kittyfetish
Raza's blog. All of the below may be freely copied, shared, linked to and otherwise distributed.
Emotional Trigger Conditioning 0.12 beta
(cross posted here from a password protected forum to show a friend)
I'm not entirely sure of how it functions, but I think it goes something like this.
Basically, when imput arrives in your brain, it passes through your conscious thought, and may then trigger feelings if a particular part of your brain associates the tought with the feeling. This particular bit of memory or whatever it is can change through conditioning, thus meaning different imput will trigger different feelings (or none at all).
This change happens when at the moment that thought/imput A is on your mind and is triggering or not triggering it's reaction, thought/imput B is triggering a more powerful feeling. Your mind will then (after a few times) start to associate thought/imput A with response B.
This is for example what happens when a child considers something fun, but gets a very negative response from his peers. If the feeling of getting hurt by the negative attention is more powerful than the positive response to whatever caused it, they'll stop liking it.
Now for most people, these triggers get changed largely beyond their controll by their environment; events in their life, society around them, etc. This is why people can get such strong involvement with culture-dependant social norms. Certain triggers are set at birth by default, as well, but these too can change.
However, growing somewhat aware of the way this works, you can make an efford to change your own triggers overtime as well. For example, getting myself very horny on something else, then thinking about something homoerotic near climax when masturbating is how I made myself bisexual.
One very useful emotion for this is pride in yourself, since in order to change an emotion you need a counter emotion, and a strong self of pride can be triggered simply by deciding that you want to change something. This is what I use in order to stay open minded about contradictions to ideas I hold dear for example, my pride in my own intellectual honesty overcomes whatever negative reaction is triggered by having them contradicted, thus allowing me to be proud of myself for managing to change my mind when reasonable rather than feeling pissed over being proven wrong.
I've done this over a ton of things, including practically eliminating entire emotions like anger and jealousy from all conventional triggers.
However, this is all theory. I know it works, but I don't know for sure that this is how it works, and I'm even less sure whether this works equally well for everyone. Also, rules I'm somewhat convinced of such as 'everything can be changed, even genetically decided instincts' etc might easily have exceptions to them that I've simply never come across yet.
I'm not entirely sure of how it functions, but I think it goes something like this.
Basically, when imput arrives in your brain, it passes through your conscious thought, and may then trigger feelings if a particular part of your brain associates the tought with the feeling. This particular bit of memory or whatever it is can change through conditioning, thus meaning different imput will trigger different feelings (or none at all).
This change happens when at the moment that thought/imput A is on your mind and is triggering or not triggering it's reaction, thought/imput B is triggering a more powerful feeling. Your mind will then (after a few times) start to associate thought/imput A with response B.
This is for example what happens when a child considers something fun, but gets a very negative response from his peers. If the feeling of getting hurt by the negative attention is more powerful than the positive response to whatever caused it, they'll stop liking it.
Now for most people, these triggers get changed largely beyond their controll by their environment; events in their life, society around them, etc. This is why people can get such strong involvement with culture-dependant social norms. Certain triggers are set at birth by default, as well, but these too can change.
However, growing somewhat aware of the way this works, you can make an efford to change your own triggers overtime as well. For example, getting myself very horny on something else, then thinking about something homoerotic near climax when masturbating is how I made myself bisexual.
One very useful emotion for this is pride in yourself, since in order to change an emotion you need a counter emotion, and a strong self of pride can be triggered simply by deciding that you want to change something. This is what I use in order to stay open minded about contradictions to ideas I hold dear for example, my pride in my own intellectual honesty overcomes whatever negative reaction is triggered by having them contradicted, thus allowing me to be proud of myself for managing to change my mind when reasonable rather than feeling pissed over being proven wrong.
I've done this over a ton of things, including practically eliminating entire emotions like anger and jealousy from all conventional triggers.
However, this is all theory. I know it works, but I don't know for sure that this is how it works, and I'm even less sure whether this works equally well for everyone. Also, rules I'm somewhat convinced of such as 'everything can be changed, even genetically decided instincts' etc might easily have exceptions to them that I've simply never come across yet.
No rips in the papers - Scratch at me
'Justice' vs Effect
It appears to me that a lot of people, if not practically everyone, seem to base a lot of their interaction with others on what is deserved or 'just'. If someone is helpful, they 'deserve' to be treated with favor in return. If a possession is taken from you, you 'deserve' to get it returned or replaced. If someone harms you, they 'deserve' to be harmed back.
As an effect, this concept of 'justice' is often used to justify actions which could otherwise be considered irrational. Justice is by itself considered an argument for an action, even if it bears no logical validity, and often at the expense of achievement of desired results.
