http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/10/how_to_draw_not_about_how_to_d.html

The point is that learning to draw well is actually learning to undo your natural biases — the biases that let us function so easily in everyday situations. We see a door as a rectangle, a sliver, a square and everything in between. At least these objects makes these shapes ON THE RETINA, but that’s now how we see them. We see them as a rectangular door, just from many perspectives. Same with

My hypothesis is that judgments about morality and what we have reason to do are similar. We have built in biases that make certain actions stand out to us in certain ways which makes it easy to navigate society, but unless we become “painters” of morality and practical reason, then we are at the mercy of these shortcuts. We must learn to see around them.

Also from my last post, still the thing that is most interesting to me is that we couldn’t watch TV if our brains created our perception of the world differently. What more proof could you need that TV makes you fat other than the act of watching engages the opposite visual system than the ACTING visual system. Almost by definition watching TV can’t involve acting. Only perceiving at its most passive.

This book is just really good. It’s short and accessible but awesome in the way it will change your thinking.

The main idea is that we have two perceptual systems, one for action and one for representation. The deepness in which these themes are pursued is truly impressive.

Dee Fletcher, the main research subject of the book, lost the ability to see objects as objects. Her visual experience is hazy and objects seem to “run together,” but she can see color and texture. HOWEVER, she is still able to act like normal human beings. She can mail a letter in a small slot, grasp objects of a variety of shapes and so on. The evidence amassed over the course of the book is impressive. The representational system is closely tied to consciousness and is not much use for action. If we see an object, we can pick it up easily, quickly, and with the right amount of visua-motor adjustment. If we wait a few seconds while our eyes our closed and SIMULATE picking up the same object, we’re slower and less adroit with our motions, the hypothesis being that information for our motor system clears out after a short period of time, leaving us with our perceptual system, which is not built for action.

The idea is strengthened by patients who have damaged visual systems for action. These people can see everything crystal clear, but have trouble and uncertainty ACTING. If such people wait a few seconds to engage with an object, their performance improves, because rather than engaging their ordinarily superior (but now broken) motor-vision system, they engage their work (but second-rate) representational-vision system.

This is used to explain a wealth of ordinary and fascinating data. First, why do young kids draw the same pictures of houses and cars, but master artists can introduce perspective and the appearance of reality? The reason is that our eyes work “behind our backs” to create object recognition over time. A black shirt in sunlight reflects more light than a white shirt in a dim room, but the former still looks black and the latter still looks white. That’s our brain helping us and compensating for what we “see” (see is in quotes because I’m using that word to refer crudely to just the light that hits our retina. Real perception is much, much more than just light hitting the retina). So, young children draw things as the OBJECT is. We recognize a door from all sorts of positions, even though a door’s shape on our retina can be trapezoidal, parallelogram, or square depending on the perspective. But throughout it all we recognize a door, and that’s why kids draw the door as the object the brain cues to us — the rectangular straight on object. Master artists have in a sense mastered the ILLUSION and clues our brain uses to help us see perspective.

Also, why is it hard to mime actions. Well, because of what I said before. We’re quite bad at mimicking the FLUIDITY of action that is guided by our motor system. Painters have to learn to recreate what our REPRESENTATIONAL visiionsystem does for us, but mimes must learn to duplicate actions normally controlled by our ACTIONAL visual system. That’s why miming is really hard.

Something that really blew me away, is that TV would be impossible without our representational visual system. All the lower mammals have an actional visual system, but only we have a representational system which works mainly by relative distances and sizes. Thus, everything on a TV looks right, because its compared to everything else on the TV. Godzilla looks big (even though he’s small) and 3-d (even though he is on a 2-d screen).

The MOST interesting thing though was that our representational system can be fooled by illusions but our actional visual system CANNOT. When looking at a line illusion (with the arrows) we can’t help but SEE the lines as different lengths, but if we try and reach out to grab the lines, our fingers will stretch the right distance. They won’t be fooled by the illusion. What this means is that acting in the world reveals the truth of the world in a special way. ONLY through action can we work around some illusions. The world is revealed to us in a special way when we TAKE action. Is there some relationship to the wall street protests, i.e. when we ACT on our political beliefs rather than just think about them, the world maybe revealed to us in a special way. I’m fascinated by that thought.

Pg. 211 is what I’m interested in these days. Municipal bonds are tax exempt (no one pays taxes on the interest one receives from them) and so they are bought a lot by investors. But, we can incentivize those investors to the same amount by making them pay taxes and then give a tax credit back. This would gain the U.S. treasury a small sum of money AND have the same effect as the current tax free status.

There is a lot to say here, some philosophical, and some empirical.

Empirically, one should read the following citation (and the journal is pretty money).

