Zombies

I just overheard an aphorism I've never heard before, "every zombie needs a back story." I wonder if that's true. Well, certainly every zombie seemingly does have a back story. But do they need one? Not if they are just an extra in a movie or a statistic in some department of homeland security report.
Now, if the zombies win then I can't say whether pre-zomie lives will be important or not. I don't know what zombies value or how they see the world. All I know is they eat brains. If they win, what do they eat when the brains run out?

Forum posts regarding television

Here's what will probably be a bit of a jumbled bit of thoughts on TV from my MDS 3001 class. I'll include the original questions, but not the classmates' comments that I'm sometimes responding to...

This week's discussion questions will focus on Winn's "TV Addiction" essay.  

1.  In her essay, "TV Addiction," Marie Winn describes watching television as "an unproductive experience, that by any human measure almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile." Do you agree or disagree with her statement, and why or why not?

2.  Winn's argument is precise, clearly phrased, and to the point.  But is there something this short argument is overlooking?

 

1. While I am sympathetic to most of Winn's arguments in "TV addiction," her claim "that by any human measure almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile" is an overreach. I would say that at the very least watching television is more worthwhile than building chemical weapons, lobbying for regressive tax policy, or clear-cutting rain forests to make space for sugar cane plantations. Depending on what programs are viewed, television at least has some potential to convey useful and worthwhile information. Granting Winn's main point, that television is at least potentially addicting, it must be seen as one of the least damaging of our society's common additions.

In fact, if by "unproductive," Winn is referring to simply the economic realm (which I doubt), television must be seen as an inherent part of current cycle of productivity. Seventy percent of the economy is driven by consumer spending, and a huge proportion of advertising budgets go to television ads. Assuming that companies are not so foolish as to spend billions of dollars on advertising that is not effective, these ads play a big role in shaping the spending habits of television viewers, which is essentially to say of all Americans. Planting a garden, reading a book or hosting a dinner party may be more "worthwhile" than watching television, but they probably do less to add to GDP than spending the same amount of time watching television's ads and generally implicitly pro-consumerist programming. Winn says that television allows people to enter into a "pleasurable and passive mental state." Passive people seeking recreation and satisfaction of their needs through consumption is exactly what will make the economy grow, at least in the short term.


2. In his book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Jerry Mander makes a thorough, and to my mind convincing, argument that the overall effect on society would be clearly positive if television were somehow eliminated. Marie Winn does not seek to make such a complete case in her short essay, "TV addiction." She does succeed in explaining a reasonable alternative way to envision television viewing. By establishing what an addiction is, and showing that television fits those patterns, Winn makes her case.

However, I believe the essay would have been stronger if she had gone into more depth about what distinguishes television addiction from other addictions. For one thing, television viewing is a purely psychological addiction, obviously since no part of the television physically enters the body, there is no direct chemical impact on the body or brain. Substance addictions involve both psychological and physical aspects, with relative weights varying by individual and substance. Secondly, television is more culturally ubiquitous than anything commonly seen as addictive. Depending on which drug and where you live, drugs can range from very difficult to find to difficult to avoid, but not even alcohol is as widespread as television. Even alcohol, which in commonly used in most adult social groups, has the benefit of being recognized as addictive, and people who quit drinking are widespread and rarely challenged on the validity of their decision to not drink. At this point, someone who makes a point of not watching television is likely to face questions and some level of social isolation.

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1. No, I think that the ends of "grow the economy" is way over-valued, and far too much is already sacrificed in justification of those ends. I was just saying that in terms of GDP, television is probably a hugely, albeit indirectly, "productive" activity. (Actually, there's a lot of GDP in producing tv and selling ads/subscriptions, but we're looking at it from the perspective of the viewer, so to speak.) My "(which I doubt)" was to try to say that I think Winn is defining "productive" in a more holistic way. I think it's clear that she is not using "productive" in a way where paying $100 for 30 TV dinners is twice as productive as buying $50 of fresh produce from the farmer's market and the time spent cooking with your spouse instead of watching TV isn't productive at all...

