Spelunking the Universe
Posts tagged Psychology
The Me in the Mirror
1 year ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
So I went back for my follow up check at the Oral Surgeon. We momentarily discussed the amazing potency of their “light” form of local anesthesia. I went from answering the question “Do you like playing games?” or was it “Do you play games?” Something like that, I just recall the last words I said was “It’s hard to enjoy games when your job…” I immediately woke up in a totally different room, as I’ve mentioned before.
He told me that when you are under you can answer simple commands, that in fact I had walked into the other room of my other volition. He didn’t tell me if he had told me to which does elicit some level of funny visuals in my head. It got me wondering, during this whole period of time while I was in a subconscious state was I feeling pain? Was there a form of me in agony as teeth were removed from my head? I was coherent enough to respond to his commands and I was obviously there for the entire procedure.
I have a complete Amnesia of the entire event, something I’ve been trying to write about for quite some time properly. So I suppose it is a blessing in disguise. But it makes me wonder about that other me, the one that is localized to that small piece of the timeline of my life. What was he thinking at the time? Did the drugged state he was in change his feelings on anything in particular? Was this me for all intents and purposes except that I couldn’t remember anything or feel pain?
I feel somewhat like for a moment I was no longer within my own timeline. Not in the literal sense but in the emotional one. That there is this small sliver of my life that was replaced by another me entirely. It doesn’t feel quite like sleeping, even though they are the same processes. When I go to rest I can feel myself getting tired and I feel a gradual progression of events. Likewise I wake up in nearly the exact position I went to sleep.
I am a million times thankful that I wasn’t awake for the procedure. This is by no means a complaint, as mentioned before the Doctor did a job so amazing I don’t believe it could be done better. I’ve just been pondering about that other me. The one that went through the procedure, following simple commands like a drone. What thought, however simple, was floating along in his brain. I do not remember any dreams during the procedure, which may just be the reach of the drugs.
It’s probably one of my favorite and most perplexing life experiences. It is one thing to be asleep, but to think for a time I was a semi conscious zombie is fascinating. If not for the fact I’d not like to see myself butchered I would have loved to see a video.
I imagine this is not nearly as interesting to anyone out there who has never been anesthetized. I’m also told (by the surgeon) that if I haven’t drank before the feelings I felt would be alien to me. Is this perhaps what total inebriation feels like? Waking up the next day not remembering a moment of the past night. It isn’t the least bit motivating in getting me to drink but I wonder if the processes were the same.
It’s hard to shake the overwhelming feeling of seemingly traveling through space and time in a way far outside the norm.
The “Ordered” Universe–Because it is.
1 year ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
There is often a point made about the universe, about everything that is around us. The gist of the point is that “There is obviously a designer, a watch requires a watchmaker, and a universe run by laws must have a lawmaker.” This is very pleasing to the ear and to the mind as long as you don’t take longer than two seconds to think about it. The moment you do it falls apart and it falls apart hard.
The observation that the universe is governed by strict laws is ultimately a redundant observation, the universe must be as it is if we are to be as we are. If the universe were different in any way then we would be different (if we existed at all), to clarify “we” are merely the things observing the universe. If there is nothing conscious in another universe then the “we” is a null value. But regardless of what universe you examine and the species within it, the reasoning behind their being there is entirely redundant.
Because no matter what the case were, the questions would be exactly the same and the reasoning would be exactly the same. While I used to give my parents a bit of a grimace when I got the “Because I said so.” line from them I must admit that in this case a similar response must be made. The universe is ordered because it is ordered. You are sitting or standing where you are because you are sitting or standing where you are. We see visible light because whatever light we would have sensed would have been called Visible light, that range of light is only special because it is special to us, if we were different in any way we would be making the exact same observation about a different range of visible light.
We are on Earth not because Earth is special but because whatever planet we would have been on anywhere in the entire universe would have been judged with equal curiosity. It would have been the “special one” for no other reason than it happened to be the one we spawned on. There is no necessary designer behind the universe because the universe must exist in some fashion or another, if that fashion were a null fashion then more power to it. There could have been a trillion trillion universes before this specific one, each one with beings that too tried to explain why their own unique composition was the one. What made it special was not that it was special but that it was what the outcome was.
