The post-cringe society

A former student sent me a link to a new video clip – #Only, by female rap “artist” #NikiManaj (featuring also some male collaborators). She had found the piece utterly appalling – offering final proof that there is, indeed, nothing sacred left anywhere anymore. This, of course, should hardly be surprising – given all the hand-wringing (or celebration) regarding the “desacralization” of the world since the 19^th century. The “song” itself is a string of profanities set against the backdrop of a music-like sound track and stylized/computerized Nazi-like imagery. Of these, only the latter has apparently provoked some – no doubt anticipated – protests. The whole video project, meanwhile, has “received generally positive reviews from critics” – if the Wikipedia entry is a reliable source. This latest contribution to the neverending quest to shock, and shock, and shock the bourgeoisie seemed particularly grotesque – as I watched it after a CNN “story” featuring a young man lying dead in front of his shack in Freetown. So why do “artists” now need to go to such lengths to appear provocative and generate some buzz?

#WitheringoftheState - finally!!

#PatrickBuchanan, who is apparently still taken seriously in some circles, recently made the following sweeping observation: “Many private institutions are succeeding splendidly. But our public institutions, save the military, seem to be broadly failing.” It is, indeed, hard to argue on behalf of any public institution these days. As for the private side, we seem to live at a time when RIO has become the measure of all things. So I guess Buchanan’s verdict would apply most forcefully to the most financially successful entities – the likes of Goldman and the other Godzillas of shadow banking (or “alternative banking,” as some aficionados prefer to call it).

A rarely repentent foodie

#JohnLanchester makes in #TheNewYorker a rarely, almost incoceivably perceptive observation for a foodie: “If shopping and cooking really are the most consequential, most political acts in my life, perhaps what that means is that our sense of the political has shrunk too far—shrunk so much that it fits into our recycled-hemp shopping bags. If these tiny acts of consumer choice are the most meaningful actions in our lives, perhaps we aren’t thinking and acting on a sufficiently big scale. Imagine that you die and go to Heaven and stand in front of a jury made up of Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Your task would be to compose yourself, look them in the eye, and say, 'I was all about fresh, local, and seasonal.'” Not a happy thought – and it shoudn’t be. But what else is left for a humanitarian #intellectual, really?

#PowertotheMeek, with some reservations

A little over a weak ago, a NYT opinion piece reported some studies according to which women tend to take better decisions under stress (“Are Women Better Decision Makers?”). Apparently, this advantage comes mostly from a tendency among men to take silly risks when stressed out. Under such conditions, women remain better attuned to others – and, apparently, to their own gut feelings. In one of the experiments, they performed better on a version of the famous Iowa Gambling Task. In fact, it could just be the case that it is individuals with better calibrated empathy and visceral sensitivity – as opposed to those detached and supremely cool – who make better decisions under stress. And, for some mysterious – mostly biological – reasons most of these individuals happen to be women. So much for the much vaunted superior self-confidence of men – which women are now often prodded to embrace in order to get ahead in the ever accelerating rat race.

#Cool and cooler

In the aftermath of the Ottawa attack, PM #StephenHarper made the obligatory utterances about maintaining Canadian resolve, liberties, etc. Substantively, his statement seemed well crafted. But he himself appeared removed and somehow untouched by all the drama that had unfolded – and after spending over 12 hours under lockdown in the parliament building. This, of course, could be seen as an expression of much needed, admirable, steadfast determination in the face of pure evil. Yet, I was reminded of #LewisMumford’s putdown of spineless #liberals at the start of WW II: “His first impulse in any situation is to get rid of emotion because it may cause him to go wrong. Unfortunately for his effort to achieve poise, a purely intellectual judgment, eviscerated of emotional reference, often causes wry miscalculations. … Instead of priding himself on not being ‘carried away by his emotions,’ the liberal should rather be a little alarmed because he often has no emotions that could, under any conceivable circumstances, carry him away.”

#Self-control for the masses

So what is the secret of effective self-control? According to psychologist David DeSteno (“A Feeling of Control: How America Can Finally Learn to Deal With Its Impulses”), the first step would be to recognize that relying on mere willpower or cognitive control may not be the best strategy. These resources are easily depleted, and we have an almost limitless capacity to invent rationalizations for various lapses. Instead, we need to recognize the role of pro-social emotions like compassion and gratitude. As he and others have demonstrated, such “moral sentiments” can increase one’s capacity to resist unhealthy temptations by 12 percent or perhaps more. And how can we acquire such affective aptitudes? According to DeSteno, it can be taught “fairly easily.”