2. Those guys always have a TV in their room, but so does just about every American in the room they spend the most time sitting, so it's a pretty weak statistic!
My point wasn't about the physical impact as the physical aspect of the addiction itself. An addict's body can become so accustomed to alcohol, heroin, etc. that their life would actually be in greater immediate jeopardy if they quit cold turkey. Physical withdrawal is notorious when quitting cigarettes, and I can personally attest to the body's potential to develop a need for caffeine to function normally! TV shares the psychological mechanisms common to all addictions, but does not have a physical component to the addictive mechanism. In this way it shares more in common with other non-substance addictions/compulsions - gambling, etc.

 

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1. No, I think that the ends of "grow the economy" is way over-valued, and far too much is already sacrificed in justification of those ends. I was just saying that in terms of GDP, television is probably a hugely, albeit indirectly, "productive" activity. (Actually, there's a lot of GDP in producing tv and selling ads/subscriptions, but we're looking at it from the perspective of the viewer, so to speak.) My "(which I doubt)" was to try to say that I think Winn is defining "productive" in a more holistic way. I think it's clear that she is not using "productive" in a way where paying $100 for 30 TV dinners is twice as productive as buying $50 of fresh produce from the farmer's market and the time spent cooking with your spouse instead of watching TV isn't productive at all... 2. Those guys always have a TV in their room, but so does just about every American in the room they spend the most time sitting, so it's a pretty weak statistic! My point wasn't about the physical impact as the physical aspect of the addiction itself. An addict's body can become so accustomed to alcohol, heroin, etc. that their life would actually be in greater immediate jeopardy if they quit cold turkey. Physical withdrawal is notorious when quitting cigarettes, and I can personally attest to the body's potential to develop a need for caffeine to function normally! TV shares the psychological mechanisms common to all addictions, but does not have a physical component to the addictive mechanism. In this way it shares more in common with other non-substance addictions/compulsions - gambling, etc.

 

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	I didn't mean to undermine her argument. I actually think by being clear that it is not exactly the same as a substance addiction, but that it does resemble other activities that are widely acknowledged as "addictive," like gambling, and less common ones like kleptomania, pyromania, etc.

-------------------------------------------   Well, as a Post Office loyalist, I'd suggest that TV ad revenue should be redirected to mail, which I've heard from biased sources is actually the best ROI of any form of advertising. Maybe that was just for small businesses? Anyhoo, I think reducing the overall volume (in both senses of the word) of advertising we're subjected to would be tremendously beneficial to our psycho-social well-being, if not our economic well-being. By the way, according I got curious and to Wikipedia, compulsive gambling is not considered an addiction by the American Psychological Association: Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria. Although the term gambling addiction is common in the recovery movement[1] pathological gambling is considered to be an impulse control disorder and is therefore not considered by the American Psychological Association to be an addiction.[2] .................... Considered to be part of the obsessive-compulsive disorder spectrum,[2] impulse control disorders are often associated with substance use disorders because "it has been speculated that these disorders are mediated by alterations of partially overlapping neural circuits".[3]   ----------------------------------------------------- Here's a four minute clip from the movie Network. I've never seen the whole movie, but this clip was played this week on a podcast that I listen to (hours after I wrote my first post, actually). Today I finally got a chance to point it out. It's got some offensive language, strong statements of opinion, and a lot of yelling, so if you're easily offended, use your own judgement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTN3s2iVKK

Much more likely to succeed!

Book Club

Here are the two books I'll be reading shortly for book club. If you want to lend me a copy, or buy one and lend it to me, or read it and talk about it, or anything like that, let me know!



Room: A Novel


The Grace of Silence

Mall of America

I went to the Mall of America yesterday. I was feeling up for an adventure, and I wanted instant gratification of my desire for new shoes for work and a costume for my daughter. Plus, I hadn't been to MOA for many years, and it's the kind of cultural icon I feel like I should keep an eye on if it's right in my back yard...
So, the Crocs store was closed, and there were not, as I had expected, several huge Halloween stores at the Mall of America. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out those two relevant facts. Alone at the Mall of America, surrounded by mostly purple- or green-clad midwesterners trying to squeeze in a little shopping before the football game, I suddenly had the urge to be elsewhere. So, I met Justy for a beer at Mac's and we watched enough of the Vikings game to almost get sucked into thinking silly and fantastic thoughts, then left before we had to witness the actual course of things...
Well, the funny thing is that as a "member of the Amazon Associates Program," and as Postal Service loyalist, I should have known that rather than go to the mall, I should have just "[in my mother's voice] let my fingers do the walking," and done my shopping from the comfort of my local independent coffee shop:

Live and learn. I did have the experience of joining several thousand of my most anonymous neighbors on a jaunt through USA's largest indoor shopping center, which I don't do often. I also took the light rail from one end to nearly the other for the first time, and had a lovely stroll over the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. Mac's was great as always, and Justy and I had good times as per usual. Alright, all play and no work makes Ryan a poor boy, so I must move on!

