Every time someone leaves a comment on one of my blog posts about how their religious practice, meditation approach, or whatever, is just absolutely wonderful, how it's benefited them so much, and that I'm a fool for not jumping into the spiritual pool they they find marvelously refreshing, I think...
OK. It's great that you enjoy what you're doing. But what does this have to do with me? Or anyone else?
Some people really like to drink whiskey. Others, wine. Still others, beer. Then there's teetotalers who won't touch a drop of anything alcoholic. Each person could eloquently praise the glory of how drinking such-and-such, or abstaining, leads to good feelings, happiness, bliss, a pleasant life.
Yet whatever pleases one person, whatever works for them, might not be my cup of tea (or a stronger concoction). Hardly anybody disagrees about this when it comes to beverages, food, music, art, vacation spots, computers, cars, TV shows, movies, or other lifestyle choices.
My wife and I know quite a few people who love going on cruises. We listen to their stories of how wonderful it is to get on a big ship, visit interesting ports of call, relax on deck as the ocean slips by, and so on.
Then we say to ourselves, not for us.
Neither of us has ever been on a cruise. We probably never will go on one. We can appreciate why other people like them, but we're so certain that this isn't for us, we don't have any desire to spend time and money on something we're pretty sure we won't like.
Ditto for religion.
I've got no problem with true believers speaking about how good their religion, spiritual path, mystic practice, or such makes them feel. I enjoy happy people. If you find something that helps you enjoy life, great. Go for it.
Just don't take the next preachy step and say, "You've got to try it too!" No, I don't. Thanks for sharing, but don't expect me to embrace what you find so huggable.
Now, in some spheres there is so much solid evidence that X, Y, or Z is bad for people, it makes sense to be fairly aggressive in warning a friend, relative, or loved one about the consequences of doing something. Or conversely, to encourage them to do A, B, or C -- because of the proven benefits.
With religiosity, though, proof of general effectiveness is lacking.
Every approach to spirituality should come with a warning label: "Your results may vary." We're not talking about truth here, but about likes and dislikes, good feelings and bad feelings. There's no demonstrable objective reality lying behind the supernatural claims of the world's many competing religions.
Some faiths appeal to some people. Other's don't. Some faiths work for some people. Other's don't. Liking something doesn't mean it is universally true.
British neuroscientist Susan Greenfield regrets the recent controversy over certain of her remarks, and calls for a serious debate over "mind change" -
"Mind change" is an appropriately neutral, umbrella concept encompassing the diverse issues of whether and how modern technologies may be changing the functional state of the human brain, both for good and bad.
Very well, here goes. I wonder if Greenfield will reply.
As Greenfield points out, the human brain is plastic and interacts with the environment. Indeed, this is how we are able to learn and adapt to anything. Were our brains entirely unresponsive to what happens to them we would have no memory and probably no behaviour at all.
The modern world is changing your brain, in other words.
However, the same is true of every other era. The Victorian era, the Roman Empire, the invention of agriculture - human brains were never the same after those came along.
Because the brain is where behaviour happens, any change in behaviour must be accompanied by a change in the brain. By talking about how behaviour changes, we will, implicitly, also be discussing the brain.
However it doesn't work in reverse. Changes in the brain can't be assumed to mean changes in behaviour. Greenfield cites, for example, this paper which purports to show reductions in the grey matter volume of certain areas of the brain cortex in Chinese students with internet addiction compared to those without.
The obvious comment here is that it doesn't prove causality, as it is only a correlation. Maybe the reason they got addicted was because they already had these brain changes.
However, there is a more subtle point. Even if these were a direct consequence of excessive internet use, it wouldn't mean that the internet use was changing behaviour.
We have no idea what a slight decrease in grey matter volume in the cerebellum, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and supplementary motor area would do to cognition and behaviour. It might not do anything.
My point here is that rather than worrying about the brain, we ought to focus on behaviour. Because that is also focussing on the brain, but it's focussing on the aspects of brain function that actually matter.
Greenfield then poses three questions.
1. Could sustained and often obsessive game-playing, in which actions have no consequences, enhance recklessness in real life?
Maybe. Although I don't think we do live in a reckless society given that crime rates are lower now than they have been for 20 years.
However, the question assumes that game playing has no consequences. Yet in-game actions do have in-game consequences. To a non-gamer, these may seem like no consequences, because they're not real.
Yet in the game, they're perfectly real, and if you spend 12 hours a day playing that game, and all your friends do as well - you are going to care about that. Those consequences will matter, to you.
In World of Warcraft, for example, actions have all too many consequences. If you impulsively decide to attack an enemy in the middle of a raid, you could cause a wipe, which would, quite possibly, ruin everyone's evening and get you a reputation as an oaf.
Exactly as your reputation would suffer if you and your friends went for an evening at the opera, and you stood up in the middle and shouted a profanity. Ah, but that's real life, the response goes. Is it? Is a performance in which hundreds of people sit solemnly, while grown adults dress up and pretend to be singing gods and fairies on the instructions of a deceased anti-semite, any more real than this?
3. How can young people develop empathy if they conduct relationships via a medium which does not allow them the opportunity to gain full experience of eye contact, interpret voice tone or body language, and learn how and when to give and receive hugs?
I do not think that this accurately represents the experience of most children today. However, even ssuming that it were true, what would be the problem?
If everyone's relationships were conducted online, surely it would be more important to learn how to navigate the online world, than it would be to learn how to interpret body language, which (webcams aside), you would never see, or need to see.
The brain adapts to the environment. If the brain is plastic and adapts to the environment, as Greenfield argues, then surely we ought to be trying to help the process along, to make ourselves better adapted. It would be more worrying if it didn't adapt.