Just like rolling a die, there must be an outcome to the roll (at least in the philosophical sense) there are 6 choices, and the one you are left with is not chosen because it is divine, or because it is pre-thought or unique, but because it was the choice. Essentially the universe is ordered because, as humans, the only way humans would have examined the universe would be if it was ordered. If it wasn’t ordered we wouldn’t exist as we are but whatever that did exist would be asking the exact same questions (for a short while at least), they would be no more unique than us, and the universe they’d be in would be no more unique than ours. These things must be the way they are for us to wonder why they are as they are because no matter how they were we’d be wondering. There is always an outcome to the dice roll and if you knew nothing of the other 5 possibilities you would assume that there was something special about that dice roll, wherein fact there was nothing unique about it at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I am infinitely fascinated by the entire universe and of the possibilities of things unknown. But the desire to know “Why Earth?” or “Why this Universe?” or “Why is it ordered?” are all fruitless questions, beyond knowing how to best sustain our own physiology they will not bring us unique information because if you changed the variables to some other variant the questions would still exist, they are entirely malleable and don’t hold educational value in that respect. These questions are no more productive than pondering if we are in a Matrix or a Brain in a Vat. All they tend to do is waste time in the case of furthering advance in science, which is a shame because the further Science travels the more wonders we will discover.
Just don’t get caught up in explaining why the universe is, because at the end of the day it is and all the explanations in the universe will not make it change (for if they did the best you’ve done is get yourself killed, the living thing is not fond of extreme sudden change). I realize it’s fun to think about but it does not provide any useful information because the questions all apply to every possible variation of existence wherein anything capable of asking the questions would exist.
Note: That was very difficult to write since I’m trying to explain the circular logic of this profoundly wasteful question and it seems to drag you into circular answers. Which I think helps explain my point better than my attempts to explain it did.
Over thinking It
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
To say that I over think things would be an understatement of such proportions that it would be far beyond a lie. It is something that keeps me up many nights and causes me to think about situations that all others involved have long since forgotten.
I’ve noticed it all the more recently as I work on “the story”. (Now forgive me as I’m about to compare myself to a truly talented writer, this isn’t to say I am talented, it just happens to be who I’m reading at this moment) I’ve been reading harry potter, yes I know only a decade or so after the rest of the world started. I try my best to be so far back on the bandwagon that I occasionally must rush after it as it scampers off without me. Keeps life refreshing for me that way…in the sense that I can enjoy something and not feel the urge to rant on about it for ages. Although today that will not be the case!
At any rate Rowling manages to present an entire castle worth of characters, likely thousands of students, hundreds of teachers, and a plethora of monsters all working in tandem. The details of what all of them do is scarce, save for about 20 or so major players but it still feels like a very deep and active place to learn. I wonder as I read it, how many hours did Rowling spend plotting out the journeys students with no real importance made each day? Did she spend nights pondering about just what the professors were doing at the moment Harry and Ron walked into that very wet and very empty girl’s bathroom?
How many days of her life were lost to constant thought over just what Dumbledore was eating each day? Did these sort of questions even pop up to her? I find myself plotting distances, times, steps taken, weather patterns, social and economic issues. I’m pondering what characters who won’t even appear for multiple books are doing at the exact moment a situation is going down.
It is swallowing my mind to the point where I’m thinking about it during much of the rest of the day, even when I AM reading Harry Potter. As I plod away through the, admittedly very interesting, tale of this young boy and his friends I am wondering just how the next scene of my own fantasy universe will pan out. I’m hoping by the end of this first novel I’ll have some sort of system down, a series of kill switches to help dull the endless pondering about this place. Because if I don’t I might just wake up one day within the pages.
Rico Examines “Technology and Depression”
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I was discussing this topic with my Mother-In-Law a short while back and felt it was interesting enough to post here. If you disagree, imagine instead I’m talking about puppies, because everyone loves puppies.
We’ll begin with the subject of change and the effects of it on our psyche. I don’t believe I’ll be citing anything today, so if you disagree with my points go check out case studies and I’m sure they’ll provide the same information. While it is true that change, and paradoxes, help expand the gray matter, many people are very resistant to change. This may be a survival mechanism, once you have mastered your surroundings, you would be very unhappy if those surroundings changed because now you would need to utilize more time (a precious commodity to mortal beings) to once again become learned.
There is an irony to this, the more open to change an organism is, the faster it will adapt and the higher likelihood that it’ll survive. So how is it, that humans have survived this long? As a whole humans have proven they are overall highly resistant to change, so much so that they’ve many times over developed belief structures that are themselves the ultimate hyperbole of static. Beings with unchanging infinitely wide power that exist for an unchanging amount of time over an unchanging swath of existence (namely all of it). The answer lies in a natural check, in a sense humans are one massive organism, while our bodies do contain various organs that seem to have no purpose other than to kill us, there are balances to these that keep us as a whole alive.
