I don't really mess with conspiracy theories: if you study enough history, you'll find that what they say is true: history really is stranger than fiction. It has to be that way: the creative power of so many minds across so many years could hardly be expected to stand inferior to that in the confines of a single thinking head. History, politics, society, culture, and whatever else are already interesting enough without going to the fringe theories. So, this isn't a serious conspiracy theory. It's more of a satire born out of fleeting curiosity.
That being said... I'm beginning to think that there's something fishy going on with Dictionary.com (and its subsidiary website, Thesaurus.com). The suspected culprit? Sarah Palin.
Now, I don't recommend or endorse giving two shits about Sarah Palin: she seems too dim-witted and gung-ho to be anything other than a politico-corporate puppet (excuse all the hyphenation). However, even if she only has the appearance of importance, her previous campaigns have been anything but immaterial (as a real (self-deluded) philosopher, it pains me to perpetuate that word's use in this context, further obscuring a truly useful distinction). What I mean, is that there has been real weight and money behind these, giving them life and force.
This is where the conspiracy begins. How much life and force? Just how far did her campaign extend its cancerous reach? What did it touch? What did it destroy? What did it corrupt?
If you'll remember back to whenever it was that this insignificant woman ran for vice presidency, you might recall that the term maverick was part of her media packaging. That was her selling point: she doesn't do things the traditional way; she doesn't follow the trodden path; she isn't just a sheep. This is also a critical point of connection in the conspiracy, because a maverick is a rebel, a renegade. From this connection, there springs a risk that was intolerable to her political party (republican, I guess): couldn't the opposing party simply point out that these are the traits of a traitor? That a renegade, a maverick, is inherently against the system? That its very meaning is contrary to the conservative ideals of the party she is supposed to represent?
Action had to be taken by the republican party, the risk was just too great. They had to bribe Dictionary.com to remove a connection between these words: mavericks couldn't be tied to the treasonous rebels, renegades, turncoats, or any treachery of the sort, and therefore the connection between them on Thesaurus.com was severed. Even now, despite the inescapable logical connection, they remain so. If searching for rebel, many mediating words will appear, but there will be no maverick; and, it's the same the other way around. A true travesty for all thinking people. Is there no end to the cruelty of the political machine?
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Animals and Humans: A Short Rant on the History of the Philosophy of Evolution
A SHORT FOREWORD
I'm afraid of losing great progress that has already been made in the past. While some sciences have advanced greatly in the last couple centuries, it seems a few eggs were dropped along the way (thank you romanticism) I cannot fully take credit, or much credit at all for my thoughts here: my arguments, reasoning, style, and process I owe mostly to Arthur Schopenhauer. He lived in another century, but never---barring Einstein, actually---has there been a writer I've read (not Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, Kuhn, nor Popper) that had such a profoundly insightful and coherent philosophy. Schopenhauer had a complete system for understanding the world: not just a small corner of some particular aspect of a unified science (which follows from us living in a unified world, the physical laws of which don't seem to change at a fundamental level). Kant gets honorable mention here, but I find reading him tedious and frustrating, and as such I have only read a few of his works. Actually, there was only one of which I seriously studied (his Metaphysics of Morals) which was owing to the way some of its contents made my blood boil.
Also, shout-out to Descartes, but I mention him later anyways, so no worries.
REASON FOR WRITING
I'm mainly writing because of this: something said at the Adobe Keynote Meeting this year.
If you don't feel like clicking, here is a quick summary: This guy says that creativity and imagination are uniquely human traits. Obviously they're not, but here I explore how one can explain what separates humans from other species of animals.
THE RANT
This is bad science. I love Adobe products and I've recently started to feel "empowered" like the initial presenter was saying (towards the first ten minutes of the video), but this doesn't work. I have all the respect for Adobe because they've managed to create a modular, multifaceted, interconnected, expressive, powerful, coherent system of tools. Tools that aren't too hard to learn (I could make better tutorials than exist if Adobe would be interested in testing such a bold claim---I've seen most of what's on Lynda/LinkedIn and the structure can be easily improved to help learning creative more quickly develop their skills). Anyone who doesn't respect their accomplishments can't see far into the past nor the probable future.
That being said, Adobe is dope, but this is bad science and I want to explain in case anyone is interested.
The first and most important idea---which is here, obviously overlooked---is the defining characteristic of an animal: that which knows.
