Everything You Think You Know, Just Ain't So

Humans cannot perceive reality directly. Instead, the outside world is filtered through our various senses. Significant filtering and pre-processing occur in the sensory organs themselves. Inside the brain, "primary" areas are devoted to each of the senses, where further filtering and pre-processing of information take place -- under the influence of feedback from "higher" brain areas. From the primary sensory cortex, the information proceeds to "associative" sensory areas and other cortical and sub-cortical parts of the brain, where an incredible free-for-all of clashing and matching information occurs deep below the level of consciousness.

Sensor Science

All of these sensory and mental processes find themselves immersed within a sea of emotions, influenced by the hormonal, biochemical, physiological, and genetic state of the individual. Every moment of time contains its own mix of emotions, frequently linked and tagged subconsciously to subtle sensory cues, such as fragrances, colours, or musical phrases.

This insistent background will shade our "knowing" in different ways, at different times.

Edge.org: Daniel Kahneman

Within the great tumbling scrum of the subconscious, a number of the brain's default mechanisms operate below the level of awareness, detected only by careful testing. But when put under the magnifying glass, the mind betrays its inner workings in the form of a number of sensory illusions and cognitive biases.

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Many of the cognitive biases come about due to subconscious laziness, or a type of ongoing conservation of energy by the brain. Others are simply quirks resulting from the basic design of brain circuits and function.

But even after information has survived these minefields -- of sensory filters, perceptional illusions, emotional biasing, and cognitive biasing -- there are other types of information distortion which must be traversed. More on the conscious level, humans must face a large number of "logical fallacies" that are incorporated into verbal communication for many reasons -- some of the honest, and some of them quite devious.

Always remember that descriptions and explanations of logical fallacies may in themselves be fallacious and misleading.


Top 20 Logical Fallacies

Ad hominem An ad hominem argument is any that attempts to counter another’s claims or conclusions by attacking the person, rather than addressing the argument itself. True believers will often commit this fallacy by countering the arguments of skeptics by stating that skeptics are closed minded. Skeptics, on the other hand, may fall into the trap of dismissing the claims of UFO believers, for example, by stating that people who believe in UFO’s are crazy or stupid. A common form of this fallacy is also frequently present in the arguments of conspiracy theorists (who also rely heavily on ad-hoc reasoning). For example, they may argue that the government must be lying because they are corrupt. It should be noted that simply calling someone a name or otherwise making an ad hominem attack is not in itself a logical fallacy. It is only a fallacy to claim that an argument is wrong because of a negative attribute of someone making the argument. (i.e. “John is a jerk.” is not a fallacy. “John is wrong because he is a jerk.” is a logical fallacy.) The term “poisoning the well” also refers to a form of ad hominem fallacy. This is an attempt to discredit the argument of another by implying that they possess an unsavory trait, or that they are affiliated with other beliefs or people that are wrong or unpopular. A common form of this also has its own name – Godwin’s Law or the reductio ad Hitlerum. This refers to an attempt at poisoning the well by drawing an analogy between another’s position and Hitler or the Nazis.

Ad ignorantiam The argument from ignorance basically states that a specific belief is true because we don’t know that it isn’t true. Defenders of extrasensory perception, for example, will often overemphasize how much we do not know about the human brain. It is therefore possible, they argue, that the brain may be capable of transmitting signals at a distance. UFO proponents are probably the most frequent violators of this fallacy. Almost all UFO eyewitness evidence is ultimately an argument from ignorance – lights or objects sighted in the sky are unknown, and therefore they are alien spacecraft. Intelligent design is almost entirely based upon this fallacy. The core argument for intelligent design is that there are biological structures that have not been fully explained by evolution, therefore a powerful intelligent designer must have created them. In order to make a positive claim, however, positive evidence for the specific claim must be presented. The absence of another explanation only means that we do not know – it doesn’t mean we get to make up a specific explanation.

Argument from authority The basic structure of such arguments is as follows: Professor X believes A, Professor X speaks from authority, therefore A is true. Often this argument is implied by emphasizing the many years of experience, or the formal degrees held by the individual making a specific claim. The converse of this argument is sometimes used, that someone does not possess authority, and therefore their claims must be false. (This may also be considered an ad-hominen logical fallacy – see below.) In practice this can be a complex logical fallacy to deal with. It is legitimate to consider the training and experience of an individual when examining their assessment of a particular claim. Also, a consensus of scientific opinion does carry some legitimate authority. But it is still possible for highly educated individuals, and a broad consensus to be wrong – speaking from authority does not make a claim true. This logical fallacy crops up in more subtle ways also. For example, UFO proponents have argued that UFO sightings by airline pilots should be given special weight because pilots are trained observers, are reliable characters, and are trained not to panic in emergencies. In essence, they are arguing that we should trust the pilot’s authority as an eye witness. There are many subtypes of the argument from authority, essentially referring to the implied source of authority. A common example is the argument ad populum – a belief must be true because it is popular, essentially assuming the authority of the masses. Another example is the argument from antiquity – a belief has been around for a long time and therefore must be true.

Argument from final Consequences Such arguments (also called teleological) are based on a reversal of cause and effect, because they argue that something is caused by the ultimate effect that it has, or purpose that is serves. Christian creationists have argued, for example, that evolution must be wrong because if it were true it would lead to immorality. One type of teleological argument is the argument from design. For example, the universe has all the properties necessary to support live, therefore it was designed specifically to support life (and therefore had a designer.

Argument from Personal Incredulity I cannot explain or understand this, therefore it cannot be true. Creationists are fond of arguing that they cannot imagine the complexity of life resulting from blind evolution, but that does not mean life did not evolve.