The relatively small percent of humans that are not only open to change but actively searching for it, these are what keep humans alive. While many people find distress in change, they can avoid it (to the misfortune of them and all around them), this small group however continually discovers and advances knowledge in the universe and thusly sparks change, which generally leads to longer and much less painful survival.
Depression, or at the very least stress, is derived from seemingly uncontrollable circumstances. The worse the feeling of no control, the higher the level of depression or stress. In most situations the loss of control can be rectified but it cannot usually be rectified quicker than merely avoiding it, which may be the reason that people largely avoid change or things they don’t understand.
However Technology has become basically unavoidable, for a truly productive life people must tie in with technology. This has some amazing ramifications, because I’m willing to bet that not a single person reading this article has a deep understanding of exactly how a computer works. Many people have a rough idea of how cars work, the mechanisms for their function are fairly straight forward. However a computer (though arguably no more complicated) has a much more daunting scope. You could contain all the knowledge of the collective human existence into a device that is the size of a dictionary. This is a daunting concept that mystifies PCs amongst many people, and puts plenty of money into the pocket of the “Geek Squad” 
.
We are technologically much better off than we were in the early 1900’s, but with that has come the inescapable necessity to learn and change. This is a massive, utterly unstoppable, reality that I do feel has made the majority of people less happy than they were in a relatively simpler time. War has always been here, disease has always been here, and wheels have been around for a long time. But technology, electricity, and the extremely quick evolution of information has put a globes worth of people who live off the idea of the rawest static ideals in check.
This is a very good thing however, forcing people to accept change and to enjoy new challenges has nothing but positive ramifications in the short term and in the long term. For the entirety of human history it has been the people accepting of change, and only these people, that has kept the rest of the human population advancing and alive. The larger this population becomes, the better the lives of all people will be. However it will be an uphill struggle considering just how strong the desire for static infinitives is. If you need a very real example look at America and Pluto. Or really America and basically any scientific advance in the last 100 years that didn’t obviously and immediately make life easier. I’d comment on other countries, but I don’t live in them so all my comments would be largely assumptive and that’s not fair.
Unrelated I would like to congratulate Volcanoes, you have once again reminded everyone just how badass you can be.
Rico Examines “People, Politics, and Pretense.”
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Basically anyone who has read an article about politics has seen an astounding statement of just how “Out of Touch” the politicians involved are. When people talk about the efficiency of businesses versus government run operations there is a distinct separation of the two. As if there is some magical race of beings that are running one versus the other.
Lets first establish what people run, people run everything, they run businesses, they run families, they run schools, they run hospitals, they run governments, and they run religions. There is absolutely nothing different about this between them all, each is run by people and each has people picked in some manner of fashion for that position. Perhaps they established kin through procreation, or established quality of talent through election or hiring, or they’ve established belief through convincing parable. Which by the way is a word everyone should use today, try it.
There is no reason why one should assume that a government cannot run something as well or better than a corporation. Likewise there is no reason to assume that a corporation cannot run something as well or better than the government. Mix and match any of the above examples and the statement is the same. It is not that these organizations cannot do it, it is that they do not do it.
The fault of course, as it must, falls upon people as a whole. People decide what is an acceptable level of accomplishment for each organization and that acceptance is what decides the level of success the organization performs to. If you accept your neighbors being terrible parents you have set a precedent that that level of parenting is all that is necessary. If you accept that your government cannot run anything properly they will then achieve that level of success. The same for schools, faiths, and hospitals.
Absolutely everything in this world run by humans will run at a level that is accepted by the people. Because absolutely everything in this world run by humans is (tautology time) run by humans. So they function under the same rules, the same psychological triggers, and will all rise or fall because of the same variables.
Don’t ever accept anything because of what organization it is a part of if the outcome is not to the standards you feel fair. There is no inherent static wall that an organization cannot rise above, everything is limited only by the expectations of global society. It is, in its entirely, no more complicated than that.
Coming this Week on TheIOS:
Rico Examines “Video Games: Graphics Vs. Gameplay.”
Rico Examines “The Beauty of Mathematics.”
ADIOS: The King of Spes: Votum.
IIWP (If I was President): Taxation
How many people are you?
