Dream about John

Actually, it was a nightmare; I don’t feel strong enough to recount it.  It was not a visitation dream; there was nothing positive about it.  After the main part of the dream I drank colloidal silver in a bar and everybody wanted to know what I was having; the drink had a remarkable texture and would form a skin unless you gently shook it once in a while.  I still feel disgusted and shaky about the dream, though; if this is what going back on a vitamin regimen does I may be in for a rough couple of nights.

Bob Dylan’s New Year’s Day is done

I have always been much more fond of the lyrics than the tune on this one, but I don’t mind. …. I remember the day I wrote it… on the subway, coming back on New Year’s Day from crashing at Dave’s the night before.  Toronto seems so very far away from me now.  And yet thither must I go.

The landpeers are power washing the back deck preparatory to painting it.

I had lunch at Himalayan Peak with Hardeep, Trevor, ScaryClown and Robof9 yesterday, and hung with the folks in the cafeteria after that.  LTGW encouraged me to go to the 4:24 showing of District 9, but I wanted to get home and make dinner.

and now for some math tattoos.

Wonderful dream

I haven’t had a decent dream that I can remember in months, and I just had a splendid one.

I was living in a third storey walk up and got involved in a drug bust.  This is all because Jeff and I blasted through a couple of episodes of Homicide last night.  Man, that was a GREAT show.  The writing, the acting; and John Waters was the bartender in one episode, what more could you want?  Anyway, huge drug bust in one show, tiny drug bust in Allegra’s dream.

I swiped the evidence while my neighbour was being busted so of course they had to let him go (serves the cop right for busting the guy without backup) and then he came looking for me.  I just handed it back to him, so he was somewhat startled (it was only weed; I would hardly have helped the guy if it was something stronger).  My feelings of paranoia and discomfort while waiting for him to get back from the cop shop were NOT pleasant; nor was realizing he’d shaved off his dreads between the time he was busted in the time he got back so he got real close to me without me recognizing him.  Man, hair is a major disguise element.  Dreams are wild, hunh?  Anyway he was all happy and then I woke up.

Rumi and Dylan

I know it’s ludicrous, but I read Rumi, and I cry and cry and cry, and then I pick up the book and start reading again.  He’s just the most amazing creature – a living breathing ecstatic poet, 800 years dead.

Enough of that.  I have determined that Bob Dylan’s New Year’s Day is the next tune I will be writing down, in honour of his ‘detention’ in Jersey.  Murphy, but I hope he writes a song about it.

The little list of biases.

As I do research on atheism and cognition, I am finding all kinds of wonderful things.

For discussion and reference, here’s a list of cognitive biases from “Born to Believe” by Andrew Newburg and Mark Robert Waldman.

The first bias made me snort.  Now why didn’t I think of that?

  1. Family bias.  We are more likely to believe what our family members tell us.
  2. Authoritarian bias.  We are more likely to believe what authority figures tell us.
  3. Attractiveness bias.  Why are crippled ugly people not used in advertising? We are more likely to believe what nice looking people tell us.
  4. Confirmation bias.  The text for this bias, in its quiet, unemotional way, speaks volumes, so I am going to quote it directly. “We have a tendency to emphasize information that supports our beliefs, while unconsciously ignoring or rejecting information that contradicts them.  Since beliefs become embedded in our neural circuitry, contradictory evidence often cannot break through the existing connections of the brain.”
  5. Self-Serving Bias.  That’s kinda obvious.  If this information suits me, I will like it better, I will believe it.
  6. In-Group Bias.  People we like get preferential treatment (the ‘hall pass’ of song and legend) when it comes to their beliefs.
  7. Out-Group Bias.  We discount the beliefs of others outside our group.
  8. Group Consensus Bias.  If  everyone around you agrees with you, the more likely you will be to assume that your beliefs are valid.
  9. Bandwagon Bias.  If you walk into a room full of people who believe something, the more likely you will be to tailor your beliefs to theirs. Frequently seen in Vancouver during playoffs.
  10. Projection Bias. Everybody thinks like you.  (Except when they don’t, and your projection gets you into serious crap).
  11. Expectancy Bias.  The reason double-blind studies were invented; you’re trying to learn what is THERE not what you EXPECT to be there
  12. “Magic Number” Bias. Guilty!!  Your brain, unless you are very cognitively disturbed, is designed to do math.  Big numbers make for big emotions, and emotions help code beliefs.  It’s all very neatly intertwingled, isn’t it?
  13. Probability Bias.  “Never tell me the odds” as Han Solo once famously remarked.  Particularly prominent cognitive bias in teenagers and gamblers.  This bias causes you to believe that you are luckier than others.  Bias aside, in my case, it’s true.
  14. Cause-and-Effect Bias.  Oh, sugar.  Wish I had a buck for everytime nautilus3 called me on this bias; I’d be living in the British Properties.  Since our brains love to see a cause for an effect, without necessarily understanding all the factors that went into that effect, humans consistently bugger up what caused what.
  15. Pleasure Bias.  Pleasure = a higher truth.
  16. Personification Bias.  Things get names and personalities.  Unidentified incoming information gets ‘turned into’ something.  Raw data does NOT stay raw for very long.
  17. Perceptual Bias.  We assume that what we think, perceive and believe is somehow an objective reflection of the world.  Beeg misstek.
  18. Perseverance Bias.  Once it is in, it doesn’t come out without effort.  A belief ingrained in our neural circuitry, bolstered by habit, in-group bias, family bias, what have you, is freaking near impossible to get out.  In my view it will not come out without psychological trauma.
  19. False-Memory Bias.  I had no idea that false memories stay in the brain longer than true ones.  This accounts for many events in my life that were simply impossible to explain at the time they happened.
  20. Positive-Memory Bias.  When we look back, it’s better, brighter and happier.
  21. Logic Bias.  If you think it’s logical you’re more likely to believe it.  I personally think this lays over logic a meaning a professional philosopher would find scandalous.  The authors quote William James: “As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”
  22. Persuasion Bias.  Great speakers who emote get our poor old cognitive goat.  If you look at the difference between a Baptist minister and a scientist presenting findings….  yeah.
  23. Primacy Bias.  Allegra gets more kicks at the can than Zoe.  Information at the top of the list is more easily remembered and more heavily weighted.
  24. Uncertainty Bias.  Human beings do not enjoy uncertainty.  People prefer to believe or disbelieve something and get out of the nasty feeling that accompanies uncertainty.
  25. Emotional Bias.  Anger means I’m right, depression means I can’t see the positive, and anxiety means I’m wrong.
  26. Publication Bias.  Wow, it was printed, so it’s true.  The authors say that editors are biased towards positive rather than negative findings, but that bias must stop at the newsroom door.
  27. Blind-Spot Bias.  The worst bias of all.  The knowing that we don’t have biases, never fall prey to them, and can readily identify them in other people without seeing the humor in that.