Begging the Question The term “begging the question” is often misused to mean “raises the question,” (and common use will likely change, or at least add this new, definition). However, the intended meaning is to assume a conclusion in one’s question. This is similar to circular reasoning, and an argument is trying to slip in a conclusion in a premise or question – but it is not the same as circular reasoning because the question being begged can be a separate point. Whereas with circular reasoning the premise and conclusion are the same. The classic example of begging the question is to ask someone if they have stopped beating their wife yet. Of course, the question assumes that they every beat their wife. In my appearance on the Dr. Oz show I was asked – what are alternative medicine skeptics (termed “holdouts”) afraid of? This is a double feature of begging the question. By using the term “holdout” the question assumes that acceptance is already become the majority position and is inevitable. But also, Oz begged the question that skeptics are “afraid.” This also created a straw man (see below) of our position, which is rather based on a dedication to reasonable standards of science and evidence.

Confusing association with causation This is similar to the post-hoc fallacy in that it assumes cause and effect for two variables simply because they occur together. This fallacy is often used to give a statistical correlation a causal interpretation. For example, during the 1990’s both religious attendance and illegal drug use have been on the rise. It would be a fallacy to conclude that therefore, religious attendance causes illegal drug use. It is also possible that drug use leads to an increase in religious attendance, or that both drug use and religious attendance are increased by a third variable, such as an increase in societal unrest. It is also possible that both variables are independent of one another, and it is mere coincidence that they are both increasing at the same time. This fallacy, however, has a tendency to be abused, or applied inappropriately, to deny all statistical evidence. In fact this constitutes a logical fallacy in itself, the denial of causation. This abuse takes two basic forms. The first is to deny the significance of correlations that are demonstrated with prospective controlled data, such as would be acquired during a clinical experiment. The problem with assuming cause and effect from mere correlation is not that a causal relationship is impossible, it’s just that there are other variables that must be considered and not ruled out a-priori. A controlled trial, however, by its design attempts to control for as many variables as possible in order to maximize the probability that a positive correlation is in fact due to a causation. Further, even with purely epidemiological, or statistical, evidence it is still possible to build a strong scientific case for a specific cause. The way to do this is to look at multiple independent correlations to see if they all point to the same causal relationship. For example, it was observed that cigarette smoking correlates with getting lung cancer. The tobacco industry, invoking the “correlation is not causation” logical fallacy, argued that this did not prove causation. They offered as an alternate explanation “factor x”, a third variable that causes both smoking and lung cancer. But we can make predictions based upon the smoking causes cancer hypothesis. If this is the correct causal relationship, then duration of smoking should correlate with cancer risk, quitting smoking should decrease cancer risk, smoking unfiltered cigarettes should have a higher cancer risk than filtered cigarettes, etc. If all of these correlations turn out to be true, which they are, then we can triangulate to the smoking causes cancer hypothesis as the most likely possible causal relationship and it is not a logical fallacy to conclude from this evidence that smoking probably causes lung cancer.

Confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable Because we do not currently have an adequate explanation for a phenomenon does not mean that it is forever unexplainable, or that it therefore defies the laws of nature or requires a paranormal explanation. An example of this is the "God of the Gapsa" strategy of creationists that whatever we cannot currently explain is unexplainable and was therefore an act of god.

False Analogy Analogies are very useful as they allow us to draw lessons from the familiar and apply them to the unfamiliar. Life is like a box of chocolate – you never know what you’re going to get. A false analogy is an argument based upon an assumed similarity between two things, people, or situations when in fact the two things being compared are not similar in the manner invoked. Saying that the probability of a complex organism evolving by chance is the same as a tornado ripping through a junkyard and created a 747 by chance is a false analogy. Evolution, in fact, does not work by chance but is the non-random accumulation of favorable changes. Creationists also make the analogy between life and your home, invoking the notion of thermodynamics or entropy. Over time your home will become messy, and things will start to break down. The house does not spontaneously become more clean or in better repair. The false analogy here is that a home is an inanimate collection of objects. Whereas life uses energy to grow and reproduce – the addition of energy to the system of life allows for the local reduction in entropy – for evolution to happen. Another way in which false analogies are invoked is to make an analogy between two things that are in fact analogous in many ways – just not the specific way being invoked in the argument. Just because two things are analogous in some ways does not mean they are analogous in every way.

False Continuum The idea that because there is no definitive demarcation line between two extremes, that the distinction between the extremes is not real or meaningful: There is a fuzzy line between cults and religion, therefore they are really the same thing.

False Dichotomy Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two. For example, evolution is not possible, therefore we must have been created (assumes these are the only two possibilities). This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a continuum of variation to two black and white choices. For example, science and pseudoscience are not two discrete entities, but rather the methods and claims of all those who attempt to explain reality fall along a continuum from one extreme to the other.

Genetic Fallacy The term “genetic” here does not refer to DNA and genes, but to history (and therefore a connection through the concept of inheritance). This fallacy assumes that something’s current utility is dictated by and constrained by its historical utility. This is easiest to demonstrate with words – a words current use may be entirely unrelated to its etymological origins. For example, if I use the term “sunset” or “sunrise” I am not implying belief in a geocentric cosmology in which the sun revolves about the Earth and literally “rises” and “sets.”

Inconsistency Applying criteria or rules to one belief, claim, argument, or position but not to others. For example, some consumer advocates argue that we need stronger regulation of prescription drugs to ensure their safety and effectiveness, but at the same time argue that medicinal herbs should be sold with no regulation for either safety or effectiveness.

