Beyond Rivalry

Never understimate the power of expectations -- particularly unconscious or semi-conscious ones, the ones you might deny if asked about them explicitly. And never understimate the power of cognitive dissonance, also at play in this study, reported in the Boston Globe:

SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.

The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines.

The experiment was even more unusual because it was conducted inside a scanner -- the drinks were sipped via a network of plastic tubes -- that allowed the scientists to see how the subjects' brains responded to each wine. When subjects were told they were getting a more expensive wine, they observed more activity in a part of the brain known to be involved in our experience of pleasure.

What they saw was the power of expectations. People expect expensive wines to taste better, and then their brains literally make it so. Wine lovers shouldn't feel singled out: Antonio Rangel, the Caltech neuroeconomist who led the study, insists that he could have used a variety of items to get similar results, from bottled water to modern art.

...

The human brain, research suggests, isn't built for objectivity. The brain doesn't passively take in perceptions. Rather, brain regions involved in developing expectations can systematically alter the activity of areas involved in sensation. The cortex is 'cooking the books,' adjusting its own inputs depending on what it expects.

 

Our judgment is biased. It seems to me that we rarely acknowledge the breadth and depth of our subjectivity.

I'm reading Gavin de Becker's book The Gift of Fear, and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence (1997). He defines intuition as our awareness of perception before it hits our judgment -- in other words, an awareness at some level of sensory perception unbiased by expectation, knowledge, moral reasoning (I should, I shouldn't, etc.), expertise, and other subjective mechanisms for denying what our senses notice. Of course, even in the initial "noticing," there is some judgment, some bias, that causes us to notice something at all, that distinguishes a perception we notice from one we don't. Even in noticing, we are already comparing what we expect with what we perceive and finding that they don't  quite overlap. That's intuition. Too often, de Becker argues (and provides a wealth of examples to demonstrate), we argue ourselves out of our intuition. We, in essence, say that regardless of what my tongue says (or nose, but not in the case of the Cal Tech experiment), this wine must taste better because it costs more. The assumption that expensive = better, and that (false) knowledge that this one is more expensive than that one, make it all but impossible to actually perceive reality.

In the scenarios de Becker outlines, however, the consequences for our almost knee-jerk denial of our perception and our intuition are much more grave than paying big bucks for plonk. We may sense signals that someone will behave violently towards us, but usually we ignore them or deny them, telling ourselves, "He seems like a nice guy," or "I don't want to appear rude" or "It's probably nothing."

I'll blog more about de Becker's book tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a nice glass of wine :-)

Tagging along to Belle Lettre at Law and Letters' list of music she listens to "in order to exaggerate a certain emotion," which in her case consists of country and jazz (esp. for music of longing), here's a first stab at mine. What are yours?

(I can't vouch for the YouTube videos -- I'm including most of them for the audio performances)

Wallowing, Despondent

Unbreak My Heart - Toni Braxton

Pills - The Perishers with Sarah McLachlan

By Your Side - Sade

Leave Me Be - Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Damn Crazy - disappear fear 

Somebody Already Broke My Heart - Sade 

Quickly Enough - Scissor Sisters 

Still Within the Sound of My Voice - Linda Ronstadt 

Streets of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen 

Seven Year Ache - Rosanne Cash

My Immortal - Evanescence

What You Didn't Say - Mary Chapin Carpenter

Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen 

I Miss You So - Diana Krall 

Bursting with Happiness

While You See A Chance - Steve Winwood (my favourite song to wake up to)

Life - Des'ree  (the lyrics may not be much but the music is so happy)

The Lucky One - Alison Krauss and Union Station 

Roam - B52s

Beautiful Life - Ace of Base 

Alison Road - Gin Blossoms 

Heyya - OutKast 

Holiday - Green Day

Switch - Will Smith 

It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet

La Danse de la Vie - Beausoleil

Quelle Belle Vie - Beausoleil

Defiant 

Don't Turn Around - Ace of Base 

Turnaround - Stealin Horses

True - Concrete Blonde 

Hard Way - Mary Chapin Carpenter

You Win Again - Mary Chapin Carpenter 

Don't Talk - 10,000 Maniacs 

Headstrong - 10,000 Maniacs 

I Won't Back Down - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 

Longing: Nostalgic

China Roses - Enya 

Sweet Virginia Breeze - Robbin Thompson

Shilo - Neil Diamond

Brooklyn Roads - Neil Diamond

Southland in the Springtime - Indigo Girls (video is only a clip)

Come On, Come On - Mary Chapin Carpenter 

What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong 

Bound By the Beauty - Jane Siberry 

Theme from A Summer Place - Percy Faith and His Orchestra

Summertime's Calling Me - The Catalinas (starts at 3:15 on the YouTube video)

Myrtle Beach Days - Fantastic Shakers 

Verdi Cries - Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs

Longing: Tempted

Original Sin - Elton John

Dance Along the Edge - Concrete Blonde 

Once or Twice - Holly Near

Indoor Fireworks - Elvis Costello

Deep Dark Despair 

I Eat Dinner (When the Hunger's Gone) - Kate and Anna McGarrigle (clip is Rufus Wainwright, Kate's son, and Dido)

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues

I've uploaded another PDF file for anyone to use, a backgrounder for Through A Glass Darkly (1961), the second in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting now.

Just catching up on some things ...

