Worth Reading

My New Heroes - Can They Empower Me With the Gift of Retention?

A little freaked out this morning when I saw this online Wired article dated yesterday, as it goes into great detail about the subject of one of my very own posts here on April 8, but I'll recover.

One man's name is Piotr Wozniak, and his story and method of devising a method to remember things long-term (as opposed to forgetting them soon after the test or class is concluded) is an utterly astonishing tale as far as I'm concerned.  What he discovered through his own painstakingly detailed research on himself as the test subject, using handwritten logs over a period of time, served as independent verification of studies conducted in labs long ago that were somehow never publicized or seized upon by the intellectual community or the public.  He knew nothing of those studies (he conducted his own self research back in the 1980's before such information was readily accessible to all).

The other hero is the man who created this field over a hundred years ago with his own research and observation.  Here's an excerpt from Wired that talks about him and then about Piotr's SuperMemo program, but do your best to set aside 10 minutes or so to get through the entire article (which is actually about Piotr's method for employing working aspects of this mental phenomenon) yourself:

"In the late 1800s, a German scientist named Hermann Ebbinghaus made up lists of nonsense syllables and measured how long it took to forget and then relearn them. (Here is an example of the type of list he used: bes dek fel gup huf jeik mek meun pon daus dor gim ke4k be4p bCn hes.) In experiments of breathtaking rigor and tedium, Ebbinghaus practiced and recited from memory 2.5 nonsense syllables a second, then rested for a bit and started again. Maintaining a pace of rote mental athleticism that all students of foreign verb conjugation will regard with awe, Ebbinghaus trained this way for more than a year. Then, to show that the results he was getting weren't an accident, he repeated the entire set of experiments three years later. Finally, in 1885, he published a monograph called Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. The book became the founding classic of a new discipline.

Ebbinghaus discovered many lawlike regularities of mental life. He was the first to draw a learning curve. Among his original observations was an account of a strange phenomenon that would drive his successors half batty for the next century: the spacing effect.

Ebbinghaus showed that it's possible to dramatically improve learning by correctly spacing practice sessions. On one level, this finding is trivial; all students have been warned not to cram. But the efficiencies created by precise spacing are so large, and the improvement in performance so predictable, that from nearly the moment Ebbinghaus described the spacing effect, psychologists have been urging educators to use it to accelerate human progress. After all, there is a tremendous amount of material we might want to know. Time is short.

How Supermemo Works
SuperMemo is a program that keeps track of discrete bits of information you've learned and want to retain. For example, say you're studying Spanish. Your chance of recalling a given word when you need it declines over time according to a predictable pattern. SuperMemo tracks this so-called forgetting curve and reminds you to rehearse your knowledge when your chance of recalling it has dropped to, say, 90 percent. When you first learn a new vocabulary word, your chance of recalling it will drop quickly. But after SuperMemo reminds you of the word, the rate of forgetting levels out. The program tracks this new decline and waits longer to quiz you the next time."

Way To Prolong Life

Life is the past.  Sure, there is also the exact instantaneous moment that is the present RIGHT NOW, and there is the concept of the future (what will, or could, happen), but for all practical purposes, life is our memories.  The way to prolong life, then, is to prolong memories.  This can be done in only one way:  making more of them; which, in turn, can be done in one of two ways:  live longer, or engage in memory making, that is, memorable activity.

Our brains don't slow down or speed up (at least not without external influence, chemical or other).  So if the brain takes a certain amount of time to get through memories, then it would take longer to get through more of them, resulting in the perceived extension of time.  This is somewhat paradoxical, since actually engaging in the memory making activity typically makes "time fly."  Yet, after the fact, say a few months or years later, when we think back to a span of time (hours, days, month, whatever), the periods that time seemed to fly are the periods that are now remembered as longer, more eventful, more memorable than the times when "nothing" was going on.  Do your own thought experiment here:  remember a courtship, an intensive learning time, a period when a new sport or skill or body of knowledge or relationship was being learned.  The time really seemed to pass quickly, didn't it?  Now, contrast some of those periods, with known lengths (maybe something took 3 weeks, or a day, or 2 years) to a similar period of time when "nothing" was going on.  Which period now seems longer?  Most likely, the periods where nothing was going on are merely blips in memory, if they can be recalled at all, whereas the active and engaged periods are filled with vivid memories that take some processing power and time to think about, thereby making those periods seem longer in duration.