No True Scotsman This fallacy is a form of circular reasoning, in that it attempts to include a conclusion about something in the very definition of the word itself. It is therefore also a semantic argument. The term comes from the example: If Ian claims that all Scotsman are brave, and you provide a counter example of a Scotsman who is clearly a coward, Ian might respond, "Well, then, he's no true Scotsman." In essence Ian claims that all Scotsman are brave by including bravery in the definition of what it is to be a Scotsman. This argument does not establish and facts or new information, and is limited to Ian's definition of the word, "Scotsman."

Non-Sequitur In Latin this term translates to "doesn't follow". This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists.

Post-hoc ergo propter hoc This fallacy follows the basic format of: A preceded B, therefore A caused B, and therefore assumes cause and effect for two events just because they are temporally related (the latin translates to "after this, therefore because of this").

Reductio ad absurdum In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false. The term is now often used to refer to the abuse of this style of argument, by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. For example a UFO enthusiast once argued that if I am skeptical about the existence of alien visitors, I must also be skeptical of the existence of the Great Wall of China, since I have not personally seen either. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because he is ignoring evidence other than personal eyewitness evidence, and also logical inference. In short, being skeptical of UFO’s does not require rejecting the existence of the Great Wall.

Slippery Slope This logical fallacy is the argument that a position is not consistent or tenable because accepting the position means that the extreme of the position must also be accepted. But moderate positions do not necessarily lead down the slippery slope to the extreme.

Special pleading, or ad-hoc reasoning This is a subtle fallacy which is often difficult to recognize. In essence, it is the arbitrary introduction of new elements into an argument in order to fix them so that they appear valid. A good example of this is the ad-hoc dismissal of negative test results. For example, one might point out that ESP has never been demonstrated under adequate test conditions, therefore ESP is not a genuine phenomenon. Defenders of ESP have attempted to counter this argument by introducing the arbitrary premise that ESP does not work in the presence of skeptics. This fallacy is often taken to ridiculous extremes, and more and more bizarre ad hoc elements are added to explain experimental failures or logical inconsistencies.

Straw Man A straw man argument attempts to counter a position by attacking a different position – usually one that is easier to counter. The arguer invents a caricature of his opponent’s position – a “straw man” – that is easily refuted, but not the position that his opponent actually holds. For example, defenders of alternative medicine often argue that skeptics refuse to accept their claims because they conflict with their world-view. If “Western” science cannot explain how a treatment works, then it is dismissed out-of-hand. If you read skeptical treatment of so-called “alternative” modalities, however, you will find the skeptical position much more nuanced than that. Claims are not a-prior dismissed because they are not currently explained by science. Rather, in some cases (like homeopathy) there is a vast body of scientific knowledge that says that homeopathy is not possible. Having an unknown mechanism is not the same thing as demonstrably impossible (at least as best as modern science can tell). Further, skeptical treatments of homeopathy often thoroughly review the clinical evidence. Even when the question of mechanism is put aside, the evidence shows that homeopathic remedies are indistinguishable from placebo – which means they do not work.

Tautology Tautology in formal logic refers to a statement that must be true in every interpretation by its very construction. In rhetorical logic, it is an argument that utilizes circular reasoning, which means that the conclusion is also its own premise. Typically the premise is simply restated in the conclusion, without adding additional information or clarification. The structure of such arguments is A=B therefore A=B, although the premise and conclusion might be formulated differently so it is not immediately apparent as such. For example, saying that therapeutic touch works because it manipulates the life force is a tautology because the definition of therapeutic touch is the alleged manipulation (without touching) of the life force.

The Fallacy Fallacy As I mentioned near the beginning of this article, just because someone invokes an unsound argument for a conclusion, that does not necessarily mean the conclusion is false. A conclusion may happen to be true even if an argument used to support is is not sound. I may argue, for example, Obama is a Democrat because the sky is blue – an obvious non-sequitur. But the conclusion, Obama is a Democrat, is still true. Related to this, and common in the comments sections of blogs, is the position that because some random person on the internet is unable to defend a position well, that the position is therefore false. All that has really been demonstrated is that the one person in question cannot adequately defend their position. This is especially relevant when the question is highly scientific, technical, or requires specialized knowledge. A non-expert likely does not have the knowledge at their fingertips to counter an elaborate, but unscientific, argument against an accepted science. “If you (a lay person) cannot explain to me,” the argument frequently goes, “exactly how this science works, then it is false.” Rather, such questions are better handled by actual experts. And, in fact, intellectual honesty requires that at least an attempt should be made to find the best evidence and arguments for a position, articulated by those with recognized expertise, and then account for those arguments before a claim is dismissed.

The Moving Goalpost A method of denial arbitrarily moving the criteria for “proof” or acceptance out of range of whatever evidence currently exists. If new evidence comes to light meeting the prior criteria, the goalpost is pushed back further – keeping it out of range of the new evidence. Sometimes impossible criteria are set up at the start – moving the goalpost impossibly out of range -for the purpose of denying an undesirable conclusion.

Tu quoque Literally, you too. This is an attempt to justify wrong action because someone else also does it. "My evidence may be invalid, but so is yours."

__Skeptics Guide to Logical Fallacies

This is just a bare introduction to a few of the ways that human knowledge is filtered, processed, shaded, twisted, obscured, and misled -- just in the everyday course of events. Over at the blog Al Fin, the Next Level, they will be looking at some of these issues more closely from the standpoint of Dangerous Child training.

More: Thinking Skills for the Dangerous Child

The Wisdom of Human Ritual; Don't Leave Home Without It

The ritualistic inclination is built into our species, as you can learn from the profound but simple experiment described below.

