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Apropos to the name of this blog, I've been thinking about consciousness a lot lately. More particularly, how the hardware that seats that consciousness influences the paths our minds choose to wander.
The topic seems to be consuming the science threads I follow. I'd like to thank Harvard President Lawrence Summers for that. Not for his ideas, but for being a catalyst that forced people to reexamine human sexual dimorphism again in hopefully more enlightened times.
Leonard Sax's Why Gender Matters highlights why it's important to understand intellectual gender differences. In a nutshell, by the age of 12, boy are as 8 years old girls in language and communications. Conversely, girls of 12 are four years behind boys in geometry. Dr. Sax posits that these differences need to be recognized so that a class full of 12 years olds don't feel stupid on one topic or another. Buy approaching learning with an eye to gender, both sexes could get a more complete and helpful education. This is one of the few intelligent commentaries in the debate, which isn't really a debate so much as an ongoing academic flame war,
Now to a stupider part of the brain, the bit that knows no gender or possibly even species, the "reptilian brain". This piece of meat is common to must creatures on the planet and seems little changed from things that slither to us. The brain stem has the basic life support stuff, like breathing, and then some interesting survival stuff, like twitching when confronted by sudden motion.
I believe that the reptilian brain can explain far more annoyingly concrete behavior. When people move around each other in a public setting, they very often seem to be on auto pilot. Like ants recovering food, humans seem to display strangely consistent emergent behavior when you get enough together. Try this experiment:
In a big store, the bigger and more crowded the better: stop. Stand in one place, pick a place that seems to have little real value, but is just off of the flow of traffic. Don't look at anything in particular, but try to exude an air of contented interest. Give it a little time. Soon, others will join you. Not just one other, people will start to have to fight their way through your manufactured traffic jam. Welcome to the human reptilian brain in action.
Not only have I done this many times, I did it just yesterday. I was given the job of cart guard so that my partner could fight her way to less accessible aisles. Knowing this could take some time, I chose my parking spot with care. My cart and I stood apart from main flow, down the side, blocking only a corner of a display so an interested consumer could still get their bulk day glow pink artificial sweetener if that wanted it.
In no time, more people seemed to be moving around me than before. Then, someone parked their cart on the other side of mine, seeming to intentionally restrict traffic. I moved a little, wanting to lessen the restriction while not straying too far from my designated spot. Cartman wouldn't move. At first he seemed interested in the local stuff, but then found other reasons to stay. He even left his cart for a bit to explore other places, perhaps unconsciously not wanting to give up his prime spot; next to me.
Before I left, there were enough people swarming around me that I had to fight my way out to the person I'd been waiting for. I don't believe anyone did this consciously, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an imagining. Perhaps, someday, when I'm really, really bored, I'll try to intentionally start a traffic jam. I wonder if it works if you're actually trying? Damn lizard lobe
The topic seems to be consuming the science threads I follow. I'd like to thank Harvard President Lawrence Summers for that. Not for his ideas, but for being a catalyst that forced people to reexamine human sexual dimorphism again in hopefully more enlightened times.
Leonard Sax's Why Gender Matters highlights why it's important to understand intellectual gender differences. In a nutshell, by the age of 12, boy are as 8 years old girls in language and communications. Conversely, girls of 12 are four years behind boys in geometry. Dr. Sax posits that these differences need to be recognized so that a class full of 12 years olds don't feel stupid on one topic or another. Buy approaching learning with an eye to gender, both sexes could get a more complete and helpful education. This is one of the few intelligent commentaries in the debate, which isn't really a debate so much as an ongoing academic flame war,
Now to a stupider part of the brain, the bit that knows no gender or possibly even species, the "reptilian brain". This piece of meat is common to must creatures on the planet and seems little changed from things that slither to us. The brain stem has the basic life support stuff, like breathing, and then some interesting survival stuff, like twitching when confronted by sudden motion.
I believe that the reptilian brain can explain far more annoyingly concrete behavior. When people move around each other in a public setting, they very often seem to be on auto pilot. Like ants recovering food, humans seem to display strangely consistent emergent behavior when you get enough together. Try this experiment:
In a big store, the bigger and more crowded the better: stop. Stand in one place, pick a place that seems to have little real value, but is just off of the flow of traffic. Don't look at anything in particular, but try to exude an air of contented interest. Give it a little time. Soon, others will join you. Not just one other, people will start to have to fight their way through your manufactured traffic jam. Welcome to the human reptilian brain in action.
Not only have I done this many times, I did it just yesterday. I was given the job of cart guard so that my partner could fight her way to less accessible aisles. Knowing this could take some time, I chose my parking spot with care. My cart and I stood apart from main flow, down the side, blocking only a corner of a display so an interested consumer could still get their bulk day glow pink artificial sweetener if that wanted it.
In no time, more people seemed to be moving around me than before. Then, someone parked their cart on the other side of mine, seeming to intentionally restrict traffic. I moved a little, wanting to lessen the restriction while not straying too far from my designated spot. Cartman wouldn't move. At first he seemed interested in the local stuff, but then found other reasons to stay. He even left his cart for a bit to explore other places, perhaps unconsciously not wanting to give up his prime spot; next to me.
Before I left, there were enough people swarming around me that I had to fight my way out to the person I'd been waiting for. I don't believe anyone did this consciously, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an imagining. Perhaps, someday, when I'm really, really bored, I'll try to intentionally start a traffic jam. I wonder if it works if you're actually trying? Damn lizard lobe