Highlight of the Day:
1. H-index:
The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the productivity and impact of the published work of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have no more than h citations each.
It was so much fun to learn some insider view of science from time to time!
2. Blackstone Boulevard on eastside Providence was a nice but long walk.I wish we have a lake or mountains around for a stroll...
I learned H-index, and was also thinking about how to balance between being a good scientist and an effective social activitst...
3. SEED claimed itself as a rather high-level, extremely-strict-in-selection program. However, I have no doubt that after some hard-work, I could get it.
Just fight!
4. Three books I want to write in life -- I don't think I've ever told anyone about this "dream" before today.
But I may want to make it a claim or a story of mine since today?
5. Renew wishes after May!
Links of the Day:
H index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index
SEED program: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~northshore/?page_id=306
So I want to figure out what 北岸（http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~northshore/） are doing, and how interesting their people are, when I get more time later this week.
Showing posts with label FunLife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FunLife. Show all posts
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Back to the TRACK!!!
I have to apologize to my dearest readers for not being able to keep my promise and update my blog once a day in the past week. My life was sort of off track in terms of my mental states... But I'm back! And I'll keep my wish of living naturally and energetically as a plant :)
The past week is truly full of new experiences. Every day are worth blogging. To have a quick review (so that we can move on to new life awaiting us), I'll just summerize all the events quickly:
First time at Harvard.
First time sleeping in a sleeping bag.
First time showing up at China Education Symposium and met lots of new friends.
First time be an audience of business competetion in life -- it was lots of fun!
Shopping... so much shopping OMG.
Learn how to cook pasta (penne) with new friends!
The Mikado -- first opera at Brown!
And another big event was, the premiere of Xinyu's newest drama at Zhejiang University on Nov 18th, 忠笑两全, was a huge success! Big congrates to you!
The past week is truly full of new experiences. Every day are worth blogging. To have a quick review (so that we can move on to new life awaiting us), I'll just summerize all the events quickly:
First time at Harvard.
First time sleeping in a sleeping bag.
First time showing up at China Education Symposium and met lots of new friends.
First time be an audience of business competetion in life -- it was lots of fun!
Shopping... so much shopping OMG.
Learn how to cook pasta (penne) with new friends!
The Mikado -- first opera at Brown!
And another big event was, the premiere of Xinyu's newest drama at Zhejiang University on Nov 18th, 忠笑两全, was a huge success! Big congrates to you!
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Nov 6...It is called... daylight saving? Have a monthly brunch, and a pleasant afternoon tea with nice chatting. Buy some nice books and greeting cards, and receive a call from an old friend on the west cost!
Got an extra hour today, YEAH!!! All the sadness of losing one hour from time to time when we were sailing around the globe from the west to the east on Semester At Sea has gone away!!!
And, it is called Sunday -- a day of sunshine? Really lovely reunions with friends, at brunch party, afternoon tea, and also over the phone.
I bought two books from the book store. One is The Ship -- my heart just stopped beating for a moment on seeing that huge ship on the cover! I was reminded all the great memories on the ocean! Another one is Chinese Culture and Art -- I need to learn how to introduce Chinese cultural heritage to my western friends. And I'm also gonna give this book as a present to 2012 spring Chinese voyagers!
One of my Chinese good friend was robbed on Thayer Street. Be careful, guys!
And, it is called Sunday -- a day of sunshine? Really lovely reunions with friends, at brunch party, afternoon tea, and also over the phone.
I bought two books from the book store. One is The Ship -- my heart just stopped beating for a moment on seeing that huge ship on the cover! I was reminded all the great memories on the ocean! Another one is Chinese Culture and Art -- I need to learn how to introduce Chinese cultural heritage to my western friends. And I'm also gonna give this book as a present to 2012 spring Chinese voyagers!
One of my Chinese good friend was robbed on Thayer Street. Be careful, guys!
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Liszt "at" Brown! My first concert on campus! And hear from an organ for the first time! So cheerful!