Imagine you are a five-year-old being led into a small office. A woman with a warm smile shows you an assortment of strange objects. Some of them are shiny. You feel like playing with them. That’s OK, that’s allowed. Soon the friendly lady takes the objects away and says she wants to show you a video. On the screen is another woman. She has an identical set of objects lined up neatly in a row and she’s doing odd things with them — she lifts one and taps it on another, then puts it back and takes something else, twirling it in a peculiar fashion before replacing it. This goes on for some time. Then the strange objects are pushed back towards you and the lady says: ‘It’s your turn.’ What would you do?

If you were a five-year-old, you would imitate at least some of the actions you observed in the video. No instruction would be necessary. And yet, the behaviour doesn’t appear to achieve anything. The psychologist Cristine Legare and I have been working together for several years trying to understand why young test subjects bother to copy it. Our starting point is that they treat it as a convention of some kind. That is to say, they adopt what we call ‘the ritual stance’, imitating without questioning the purpose of the actions.

In our experiment, however, the behaviour of the woman in the video is ambiguous. Children can't be sure it if is oriented to a goal or not. A surprisingly simple shift helps them to decide: we just alter the last move in the sequence. If the woman puts the last object into a box, it looks like the whole procedure was just a ‘funny’ way of putting an object away. We call this the ‘instrumental condition’. On the other hand, if the objects all end up back where they were originally placed, the whole action sequence appears not to have any tangible purpose. We call this the ‘ritual condition’. When the start and end states are identical, children are more confident that the demonstration on the video should be interpreted as a kind of ritual. And guess what? They copy it much more faithfully, and are less inclined to try out variations on their own initiative. _Harvey Whitehouse

Ritual Mosaic Humans value ritual from their earliest years. The need for human ritual only grows with the years. It seems to have always been that way.

Whether we consider the aborigines of Australia, the Native Americans, the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, or our own European ancestors, we find a world-wide preoccupation with ritual action that cuts across all races, religions, and cultures. We could even say that human culture is primarily a culture of ritual. _Culture of Ritual

Yet in our modern scientific world, the human need for ritual is typically denied and scoffed at, as an unnecessary residual of a more superstitious age.

But only a little thought and reflection should tell us that the further from religious belief and culture that we travel, the more necessary our grounding and passage of time rituals become.

Each culture, society, community, and family will have its own rituals based upon a unique history. Depending upon the ritual one is observing, one is either connecting with his family, community, society, culture, nation, or all mankind.

Rituals were once an unthinking part of daily life for every human living within a society or culture. In the modern scientific age, however, rituals must be consciously employed for their underlying purposes, or they become neglected and forgotten. The loss of grounding that occurs with the withering away of ritual is tragic -- for all that it is rarely noticed.

In The Dangerous Child Method of Education and Child-Raising, ritual is given a prominent role -- particularly in the toddler years, and in the years prior to puberty. Puberty itself is a passage, and deserves its own rite. And so on, through the years of passages that constitute human existence.

Daily rituals should also be utilised, from the earliest years. Here is a brief look at some "mindfulness rituals," meant to ground and vitalise one's daily existence.

1. Sit in the morning. When you wake up, in the quiet of the morning, perhaps as your coffee is brewing, get a small cushion and sit on the floor... I’ll ... just sit, and focus on my breathing going in and out. I’m an absolute beginner when it comes to meditation, but this always starts my day right.
2. Brush your teeth... Try fully concentrating on the action of brushing, on each stroke of each tooth, going from one side of the mouth to the other. You end up doing a better job, and it helps you realize how much we do on autopilot.
3. Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV, put away the computer and mobile devices, even put away the book or newspaper... unless you do this, you are not truly appreciating your food. I like eating... mindfully, paying attention to each bite. It makes the food taste better, and I eat slowly and with gratefulness.
4. Wash your bowl. When you’re done eating, wash your dish immediately. Do it while paying full attention to your washing, to the water and suds.
5. Drink tea... Make your own tea ceremony — prepare the tea carefully and mindfully, pour it slowly, sip it with thoughtfulness. See if you can set aside one time each day to do this, and it will transform your day.
6. Walk slowly. I like to take breaks from work, and go outside for a little walk. Walk slowly, each step a practice in awareness. Pay attention to your breathing, to everything around you, to the sounds and light and texture of objects.
7. Read in silence... Have no television or computers on nearby, and just immerse yourself in the world of the novel. It might seem contradictory to let your mind move from the present into the time of the novel, but it’s a great practice in focus...
8. Look at someone gratefully. Each day, find someone you care about. Instead of just seeing what you always see, really look at the person. Try not to do it creepily. See this person for the miracle that she is, and be grateful for her existence. If you’re feeling generous, tell that person how thankful you are for her.
9. Work with focus. Start your workday by choosing one task that will make a big difference in your work, and clearing everything else away. Just do that one task, and don’t switch to other tasks. _Leo Baubata

These particular "rituals" are based upon the practise of "mindfulness," which is usually associated with zen. But in Dangerous Child training, we incorporate mindfulness rituals without any particular trappings, other than those which might be particularly salient to the child.

There is something trance-like in the observation of many rituals. But rituals can just as easily liberate one from a default state -- a "spinning of the wheels" trance which the brain can easily fall into. Mindfulness rituals in particular tend to help break us out of the many unthinking default trances into which our minds can easily sink.

If meaningful rituals are incorporated into our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly lives, we are more likely to have a subtextual "soundtrack", mapping system, or system of life indexing, which helps us to better understand where we have been and where we may be going.

Most of us are somewhat familiar with religious ritualism. But many forms of pagan ritual preceded all forms of organised religious ritual as far back in time as we can go. And it is interesting to observe the return of much of this pagan ritual across various parts of modern societies.

