Brian Jordan's texty thoughts

The core of my dilemma…

I’m interested in learning about most everything. Since I began conducting investigations in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and philosophy this year, I have come to the realization of just how intimately related every field of study really is. I find that the categories defined through education-system-division or economic-work-force-convenience are superficial and can ofttimes be outright deceiving.

The time-dependent factors — money and respectability

I’m at an age and stage in my education (undergraduate Junior) when considering the things I’ll need to do to leave career doors open is beginning to sound important. Just don’t know what I’d love to do most. Which endeavors would be best to pursue for money and field respectability (extrinsic motivators)? Which endeavors are best left to pursue for intrinsic satisfaction? Must these two categories of motivation always be mutually exclusive?

there’s a relevant TEDtalk on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and a paper on extrinsic motivation’s diminishing effects on creativity tasks (Eisenberger + Cameron, 1996).

Some swinging doors……

I wouldn’t mind peeking into …

Given unlimited time and opportunity, I currently think I would enjoy:

• Attending medical school and later working in medical practice or research (neurology, neurosurgery, muscular, ocular, ear/nose/throat)
• Attending law school and examining, practicing law (copyright, education, corporate, health, intellectual property, probate)
• Attending graduate school and studying something I find intrinsically interesting (neuroscience, [brain and] human-computer interaction, psychology [creativity, happiness, models, social], art, education)
• Attending Business school (creative project management, Internet-based/dependent businesses, marketing, non-profit management, start-up models)
• Working (copyediting, start-up, marketing)

Request for strategies

I would really love to hear thoughts on deciding on a path. What endeavors are best to keep mutually exclusive from income? What are some small things I can try that might help me whittle down the number of doors I’ll try to keep open?

Now back to studying for Professor Dennett’s philosophy of mind and language mid-term…

Respectable by association,
B

Tags: asktheinternet, creativity, motivation, tedtalks

(this is an edit-for-style/repost of a post I made to the Tufts Happiness Club’s facebook group page. oh, and a friend and mine are starting a Tufts Happiness club. maybe I’ll write about that when I’m not writing about this, or the dreams post I last promised! [so, my brain is highly distractable. what's it to ya! ])

(UPDATE: watching The Daily Show 3 hours after I posted this, Dr. Ehrenreich was the guest! Also, she has a blog, is awesome, supported [with gusto!] Nader in 2000 and Obama in 2008 and currently serves on the NORML board of directors. <3)

You might have recently seen the Boston Globe interview entitled “Enough with the bright side: Positive thinking can be dangerous, says Barbara Ehrenreich”

I am not convinced this interview’s introduction is completely fair to Dr. Ehrenreich.

In the article, Dr. Ehrenreich seemed to make more of a case against the use of happiness-boosting techniques by secular (and cult, money-making, and non-scientifically-backed “self-help”) organizations than one against the growing body of research which enumerates various benefits of positive affect.

I am ordering two copies of her book for the club (Bank of Brian) and will review it myself, and I hope someone else from the Tufts Happiness Club will join me.

And thanks to some fortuitous Googling, tomorrow my good friends Lauren, Margaret and I are going to listen to a talk by Dr. Ehrenreich put on by The Harvard Bookstore at Brattle Theater in Cambridge. Info here, let me know if you’ll join us.

My current plan is to give a short presentation of her claims (and the research her book references) to the club during our second meeting. If positive affect has negative effects, we want to know what those are, we want to know why, and what amount of positive affect is “a bad thing” by those accounts. At this point I am interested in teaching and discussing with others the main points of this account.

Oh, also, Dr. Ehrenreich sounds pretty awesome, by most accounts:
* “In 1968, she received a Ph.D in cell biology from Rockefeller University.” [1]
* “In 1998, the American Humanist Association named her the Humanist of the Year.” [1]
* From the Boston Globe interview: “BE: No. And I think I was open to it. I wanted to feel the love, or feel what people were supposed to feel, but unfortunately, I’m saddled with this rational mind. At one conference in 2007, there was constant talk about how quantum physics explains how you can have anything you want just by thinking about it. That just infuriated me.” [2] — all good points and makes her sound more awesome in my book.

Quote refs:
[1] (as Freshman year English teachers everywhere cringe) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Ehrenreich
[2] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/10/11/enough_with_the_bright_side/?page=2

I am curious to see whether this article has done her arguments justice, or if the Globe has simply sensationalized her book’s reasonable claims.

Please comment and let me know what you think, what you read, what you find, and points you’ve heard from others so I can investigate and we can discuss in the club!

Also, because she’s a biologist, a new goal in my life is to have a phone talk with Dr. Ehrenreich about the brain because I currently am obsessed with it, she seems incredibly rational and a great researcher, and I have way too many questions I need answered about the biological science of the brain (those questions are also another blog post).