Now, that might sound strange since teleology is often misunderstood to have necessarily theological implications. "Teleology" comes from the ... old some language for telos (I'm not a Greek or Latin scholar, although I was a Korean linguist in the USN for six years), roughly means purpose. Generally, this is how the parts of an organism are explained: we think in terms of their purpose, first and foremost. Teleological explanations shouldn't be banned from natural science; however, divine teleological explanations should be banned (here I'm speaking of science, I don't wanna start a fistfight about your god or gods or lack-thereof).
Animals know and have perception---no matter how primal---which means some sort of representation of the world for itself. That is, it knows... something, no matter how dim that knowing might be. That's what it means to be an animal, at the foundation of the matter. This is the defining characteristic for something to be categorized as an animal (note to self: this implies that non-biological animals---that is ... interesting, but off topic).
This is an interjection of a supporting strange fact: dingoes---though many other animals do this---harmonize with their vocal expressions (i.e., their howling, as compared to a birds singing). They harmonize across multiple octaves: they don't just copy: they can understand harmony between similar patterns in sound-wave properties (i.e., they can harmonize across multiple octaves, like I already said).
Additionally, as the above line suggests: imagination and perception are inextricably linked. Your perception is imagination constructed according to your knowledge of context and the experiential, developmental neuronal wiring that started happening from the moment you were born.
WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN HUMANS?
Well, there are several, many of them are shared with other animals. It is the ability of reasoning that was once ascribe as unique to humans; that, and organized warfare, spite, envy, revenge, and even language. However, all of these are shared with other animals of sorts. If you're curious about the organized warfare I'm thinking of, it's groups of chimpanzees (if I recall correctly; really, some sort of ape or monkey).
What separates us is an instinct for experimentation, exploration, and conscious expression of our thoughts in the form of verbalization in combination with the highly unique prefrontal cortex and our extreme (compared to other animals) nervous system developmental capacity.
As the scale goes from primal to nature's master work: the human brain (at least on this planet), it starts with the simplest of perception, perhaps touch. Then, it works it's way up to what most mammals have: an immediate perception (however dull) of a world, and beyond.
Now, when you get to primates (birds or other animals of prey are also of important note), that's when you get highly-developed perceptions of the world: imagination of *objects beyond objects*, obscured, temporarily hidden. The realm of understanding that---to some extent---delusions, illusion, mistakes, tricks of the light, are not the "real world." That is, the problem of what is "real" and what is "mere perception" (i.e., "ideal" is the proper philosophical term for this notion---this is because it's already agreed upon that imagination and perception are joint functions). This is Descartes problem of the Ideal and the Real which sparked so much debate for centuries beyond his death in the 16th century. To summarize him: "Yo, if this is all real how come no one can provide a proof that it isn't just a dream? I mean, the stuff of dreams seems real in the moment, but comparing memories of dreams to the memories of perceptions of reality (okay now I'm interjecting A LOT of Schopenhauer here, and also this is what Kant (I think?) called "the long dream," though perhaps it was another author.) We have perceptions in dreams (i.e., we imagine existing in a world)
THE SHORT VERSION
If anything gave rise to civilization it was tendency to cooperate and share thoughts (i.e., communicate); HOWEVER the point I really want to make is that our uniqueness comes from a HARMONIOUS CONSTELLATION of highly-developed, biologically-rooted traits that combine well with our environment.
This is a simple to analogy to what I mean above: THE LEAD SINGER does not = THE BAND (unless, of course, they're one person with a guitar calling themselves by a band name or something).
As a parting question: If my dog isn't capable of imagining, why's he barking, pawing, etc. in his sleep?
I'm afraid of losing great progress that has already been made in the past. While some sciences have advanced greatly in the last couple centuries, it seems a few eggs were dropped along the way (thank you romanticism) I cannot fully take credit, or much credit at all for my thoughts here: my arguments, reasoning, style, and process I owe mostly to Arthur Schopenhauer. He lived in another century, but never---barring Einstein, actually---has there been a writer I've read (not Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, Kuhn, nor Popper) that had such a profoundly insightful and coherent philosophy. Schopenhauer had a complete system for understanding the world: not just a small corner of some particular aspect of a unified science (which follows from us living in a unified world, the physical laws of which don't seem to change at a fundamental level). Kant gets honorable mention here, but I find reading him tedious and frustrating, and as such I have only read a few of his works. Actually, there was only one of which I seriously studied (his Metaphysics of Morals) which was owing to the way some of its contents made my blood boil.