As humans try to make sense of an increasingly secular existence, it is crucial for us to understand the importance of our underlying need for ritual -- both on a daily basis, and to mark critical events and transitions in our lives.

To make the most sense of this need, we must go back and understand how rituals naturally came about, and how these native rituals were modified and adapted to meet the needs of different cultures, civilisations, religions, and societies.

High Tech Date Rape: The World Warps Strange

As women have become more educated, more sophisticated and worldly wise, they have come to demand more wealth, accomplishment, and sophistication from their men. These increased demands have proven burdensome to the majority of men, who have been put at a relative disadvantage in terms of education and work, due to affirmative action and other government mandates. In addition, most men do not find it within themselves to be classy dressers, suave charmers, or masters of smooth seduction.

In the old days, a smooth serenade, or a moving poetry recitation, might have worked -- even if the man were struggling above his pay grade, so to speak. But the modern woman does not give in so easily, as her more sentimental forerunners might have done. And besides, most modern men are neither musically talented nor poetically gifted.

Due to these and other disadvantages, many men have been driven to the use of date rape drugs, including copious quantities of alcohol. But there is nothing particularly memorable or satisfying about taking advantage of a woman lost in a deep stupour. In addition, the legal penalties can be severe and lasting.

A safer and more sophisticated approach to taking control of an inauspicious mismatch, involves the use of conversational trance induction -- or hypnosis. This is a very effective approach, but it requires a certain amount of training, in addition to innate talents of empathetic sensing and projection, along with exquisite control of one's voice and body language. Only a relative few men can be masters of these techniques.

This brings us to a rapidly developing field of neuroscience known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). With TMS, one can place an electro-magnetic coil over a particular area of the forehead of an attractive but dismissive woman, instantly turning rejection into ready compliance. TMS is capable of disrupting the normal inhibitory and behavioural control and decision-making of the pre-frontal cortex (PDF) and associated regions.

Yes, I can already hear you asking: "How can I get her to hold still long enough to place the coil over the exact location required to get her to submit?"

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Now, thanks to clever scientists in Spain, you don't have to. Utilising advanced theories of meta-materials, these Barcelona physicists have devised a way to turn materials formerly thought of as "invisibility cloaks" into devices capable of projecting electromagnetic fields over a distance.

You may begin to see the potential. Concealed within the obscure physics are the makings of an electromagnetic field projector, with the potential to initiate limited behavioural control over a distance.

Beyond energy transmission, the researchers suggest the ability of the shell to concentrate magnetic fields into a small space could enhance the accuracy of magnetic sensors. This could extend the reach of a medical research technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, in which parts of the brain can be temporarily activated or deactivated by magnetic fields. _PhysicsWorld

Of course, the implications of this type of remote brain control go far beyond the trivial example of "date rape." In fact, this type of control over the impulses and inhibitions of other people -- even large groups of people simultaneously -- is exactly the tool that politicians, advertising companies, community organisers, religious prophets, college professors, and other shady characters have longed for since the coming of homo sapiens.

In the age of meta-materials and other counter-intuitive technologies, the world is beginning to warp strangely odd. And yet, none of us are given a pass to sit out these developments and await a later, safer, less startling technological environment. It would likely be a long wait, regardless.

New technologies work out of sight, out of mind, beyond our conceptual grasp, for the most part. And even in the face of widespread economic disaster, such technologies -- and even stranger ones -- will continue to be developed somewhere, by some organised group or another.

It sounds as if we will need to become more dangerous than ever just to live in the coming world -- but in a good way, of course.

H/T NextBigFuture

The Waking Trance

Human consciousness is an odd pickle. We all experience it every waking day, but no one understands it well enough to build a good imitation. What are we missing?

Quite a lot, actually. For example, why are we so changeable from day to day or moment to moment? Is it possible that much of what we call ordinary consciousness is simply the slipping from one state of automatic trance into another?

Let's try to define "trance:"

To many psychologists a trance is a state of limited awareness. Some psychologists would also characterize trance as a form of sleep, or dreamlike awareness or a kind of altered state of consciousness.

... it is relatively easy to hypnotize a person and to keep that person in a trance state without their being aware that they are in fact in a trance. The technique of pacing and leading a subject from a rich or varied set of thoughts to a limited or impoverished set of thoughts is a technique used consciously by hypnotists, advertisers, sales people, preachers and politicians.

...how can you tell if you are in one of these ordinary, unconscious trances? You are in a trance when your attention is limited and there is a certain repetition of thoughts. In an extreme case, your attention is so limited that it feels like "tunnel vision."... Concentration, when the mind is focused on a specific problem or thought, is also a form of trance. You could characterize trance cybernetically as an awareness loop, or a circular flow of consciousness. _Unconscious Trance

Most of us spend most of our time in one type of trance or another. Even the experience of unconscious mastery is a type of trance.

In general this is fine, if we are in control of which trance we choose to be immersed within -- and if we can exit the trance whenever we wanted.

Almost every human being on Earth will revert back to what is known as "the consensual trance," the limited world of the particular social consensus within which the person happens to be immersed. It is a trance into which we are born and to which we are conditioned. Later, when we enter -- or are close to -- adulthood, we may be presented with a choice as to whether we wish to move into a different consensual trance. Very few discover the ability to experience large portions of their lives outside of the consensual trance. Even fewer make the choice to step outside the consensual trance into a greater freedom of the mind.