Highlight of the Day:
And Orpheus is also impressing, which is so cheerful and lovely, just like Alice in wonderland... a huge contrast to Totentanz!
Link of the Day:
1. Enrico Pace playing Liszt's Totentanz. I don't know whether there're some better versions out there. But this is definitely fabulous!
2. Check this out! MIT Brian&Cognitive Science has an amazing video archive of their lectures. MIT is so cool (esp. in technology)!!!
I went to my first on-campus concert tonight -- Lisztomania! A Bicentennial Festival Concert. It was truly breath-taking... just magnificent!!
What we had are:
Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H (organ)
Anima Christi (organ)
Ossa Arida (organ)
Consolations, No.4
Hosannah for Trombone and Organ (organ, trombone)
The beatitudes from Christus (baritone: Andrew Garland)
Ave Verum Corpus
Pater Noster from Christus (chorus)
Orpheus (Symphonic Poem No.4) (orchestra)
Totentanz (orchestra; pianist: Kenneth Hamilton)
The Bells of Strasburg Cathedral (orchestra, organ, baritone)
Among all the music they played, I was especially impressed by Totentanz (with orchestra) -- the appearing and reappearing chant Dies Irae with rich variations, the explosion of giant power, the unbelievable skills of the pianist, and the excellence of this Brown orchestra! I played it on loop on Youtube after the concert!
And Orpheus is also impressing, which is so cheerful and lovely, just like Alice in wonderland... a huge contrast to Totentanz!
Link of the Day:
1. Enrico Pace playing Liszt's Totentanz. I don't know whether there're some better versions out there. But this is definitely fabulous!
2. Check this out! MIT Brian&Cognitive Science has an amazing video archive of their lectures. MIT is so cool (esp. in technology)!!!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
First Talk at Lab Meeting! Two Interesting Lectures on the same day! Floral Water Tasting with Good Music!
Highlight of the Day:
1. Yes! I finally gave my first talk in the lab meeting today, bringing my first project to the table! I didn't know I was gonna talk about it until 2 hours before the meeting. Somehow, I just felt that it should be in the next week, or in the last week. Consequently, I got less than one hour to make my PPT...
But yes! I made it! And it went on great! Several lab members showed good amounts of interests in the project, coming up with lots and lots and lots of cool ideas -- more than I can handle at this moment! And my advisor is super supportive and helpful, as always!
2. My Ayala's herbal water has arrived today. The most delicate, poetic, flowery, and pricy water I've ever tried (I know there's Bling H2O... but do you really want to spend $60 on a bottle of water?) I got 6 different blends and enjoyed a 40-minute water-tasting with Scarborough Fair as my selected background music -- there is the lyric of "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" in it.
The crispy refreshing clearness with deep smooth sweetness in the aromatic water (and in the music) caresses my palate like a soft, warm breeze. Truly a delightful and natural experience!
3. And I had two good lectures (both with free food) today! By the way, I can never imagine this at ZJU. That's why it is so intellectually stimulating to do research here!
One lecture at Brain Science Program is delivered by William Fifer at Columbia University (Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics), titled "Fetal Roots of Child Neurodevelopment". It was about the knowledge we have about infants beyond they can sleeping, sucking, and defecating (mostly done by EEG research). And what we know about fetus... not psychologically, of course, but physically measurable "behaviors" like heart rate and beyond.
Though the lecture is not easy to follow, the lecturer did show some great taste of humor. I like the following three points in his lecture:
i) "In the next study, we went to South Africa. We had a great time there, watching cheetahs watching us". This saying suddenly remind me of the days when I was in S.Africa. I didn't go on any Big Five safari, though.
ii) When he was showing how animal could (or couldn't) learn from past experience, he played and re-played the very funny, and sort of well-known, video clip in which one penguin waddled by the other one standing pretty still, but all of a sudden, the second guy slapped the first guy with his wing and the poor guy fell onto the ground! It was just so appropriately entertaining at that point!
iii) At the end of his lecture, after presenting a good variety of different studies in recent years and intensive progress at his lab, he showed a piece of jig-saw puzzle on the slide, and circled a smaaaaaaall corner of the piece, modestly saying that he was just working on a tiny piece of the field, but hopefully that one day, research can shed light on the whole piece. Another pretty well-used picture with a pleasing tone.
