Daniel Gilbert: To See Water For What It Is, It's Better Not To Be a Fish

Mind Shadows Daniel Gilbert: To See Water For What It Is, It's Better Not To Be a Fish

In July 2004, the City Council of Monza, Italy, took the unusual step of banning goldfish bowls. They reasoned that goldfish should be kept in rectangular aquariums and not in round bowls because "a fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality and suffers because of this." No mention was made of the bland diet, the noisy pump, or the silly plastic castles. No, the problem was that round bowls deform the visual experience of their inhabitants, and goldfish have the fundamental right to see the world as it really is. The good counselors of Monza did not suggest that human beings should enjoy the same right, perhaps because they knew that our distorted views of reality are not so easily dispelled, or perhaps because they understood that we suffer less with them than we would without them. Distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous―that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others. To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion. So what does all of this have to do with forecasting our emotional futures? As we are about to see, we may live at the fulcrum of reality and illusion, but most of us don't know our own address.

In Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

Colin McGinn On The Zealots of Science

We all know about those on the religious right and their evangelical beliefs; in today's media nothing is said about the evangelists for science. Formerly an Oxford professor, Colin McGinn currently teaches at the University of Miami, and he has taken issue with both sides. I like what he recently said about those who beat the drums for all to be explained by science. We regard science as reasonable and so it is, but these people are enemies of thought, as termed by McGinn.

Essentially, he pondered "who is more deplorable among us: the superstitious zealots who limit their knowledge to what the Bible tells them or the scientists who are unable or unwilling to take any question seriously which has no scientific answer--which includes most of the questions I as a philosopher spend my time on. "

His comment can be found here.

John-Dylan Haynes: Free Will as Implausible?

Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

Neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes, has more than a proposition. He has evidence. How are we to construe the evidence? He has something to say on it. "We think our decisions are conscious," he says, "but these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible."

What data? At the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Haynes is pioneering research that collects it. In the April Nature Neuroscience, he reports on the research. To determine what goes on moments before people sense they've reached a decision, he and his colleagues monitored neural currents in the brains of student volunteers as they decided. The "decision" could be random, reached quickly or slowly, as to whether to push a button with their left or right hands.

Seven men and seven women, 21 to 30 years old, were tested. Using an fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imager, the team used pattern-recognition software to analyze the results of neural changes relative to thoughts.

Inside the brain scanner, the subjects watched random letters pass across a screen. They pressed a button with their right hand or a button with their left hand. Then they marked down the letter that had been on the screen in the instant they had decided to press the button.

The data? Up to the moment of being conscious of a decision, brain behavior signals were identified that let researchers know when the students had "decided" to press a button. These signals occurred on average 10 seconds before the students knew it themselves. About 70% of the time, the researchers could also predict which button the students would push.

Benjamin Libet's earlier experiments found roughly a half second delay between the impulse and the act. This, too, raised important questions about our belief in our ability at conscious decision.

Found in Nature Neuroscience and the WSJ.

Robert Lee Hotz at the WSJ Science Journal has this to say:

Dutch researchers led by psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis at the University of Amsterdam recently found that people struggling to make relatively complicated consumer choices -- which car to buy, apartment to rent or vacation to take -- appeared to make sounder decisions when they were distracted and unable to focus consciously on the problem.

Moreover, the more factors to be considered in a decision, the more likely the unconscious brain handled it all better, they reported in the peer-reviewed journal Science in 2006. "The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us," Dr. Dijksterhuis said.

There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.

Happiness Is Over-Rated: II

Mind Shadows Happiness Is Over-Rated: II

One of my opinions is that happiness has become a cottage industry. A search of Amazon.com reveals a long list of titles. Among them is The How of Happiness, by Sonja Lyubomirsky, or Happier, by Tal Ben-Shahar, whose sub-title seems to offer daily mental candy bars: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment; and Happiness. I came up with one title, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, whose author, Eric G. Wilson, claims that its modern pursuit is shallow, that the world is filled with tragedy, that melancholy is necessary for innovative and inventive cultures. He was the exception. Most of the books did not question the desirability of happiness. I even found a title, Happiness is A Warm Bun, by a French pastry chef.

Happiness isn’t what it used to be. Thoughts about it started with the Greeks and the thinking has changed over the years until today it has become something Socrates wouldn’t recognize. Aristotle asked what is happiness? He concluded that it results from a way of life and, though happiness is an ultimate end, it should not be pursued as a focused goal. Rather, it results from other activities which promote it. With him, virtue was key, but the word meant something else then. Leisure was a virtue and work was a vice. Free men had leisure and were therefore capable of virtue while slaves were condemned to work and therefore vice. This was a condition of Greek democracy. Freed from the need to work, deep thinkers could think deep thoughts.