It is possible to move other persons into a trance, shift them from one trance state to another, or to help them emerge -- temporarily -- from a typical trance state. It is worth learning how to manipulate other persons' trance experiences in order to better apprehend when someone is attempting to do the same to you, typically in an attempt to enlist you into some kind of mass movement or ideology:

1. Build Rapport with the Listener

Your first task is to gain rapport with the listener. Rapport is simply put that feeling of connection and trust between two people. It doesn’t have to be too deep. You already have a rapport with your friends, parents and others. You can easily gain rapport with other people just by making compliment, laughing at their jokes etc.

2. Switch off the Critical Mind

After building rapport, you can now use covert hypnosis techniques to switch off the critical mind of the listener.

One of the ways to do this is to use the words “Imagine”, “What if” etc. When you use these words, the critical mind immediately shuts off, thus making the imagination work. This is very important, because we are only doing the things that we could imagine before, so invoking the mind’s eye of the listener will help you to send commands to his (her) subconscious.

3. Make Irresistible Hypnotic Commands

After bypassing the critical mind of the listener, you can now make your irresistible commands and describe the things you want a person to do.

Covert hypnosis is that simple. In covert hypnosis, your success will depend on the depth of rapport, your hypnotic language and how you follow the covert hypnosis technology. _Covert Hypnosis

It is no accident that these are simultaneously the tools of sexual seduction, religious conversion, and political enlistment and indoctrination. These are tools that are used in government and religious school classes, sports team pep talks, pick-up bars, cathedrals and mosques, clubs, associations, gangs, and mass movements of all kinds.

The tools of conversational trance manipulation have been perfected by ethical persons such as Milton Erickson, and by unethical persons such as your charismatic politician of choice.

But no one needs to put you into a trance. You do that every day, all by yourself. It is possible to go through days, weeks, months, and years without ever truly emerging from the waking trance, the consensual trance. In general, the possibility that one may emerge from such a trance is so disturbing that it can lead to psychic trauma, drug addiction, membership in a cult, or worse.

But just in case one wished to experience a different state of existence, how would he go about emerging from the waking, consensual trance?

How can anybody distinguish, then, between dream, hypnotic trance, and reality? Dehypnotization, the procedure of breaking out of the normal human state of awareness, according to both mystics and hypnotists, is a matter of direct mental experience. The method can be learned... _Howard Rheingold on Charles Tart

Maybe, maybe not. A lot depends upon the person's experience up to the point when he tries to break free. If the person were raised to be a dangerous child, he will likely have already learned ways of breaking out of the consensual trance -- at least temporarily, for specific purposes. But if the person were raised to be a psychological neotenate -- like most modern children -- his chances of learning to break free of the waking consensus will depend upon his strength of character and his motivation.

Human societies are moving toward a point where it becomes more crucial for persons to wake up. Whether this will involve waking up into yet a higher trance, or waking up outside of trance altogether, may be more a matter of semantics than we would like to think.

If a person wants you to "wake up" to his way of thinking, that is a clue that he wants you to share his trance. This is a typical experience for university students in the modern classroom of indoctrination, and for consumers of mainstream media news and commentary.

But if you want to wake up outside the consensual trance -- and perhaps into your own trance -- you will need to do some creative thinking and experimenting.

If it seems like I am trying to "dumb down" and generalise the definition of trance to the point that it encompasses all experience and consciousness, that is not my intent. I am leaving room for several types of consciousness outside of trance states.

But it takes work to reach them, and even more work to stay in them for any appreciable period of time.

Most people will never wake from the consensual trance, and that is just how they want it. But as push comes to shove, and shove comes to strike, someone will have to devise some workable alternatives. Hopefully, at least some of these alternatives will involve a larger scale emergence from the limited consensus.

Problem Solving with Sudden Creative Insight

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Most of us have solved problems using trial and error, slogging our way through the possibilities until we hit on the right answer. Some of us have solved problems through a sudden flash of insight -- an epiphany or eureka! moment. Of the two methods of problem solving, most of us who have experienced both, would prefer the epiphany. Northwestern University researchers have looked at these two methods of problem solving in an attempt to better understand how to achieve the more preferred sudden insight.

In a just completed study, researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine.

“What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles.


...For almost a century scientists have used puzzles to study what they call insight thinking, the leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis.

In one classic experiment, the German psychologist Karl Duncker presented people with a candle, a box of thumbtacks and the assignment of attaching the candle to a wall. About a quarter of the subjects in some studies thought to tack the box to the wall as a support — some immediately, and others after a few failed efforts to tack wax to drywall.

The creative leap may well be informed by subconscious cues. In another well-known experiment, psychologists challenged people to tie together two cords; the cords hung from the ceiling of a large room, too far apart to be grabbed at the same time.

A small percentage of people solved it without any help, by tying something like a pair of pliers to one cord and swinging it like a pendulum so that it could be caught while they held the other cord.

...creative problem-solving usually requires both analysis and sudden out-of-the-box insight.

“You really end up toggling between the two, but I think that they are truly different brain states,” said Adam Anderson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto.

At least, that is what brain-imaging studies are beginning to show. At first, such studies did little more than confirm that the process was happening as expected: brain areas that register reward spiked in activity when people came up with a solution, for instance..

Yet the “Aha!” moment of seeing a solution is only one step along a pathway. In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged people’s brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they’ve seen it. Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way).

...The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state. In their humor study, Dr. Beeman and Dr. Subramaniam had college students solve word-association puzzles after watching a short video of a stand-up routine by Robin Williams. The students solved more of the puzzles over all, and significantly more by sudden insight, compared with when they’d seen a scary or boring video beforehand.

This diffuse brain state is not only an intellectual one, open to looser connections between words and concepts. In a study published last year, researchers at the University of Toronto found that the visual areas in people in positive moods picked up more background detail, even when they were instructed to block out distracting information during a computer task.

