3 mistakes

In this sentence there is 3 mistake.

Reptilian thinking

The amygdalae send impulses to the hypothalamus for important activation of the sympathetic nervous system, to the reticular nucleus for increased reflexes, to the nuclei of the trigeminal nerve and facial nerve for facial expressions of fear, and to the ventral tegmental area, locus coeruleus, and laterodorsal tegmental nucleus for activation of dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine.

The cortical nucleus is involved in the sense of smell and pheromone-processing. It receives input from the olfactory bulb and olfactory cortex. The lateral amygdalae, which send impulses to the rest of the basolateral complexes and to the centromedial nuclei, receive input from the sensory systems. The centromedial nuclei are the main outputs for the basolateral complexes, and are involved in emotional arousal in rats and cats.

In complex vertebrates, including humans, the amygdalae perform primary roles in the formation and storage of memories associated with emotional events. Research indicates that, during fear conditioning, sensory stimuli reach the basolateral complexes of the amygdalae, particularly the lateral nuclei, where they form associations with memories of the stimuli. The association between stimuli and the aversive events they predict may be mediated by long-term potentiation, a lingering potential for affected synapses to react more readily.

From Dacher Keltner’s wonderful lessons at UCB.

From the social psychology lessons on iTunes U:

We are not neutral processors of information. Our pre-existing attitudes lead us to take in information that agrees with our attitudes and accept that while we reject information that contradicts our social attitudes.

A state of cognitive dissonance is harmful and painful. When we are in this state of painful dissonance we seek change and we engage in actions that restore our beliefs to a more consonant state.

Negative reactions are stronger than positive reactions.

A yogology concept: 4 branches of avidya

Avidya literally means “incorrect comprehension”. Avidya is expressed and experienced in 4 different ways:

1. Asmita (ego): “I have to be better than other people”.
2. Raga (attachment): We want something today because it was pleasant yesterday, not because we really need it today. 
3. Dvesa (refusal): We have a difficult experience and we are afraid of repeating it.
4. Abhinivesa (fear): We feel uncertain. We have doubts about our position in life.

The goal of yoga is to reduce the film of avidya. Yoga means acting in such a way that all of our attention is directed toward the activity we are currently engaged. Where we are attentive to our actions we are not prisoners of our habits; we do not need to do something today simply because we did it yesterday.

It is a classic yoga concept, very close to ecology. Yogology = yoga + ecology.

T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga

4 Rs

Reuse, recycle, reduce, refuse.

The Long Tail

An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as follows: “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.”

Heinz von Forster’s Cybernetics and Circularity

A selection of Heinz von Forster’s aphorisms:

The Hermeneutic Principle: “The hearer, not the speaker determines the meaning of an utterance.”

Jean Piaget’s Epistemological Postulate: “He who organises his experience organises the world”.

The Constructivist Postulate: “Experience is the cause, the world is the consequence.”

The Realist Postulate: “The World is the cause, experience is the consequence.”

The Logic of the World Principle: “The logic of the world is the logic of descriptions (of the world).”

http://www.cybsoc.org/heinz.htm

The Nature of Belief

R. Dilts, Changing Belief Systems with NLP:

Let’s say that a child doesn’t do well on an exam. 
The teacher could say, “It is not your fault at all. Either there was noise in the room or something in the environment that interfered with your performance on the exam”. In other words, the problem is in your environment and has nothing to do with you at all. Of course, this has the least impact on the student.
The teacher could say, focusing on a specific behavior, “You did poorly on this text.” That puts the responsibility with the student.
At the capacity level the teacher could say, “You are not very good at this kind of material, your capabilities for math or spelling – or whatever it is – are not well developed”. This has a wider implication.
On a value level the teacher could say, “Oh well, it is not important. What is important is that you enjoy learning”. The teacher is reinforcing the belief that it is not important ti get a good grade, but that enjoying learning is important. Now we have jumped to the level of belief. This goes beyond the subject area to the whole process of learning.
On the level of identity, the teacher can say, “You are a poor student” or “You are a learning disabled person” or “You are not a mathematician”. This touches the child’s whole being. This level of identity is different from level of capability. It is different to believe that I’m not capable of excelling in a particular subject than to believe that I am a stupid person.
If I take something on as part of my identity it begins to have a very profound impact.

We are deserts

We are deserts but populated by tribes, flora and fauna. We pass our time in ordering these tribes, arranging them in other ways, getting rid of some and encouraging others to prosper… The desert, experimentation on oneself, is our only identity, our single chance for all the combinations which inhabit us (G. Deleuze and C. Parnet, Dialogues, Paris, Fiammarion, 1977).

Architecture as Experience

From Architecture as Experience, D. Arnold and A. Ballantyne:

Michel de Certeau has suggested drawing a distinction between the use of the words ‘place’ and ‘space’ such that the ‘place’ would be the unmediated fabric (e.g. the stones of Stonehenge) but the ‘space’ that visitors experience would be a ‘practised space’ – the place refracted through the visitor’s culture, experience and use of the place (M. de Certeau, ‘Spatial Stories’, in A. Ballantyne, What is Architecture?, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 72-87).

Heterotopia a place that is different from itself, on account of the plurality of readings of its events (Michel Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, in Diacritics, Spring 1986). In the light of such readings, it is necessary to draw a distinction between a building as an object and the various experiences of the building (the ‘misprisions’ of the place) which can properly be called ‘architecture’ – which is to say that architecture is our experience of buildings.

The architecure which is produced will depend partly on the kind of stimuli and sensations that are caused by the building (as an inert object) and partly by the cultural apparatus in the mind of the person – the instincts, concept and habits through which the stimuli are refracted. Both the buildings and the person’s mind are necessary to architecture, and different minds might produce different architectures when brought into contact with the same building – as in the heterotopias mentioned above.