Put more seriously, I should say that the Greeks framed many of the important questions that have engaged philosophers and serious intellects down the ages. They asked, What makes up happiness? How does it differ from pleasure? What is The Good Life? How does it contribute to happiness? For the Greeks in general, and Aristotle in particular, Happiness had to do with the conduct of life. It was deeply imbedded in the right way to live, which was why Aristotle titled his major work on the subject Nichomachean Ethics. Ethics. Happiness had to do with right behavior in a broad sense.

For the Greeks, and for us, the question of The Good Life raises a prior one: What is the Good? For Plato, it was harmony in the parts of a man’s soul. Recall that Plato seeded much Christian doctrine, and the great Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas turned to that ancient Greek as a basis for his Scholastic philosophy. Aristotle had a more practical view, allying the Good with experience, not the soul, and what a man could achieve as virtue in this life, wherein the highest virtue was the contemplative life.

In the Nineteenth Century, happiness was linked to pleasure for Jeremy Bentham, who said “push pin [a game] is as good as poetry.” Bentham, like Descartes, disconnected happiness from the spiritual and from theology. For him, happiness can be quantified: it is the sum of all pleasures. From Bentham to John Stuart Mill is short step. Mill warmed Bentham over into Utilitarianism, The Greatest Good for The Greatest Number, which is the closest we have come to a public rather than an individual philosophy of happiness. In America, it became Pragmatism under William James. Whatever its name, it is part of the theory, if not the practice, behind modern democracies. The greatest good for the greatest number.

Often in the West, happiness becomes regarded as something else, which can be traced to the Medieval Wheel of Fortune and to Fortuna, who presided over the Wheel. It involves good things happening, good luck. In the Middle Ages, the wheel turned, swinging some to its top, plunging others to its bottom. In the 13th Century Carmina Burana, one song goes, “you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing.” Mere superstition, we say of that today, while some still cling to a belief in luck. The luck of the wheel. In modern times we think of Lotto winners as happy, and many of them are until the usual mess of their lives catches up with them. One popular answer for this outcome is not bad luck, but bad character, bad thoughts, bad habits.

Today, there is a large body of research dealing with the psychology of happiness, not with the Platonic soul, not with luck, not with the greatest good for the greatest number. Martin Seligman teaches that, in part, “Authentic Happiness” involves knowing your “highest strengths,” then using them “in the service of something you believe is larger than you.” Mihály Csíkszentmihályi speaks of flow and says it presupposes developing clear goals, concentration, and absorption so focused that one lapses out of self-consciousness. Sort of a how time lies when you’re having fun.

In recent years, the thinking about happiness has used statistics and the term has changed from happiness to subjective well-being (SWB), thus relegating it from any objective basis, though they do find it relates to objects like health, money, and necessities—to an extent. Considerable evidence correlates positively between SWB and general health., while the use of medical services correlates negatively—the more people use them, the less happy they are. Money also correlates positively but not past a certain point. So long as it can buy necessities and insure against excessive upward comparisons, it promotes SWB. That is, so long as a person can look around and see that his neighbors have no more stuff than he has. The statistics reveal Denmark, Switzerland and Austria as the top three happy nations. Bhutan is near the top also. The top three have high per capita income; Bhutan does not, but its great political goal is to increase Gross Domestic Happiness, much as other nations seek to grow the Gross Domestic Product. The bottom four in the study are Moldova, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and Burundi. The same study found the USA 23rd out of this field of 178.

In the East, especially in Eastern religions, release from suffering became a keynote condition of The Good Life. Things change, nothing is permanent, and the wise man does not cling to any of it. Nonattachment, yes; attachment, no. This view of The Good Life turned people toward a different set of beliefs. Beliefs in turn shape entire societies and cultures. For the East, the shaping belief involved not over-reaching, but accepting one’s lot with peace and tranquility. The Buddha said that life was dukkha, Pali for suffering, and the cause of it was tanha, or off-centeredness caused by ego. He taught his followers the Noble Eight-Fold path, with non-attachment at its core. As for happiness, forget it as the one thing desired. A serene, non-attached life was The Good Life.

