Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
2010/1/13 J. Andrew Rogers and...@ceruleansystems.com To point out a significant bias, in most militaries I am familiar with the standards of behavior, compliance, and myriad other things for females are substantially laxer than for males. Explicitly so, not just as a matter of practice. The military experience for a female is considerably different than for a male, so I would expect behavior to vary accordingly. A few modern militaries have experimented with gender-blind military units and they generally worked well after some modest cultural adjustment. Every case I am familiar with (e.g. Canada ran this experiment in some combat units for a handful of years) the *political* backlash against the policy usually kills the idea after a few years even though the results are typically good from a military perspective. The other inherent bias is the ''type'' of woman that joins the military. A military career is a fairly conformist choice for many men, but relatively nonconformist, even challenging, for most women. Similar findings have been observed in the corporate sector where female employees account for disproportionate numbers of whistleblowers, for instance. -- ‘That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!’- Calvin
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
On Jan 13, 2010, at 12:05 AM, Ingrid wrote: The other inherent bias is the ''type'' of woman that joins the military. A military career is a fairly conformist choice for many men, but relatively nonconformist, even challenging, for most women. Similar findings have been observed in the corporate sector where female employees account for disproportionate numbers of whistleblowers, for instance. It is definitely not a representative distribution by all anecdotal appearances. As I recall, volunteer militaries tend to find their equilibrium around 15-20% female. When instituting strict gender-blind policies the equilibrium falls to somewhere around 5% if I remember correctly.
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 5:39 AM, Jim Grisanzio jim.grisan...@sun.com wrote: Raul wrote: Yep, was fun reading... There's this analogy in ThinkerToys: http://books.google.com/books?id=5ozm2lpj05QCpg=PA51 quote Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. ... Good story. I certainly know a few of those monkeys (and a few veterinarians studying real monkeys too). But I suppose we all have the ability of acting like those monkeys from time to time even if we are consciously aware of the issue and try to disrupt the process. I think that's a strong point of the article, that our reactions are hardwired to at least a certain degree. Catching (and adjusting) our own narrow agendas is cool, but what about what we genuinely miss? And how much are we missing on any given day. Probably more than we are comfortable with. Playing devil's advocate somewhat, there's a cost as well as a potential pay-off to not just playing along. Think of the willing-to-be-a-rebel monkey 100 years later. What's the real deal? the monkey asks. To find out, they have to apply intellectual thought to get to a point of enquiry and then likely have cunning and/or bravely to get any actual answers - e.g. by climbing to the top despite the barrage and then by having the conviction to say but the banana was lovely and the only downside was you unnecessarily beating me whilst everyone is stuck in the firm paradigm which demands threatening anyone questioning The Truth. Even at the individual level instead, it's not just broken to be town. There's a balance between taking advantage of your beliefs so you can focus on action (imagine doing all your maths from first principals rather than relying on say 1+1=2) and questioning your beliefs in case your direction/actions are poor. A friend floored me recently with her approach. I know her as very sure of her (core) beliefs. She let up. Once every year or two she has a bout of introspection where she re-aligns. Interesting approach at trying to find the best of both worlds. With regards to the article - I very much enjoyed reading it at one level but there was a niggling irritation at another, and a friend captured it interestingly. Namely: it reads a bit like Gladwell. digs out chat transcript: [06/01/2010 17:09:03] Morgan Friedman: notice how this is written in a total gladwellian style? [06/01/2010 17:09:13] manarh: yeah [06/01/2010 17:09:17] manarh: I find that irritating personally [06/01/2010 17:09:42] manarh: didn't peg it as gladwellian - but I find them both irritating and when you mentioned it... it's for similar reasons. [06/01/2010 17:10:20] manarh: Emotional pull to allow mostly good points on interesting topics to be made powerfully but I think with weaknesses in accuracy. [06/01/2010 17:10:23] manarh: If that makes sense. [06/01/2010 17:10:27] Morgan Friedman: agreed 100% [06/01/2010 17:10:29] manarh: Feels dangerous [06/01/2010 17:10:48] Morgan Friedman: gladwell writes so well that he convinces you of what he's saying, even if he may not be right. the perils of writing too well. [an example of what I thought was inaccurate was how Kuhn was first cited - as distinct from the later citing which was quoted in this thread. In the first I felt Kuhn was misrepresented, though the second citing redressed that (with consequent minor loss of coherence, IMHO, to article)] Right, I'm in danger of going off on my spiel connecting architecture with paradigms with emergence with the law and organisational values oops, nearly! ;). m
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:24, Raul raul.li...@gmail.com wrote: There's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_(sociology) Discovery (or was it NatGeo?) had shown a research study on the inherent differences in the way a human brain processes information, thence their reactions. They showed a team of army recruits being made to march around a restaurant few times while the patrons gaped at them. Then the captain ordered them to sit down for lunch/dinner, place a banana on their head and then begin eating**. The recruits did as commanded. However, a voiceover informed the viewers that if female recruits had been given the same commands, they would question authority and refuse to sit with a banana on their head while eating food, would want to question the captain the purpose of such an exercise, etc... To bolster this argument the viewer was shown the scans of a male brain which only showed the left side is used to process information while the female brain scan showed both hemispheres were used. An army recruit, by nature of his/her job, is not supposed to question authority. So, the research finding female army recruits will question authority and disobey the captain is very hard to believe. Isnt it a cognitive bias to conduct a study on a small statistical sample, and then apply that generalization on half the wolds populace and claim they used only one half of their brain!? I am not sure what the aim of the study was but I have met many women who are not army recruits, never question people in authoritative positions. ** That must have been uncomfortable, and reason enough to rebel !! -- .