The way to prolong life is to spend as many of your 1440 minutes per earthly axial rotation as you can on activities that will create memorable associations in your mind years from now, blasting through the days full throttle, generating years worth of memories and experiences that will seem like they must have taken several lifetimes to accumulate, rather than doing as most people do (especially the older ones with "nothing to do" now that they are retired and their children have long since moved on and they have picked up no hobbies or passions to get them through their remaining decades of life), which is putting life on autopilot, just trying to get through the days, surviving the pain and/or loneliness, and nothing more.  The days that take forever to live through, while at the same time resulting in memories years from now of vast stretches of years of nothingness, mere voids on the timeline of life.  Bleak?  Perhaps.  Changeable?  Yes!

America Is Doomed, Thanks to Audio/Visual Media

Mankind has built upon its own advancements for thousands of years by studying, understanding, and applying previous generations' collective knowledge and wisdom.  This is no longer the case in America.  At first, the intellectual and learned elite of societies would discuss and debate important issues amongst themselves, eventually improving or, at the very least, thoroughly informing themselves of the leading thoughts and practices of the day as well of days past.  Then, the written word and the ability to pass down knowledge and observations verbatim enabled vast leaps and bounds in our development, up until the invention of radio and tv, which were far more entertaining than conversation or the written word.  Now, Americans are no longer schooled in the knowledge and wisdom of antiquity, or "the classics," or whatever that body of human experience can be called.  There is not enough time between all of the math and science and other topics that must be digested (at least SOME history is required, but not enough, and with nowhere near the diversity to which we should be exposed).  So we turn out highly unenlightened, non-worldy, non-versed scientists and business people and sales professionals and athletes, some of whom may eventually, as they get older (into their 30's), decide to delve into the wisdom of thousands of years for themselves in their own free time.  Like me.  Yet as I experience these discoveries and insights and revelations for myself, I feel like I'm the only one who knows them or cares to know them as compared to most of my acquaintances - until I visit blogs such as La Vie Quotidienne by Shefaly ( http://laviequotidienne.wordpress.com/ ).  She has a community of fellow bloggers and readers, many of whom seem well-versed in philosophy, religion, history, etc. (although that's not what her blog is focused on per se), and it's a joy to post comments there and be surprised and engaged by the thoughtful and well-versed replies to them.

Wait - those happy thoughts almost made me forget my initial rant about the lack of exposure to the classics in the American education system.  Oh well, I suppose we can only do what we think is right for our own development and leave it to others to discover for themselves.  As for myself, learning an ancient written language should be just what I need to move things along, so Greek it shall be!

Conundrum of Justice: Home vs. Real World

Once my 2 kids were old enough to speak, they quickly realized they had become able to blame and tattle on others (specifically, EACH other).  As parents, the ultimate dispensers of justice and, as required, punishment, in the household, my wife and I were constantly called upon to settle matters fairly.  After a brief honeymoon period in this role, I realized that I was doing my children no favors by handling situations in an utterly fair and logical manner - after all, was the "real" world based on such fairness and logic?  Absolutely not!  So my mission shifted to preparing them for that cruel, cunning, survival-of-the-fittest mentality, as I did not wish to see my innocent babies devoured alive by such a hostile and unforgiving environment.  They quickly adjusted, taking to my entreaties of "who ever promised that things would be fair?  Life isn't fair!  You need to be able to handle unfair situations on your own!  DEAL WITH IT!"
After feeling better about my handiwork, I recently came across some advice from a spiritual source:  the home should be a safe place, a fair place, a place where children can be taught the concepts of justice and kindness in dealing with others, since the external environments that they undoubtedly find themselves in are outside of a parent's control and are no place to learn such things.  Man, did I feel like a loser.  Although I constantly do my best to set a good example for my children, to show them how to treat others with respect and compassion (and honesty and fairness), I could see how they might take my problem-solving  words to heart about "life not being fair" and apply that to the frontier that is the playground.  Fortunately they are still considered model children by many (hopefully all) of our friends, family, and acquaintances, and seem to have a deeply ingrained sense of what is right and wrong and how to treat others (even though it's hard to do sometimes).  But to the title of this post, am I raising a couple of wusses?  Will they grow up to be idealistic losers who get walked all over and taken advantage of by unfair and unjust sharks?  And more to the point, is it better to be that idealistic person who's occasionally victimized or taken advantage of by others than to be the one doing the exploiting and the gaining?  I believe it is.  Such is the way of this world, and hopefully my children can enjoy it as much as I have in spite of those realities.

Are Street Dogs Like People, or Are People Like Street Dogs?