Also, shout-out to Descartes, but I mention him later anyways, so no worries.
REASON FOR WRITING
I'm mainly writing because of this: something said at the Adobe Keynote Meeting this year.
If you don't feel like clicking, here is a quick summary: This guy says that creativity and imagination are uniquely human traits. Obviously they're not, but here I explore how one can explain what separates humans from other species of animals.
THE RANT
This is bad science. I love Adobe products and I've recently started to feel "empowered" like the initial presenter was saying (towards the first ten minutes of the video), but this doesn't work. I have all the respect for Adobe because they've managed to create a modular, multifaceted, interconnected, expressive, powerful, coherent system of tools. Tools that aren't too hard to learn (I could make better tutorials than exist if Adobe would be interested in testing such a bold claim---I've seen most of what's on Lynda/LinkedIn and the structure can be easily improved to help learning creative more quickly develop their skills). Anyone who doesn't respect their accomplishments can't see far into the past nor the probable future.
That being said, Adobe is dope, but this is bad science and I want to explain in case anyone is interested.
The first and most important idea---which is here, obviously overlooked---is the defining characteristic of an animal: that which knows.
Now, that might sound strange since teleology is often misunderstood to have necessarily theological implications. "Teleology" comes from the ... old some language for telos (I'm not a Greek or Latin scholar, although I was a Korean linguist in the USN for six years), roughly means purpose. Generally, this is how the parts of an organism are explained: we think in terms of their purpose, first and foremost. Teleological explanations shouldn't be banned from natural science; however, divine teleological explanations should be banned (here I'm speaking of science, I don't wanna start a fistfight about your god or gods or lack-thereof).
Animals know and have perception---no matter how primal---which means some sort of representation of the world for itself. That is, it knows... something, no matter how dim that knowing might be. That's what it means to be an animal, at the foundation of the matter. This is the defining characteristic for something to be categorized as an animal (note to self: this implies that non-biological animals---that is ... interesting, but off topic).
This is an interjection of a supporting strange fact: dingoes---though many other animals do this---harmonize with their vocal expressions (i.e., their howling, as compared to a birds singing). They harmonize across multiple octaves: they don't just copy: they can understand harmony between similar patterns in sound-wave properties (i.e., they can harmonize across multiple octaves, like I already said).
Additionally, as the above line suggests: imagination and perception are inextricably linked. Your perception is imagination constructed according to your knowledge of context and the experiential, developmental neuronal wiring that started happening from the moment you were born.
WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN HUMANS?
Well, there are several, many of them are shared with other animals. It is the ability of reasoning that was once ascribe as unique to humans; that, and organized warfare, spite, envy, revenge, and even language. However, all of these are shared with other animals of sorts. If you're curious about the organized warfare I'm thinking of, it's groups of chimpanzees (if I recall correctly; really, some sort of ape or monkey).
What separates us is an instinct for experimentation, exploration, and conscious expression of our thoughts in the form of verbalization in combination with the highly unique prefrontal cortex and our extreme (compared to other animals) nervous system developmental capacity.
As the scale goes from primal to nature's master work: the human brain (at least on this planet), it starts with the simplest of perception, perhaps touch. Then, it works it's way up to what most mammals have: an immediate perception (however dull) of a world, and beyond.
Now, when you get to primates (birds or other animals of prey are also of important note), that's when you get highly-developed perceptions of the world: imagination of *objects beyond objects*, obscured, temporarily hidden. The realm of understanding that---to some extent---delusions, illusion, mistakes, tricks of the light, are not the "real world." That is, the problem of what is "real" and what is "mere perception" (i.e., "ideal" is the proper philosophical term for this notion---this is because it's already agreed upon that imagination and perception are joint functions). This is Descartes problem of the Ideal and the Real which sparked so much debate for centuries beyond his death in the 16th century. To summarize him: "Yo, if this is all real how come no one can provide a proof that it isn't just a dream? I mean, the stuff of dreams seems real in the moment, but comparing memories of dreams to the memories of perceptions of reality (okay now I'm interjecting A LOT of Schopenhauer here, and also this is what Kant (I think?) called "the long dream," though perhaps it was another author.) We have perceptions in dreams (i.e., we imagine existing in a world)
THE SHORT VERSION
If anything gave rise to civilization it was tendency to cooperate and share thoughts (i.e., communicate); HOWEVER the point I really want to make is that our uniqueness comes from a HARMONIOUS CONSTELLATION of highly-developed, biologically-rooted traits that combine well with our environment.