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
I’ve been on a journey of sorts through my life, to prove to folks that likely nothing is black and white. Now honestly, could something like “How many people are you?” be that complicated of a question? I mean obviously, you are one person, I am one person, it seems so simple.
Well lets go on a very short journey, through an entirely plausible series of events, merely limited by current medical technology. I’ll then ask a few simple questions and we’ll see how straight forward they are.
For reasons unknown, Markus, has entered a hospital to have a peculiar surgery done. The hospital is going to cut Markus completely in half from tip of his head to his groin. The brain itself can survive as damaged as 50%, which means that a perfect cut with optimum tools and technology would leave two halves that only are limited by the organs that remain. We would need to either build or donate an extra heart and any other organs that are not perfectly split. Essentially the ‘open’ side would then be closed with a bionic enclosure. Nothing fancy, an apparatus that helps enclose both sides so that now we have two living halves that both function.
My first question is a simple one. What would each side know? Would one side be able to speak and the other not? Does the brain store certain information in a raid between both halves? What would the halves say to one another?
Perhaps some deeper more philosophical questions. Would the halves themselves feel one another? In theory if we have a soul we would be dealing with one entity that now experiences two separate sets of sensation. What metaphysical ramifications come from each not communicating with the other?
Now I ask you. Given this situation that could quite easily happen with some small gains in the medical field. Is this just one person or two people? If you argue that it is one person, would you arrest one half if the other (unbeknownst to it) robbed a bank? If you didn’t arrest both of them then you are acknowledging that they are both separate people.
But now we have a new question. At what point did we take one person and make them two? What was it that defines a person? Is it simply the bridge between the two hemispheres? Or is it merely how many functioning bodies are present. In the face of the split man you have taken one functioning body and made it into two with a few modifications.
So that’s my conundrum. A problem that could be so easily fixed by just having a brain that does not operate when the hemispheres are disconnected from one another. This of course isn’t my finest work but the simple scenario and questions should keep folks busy which is what is important.
Cognitive Dissonance
2 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in Poetry
Cognitive Dissonance
Is a tragic romance
of what is
and what is not
of what actually was
and how we think it was
Fatal fantasy
of a fictitious reality
leading wars and tragedies
prominently into now
Cognitive Dissonance
masked behind morality
greatest tragedy
to ever befall man
as it strips the ease
as much as it can
fed by frail minds
of all kinds
Cognitive Dissonance
sitting kingly
upon a throne of solid bone
as it commands those
watching mindless shows
making sure to hose
the fires of reality
from their rightful place
in our cognitive faculty
The Viral Fear
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Run! It’s a Swine Flue!
So here we are. With the momentary pause of the US’s apparent goal to have one war with every nation on the planet there had to be something. We have a disease known as the Swine Flu, indeed not all that uncommon. Apparently if you are in constant contact with pigs you just may acquire a human strain of this mean little bug.
So what does it do to you? Well if you live in Mexico it is apparently fatal, however if you are anyone else in the world it is essentially just like every other flu. It is a supreme pain in the butt, you will probably vomit, but eventually be ok. So why now with .00000001867 of the US population infected by this disease and many already recovering (only what…4 people have been hospitalized and will likely recover) it has become the job of news stations to color entire states (and countries) bright red once a single person has the disease there. Millions of people put in fear over a small outbreak of a disease that is only fatal in a country where you can’t even drink the water most times.
I sometimes wonder if we have a viral fear of a time without fear. We work so hard to make mountains out of molehills that I often wonder when people will learn how to instantly die from panic. As if our own genetic code desires us to end the reign over the land. Perhaps that’s a bit dark, but nowhere near as dark as the nonsense flying across twitter or anywhere else for that matter. This site not an exception I’m sure .
Just for a second here lets list the differences between Swine Flu and the Flu systematically. If the symptom is in both it will be bold. If it is only in the Swine it’ll be Underlined and if it is just the Flu it’ll be Italic.
Fever, Lethargy, Lack of Appetite, Runny Nose, Sore Throat, Coughing, Nausea, Vomiting, Aches, Headache and Diarrhea. That’s right, the only thing that Swine Flu will give you over a Flu is the runs. Oh wow. Lets all not defecate ourselves to death at once. The Flu however gives you joint aching, Nausea, Aches, AND Headaches on top of everything else besides Diarrhea. So until we see a regular Flu Outbreak (you know every single year) I wouldn’t worry.