Driving to work in downtown Dallas, there are a couple of places where it makes sense to exit the highway for a mile or so and then get back on in order to avoid traffic bottlenecks.  In doing this, I've noticed a stray dog for the past couple of weeks hanging around the same general area.  After a few days of ranging over an area, then a smaller area, then a specific intersection, and then a particular corner of the same intersection, he has remained in that same spot day after day.  I didn't know why, until Monday when I was behind another vehicle at the stop sign that the dog hangs out at and I saw the driver roll his window down and toss a mostly-eaten Egg McMuffin to the dog, who promptly devoured it in one bite.  This animal has figured out that if he hangs out at this one specific point, people throw food to him.

Similarly, when I first started working downtown, I noticed the street beggars that asked passersby for money.  There weren't a huge number of them, and it didn't cause an uncomfortable feeling for me.  But day after day, I grew to recognize the exact same people in the exact same places, indicating that they, like the dog, had concluded that inhabiting those specific places resulted in people giving money to them.  You may ask yourself, "well, if they make enough money to eat and live and do whatever it is they do when they're not there, why wouldn't they continue to do so?"  In the case of the dog, I can agree with that train of thought:  his only thought is of food, and he can run around for enjoyment as much as he likes.

But with people, the thought should not be of only food or alcohol or money; it should also be about what is done in exchange for that money.  When an action is taken, it is taken either for the intrinsic value of that action, or for the expected outcome of that action.  People should not be assessed as successful or unsuccessful on the basis of their net financial worth (a mere outcome of action taken); rather, success should be judged based on the enjoyment they experience in the activities undertaken in pursuit of their livelihood (the intrinsic value of the action taken) as well as the contribution, positive or negative, that is made by them to society as a whole (an effect of the action taken that extends beyond the individual taking the action, of which our awareness makes us human).  If a person makes $100,000 per year by stealing other people's belongings, and he thoroughly enjoys himself while doing so, he is still not "successful" because he places such a drain on other individuals.  If a person makes $5,000,000 playing basketball and brings great joy and excitement to millions of fans, yet he does not enjoy himself in the process, then he likewise would not be considered a success as a human being.  And finally, in the case of the person who enjoys the work he or she does, and makes enough money to sustain a lifestyle that agrees with him or her, and helps their fellow man in the process, that person may be considered successful - at least by my standards, which may be different from yours or anyone else's.  Those people are exceedingly rare to come across, and if you are fortunate enough to know of one, then you will know what I'm describing.  Almost all of us fulfill one or two of the three requirements, but not all three, and to me, the realization of all three is what every one of us should be striving to attain.

The Reason Why Religious People Are Happier Than Atheists

Edge.org has an essay by Jonathan Haidt that provocatively interrogates the "new atheists" of pop science, questioning their methods as being more passionate and emotional than scientific (though by and large they are scientists leading the movement).  I could not agree more with that assessment, as I have made the same one myself.  Haidt is very rational in his approach, and takes an approach that one would expect out of any scientist in this debate.  Though himself an atheist, his dealings with facts and studies allows for a productive engagement by both sides.  So productive, in fact, that there are quite a number of responses by other Edge contributors to his essay.

I do not take issue with what he writes, and I only wish to shed some light on one of his assertions.  He states that:
  "surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too."
I would advance the opinion that if "religious believers," who by definition are believers in a better afterlife or, at the very least, a better existence or non-existence to follow their earthly bodily ones, are surveyed, then they would in all likelihood be happier than their non-believing counterparts.  If one has a better circumstance than their present condition to look forward to, this would produce a self-described "happier" state than one who has nothing to look forward to.  Likewise, if the achievement of that preferred condition were predicated upon helping others during their time on earth, then those religious believers would naturally be more inclined to do so.

So that would explain two of the four survey findings.  As for the healthier and longer-lived statistics, only one is really relevant since health is a driver of longevity; i.e., if a population is healthier than another population, then it would in all probability also be longer-lived than that population, all other factors being equal.  And as to the health or non-health of groups of survey respondents, I can only say that each of the two groups had a 50% chance of being healthier than the other, so further research in that area would be required.  If, on the other hand, it were observed in survey after survey of various populations that there is in fact a high correlation between health and religious belief or non-belief, it could very likely also be correlated to a relationship between health level and happiness level.

Are these cause and effect relationships, or are they merely consistent with other "symptoms" of whatever it is that predisposes certain people to religious belief, mental/psychological happiness, and physical well being?