Another lecture at CLPS is delivered by Todd Gureckis at NYU, titled "Follow Your Own Path: Exploring the Impact of Self-Directed Information Sampling on Learning". It was even more difficult to follow. Instead of examining "passive" learning by limiting participants’ control over the information they experience at each point in time (and do Bayesian analysis or connectionist or whatever), the current study explores how people gather information in "self-directed" learning environments. In other words, the primary aim of this research is to characterize the information sampling strategy that participants use to reduce their uncertainty, and to examine how self-directed learning influences acquisition. Guided by this idea, researchers have found that learning is faster when they can select and sequence learning episodes themselves, depending on the abstract structure of to-be-learned concepts and the space of hypotheses that the learner considers.
So, that's it about today! Well, I don't really want to mention that there are too many emails coming in which sort of troubles me, and that I'm having more and more problem falling into sleep in recent days and feel a little bit tired (probably because I am too excited by current research?) As you see, I like to KEEP POSITIVE THINKING in life, because life is truly a gift!
Link of the Day:
Since I just mentioned about Ayala's Herbal Water, please click on this link to get a better idea of what it is and what different herbs are used for.
Quotation of the Day:
As you may know, I'm reading David Thoreau's Walden to (hopefully) give myself a better understanding of the rhythm and thyme of the language called English. I encountered a very well-known paragraph today, which is probably among the earliest ones I happened to read long ago. I want to quote it for today's quotation, especially because it can also serve as an excellent footprint of my "One New Thing A Day"!
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that."
这里也附上我早先读到的中文翻译版，正是这一段文字让我对《瓦尔登湖》产生了兴趣：
“每一个早晨都是一个愉快的邀请，使得我的生活跟大自然同样地简单，也许我可以说，同样地纯洁无瑕。我向曙光顶礼，忠诚如同希腊人。我起身很早，在湖中洗澡；这是个宗教意味的运动，我所做的最好的一件事。据说在成汤王的浴盆上就刻着这样的字：‘苟日新，日日新，又日新。’我懂得这个道理。”
1. Yes! I finally gave my first talk in the lab meeting today, bringing my first project to the table! I didn't know I was gonna talk about it until 2 hours before the meeting. Somehow, I just felt that it should be in the next week, or in the last week. Consequently, I got less than one hour to make my PPT...
But yes! I made it! And it went on great! Several lab members showed good amounts of interests in the project, coming up with lots and lots and lots of cool ideas -- more than I can handle at this moment! And my advisor is super supportive and helpful, as always!
2. My Ayala's herbal water has arrived today. The most delicate, poetic, flowery, and pricy water I've ever tried (I know there's Bling H2O... but do you really want to spend $60 on a bottle of water?) I got 6 different blends and enjoyed a 40-minute water-tasting with Scarborough Fair as my selected background music -- there is the lyric of "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" in it.
The crispy refreshing clearness with deep smooth sweetness in the aromatic water (and in the music) caresses my palate like a soft, warm breeze. Truly a delightful and natural experience!
3. And I had two good lectures (both with free food) today! By the way, I can never imagine this at ZJU. That's why it is so intellectually stimulating to do research here!
One lecture at Brain Science Program is delivered by William Fifer at Columbia University (Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics), titled "Fetal Roots of Child Neurodevelopment". It was about the knowledge we have about infants beyond they can sleeping, sucking, and defecating (mostly done by EEG research). And what we know about fetus... not psychologically, of course, but physically measurable "behaviors" like heart rate and beyond.