As a way of life, serenity is not for me. I like the zest I feel, the excited edge, when engaged in some challenging activity, something meaningful. Oh, I meditate, I can be serene at times, but as a mode of living it would be boring. Ample evidence indicates that the human brain is not wired for serenity. It likes challenges, an edge—some brains more, others less. Tanha can be regarded as a function of neuro-electric impulses within the convoluted grey mass inside our skulls. It is normal biological activity and for calm we certainly can non-attachedly see it for what it is, this activity—something devoid of self—but there is a sense in which being off center is valuable unto itself, else nothing would get done, wrongs would not be righted. In this regard, the West’s Engaged Buddhism is on target.

As for pure pleasure, in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the citizens are happy. They take a pill called soma which makes their days go swell. The movies are called feelies, and the audience can electronically connect to whatever the actors feel—sexual orgasm, scrumptious food. Then a “savage,” a half-breed Indian from Arizona, refuses to buy into the program. He finds beauty and majesty as well as pain and tragedy in the works of Shakespeare. For him, the state’s version of happiness was not enough. He becomes an inconvenience for the state, which must liquidate him.

Do I have any clear answers as to how to become happy? I will say this. I agree with Aristotle that happiness (or SWB, if you want) is a by-product of other, highly meaningful, activities, and cannot be pursued as a goal unto itself. I would add that there is no simple three-step approach. Inevitably somebody will want an easier answer. Okay, so what might that be? Bobby McFerrin used to sing, “Don’t worry, be happy.” That’s as good as any other two-bit solution to life.

In the 19th Century Matthew Arnold was plagued by unhappy thoughts, but found a guiding principle in the phrase, “To see life steadily and to see it whole.” Those who exclusively pursue happiness cannot do that. In the 17th Century another Englishman, Robert Burton, had something to say about his condition, melancholy, now known as depression. Though not a depressive, I am often enchanted by Burton’s beautiful prose. I become absorbed in his rolling rhythms and lyrical passages, as he speaks from long ago to a world far removed from the modern cottage industry on happiness. He put it this way: “And from these melancholy dispositions no man living is free.” Nobody, said Burton, “no Stoick, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine,” nobody, he said “can vindicate himself; so well-composed, but more or less, some time or other, he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality.” I tip my glass to the old fellow, and drink one to his wisdom.

Benjamin Libet & Free Won't**

Hold out your arm. Look at it. Now bend your hand at the wrist. Do it whenever you want. Do it a few times.*

How did this process begin? Was it you? Was it these words?

In 1985, neuro-scientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment related to this.

With electrodes connected to their wrists and scalps, his subjects had brain waves recorded as they watched a clock with a spot revolving faster than a second hand. Like you, they were told to flex their wrists whenever. They were also told to note the spot's position at the time they decided to do so. They stated where they saw it, and Libet correlated their observations with data recorded by electrodes at wrist and scalp.

Libet measured three factors: the action's beginning, the moment of decision, and the Readiness Potential, which began a certain brain wave pattern. This pattern involves the brain's plans to carry out an action.

Okay, so what did he find out? This. The decision to act was recorded as taking place at some 200 milliseconds before the Readiness Potential, which occurred some 550 milliseconds before the action.

So what?, you ask. Only this. A decision to act did not start the process. It did not come before the Readiness Potential. It can be construed as an effect of the Potential as cause. The decision was determined, then, and not a function of free agency.

Surprised? Did you expect a different sequence, this one?: first, the decision to act, then the planning stage, otherwise known as Readiness Potential, followed by the action. Instead, the Readiness Potential preceded the decision. Understood one way, no decision caused the brain to get ready to act. The brain got ready, then gave the appearance that a decision was made.

Some who study this experiment can liken the sense of decision to a hood ornament over a truck engine, symbolic rather than instrumental of a driving force. Libet found one, Readiness Potential, two, decision, three, action. The Readiness Potential led to the action, with the decision to act as a result of the Readiness Potential. In their view, with true free will a decision should have generated the preparation to act, culminating in the Readiness Potential.

Others say that had the decision sprung into consciousness without anything preceding it, the event would have been like God in the Book of Genesis saying of the void, Let there be light! Something would have come out of nothing. We can deem it natural that something comes from something, in this case a decision from a Readiness Potential. Obvious proponents of something from something are scientific determinists. This handily dispenses with subject-object duality and explains all through a physical monism.

With a different argument, somebody might say that a neatly simple scientific experiment causes reductionist absurdity when applied to anything so complex as human agency—or free will, if you prefer. People daily engage in behavior more complex than moving their wrists. They raise children, handle office politics, respond to political news. These involve conscious experiences, not simple brain events which the Libet experiments record. The correlation of conscious experience to brain events is highly problematic.

