Forms of Expression
Late-night thoughts, random musings, unrelated contemplations: Item. Lawsuits involve competing views attached to a set of facts. A rejoinder to another’s position assumes one will respond in a “proportionate” manner. But proportionality requires one to temper and moderate one’s level of response. Another approach is not initially to seek out proportionality, but to seek out […]
Skill Sets
Item. Is there an academic discipline that combines physiology and psychology in a systematic way? Or to put this in slightly different terms: can an examination of the physical be used to somehow predict behavior, speech patterns, ways of viewing the world, etc.? “We have two eyes” ––does this suggest we’re hardwired to see things […]
The Science of Subjectivity
“An action taken with positive thoughts will never produce negative results.” ― Debasish Mridha Risk, and its acceptable level, turn on internal and external circumstances, both known and unknown. Let’s take a simple, if somewhat stylized, example to illustrate. Suppose someone presents to you the following opportunity. There are a thousand sealed boxes all of them identical […]
Specialization’s Limit
Specialization of labor––surely this makes the most sense. Hire the most highly qualified people, train them in a particular specialty, and then have them carry out that single specialized task. This has been the conventional wisdom for decades, used in a variety of contexts. There would seem to be no downside to this perfectly rational […]
Care and Belief
There’s no work-life rule book, no single text that holds all the answers. Certainty is provisional; knowledge is interim; conventional wisdom can be uprooted in a day. Perfectionists are those who use a laser, not string, to align their garden rows. They ignore the well-worn path. They seek out the ultimate as if the ordinary––the […]
Searching for Patterns
We seek out patterns since they’re shortcuts to understanding. They provide an abbreviated means of making sense of things. When they work, they can save time and effort. But we sometimes find patterns in instances where none exist. Over time, we come to learn that searching for patterns can be a more complex task than […]
Witness Questioning and the Framing Effect
How questions are phrased makes all the difference. The specific words used, the tone and undertone of the question, the subject matter emphasized––depending on how a question has been phrased, one can pretty much predict the answer. Psychologists have long understood this concept, referring to it as “the framing effect:” “The framing effect provides another […]
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Neuronal Degeneration
Mild traumatic brain injury is underreported in car accidents. Very often in the blur of events drivers and their passengers will not describe to the emergency personnel the exact mechanism and mechanics of a crash. Hours and days later they will begin to experience symptoms. Forgetfulness. Headaches. Pain. Disorientation. Inability to concentrate. Brains scans such […]