---->  "Are you going to hell?", a Salon interview by Louis Bayard of former born-again Christian John Marks, whose recent book Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind details Marks' "two-year investigative odyssey through the heart of Christian America. Listening to the fiery testimony of megachurch preachers, traveling from Easter pageants and Focus on the Family seminars to Christian rock concerts and blogger conferences, Marks experienced firsthand both the promise and the limitations of the faith enterprise -- even as he queried, all over again, the grounds of his own beliefs." Marks hopes the book will lead to increased dialogue between evangelical Christians and others, a conversation which he says will be loud and angry, and which "can be done but only with both sides acknowledging that the other won't change."

Bayard mentions the statistic that "some 40 million unbelievers are attending church services," and aks why, to which Marks responds: "Because they like the church, they believe in what it represents, they believe in the social stances, they believe in the political values. But when you get to this central question -- Do you believe that Jesus Christ redeemed you for all time and do you live as if that's true? -- most people cannot tell you how many real believers there are."

---->  Dave Pollard on "responsibility" as "promising back" and the many pitfalls of human interaction, particularly in groups. What he says resonates strongly for me right now as a leader (host, facilitator) of a small group and even as an active  member of other regular small groups. I think I am usually aware at the time of hurt or disappointment in reaction or response to my actions and others' actions in small groups, but I often don't know what to do about it, other than to focus my attention on responding skillfully:

"All of these truths are about Responsibility and its burden. When we stand up in front of a group as an 'authority', or talk to an individual one-to-one, or just communicate wordlessly with someone, we are being asked to take some responsibility for their feelings, their understanding, and even their love. When a member of the audience asks us a question and we answer in a way that is unsatisfactory to them (for whatever reason) they are hurt. When we say something to someone that makes them flinch or frown or leads to a 'pregnant pause', they are hurt. When someone looks at us, perhaps in invitation to some further communication and we turn away, they are hurt. It is not intentional. No one is to blame. But there has been a Failure of Responsibility. The word 'responsibility' comes from the Latin words meaning to promise back. All of this pain is the result of unintended broken promises."

----> Which is more environmentally responsible: reading a newspaper in print or online?  Brendan Koerner (The Lantern) at Slate says that reading online is better, but only slightly, and he doesn't have the stats to prove it. There's a lot to consider, either way: For paper, there's the tree content, the percentage of the paper's paper that's made of  recycled paper, the emissions and petroleum use of the pulping process, and the newspaper distribution environmental costs. (Not to mention the petroleum use and emissions of the machines used to hew and transport the logs, which he doesn't.) For online versions, there's the kilowatt-hours of electricity used by each server (perhaps hundreds of them, including ad servers), the electricity to power the end-user's computer, and perhaps the environmental cost of disposing of all of our computer hardware, though that assumes that reading newspapers is a major reason people have computers -- a dubious assumption, IMO. Then there's the issue of carbon -- online, carbon is released right into the atmosphere; in print, it's 'locked' into the newsprint, which can be recycled or will decompose slowly in a landfill (but doesn't it release into the atmosphere then?). 

My head hurts.

Christian rocker Larry Norman died on Sunday, at age 60, of heart ailments. His music meant a lot to me when I was in college. More at Christianity Today and The Huffington Post, where Mark Joseph comments:

"Norman will be mentioned in obits as the Father of Christian Rock, but that's a misunderstanding of who he was. Someone once said 'I'm too saved for the Sinners and the Saved don't want me around' and that best described Norman's amazing life and career."

I wouldn't mind that epitaph.

His "The Great American Novel" is remarkably current, though written in 1972:

"You are far across the ocean in a war that's not your own / And while you're winning theirs, you're gonna lose the one at home. / Do you really think the only way to bring about the peace / Is to sacrifice your children and kill all your enemies? / The politicians all make speeches, while the newsmen all take notes / And they exaggerate the issues as they shove it down our throats ...."

"The Outlaw" is lovely, and it probably influenced my understanding of Jesus more than I know, though the assumption in this song and his others that leaving earth for a better life in heaven equals eternal life isn't part of my current delusion. That said, "Reader's Digest"  (not on YouTube yet) is one of my favourite Norman songs.  All the songs I mentioned are on the 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet, which I own, but he's actually quite prolific and has been covered by a variety of folks.

His official website, with a note on Larry's death written by his brother, Charles. Some interesting background and a tribute of sorts from Ben Anastas at Moistworks. Apparently (per CT via Wikipedia), a documentary on his life is due out this year.

Check out the D.C. Trip Photos at Flickr

We were fortunate to have blowing snow one day, which is better for camera lighting than sun, and I think the misty, fog-like snow adds mood to the photos, making even the ordinary seem dramatic. Not that the Washington Monument or Capitol is ordinary, but.

Obsolete Skills, which is a wiki (edited by anyone who wants to, whether they are experts on the topic or complete dolts), not only lists them but describes some obsolete, almost-obsolete, and perhaps debatably obsolete skills in lucid detail. Not all of them, though. And some (q.v. previous link) aren't all that obsolete, which is sometimes acknowledged. Many are computer-related, but not all.

I've uploaded two PDF files for anyone to use, an Ingmar Bergman backgrounder and a backgrounder for Wild Strawberries (1957), the first in the BergmanFest! series I'm hosting this coming month.

Like being hit by a big ship ("The book is 112 pages full of great information on how to avoid huge ships. You’d think you could summarize it in one sentence: 'Don't get in front of a huge ship,' but it's not quite that easy, apparently.")

And more things to avoid, and how. At gthing.

I'm away this week, back on Saturday. See you then.