quotations – Page 21 – Andi Fugard (∧⇒)

Kropotkin on philosophy

“… in what respect does the philosopher, who pursues science in order that he may pass life pleasantly to himself, differ from that drunkard there, who only seeks the immediate gratification that gin affords him? The philosopher has, past all question, chosen his enjoyment more wisely, since it affords him a pleasure far deeper and more lasting than that of the toper. But that is all! Both one and the other have the same selfish end in view, personal gratification.”

(From An Appeal to the Young by Pyotr Kropotkin)

Be careful when tweaking only one variable

Nice example of how tweaking only one variable can have an unintended effect on another:

“I began thinking about all this after reading an NBER working paper by Christopher Carpenter and Mark Stehr titled Intended and Unintended Effects of Youth Bicycle Helmet Laws. More than 20 states in the US have adopted laws requiring young people to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. The authors found that these laws increased helmet use and reduced youth fatalities from cycling accidents by roughly 19 per cent, which is a good thing. But they also found that the laws significantly reduced, by between 4 and 5 per cent, the amount of cycling done by young people, which was not the intention.

“… The moral of this tale is to be careful when making policy, as you may get a response you didn’t plan for.”

Mill on patterns of human existence

“… it is important to give the freest scope possible to uncustomary things, in order that it may in time appear which of these are fit to be converted into customs. But independence of action, and disregard of custom are not solely deserving of encouragement for the chance they afford that better modes of action, and customs more worthy of general adoption, may be struck out; nor is it only persons of decided mental superiority who have a just claim to carry on their lives in their own way. There is no reason that all human existences should be constructed on some one, or some small number of patterns. If a person possesses any tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself, but because it is his own mode. Human beings are not like sheep; and even sheep are not undistinguishably alike.”
—J. S. Mill, On Liberty

Brands

CBT versus counselling. Mental models versus mental rules. Bayesianism versus everything. There are lots of brand wars in psychology which stifle the development of theory and lead to tedious arguments. This does get recognised in print now and again. Here are some examples.

The first comes from a discussion of the ACT-R theory (Anderson, 2007, p. 19):

“… this book is not about ACT-R; rather I am using ACT-R as a tool to describe the mind. […] We may be proud of our ACT-R models and think they are better than others […] but we try not to lose track of the fact that they are just a way of describing what is really of interest.”

Later (p. 239) Anderson cites Herbert Simon, who complained that

“… ‘brand names’ tend to make difficult the analysis and comparison of […] mechanisms or the exchange of knowledge between research groups. […] Physicists did not divide quantum mechanics into the Heisenberg Brand, the Schrodinger Brand, and the Dirac brand.”

Another example, from sociology: a book on social class (Wright, 1997, p. 34):

“Readers who are highly skeptical of the Marxist tradition for whatever reasons might feel that there is no point in struggling through the numbers and graphs in the rest of this book. If the conceptual justifications for the categories are unredeemably flawed, it might be thought, the empirical results generated with those categories will be worthless. This would be, I think, a mistake. The empirical categories themselves can be interpreted in a Weberian or hybrid manner. […] As is usually the case in sociology, the empirical categories are underdetermined by the theoretical frameworks within which they are generated or interpreted.”

References

Anderson, J. R. (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? Oxford University Press

Wright, E. O. (1997). Class counts: student edition. Cambridge University Press.

Nicholas Lezard on pub quizes

“Newcomers and innocent bystanders are encouraged – no, bullied – into taking part. The young are particularly welcome, because they cannot pace their drinking, not that it would matter much if they could, for they know absolutely fuck-all about anything, especially as the quiz is set by the regulars, none of whom is ever going to see 45 again, and whose frame of reference reflects this.”

“The real point of the quiz, as far as I can see, is not to win, but for everyone to shout at each other.”

(Well, a particular pub quiz, but I think it’s a general phenomena.)

Bentall on the “Kraepelinian paradigm”

Bentall, R. Madness explained: why we must reject the Kraepelinian paradigm and replace it with a `complaint-orientated’ approach to understanding mental illness. Medical Hypotheses, 2006, 66, 220-233:

“Instead of attempting to explain mythical diagnostic entities, we should try and explain the actual complaints that patients bring to the clinic, such as hallucinations, delusions, disordered communication and mania. This strategy assumes that, once these complaints have each been explained in turn, there will be no ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘bipolar disorder’ leftover to account for.”

…

“a simple list of a patient’s complaints contains much more useful information than a Kraepelinian diagnosis, and takes less effort (because complaints have to be assessed in order to generate a diagnosis). In fact, cognitive-behaviour therapists have long argued that lists of this kind – the ‘problem list’ in the jargon of the approach – is the best starting point for clinical intervention… A complaint-orientated approach implies that treatments should be delivered according to patients’ needs.”

Profiles of intelligence

Johnson, W. & Bouchard, Jr., T. J. Sex Differences in Mental Abilities: g Masks the Dimensions on Which They Lie. Intelligence, 2007, 35, 23-39:

“Performance on image rotation tasks is known to predict success in fields such as airplane piloting, engineering, physical sciences, and fine arts better than does general intelligence, and especially verbal ability. What has perhaps not been recognized is that inclusion of verbal ability in assessments used to recruit individuals to those fields may actually act to impair efforts to select those with the talents most relevant to the jobs in question.”