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
On Wednesday 13 Jan 2010 9:35:36 am . wrote: Discovery (or was it NatGeo?) snip Isnt it a cognitive bias to conduct a study on a small statistical sample, and then apply that generalization on half the wolds populace Discovery and NatGeo have perpetrated a massive fraud on the entire world using the inherent cognitive bias of any average TV viewer to swallow and internalise any mumbo jumbo that is shown with an aura of authority. On the forums of Bharat Rakshak there is a well known Discovery channel syndrome in which actual military problems are sought to be solved by hypothetical solutions shown on Discovery/NatGeo. Why wasn't X shown on Y channel used in the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. It worked well in the TV show shiv
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
ss [13/01/10 09:52 +0530]: On the forums of Bharat Rakshak there is a well known Discovery channel syndrome in which actual military problems are sought to be solved by hypothetical solutions shown on Discovery/NatGeo. Discussed the tom clancy syndrome yet? Poor guy just didnt like indira gandhi, did he? :)
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
On Jan 12, 2010, at 8:05 PM, . wrote: Discovery (or was it NatGeo?) had shown a research study on the inherent differences in the way a human brain processes information, thence their reactions. They showed a team of army recruits being made to march around a restaurant few times while the patrons gaped at them. Then the captain ordered them to sit down for lunch/dinner, place a banana on their head and then begin eating**. The recruits did as commanded. However, a voiceover informed the viewers that if female recruits had been given the same commands, they would question authority and refuse to sit with a banana on their head while eating food, would want to question the captain the purpose of such an exercise, etc... To bolster this argument the viewer was shown the scans of a male brain which only showed the left side is used to process information while the female brain scan showed both hemispheres were used. To point out a significant bias, in most militaries I am familiar with the standards of behavior, compliance, and myriad other things for females are substantially laxer than for males. Explicitly so, not just as a matter of practice. The military experience for a female is considerably different than for a male, so I would expect behavior to vary accordingly. A few modern militaries have experimented with gender-blind military units and they generally worked well after some modest cultural adjustment. Every case I am familiar with (e.g. Canada ran this experiment in some combat units for a handful of years) the *political* backlash against the policy usually kills the idea after a few years even though the results are typically good from a military perspective.
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
Manar Hussain wrote: Playing devil's advocate somewhat, there's a cost as well as a potential pay-off to not just playing along. Yep. Huge cost. And sometimes people pay with their lives. A friend floored me recently with her approach. I know her as very sure of her (core) beliefs. She let up. Once every year or two she has a bout of introspection where she re-aligns. Interesting approach at trying to find the best of both worlds. I do this too. That's why some people sometimes hit me with being inconsistent (especially when they look at old stuff I've written) since my positions evolve all the time. I do it intentionally. If a position is not working for me (in whatever way I specify), I eventually kill it and move on. What I like about the substance of the article is that it articulates a concept that people can use to change themselves -- even though they generally can't change the paradigms in which they live. You can change the small things in your world, in other words, and hopefully over time those small things add up to bigger changes. And when you are focusing on this process, you are more apt to spot bigger paradigm shifts coming along and you can jump when the opportunity is right. Something like that. :) Jim
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
Raul wrote: Yep, was fun reading... There's this analogy in ThinkerToys: http://books.google.com/books?id=5ozm2lpj05QCpg=PA51 quote Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. ... Good story. I certainly know a few of those monkeys (and a few veterinarians studying real monkeys too). But I suppose we all have the ability of acting like those monkeys from time to time even if we are consciously aware of the issue and try to disrupt the process. I think that's a strong point of the article, that our reactions are hardwired to at least a certain degree. Catching (and adjusting) our own narrow agendas is cool, but what about what we genuinely miss? And how much are we missing on any given day. Probably more than we are comfortable with. Jim
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
Udhay Shankar N wrote: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1 Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up Modern science is populated by expert insiders, schooled in narrow disciplines. Researchers have all studied the same thick textbooks, which make the world of fact seem settled. This led Kuhn, the philosopher of science, to argue that the only scientists capable of acknowledging the anomalies — and thus shifting paradigms and starting revolutions — are “either very young or very new to the field.” In other words, they are classic outsiders, naive and untenured. They aren’t inhibited from noticing the failures that point toward new possibilities. Really nice article. The acknowledging the anomalies bit from Kuhn may enable you to jump paradigms, which is very cool, but it also gets you a lot of knives buried in your back. Acknowledge carefully. :) Jim