A typical example: A man walking around in public. A stronger looking stranger approaches him and punches him painfully in the stomach, then continues walking away with no further interest in him. Yet, in this situation, many guys would attack the offender, knowing they could hurt him before getting hurt worse themselves. They'd sacrifice their desired effects (preventing harm to themselves) in order to get 'revenge' (a form of justice).
Another typical, but at first sight directly opposing example: A woman gets beat up by her husband. This has happened regulary before. The woman does not do anything to prevent it from happening again because she wants to forgive him. In this situation, she is sacrificing desired effects (self preservation, perhaps helping the guy change his behaviour) in order to be forgiving. Forgiveness is another - although far less blindly accepted - form of justice.
In both these situations, the subject bases their actions on a completely abstract concept of what they think the person they are interacting with 'deserves', and with that do things that hinder progress towards what they desire to happen. To the average person the first example may seem more acceptable than the second, but in effect they're equally irrational. Also, these are extreme examples of something most people do on a very regular basis in less 'important' decisions. In effect, a lot of our entire social system, the way we interact with eachother, is based on this irrational norm of 'justice', the belief in giving people what they 'deserve'.
Now, ofcourse there are situations where practising revenge may prevent an undesired event from being repeated. Ofcourse there are situations in which practising forgiveness may end undesired conflicts and yield positive results. However, neither of these can be applied consistently, and in neither of these possibilities it was the 'justice' in the act that caused the positive result. It just happened to coincide with a good solution.
Therefore, justice, revenge, forgiveness, deservingness, etc are all irrelevant.
An interesting note on this is also that by this definition of justice (the sense of what is deserved based on one's ideals), the commonly accepted idea that pragmatism and idealism are opposites is false. This may already have been obvious, as pragmatism can effectively be an ideal, but with this reasoning we can attempt to establish what, then, is the opposite of pragmatism. It is justice.
Quite simply, the only rational way to decide on your actions is to look at the effect you expect them to have. This may seem obvious, but it's surprising how deeply instinctive acting to a sense of justice can be to people, and when applied to core social systems such as law enforcement can yield surprising incompatibility, so keep the critical introspection and consideration of others up carefully.
Thoughts?
As an effect, this concept of 'justice' is often used to justify actions which could otherwise be considered irrational. Justice is by itself considered an argument for an action, even if it bears no logical validity, and often at the expense of achievement of desired results.
A typical example: A man walking around in public. A stronger looking stranger approaches him and punches him painfully in the stomach, then continues walking away with no further interest in him. Yet, in this situation, many guys would attack the offender, knowing they could hurt him before getting hurt worse themselves. They'd sacrifice their desired effects (preventing harm to themselves) in order to get 'revenge' (a form of justice).
Another typical, but at first sight directly opposing example: A woman gets beat up by her husband. This has happened regulary before. The woman does not do anything to prevent it from happening again because she wants to forgive him. In this situation, she is sacrificing desired effects (self preservation, perhaps helping the guy change his behaviour) in order to be forgiving. Forgiveness is another - although far less blindly accepted - form of justice.
In both these situations, the subject bases their actions on a completely abstract concept of what they think the person they are interacting with 'deserves', and with that do things that hinder progress towards what they desire to happen. To the average person the first example may seem more acceptable than the second, but in effect they're equally irrational. Also, these are extreme examples of something most people do on a very regular basis in less 'important' decisions. In effect, a lot of our entire social system, the way we interact with eachother, is based on this irrational norm of 'justice', the belief in giving people what they 'deserve'.
Now, ofcourse there are situations where practising revenge may prevent an undesired event from being repeated. Ofcourse there are situations in which practising forgiveness may end undesired conflicts and yield positive results. However, neither of these can be applied consistently, and in neither of these possibilities it was the 'justice' in the act that caused the positive result. It just happened to coincide with a good solution.
Therefore, justice, revenge, forgiveness, deservingness, etc are all irrelevant.
An interesting note on this is also that by this definition of justice (the sense of what is deserved based on one's ideals), the commonly accepted idea that pragmatism and idealism are opposites is false. This may already have been obvious, as pragmatism can effectively be an ideal, but with this reasoning we can attempt to establish what, then, is the opposite of pragmatism. It is justice.
Quite simply, the only rational way to decide on your actions is to look at the effect you expect them to have. This may seem obvious, but it's surprising how deeply instinctive acting to a sense of justice can be to people, and when applied to core social systems such as law enforcement can yield surprising incompatibility, so keep the critical introspection and consideration of others up carefully.
Thoughts?
Free culture?
The below link leads to a captured presentation by Lawrence Lessig on free culture, copyrights and restricted use, and a bit of their history. It's very interesting, and recommended to the end.