Journal Entry: Reading Reflection 3 (MDS3001W)

1. What is the main idea, or theme, of the essay?
2. Which passage(s) did you like especially, or that really captured the author's intent?
3. How does the main idea of the essay relate to the History and Social Science area?
4. Which course from the U of M catalogue relates to the essay and the History and Social Science area?

The main idea of Jared Diamond's essay, "The Ends of the World as We Know Them,” is that Americans need to reflect, and to change our behavior. “Such questions seem especially appropriate this year.” Diamond writes early in the essay. “History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly.” But Diamond is not all doom and gloom. By the end, he concludes that “To save ourselves we don't need new technology: we just need to political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment.” While I would argue that the word “just” might tend to minimize the scale of the task of creating the “political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment,” his point remains fundamental: it is well within humanity's current power to substantially stop and reverse most if not all of the alarming trends described by Diamond and many other authors.
This essay is one of the most direct examples of the idea that if we don't know our history we are doomed to repeat it. By looking at the trajectory of many past civilizations and comparing them to our own, Diamond helps us understand the situation and the decisions we face. POL 3477 – Political Development, HIST 1017 – Origins: Global Societies, and POL 1905 – Freshman Seminar have all used Diamond's other well-known book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. I fitting class to use this essay might include ANTH 4069 – Environmental Archaeology, or a directed or independent study class in history, anthropology or geography, among others.

Journal entry for MdS 3001W

1. What five strengths did you identify?
2. For each of your five strengths, describe 2 examples or situations in your life where you used that strength. 

My first strength was “ideation.” This means that I love ideas and making connections between things. This has been true throughout my life. One example is as recent as the forum discussion for this week, linking Jared Diamond's deep lessons from previously collapsed societies to our current situation and the criticisms leveled by the Occupy movement. My recent fascination with truisms, especially if they are considered a bit quaint or archaic is another example of my love of ideas. I have found that almost always even the most seemingly anachronistic sayings have something meaningful to say even in our current situation.



My second strength was “adaptability.” This is perhaps the strength that has been the biggest savior as well as sometimes a challenge. My adaptability has never served me better than over the last year as my entire life has been turned upside down – quitting my job, separating from my wife and children, moving to another city to return to school. Any one of those could have sent me reeling if I was not ready to “respond willingly to the demands of the moment.” The way adaptability can get me in trouble is when “on some level [I] actually look forward to [sudden requests or unforeseen detours].” When things become too well planned or routine, I can start to resent the order and subtly undermine it, even to my own detriment.



My third strength was “strategic.” I have used this throughout my life as well, usually identifying it as a tendency to see the “big picture.” The most recent good example of using this strength is when I led an effort to revamp the budget and bylaws of the North Dakota State Association of Letter Carriers. I was able to see the patterns in the complexity and find workable solutions. Another example of my strategic strength in action is when I arranged to have my kids watched so that I could with help from two relatives and a friend who passed them along over 9 hours and all parts of the Twin Cities. None of those three knew what exactly was happening, but they knew their parts and I could see how it all came together.



My fourth strength was “relator.” The entire description of this strength rung true with my experience of how I form relationships with people. I don't actively seek out new associates, but look to strengthen existing bonds. One place this can be seen is in how often I have returned to the same jobs after a period of time – Rainbow Foods, Young Quinlan Garage, ADC Telecommunications and Al's Breakfast have all employed me more than once with at least a year off in between. Personal relationships follow a similar pattern. For example, almost everyone I've spent any significant time with since I've been back to Minneapolis is family, an old friend, or a friend of an old friend.