Some might be concerned by this. Surely, there is value in the old way of doing things, value that would be lost in the new era. Unless one can point to definite reasons why the new state of affairs is inherently worse than the old - not just different from it - it is hard to distinguish these concerns from the simple feeling of nostalgia over the past.
The same could have equally well been made at any time in history. When our ancestors first settled down to farm crops, an early Greenfield might have lamented - "Young people today are growing up with no idea of how to stab a mammoth in the eye with a pointy stick! All they know is how to plant, water and raise this new-fangled 'wheat'!"
Labels: greenfield, history, media, science
Posted by Neuroskeptic at 09:00
from stephen s fine
Posted by: Stepen S Fine | August 12, 2011 at 01:27 AM
I don't see what the problem is if someone likes to do something, follow whatever path, get excited about whatever it is that gets them excited and try to persuade me to do it, join it, have a go....etc
Nor do I see it a problem if someone tells me I'm an ass for doing something that hasn't worked for them. If it is not causing a problem for me, why change or stop and better still, why try to change them into agreeing with me, calling them names back?
If it appeals, I'll do it and if it doesn't I won't. Why get annoyed, either way??
My grandson a lot of the time tries his utmost to persuade me that what he wants to do is a good thing and a right thing.[He never ceases to amaze me]
He can eventually throw a 'tantrum' if he is not allowed to spill a bottle of water inside the house [removal of the bottle]. He doesn't get any reaction of it being bad, just the fact that I don't want him to do it and he also sees how amused I get at his antics and goes onto his next exploration and adventure.
Sometimes all this 'good and bad, right and wrong, likes and dislikes, cult, religion, spirituality, disagreements, agreements'......makes me want to laugh and laugh and laugh....
Marina
Posted by: Marina | August 12, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Laughing Yoga
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaEjP8wp5lI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3bsrkH1ZCY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbMYSFv8daA
Posted by: tAo | August 12, 2011 at 01:39 PM
tAo,
lol lol lol lol lol
It is actually very catching, though I get the same feeling when I read some comments here on the blog - sometimes even my own! lol
btw, in the first link above, in the second half of it, the laughing guru had a red thingy on and did some 'lion' laughing.
I got a picture of you in my head in the red thingy .....and that got me going even more lol lol lol
Now I know what you have been practicing!
Marina
Posted by: Marina | August 12, 2011 at 03:31 PM
“You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” -Ayn Rand
Posted by: Mike Williams | August 12, 2011 at 11:32 PM
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious?” - George Orwell
“As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world. This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.” Senator Bernie Sanders VT
"The dollar is going to fail. All currencies and paper assets are going to fail. It is a mathematical certainty. Unless more money is created in excess of the debt AND interest accrued the year before, the entire system collapses. If debt/money is created in excess, we reach a point where the exponential growth of compounding interest necessitates larger and larger amounts of debt/money to be created to keep the system from collapsing. This ever expanding money/debt eventually reaches the reality of limited amounts of resources in the natural world. More money chasing after a limited amounts of goods brings about hyperinflation and the destruction of the currency." - Silver Bullet
Posted by: Mike Williams | August 12, 2011 at 11:56 PM
“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road”- Voltaire
“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands.
The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.” - John D Rockefeller
“Competition is a sin.” John D. Rockefeller
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”- Voltaire
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”- Voltaire
“Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you’re hurt.” -Thomas Gates
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.” -Henry Ford
Posted by: Mike Williams | August 13, 2011 at 12:36 AM
stephen s fine, interesting thoughts especially:
“Even if these were a direct consequence of excessive internet use, it wouldn't mean that the internet use was changing behaviour.”
And,
"3. How can young people develop empathy if they conduct relationships via a medium which does not allow them the opportunity to gain full experience of eye contact, interpret voice tone or body language, and learn how and when to give and receive hugs?
I do not think that this accurately represents the experience of most children today. However, even assuming that it were true, what would be the problem?"
I find it harder communicating online, but then again, it was good old paper and pen, when I was at school.
Communicating online where you have not only male/female [and if ye read Brian’s thread on the differences between men and women, that itself can be a hurdle :)] but you also have people from different countries with different cultures and what may be funny or ok to say in my neck of the woods, may be an insult to someone across the globe.
In some cases[on a blog] a 'comment' may have a feeling of sarcasm coming from it and if you reply from that stance, you may be told "I was only joking. Don't take things so personal." This may be true but also it can be a way of ‘messing’ with the other person or people 'messing' with themselves.
However, I do think the interaction from the feeling/intuitive senses are or can be very active when communicating via the internet. Sometimes I may not understand a comment with the recondite words that can be beyond me, but I can tell the feeling that the commentator is coming from – usually. It is like it has an essence a fragrance, even though there is no eye contact, no interpreting of voice tone or body language, it is still there to be picked up or felt.
The younger generation will probably find other ways to compensate for the lack of physical communication. Also the internet can give a wider range of people to communicate with, instead of just the household or friends in person.
Maybe it is down to having the old basic - a good sense of self no matter the means of communication.
If you have a poor attitude or a low self-worth, communication regardless of what the means can end up the same; be it in person, by post, by telephone or by internet.
(I have posted this lil cartoon before Stephen but in case you didn’t see it, I’ll post it again. I thought it funny and fitting in response to your post!)
http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/english/2009/04/cartoon-history-of-communcation.html
PS Nice quotes Mike. Here is an Irish one for ya.
" As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way."
Marina
Posted by: Marina | August 13, 2011 at 05:59 AM
"Unless one can point to definite reasons why the new state of affairs is inherently worse than the old - not just different from it - it is hard to distinguish these concerns from the simple feeling of nostalgia over the past."
Global warming is not nostalgia.
Posted by: cc | August 13, 2011 at 03:19 PM