Though the lecture is not easy to follow, the lecturer did show some great taste of humor. I like the following three points in his lecture:
i) "In the next study, we went to South Africa. We had a great time there, watching cheetahs watching us". This saying suddenly remind me of the days when I was in S.Africa. I didn't go on any Big Five safari, though.
ii) When he was showing how animal could (or couldn't) learn from past experience, he played and re-played the very funny, and sort of well-known, video clip in which one penguin waddled by the other one standing pretty still, but all of a sudden, the second guy slapped the first guy with his wing and the poor guy fell onto the ground! It was just so appropriately entertaining at that point!
iii) At the end of his lecture, after presenting a good variety of different studies in recent years and intensive progress at his lab, he showed a piece of jig-saw puzzle on the slide, and circled a smaaaaaaall corner of the piece, modestly saying that he was just working on a tiny piece of the field, but hopefully that one day, research can shed light on the whole piece. Another pretty well-used picture with a pleasing tone.
Another lecture at CLPS is delivered by Todd Gureckis at NYU, titled "Follow Your Own Path: Exploring the Impact of Self-Directed Information Sampling on Learning". It was even more difficult to follow. Instead of examining "passive" learning by limiting participants’ control over the information they experience at each point in time (and do Bayesian analysis or connectionist or whatever), the current study explores how people gather information in "self-directed" learning environments. In other words, the primary aim of this research is to characterize the information sampling strategy that participants use to reduce their uncertainty, and to examine how self-directed learning influences acquisition. Guided by this idea, researchers have found that learning is faster when they can select and sequence learning episodes themselves, depending on the abstract structure of to-be-learned concepts and the space of hypotheses that the learner considers.
So, that's it about today! Well, I don't really want to mention that there are too many emails coming in which sort of troubles me, and that I'm having more and more problem falling into sleep in recent days and feel a little bit tired (probably because I am too excited by current research?) As you see, I like to KEEP POSITIVE THINKING in life, because life is truly a gift!
Link of the Day:
Since I just mentioned about Ayala's Herbal Water, please click on this link to get a better idea of what it is and what different herbs are used for.
Quotation of the Day:
As you may know, I'm reading David Thoreau's Walden to (hopefully) give myself a better understanding of the rhythm and thyme of the language called English. I encountered a very well-known paragraph today, which is probably among the earliest ones I happened to read long ago. I want to quote it for today's quotation, especially because it can also serve as an excellent footprint of my "One New Thing A Day"!
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching Thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again." I can understand that."
这里也附上我早先读到的中文翻译版，正是这一段文字让我对《瓦尔登湖》产生了兴趣：
“每一个早晨都是一个愉快的邀请，使得我的生活跟大自然同样地简单，也许我可以说，同样地纯洁无瑕。我向曙光顶礼，忠诚如同希腊人。我起身很早，在湖中洗澡；这是个宗教意味的运动，我所做的最好的一件事。据说在成汤王的浴盆上就刻着这样的字：‘苟日新，日日新，又日新。’我懂得这个道理。”
Saturday, October 29, 2011
First Letter sent to GBSS. Good food. Good poems.
Highlight of te Day:
I did lots of study on spices today. And I decided to learn more at U.S. and in China. Here in U.S., I can learn about western spices, cheese, wine, coffee, and hopefully French and Italian cooking. Back in China, I want to learn more about Chinese cuisine, each and everything about it!
I feel that I need a personal tutor, so I just sent out an email to Graduate Bulletin:
Someone with good knowledge in Cheese/Cof
Another day-dreaming thing...
I want to know more about aromatherapy and relation between mind&psyche! I know I'm always so interested in the olfactory world!
Can food and spices heal people?
Links of the Day:
1. Betcha you don't know...
The difference between, Zire, Fennel, Anise, Star Anise Fruit, dill, and Carum carvi, because they just look the same! So read here!
