PhiloPsycho Freedom

Secular Reincarnation

Lately I've been thinking about Thomas Huxley's idea of infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters for an infinite amount of time. As the theory goes, they'd eventually recreate Shakespeare's works in their entirety simply due to random hitting of the keys. Don't argue this point, it's true. In fact, they'd not only recreate Shakespeare's works once, but would do so an infinite number of times. The same goes for every other literary work, supposing that they phonetically write out other scripts (like oriental, Cyrillic, Sanskrit, etc.)) and ignore accents that aren't available.

An easier way to wrap your head around this problem is to envision a keyboard that has pebbles being dropped on it, hitting only one key at a time and no others. Given that each key has an equally probably chance of being struck, it will produce every work if left doing this processes for unlimited time. The reason I find this example to be clearer is because most people seem to think the monkeys would have some sort of intent behind their actions, as if they're actually trying to recreate Shakespeare or whatever. This isn't the case - they're simply mashing keys and accidentally making novels.

Expanding from this, I realized that secular reincarnation is capable of happening. It is entirely possible that one or all of three things are infinite: time, space, and/or alternate dimensions. As long as one of these is unlimited, it's quite possible that when we die, our consciousness in its exact form could re-manifest somewhere else. This pulls a lot of things into question, of course. Where does consciousness rest? Is it possible to transmit it? Even if something is structurally identical, will you, as you are now, be part of it? What about a/the soul? Too many questions, really. But, it is promising for any non-religious person who's despairing at the afterlife.

To clarify where I'm coming from, probability theory states that nothing has a 0% chance of happening (aka everything has a chance greater than 0). Even if it's infinitesimally small, it will express itself somewhere in an unlimited number of trials. The real mindfuck here is if you consider omnipresent beings. If every possible combination of things must happen, then somewhere an omnipresent god must exist, and in another place it must not, which violates the first one's power. This clearly demonstrates that there is a limit to the probability curve in practice - we don't have gods walking among us and intervening, as some interventionist religions would believe.

Thus, we should refine the statement to be:

In an infinite universe, anything that is possible must happen.

Note: Do not attempt to actually create the monkey's on typewriters. Only a fucking idiot would expect to see similar results when comparing an infinite sample and an extremely small, finite sample.

Perfect Vision

Psychology 11:26 AM | 0 comments

Somewhere at sometime you've probably heard the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20". For those of you who haven't, this phrase is describing how much clearer events are once they're over with. We have the ability to gain some distance between us and the problem or choice of the time. This is all descriptive of something called "hindsight bias" which is how we're biased to think that things were obviously going to turn out as they did when they may not have been at the time. Enron's huge success that eventually ended the utter downfall of the energy giant? Obviously that was doomed! Their hiring description was basically the DSM-IV-TR's criteria of a sociopath. The people in the 2nd tower on 9-11? They should have expected another plane coming! The bay of pigs? Clearly JFK should have known better than to go through with such a shoddy plan! In fact, none of these cases would have been easily identified as a failure from the perspective of the decision makers (stockholders, people in the 2nd tower, JFK and staff, respectively). From our cushy position right now, it is quite obvious that these things would happen, but at the time, you can never be certain how things will work out.

There are too many factors at any given moment to clearly see everything that's relevant to a given circumstance.

Similar to me in every way!

Analysis, Psychology 4:18 PM | 0 comments

A common bias that comes up in even the most fair-handed of people is what is referred to as the "similar-to-me bias" (also known as the similar to me error). I suppose you could view this as a form of error, but bias seems more apt. This bias happens when we judge someone who seems like us, whether in appearance or behaviour, more favourably than we should.

This makes sense, right? We've thought out the world, we think we know how things work, and we tend to think we're smarter than someone who has a differing opinion from ours. They just haven't seen everything we have! We have better powers of deduction! Of course! So when we find someone who is similar to us, particularly in their views, we view them as a more capable person, more likeable, and all the rest.

One of my professors this term pointed out how this bias can play out in everyday life: If you look at people lined up somewhere (a grocery store, say), you'll notice that the more similar two people appear, the closer they'll stand. I don't mean this in an intimate way, or that they even know each other, either. Two strangers who look like they have similar backgrounds tend to stand close together. Though, this is only anecdotally shown, but not experimentally.

One of the more detrimental areas that this bias can show up is in job interviews. Though managers are usually trained to watch for such biases, they can still pop up. There's not much you can do with this. You'll be hard-pressed to imitate an interviewer with features you can't change (gender, race, socioeconomic status, etc.), but making an effort can’t hurt, right?

So, keep this bias in mind when making judgments of other people. The message is in the neighbourhood of Mr.Rogers, but just because something is different doesn't mean it is bad. Embrace our differences, people! That's all for today.

High Self-Esteem: Not always a good thing

Analysis 5:54 PM | 1 comments

This post is in line with my previous one regarding the problem of narcissism in more recent generations.

