http://humancond.org/ 2012-05-19T21:55:48-04:00 http://humancond.org/ http://humancond.org/lib/tpl/arctic/images/favicon.ico text/html 2012-05-13T00:00:19-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/books/stumbling_on_happiness?rev=1336881619&do=diff Daniel Gilbert A very interesting book summarizing some research on happiness. This is not a self-help book, and the general theme is that people are terribly bad at predicting what will make themselves happy and terribly bad at recalling what actually did happen and whether they were happy or not. This somewhat resembles the judgment and decision literature on recurring judgment errors, but with an emphasis on the errors that affect our happiness. text/html 2012-05-12T23:17:57-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/social/differences_and_fairness?rev=1336879077&do=diff Our sense of fairness is an evolved part of our response to cooperative group living. Cooperation is very much a win-win proposition, but often some individuals will contribute more to a particular undertaking, and some individuals will receive more of the benefits. Our sense of fairness is an intuitive gut sense of whether the rewards are appropriate. This is closely related to the ideas of Cheating (breaking the rules) and freeloading (gaining a benefit that goes to all without having contr… text/html 2012-05-12T23:10:18-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/level_map?rev=1336878618&do=diff This diagram is a map of the human condition that emphasizes the levels of reality and of mental processing. The general idea is that adjacent blocks connect in an intimate way and that non-adjacent blocks must communicate through intervening layers unless there is a connector arrow. The large-scale division is into the , the and four layers of . Except for the topmost layer this map also describes all mammals (though the functioning of the mental layers 2 and 3 is considerably richer in hu… text/html 2012-05-12T22:54:19-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/mind/argumentative_theory?rev=1336877659&do=diff Two people are caught in some highly compromising situation, and one says to the other: “Think of something quick!” Why is this such a funny joke? It captures something about the human condition---there were surely lots of times in our evolutionary past where the ability to think of something quick was a vital survival skill. We should not be surprised to find that humans are endowed with an excellent ability to make up explanations after the fact. We should not confuse the ready generation… text/html 2012-05-12T22:52:30-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/mind/representational_opacity?rev=1336877550&do=diff Representational opacity is the idea that the workings of the unconscious are necessarily invisible to conscious awareness because the way the unconscious mind works is fundamentally different. The conscious mind is largely verbal (see The Interpreter Theory), so its workings are necessarily discrete, symbolic (or qualitative) and somewhat logical, whereas the unconscious is quantitative, approximate, profusely connected and semantically ambiguous. text/html 2012-05-12T22:49:44-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/wiki/todo?rev=1336877384&do=diff This page contains notes on things that need to be done in the wiki and lists of pages that need work (, , and .) Seed Content * Work more keywords into front page: human nature, etc. * SEO “positive self regard” * Fix up “The Human Story” * All the front-page and level map links should be not only not broken, but also to solid content. * economics:0main, split off sustainability, better overview. Ref Luxury Fever. * Add a bunch of stubs * evidence and themes story pages… text/html 2012-05-12T22:47:14-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/evolution/sex_differences?rev=1336877234&do=diff people orientation vs. thing orientation Simon baron Coehn neonatal sex differences Why do people care? * Only mental differences controversial * Political (inequality and nature/nurture) * Scientific investigation. EP assumes differences are genetic, although that assumption may not be entirely necessary. Cultural evolution plausibly also seeks successful reproduction, so the presence of such adaptations doesn't prove primacy of the genetic process. The “smart unconscious” and mo… text/html 2012-05-12T20:12:28-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/economics/price_vs_worth_vs_value?rev=1336867948&do=diff We are using prices, worth and value to mean specific things here. The price (as we’re using it) is the number of currency units it would take to buy a good or service. In this context the worth is the economic importance the good or service is thought to have, the thing the price is intended to represent. The value is the actual benefit or enjoyment that a good or service yields. These terms tend to become blurred in standard economics, but here we have to keep them separate. See Value. text/html 2012-05-12T20:06:53-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/economics/economy_as_network?rev=1336867613&do=diff If we assume that value is subjective, and that consumers accumulate it (or the things that give it) around themselves, and that businesses expand by providing it (or the tools for others to provide it), then we begin to get a picture of the economy as existing, in the most fundamental way, within a network of social relations. text/html 2012-05-12T19:38:23-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/economics/basis_of_the_dollar?rev=1336865903&do=diff What is the U.S. Dollar based on, and what does this have to do with human happiness? In an important sense, the dollar is based on our collective public opinion. But then again, so is the rest of the economy. One way to understand this is to look at how the amount of money in circulation is controlled, to the degree that it is controlled. text/html 2012-05-12T19:31:05-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/physical/prediction_is_intractable?rev=1336865465&do=diff It is an awkward fact that, except for extremely simple or routine tasks, it is impossible to make accurate predictions of the difficulty of achieving a goal. It usually takes more time and money than expected, and often we give up having achieved nothing. Similarly, when predicting things that result from human social behavior such as stock market moves or movie sales we find that we can do no better than predicting the stock price will be the same as yesterday or the movie sales will be the … text/html 2012-05-12T19:22:01-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/physical/sensory_limitations?rev=1336864921&do=diff Our senses disregard almost all of the virtually infinite amount of information that could be sensed. How do we know this, and why is this so? Let's consider only vision. People have estimated the human visual bandwidth at around 10 megabits/sec by considering things such as how many nerve fibers there are in the optic nerve and how much information each fiber can transmit. How much is there out there to sense that we are missing? text/html 2012-05-12T19:18:17-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/philosophy/a_priori?rev=1336864697&do=diff An evolutionary perspective gives insight into a traditional philosophical problem of the relation between a priori knowledge (which can be known to be true without reference to evidence from the world) and a posteriori knowledge (which can only be evaluated by examination of the world to see if it is in fact that way.) This is closely related to the duality of necessary/contingent (see A priori and a posteriori). Our point here is that this somewhat dusty philosophical debate can be seen as … text/html 2012-05-12T19:14:15-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/philosophy/truth?rev=1336864455&do=diff There is a close relationship between Truth and Reality. Truth (or falsehood) is a property of statements, while reality is that which actually is. In the most intuitive definition, a statement is true if it corresponds to or is consistent with reality (see Correspondence Theory of Truth.) In our discussion of truth we emphasize the formal and contingent nature of truth and our process of assessing or seeking truth (see Epistemology), especially through Science, while we refer to reality more… text/html 2012-05-12T19:09:10-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/mind/story?rev=1336864150&do=diff We use story very broadly to mean any sort of explanation, theory, prediction, justification or verbal description. Any narrative inevitably contains these elements, whether it is a myth, a story intended to entertain, a persuasive political speech, or a scientific publication. text/html 2012-05-12T16:39:56-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/bias/above_average_effect?rev=1336855196&do=diff The above average effect is the prevalent positive illusion that oneself is above average in most ways, which is clearly mathematically impossible. You, dear reader, are surely above average in most ways, but it isn't possible for a majority of people to be above average. See Illusory superiority. text/html 2012-05-12T16:02:23-04:00 ram http://humancond.org/analysis/evolution/meta_evolution?rev=1336852943&do=diff By meta-evolution, we mean the evolution of mechanisms that that assist evolution. These changes can be thought of as optimizing the evolutionary algorithm. Once we adopt the view of Evolution as Algorithm we can unify understanding of a number of events in human history and ancestry that are generally studied in isolation and often not even understood as being instances of a more general pattern.