"... we have presented evidence supporting the idealized notion of
general intelligence as a general-purpose mechanism that accesses a
toolbox made up of components that vary from individual to individual.
Though everyone clearly has most if not all of the same tools,
individuals appear to differ not only in the skill with which they use
their tools, but also in the specific tools they habitually use. For
some of the more specific tools, it would appear that using one tool
means failing to use another. [...] Performance on image rotation tasks
is known to predict success in fields such as airplane piloting,
engineering, physical sciences, and fine arts better than does general
intelligence, and especially verbal ability. What has perhaps not been
recognized is that inclusion of verbal ability in assessments used to
recruit individuals to those fields may actually act to impair efforts
to select those with the talents most relevant to the jobs in question."

“It’s like you are just a spectator in this thing”

I’ve just read a lovely article by Sara Ryan and Ulla Räisänen [“It’s like you are just a spectator in this thing”: Experiencing social life the “aspie” way. Emotion, Space and Society, 2008, 1, 135-143] who interviewed people with Asperger’s syndrome to explore their experiences of problems like social exclusion. Some excerpts from the interviews:

“… it just sort of highlighted and made me almost feel as though basically sort of like a freak. You know you really had nothing in common with these people and with people in general and it was a very lonely feeling […] You know, loneliness, I think, sort of becomes the default setting.”

“… like you say something stupid, and then realise you have said something stupid, and say something even more stupid, and or say something or do something awkward and then sort of combination of doing something awkward and saying something awkward and trying to make it funny and then making it even more awkward, making yourself look like a complete and utter idiot and then going all sort of red in the face and then hiding for days.”

This sort of detail of what it feels like to be an aspie in an (in general) non-aspie friendly society is sadly missing from other parts of the psychological literature.

It would have been lovely if they had also included a matched non-Asperger group. For instance after discussing how it felt for one of the participants to try to have a conversation, the authors comment:

“Of course, this is an experience that is probably familiar to many neuro-typical people but the level of intensity and frequency is substantial for people with AS who are unable, or find it difficult to, internalise social norms and values.”

So, how does it feel for a non-autistic person to have a conversation? There must be a tremendous amount of variation! Where do people typically get their ideas from? Where does it feel like they come from? Do they just pop into memory? I have been in many fairly unpleasant social situations where people simply have nothing to say to each other. Wine is then wheeled in before disaster strikes. I have seen a professor practically inhale a copy of the Guardian just before going to lunch; from the conversation that followed it seemed that he was replaying much of what he read, but the result was that people had interesting discussions. To make sense of the autism spectrum experience, the worries of non-autistic folk must also be understood.

I've just read and enjoyed your article on how people with Asperger's
experience life.  A few thoughts came to mind.

Have you done anything similar with a neurotypical comparison
group?  You make an interesting side comment:

"Of course, this is an experience that is probably familiar to many
neuro-typical people but the level of intensity and frequency is
substantial for people with AS who are unable, or find it difficult to,
internalise social norms and values."

So, how does it feel for an NT to have a conversation?  Where do people
typically get their ideas from?  Where does it feel like they come from.
 Do they just pop into memory?  I've been in many fairly unpleasant
social situations where people simply have nothing to say to each other.
 Alcohol tends to lubricate proceedings.  I've seen a professor quickly
digest the contents of an issue of the Guardian just before going to
lunch; from the conversation that followed it seems that he was
replaying much of what he read.

Also how the aspie folk in your sample think of topics, reminded me of
the distinction between stimulus-oriented versus stimulus-independent
thought.  Perhaps this is further evidence that autistics (or those with
ASD, depending on your terminological preferences!) are more stimulus
dependent.  I wonder if results from the cognitive end of the literature
combined with your ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism approach
could give ideas for coping mechanisms, both for autistics and for NTs.
 This would fit in nicely with the idea that "Moral obligations ...
include being sympathetically aware of the kinds of ways in which
others present can become spontaneously and properly involved..." -
maybe conversation partners can help autistics to ignore local stimulus
features.

Henri Frédéric Amiel’s journal—a couple of quotes

(Wikipedia entry over here; translation of journal here.)

Stimulus oriented versus stimulus independent thought?

“[…] respect in yourself the oscillations of feeling. They are your life and your nature […]. Do not abandon yourself altogether either to instinct or to will. Instinct is a siren, will a despot. Be neither the slave of your impulses and sensations of the moment, nor of an abstract and general plan; be open to what life brings from within and without, and welcome the unforeseen; but give to your life unity, and bring the unforeseen within the lines of your plan. Let what is natural in you raise itself to the level of the spiritual, and let the spiritual become once more natural. Thus will your development be harmonious […]”

Society

“[…] what we call “society” proceeds for the moment on the flattering illusory assumption that it is moving in an ethereal atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods. All vehemence, all natural expression, all real suffering, all careless familiarity, or any frank sign of passion, are startling and distasteful in this delicate milieu; they at once destroy the common work, the cloud palace, the magical architectural whole, which has been raised by the general consent and effort.”

Peter Wilby on Yachtgate

(New Statesman, 27 October 2008):

…

My mind goes back now, not only to Cripps, but also to the 1930s when politicians, aristocrats, diplomats and businessmen met at country house weekends and decided Hitler was quite a decent chap who should be allowed to have most of what he wanted; and to the early 1960s when half the ruling class seemed to be involved in weekend sex orgies, complete with specially hired prostitutes, on country estates.

Those matters concerned only the Tories, but this one now involves both government and opposition, showing, in the northern phrase, how they all piss in the same pot. The details, obscured by denials and counter-denials, will escape most voters. But there is a sense, perhaps more in the middle class than the working class, that a super-class of rich people lives on a different planet from the rest of us and most politicians have been bought by them.

While the rest of us get screwed, our rulers, enjoying parties and freebies, making deals and exchanging gossip, are too busy to care.