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Subject: When smart people speak...
I've been interested in the workings of the brain for a while now (see here and here and here and here and here and especially here (also here) and here...)
Um, my point: The British Psychology Society has a recent article where they invite the "world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves."
These are people who have interesting things to say and I'm quite surprised to see them echoing things I've also realized. This brings to mind something else but I'll get into that later.
Paul Broks:
"Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived at any great insight or understanding. [...] It left me less inclined to bother about self-understanding than to consider the value of things, moral and aesthetic. How best to live?"
David Buss:
"One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. [...] Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. [...] One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t."
Susan Blackmore:
"The oh-so-tempting idea that I am something else – a soul, a spirit, a mystical entity – is rubbish, although I once believed in it. This question nags at me so much that I have devoted most of my life to it – through research, writing, and thirty years of daily meditation. But I still don’t understand. And the more I look, the less substantial my own self seems to be. What is consciousness? And who is conscious? I really don’t know."
They're not all about consciousness (something I have thought about a lot), the topics range wildly, covering things like discussions with the Dalai Lama or raising children:
"We are totally devoted to them when they are little and yet the most we can expect in return when they grow up is that they regard us with bemused and tolerant affection."
Most of them are worth a read.
Um, my point: The British Psychology Society has a recent article where they invite the "world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves."
These are people who have interesting things to say and I'm quite surprised to see them echoing things I've also realized. This brings to mind something else but I'll get into that later.
Paul Broks:
"Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived at any great insight or understanding. [...] It left me less inclined to bother about self-understanding than to consider the value of things, moral and aesthetic. How best to live?"
David Buss:
"One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. [...] Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. [...] One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t."
Susan Blackmore:
"The oh-so-tempting idea that I am something else – a soul, a spirit, a mystical entity – is rubbish, although I once believed in it. This question nags at me so much that I have devoted most of my life to it – through research, writing, and thirty years of daily meditation. But I still don’t understand. And the more I look, the less substantial my own self seems to be. What is consciousness? And who is conscious? I really don’t know."
They're not all about consciousness (something I have thought about a lot), the topics range wildly, covering things like discussions with the Dalai Lama or raising children:
"We are totally devoted to them when they are little and yet the most we can expect in return when they grow up is that they regard us with bemused and tolerant affection."
Most of them are worth a read.
BLEARGH