As many of you may have probably noticed over the years, teachers and parents seem to equate high self-esteem with good grades. Uncanny that there is a correlation between the two, but not quite in the direction they saw it.

Maybe you already know this, but I feel it's important to emphasize: correlation does not mean causation. Just because two things happen together, doesn't mean one necessarily makes the other happen. In this instance, teachers and parents assumed that kids with high self-esteem were more determined, confident, and successful because of it. As it seems to be dawning on us, it's the other way around, if anything. What we ended up with was a group of people with a fragile sense of self who believe that the world is effortlessly theirs for the taking, eventually leading to a breach of their self-image when someone points out a flaw. Their view of the world might not be a bad thing if these people are some form of royalty or in some social experiment where this was actually an accurate view of their situation, but clearly it isn't.

No, what we have are people who demand reverence and awe in their presence. What happens if you don't bow before their greatness? Well, there's a number of outcomes, none of them good: they could throw a tantrum, they could violently lash out, and/or they could pout. All very irritating, especially if you're somehow lucky enough as to have to work with them.

Yes, we've come to a sad realization that not everyone deserves self-esteem. Those who do not earn it through hard work have a fragile veneer of a self. People should feel good about themselves, but within reason. If you've gained a degree of success and you've worked hard to get there, feel good! If you've not done much and have nothing to show, don't despair, just aspire to achieve!

Moral of the story: When trying to get someone - or yourself - to feel better about themselves, don't excessively compliment when there's nothing worth complimenting. This detracts from your compliments severely and leads to the above problem. Rather, encourage them to pick up a hobby or to do some self-improvement (tactfully) to bring about something actually worth being proud of.

A Dip into Personality

Psychology 9:37 PM | 0 comments

I haven't dipped much into personality theory yet, and I thought it was high time that I did so!

In 1902, Charles Horton Cooley came up with the concept of the Looking Glass Self. To Cooley, a person is comprised of many different selves which we portray to the world. The way we decipher which self to present in any given moment is dependent on the social situation that we are in. One way of looking at this is to watch and become aware of how you act around your dad, and compare it to how you act around your best friend. Clearly, "who you are" changes dramatically from one situation to the next. Why was this? It was because, according to the Looking Glass Self theory, you thought that these people viewed you in a different light and you felt it necessary to have to live up to their expectations. Cooley's theory is ripe with the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies. If I perceive you to think that I'm an asshole, I'm going to be resentful of that and fulfill your belief of me being an asshole to you. The sum of this theory can be found in the following statements:

I'm not who I think I am. I'm not who you think I am. I'm who I think you think I am.

So, as stated, we become what we believe others expect us to be, as illustrated in the picture. Think about a time when you were in the company of someone who you think respects you. You will do all in your power to be consistent with their expectations, doing your best not to let them down. Knowing this theory may give you some freedom to alter your actions; if you're aware enough of your motivation for your actions you can alter how you act around someone in order to change their opinion instead of playing into it, which most people have tried to do without knowing this theory. Dale Carnegie would adamantly agree with this theory; in one of his books, he said that the only way to make someone trustworthy is to treat them as if they already are. Don't misconstrue this. He's not saying it's guaranteed to make someone trustworthy, but it's the only situation that will bring forth such qualities. To turn it around, you can't make someone trustworthy by treating them suspiciously.

The Looking Glass Self is consistent with one of Carl Jung's theories of the archetypes of personality. There are many archetypes, but one in particular is related to Cooley's theory: the persona. To Jung, the persona is the mask that we wear in different situations. When at work, we're our working selves, with our kids, we're our parental selves, etc. Jung felt that these masks could become pathological if we ended up becoming too committed to any particular one. For example, If we became too committed to the introversion mask, we become awkward in social settings, unable to communicate effectively, and even more withdrawn due to our social awkwardness; conversely, if we become too committed to the extroversion mask, we become too flexible with our self, producing glaring inconsistencies from situation to situation that will produce other problems.

Overall, I found this to be a generally accurate and intriguing perspective to take on how behaviour changes from situation to situation. Our survival depends in large part to our co-operation with others, so it is wired specifically to read others well. This theory doesn't apply solely to negative reactions either, as demonstrated by Carnegie above. So, who are we, in general, you might ask? Well, personality is defined in the realm of psychology as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviours in various situations. One of the key parts of personality, though, is its pervasiveness, which is not mentioned in that definition. We are the commonalities that appear between these social situations. Where does the isolated self - the self when you're alone - play into this? Well I'm not quite sure, so I'll throw that your way. Feel free to enlighten me in your comments.

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Motivation Theory and Video Games

Psychology, Reaction 8:40 PM | 0 comments

I came across this post the other day and thought it was a great analysis of the habits we gravitate towards, namely genres of video games for you gamers out there. I fully support the following message:

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.