Dumb and dumber?

Vaughan Bell has hacked into yet another loony book peddling pop neuroscience, Susan Greenfield’s Mind Change (“Head in the Clouds”). Obviously, Bell disagrees with about 98 percent of what the baroness has to say. So why does she hold on to a different, obviously untenable point of view? According to Bell, the famed (if controversial) neuroscientist is basically a half-wit who can barely function at the cognitive level of an average undergrad. In any case, she is less mentally competent than a first-year graduate student who has been warned in a research methods seminar not to confuse correlation with causation. Now this is one curious causal explanation.

Long live #DelayedAdulthood!!

On the web site of the NYT, psychology professor Laurence Steinberg makes “The Case for Delayed Adulthood” (and also pitches his new book on that timely topic). The phenomenon of prolonged adolescence (a.k.a. “emerging adulthood”) is now well established, and psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists are busy making a positive spin on it the new cultural norm. Here is Prof. Steinberg’s hopeful conclusion: “If brain plasticity is maintained by staying engaged in new, demanding and cognitively stimulating activity, and if entering into the repetitive and less exciting roles of worker and spouse helps close the window of plasticity, delaying adulthood is not only O.K.; it can be a boon.”

The year that changed everything?

#NicholasCarr has a new article out. It’s crowned by an ominous title (“The Manipulators: Facebook’s Social Engineering”), but in fact carries a hopeful message. Carr begins by with a look back at the founding and relentless expansion of virtual behemoths like #Google, #Facebook, #YouTube, #iTunes, #Twitter and the like – whose stamp on sentient life has been boosted exponentially with the rapid spread of hand-held devices. In his words, “it has been a carnival ride, and we, the public, have been the giddy passengers.” But don’t be dispirited, for “this year something changed” – courtesy of a scholarly paper exposing Facebook’s experiment involving the manipulation of users’ moods, plus the European court ruling obliging Google and its kin to erase information citizens might deem inaccurate or outdated. “Arriving in the wake of revelations about the NSA’s online spying operation, both seemed to herald, in very different ways, a new stage in the net’s history – one in which the public will be called upon to guide the technology, rather than the other way around. We may look back on 2014 as the year the internet began to grow up.”

Who needs meaning?

According to the programmatic statement published by a new European framework formed to study e-reading, “empirical evidence indicates that affordances of screen devices might negatively impact cognitive and emotional aspects of reading.” This may (or – more likely – may not) raise some curious questions related to the following “causal” chain: if e-reading evokes a weaker affective response, and neuroscientists say “meaning” comes primarily from this sort of neurosomatic arousal, would an evocative text read from a screen have a less vibrant meaning? Of course, the whole beauty of a screen-based life is that it can make you immune to sensing such minor deficits – and asking such potentially troubling questions. 

#CNN means business!!

This is how #HoraGorani, one of CNN’s own “leading women,” wrapped up her “show” the other day – much of it dedicated to the beheading of the second American hostage by the ISIS lunatics: “Stay with CNN – which means business is next.” Indeed – after the commercial break. Gorani also bragged CNN was showing only a still image from moments before the gruesome execution – but, of course, #QuestMeansBusiness had to show a moving image, just shy of the real thing, too. The strategy to overdramatize “stories” which are almost unbearable in their own right – with all available means, topped by the inescapable Richard Quest – may be a bit pathetic. But it has probably bumped up their ratings – as if to prove that no, there is no cosmic justice after all. Or who knows?

Charles Simic’s “Portable Hell”

In his latest NYRB article, Simic describes grimly the kind of hell “that can fit comfortably inside your head, despite the vast crowds of the damned and all that fire and smoke, is what you end up with after reading the world news these days.” Yes, the news these days can be a bit hard to digest, or even follow faithfully with so many depressing “stories” unfolding simultaneously around the globe. But there is an easy solution to this. All Simic needs to do is spend more time reading the “Fixes” blog on the NYT web site, and follow people like Bill Gates, Jeffrey Sachs, and Steven Pinker on Twitter, etc. – as opposed to watching obsessively all the endless images of dead children and grandparents he mentions.