A bit of advice below:
If the world really does start having a huge outbreak of the Swine Flu, you know what you do? You stay at home for a week and eat the food you have at home and use your tap for water. If the death rate is really as dramatic and quick as people are trying to make it out you just need to wait out the dying and you’ll be fine. This isn’t 28 days later, sick people don’t hunt down healthy people and infect them. In the US you are more likely to be shot by your local gang or ticketed by the traffic police than die from Swine Flu.
Hindsight Bias, Everyone knew this would happen.
3 years ago
by Rico Penguin
in General
Another remarkable aspect of cognitive faculties is their ability to convince us that we are certain of something that in reality was (or may still be) incredibly uncertain. This phenomenal effect is so convincing that in many cases we are absolutely positively sure that it isn’t happening. We just know that what we think now isn’t an illusion or manipulated by outside sources, we tend to forget that if our brain is tricked we are going to be unaware that it was. One particular form of these biases that can have a remarkable impact on our lives, especially debates of previous events, is the Hindsight Bias. To use my favorite resource for quick and dirty information Hindsight Bias is defined as follows:
Hindsight bias is the inclination to see events that have occurred as more predictable than they in fact were before they took place. Hindsight bias has been demonstrated experimentally in a variety of settings, including politics, games and medicine. In psychological experiments of hindsight bias, subjects also tend to remember their predictions of future events as having been stronger than they actually were, in those cases where those predictions turn out correct.
One explanation of the bias is the availability heuristic: the event that did occur is more salient in one’s mind than the possible outcomes that did not.
- Wikipedia
One of my favorite lines that is formed from this bias is that of “Oh man I should have seen that coming.” A person has an event that was no more likely than a another event transpire (or the difference is negligible) and yet they feel in retrospect (aka hindsight) that it was blatantly obvious that event would have transpired. When watching a horror movie we scold people who have died for not thinking about the obvious nature of their situation even though there could have been a multitude of ways it would have ended. It just so happens that the way it does end is the way that comes most strongly to the mind in hindsight.
This seems like a reasonable way to examine the past as well, events that have occurred in the past have proven that it is possible that they occur (obviously). Causally this gives them priority over ‘possible’ events that have not yet transpired. Why fear what has never been when you can much easier fear what has and at least prepare for its next occurrence (rhetorical).
Hindsight bias is also one of the many crippling tools in gambling. When playing a game where there is always the same chance of winning to losing people will feel that after X loses they are bound to win. A game as simple as ‘heads or tails’ could have people sitting around for hours waiting for a half dozen heads in a row to place 20 million dollars on tails. The remarkable thing is that regardless of what ends up happening they’ll respond with a relatively similar answer. “I knew that was going to happen.” If it is tails then they’ll probably say it in a much happier fashion and perhaps try the gamble again an hour later and lose it all, at which time they’ll respond similar to how they would have had it been 7 heads in a row the first time. “Damn. It obviously favors heads.” It’s powerful because much like confirmation bias we ignore the possibility of a contradictory outcome. We (usually) do not actively search for information to contradict what we believe is the likely (or perhaps only) outcome to a situation, to do so is to open up a can of worms, to possibly spark high levels of skepticism in all facets of life.
It’s much easier in the end to simply assume that all past events were obviously going to happen. However it is important to stress that just because this wonderful little quirk exists we should not assume that nothing is likely. If you leap from a 50 story building there is a near certainty that without aid you will die, if you light yourself afire and jump into a pool full of gasoline you will likely not survive, if you date a super model and are hoping for a thoughtful relationship you…alright that last one might of been a bit mean.
To defeat (or at least weaken) this effect it pays to (when possible) examine all possible outcomes of an event, there is no obvious result of a coin toss (specifically either side compared to its opposite) and there is no certain result to the roll of a die (cheating aside). It is important that we recognize these biases exist and try our best to not be overcome by them, otherwise we end up being terrible journalists, economists, historians, or basically any profession that involves interaction with other people or worse still positions of influence. As I’ve told my girlfriend, the brain is a whore for stimulation. We as the unusually quirky software must make sure that our hardware doesn’t go off and get us killed for its own jolts of yum yums.
That last bit inspired me, I think tomorrows discussion will be on the unusual nature of our construction (or I think I should say architecture). Humans remind me a bunch of jelly fish…or really any other living organism, but I’ll save this train of thought for tomorrow.
PS. For those that didn’t catch it, Jamie Berger himself commented on my DRM post a while back. You can find his comments here. I appreciate all input and his was no exception 
.