"How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect"

[stilltrucking]

In addition to assorted bad breaks and pleasant surprises, opportunities and insults, life serves up the occasional pink unicorn. The three-dollar bill; the nun with a beard; the sentence, to borrow from the Lewis Carroll poem, that gyres and gimbles in the wabe.

An experience, in short, that violates all logic and expectation. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote that such anomalies produced a profound “sensation of the absurd,” and he wasn’t the only one who took them seriously. Freud, in an essay called “The Uncanny,” traced the sensation to a fear of death, of castration or of “something that ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.”

At best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy.

Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.

“We’re so motivated to get rid of that feeling that we look for meaning and coherence elsewhere,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Psychological Science. “We channel the feeling into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning.”

Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.

In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense. It may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.

continued here...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html?em

[stilltrucking]

How to Measure a Cheshire Grin?

By JOHN ALLEN PAULOS

A biography of Lewis Carroll concentrates less on Alice and more on his mathematical adventures.

In “Lewis Carroll in Numberland,” the distinguished British mathematician Robin Wilson has filled a perceived gap in the writings about Carroll by describing in a straightforward, jabberwocky-free fashion the author’s mathematical accomplishments, both professional and popular.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/books ... los-t.html

[SadLuckDame]

I guess I'm gonna have to sign-up for the ny times.

All I noes is, I believe in Santa, the tooth fairy and white rabbits with pocket watches.

[stilltrucking]

The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.

That line jumped out at me me.

Poor big sad apes.

When I was hanging out with those college kids back at Carnegie Mellon they sat me down and tried tell how my life was running in patterns.

My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me

When I finally decided on a major after twelve years of taking sophmore courses I settled on anthropology. Because it seemed to be a good umbrella.

Cultural anthropology 401
The first day the instructor played this song in class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzY5gYicbKY

I believe in
believing

[SadLuckDame]

Dearest Trucker, off to diary.

I'll add this instead.

Patterns? What type of patterns?

[stilltrucking]

I was not thinking about your patterns
I was thinking about mine.
They said I always wanted the woman I could not have.


I don't know you Sad Luck, not well enough to be talking about patterns in your life. But what you say it sounds right , I mean it sounds like you understand yourself pretty well. But I think we often have more than one motive for our behavior, our choices. Is that too Freudian?

The anthropology instructor was talking more about how the culture we are born into patterns our lives. I think so anyway. I was just being Freudian I guess. I think about Freud more as a cultural anthropologist than a psychologist.

I was going to major in anthro and minor in psychology, but then I got bit by the spider woman and I ran away to join the circus at the tender age of 33. And the road owned me for twenty seven years.


Memoirs Of An Ex Prom Queen loved that book. She had the Faust syndrome too. She wanted to understand the world, fit it all together in one sweeping theory. Been thirty years since I read it, maybe it was not as good as I thought it was.

I don't know why I bring that book up, I have a reason but it has not made the trip into consciousness yet.

[SadLuckDame]

I put it out there, as if talking to myself of your gesture or something like that. It was sort of meant to be like...
me..."Oh what ya say?"
you.."Patterns, you know, patterns."
me..."Patterns? Hmm, I've these types of patterns springing to mind. Are these the kind of patterns you mean?"

I guess I didn't mean it as in, you know me, but you know.

They said I always wanted the woman I could not have.

I'm thinking you may learn more at the circus than at settling.

Memoir Of An Ex Prom Queen loved that book.

I've never heard of it, I'll look for it. I've never read Catch 22 either or a few of the references I'd looked up. Someday. Must be why I miss things at times.

I am slowing down more and trying to listen before I react. I've a pattern of reaction and defensiveness. Both losing steam, little by little.

"psychology", I thought surely you were.
I don't know anything about anthropology.

[stilltrucking]

If you click on that link to memoirs. it will give you a look inside the book, the first or second page has a quote from Emma Goldman, about being disfigured. The one I was telling you about earlier.


Sorry I misread what you said. I have a tendency to rip and run. I need to pay more attention to what you were saying.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Alexander Pope

That is anthropology in a nutshell.

Culture is the extro-biological womb we are born into. Enculturation.
I don't know much about anthropology either.

I wonder where mars/marksman45 is, wise young one
I used to think he was so much older.
He knew what enculturation is. How we get molded into John Q Public.

[SadLuckDame]

Bah, my fault entirely. I do think I shall go edit it out. Doesn't fit in the conversation anyway. I don't know where I wander too either.

The study of mankind. I'm glad you've incorporated Eve into the mix in our talks, trucker. I can learn of man, you can learn of at least a few women. Somehow it works.

[stilltrucking]

My sister got sorrow
Sorrow you would not believe
I have come to have compassion on her husband too
and son.

I am a prisoner of love.