This is a simple to analogy to what I mean above: THE LEAD SINGER does not = THE BAND (unless, of course, they're one person with a guitar calling themselves by a band name or something).
As a parting question: If my dog isn't capable of imagining, why's he barking, pawing, etc. in his sleep?
Friday, August 2, 2019
Research Summaries --- Performance Under Pressure
Performance Under
Pressure
Research Article Summaries
Description: This is a collection of summaries of research articles related to performance under pressure! It's not completely comprehensive, but it's a start towards centralizing some of this information.
(#1)
Title: Who Chokes Under
Pressure? The Big Five Personality Traits and Decision-Making under Pressure (2014)
Author(s): Kaileigh
A. Byrne, Crina D. Silasi-Mansat, and Darrell A. Worthy
Relevant Findings: Of the “Big Five” (i.e., the five major dimensions into which
modern psychology separates personality traits), the two traits most associated
with choking under pressure were neuroticism and agreeability. Both were shown
to negatively influence performance.
(#2)
Title: Who
Thrives Under Pressure? Predicting the Performance of Elite Academy Cricketers
Using the Cardiovascular Indicators of Challenge and Threat States (2013)
Author(s): Martin
J. Turner, Marc V. Jones, David Sheffield, Matthew J. Slater, Jamie B. Barker,
and James J. Bell
Relevant Findings: Perceiving things as challenges (rather than threats) prevents
performance loss from choking under pressure. However, it’s noted that the
challenge mindset is not something into which is easily entered, and no method
for this is suggested.
(#3)
Title:
Working Memory Capacity, Controlled Attention and Aiming Performance Under
Pressure (2016)
Author(s): Greg
Wood, Samuel J. Vine, and Mark R. Wilson
Relevant Findings: Working Memory Capacity (WMC) can be a limiting factor in
attentional control. High-WMC individuals did not experience impaired
attention while under threat, while low-WMC individuals did experience
impaired attention.
Speculation: There may be a point of critical mass, metaphorically speaking, at which WMC becomes large enough to mediate between attention to a threat and attention to a task long enough to become re-immersed in the non-threat task (as a cascade of attentional resources become devoted to a task). Without being able to mediate attention in this situation, the lower WMC individual might compensate by defaulting to a panic network of thought and action (evolutionarily speaking, this would be the better option).
Speculation: There may be a point of critical mass, metaphorically speaking, at which WMC becomes large enough to mediate between attention to a threat and attention to a task long enough to become re-immersed in the non-threat task (as a cascade of attentional resources become devoted to a task). Without being able to mediate attention in this situation, the lower WMC individual might compensate by defaulting to a panic network of thought and action (evolutionarily speaking, this would be the better option).
(#4)
Title: Priming as a Means
of Preventing Skill Failure Under Pressure (2010)
Author(s): Kelly
J. Ashford and Robin C. Jackson
Relevant Findings: Positive priming prevents performance degradation, while negative
priming promotes performance degradation. (The well-grounded assumption being
that the more an individual pays attention to their performance of a motor
task, the more this attention interferes with that performance)
Referential Claims: There is some evidence that engaging in a concurrent secondary
task while performing a motor task is effective in reducing the cognitive
interference associated with skill-focused attention and can actually improve
performance (e.g., Beilock, Carr, et al., 2002; Jackson et al., 2006; Maxwell
et al., 2000).
[E]vidence suggests that individuals who
acquire a large pool of explicit knowledge during learning are susceptible to
performance decrements under pressure (Liao & Masters, 2002).
[S]kills acquired in an environment that
limits explicit knowledge results in robustness under pressure (e.g., Hardy,
Mullen, & Jones, 1996; Masters, 1992; Maxwell, Masters, & Eves, 2000).
[I]t has been suggested that skills learned
and practiced in conditions that engender a high degree of self-focus would be
more resilient to the detrimental effects of stress (Liao & Masters, 2002).
Research conducted by Lewis and Linder (1997)
and Beilock and Carr (2001) demonstrated that learning a skill in the presence
of a camera led to a stress resistant performance that eliminated the
occurrence of choking.