Now don’t get me wrong, cognitive biases all serve us biologically, as individuals.  Where they get wacky is when they get writ large onto public policy.  Anyway, this book is providing LOTS to think about, and I also got The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks with John Moyne (burst into tears on the first page, I’m SUCH a sap), Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner (punk rocker + Buddhism), and Spark (why exercise is important to cognition) by John J Ratey with Eric Hagerman.  Can ya tell what my cognitive biases are from this small sampling???

Oh, the zombanity

Apparently there was a zombie walk this weekend.  I was busy….  not stuff I can blog about ….. but here’s a little zombie flavourin’ agent for your day.

True Blood S2E9 was extremely enjoyable; thank you Mike for getting all the remotes to work.  I fed him turkey and chicken sausage with fennel and cherry PIE – that plus the True Blood made for an excellent evening.  I am going to get another tutorial from Jeff.

Today, I go to the library.

Jeff and Keith will be back from Courtenay this afternoon.

Long quote from Kropotkin’s The Spirit of Revolt

The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seemed just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames up in every class of society, in every possible environment, in the very bosom of the family. The son struggles against his father, he finds revolting what his father has all his life found natural; the daughter rebels against the principles which her mother has handed down to her as the result of long experience. Daily, the popular conscience rises up against the scandals which breed amidst the privileged and the leisured, against the crimes committed in the name of the law of the stronger, or in order to maintain these privileges. Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted; they perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath, and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial, and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration.

In periods of frenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economic institutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity which they are supposed to guarantee; they produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled interests, war; a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers among themselves. Human society is seen to be splitting more and more into two hostile camps, and at the same time to be subdividing into thousands of small groups waging merciless war against each other. Weary of these wars, weary of the miseries which they cause, society rushes to seek a new organization; it clamors loudly for a complete remodeling of the system of property ownership, of production, of exchange and all economic relations which spring from it.

The machinery of government, entrusted with the maintenance of the existing order, continues to function, but at every turn of its deteriorated gears it slips and stops. Its working becomes more and more difficult, and the dissatisfaction caused by its defects grows continuously. Every day gives rise to a new demand. “Reform this,” “reform that,” is heard from all sides. “War, finance, taxes, courts. police, everything must be remodeled, reorganized, established on a new basis,” say the reformers. And yet all know that it is impossible to make things over, to remodel anything at all because everything is interrelated; everything would have to be remade at once; and how can society be remodeled when it is divided into two openly hostile camps? To satisfy the discontented would be only to create new malcontents.

Incapable of undertaking reforms, since this would mean paving the way for revolution, and at the same time too impotent to be frankly reactionary, the governing bodies apply themselves to halfmeasures which can satisfy nobody, and only cause new dissatisfaction. The mediocrities who, in such transition periods, undertake to steer the ship of State, think of but one thing: to enrich themselves against the coming débâcle. Attacked from all sides they defend themselves awkwardly, they evade, they commit blunder upon blunder, and they soon succeed in cutting the last rope of salvation; they drown the prestige of the government in ridicule, caused by their own incapacity.

Such periods demand revolution. It becomes a social necessity; the situation itself is revolutionary.