Ott, Jan. Journal of Happiness Studies 2005 (6:4) “Level and Inequality of Happiness in Nations”

In this, she (he?) discusses how inequality in wealth is related to greater happiness as well as looking at the happiness reported in various states. Apparently Pakistanis are pretty unhappy, and so are Russians.

In terms of the philosophy, many people note that once people get basic things like food and shelter and transportation accorded to them, they become more or less happy. SURVEYS are used to assess people’s happiness and I think this is methodologically flawed, because of the way that being asked that question primes a positive response. People want, strongly, to believe that they are happy and so are likely have a very strong prejudice in favor of answering that question in the affirmative. The self-image reasons alone are probably strong. Also, I don’t think happiness is just an internal state that can be reported at the time of a question. Happiness concerns one’s entire life, and require deeper introspection than just “I’m feeling good in this psych lab.”

Aristotle for one thought that happiness had an objective component and so was not assured merely by FEELING happy, one had to have a certain combination of activities and commitments in order to be happy. Think about the last time you were engaged in a cherished activity. Time seemed to fly by and most of your troubles just melted away. Runners describe this, but so do people who read, and people who have hobbies like woodworking or painting. What this suggests to me is that happiness is a MODE OF ENGAGEMENT with life and so can’t be measured by a simple “are you happy, yes or no?”

An emphatic yes to the last question, but I was talking to a veteran the other day, and he became very disillusioned with the military and he wanted to get out early but with an HONORABLE discharge. This is hard to do, but one way that many people were able to do this (and he did not take this route) was to become “gay.” (look at this report for stats and analysis; it mentions that a lot of people used this way out).

Now, depending on what your general view of the military is, this could be good or bad. You might think that people getting out of their service early is bad and so therefore think that this is just another reason to get rid of DADT — it will end the “leak” of service people out of the military.

You might though, see this phenomenon of fake homosexuality as a cost of ending the policy. The reason is that some people start out supporting the military’s operations when they join up, but they become disillusioned (Iraq will do that to you) and so think they are ethically required not to participate in the duties they’ve been asked to perform. For these people, DADT helped them realize their ethical ideals and so acted as a “moral escape hatch.” And since admitting to homosexuality when one is not homosexual has a high cost, the route is not likely to be abused. In other words, not just anyone will fake homosexuality to leave the military, but those who have strong moral convictions can use this route.

All told, DADT was (in some cases) a kind of a quirky and interesting mechanism that some people used to stay true to their ethical beliefs

So far, I disagree with basically everything that’s been said about this month (?) long media/political event.

First, I want to go on the record and say that there will not be a default. People have tried to escalate the risk this time around, but I just don’t think it will happen. People have already cautioned that just because it would be stupid to not raise the debt ceiling does not mean it will be raised. True enough, but when the incentive system  is so clearly and robustly in favor of some result, one has to have a pretty sophisticated reason why we should worry in this case. I’m reading a book on negotiating and the author claims that 80% of concessions are made in the final 20% of the allotted negotiating time. Deadlines get things done.

Some people say that America looks stupid and why can’t we get this issue solved. I agree that America will look very stupid if we run out of money, but I don’t think it is at all stupid that we are having this debate and that both sides are trying to extract concessions from each other. Some people say that this is just “political theater” but I  am really growing to dislike that phrase. It’s often used to just stop caring about the debt ceiling altogether or worse, politics altogether. There is a theatrical element, but there is also the completely honest and genuine reason that some people in the house want lower spending and are willing to force a showdown to get that.

Also, I wonder if we have wasted more time whining about our politicians than anything else. How would a different media approach to this issue actually have CAUSED a different outcome. What if the media had just refused to report more than a few times a week about this (there’s no such thing as “the” media of course and collective action problems would make this unworkable)? Some of the “theater” would be gone and many politicians would be able to compromise more easily because the eye of the public would not be on their every move. Negotiations can easily obscure one’s role in the final product allowing various politicians (on both sides) to meet in the middle but still hide that fact.

This one is probably the best (the bottom graphic).

This is very helpful.

Also this.

NYT is late to the game but they have a comprehensive debt ceiling graphic.

It’s also not clear to me that all parts of Boehner plan are constitutional since its enforcement mechanism is a required 2/3 majority vote. But the supreme court has ruled that one congress cannot change the vote dynamics for future congresses and I think has ruled on a case very similar to the current budget legislation. The Graham Rudmann  (sp? for both of those) Act tried to do something similar to what the current caps would do, but was struck down.

Also the Boehner bill allows Obama to request a raise in the debt ceiling while Reid’s plan just raises it. Is there a difference?

There aren’t really any big conclusions to draw, but there’s a lot to just chew on.

For example, if you’re reading this, there are about 2 million people who are your exact age.

