Teaching yourself new habits

It seems that willpower only will not be enough to change habits. Ben Tiggelaar refers to psychologist Carl Rogers who claimed that people should learn 2 important things in life. Accepting a certain degree of uncertainty en being able to postpone getting rewards. It seems that it is deeply wired in our system to increase behavior that leads to instant rewards, and to stop behavior that leads to instant punishment. The urge is strong and subconscious. Therefore it is hard to change habits that lead to instant reward, like computer gaming or fast food dining. Ben Tiggelaar advises a way out of this, which he calls dreaming, daring and doing.

"Dreaming" is about setting goals, finding out what is important to you in life. There's an interesting referral to a research done by Martin Seligman from Pennsylvania State University. It seems that some circumstances contribute measurable to happiness. They are:
1. Living in a prosperous democratic country
2. Maintaining a large social network
3. Being married
4. Believing in God
5. Avoid negative emotions
I suspect Seligman interviewed only Americans though. What was interesting is that earning more money, living in a sunny country, staying healthy, having the best possible education are not contributing so much towards happiness. Anyway, everybody has to make his or her own list. This can be a starting point.
Step 2, "Daring", is about predicting barriers to success, and creating plans and behaviours to get around them. Especially the second part is important, since you'll only be scaring yourself otherwise.
The last step, "Doing", is about rewarding the behaviour that you've identified is leading to your goal. Because it is so deeply wired in our system to do more of the behaviour which leads to instant reward, it is of course important to give yourself instant small rewards for the right behaviour.

The book also contains an interesting discussion about negative feedback, "punishment". We are wired react to negative feedback, to avoid behavior which leads to pain, or displeasure much stronger than to positive feedback. This is very logical form an evolutionary point of view. Learning by negative feedback has a few drawbacks, though. It is only about avoiding the bad things, so you can't build positive, creative behaviour with it. The behaviour disappears with the disappearance of the threat. For instance, kids do naughty things, when they think their parents aren't watching.

So if there are some nasty habits, you want to get rid of, or if you are frustrated at failing at your new year's commitments, or if you just want to change yourself for the better, this could be an interesting read.

Blink - Thinking without thinking

Last week on the plane I read 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a fun book that reads surprisingly fast. (I had to buy a new book for the return flight)
Basically Gladwell Maintains that the 'hunch' we get in the first split second we see something can be a far better and quicker judgment than if we take more time to observe and reason.
Of course it can go awfully wrong if we only go on first impressions, so the author comes up with three preconditions must be met before you can trust your hunch:
- You should have adequate experience in the situation you are judging. The patterns should be there in your subconscious. Gladwell illustrates this with marital consulting experts and face expression experts.
- You should have the right stress level. Being too relaxed makes you miss things. Being too stressed (illustrated by police officers in a firefight) makes you resort back to your 'reptilian' brain and survival instincts. Not good for judging a situation!
- You should not have too much information coming at you. This makes the rational brain kick to process all that and the wisdom of the blink is lost. Only the essential information should be there.

The point is illustrated painfully by a female trombone player who wins a blind audition with a huge lead. After the judges see that she is a woman, all of a sudden they can not believe anymore that she is a good trombone player since women were thought to be too frail to play the trombone.

Your initial feeling about something can also go wrong by implicit subconscious associations, that may be entirely irrational. Some very interesting tests and background information are at http://implicit.harvard.edu/

I think I'll trust my snap judgements more, and although I think the above mentioned preconditions are very strict, they act as a nice warning sign when you should double check your intuition.

On Intelligence

A few days ago I finished 'On Intelligence'. One of the most inspiring books I ever read. It's a very accessible, yet in depth, explanation of how the brain works. While many statements sound bold and unfounded, there is a scientific base to it, and most importantly a few falsifiable predictions are made so the theory can be scrutinized the way Carl Popper would approve it.

Jeff Hawkins explains how neural networks are no way near the way a real brain works. He also explains why the whole AI movement is on the wrong track and proposes a very interesting algorythm for the brain which integrates a lot of recent work on neurology. If you're interested in the algorythm: go read the book. I won't try to explain it in one post.

What I found stunning is that the algorythm Hawkins proposes explains a lot of patterns in human behaviour that are mentioned in other books I like. (McWhinney, Korzybski, Pirsig, etc.) It's like a giant puzzle coming together.

One of Hawkin's coworkers has modeled the algortyhm in a computer. It seems to work. I want to try that too. It seems the new LEGO NXT has a more powerful chip and programming software by the guys at National Instruments. Maybe I can build intelligent stuff with that...

My favorite quote from the book is "Consciousness is what it feels like to have a neocortex". Meaning that the hierarchical neocortical system that allows for abstraction and pattern recognition makes us experience what we call consciousness.