2. One beautiful poem by Jacques Prévert called the Garden.
3. A brief summary on common spices.
I did lots of study on spices today. And I decided to learn more at U.S. and in China. Here in U.S., I can learn about western spices, cheese, wine, coffee, and hopefully French and Italian cooking. Back in China, I want to learn more about Chinese cuisine, each and everything about it!
I feel that I need a personal tutor, so I just sent out an email to Graduate Bulletin:
Someone with good knowledge in Cheese/Cof
Another day-dreaming thing...
I want to know more about aromatherapy and relation between mind&psyche! I know I'm always so interested in the olfactory world!
Can food and spices heal people?
Links of the Day:
1. Betcha you don't know...
The difference between, Zire, Fennel, Anise, Star Anise Fruit, dill, and Carum carvi, because they just look the same! So read here!
2. One beautiful poem by Jacques Prévert called the Garden.
3. A brief summary on common spices.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Mac back with Windows. Book from Bertram. And lots of conversations about CAPE and Youth Development
Reading Bertram's Other Minds, a collection of different papers on "mindreading" or mental states inference.
And thinking about setting up a Theory of Mind and Social Cognition Journal Club!
Lots of indigents to cook...
Halloween party tomorrow! Yes!
And thinking about setting up a Theory of Mind and Social Cognition Journal Club!
Lots of indigents to cook...
Halloween party tomorrow! Yes!
Monday, October 24, 2011
Meeting with President Yang after leaving Zhejiang University
Highlight of the Day:
Playing with eye-tracker...
Meeting with my advisor...
Getting up early...
Stuffed by cheese and crackers in dinner...
What else?
?
Yes, meeting with President Yang from ZJU, my alma mater! I didn't shake hands with him in graduation ceremony, and now I finally made it! And much more, actually!
Some discusion on a variety of questions...
And I talked with Ms. Min Li about SAS and my plan back in ZJU during winter break. I gave her one of my SAS books as a gift.
RCR Final tomorrow.
That's pretty much about today!
Playing with eye-tracker...
Meeting with my advisor...
Getting up early...
Stuffed by cheese and crackers in dinner...
What else?
?
Yes, meeting with President Yang from ZJU, my alma mater! I didn't shake hands with him in graduation ceremony, and now I finally made it! And much more, actually!
Some discusion on a variety of questions...
And I talked with Ms. Min Li about SAS and my plan back in ZJU during winter break. I gave her one of my SAS books as a gift.
RCR Final tomorrow.
That's pretty much about today!
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Sight seeing in New England! Lots and lots and lots of new papers coming in!
We got a perfect afternoon, driving across MA to see the leaves, beach, state forest, ponds... a beautiful New England! And to celebrate RK's birthday!
My first fall in New England!
I love you CLPS guys! More pictures at renren.com and Facebook!
I just realized how much I have to read before I get a good whole picture of the field!
My first fall in New England!
I love you CLPS guys! More pictures at renren.com and Facebook!
I just realized how much I have to read before I get a good whole picture of the field!
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Julie & Fiery's Party! So good to know you guys!
Highlight of the Day:
We had a really lovely party this afternoon at Fiery's place.
I arrived late because I was lost in the beautiful scenery up the hill, looking over Providence in lovely afternoon sunlight.
But luckily I met everyone! Even Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom, who were nice surprise to the party! Honestly, I was able to recognize Paul because he's famous in China because of Yale Open Courses.
And also meeting all significant others showed up in the party!
God I just can't get over this... I "fell in love" with Julie and Fiery, one of the most adorable couples I've ever seen, in their party this afternoon. Julie is so sweet, smart, and intelligent. Fiery is so talented, artistic, and friendly. Both of them are cheerful! Julie even told me a little bit lovely details of their long-distance love in which one is in New York and the other one in Providence. Good to know they're married so that they made the best couple! (I know this sounds goofy...)
