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Scientific Encounters
The immediate future looms large in human psychology. People tend to care more about near-term payoff or danger than what might be coming down the pike in a few years. This tendency to downplay later rewards or threats – called hyperbolic discounting – probably evolved because prehistoric conditions were too harsh for long-term calculations to be of much benefit. Live for today because tomorrow may never come.
Like scientists, medical doctors appreciate their own limitations. Yet they are tasked with making important decisions – possibly life-and-death decisions – despite not knowing for sure they’ve got it right. Wait and see? Try something? Try something else? All the while observing and thinking and investigating further. Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds.
Problem-solving when we’re in a good mood tends to be quick, flexible, creative, and intuitive. Problem-solving when we’re in a bad mood tends to be information-based, detail-oriented, systematic, and cautious. Then there’s problem-solving when we’re on the rebound from feeling bad to feeling good ...
Behavior is motivated by desire to do or have something, either for pleasure or the relief of discomfort. Conflict is the perception that there’s a reason not to act on the desire. Temptations are desires that conflict with one or more of our goals. We resist temptations through exercising self-control.
I work in scientific research and have seen its dirty underbelly. Diving in headlong, full of idealism about the scientific method and its inherent humility.
Just like with speech, thoughts aren’t only about their literal content but also their function. Morin et al (2011) found that one function of inner speech was self-motivation. Some inner outbursts do serve to boost confidence by self-praise (“that was brilliant”!) or motivate corrective behavior by self-chastisement (“that was stupid”!).
Temporal discounting undermines persistence in the pursuit of difficult long-term goals. It's too bad that the period of life associated with temporal discounting - aka youth - is also the time of greatest potential for skill/expertise building, which, unfortunately, also requires self-control, grit, emotion management, and conscientiousness.
One thing I love about the scientific mindset is its humility. Scientific proposals about the nature of reality are tentative, provisional, and mindful of their limitations. That very humility feeds the wonderful feeling of awe and adventure that accompanies the scientific quest to understand something better.
...If one condition was more effortful and less fun than the other, would the groups differ in any systematic way in their expectations of cognitive change or in how they approach the post-training assessment tests?
“The problem with free speech is that it’s hard, and self-censorship is the path of least resistance. But once you learn to keep yourself from voicing unwelcome thoughts, you forget how to think them – how to think freely at all – and ideas perish at conception.” George Packer, p.20, The New Yorker April 13, 2015.
Can one truly embrace the scientific method and revere religious masters or teachings as depositories of wisdom? If so, is that because one has assigned different epistemological realms to science and religion? Or does one try to explain religious sentiments as compatible with an attitude of scientific scrutiny?
Between “toxic” thoughts and feelings, unawareness, cancer-prone personalities, and just plain ol’ stress*, the unmindful among us are in mortal danger. Delicate homeostatic inner balance has been put to the service of New Age fear-mongering.
...from the website Science or Not?
Cherry picking: “In cherry-picking, people use legitimate evidence, but not all of the evidence. They select segments of evidence that appear to support their argument and hide or ignore the rest of the evidence which tends to refute it.”
Self-control operates much like a cybernetic feedback system and includes 3 interacting components: the setpoint, a discrepancy, and the correction (or reduction of discrepancy).
Stressing status and appealing to authority: “People who use this tactic try to convince you by quoting some ‘authority’ who agrees with their claims and pointing to that person’s status, position or qualifications, instead of producing real-world evidence. The tactic is known as the argument from authority.”
The problem with the concept of ‘proof’ is that it implies certainty – and science isn’t about certainty. Science is about proposing and testing hypotheses and then drawing provisional conclusions with the understanding that future evidence may lead to revision or rejection of those conclusions. The language of science is cautious and tentative.
Minimalist synopsis of the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments: subjects were willing to hurt others if they thought this was what authority figures wanted from them. Both studies serve as cautionary tales of how easily humans can be manipulated by authority figures into committing atrocious acts against their fellows. For me, the main lesson of these studies is a bit different – it is the danger of living in totalitarian environments.
Comment on: A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind by Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert; 12 November 2010 Vol 330 Science ...
Per Laska and Gurman, “common factors” are those that are “necessary and sufficient for change: (a) an emotionally charged bond between the therapist and patient, (b) a confiding healing setting in which therapy takes place, (c) a therapist who provides a psychologically derived and culturally embedded explanation for emotional distress, (d) an explanation that is adaptive (i.e., provides viable and believable options for overcoming specific difficulties) and is accepted by the patient, and (e) a set of procedures or rituals engaged by the patient and therapist that leads the patient to enact something that is positive, helpful, or adaptive.” (p. 469)
According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the EPA has found a clear level of concentration of the pesticide imidacloprid in which things start to go badly for the local honey bee population: "If nectar brought back to the hive from worker bees had more than 25parts per billion of the chemical, 'there's a significant effect,' namely fewer bees, less honey and 'a less robust hive,' ... But if the nectar chemical level was below 25 parts per billion, it was as if there were no imidacloprid at all, with no ill effects, Jones said. It was a clear line of harm or no harm, he said."