Keep Guessing, Silly "Scientists"

Aristotle used his 5 senses and his magnificent mind to become one of the earliest scientist-philosophers, a term I use to combine science, which is, or at least ought to be, wholly based on using our 5 senses for observation of "things" and making connections between what is observed, with philosophy, which is trying to figure out what our senses cannot reveal to us through direct observation.  I assert here that science is continually and acceleratingly shading into philosophy, and that that is a bad thing.  The difference between the scientist-philosopher, of which Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas are exemplary models, and some of today's "scientists" is that while Aristotle and Thomas clearly delineated the two and used scientific or sensory observation of "things" to form their philosophies to color that which could not be observed, today's scientists use their philosophy, their postulated explanations of that which has not been observed, to create what is presented to the world as science.  And when they are eventually proven wrong by new facts that have only just now been brought to light (whether "now" was yesterday, 50 years ago, or 500 years ago), do they see the error of their ways and admit that they do not have enough observations of relevant "things" to form the philosophy that they are attempting to force upon the world as "science"?  Of course not!  They only revise their theories, which are subsequently treated as newfound knowledge and celebrated by the masses as advances in human achievement, when in fact all they really are are usually nothing more than future disproved nonsense.

A recent case to illustrate this topic is what has come to be generally accepted by most people as the "theory of evolution," which portrays homo sapiens sapiens (yes, there are two sapiens, if you thought it was a typo) as the culmination of hundreds of millions of years of genetic variation and mutation until finally, voici!  Mankind in all his artistic and never-ending creative glory!  Skipping over the first several hundreds of millions of years of life on this planet and going right to the past 200,000-1,000,000 (this seems a rather large span of time, but bear with me), we have in the fossil record a sampling of old bones that resemble humans, or chimpanzees, or apes, in that their skulls or hands or legs or what have you are somewhat reminiscent of human skulls and so forth.  "Scientists" cannot even agree on the age of these bones; at one point, they may be declared as approximately 400,000 years old, but then after some other dating "advancement" or discovery of other relative "evidence" it may be re-trumpeted as 285,000 years old, or even 800,000 years old.  The point is, it cannot be known how old the bones are, because it never was and never can be a fact that was observed and recorded by anyone at any time.  Nor can it be observed what these creatures actually looked like, what they did, or how they did it.  What HAS been observed and recorded is the fact that humans are the only creatures, ever, to record their observations.  Be it cave art or notches of hunting kills on a stone axe, people are the only creatures to have ever bothered or been able to record their observations.  Was this "evolution?"  Did it just randomly occur to some heretofore unintelligent prehistoric beast after hundreds of millions of years to record an observation of something in some way?  And would this spark of brilliance be related to the same miraculous (just don't call it "God") flash that ignited life on this planet from lifelessness in the first place, or the "big bang" that supposedly started the universe from a massive (or was it massless) yet infinitesimally tiny ball of nothingness, or everythingness?  And why do these theories make perfect rational sense to "scientists" and people the world over, while they simultaneously refuse to entertain the possibility that God exists?  Finally, why again, exactly, do we trust everything these "scientists" tell us, when almost none of it has been observed by anyone, ever?  Where are Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle when you need them?!

Top 8 Paths to Fulfillment

8 paths to personal fulfillment, based on my own extensive study and practice:

1) Look within yourself. You will find what motivates you, what brings you joy or sadness, and eventually, what you believe. This is your soul, or essence, or spirit.

2) Look outside of yourself. You will find that you are not everything; instead, you are a part of something, and everything else is a part of that same thing.

3) Expose yourself to as much as possible. Experiences, physical locations, acquaintances, subject matters, everything you can think of: directly experience as much variety as you can.

4) Drill as deeply into 1 specific thing as possible. Again, an academic subject, a culture, a physical place, a talent, anything you choose: learn and experience that subject as deeply and completely as you are able.

5) Be as generous and giving as you can. Cultivate an awareness of needs, and when you come across people or circumstances that you can help, help them in the way that you can.

6) Be self-centered. Know what you require, and take the necessary actions to attain it. This may be food or shelter, or love from another, or freedom to contemplate and search, and the necessary actions to attain them will be activities such as work, social interaction, alone time, and the awareness that you cannot help everyone and everything or do everything that other people think you should do.

7) Think. Read, watch, and listen to everything you can that is deemed by yourself as worthy of your learning capacity and effort. Sense it, concentrate on it, process it, and make new concepts and ideas within your mind from it.

8) Do. Apply what you learn in the ways that you are able. Build something, or calculate something, or write something, or present something, or otherwise share the things that you have created within your mind with your learning and thinking. This can be a long and drawn out effort with a final finished "product", or an ever-evolving/changing/improving work in progress that will never really be "done" in the sense that work on it will cease. But there must be a physical going forth to apply what you know, even if that is as seemingly effortless as discussing the concept with other people face to face or as a blog post.