For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights

This is the title of a new NYT article reflecting the view from then data trenches. It says “data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets.” One data executive, “whose sensor-filled wristband and software track activity, sleep and food consumption, and suggest dietary and health tips based on the numbers,” complains how little this aspect of data analysis is appreciated by “data civilians.” The solution? But, of course – (almost) full automation of data collection, an effort spearheaded by a few promising startups. And how about all the research suggesting that insight is linked to intuition, and excessive analysis and overthinking – and particularly formal modeling – tend to suppress these “softer” aptitudes? I suspect most “data scientists” will hardly worry about this.

Tyranny of the #algorithm?

A NYT article carries the following ominous title: “As Work Shifts Vary, Family’s Only Constant Is Chaos.” And this is the teaser which appears online under it: “Increasing numbers of low-income mothers and fathers are at the center of a new collision that pits workplace scheduling technology against the routines of parenting.” No prizes for guessing the ultimate winner…

Comedic genius and mental illness

The Scientific American web site carries an article/blog post under the following title: “Robin Williams’s Comedic Genius Was Not a Result of Mental Illness, but His Suicide Was.” The author, Scott Barry Kaufman, is a recognized authority on creativity. I am wondering why he didn’t think/write of Shelley Carson’s “shared vulnerability” theory to which he has referred in the past.  In a nutshell, Carson’s theory (which she recently outlined for the lay public in Scientific American) states that extremely creative individuals and those suffering from schizophrenia and a few other mental maladies have similar neurosomatic predispositions. I guess after each suicide or semi-suicide by a particularly gifted celebrity Shelley is tempted to sigh: “I told you so!”

#Adolescence 2.0?

A few months ago, Slate published a review demolishing Stephanie Brown’s book, Speed: Facing Our Addiction to Fast and Faster—and Overcoming Our Fear of Slowing Down. Here is a typical put-down: Brown “offers a portrait of a generation of teenagers 'holed up in dark, locked bedrooms, hooked to the computer, smoking dope and taking uppers and downers to regulate their attention and mood, when actual trends in teenage behavior are overwhelmingly positive. Today’s teenagers are less likely to smoke cigarettes, less likely to drink to excess, less likely to use cocaine, and less likely to get pregnant than previous cohorts.” It may be me, but I somehow fail to see the contradiction here. By the way, the cover of David Siegel’s latest book, Mindsight, suggests that “adolescence” now lasts until age 24. 

The virtuous circle of #Narcissism

“Narcissism” has acquired a bad rap as a psychiatric term somehow capturing the #Zetgeist – a rhetorical trend which may not be entirely justified. A few weeks ago Anne Manne reviewed in #TheGuardian psychological research indicating “how wealth breeds narcissism” – generally speaking, the wealthier you become, the more likely you are to be a narcissistic prick. A recent study, on the other hand, has found that “companies led by narcissistic CEOs outperforming those helmed by non-narcissistic executives” (at least in the short run). Which means that giving top executives astronomical “compensation” packages should set off a virtuous psychofinancial circle: the more money CEOs get, the more narcissistic they become, the higher share price their company commands, the easier it becomes to justify even higher pay for the chief, the more narcissistic he become, and on, and on. Of course, the shoes of CEOs will need to be filled by ever more extreme narcissists as the overall personality syndrome becomes more widespread and accepted as “normal” in the age of the “selfie.”

The rescue of the drowning…

A recent epidemiological study has found “job loss linked with higher incidence of depression in Americans compared with Europeans.” The authors attribute this difference in mental health outcomes to the more generous benefits extended to the unemployed in West European countries. Part of the explanation, though, could lie in the stronger emotional and economic support the unemployed tend to receive from friends and family this side of the channel. The press release does not say if the authors think they have a solution – or “intervention” – up their sleeve to could help alleviate the plight of the laid-off. One colleague who commented on the study did venture a remedy, though.

The #singularity is near!