My fifth strength was “learner.” This is one of the easiest strengths for others to see in me, as I am constantly reading, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, reading magazines, etc. or talking about one of them. The most striking thing to me is how this strength interacts with my “adaptability” strength. The learner description that I “thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one” both complements the adaptability theme and describes me well. However, when my learner strength draws me to formal educational settings, my adaptability sometimes feels put upon and leads to the restlessness described above.

MdS 3001W forum post

1.  Discuss some of the cultural, political, social and economic conditions that were written about in the essays.  Focus on those that felt significant to you and explain why.

I was in college the first time when “All Consuming Patriotism” was written, the year after 9/11. Although I don't believe I read the article, I did have discussions with friends about many of the ideas in this essay. We were struck by how reflexive and adamant the rush to defend the growth of the economy was, even more struck than the rush to war, which we knew well enough to expect. We thought that 9/11 should be a cause for reflection and re-evaluation, not a time to automatically “keep shopping.” Frazier says it beautifully, “Money and the economy have gotten so tangled up in our politics that we forget we're citizens of our government, not its consumers. And the leaders we elect, who got where they are by selling themselves to us with television ads, and who often are only on short loan from the corporate world anyway, think of us as customers who must be kept happy. There's a scarcity of ideas about how to direct all this patriotic feeling because usually the market, not the country, occupies our minds.”
Jared Diamond's “The Ends of the World as We Know Them” also struck me for how its insights are relevant to today's United States, or more realistically the US-led world economic and political system. First of all, Diamond's comparison that, “If 6,000 Polynesians with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing today.” While this immense power has been clear to me, I have never heard it expressed so vividly. Diamond's conclusion later in the essay seems especially relevant in light of the current “Occupy” protests around the world. “History teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those headed for failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. … The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense.” The idea that elites are insulated from the consequences of their action is clearly connected to the Occupy movement's most united message, the idea of the 1% and 99%. I think that the “willingness to re-examine long-held core values” can be seen at the heart of what has been the loudest criticism of the movement: its lack of coherent “demands.” A re-examining of core values seems to be in fact exactly what the movement wants, but that cannot reasonably be demanded of the existing system or legislated into existence. More importantly the tangible aftermath of such a re-examination is not possible to predict ahead of time.



2.  Discuss which essay helped you see something about a society or a social issue in a way that you'd never considered before or were aware of.   
“Reading Lolita in Tehran” gave me new insight into the reality of life under a truly repressive regime in Iran. It is easy to take for granted, here in the United States, a relatively free ability to speak your mind. While certain unpopular opinions may cost you social prestige or even legal or economic difficulties, suffering physical harm for bucking a social custom or speaking out is extremely rare. More importantly, with a few glaring examples, the government is neither the perpetrator of nor complicit in such violence. In Iran, on the contrary, the slightest infractions can lead to harsh punishment by both government forces and government-supported vigilantes. Nafisi's students remained defiant, pushing the limits whenever safety allowed, and sometimes even when it didn't.
One idea from the essay led me to think about our society in a way I had never considered. Talking about her students, who grew up under the regime and never knew freedom, Nafisi says, “Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.” Around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I read an article about kids who are in high school now who were just old enough to have clear memories of the attacks, and how profoundly it has shaped their lives. Anyone younger than them, and probably for the most part those kids as well, will only have second-hand memories of a time before the war on terror, the PATRIOT act, taking off your shoes and throwing away your toothpaste at the airport, and needing a passport to go to Canada. Will these kids also have a vague longing for the things we older people describe, what Nafisi calls the “void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us?”

Planned Happenstance

This is an old article, but the whole concept of "planned happenstance" is new to me. To hear that these ideas are a "real thing" is incredibly validating of a way of looking at the future that I have felt but had a difficult time articulating. If I would have read this before school started this fall, probably would not have gone back. Oh well, I guess being back in school, taking the classes I am, is happenstance, too, right...?

Jack-O-Lantern

Grandma is going to bring it up to the kids - hopefully it will last 12 days!

Random thoughts from the bus

SIDS, cribs, and co-sleeping. If you're worried or wondering about co-sleeping I'd be willing to tell you about my story and point you to better resources than the strib articles I read.

It's funny (?) how much more "disproportionality" was the subject of the news report about the prisoner exchange than it was during the last war there. Not to mention in stories about "our" wars...

I heard on the tv this morning that tv's not too good for little kids. Shocking! How long until the next major study documenting how much more tv americans, especially kids, watch than 10 or 30 years ago?