In a nutshell, no single philosophy or path can be so narrowly interpreted or followed to provide what you seek. You may hear generalizations such as "Eastern traditions look inward, while the West looks outward," or "become an expert in something to make yourself more valuable" or "get a well-rounded education so that you will be familiar with whatever life throws at you." The answer is, of course, all of the above, for all of the old sayings and wisdom have roots in timeless truths. Too challenging to be all things, to do all things, to know all things? Certainly! But the end result of having successfully "done" it all is not the objective here; fulfillment is. And the most fulfilling activities are those which stimulate, those which result in knowing oneself more fully, those which help others, those which keep one occupied, those which sharpen the body and the mind, and those which lead us closer to answering the eternal "why am I here?" So what are you waiting for? And one more thing:  the order of Paths 1-8 above are of no importance, as the more you pursue any one of them, the further along you will be in the rest of them

Why There's Almost Certainly No Chance of World Peace

My wife and I had a spousal spat the other night.  No big deal.  We love each other (a lot), love the kids, consider ourselves very fortunate in this life, blah blah blah, but things happen sometimes, terrible things, things that seem determined to derail our happiness.  In this case, the terrible things had to do with straightening up the house the night before the cleaning service came - ALWAYS a highly-charged affair in our household.  My theory:  we pay people to clean, so why do we need to clean before they come?  Her alternate, less-informed, in all ways inferior perspective:  wouldn't it be better for them to spend their time on the things we don't like to do, rather than on easy things we don't mind doing ourselves, such as straightening and tidying?

Forgive my digression.  Let's get back to the topic at hand, which is world peace.  If two people who love and care for each other can come to violent emotional blows over something as trivial is this, what hope is there for a world full of people who genuinely do not care for one another, many of whom do not have the basics of human survival to live on, many of whom would sleep far better at  night if as many of their enemies as possible were not only out of sight and out of mind, but actually dead and gone?

Sorry, but I just don't see it.  Does that mean we give up, stop trying, close our eyes and plug our ears and yell "lalalalalala" as loud as we can so that we can be as isolated as possible?  Probably not.  As I told my wife a couple of days after the skirmish, in response to her questions about "why can't we just get along, since we want the same things, have the same goals, share common interests," etc.:  we can't "all just get along" because, simply stated, we are human.  We are not made to get along.  We are made for...something else that I'm not sure of, but I am QUITE certain that it is NOT to "all just get along".  The billions of people who have inhabited this planet over the past tens of thousands of years have all wondered and explored the same question in various forms, to no avail.  So enjoy the good times, survive the bad, do your best to get along, but know that it's not gonna happen all (or even most of) the time, despite your best and most well-intentioned efforts.

A Gullible Skeptic

"REALLY?  WOW, that's cool!"  This is frequently my reaction to someone telling me something I didn't know and that I find interesting.  However, tell me something that's going to happen, or what scientists predict will happen, or even what the weather is supposed to be tomorrow, and you will likely receive a response from me along the lines of "whatever," or "they only occasionally get it right out of dumb luck," or "that's what they predicted for last year too, and look what ACTUALLY happened."  Yes, I am both a skeptic and true believer, going way overboard with each folly.  Much too quick to accept what someone has presented as factual information on something that's transpired or been discovered, and much too dismissive of any predictive effort on the part of humanity.  But even though I wish I could tone it down a bit in each case, it is actually a dual state of mind that has served me well, for it represents an open mind as related to the seemingly boundless achievement of man, yet it casts a suspicious eye toward our self-perceived abilities to discern what the future holds.  In my opinion, we can achieve virtually anything our minds can conceive, yet we cannot know what will or will not happen transpire at a given time or on a given day or even over a given length of duration:  for instance, a North Atlantic Hurricane Season.  This is the second summer in a row that a prediction of a particularly destructive and disastrous hurricane season would befall the U.S., and after last summer's hurricane-free status survived intact for the entire season, we are now almost a quarter of the way into this one and have yet to catch so much as a whiff of swirling tropical breezes between Africa and the Caribbean.

Weather galls me in particular, as we have so much data and applicable scientific advancement at our fingertips, but stock market and housing predictions are other perpetual offenders.  As for political predictions, those are literally useless, as they are solely based on people, their actions, their states of mind, their opinions, and all of the everyday events and affairs that shape them from minute to minute.  It is quite literally impossible to make any reliable predictions or to believe any polls taken in advance of elections, as the entire outcome could be turned upside down a month, week, or even day before the vote takes place.

When it comes to predictions, why bother?  Far better to choose a desirable outcome and proceed to cause it (which we have demonstrated ourselves quite capable of doing throughout history) than to guess what might happen and then try to plan and act according to what that outcome is supposedly going to be, though it will likely never actually transpire.  What a colossal and utter waste of our talents and efforts.