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
Personally I am in full support. I do not support capitalism as a whole, and the free culture still found on the internet has been a very pleasant escape from it - but even if you're a moderate capitalist the importance of some limitation of it's claim on culture and information should be obvious. (or become so if you hear the above, anyway)
Enjoy.
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html
Personally I am in full support. I do not support capitalism as a whole, and the free culture still found on the internet has been a very pleasant escape from it - but even if you're a moderate capitalist the importance of some limitation of it's claim on culture and information should be obvious. (or become so if you hear the above, anyway)
Enjoy.
A case for the legalisation of recreational drugs
Been occupied today, but here's something I wrote a few days ago. My case for drug legalisation:
On the direct danger of drug abuse:
With drugs legal, it can be assumed they would be more commonly used. However, legalisation opens the doors for far better education of people on the subject, minimising abuse even while use increases.
Also, it would allow for government regulations and checks on the drug's quality, which is currently the top danger of drug use.
With the factors of informed use and quality of the used substance improving, the increased overall use would be significantly outweighted in it's influence on the general direct harm of drug use on public health.
On the safety of the public:
Legalisation of drugs would make them available for far lower prices even after taxing, and with that destroy the profitability of the illigal drug market, taking a huge bite out of general funding for criminal and even terrorist enterprises.
Also, since possible addicts would no longer be as hard pressed to get the money to satisfy their addiction, it would decrease the amound of mugging, robbery, pickpocketing, car theft and the likes done by these people.
On the economical side of things:
Drug legalisation would open up an entire new industry for private enterprise to populate and for the government to tax, probably bringing both a significant boost to the economy and to the governments budget.
Also, the above explained decrease in crime would free all of the current 'war on drugs' budget, a large amound of the general narcotics and organised crime budgets and a bit of the common crime budgets for other purposes. Also, the release of those currently convicted on drug crimes and the removal of the need to hold court for these crimes would free even more money, as well as take some of the load off of the court and prison systems. Even after spending some on public education on drug use and the enforcements of drug sale regulations there should be a significant amound of this left for unrelated purposes.
On general civil rights and public attitude:
Drug legalisation would be a general improvement of civil liberties, and allow for the breaking down of the public's stigmata on the subject. Rational consideration of this taboo might even jump over to other, similiar issues and improve the public grasp of reality.
Comments? Criticism? Additions?
On the direct danger of drug abuse:
With drugs legal, it can be assumed they would be more commonly used. However, legalisation opens the doors for far better education of people on the subject, minimising abuse even while use increases.
Also, it would allow for government regulations and checks on the drug's quality, which is currently the top danger of drug use.
With the factors of informed use and quality of the used substance improving, the increased overall use would be significantly outweighted in it's influence on the general direct harm of drug use on public health.
On the safety of the public:
Legalisation of drugs would make them available for far lower prices even after taxing, and with that destroy the profitability of the illigal drug market, taking a huge bite out of general funding for criminal and even terrorist enterprises.
Also, since possible addicts would no longer be as hard pressed to get the money to satisfy their addiction, it would decrease the amound of mugging, robbery, pickpocketing, car theft and the likes done by these people.
On the economical side of things:
Drug legalisation would open up an entire new industry for private enterprise to populate and for the government to tax, probably bringing both a significant boost to the economy and to the governments budget.
Also, the above explained decrease in crime would free all of the current 'war on drugs' budget, a large amound of the general narcotics and organised crime budgets and a bit of the common crime budgets for other purposes. Also, the release of those currently convicted on drug crimes and the removal of the need to hold court for these crimes would free even more money, as well as take some of the load off of the court and prison systems. Even after spending some on public education on drug use and the enforcements of drug sale regulations there should be a significant amound of this left for unrelated purposes.
On general civil rights and public attitude:
Drug legalisation would be a general improvement of civil liberties, and allow for the breaking down of the public's stigmata on the subject. Rational consideration of this taboo might even jump over to other, similiar issues and improve the public grasp of reality.
Comments? Criticism? Additions?
No rips in the papers - Scratch at me
Sweet....
With my very first entry I got featured as yesterday's top blog!
I'm sure it's either not a terribly meaningful thing, or I just got extremely lucky - but it's still a very nice and encouraging surprise to notice my name on the front page. Makes me think that perhaps if I keep my update rate and quality standards up, it might not end up as another forgotten page in the endless library that is the internet.
Thank you to whoever nominated me, and ofcourse everyone else who even just reads this.
I'm sure it's either not a terribly meaningful thing, or I just got extremely lucky - but it's still a very nice and encouraging surprise to notice my name on the front page. Makes me think that perhaps if I keep my update rate and quality standards up, it might not end up as another forgotten page in the endless library that is the internet.
Thank you to whoever nominated me, and ofcourse everyone else who even just reads this.
Raza
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