This is horrible.
Yeah... the more flags the more you are likable. The more flags the less likely you are going to be attacked by anti-American people. Yeah, you keep believing it. I wish there actually is a God trying to help those embarrassing Americans.
I like his enthusiasm and the topic of the talk.
I like the way he points out how little we know about the brain in terms of how it works.
Neuroscientists have to work with psychologists, please.
One day I dinnered with a friend's friend who happens to be a wet neuroscientist ("wet" means that he wears a lab coat for protection from wet things coming out of his experimental subjects such as mice or a mice's cells.) (I many times wear a lab coat because the AC is so strong that I cannot type) That neuroscientist insisted that eventually we would understand how the brain works when we know every detail to the molecular level of the brain. I simply shook my head and smiled.
This good TED talk (all TED talks are good, but I pick my favorites to be posted here) proposes a theory or a framework for how we can understand the brain better. I do not agree with him on his theory that intelligence is defined by prediction. Intelligence is defined by much more processes and outcomes, mentally and neurologically, besides prediction.
You can condition a pigeon so that it can predict if it is going to be fed when seeing a light.
Intelligence is defined by .... It depends.
How connected brain regions are may be the key. Which may result in how one connects events around her. Which may result in intelligent behaviors such as wise decision, creative action, and socially favored sentences.
This is my theory today. Tomorrow if I learn more, my theory may change, theoretically.
After only 5 hours of sleep (for tango and other stuff worth my time), I ran 4 subjects. Ok, for people who have no idea what I mean, a "subject" refers to a human participant in my study. When writing journal articles now, we are encouraged to use "participants" instead of "subjects" because "participants" sounds more human-like and more respectful. However, in lab or in this jargon-filled research field, we researchers still call participants subjects when talking to each other.
Alright, I sat in the room, running 4 subjects from 10 am to 3 pm. I did my best to keep my eyes open without help from coffee. Well, it's Friday, meaning I want to sleep well and long tonight, suggesting coffee should be avoided.
Anyway, finally I finished today's duty of running experiments.
Millie the lab secretary came to me, telling me I should have booked the room before I ran experiments. She was nice and helpful. She taught me how to book the room.
I know it's necessary since our lab does not own the room. This kind of bureaucracy is very mild.
And then I started making copies of all the consent forms.
Yes, formS.
When I was in Penn State, there was only one consent form with 2 pages max.
Now my subjects have to sign 6 to 8 forms and fill out questionnaires, taking 10 to 20 minutes before actually doing the experiment. And I have to photocopy everything for them.
I have taken it as well as I could. No complaint. At least not this moment.
I was sitting in the room doing 3-holing and filing. Kristen came to show me how to send checks to subjects who had participated in the study.
I thought it was as easy as enveloping the check and mailing it.
No, in stead I wrote down 8 steps for the whole procedure. My head was aching. I missed my bed.
Many photocopies have been made since I started my job. Each copy of the same information goes to different departments for almost the same purpose. The same evidence has been scattered to the entire research center and beyond for the purpose of "protecting" participants and ourselves.
If A is not done, B cannot be done. If B is not done, C will come to yell at you, and no one will notify you which step has gone undone.
I had advertised my study through email and many listservers and by posting flyers.
Now I cannot do that. Everything has to be proved before hand. As if I was going to inject illegal drugs to subjects. As if I was going to wash subjects' brains with my boring visuo-spatial tasks. As if I was going to lure more people with thirty dollars.
Yeah, 30 bucks sound good for an hour of participating in simple behavioral experiments. Back in Penn State, we only pay at most 12 per hour for time-consuming psychophysiological experiments. However, if you paid me 30 bucks to drive away from my home or work, I would have rejected you.
Campus is always the best place to get healthy participants. But I am not on campus now.
So my point is why the IRB restricts me so much now!
Paperworks slow down progress.
Yet another real example happened these past two days.
I wanted to go on the website of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but found it blocked.
I was like WHAT? WHY? It is a government website!
Immediately I emailed the good geek IT person (not Mr. M) and complained. Mr. B told me to send an evaluation of the website so that the IT consultant company could unblock it.
How could I evaluate it without seeing it? So I wrote on the evaluation page that CDC.gov is a government website with information for the public and I have no idea why you think the website is not appropriate for people who work in medical research institutes to have access to it.
Well, actually I did not write the words after "and" in the last sentence. I was being nice.
After one day, it was unblocked.
After precious 24 hours, it was unblocked and I had forgotten why I wanted to go there in the first place.
Vogonism!
Yes, I invent this word from the vogons in the movie "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy". Vogons do not do anything without paperworks.
I spent one hour doing paperworks after running experiments today. Unbelievable.
I could have read a paper, written a paper, or gone back to my bed for that hour.
Ugly fat vogon!
This is the first time I acknowledge this model is cute. Or it is cute because it is parked right there with the contrary color to my bug.
Normally I call it the ugly car. Yes, scion xb is ugly.
It is like a TV set running around. How cute a TV set can be? Never as cute as a beetle!
I call it ugly in a proud way every time I see one of this kind on the street. I never miss the chance to call it the ugly car because it is ugly. Even when I am not able to say it out loud, I say it in my head.
Or sometimes I rephrase it as "the uglily cute car" for Jason.
Jason had one ugly car. I have written something about it in my old blog.
When he had the ugly car, I was using a nickname "xb". He thought I knew the model of his car. It was just a coincidence.
Jason only owned the car for a little while because he moved to China.
And I was never called xb by the person who had nicknamed me.
xb did not last for long.
Well, it sounds kinda sad now.
But when I took this picture I was smiling and simply enjoy the scene of these two cute butts. They were so innocently located there. Nothing was upsetting. They did not have emotions, either. They were alive only because of my smile of acknowledgment. I was only a bit sad when linking the past to the present view. Everything was in my head.
Being sad or happy or purely enjoying this visual input onto my retina is just an option.
I decide what I feel. (Cognitive psychologists rule over affective psychologists)
Do I?
No, of course not, and luckily I cannot decide what I feel. So all my smiles and tears are genuine.
(Of course, cognitive psychologists and affective psychologists are both equally interested in how mind works. And I have to say that affects many times rule over cognition. Humans are more emotional than intellectual.)
I cannot help but smile almost everytime when seeing my bug's smile. Can't fake that. Can't hide that.
This is how I know I truly like something or someone.
Yup, something or someone with a cute butt.
Someone (I know this someone is reading this) has said I look like Mashimaro. One day, pei will be beautiful as a grown-up. Wait and see!
I was searching this video for a friend, and realized how far away the mashimaro era has been.
My first mashimaro stuffed toy was given by Lyndsey. See? Even you cannot believe it, right? I had mentioned it to her before my first Psychonomics meeting, which was in Vancouver, where Asians are everywhere in town. We went to the meeting together. She bought the little toy without telling me until my birthday. I was very moved.
In two months, I was in Taipei for the New Year. I had my first shooting game in a night market. (Yeah, I know. Normal Taiwanese have played this game since they were 10. My childhood was difficult.) I was very good at shooting! I got the target 10 out of 10. So I won a prize. I picked a mashimaro.
It is like why I like Garfield. These characters are so honest. They do not hide their dark sides for being popular in the society. Isn't it ideal? You being you and I being me and we are all happy without offending anybody. No. The happy part actually is offending somebody as shown in the animations. The ideal part is that people who are offended are able to take nothing personally and be forgiving.
Too ideal to be true. So enjoying the animations is good enough. In the real world, I shall be nice most of the time.
