why do i work the way i work?

Today was a terribly good day: I worked with few distractions, managed to be productive and am very content of the result. Let's hope tomorrow (maybe the next month?) will be the same!

The problem is, you see, I am working to introduce an intern to some analyses we are doing. Not only is it unrelated to my actual work, but it's also rather voluntary. And yet, I am compiling information, running analyses and writing a tutorial so I can be best prepared on monday and help the poor fella understand something which took me years to grasp. And it did not take me so long to understand it, because it was too difficult. Rather, it's something I ignored for a long time, because there has always been a way around it. In fact, for years now, people have been programming scripts to run these analyses automatically and as long as you have the skills or know someone who can write one for you, there is no reason to invest that much time in understanding the mechanics behind it (after all there are tons of other relevant stuff to do).

So, in the end, the tutorial I have written will never be of any use to anyone. Maybe only for demonstration purposes for interns? But whenever the interns will actually start analyzing, they will use the automatized script files.

I think this attitude of mine that became evident during the last few days pretty much explains a lot of things in my life. No, I'm not excessiveley kind or diligent or anything. I just seem to be doing small things for the sake of getting them done. I am certain it's not productive on the long run, but something deep inside me tells me "you did a good job". Maybe it's just a way of deceiving myself. Or maybe not. Maybe that's what actually matters to me. We are our sole constant companions and in the end, when we are old, it is still ourselves that we will be stuck with.

photo by ppimm

Update: 23.10.2013
Years later, interns and students still come to me and thank me for my tutorials. Thank you time, for proving my point ;) 

taking the "fiction" out of "science fiction"

First in a series of posts on the future of brain imaging technology (I will use this for a debate in class with the students): CBS's 60 Minutes with Lesley Stahl: "How Technology May Soon 'Read' Your Mind" (picture via Bertrand Thirion).

Watch an interesting lecture on this topic by Martha Farah here ("Imaging the Brain, Reading the Mind" is a Northwestern University public outreach program to help the general public understand the impact of cutting-edge brain imaging technology on human health, law, and ethics).

meet the elements

I have just found this cute video on BoingBoing: "Meet The Elements" by They Might Be Giants is an animated upbeat ode to the periodic table of elements and how they form our world. Video directed by Feel Good Anyway.

stupidity and research

I have recently stumbled across Martin Schwartz' essay "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research".

Although I do not agree with everything he states, I have to highlight a few paragraphs:

"I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else."

Martin goes on to admit that he has the same feeling and to suggest that the key to overcoming that painful awareness is to accept it and get used to it. Even get addicted to it. He explains that it's important to understand that it is not just him not knowing the answers: It's everyone's problem, from the student to the big prof:

"Science involves confronting our 'absolute stupidity'."

I think Martin may be right here, but I think he neglects the fact that unfortunatelly many people hide their own "absolute stupidity" (instead of embracing it) by making others feel "realtive studpid". In a different line of thoughts he continues:

"I'd like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. (...) What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty. Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid.(...) Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."

Martin's bottom line is "if we don't feel stupid, it means we're not really trying". By this he means that we are used to asking easy questions, so that we can easily find the answers. It might not be challenging at all, but it is quite comforting to know we are smart. Since we have been brought up in a tradition that does not tolerate uncertainty, most people I know are striving to find predictability and certainty. I believe this is, in itself, not a bad thing, as long as one's aspirations are in concordance with one's environment! But if this is not the case, it might cause a great deal of suffering. And then, one has to make a decision: either accept the undeniable truth or reject it and find a more convenient one. The good thing about accepting it, according to Martin, is that it changes the entire perspective, it liberates one from ever attempting to be "smart". I am determined to accept it. But I still have a long way to go.

I believe that in order to achieve victory we must first conquer ourselves. Martin suggests that acceptance might be the first step in doing so. I will now add another interesting idea: Then, after making the choice "You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair." (adapted from Taisen Deshimaru). Because without this devotion, accepting stupidity is not a good choice. Stupidity must not only be embraced, it must be exploited.

the blind painter

Eşref Armağan (born 1953) is a blind painter of Turkish origin. He was born blind to a poor family in Turkey, and has been drawing or painting since childhood. He has had exhibitions in Turkey and in Holland and the Czech Republic. In 2004, he was the subject of a study of human perception, conducted by the psychologist John Kennedy of the University of Toronto (watch the video below).

Read more here.

For centuries, scientists believed that the brain was a fixed entity, that it was hard-wired for each individual function, and incapable of reorganizing after injury. The brain, however, is a lot more resourceful than we ever knew it was. Armağan's story has revealed that the brain has the potential to adapt and rewire itself according to individual needs. The brain's ability to reorganize its functions based on new information and experiences is defined as neural plasticity.

reading kafka makes you smarter

Franz Kafka in 1905. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; picture source

Research from psychologists at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia claims to show that exposure to surrealism may sharpen your cognitive functions and make you better at recognizing patterns: Subjects who had just read Kafka's "The Country Doctor" were better at recognising patterns in a grammar test, compared to subjects who had read a more plausible version of the same story.

"The idea is that when you're exposed to a meaning threat –– something that fundamentally does not make sense –– your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment", said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author the article. "What is critical here is that our participants were not expecting to encounter this bizarre story. If you expect that you'll encounter something strange or out of the ordinary, you won't experience the same sense of alienation. You may be disturbed by it, but you won't show the same learning ability. The key to our study is that our participants were surprised by the series of unexpected events, and they had no way to make sense of them. Hence, they strived to make sense of something else."

BUT: Thus far, the researchers have identified the beneficial effects of unusual experiences only in implicit pattern learning. It remains to be seen whether or not reading surreal literature would aid in the learning of explicily studied material (e.g. for exams) as well...

Thank you ecila for the link.

source1, source2

Here is the original paper

I shall now take advantage of this opportunity, and additionally post the award-winning wonderful animation "Kafka Inaka Isha" by Koji Yamamura, which is based on Kafka's "Ein Landarzt/ The Country Doctor" and is, in my opinion, equally disturbing and absurd as the original writing (caution: it might seem quite distressing and nonsensical to anyone not familiar with Kafka's deliberate effort to disorient). I love the animation technique and it somehow reminds me of Caroline Leaf's "Two Sisters" animation, as it manages to convey the impression of a dream (distorting images, as if they were constantly flowing and impossible to grasp).

networking

A leading neuroscientist warns of negative changes to the 21st century mind as a result of using social networking sites like Facebook. Changes include infantilisation, attention deficiency, selfishness, erosion of identity and an inability to empathise with others.

Interview with neuroscientist Lady Susan Greenfield, Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford and Director of the Royal Institution.

Read more here.

I agree that the environment can change the brain. I agree that social networking sites have no cohesive narrative or long-term significance and that, as a result, a brain might evolve with a shorter attention spam, craving for instant sensation (I especially like this part). But what in fact IS changing childrens brains is the environment as a whole. As for the question of "what is an interaction" and the "craving for instant sensation": I mean, common, there was no Susan Greenfield back then to warn us about the changes in our synaptic activity when the phone was invented!

I also agree that 900 facebook "friends" cannot be called friends. And that facebook represents a true menace in terms of possible addiction. But that just depends on the user. I seriously doubt that one can generalize to the entire facebook population like that.

To sum up: Facebook can be very useful (unless you spend hours feeding your virtual pet or doing quizzes that have no point) and fun. But, as with all things, it should not be used excessiveley.