Last month, a computer program apparently passed the famous #TuringTest, convincingly presenting itself as a 13-year-old before a panel of judges – at least for a third of them. There has been much hoopla around this result – which should have been totally predictable. A few years ago #NicholasCarr sounded the alarm (based on his disturbing self-observations and some relevant research) that exposure to the incessant stream of cacophonous information related through the internet was inducing in users a kind of “artificial intelligence” – a mode of thinking marked by dampened emotional responsiveness and mechanical analysis. If this, indeed, is the case, then the thinking gap between human and machine is obviously shrunk, making it so much easier for a mega-app to reach over even without credibly mimicking a real human – and without Scarlett Johanson’s unmechanical, sexy voice.

Pathological #optimism?

A recent pop-science article in the NYT says “debate continues on hazards of electromagnetic waves.” It points out that the first disturbing findings date back half a century, and it has been more recently established that kids living near high-voltage power lines have measurably higher rates of leukemia. There have also been some sporadic, potentially disturbing finding regarding cell phones and other equipment. So why hasn’t this become a burning public health concern? I would guess it’s the same reason which recently led a top military commander to testify to a US senate committee that things in Afghanistan were really, truly looking up, despite some apparent evidence to the contrary – chronic optimism, or what some psychologists call “positivity bias.” This is the mindset which can lead you to conquer the Aztec empire with a company of desperados, land a few men on the moon, and win some hot and a cold war. I would guess it can also lead you into Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and let you maintain confidence in a virtualized financial matrix (or, dare I say, fly a passenger airliner over a war zone).

You’ve got talent!

An article in the NYT revisits the old nature-vs.-nurture debate (“How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Talent”). It is related to a new meta-study which appears to debunk the 10,000-hours rule made famous by Michael Gladwell. The piece starts with the following observation: “The 8-year-old juggling a soccer ball and the 48-year-old jogging by, with Japanese lessons ringing from her earbuds, have something fundamental in common: At some level, both are wondering whether their investment of time and effort is worth it.”

Yes, indeed. I have no doubt in my mind that this is exactly what someone like 8-year-old Diego Armando Maradona would think, kicking a ball in some South American shanty town – no matter how “weird” it may sound.

Macht makes right

It’s no fun facing a real existential dilemma. Whom should I root for – the team which relies on the most pathetic and obnoxious football/soccer player in living memory; or the team representing (albeit imperfectly) the nation whose leaders twice sank the “world” in bloody conflict last century – and which provided thousands of gleeful executioners for the delusional and murderous Nazi regime? After much soul searching, I opted for the latter. Why? Because they seemed poised to score a rare victory for “civilization” in the early 21^st century. And because I could not really suppress my dislike of Ronaldo – no matter how politically incorrect it might seem.

Revenge of the extrovert?

With all due respect, this must be one of the most groundless theories in the social sciences since Keynes famously mis-predicted the 15-hour work week. It is the “brain child” of Jennifer O. Grimes, a “Millennial” prospective psychologist bent on finally cracking the “introvert” walnut. She has developed an “energy theory” according to which introversion and extraversion can be related to fleeting self-representations (“If you think about planning and really putting together something in your mind, that could be argued to be introversion. But unless you act and channel the energy outward, it's not bringing to extroverted observable fruition the introverted plan.”); or the personality traits of introverts (if we take these to be a bit less transient) would place them on (or very close to) the autism spectrum – just dial these qualities up a bit, and you will get into typical Asperger’s symptoms. This is, I must say, a very extroverted way of analyzing introversion.

Don’t worry – ever…

On the Edge web site, Steven Pinker offers a scientific dissection of “writing in the 21^st century.” Toward the end of his analysis, he slips in the following obligatory warning:

“Another intellectual error we must be suspicious of is the ever-present tendency to demonize the younger generation and the direction in which culture and society are going. In every era there are commentators who say that the kids today are dumbing down the culture and taking human values with them. Today the accusations are often directed at anything having to do with the Web and other electronic technologies—as if the difference between being printed on dead trees and displayed as pixels on a screen is going to determine the content of ideas. We're always being told that young people suck: that they are illiterate and unreflective and un-thoughtful, all of which ignores the fact that every generation had that said about them by the older generation. Yet somehow civilization persists.”

As I have noted earlier, someone could have made the same observation in Rome circa 400 A.D., and smirked at the Cassandra’s who fail to see the obvious truth. But the paper-vs.-pixels debate is worth revisiting, too.