Re: [silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
2010/1/6 Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1 Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up * By Jonah Lehrer * December 21, 2009 | * 10:00 am | * Wired Jan 2010 Nice. I should send this to my scientist father. (Actually, I have already sent it, but just now realized the mail didn't get delivered). For those interested in similar topics, I highly recommend The Trouble with Science by Robin Dunbar [1] (no, I don't know if they are related). Kiran [1] http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Science-Prof-Robin-Dunbar/dp/0674910192
[silk] The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1 Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up * By Jonah Lehrer * December 21, 2009 | * 10:00 am | * Wired Jan 2010 It all started with the sound of static. In May 1964, two astronomers at Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, were using a radio telescope in suburban New Jersey to search the far reaches of space. Their aim was to make a detailed survey of radiation in the Milky Way, which would allow them to map those vast tracts of the universe devoid of bright stars. This meant that Penzias and Wilson needed a receiver that was exquisitely sensitive, able to eavesdrop on all the emptiness. And so they had retrofitted an old radio telescope, installing amplifiers and a calibration system to make the signals coming from space just a little bit louder. But they made the scope too sensitive. Whenever Penzias and Wilson aimed their dish at the sky, they picked up a persistent background noise, a static that interfered with all of their observations. It was an incredibly annoying technical problem, like listening to a radio station that keeps cutting out. At first, they assumed the noise was man-made, an emanation from nearby New York City. But when they pointed their telescope straight at Manhattan, the static didn’t increase. Another possibility was that the sound was due to fallout from recent nuclear bomb tests in the upper atmosphere. But that didn’t make sense either, since the level of interference remained constant, even as the fallout dissipated. And then there were the pigeons: A pair of birds were roosting in the narrow part of the receiver, leaving a trail of what they later described as “white dielectric material.” The scientists evicted the pigeons and scrubbed away their mess, but the static remained, as loud as ever. For the next year, Penzias and Wilson tried to ignore the noise, concentrating on observations that didn’t require cosmic silence or perfect precision. They put aluminum tape over the metal joints, kept the receiver as clean as possible, and hoped that a shift in the weather might clear up the interference. They waited for the seasons to change, and then change again, but the noise always remained, making it impossible to find the faint radio echoes they were looking for. Their telescope was a failure. Kevin Dunbar is a researcher who studies how scientists study things — how they fail and succeed. In the early 1990s, he began an unprecedented research project: observing four biochemistry labs at Stanford University. Philosophers have long theorized about how science happens, but Dunbar wanted to get beyond theory. He wasn’t satisfied with abstract models of the scientific method — that seven-step process we teach schoolkids before the science fair — or the dogmatic faith scientists place in logic and objectivity. Dunbar knew that scientists often don’t think the way the textbooks say they are supposed to. He suspected that all those philosophers of science — from Aristotle to Karl Popper — had missed something important about what goes on in the lab. (As Richard Feynman famously quipped, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”) So Dunbar decided to launch an “in vivo” investigation, attempting to learn from the messiness of real experiments. He ended up spending the next year staring at postdocs and test tubes: The researchers were his flock, and he was the ornithologist. Dunbar brought tape recorders into meeting rooms and loitered in the hallway; he read grant proposals and the rough drafts of papers; he peeked at notebooks, attended lab meetings, and videotaped interview after interview. He spent four years analyzing the data. “I’m not sure I appreciated what I was getting myself into,” Dunbar says. “I asked for complete access, and I got it. But there was just so much to keep track of.” Dunbar came away from his in vivo studies with an unsettling insight: Science is a deeply frustrating pursuit. Although the researchers were mostly using established techniques, more than 50 percent of their data was unexpected. (In some labs, the figure exceeded 75 percent.) “The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen,” Dunbar says. “But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense.” Perhaps they hoped to see a specific protein but it wasn’t there. Or maybe their DNA sample showed the presence of an aberrant gene. The details always changed, but the story remained the same: The scientists were looking for X, but they found Y. Dunbar was fascinated by these statistics. The scientific process, after all, is supposed to be an orderly pursuit of the truth, full of elegant hypotheses and control variables. (Twentieth-century science philosopher Thomas Kuhn, for instance, defined normal