2nd Constitutional Convention

I think we should have another constitutional convention. I've been interested in the idea since it started bubbling under from mostly tea party folks, and now I'm getting pretty attached to the idea. Here's an article from the Harvard Crimson about a conference that took place there to discuss the idea. The excerpts in bold below are from the article, with my comments in green.

Opponents of the initiative expressed concerns that a runaway convention would lead delegates to deviate from an assigned agenda, resulting in radical and unprecedented changes to the Constitution.

Ummmm, I think that's exactly the point. The changes we need are certainly unprecedented, and almost as certainly radical. Any agenda assigned by (congress?) would have no authority, and shouldn't. The reason a constitutional convention is needed is because, more than anything, congress is completely incapable of acting. Why would a constitutional convention feel bound to do what congress instructed them?

“The timing is not appropriate for this type of experimentation. America is like a ship in the middle of a storm,” said Alexandra Filindra, a political scientist from William Paterson University, echoing the opinion held by many that the status quo might be less risky than a new approach.

I am dumbstruck at how a thoughtful person (assuming a professional political scientist is) can think that the status quo might be less risky than a new approach. I doubt she thinks that a threatened government shutdown and default on the national debt every few months with a gridlocked congress whose approval rating is 14% is a workable path forward. Perhaps she believes enough pressure will build up  behind the log jam of government that a national consensus will develop? If that's the case, I still think a constitutional convention is a better forum for that consensus to express itself than within the current system. 

As for the idea that, "America is like a ship in the middle of a storm," that simile works. The implication that because of that storm we should not make a radical course correction does not follow. In fact, that storm makes it more important than ever that we consider all of our options - including turning around if that's what it takes to steer clear of the storm. The founding fathers were in a rickety wooden boat in a storm when they drafted the constitution. We may be in a storm, but now we've got the biggest and most powerful boat in the world. What makes it impossible for us to do what the founders did, for our time and situation as they did for theirs?

There is plenty of reason to think a new constitutional convention could come up with a much more workable solution to the myriad problems facing our government than any proposal coming from within the system. As Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Dear David Brooks,

Generally I read your columns and respectfully disagree. Your new column is not up to your usual standards, in my opinion.

Perhaps the low point is:

Even if you tax away 50 percent of the income of those making between $1 million and $10 million, you only reduce the national debt by 1 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. If you confiscate all the income of those making more than $10 million, you reduce the debt by 2 percent. You would still be nibbling only meekly around the edges.

That's a pretty clever way to make $306,022,711,000 per year sound like not much money: first, split it into to separate pieces, then express it in the confounding "percent of debt paid per year." I guess, "Put together, that 3% dwarfs the principal reduction in the first year of a 30-year mortgage" wouldn't have made quite the point you wanted to...

This type of obfuscation is below you.

PSY 3135 forum post #2

Within a relatively wide normal range, differences in testosterone levels among individuals has little causal effect on behavior. However, if the average testosterone levels between two groups of men varies by even a relatively small amount, dramatic changes in behavior are likely. This was illustrated with the example of fraternities and their members' treatment of female a female interviewer.

What are other situations where the average testosterone level might be artificially high (or low)? What situations will cause the testosterone levels of whatever males happen to be there to rise? What about situations where the men who self-select to gather have higher than average testosterone?

Journal Entry: Reading Reflection 1 (MDS3001W)

In Dining with Robots, Ellen Ullman examines the idea of thinking machines, and comes to an unsettling conclusion. “Life is pressuring us to live by the robots' pleasures... Our appetites have given way to theirs. Robots aren't becoming us...; we are becoming them." While such arguments have been put forth by philosophers and social scientists, Ullman's essay is different in two important ways. First, it uses the narrative of having a robot over to dinner to structure the story. Perhaps more importantly, it comes from the perspective of a computer programmer, someone who understands the way computers "think."

The passage that most struck me came at the end of Ullman's story about her first programming instructor's analogy between writing code and writing a recipe. “It didn't occur to me to question the usefulness of comparing something humans absolutely must do to something machines never do: that is, eat.” I think the same question should be asked of many of the living beings and systems that are sometimes viewed as behaving more like machines than truly reflects reality. Even the basic assumption of economics – individuals left to their own devices will rationally choose to do what will make them happy – may be dubious!