Well, I sometimes cannot resist but compare people to animals... so Julie is like a cheerful deer bounding over mountain springs, and Fiery is like a curious squirrel cracking delicious nuts... I just laughed at my own ideas when I came up with this...
And the Red Sox game... was a good practice because I was so bad at it! And I was so impressed to learn that Julie and Fiery made and painted this equipment themselves!
When I was walking back through the neighborhood, enjoying my wonderful mood and taking photos of all the lovely buildings and plants along my way, I remembered Julie told me that they were also exploring around the neighborhood in Providence in summer because they knew little about this city. I wish that my boyfriend could be here and we do it together one day!
Link of the Day:
Since I made the lovely couple the star of the day, I really want to recommend their website as well. They made this for their marriage, and it's really a wonderful idea!
We had a really lovely party this afternoon at Fiery's place.
I arrived late because I was lost in the beautiful scenery up the hill, looking over Providence in lovely afternoon sunlight.
But luckily I met everyone! Even Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom, who were nice surprise to the party! Honestly, I was able to recognize Paul because he's famous in China because of Yale Open Courses.
And also meeting all significant others showed up in the party!
God I just can't get over this... I "fell in love" with Julie and Fiery, one of the most adorable couples I've ever seen, in their party this afternoon. Julie is so sweet, smart, and intelligent. Fiery is so talented, artistic, and friendly. Both of them are cheerful! Julie even told me a little bit lovely details of their long-distance love in which one is in New York and the other one in Providence. Good to know they're married so that they made the best couple! (I know this sounds goofy...)
Well, I sometimes cannot resist but compare people to animals... so Julie is like a cheerful deer bounding over mountain springs, and Fiery is like a curious squirrel cracking delicious nuts... I just laughed at my own ideas when I came up with this...
And the Red Sox game... was a good practice because I was so bad at it! And I was so impressed to learn that Julie and Fiery made and painted this equipment themselves!
When I was walking back through the neighborhood, enjoying my wonderful mood and taking photos of all the lovely buildings and plants along my way, I remembered Julie told me that they were also exploring around the neighborhood in Providence in summer because they knew little about this city. I wish that my boyfriend could be here and we do it together one day!
Link of the Day:
Since I made the lovely couple the star of the day, I really want to recommend their website as well. They made this for their marriage, and it's really a wonderful idea!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Learn some new words such as preppy... and find out that the research project I'm about to carry out was just published!
Highlight of the Day:
Tonight, during working hours in the office, I learned some new words and concepts such as liberal vs conservative, preppy, prep, hippie, hipster, metrosexual... from Jason, Patrick and David on
(Hey! What on earth are you guys chatting about!)
And, my "perceiver effect" has already been published... sad but luckily I still have a handful of ideas to put into practice!
Links of the Day:
1. The Weirdest People in the World. A fundamental challenge to the psychological discoveries that we all agree on! Jump out off our perspective to scrutinize the world!
2. A wandering mind is not a happy mind. One page paper published on science by Daniel Gilbert, who is well-known for his happiness research at Harvard. The methodology rocks!!! Can we apply the real-time recording iPhone App to moral psychology research and more questions in social interaction?
3. Jonathan Haidt made a talk on THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF POST-PARTISAN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY on edge.
The basic idea is:
"This how we like to see ourselves. We social psychologists are supertolerant free thinkers. We celebrate diversity and non-conformity. We boldly follow our science wherever it takes us, and no matter whom it offends. We care only about truth!
But in reality, we are a tribal moral community. In support of that claim, I made three arguments. I said that, because we have sacred values other than truth, we have taboos that constrain our thinking; we have almost no moral/political diversity; and we have created a hostile climate for graduate students who don’t share those sacred values. If these statements are true, then I think we must begin some serious discussions about how to turn off the magnet."
Tonight, during working hours in the office, I learned some new words and concepts such as liberal vs conservative, preppy, prep, hippie, hipster, metrosexual... from Jason, Patrick and David on
(Hey! What on earth are you guys chatting about!)
