Bruce Bower, "Pain relief you can believe in", Science News, October 11, 2008
"Our data suggest that religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain." - Irene Tracey (University of Oxford) p.9
"Practicing Catholics perceived electrical pulses as less painful while viewing an image of the Virgin Mary than while viewing a non-religious picture. Functional MRI showed a change in these volunteers' brain only while looking at the religious icon." p.9
[Opiate of the masses indeed! Making sense of suffering helps us endure it. Just one of many ways that we are fundamentally psychosomatic.]
10.11.2008
9.27.2008
Science News
Bruce Bower, "Blindfolded babies show ability to learn how others see the world", Science News, September 27, 2008
'This first-of-its-kind training study shows how infants use themselves and their own experiences to understand the inner lives of others' - Andrew Meltzoff (University of Washington in Seattle) [10]
Bruce Bower, "Study evaluates kids' therapies", Science News, September 27, 2008
On the upside, research shows that cognitive-behavioral therapy eases post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related problems in the young. On the down side, most mental-healthy practitioners use other therapies for kids and teens that lack scientific support. [11]
'This first-of-its-kind training study shows how infants use themselves and their own experiences to understand the inner lives of others' - Andrew Meltzoff (University of Washington in Seattle) [10]
Bruce Bower, "Study evaluates kids' therapies", Science News, September 27, 2008
On the upside, research shows that cognitive-behavioral therapy eases post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related problems in the young. On the down side, most mental-healthy practitioners use other therapies for kids and teens that lack scientific support. [11]
9.13.2008
Science News
Tom Siefried, "It's Likely That Times Are Changing", Science News, September 13, 2008
Yet quantum physics requires time to tell the universe what to do - time is necessary for things to happen. Or, as the famous restroom graffito puts it, time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. [27]
[What if all the potentialities of the universe existed in extreme superposition, disentangled by the momentary effect of what we call 'time'? But that the past, the present and the future still remain inextricably tied to each other in a Parmenidean totality? That we merely experience expressions of this totality, as destiny.]
In quantum math, time is represented in a formula called a wave function, which describes a multiplicity of possible realities. [27]
'I showed that you could make different choices of what you mean by time and get any law of physics you want.' Andreas Albrecht, a cosmologist at the University of California, Davis, says. [28]
If you can choose any time you like and get different laws, it makes no sense to say that the universe is ruled by a single Constitution of Physics. The cosmos becomes more like the United Nations, a hodgepodge of jurisdictions with diverse codes of conduct. 'The clock ambiguity suggests that we must view physical laws as emergent from a random ensemble of all possible laws,' Albrecht and Iglesias write. [28]
"Freedom to choose different clocks means choosing from among a multitude of possible laws, some wildly different from those in human textbooks. But quasiseparability places limits on which sets of laws humans could possibly experience. Only those laws consistent with quasiseparability would permit systems containing objects like physicists. [28]
[We exist in an object frame of reference, where the experience of objective coherence occurs on account of reality's quasiseparability. But that is not to say that simultaneously right now, many non-objective laws of physics are superimposed upon our reality, affecting the nature of our being; as we are but one physical expression of reality]
Yet quantum physics requires time to tell the universe what to do - time is necessary for things to happen. Or, as the famous restroom graffito puts it, time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. [27]
[What if all the potentialities of the universe existed in extreme superposition, disentangled by the momentary effect of what we call 'time'? But that the past, the present and the future still remain inextricably tied to each other in a Parmenidean totality? That we merely experience expressions of this totality, as destiny.]