Although the main point I took from the article does not have much to do with Applied Technical and Professional, computers and robots do. Almost any computer science class would be highly related to this article. CSCI 5552 – Sensing and Estimation in Robots, and ME 5286 – Robotics, both seem very relevant. Perhaps the professor for CSCL 3461 – Monsters, Robots, Cyborgs could work this reading into the syllabus, although that class isn't in the Applied Technical and Professional area.

A couple more signs we could use at al's

Goal Statement

This is the first section of the big "proposal" I have to put together for my degree. For what it's worth, here is the first draft:

I am proposing a Bachelor of Science in Multidisciplinary Studies through the College of Continuing Education at the University of Minnesota. My three areas of study will be Science and Health Science; Applied, Technical and Professional; and History and Social Sciences. These three areas essentially represent the chronological trajectory that my interests have followed through my initial time at the University of Minnesota, my time away from school, and now my return to complete my degree.

I am currently at a major crossroads in my life, and this degree will serve to clear paths and open doors so that the major decisions I face can be made with as few artificial limitations as possible. I began my university studies as a Mechanical Engineering major, less because I had a passion for the material than because I had an aptitude for a subject many find difficult, and because that aptitude promised an easy path to an upper-middle-class living if I turned it into a career in engineering. The basic undergraduate Mechanical Engineering curriculum will form the basis of my Science and Health Science area. Even while studying engineering, the most interesting classes were those that strayed from the highly technical engineering discipline into areas like industrial engineering. Some of the classes I took while studying engineering will fall into the Applied, Technical, and Professional area.

The remainder of the Applied, Technical, and Professional area will consist of new classes related to my third area, History and Social Sciences. Social sciences, above all psychology, will comprise the majority of my new classes. The investigation of people – their motivations, their follies and their triumphs – has grabbed my interest in a way that investigating technical challenges never did. More than that, I can see a role for social sciences in changing the world in ways that I feel are important far more easily than I can see such a role for engineering and physical science.

I am standing at a crossroads in my life. I do not have a clear intent for where I will live or work a year from now. I do know that many of the roads at this particular junction are currently closed to me. Many jobs will not accept applicants without a bachelor’s degree. Graduate schools, obviously, have a strict requirement that you complete your undergraduate degree first. Although many of the things that have brought me to this crossroads were difficult, I am grateful for this opportunity to imagine a new path for my life. By opening more avenues, my B.S. in Multidisciplinary Studies will allow my imagination will be freer to roam and find a road that suits me perfectly.

Occupy Wall Street

I first learned about the Occupy Wall Street movement this spring in Adbusters, where I'm used to hearing great ideas that don't always catch on. So, I'm very happy to see that OWS seems to be gathering steam.
Naomi Klein's recent speech  might be the best thing I've heard/read so far.
I'm going to try to stop by downtown Minneapolis this afternoon if I can get focused and get my homework done! If that's successful I'll put up some pictures soon.

A new narrative?

I hope E.J. Dionne is right in his latest column, where he says that the past week has been a major turning point for American politics. It does make sense that as "class war" becomes more of a buzzword, the people making preserving low taxes for the "job creators" at the top of the economic heap their top priority might have a hard time keeping all of the populist momentum on their side...

Efficiency

I'm so glad the free market invisibly guides us to do things like put six satellite dishes on one house...

Funny and inspiring TED talk

PSY 3135 forum post

Wright mentions the concept of the “environment of evolutionary adaptation,” or EEA. This idea says that a trait, and its associated gene(s) will be present today if they were adaptive in the environment where our ancestors lived, regardless of their usefulness today. In Wright's words, “We aren't designed to stand on crowded subway platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired or fired, or to watch the evening news. This disjunction between the contexts of our design and of our lives is probably responsible for much psychopathology, as well as much suffering of a less dramatic sort.”

Given how different the modern American environment is from that of the EEA, and that our technologies and thus lifestyle are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, what should we expect for the future of psychopathology if Wright is correct in asserting this effect? Does evolutionary biology give us clues? Could studies be designed to isolate those aspects of the modern environment that cause genes to express in the most troubling ways? Do you have any theories as to which aspects might cause the most trouble? Why?