And, my "perceiver effect" has already been published... sad but luckily I still have a handful of ideas to put into practice!
Links of the Day:
1. The Weirdest People in the World. A fundamental challenge to the psychological discoveries that we all agree on! Jump out off our perspective to scrutinize the world!
2. A wandering mind is not a happy mind. One page paper published on science by Daniel Gilbert, who is well-known for his happiness research at Harvard. The methodology rocks!!! Can we apply the real-time recording iPhone App to moral psychology research and more questions in social interaction?
3. Jonathan Haidt made a talk on THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF POST-PARTISAN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY on edge.
The basic idea is:
"This how we like to see ourselves. We social psychologists are supertolerant free thinkers. We celebrate diversity and non-conformity. We boldly follow our science wherever it takes us, and no matter whom it offends. We care only about truth!
But in reality, we are a tribal moral community. In support of that claim, I made three arguments. I said that, because we have sacred values other than truth, we have taboos that constrain our thinking; we have almost no moral/political diversity; and we have created a hostile climate for graduate students who don’t share those sacred values. If these statements are true, then I think we must begin some serious discussions about how to turn off the magnet."
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Singing in MetCalf... and reading EDGE starting from Argumentative Theory
I'm gonna start this post with OFFICE ANTICS and turn to very serious discussion on a potentially influential, relatively new, mind-related idea called Argumentative Theory.
So what is AT?
I somehow was really elated and felt ecstatic after eating subway and chatting with Xiaotong, my Chinese friend around 6 p.m. So we went to MetCalf 354, where David was working, to look for some fun. I soon started pulled David's hair, sang Chinese songs, and made faces to the camera -- he took a good number of pictures and videos of me, actually! He threatened me that he was gonna post them on Youtube, which was definitely a terrible idea, but I somehow love those very hilarious videos quite a lot!
So let's calm down and talk about serious psychological theory... a BIG IDEA on mind, social psychology, and evolutionary psychology called ARGUMENTATIVE THEORY!
So how important is this idea? See words cited from EDGE:
"Jonathan Haidt digressed to talk about two recently-published papers in Behavioral and Brain Sciences which he believed were "so important that the abstracts from them should be posted in psychology departments all over the country."
So what is AT?
It was intuitively assumed by Western culture that the purpose of reasoning is to make the right decision. But AT challenged this idea by asserting that instead of designed to pursue the truth, reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. Reasoning is to help us justify our beliefs and actions. Therefore, reasoning can be detrimental to rationality in a variety of cases, causing confirmation bias, logical mistakes, statistical failures, etc.
To put it more clear, we can contrast the traditional idea with AT.
The idea that reasoning is for individual purposes has never been challenged for centuries. It seems natural that reasoning helps us to get better beliefs and make better decisions. However, reasoning is a evolutionarily social function. The reason it evolves is to help us to convince others and to evaluate their arguments.
One evidence is Confirmation Bias, a robust cognitive bias in which when people get an idea and start to reason on that idea, they are mostly likely to gather more information but never challenge themselves. They finally reach to crazy ideas and terrible decisions sometimes. It has long been a mystery, but it becomes understandable with AT -- when people are trying to convince someone, they are always trying to find argument for their side. People are just good at reasoning for arguing.
Another example is "reason-based choice", in which when people try to reason to make the best decision, they always reach to the choice that they can justify, but is not necessarily good. Again, according to AT, since the goal of reasoning is to find arguments, the one choice that is best supported, not necessarily best, will win.
Some suggestion implied by AT are: to put yourself into a group to reason better; application in education; deliberative democracy in politics.
At the end of the paper, the author also talked about why evolutionary ideas are also scientific and falsifiable. They also clarified the concept of reasoning by teasing apart conscious reasoning from automatic, spontaneous reaction. I would not go further on these less important points here.
