PhiloPsycho Freedom

Here is a video I found recently that has to do with perceptions of our own performance and discrepancies between actual performance and perceived performance:





I find it very interesting that they hypothesize that the very skills required to do well are the same skills to see the true quality of a performance. It's rather ironic, really.

Recently I've been thinking about how we evaluate people's performances. Or rather, I've been thinking about how I, specifically, approach commenting on performances and my family's tendencies while commenting, which is mostly negative. So now I've posed the question to myself, after years of having been exposed to this type of criticism (some constructive, some not): Why do I find it easier to say negative comments over positive ones? What I've concluded is that I've been trained, to a degree, to be able to see faults easier than virtues, but maybe that's the same with most people. But as it is, I've been trying to improve my ability at giving compliments, which is causing me to have to analyze why I have an easier time with one, but not the other.

The Gateway Drug Theory (GDT) is always paraded about in high schools all over the world. It is a rather annoying comment on the society at hand - especially if you look at the drug they choose to demonize. The GDT has a few different version, but this is what I understand of it, picking the attributes that made the most sense to me: the GS is linked to trying harder substances, the environment in which the GS is sold allows for greater accessibility of harder drugs, and the GS causes increased chances of chemical dependence of related substances.

In North America, they generally place all the blame on marijuana as the gateway drug. It's evil! It'll fuck up your life! Try it and you'll be addicted for life! Granted, it does have some adverse effects, it's difficult to get the facts straight due to all the misinformation in the drug culture (e.g. it has never been legal to carry any amount in Canada (or so I was told by an RCMP officer (It was a question! I wasn't charged with anything!))). To me, this seems to be jumping too readily to the side of something they want to demonize and choosing to ignore something they don't want to demonize: Alcohol or Nicotine.

The Attack

Kitty Genovese was an average 28 year old girl who worked as a bar manager in Queens. One night, she closed the bar, drove home and parked about 30m from the building at about 3:15am. She walked around the building to the back entrance where she saw Winston Moseley, who ran after and quickly overtook her. He stabbed her in the back twice times with a knife. Genovese let out a scream "Oh God, he stabbed me! Help me!", which was heard by a few neighbours, and fewer of them recognized it as a call for help. As (bad) luck would have it, it was a cold night and most of the buildings' windows were shut. One neighbour added their contribution, yelling "Let that girl alone!" at the attacker, to which Moseley ran away from.

I just finished watching The Nightmare Before Christmas and it reminded me of something that was said in Roy Baumeister's book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (which, by the way, I highly recommend because  it covers the topic very entertainingly and in-depth, with a conversational tone) that says that almost anyone who commits an evil act does not perceive their own actions to be evil. Ironically, most people are trying to do a productive or good act that they think other people will enjoy and benefit from.

My friend and I have this sort of unspoken pact together where we are both trying to live on the "edge" as close as possible. Getting past the conventional meaning that alludes to living fast, dying young, and just having a generally crazy time, our meaning is something else entirely. Ours relies on the theory that everyone has a comfort zone, and we aim to get outside of said comfort zone in order to attain maximum growth.

I break it down into three major components of the self: Intellectual, Social, and Physical. The main goal is to push yourself to meet and surpass your comfort zone to within a range that leads to optimal growth (zone of optimal growth or ZoOG, if you will). This range is rather small, somewhere between complete comfort and extreme anxiety/failure. The goal within this is to push yourself just slightly past your current limits, attempting to expand them and, eventually, reach self-fulfillment (with regards to ability).

First, I think I should at least give a nod to the fact that I haven't been writing in forever: It's exam time, here at the University of Waterloo, and because of that I have had neither the will to write nor the time to do so. To anyone who has been following this, I apologize for that inconvenience, I will be back to writing semi-regularly for the next while. On the upside, this break has allowed me to come up with a number of fresh ideas to write about which should last me until the end of the year. That being said, on with the show:

Money. Something that everyone wants and nobody has enough of, it seems. But what is the end for such a drive? Ultimately, I'd argue that people are doing this for happiness, at least in western society. We use money as a representation of resources, opting to trade it instead of actually trading a resource itself. This is relatively obvious, but I think people forget that this paper-ish cotton is nothing more than a symbol of goods and services, with  no inherent value in and of itself. Without anyone to trade with, this paper will help you no more, and probably less, than toilet paper.