My dentrites to yours,
Brian

Tags: curiosity, happiness, tufts

I feel compelled to preface two dream stories I will post tomorrow with some thoughts (NB: the bulk of my writing is tangential).

I am aware that most people don’t like to hear eachother’s dreams.

I think this boils down to two reasons, which you can avoid if you’re careful with your dream storytelling: (1) often times dream tellers over-attribute vivid awesomeness to the things that happened in their dreams, especially when the dreams are about things that are specific to only their lives, usually appearances of things from their episodic memory and (2) it’s hard for savvy dream story listeners not to get distracted by considering the folk-psychological (or logically obvious) meanings of the teller’s dreams. Sometimes it can be downright awkward to actively listen to these stories. A smart response: “Oh, interesting, you had a dream wherein your parents fought eachother with swords on top of red water so you went to hide in the forest of solitude where you ate orange berries until you heard a scream and assumed which one had died. Okay, let’s talk about something else for a bit.”

More information on dreams: contemporary dream interpretation, and there will be a NOVA episode called “Why do we dream?” on October 20th, 2009 (two weeks from now). Short summary of the NOVA episode (which I can’t find anything about online as of yet, even on the NOVA schedule… also, BBC Horizon did a similar episode):

“This captivating one-hour special highlights the latest that science has uncovered about the purpose and meaning of dreams. In their quest for answers, researchers are probing the minds of cats, sleepwalkers, and stroke survivors. A mix of personal stories (a woman dreams repeatedly about an abusive past relationship) and fascinating study results (a test subject suddenly excels on a ski-racing simulator after dreaming about snow) keep the show moving at a lively pace. The take-home lesson: The dreamworld affects both mental health and problem solving in our waking lives.” (via Discover Magazine, October 2009)

I do also find curious the differences in perception we have between ideas which come from within dreams and those during waking thought. When you hear someone’s great spark of genius came from within the dream world, it changes your regard of how they came up with it. Dreams offer our thoughts a space outside of a consistent reality–whether by purpose (evolutionary pressure) or poor machinery (our mental representation of the world needs constant confirmation feedback to remain accurate)–which results in bizarre things happening and novel things being stumbled upon. How would you regard the invention of a new, more efficient can opener if it were derived from a mathematical function? If it were created by trial and error during the daytime? Calculated by genetic algorithms? Came up with during a hallucinogenic trip? Conceived of within a dream?

Anyway, that all said, I believe I may have had two dreams with obvious and wholly un-interesting neuro-chemical-pattern origins that I think stand up as interesting on their own. One of them has a TEDtalk involved, the other an online-watchable episode of Family Guy. So you will always have that if tomorrow’s dream stories suck.

Disclaimer: I began writing this as a response to a comment on this video, now decided to finish my thoughts. I first published this as a Facebook note.

I find the stories of correlation between old folk-scientific/philosophical beliefs and new accurate empirical evidence fascinating. How did those from the past stumble upon scientific accuracy?

It is very curious how durable many portions of the Zen Buddhist philosophy have proven throughout time, especially when considered alongside other folk philosophies of life, theories of happiness, religions — which were all conceived during the (relative) intellectual darkness of the past.

Of mild interest, though not the topic of my post, you will find that the stories of contradiction between folk beliefs and new empirical evidence are usually not told or largely ignored in popular literature — I suspect because they would make an important group of people blush, and might make those same important people think unkindly of those story-writers and subsequent story-tellers, considering them (and anyone in the non-folk-belief-following outgroup) as cold-hearted horrible-spiritless people who are advocating a world which would be bereft of happiness and meaning.

Two things to ponder when considering the case of Buddhism’s non-contradictory relationship with the emerging neuroscientific position on happiness, and, to a degree, science in general:

(1) Buddhism began with a null hypothesis (no presuppositions) and allowed rational thinking explicitly via Buddha’s Kalama Sutta, or Charter of Free Thinking
(2) The brain sciences are becoming powerful and mature enough to produce compelling empirical evidence about the basis of human nature, humans’ folk theories, and the comically un-mystical origins of mystic theories and stories.

More on these topics:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html Video of Harvard University psychology professor Dan Gilbert talking about the neuroscience of happiness and the inaccurate folk theories most people hold about the nature of happiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutta Zen Buddhism’s story expressing Buddha’s insistence on a proper assessment of evidence versus reliance on faith, hearsay or speculation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_science Buddhism’s relation to scientific inquiry, neuro/psychological findings and non-armchair philosophy.

(Seems less relevant when reposting this outside of Facebook, but I’ll include anyway:) Jon Sellon, I’m tagging you in this note because I am remembering in our confirmation class when you were the one person who expressed that you weren’t ready to be confirmed and wanted to explore other options — specifically, Buddhism! Boats of respect, that was not the easy thing to do.