(#5)
Title: Choking under
pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful
performance (1984)
Author(s): Baumeister,
R. F. (O.G. paper)
Relevant Findings: Initial theory behind choking is put forward (conscious processes
interfere with automatic ones).
(#6)
Title: Managing pressure at
the free-throw line: Perceptions of elite basketball players (2018)
Author(s): Rouhollah
Maher, Daryl Marchant, Tony Morris, and Fatemeh Fazel
Relevant Findings: It can affect players of any skill level, even
professionals.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
The Relationship Between Playtime and Skill
Disclaimer: I'm not going super deep into all the factors that might cause variation in how fast players gain skill. I'm just taking it as a given that you'll agree there is variation in progress. Here, the variation is simulated with RNG.
Sometimes players will ask things like, "for [X] hours, what rank should I be?" or "how long does it usually take to get champion?"
The common reply to this, if it's asked on Reddit, is this:
This prompts a bot to make a post with a link to a video of a pro (CJCJ) explaining how people all make progress at different and varying rates. The video does a good job with its explanation, but it's wrong. The only factors he holds constant are time and skill, which is leaving a lot of the picture out.
In almost all cases, when someone is learning a skill, their progress will follow what we can just call a sort of "natural law", and this is how it works:
This omission is why CJCJ's advice falls a little short: an incredibly common pattern is not taken into account.
However, we can use a bit of math (which is available if anyone really wants it) to simulate how progress might actually look over time. Here is a graph of a single function which uses randomly generated data, and which also takes the variable rate of progress into account. These numbers are fictitious, but the point is not.
With this picture of how things work, we can actually say another thing about progress over time. Looking at the entire graph, the line of progress is more or less smooth. However, if we take only a small section of time, there are obvious trajectories--things are more line-like than curved. In the big picture it's clear that these don't mean anything (they're just part of the big line that slowly curves), but up close they can be easily misinterpreted. A spike might seem to indicate that the rate of progress is increasing, but it could really just be a hiccup.
Hopefully this helps those currently frustrated with slumps for now, but when it's out, my new video will go much more in depth on the issue.
Sometimes players will ask things like, "for [X] hours, what rank should I be?" or "how long does it usually take to get champion?"
The common reply to this, if it's asked on Reddit, is this:
This prompts a bot to make a post with a link to a video of a pro (CJCJ) explaining how people all make progress at different and varying rates. The video does a good job with its explanation, but it's wrong. The only factors he holds constant are time and skill, which is leaving a lot of the picture out.
In almost all cases, when someone is learning a skill, their progress will follow what we can just call a sort of "natural law", and this is how it works:
- Progress is always fastest when beginning to learn a skill. This is pretty self-evident if you take a moment to consider any of your learning experiences. For example, take typing. If you're typing at 10 words per minute when you start, it's not hard to double that in a day. Conversely, when you've been practicing for a while you can't just double your typing speed--even in a week. There's just not as much room for growth once you've started.
This omission is why CJCJ's advice falls a little short: an incredibly common pattern is not taken into account.
However, we can use a bit of math (which is available if anyone really wants it) to simulate how progress might actually look over time. Here is a graph of a single function which uses randomly generated data, and which also takes the variable rate of progress into account. These numbers are fictitious, but the point is not.
With this picture of how things work, we can actually say another thing about progress over time. Looking at the entire graph, the line of progress is more or less smooth. However, if we take only a small section of time, there are obvious trajectories--things are more line-like than curved. In the big picture it's clear that these don't mean anything (they're just part of the big line that slowly curves), but up close they can be easily misinterpreted. A spike might seem to indicate that the rate of progress is increasing, but it could really just be a hiccup.
Hopefully this helps those currently frustrated with slumps for now, but when it's out, my new video will go much more in depth on the issue.
Getting Started
I've never used a blogging site before, so I'm stuck figuring things out as I go.
The reason I'm starting this here is that as head coach of Team Meteor (TM), I need a platform to organize my thoughts and content. I had been using Google Docs, but there were pervasive formatting errors for those that don't have the app on mobile. It's possible that when the TM website is complete, I will move everything over and reorganize it, but that's a problem for another day.
The reason I'm starting this here is that as head coach of Team Meteor (TM), I need a platform to organize my thoughts and content. I had been using Google Docs, but there were pervasive formatting errors for those that don't have the app on mobile. It's possible that when the TM website is complete, I will move everything over and reorganize it, but that's a problem for another day.
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