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."
A few types of Power: Control over Resources, Control over Rewards, and Coercion/Punishment. Power is subject to the Law of Personal Exploitation – the person/entity who cares less has the power to exploit the person who cares more (applicable to government services to employer-employee relations to marriages, etc.).
A common metaphor in mindfulness discourse is that observing thoughts and emotions is like being on a hillside watching the clouds go by: if you observe long enough, you'll notice that they just fade away, like puffy little clouds do.
The last post included ideas on reducing emissions in freight transport. This and the next few posts will be about reducing the carbon footprint of personal vehicle travel. How much CO2 do cars actually emit?
When we are advised to Recognize, Accept, Investigate emotions with Non-attachment (RAIN) I wonder what is being recognized, accepted and investigated through the observational lens of non-attachment. Emotions and their associated thoughts require attentional resources. Accepting, observing, and investigating require attentional resources.
Our brains engage in two distinct cognitive modes: the attention-demanding “task-positive mode” and the go-with-the-flow task-negative mode, also known as the default mode. Observing thoughts is a cognitive task; the thoughts themselves arise while the brain is in default mode. Here’s the thing: these two modes reciprocally inhibit each other; that is, our brain can’t be in both modes at the same time. They alternate.
The idea is that a modest BIG would eliminate severe poverty but not be so generous as to disincentivize work any more than the current safety net system does.
Reducing emissions from transportation is mostly a matter of reducing demand for transported goods, improving fuel efficiency and improving transportation efficiency – that is, moving the same amount of cargo (e.g., people and things) with fewer trips and fewer vehicles. We’re going to start with freight transportation. This includes shipping, rail, and road transport.
As we observe thoughts, they occupy the cognitive space called working memory. They are like echoes of what just happened in our heads, often represented as word fragments that may or may not be decent proxies for their pre-observed form. It’s possible to get really efficient at directing and re-directing attention. Meditation is a useful technique for acquiring this skill. It’s possible also to get really good at tracking our attention, otherwise known as “aware-ing”. Meditation is also useful here.
In the last post, I found $545 billion in federal and state budgets to pay for BIG, all by transferring existing funds. While most adults would receive a monthly BIG, most would also pay the entire BIG amount back in taxes – from the middle income quintile and up. I’m thinking people would have the option to have the government set aside their BIG payments – perhaps in interest-bearing accounts – to pay back in taxes or as a way to save for major expenditures.
Having too much time on one’s hands, as in "today I really don't have to do anything, although I know I should" often leads to inertia and procrastination, which feeds on itself: the longer one delays doing something, the harder it is to just do it. Not doing erodes self-confidence in one’s ability to achieve something through doing. Self-confidence isn’t a willed attitude – if it’s healthy and not delusional, self-confidence is based on accumulating evidence one can do what it takes for the task at hand
.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the US are: • Electricity production (31% of 2013 GHG emissions), mostly from burning fossil fuels, especially coal and natural gas. ...
Most of us who have taken an introductory psychology course have learned about the “fundamental attribution error”, which is the tendency to attribute behavior to individual characteristics instead of situational factors. The assumption here is that situations exert much greater influence on behavior than personal attributes like desires, emotions, goals, personality, or temperament. The FAE has achieved the status as received wisdom – a solid scientific fact.
In a recent online poll of 1,009 individuals, over 60% of each age category said they prioritize life experiences over possessions. Whether “experiences” are more damaging to the environment than possessions depends on the experiences and the possessions.
The thing about monopolies is that they are mostly harmful when they are truly monopolies - that is, there is no real competition for the product/service they provide and the price of entry is steep for potential competitors. But what constitutes the competition is not always obvious. Take Greyhound. Greyhound could be considered a monopoly in some areas of the country, but only when competition is defined as other companies of the same kind, i.e., other bus companies. We know that’s absurd. Greyhound’s competitors are also other forms of transportation: cars, planes, trains.
Cognitive decoupling happens when we distinguish what we suppose to be true from what might actually be the case.
Type 2 processing involves experiencing beliefs as beliefs, as windows-in-themselves and not windows-on-the-world. So, when we are coupling cognitive-wise, we are considering cognitions as objects of attention – much like when we are “observing thoughts”.
The content of our resting states is mostly something else, like a sensory impressions, visual imagery, waves of emotion, or unsymbolized thinking (wordless and imageless, but there doing something - like wondering or questioning or realizing – but without words). So if our “task-independent” experience doesn’t involve words most of the time, what does it mean to “observe thoughts as they unfold”? What are we observing when the mental activity does not include words? And when they do, how do we mark the boundary between one “thought” and another?
Is it possible for human societies to achieve or maintain a high standard of living without causing significant environmental harm? As a first step in this exploration, I’m going to define a high standard of living as a situation where the basic needs of the population are taken care of and about 50% of income can go to discretionary spending.
We’re in a resting state when we’re not performing a task, when the brain is “at ease, sir”, doing its thing in the default mode. Hurlburt and colleagues just published a paper comparing “resting state” in two conditions: in an MRI scanner and the natural environment of the subjects. They found that resting states have five characteristics: inner seeing (visual images), inner speaking, sensory awareness, feelings (i.e., emotions), and unsymbolized thinking (wordless, imageless, but there doing something - like wondering or questioning or realizing – but without words).