DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS; GET NEW AND BETTER IDEAS I talk a lot in this newsletter about how to dismantle your assumptions and beliefs and question the water that you swim in. But equally important, if not more important, is the ability to get new and better ideas once you've done that. One of humanity's main tools for seeing things differently is the scientific method. Don't click away! I know, boring, Middle School level science, but we have a massive problem. We were never really taught the first step! WHAT WE DID LEARN IN SCHOOL? How many tests and experiments did you run in school? How many times did you have to come up with the question, not just the answer? I remember an upper division writing class in college. I got a C on my first paper. Somewhat gobsmacked, I went to the Professor who informed me that I had come to a different conclusion, not the one he gave me. I said, "Let me get this straight, you gave me the hypothesis, the evidence, and the conclusion … [Read more...] about How to Learn to Love the Wicked World
Debunking
How Radar Started a War and Condensers Started a New Age
AVALANCHES OF OPINIONS There has been an avalanche of opinions and think pieces about the future. I have written before about the dangers of taking these accounts at face value. But we just can't help ourselves. BRAINS LOVE STORIES That seems like a positive statement. Especially coming from an author who spends all her time writing stories. But it isn't. We make meaning out of anything and everything. This concept is ubiquitous in modern psychology and difficult to trace to a specific source. There are thousands of articles that reference the concept and yet no single origin. Essentially we create a logical chain of cause and effect for everything that happens in our lives (even though the universe is mostly random chaos). Sometimes we know we're doing it and name it, like with superstitions. We know that we didn't get the job because of the tie we wore, but it's better to be safe than sorry at the next interview and wear it. Or astrology where we know that a … [Read more...] about How Radar Started a War and Condensers Started a New Age
The Greatest Social Experiment in History
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A BOX OF THUMBTACKS, A MATCH, AND A CANDLE?This isn't the start of a joke, but one of the best experiments ever devised.The Candle Problem shows how we can inadvertently ignore blatantly obvious solutions because we ignore function, made famous by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, from the research in the 40s of Gestalt Psychologist Karl Duncker.Participants are handed a collection of items and asked to affix a candle to a wall without it dripping on the table.Half are given a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. Half are given a box, thumbtacks, matches, and a candle.Do you spot the difference? That one little difference drastically changed the likelihood of solving the problem.People who were given the thumbtacks separately from the box almost always solved the problem. Take a thumbtack and affix the box to the wall and put the candle in the box. It's on the wall and will not drip on the table.The people who were given the tacks in the box solved it far less … [Read more...] about The Greatest Social Experiment in History
Placebo Effect is Responsible for World Domination??
Photo: Anders Sandberg Do you remember learning about the placebo effect? I remember a few references to it in high school biology, and a few jokes about it in various TV shows, but it just seems to be one of those concepts you learn by osmosis and never question. But it is insane! IT'S GETTING STRONGER We have powerful drugs to change our brain chemistry, how our guts work, and how our immune systems heal, and we must very carefully design studies to account for the fact that none of them measure up to the power of eating a sugar pill that you’re told might make you better. And even then, sometimes the effect that you think is the drug turns out to also be placebo. Sedatives are less effective if the pill is red or yellow and more effective if they’re green or blue. Was it the drug or the color? Not only that, but the placebo effect is getting stronger. The more time goes on, the harder it is to get an efficacious drug passed because every … [Read more...] about Placebo Effect is Responsible for World Domination??
The Perils of Advice from Fiction Characters
Photo: Theresa Mahler BEWARE THE AUTHOR PHILOSOPHERS (Though you can learn other things from authors like how to stay sane while doing a really weird job...) The primary purpose of entertainment is to entertain, but sometimes, especially in science fiction and fantasy, an author can't resist waxing philosophically. It’s a dangerous condition filled with aphorisms and sagely nodding heads. Fortunately, there’s only one science-fiction author who has worked their way into a full-blown religion: L. Ron Hubbard with his Scientology, so we all know how good of an idea THAT is. But even those authors who know they're writing fiction can't resist the perfect saying to be excerpted and printed on Etsy in a beautiful decorative frame. ADVICE I ONCE LOVED Here is some of the advice I have taken from various famous fictional accounts of life that have not stood the test of time. First, a caveat: I love these properties. They are great works … [Read more...] about The Perils of Advice from Fiction Characters
Tragedy and Triumph are group delusions
Photo Behzad No We decide this together: what is healthy or not, stressful or not? I owe a lot to Elizabeth Stanley and her book Widen the Window for her discussion of the connection between stress and trauma and how we think of them as worlds apart when they really are a spectrum. Though I've extrapolated into the healthy side of things for my work. Yes, we have to live in reality, but we shape reality with a lot of story. What doesn't kill you... The fact that some things are good for us and some kill us is not a controversial statement. I think everybody knows that some things make us happy and some things make us miserable, and some things traumatize us and blight the rest of our lives so we end up eating a pint of ice cream made of avocado because that would be healthier at 3 am when we’re convinced we’re going to be fired, our chosen political party will never win again, and humanity will be extinct in a century... No? Just me? One note: trauma is a … [Read more...] about Tragedy and Triumph are group delusions
Could You Be Addicted to Outrage??
I'm Kyler and I'm an outrage addict. It's been fifteen minutes since my last hit of cortisol. This is the story of how I thought I had a totally normal, healthy relationship with the internet, but learned I was actually completely screwed. It took a sixty-day migraine with vertigo to get me offline. Did you know vertigo was a symptom of migraine? Or that one of the primary triggers is screens? One day last year, I started to feel like a cork bobbing on the ocean while someone hammered on the back of my head. Fun times. And then it went on for months. Even after I figured out what was going on and that screens were my primary trigger, I just kept looking at them. All the time. As spikes were driven into eyeballs. I was that addicted to terror and outrage, and I was a pretty casual user. You know this. This is not news. But do you truly, madly, deeply know this? Because I was completely fooled. I thought I understood. I did not get into flame wars. I had the … [Read more...] about Could You Be Addicted to Outrage??
There Are No Alpha Werewolves?!
I have a small problem with the state of current Urban Fantasy. It is all shifters all the way down! Here's an exploration into why that particular myth is a strange choice to go viral. Chaste sexy monsters? Sexy monsters have been around forever from Beauty and the Beast to Frankenstein. (Though if you want to dig deeper, just be prepared when googling sexy monster!) It seems to have really taken off with the film era and Bride of Frankenstein. But even so, until Teen Wolf, Vampire Diaries, and Twilight, werewolves were not a part of global pop culture, and if they did get in, they were firmly bad guys and mostly there for the ick factor. Now we get swoony werewolves aimed at teenagers. What? Before the aughts, werewolves were bad guys; subprime mortgages were a great investment, and social media was young. The worst thing that happened on a platform was living vicariously through the juice cleanse of your junior year prom … [Read more...] about There Are No Alpha Werewolves?!