Mental Health.

Psychology Today has an interesting article dealing with methods of cultivating one's mind.

Some of this stuff I find interesting, and some I don't. What I do agree with here is the idea that through careful cultivation, a person can gain conscious control over the workings of the mind. Very few people truly work toward understanding the interior of their own minds, preferring to leave major decisions in life to reactive impulse rather than a well thought out philosophical stance, and allowing their brains to go to pulp rather than practicing a strict and well disciplined regimen of mental exercise. Mental health, like physical health, requires a measure of daily effort, but isn't as difficult as one might believe.

Eternal Sunshine of the... uh...?

Does this ring any bells? According to Kurtweil AI, scientists have found the mechanism which stores memory in the brain. It is now within the realm of possibility to completely erase memories. Is it within our reach to restore them as well?

Ah... so this explains it.

Kurtzweil AI reports that trauma may accelerate the aging process in the brain's memory structures. This would go a long way toward explaining extended long and short term memory loss on the part of certain people who blog on grey pages. (Of course, alcohol may have made a dent or two as well...)

Side Effects of Smart Drugs.

A Washington Post article which discusses the side effects of some of the new smart drugs that are currently making the college dorm rounds.

Nature.

New evidence exists for the idea that the genetic component has a heavy hand in influencing our behaviors and abilities. Thanks to Katherine for this one.

Mind Control.

This article examines a brilliant new strategy for pain reduction: Simply teach people not to feel the pain. By using a live scanning device, known as an FMRI, people can quickly learn by trial and error how to control the contents of their own minds. I can see some truly revolutionary uses for this technology. In the future we might use such techniques to teach children at a very young age to control not only pain, but emotional responses as well, and even their own thought patterns.

I told you so.

CNN is reporting that Dolphins are now known to give each other names, making them capable of identity recognition, and interpersonal communication. As I posted earlier, Dolphins are among the ranks of a growing number of species which are now known to possess highly sophisticated language skills, potentially even parallel to our own.

Expectations and the law of averages.

During a conversation I had with Katherine the other night, we discovered a pair of hypotheses which would go a long way toward describing the ways in which I build expectations, and the ways in which I am disappointed or pleased with an anticipated event.

Question 1: Why am I more often disappointed by films, stories or albums than I am satisfied by them?

Hypothesis 1: This one is pretty simple. We figured out that this is caused by the way in which I filter events prior to experiencing them. If I hear a terrible album, I'll be less inclined to seek out further works by that artist, and so will never have my expectations exceeded by that artist's growth. If I hear a brilliant album, I will always compare later works of that artist to the highest point in their career. This makes it highly unlikely for that artist to achieve a critical success, at least in my mind.

Question 2: Is there an algorithm which might describe the approximate level of quality which a work would need to achieve in order to exceed my expectations?

Hypothesis 2: Indeed, it would seem that there is, and this algorithm is simpler than I thought it would be. It's simply a matter of examining the average level of quality which is routinely produced by that particular artist. If you were to rate every Radiohead album, for instance, ona scale of one to ten and average them all out, the work in question would need only to exceed the cumulative score of the preceeding albums. Make sense?