealing with chidren, who lack the emotional regulation for logical thinking. Calm them by connecting to their feelings, and then attempt to rationalize with them.
23 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Chinese Room Argument
Suppose that I'm locked in a room and given a large batch of Chinese
writing. Suppose furthermore (as is indeed the case) that I know no
Chinese, either written or spoken, and that I'm not even confident that I
could recognize Chinese writing as Chinese writing distinct from, say,
Japanese writing or meaningless squiggles. To me, Chinese writing is
just so many meaningless squiggles.
Now suppose further that after this first batch of Chinese writing I am
given a second batch of Chines... 1 notes
notesAn argument against the possibility of AI, replacing a computer with an english-speaking human being performing english-instructions on chinese symbols and outputting results. This is like a computer, which does not understand the symbols it is manipulating, but the results look intelligent.
22 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
How to Compose a Successful Critical Commentary
How to compose a successful critical commentary:
1. Attempt to re-express your target's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.A great list of criteria. Use this before composing any response in online debate.