Also, the south has way more girls than guys as a general rule: move there if you want to meet somebody. Texas is also one of the youngest states in the U.S.

As a nation, we’re getting more age polarized. The number of older people is really jumping, but the number of middle aged people fell. Young people are growing a little bit too. It’s as if god looked at our demographic pyramid and pinched the middle, causing the excess to flow to the top and the bottom.

Also, don’t live in Ft. Lauderdale if you’re a heterosexual guy: it’s all dudes.

It would take a while to explain exactly how mysterious slurs are, but here is an attempt.

The most natural thing for a non-philosopher to think is that slurs are predicates just like anything else, like “red” or “bad.” A slur then would be something like “inferior because of his/her race” so that calling someone a slur is the same is saying something objectionable about them. However, this cannot be right for two reason.

1. Slurs “scope out” of unasserted uses. If I say “If you’re a bad person, I don’t want to hang out with you,” then I have no insulted you. I have merely introduced a hypothetical. I’ve said IF you’re a bad person and so have not ASSERTED that you are a bad person. However, if I said “If you’re a *, I don’t want to hang out with you,” then I have said something quite offensive. This is a puzzle. Slurs are offensive even when they are not actually predicated of a person (but only hypothetically predicated of them).

2. Slurs can be used unoffensively. I’ve been playing a lot of basketball in Harlem, and trust me, many of the black people I play with refer to other black people there with a word that I could not use. This is also anomalous. Nobody can use “red” to mean “blue.” But slurs can be offensive on the lips of some people but not by others.

The other thought is that slurs have no content but merely express anger or hatred or something, just as “ouch” expresses pain, but it doesn’t MEAN anything. This seems not to work though because exclamations don’t have application conditions but slurs do. Someone could say, “that’s a *,” but be wrong because the person he’s pointing at doesn’t have the race of the slur that was used. Another racist could say “False, that’s not a *, that’s a *” and insert the slur appropriate to the person’s race. You cannot have a similar conversation about “ouch.” It’s true that I could be insincere about when I’m feeling pain (and could say “ouch” when I’m not in pain), but there is never a conversation where I say “That pain was an “ouch”" and you say “No it wasn’t, it was a “yikes.”" This brings up a second point: slurs are used as standard predicates and so seem to have application conditions (true when applied to some people and false when applied to others).

But if slurs aren’t normal predicates or expressives, what in the world are they? Philosophy tries to answer this question.

Self-deception is built into the human mind in many ways. Here are two. First, we tend to pick up on and remark on things that support our antecendently existing world view. This reinforces our belief that we are right. Not only that, after we make a decision we are much more likely to think that decision was right than before we made it. Something about our brain makes us continually and aggressively congratulate ourselves on being right. There is some tie between this and arrogance or perhaps just the idea of an ego.

To learn to combat this tendency is what I mean by honesty with oneself. How far can someone REALLY entertain the fact that they may be wrong or bad or mistaken? This is the measure of how honest someone is. It’s no wonder then that introspection and self-scrutiny are intellectual virtues, because the pursuit of philosophy or really science of any kind involves thinking about how ordinary practice gets things wrong. Practice, or the intuitive and fluid way with which we go about a variety of tasks, is a powerful thing. And indeed it is probably fundamental, but just as reflecting on how to shoot a basketball can distract from your practice of shooting and therefore make you miss a clutch free throw, slipping into a practice like a job or friendship or a commitment can make you justify yourself to yourself, continually, and subliminally.

For example, I often hear people say something like “her mom, doesn’t like me and never has, what a bitch.” Or, “I never get a promotion, my manager hates me,” without ever entertaining the thought that they might be a bad boyfriend or a lazy worker. Honesty with oneself, in these situations, requires taking such criticisms seriously and indeed to reconstruct other people’s critique of your whole way of life as robustly as possible. This is scary and hard, but it is required by honesty.

Thus, the more you are honest with yourself, the more you seek real reasons and arguments for your position, again, honesty is connected with self-criticality. The most honest person not only thinks hard about the criticisms of others, but at times, accepts that there is no answer: that one is wrong or did wrong. That is the hardest thing to do because even as your body tries to reassure you with all its evolutionary strength that you are right and good, you know, if you are honest, that you are wrong and bad (in a specific case).

Notice also that this mentality is an attitude: if you have it, you tend to take criticisms very seriously, and this makes it nearly impossible to have confidence in yourself. Confidence then is a kind of magical and powerful type of automatic and intrinsic self-affirmation. A belief that you can do it that is by its nature deceptive and tends to prevent you from scrutinizing yourself.

I think this is why Nietzsche wondered why truth was any good. To function, one must believe that one’s actions are good and right, and this self-image must be nurtured, which it naturally is in most human beings.