To start this, I'll open with what studies show women tend to find physically attractive in men (assuming they're heterosexual). According to studies, when women are not ovulating, they find more feminine featured men attractive; a guy who, according to the theory, appears to be more likely to stick around and be supportive, should there be a child (rounder face, bigger eyes, more youthful (baby-faced), less aggressive, etc.). During ovulation, though, they look for men with more traditionally masculine traits: strong jaw, squarer face, more muscular, etc. The theory states that this is because they're looking to have a kid and want the best physical features available for their kid. (Interesting side-note: women tend to find the scent of men who have more different genes/immune systems more attractive (different from their own, that is))

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a rather tall guy: 6'7" in fact. Those who do know me clearly know this fact as well (maybe not in such detail, but generally speaking).

Having said that, I regularly get told that I'm tall, or asked whether I play basketball, football or whatever. My question about this is why is it alright to constantly point out this physical feature, but most other ones aren't. Don't misunderstand where I'm coming from, I don't care that much, but at times people need to wise up and stop telling me something I clearly know, especially when I'm trying to say something or the conversation is going well and they just drop that bomb that kills whatever was just being said.

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As related note to the last post, I probably should have done this one first. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a model of persuasion proposed by Petty and Cacioppo back in the 80's. It says that we have two routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.

Two factors dictates which route we take: our knowledge/ability to think about a topic, and our motivation to think about the topic. If you are high in both of these factors, you will engage in the high-elaboration, central route. If  you're missing either of these factors, or both, you'll default to the peripheral route. The central route is known as the high-elaboration route because we're more likely to want more elaborative information and to think about the information more thoroughly. So, if someone were to approach an existential nihilist and start making claims about the meaning of life, they would most likely consider the arguments and have the motivation to think about it. Once the motivation is there, we consider the argument: if we have favourable thoughts (according to the theory), we will accept the argument in whole, or in part; if unfavourable thoughts are evoked during the argument, we will reject the argument.

Today I thought I'd talk about advertisement. Do we actually pay as much attention to them as we think? or are we persuaded by external factors?

To start, I thought sexual content would be good because it's used over-abundantly. As they say, Sex Sells. But is that really the case? What research has actually been showing for the past while is that women aren't as persuaded by sexual content in advertisement, which isn't entirely a surprise. Obviously, the sexual content is there to sell the product to the male viewers, right? Well, that's what they're hoping, but what research is now showing is that when there's sexual content directed at males, men pay more attention to that content rather than the product; they're more likely to remember the girl (if they're straight) than they are to remember what the commercial was selling.

For almost my entire life, I've lived without a cell phone. Only some brief stints within high school (parents requirement to use their car) and 1 year during university (no land line in the house 2nd year) did I have one. It's come to be part of my identity to not have one and I kind of pride myself on having the ability to both survive without one, as well as keep that $30+/month in my pocket.

So now, It looks like I may be getting one because my parents are buying a bundle deal and there will be one waiting for me when it comes in. There goes a piece of my identity, only to be replaced by this synthetic, mainstream, hollow piece. Great.

For those who don't know me and want to know why I don't enjoy cell phones, here are some of my reasons:

When it comes to interpreting rules or laws, there are two main interpretations for them. In law, there are several different jurisprudences (the science or philosophy of law) other than just spirit or law (for example, feminist jurisprudence), but I feel that these two are the most pervading and easily understood when applying to everyday situations.

Mother parking. Such a novel idea, isn't it? Let's have a spot right near the front of the store, beside the handicapped spaces, for expecting mothers and mothers with young children! Brilliant! So Courteous!

Indeed, it may be a courteous thing to do, but I say it's a little too selective and misguided. Misguided because since when is pregnancy a disability? Why do these women need that much more help? As well, exercise helps everyone, including pregnant women.