The findings fit with dozens of experiments linking positive moods to better creative problem-solving. “The implication is that positive mood engages this broad, diffuse attentional state that is both perceptual and visual,” said Dr. Anderson. “You’re not only thinking more broadly, you’re literally seeing more. The two systems are working in parallel.”

The idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress. So, for that matter, is the notion that puzzle-solving helps the brain in any way to navigate the labyrinth of soured relationships, uncertain career options or hard choices that so often define the world outside. _NYT

This line of thought takes me back to the difference between hypnosis and meditation. With hypnosis, the attention is focused so narrowly that the mind becomes progressively unaware of anything except the object of focus. With meditation (mindfulness mediation), the attention becomes softened progressively, so that the mind seems to become aware of everything all at once -- but without anxiety. An ongoing fMRI study comparing hypnosis and mindfulness meditation may help to answer many of the questions which have been asked when comparing the two states of mind.

The Northwestern researchers above discovered that humour tended to soften the attention, and make the mind more prepared to receive a flash of sudden insight for solving a problem. Parallels between humour and meditation have been drawn many times -- specifically by the late philosopher and Zen enthusiast Alan Watts.

Using various metrics including psychological testing and brain imaging, researchers have found that mindfulness meditation tends to lend toward a more youthful and flexible brain -- including the preservation of cortical thickness in older individuals who practise mindfulness, comparable to brain thickness of much younger persons.

Mindfulness should be taught rather early in life, and should become a lifelong practise -- although either is rare, and both together are almost unheard of. Enhanced problem solving and preservation of cortical thickness into old age would both be welcome side benefits to the main effect of an ongoing enhancement of day to day awareness.

More bits and pieces:

The functional M.R.I. images reveal that when people are emotionally distressed — anxious, angry, depressed — the most active sites in the brain are circuitry converging on the amygdala, part of the brain's emotional centers, and the right prefrontal cortex, a brain region important for the hypervigilance typical of people under stress.

By contrast, when people are in positive moods — upbeat, enthusiastic and energized — those sites are quiet, with the heightened activity in the left prefrontal cortex. _Goleman

The difference between concentration/hypnosis and meditation is really more about expansive versus contractive awareness. Many hypnotic induction techniques encourage the subject to shrink their focus down to just one thing such as the hypnotist's voice or watching a small spot on a wall so that all other points of awareness are temporarily pushed out of awareness. In most hypnosis there is initially an increase in Beta brainwaves as the subject engages their thinking mind to start blocking out things. As they physically relax into the experience of concentration the Alpha waves begin to arise.

When you enter into hypnosis much of the racing mind gets pushed out of awareness leaving you with far less mental chatter than usual. Superficially, you might think that sounds just like meditation, and in a way it is, and in another way it isn't. In meditation we transcend racing thoughts whereas in rigid concentration or hypnosis we repress them. The result is less thinking, but the mechanisms work on opposite principles. _ProjectMeditation

Relaxation

When studied in psychology, relaxation refers to a focusing on the mind and a relaxing of the body's muscles. Research has shown that being too tense and/or living with too much stress has a significant negative impact on our lives. It can lead to physical illnesses such as high blood pressure, ulcers, fatigue, and headaches and many psychological issues, including inappropriate or misdirected emotions, confusion, difficulty concentrating, and burn-out. People utilize relaxation, in combination with stress management, to improve their quality of life, reduce the physical components of stress, and improve their psychological functioning.

There are different forms of relaxation, including breathing exercises, deep muscle relaxation, progressive muscle relaxation, imagery, meditation, and yoga. Although each of these has different components, the main goal in each is to relax the body's muscles and focus the mind. Since the body and the mind cannot be separated, most agree that both of these components must be present for any relaxation technique to work.


Hypnosis

Hypnosis is very similar to relaxation in that the same two components of physical and mental must be addressed together. Most professionals agree that hypnosis is a very deep state of relaxation where your mind is more focused and the connection between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are more clear. _Psych101

This last comparison appears to contradict what I said above about hypnosis and meditation. But remember, there are many forms of meditation. Some of them are virtually indistinguishable from many forms of self-hypnosis.
You could also watch your favourite comic or comedy show, and achieve much of the benefit of meditation. Alternatively, you could just belly laugh. Interestingly, that also works.

Human or Zombie? The Answer May Surprise You

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Can you focus your mind on the things that need doing, or does your mind seem to focus itself on whatever pops up? Humans spend most of their lives immersed in everyday trance states -- almost indistinguishable from the mental states of zombies. It happens when the mind goes on auto-pilot, and may occur on the road, at work, in a lecture, or almost anywhere the mind feels safe enough to "zone."

Mindfulness is the opposite of a trance zone. Mindfulness is on the human end of the spectrum, with trance zones being on the zombie end. If a child is raised well, she will be the master of her attentional apparatus rather than the zombie slave. But if she is like most children, she will grow up to join the zombie horde of like-minded consumers of the trite and stylish fads of the mainstream.

In fact, most people fall into a number of destructive thought patterns and habits. Once the instigating thought or event occurs, it can be almost impossible to turn the mind away from the compelling grip of the habitual pattern. Mental exhaustion can easily set in after just a few seconds of such struggle, leaving the person defeated, falling once again into the same pattern.

It is possible to learn self-control, even as an adult who was not carefully trained as a child. But it generally takes more work than most people are willing to put in. The challenge for therapists and counselors is to make such late training of attention and executive functions fun. The alternative is a life of zombie trance zoning, leading to self-defeating habits.

Interestingly, the brain wave patterns of persons in hypnotic trance are different from the wave patterns of someone in a deep meditative state (PDF). I suspect that the wave pattern would be even more complex for persons specifically trained in mindfulness meditation.