Still, one interpretation is that while Libet's subjects thought they were deciding, they actually saw an internal replay of a decision that had already occurred. They did not initiate an action but thought they had. They thought their decision had caused the action, although the Readiness Potential may have caused the decision to act. No choice, here, they would argue. No volition, just a series of processes.

If Libet's subjects didn't have free will, they did have a kind of free won't. That is, he told them that they could veto an action. Instead of flexing a wrist, they could stop the movement. He discovered an action could be vetoed, but the subjects only had one tenth second (100 milliseconds) to do so. In short, they could not initiate an action and could only overrule any impulse if they were alert and acted instantly. This is reminiscent of Zen teachings about alertness as the road to freedom.

(Of this experiment, and its implications, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett* is reputed to have said "I want more freedom than that." *(Freedom Evolves, Elbow Room, Consciousness Explained, and other books.) In short, this does not mean he refuses to accept the facts but believes that they can be interpreted differently.)*( Slightly revised from a 2003 post.)

** Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. have conducted experiments that call into question Libet's findings. According to their view, the Readiness Potential only pays attention to decisions being made and does not mean that one is "decisionally" aware of his action after the fact. In short, the Readiness Potential is misconstrued as to its role.

Happiness is Over-Rated: I

Mind Shadows Happiness is Over-Rated: I

Happiness isn’t what it used to be. Thoughts about it started with the Greeks and the thinking has changed over the years until today, with Prozac, it has become something Aristotle wouldn't recognize.

Today, there is a large body of research dealing with the psychology of happiness. Martin Seligman teaches that, in part, “Authentic Happiness” involves knowing your “highest strengths,” then using them “in the service of something you believe is larger than you.” Mihály Csíkszentmihályi speaks of flow and says it presupposes developing clear goals, concentration, and absorption so focused that one lapses out of self-consciousness. Sort of a how-time-flies-when-you’re-having-fun.

Soon, perhaps, with the help of psychopharmaceuticals, melancholics will become unknown. That would be an unparalleled tragedy, equivalent in scope to the annihilation of the sperm whale or the golden eagle. Eric G. Wilson has written a book in which he argues that the demise of melancholia would be an unhappy occurrence.

Philip K. Dick & The Nature of Reality

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness. Philip K. Dick, How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

As he grew older Dick wrote about metaphysics and theology, on drug use and what it revealed, on paranoia, schizophrenia, and mystical experience. In his work, the real, whatever it is, becomes fragile, the so-called normal world, an illusion. His fiction has found its way into films such as Blade Runner and Minority Report. Although he was marginally recognized for his talent when younger, increasingly recognized when older, now, after his death, some say he will go down as one of the epoch's greatest writers, and not just for science fiction. Some links here, here and here.

Edward R. Murrow & The London Blitz

He reported live by CBS from England to America. His opening became famous. "This is London," he said in the bleak months of 1940 as wave after wave of luftwaffe bombers set fires with their incendiaries to the buildings below. Search lights lit gaggles of bombs falling through the sky as tracer bullets lit German motors and wings for RAF Spitfire pilots diving on the bombers.

The London Blitz began about four in the afternoon the 7th of September 1940, and as air raid sirens sounded, the first German bombers arrived to drop their bombs on London. Over 340 German bombers escorted by around 600 fighters dropped hundreds of incendiary bombs on the London docks. The raid lasted until 6:00 pm. A couple of hours later, the flames served as beacons for the second wave headed across the channel from France. This attack lasted until 4:30 in the morning. More than 430 people were killed, with 16,000 serious casualties. The Blitz rained death on Londoners for 57 nights in a row, sirens awakening them in the middle of the night, urging them to take shelter.

For Americans, Edward R. Murrow chronicled this horror, and he stood on London roof tops, describing the planes and bombs in the sky, the flames leaping up over London. In Ohio and Iowa, New York and California, families clustered around living room radios to hear him. He brought the war home and prepared Americans for their entry into it. He shaped public opinion and encouraged aid to Britain.

He began a sign-off that became a recent movie title. As the war from the skies raged, Londoners did not know if they would see one another in the morning. They said “So long and good luck.” Ending a live radio broadcast, Princess Elizabeth said to the Free World, “Good night and good luck to you all.” At the end of a 1940 broadcast, Murrow signed-off with Good night and good luck.” George Clooney’s movie adopted the phrase as its title, David Strathairn playing Edward R. Murrow.

In 1941, back in the USA after three years abroad, he was guest of honor at a dinner hosted by CBS at the Waldorf-Astoria, eleven hundred guests in attendance, millions more listening on the radio. Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent him a telegram. Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, gave a speech in praise of him.