How about we replace "pregnant women" with overweight people? It may seem ridiculous, but in both cases it is a self-inflicted "ailment" (maybe less so for overweight people) that are both just as in need for this extra boost of help. I'm not talking about morbidly obese people, either. A guy with a big beer belly, how is he in any less need of that closer spot than a woman who chose to have this child, but doesn't want to walk that extra 50 yards? Another example would be the elderly: they did not choose their outcome (the ailments, not their age). They've just been lucky enough to survive long enough to have to deal with the problems of getting old, so we can't say they don't deserve a little extra help because these are, generally, not self-inflicted problems. If anything, they're more deserving, and yet they will have to give up these spots and park further away in order for these fertile, younger women to get a helping hand. While we're at it, what about injured people? If I have a broken left leg, I can still drive, but I have problems with mobility. Or how about people with athlete's foot? It hurts to walk!

Aside from the obvious technological problems, let's look at some different possible theoretical outcomes involved with time travel. I'm only going to focus on traveling to the past because that's the only one I can see any problems with at the moment.

To start, let's say there's something I want to change. I think it's impossible to go back and change that particular problem without causing yourself to be sent off in some sort of infinite loop. Think about it. You have this problem, you go back and you fix the problem. Simple right? wrong. You go back and fix the problem, which means that the problem, as you knew it and had instigated you to go back, no longer exists. Thus, you didn't go back to change it, causing it to never be fixed (and subsequently remain), causing you to go back again. This loop will continue on forever, since you'll constantly be altering the time-line and you will have no memory of any of the activities.

I came across a blog named Atheist Spirituality and thought that I’d write a reply to one of their posts.

First, I'd like to say that I like the quote that they took from the movie "Waking Life". Great movie, check it out - though, be prepared to take a break halfway through. It's very philosophy heavy.

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced with the idea of existentialism. I'm not for the idea that god controls our actions, but I don't believe that we have entirely free will, either. Through this post, they discuss what reality we're left with if we discard the idea that god is a guiding force in our lives. They propose that we should seize the day; Carpe Diem!

Has anyone else noticed that there's this artificial inflation going on in stores? For example, "Williams" coffee pub only has three sizes: Medium, Large and Extra Large. Yes, you read correctly; there is no small. Though their medium is the size of a small of any other restaurant, they insist on calling it a medium.

My thoughts on this are that they're trying to make us believe it's larger and, more importantly, more valuable because it's perceived to be larger than it actually is. They don't actually change anything about the size of their drinks at all, but people may not realize that their medium is actually a small and are okay with paying that extra $0.50 over other shops for their drink.

It's all too common that we hear these words bitterly uttered: "Guys are just stupid", "Girls just don't make sense" etc. Simply put, everyone is stupid at times.

What has been incorrectly derived from this for so many years has been the "Men are form Mars; Women are from Venus" sentiment that we are completely different and will never understand each other. It's true; Men and Women are different. But, what is failed to take into consideration is that there is greater variance within a gender than there is between them. That is to say, the best man and the best woman in a category will perform generally the same; neither party will have a huge advantage over the other on any given skill.

There are many problems with this theory of consciousness that we call the soul.

First, this anthropocentric notion that only humans have souls is ridiculous. Why would only human's have souls? Why not all living beings? or everything, for that matter? What makes humans so special? Many people will probably answer that humans are god's chosen species, and that we're special like that. Do we think that we're so grand that we'll reign forever? Nothing lasts forever, just look at fossil records. Dinosaurs, had they had the cognitive capacity to think this, would have thought that they were god's chosen species. Also note that humans weren't around at that period, which means our reign is a relatively short period of this planet's history.

So, after saying how I enjoy a factor of chance in my life, I would like to look at the opposite of chance: determinism.

Determinism is the belief that there are founding laws in every object, no matter the size. The bigger constructs' rules are made from the combined laws of the smaller constructs' that they are comprised of.

In light of my previous post, I thought now would be a good time to explain what a friend of mine and I have considered a "pure relationship".

A "pure" relationship is one where you  meet the person with no apparent connections and in a random situation. This relationship can be considered pure because it has no previous expectations or rules of engagement for interacting with the person that you've come across. Just to clarify what I mean by "in a random situation", I mean out in the world, moving about and not in some predetermined situation with set guidelines of interaction (class, club, dinner, etc.).

 

Our first lesson will be on social priming and social interactions.

So, what is priming? Priming is when some stimulus causes us to be more likely to expect something related (Read: perceived to be related) to happen. For instance, if primed with the word "dog", you'll react more quickly when you see the word "cat" (because it's related) when asked if it is a word or a non-word.