We all have brains, but they do not all work the same. Very rarely do they work at optimal levels, regardless of the genetic and environmental advantages we may have been given.

Are you human or zombie, in the way you spend most of your time? What about your children? Would you spend $200,000 to send a zombie child to university, to concentrate on queer ethnic studies and semiotic basket weaving -- between binge drinking, fornicating, and academic lobotomising? If you did, what sort of person would he turn out to be?

Mind The Enchantment

The human mind is subject to various forms of enchantment. Not a magical enchantment, but more like a trance, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not.

Because our minds are "self organised", they are subject to falling into distinctly different states, at particular "bifurcations."An illustration of this phenomenan is the "bistability" of particular images. Following the series of images above, can you say exactly where the transition occurs? What if you saw only that one image?

But the deeper you dive into the mechanisms of consciousness, the larger the number of possible mind states, so that bistability becomes tristability and so on. Just the single topic of synaptic plasticity quickly acquires a complexity to confound most scientists.

Hypnosis takes advantage of the inherent ambiguity of consciousness, and "adjusts the weighting" of various competing states of mind. Since mind is inherently a self-organizing, ongoing trance-like process, it is often likened to "riding the wave," or staying on the "bucking bronco." From the moment of waking to the release of sleep, that "blinking cursor" of consciousness compels us to provide answers and solutions, even to unknown or nonexistent problems.

For anyone who is curious about some of the underlying neurophilosophy of consciousness, I suggests looking over this article by Edelman and Tononi--two prolific and respected students of consciousness. Or look over this overview of Models of Consciousness from Scholarpedia.

Understanding human consciousness is difficult enough. But a lot of people wish to create intelligence in machines. This dream goes back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But since the computer age beginning in the 1940s, multiple generations of ingenious scientists of mind and computation have dashed their skulls against the wall of computational complexity (not to mention a lack of understanding of the complexity of human cognition or intentionality).

Each person experiences a consciousness of an enchanted mind. Not a mind of equations and computations. Rather a mind of metaphor and narrative. An entranced mind where real world expediencies intrude on waking dreams. Complex trances of strange attractors and slippery bistable conscious surfaces.

There would be no point in trying to emulate all of that in a machine. Not unless that is the only way we can find to create a conscious machine. Perhaps it is better to settle for machines that only seem conscious or intelligent, as viewed by a simple Turing test. After all, we are only looking for help in making better decisions and devising a better world for smarter, healthier, longer-lived people.

We may be entranced, but why burden our machines with all of that? It is our trance that we wish to enjoy far into the future, not the trance of a machine.

Making the Cut

Next level humans will be smarter and live longer than modern day humans. That will not be enough. They have to know what to do with their intelligence and their long lives. This higher degree of savvy will separate next levels from those who are merely intelligent and long-lived.

It is not those with the highest IQ's who hold the greatest wealth, the greatest power, or the most profound happiness and satisfaction in life. Eventually it probably will be. The reason for this is that until now humans have not reached the critical threshold of intelligence, where rationality and emotionality work cooperatively toward a total life success.

Greater longevity requires adjustments to the human genome, as well as ongoing modifications through nanotechnology, endocrine treatments, stem cell therapies, immune support, and improved nutritional support along with better methods of achieving peak fitness. We must not neglect the emotional component to longevity, which works through endocrine and immune pathways. Once our rational brain learns to cooperate with our emotional brain, the way is open for true happiness and satisfaction in life, true success.

Higher intelligence will also require adjustment to the human genome. Nanotechnology can aid intelligence in many ways. Maintaining good endocrine balance and good balance of neuromodulatory compounds will be vital. Stimulation of neural tissue with electrical and magnetic signals, along with other senses such as visual, auditory, touch, smell, proprioception, and balance, are other ways to achieve neural growth. Meditation, visualization, hypnosis, will all be utilized for improving mental reach.

Knowing what to do with intelligence and long life will separate the pretenders from the contenders. For most modern humans, simply achieving prosperity along with physical and emotional health, with long life and healthy relationships, are sufficient goals for a human lifetime. For next levels, those things are merely the starting point for lives of achievement.

We see how easy it is to bribe most between level humans. A sinecured university post, a secure civil service position, good job benefits and pensions. Security. Work out your time and live out your life with guaranteed income and perquisites.
Persons who prize security above everything else will never contribute to human progress, instead simply mark time until they die.

There are many examples of great human striving. In the modern world we see sports figures as the most graphic pictures of the human will to overcome. The Olympic Games are particularly full of stories of individual effort to surpass the best that humans have ever achieved. Sports figures provide excellent examples of human energy and drive.

The same type of effort goes on behind the scenes in cutting edge technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, microelectronics, information technology, neuroscience, tissue engineering, communications technology, energy research, and many other fields of science and technology. The payoffs for significant advances in these fields are tremendous, and motivate persons of higher drive and intelligence. The best of the best of these bright and driven people will extend the outer limits of human achievement.

Even in fields that are mature and even humdrum, finding better ways of doing the banal and everyday task can lead to riches and fame. Imaginative, intelligent, and driven individuals achieve prosperity through making the humdrum more efficient, every day, in opportunity societies. These persons may lack the brilliance of a top theoretical physicist, but they have the savvy and drive to do what they can with the situation in which they find themselves, and do well.

Next level humans will combine the energy of the world class athlete, with the brilliance of a top scientist or inventor, and the savvy and resourcefulness of a successful entrepreneur, to reshape the universe that humans inhabit. Brilliance, healthy long life, economic and social success, will not be enough. Next levels will always keep the big picture in mind, will always be thinking of ways to expand the sphere of human existence.