“ You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames. . . You laid the dead of London at our doors and we knew that the dead were our dead. . . were mankind's dead without rhetoric, without dramatics, without more emotion than needed be. . . you have destroyed the superstition that what is done beyond 3,000 miles of water is not really done at all.

Murrow climbed down from the roof tops of London and into the bellies of RAF and American bombers, flying with crews over Germany. In one night bombing raid, on December 2, 1943, he flew in an Avro Lancaster with D for Dog, as its nose art. In his radio report, even today we feel his and the crew’s fear, see the German search light cones probing the sky, feel the bomber twisting and turning out of reach. You can listen his radio to report here.

In his post war years, he became well-known for his character, integrity, and stance against ill-used power or influence. In a legendary 1954 broadcast he helped end the Red Scare and Red-baiting of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Once close friends with CBS boss William Paley, he fell out with the man, and took issue over Paley’s desire to improve profits at the expense of journalistic integrity. Paley’s successors, of course, have had their way with the media, so that today the public is entertained but rarely informed.

Here is a live report by Edward R. Murrow from London in August 1940.

Contrasting what London was like then (audio), to what it is today (video), this link provides a Murrow broadcast during the Blitz, and reminds us that all those 21st Century visitors don’t have a clue as to what 1940 Londoners had to endure.

Mind Shadows         Chris Hedges: I Don't Believe In Atheists

“The atheists and the religious fundamentalists speak in slogans. Atheists ridicule magic, miracles, and an anthropomorphic God. They remind us that world is not 6,000 years old, that prayer does not cure cancer, and that there is no heaven or hell. But these are not thoughts. They are self-evident tautologies. These two camps never step outside their narrow intellectual boundaries. They delight in critiques that are, to any first year seminarian, shallow and stale. [Christopher] Hitchens assures us that ‘the unanswerable question of who . . . created the creator’ has never been addressed by theologians. Theologians, he says, ‘have consistently failed to overcome this conundrum.’

“This is the declaration of an illiterate. Aquinas, along with many other theologians, addressed at length the issue of who created the creator. God, Aquinas argues, is not an entity. God is not a thing or a being. Creation is not an act of handicraft. Creation is the condition of there being something rather than nothing. Creation didn't happen long ago. Creation is a constant in human existence. It is part of life. And this is why ‘creationism’—the belief in an anthropomorphic god—is pseudoscience and pseudotheology. But stepping out of the cartoonish and childish taunting of religion to a discussion of the writings of Aquinas, Augustine, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr is beyond the capacity of these atheists. They haven't read them and they don't want to.

“All fundamentalists reject intellectual investigations. They know the truth. They live wrapped in the comforting and self-deluding belief that they have nothing left to learn. Hitchens, for example, assures us that ‘religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago.’ There is no need to read theology. [Sam] Harris insists he understands the Muslim world because he has read opinion polls and passages in the Koran. These atheists, like Christian fundamentalists, maintain that one can be linguistically, culturally, historically and socially illiterate and make sweeping statements about other cultures and other traditions. This celebration of ignorance fits neatly into a world that has traded dialogue for the chanting of slogans and clichés." I Don't Believe in Atheists, by Chris Hedges, also author of American Fascists

Mind Shadows      Shift Demographics, Inc. Send Right Away For Your Personal Happiness Kit

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The ancient Greeks did not live in our computer age of lightning-fast information. They posed slow questions that took them years to answer. The questions to our modern ears even seem downright silly. For example, they asked, What makes up happiness? Or, How does it differ from pleasure? What is The Good Life? How does it contribute to happiness?

Not only that, for the Greeks in general, and Aristotle in particular, happiness had to do with the conduct of life. Of course, they lived in the days before Prozac, so we can understand their confusion. Their view of happiness was deeply imbedded in the right way to live, which was why Aristotle titled his major work on the subject Nichomachean Ethics. Happiness had to do with right behavior in a broad sense. You might spend years trying to figure out what that means, and time is money.

The Greeks took such questions to an extreme. For them, the question of The Good Life raised a prior one: What is the Good? For Plato, it was harmony in the parts of a man’s soul. Modern science has laid to rest such quaint notions as the soul. Aristotle had a more practical view, allying the Good with experience, not the soul, and what a man could achieve as virtue in this life, wherein the highest virtue was the contemplative life. But in our hurried age, who has time for contemplation. Here at Shift Demographics, Inc we have just the solution for you.

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