To sum up, there are two fundamental perspectives this theory takes:
evolutionary psychology
a social perspective towards reasoning, a cognitive process
And according to AT, reasoning is a motivated, interactive mental activity.
Hope that I have articulated this theory enough.
Some other comments I want to make here:
Some other comments I want to make here:
1) Edge is an amazing place. I'm gonna read one entry per day!
2) Besides, I was also reading on egocentric vs. allocentric spatial representation these days. I think I've kind of digressed from social interaction. I'm considering of going back to social area after I finish these papers on mental rotation and spatial perception.
2) Besides, I was also reading on egocentric vs. allocentric spatial representation these days. I think I've kind of digressed from social interaction. I'm considering of going back to social area after I finish these papers on mental rotation and spatial perception.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
So New Member in the Office: Tracy my Sweetie!
Highlight of the Day:
Wondering how my "living naturally as a plant" is going? Yes I just got my lovely "role model" in my office, sitting on my desk! The name of this plant is "white butterfly". And I named her Tracy!
Why Tracy? Because to me, it sounds green, refreshing, cheerful, and lively! And one of my good firends at CLPS came up with another explanation that I like a lot -- there is a "tra", which sounds like a "tree", in "Tracy". Probably that's why this name sounds so green!
This is the first time in recent 8 years that I bought and "raise" a plant. My classmates and I also grew some wheat and beans in our classroom when I was in high school, which sounds pretty funny, even crazy. What was more crazy, I bought a cobaya when I was in high school, and kept it in the classroom as pet of the class! I even launched a vote for its name! It was named "Bubble" after a very democratic voting!
And... before high school when I was still living with my parents, we kepts lots of birds at home, like parrots, java sparrows, chicks, ducklings, and a quail. I love birds! If someone would ask you, "If you could be an animal, what would you be?" I would just answer:
"A white dove"!
So let's come back to my little role model. Tracy is doing great, and so am I! I'm going to bed at 10:30 p.m. Isn't that great, and also another new thing of today?
Wondering how my "living naturally as a plant" is going? Yes I just got my lovely "role model" in my office, sitting on my desk! The name of this plant is "white butterfly". And I named her Tracy!
Why Tracy? Because to me, it sounds green, refreshing, cheerful, and lively! And one of my good firends at CLPS came up with another explanation that I like a lot -- there is a "tra", which sounds like a "tree", in "Tracy". Probably that's why this name sounds so green!
This is the first time in recent 8 years that I bought and "raise" a plant. My classmates and I also grew some wheat and beans in our classroom when I was in high school, which sounds pretty funny, even crazy. What was more crazy, I bought a cobaya when I was in high school, and kept it in the classroom as pet of the class! I even launched a vote for its name! It was named "Bubble" after a very democratic voting!
And... before high school when I was still living with my parents, we kepts lots of birds at home, like parrots, java sparrows, chicks, ducklings, and a quail. I love birds! If someone would ask you, "If you could be an animal, what would you be?" I would just answer:
"A white dove"!
So let's come back to my little role model. Tracy is doing great, and so am I! I'm going to bed at 10:30 p.m. Isn't that great, and also another new thing of today?
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
FIRST Live Concert... in Providence and in Life!!
Highlight of the Day:
It's getting late so let's be short... Patrick organized a live music trip to the Met Cafe and nine CLPS people joined. Two banks played. Both were great! The first one... I just cannot remember the name... The second one is called the Antlers. Yes it's my first live concert here, and also in my life!
Links of the Day:
So I continued playing with Brain Voyager Brain Tutor... it was amazingly fun! Anyone who cannot google the address?
It's getting late so let's be short... Patrick organized a live music trip to the Met Cafe and nine CLPS people joined. Two banks played. Both were great! The first one... I just cannot remember the name... The second one is called the Antlers. Yes it's my first live concert here, and also in my life!
Links of the Day:
So I continued playing with Brain Voyager Brain Tutor... it was amazingly fun! Anyone who cannot google the address?
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