In quantum math, time is represented in a formula called a wave function, which describes a multiplicity of possible realities. [27]
'I showed that you could make different choices of what you mean by time and get any law of physics you want.' Andreas Albrecht, a cosmologist at the University of California, Davis, says. [28]
If you can choose any time you like and get different laws, it makes no sense to say that the universe is ruled by a single Constitution of Physics. The cosmos becomes more like the United Nations, a hodgepodge of jurisdictions with diverse codes of conduct. 'The clock ambiguity suggests that we must view physical laws as emergent from a random ensemble of all possible laws,' Albrecht and Iglesias write. [28]
"Freedom to choose different clocks means choosing from among a multitude of possible laws, some wildly different from those in human textbooks. But quasiseparability places limits on which sets of laws humans could possibly experience. Only those laws consistent with quasiseparability would permit systems containing objects like physicists. [28]
[We exist in an object frame of reference, where the experience of objective coherence occurs on account of reality's quasiseparability. But that is not to say that simultaneously right now, many non-objective laws of physics are superimposed upon our reality, affecting the nature of our being; as we are but one physical expression of reality]
1.01.2008
Tony Wagner
Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap, New York, Basic Books, 2008
Collaboration is an essential skill for us. Command-and-control leadership style is becoming less and less valued in organizations. People have to understand the importance of working fluidly and across boundaries. As organizations become more global, the ability to work fluidly around the world is a competitive advantage. [23]
It's hard for many to let go and trust people to do the work, to truly empower people to achieve results, not just to complete tasks. [25]
Corporations are increasingly being organized around a very different kind of authority and accountability structure - one that is less hierarchical and more reciprocal and relational. [28]
Collaboration is an essential skill for us. Command-and-control leadership style is becoming less and less valued in organizations. People have to understand the importance of working fluidly and across boundaries. As organizations become more global, the ability to work fluidly around the world is a competitive advantage. [23]
It's hard for many to let go and trust people to do the work, to truly empower people to achieve results, not just to complete tasks. [25]
Corporations are increasingly being organized around a very different kind of authority and accountability structure - one that is less hierarchical and more reciprocal and relational. [28]
1.01.2007
John Parrish
John Parrish, Paradoxes of Political Ethics, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
But because of the invisible hand, [Adam] Smith thinks, even in the absence of such 'generous and disinterested motives' among society's members, society will nevertheless persist, if somewhat 'less happy and agreeable' than it might have been. In such a case, cooperation will subsist, not as it would among friends, but rather as it might among merchants, 'from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love and affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation or be bound in gratitude to any other.' The advantage of this more reliable and efficient style of providence is that it does not require widespread virtue: indeed, it really asks for nothing more from human beings than what Smith unsentimentally describes as a 'mercenary exchange of good offices.' Under the division of labor human beings in society have become profoundly interdependent, needing one another's help, vulnerable to one another's harm. Thus it is from this quality of mutual interdependence that both the division of labor and its necessary consequence, inequality (both of station and of talent), arise. [Wealth of Nations, I.ii.4]
Interdependence both motivates and reinforces the market system's reliance on such non-virtuous (though not, on Smith's moral psychology, necessarily vicious) micro-economic motives as self-interest and need. In civilized society, Smith observes, a given human being 'stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons.' [Wealth of Nations, I.ii.2] Thus if the invisible hand is to perform the providential function that Smith has implicitly assigned to it, it is necessary for it to rely on these less than fully virtuous motives to aid in its work. No longer is scarcity the central concern of economic thinking, though of course it will never entirely recede from view. Rather, the profound and enduring new problem of modern commercial societies is productive and distributive coordination - grounded in the fact that our mutual interdependence as human beings is so great, and yet our practical claims on one another's benevolence are so small. [246]
But because of the invisible hand, [Adam] Smith thinks, even in the absence of such 'generous and disinterested motives' among society's members, society will nevertheless persist, if somewhat 'less happy and agreeable' than it might have been. In such a case, cooperation will subsist, not as it would among friends, but rather as it might among merchants, 'from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love and affection; and though no man in it should owe any obligation or be bound in gratitude to any other.' The advantage of this more reliable and efficient style of providence is that it does not require widespread virtue: indeed, it really asks for nothing more from human beings than what Smith unsentimentally describes as a 'mercenary exchange of good offices.' Under the division of labor human beings in society have become profoundly interdependent, needing one another's help, vulnerable to one another's harm. Thus it is from this quality of mutual interdependence that both the division of labor and its necessary consequence, inequality (both of station and of talent), arise. [Wealth of Nations, I.ii.4]
Interdependence both motivates and reinforces the market system's reliance on such non-virtuous (though not, on Smith's moral psychology, necessarily vicious) micro-economic motives as self-interest and need. In civilized society, Smith observes, a given human being 'stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons.' [Wealth of Nations, I.ii.2] Thus if the invisible hand is to perform the providential function that Smith has implicitly assigned to it, it is necessary for it to rely on these less than fully virtuous motives to aid in its work. No longer is scarcity the central concern of economic thinking, though of course it will never entirely recede from view. Rather, the profound and enduring new problem of modern commercial societies is productive and distributive coordination - grounded in the fact that our mutual interdependence as human beings is so great, and yet our practical claims on one another's benevolence are so small. [246]
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