Inlägg publicerade under kategorin psychology

Av dennis hägglund - 18 juni 2008 06:49

If you wish to proceed using your own slide-show as per below, rather than waiting until I have put one together, the second experiment is simple enough to describe. Perhaps your own logic will make some adjustments/improvements.


First we need to show centrifugal force. Simple. A string and a weight. This is to show that the Earth and other planets and plastic celestial bodies that are spinning are flattened, so that they are fat around the equator, or so that the distance through the centre from equator to equator is much longer than the distance from pole to pole.


Second we need to show how things can be twisted by this force. We know that a swing with one rope longer than the other will not ride evenly. What we need is two strings looped at one end. A stick or pencil to serve as the top of the swing, and something to serve as the seat. We make this little doll size swing do loop-the-loops, over the top several times, and with one string longer than the other the strings will twist predictably. And if we turn the swing around so that the other string is longer it twists the opposite way.


Third we want to show that a weight dangling perpendicularly from a pole of a globe that is flattened sees a smaller outline or silhouette of the planet or body if the string is longer. This can probably be done with just a diagram, although a more interesting demonstration might be of value.


Fourth we want to have it understood by the students that the first thing we recognise chronologically about the evolvement of the universe we live in is a dispersal of hydrogen and perhaps helium atoms, the simplest atoms. These atoms filled the space we now occupy and there was nothing else on that scale or larger around.


That these atoms also had to grow from something is plain enough, but the fractal microcosm is another study, and not really required for this experiment, except to say that gravity is not limited to any size particle, the iterations of the atom being exponentially separated, so that the search for the graviton would seem rather an ambitious place to start. Needless to say, these primary atoms did find each other attracting.


Fifth we show the students that the water will always select to go down a drain twisting in the same direction.


We are not teaching physics to these children. This is about spontaneous discovery. We want to minimize the role of teacher. We want to eliminate the pride of knowing. Make a vacuum of teaching and see if there is some hope that this will bring out the eagerness to discover rather than the irrational conditioned reflex to know. We also do not approve of those who discover; we eliminate the reward gimmick. Discovery is its own reward. Discovery, not a reward, is what we want to share, or it isn't discovery. And we don't want the next person to know it, but to discover it.


Next, of course, we present the slide-show, letting the students control the next and previous buttons if possible.

Av dennis hägglund - 17 juni 2008 06:44

The conscious will not grasp what there is to be without conscious activity. It sees two prospects: being the conscious or being empty of living. The flame we are fanning back to life is estranged to human life. We would not be having human life as we know it if this flame had been kept high.


There is a part of us that knows where the moon and the sun are, these being important to perfect balance. There is a part of us that composes our laughter, and as it is a composer, obviously it also listens to laughter as meaning, which means listening to and comparing nuances that could barely, if at all, be measured by the most sophisticated modern instruments. There is a language hidden in laughter compared to which human language with all its fine synonyms pales to invisibility. In other words, there is an animal sleeping while conscious imposes itself on the waking hours, and this animal will actually make friends with other species perpetually, meaning other species will make friends with it the instant they spot it (not meaning they will behave as if tame).


("It” is a nice pronoun, isn’t it? Better than saying "he” all the time, meaning he or she, or in Scandinavia, saying "she” all the time.)


Why are small children so sensitive? We have to restrict their film viewing to Winnie The Pooh, and keep a careful eye on Winnie, in case he should get too crude. It is because children that age make friends universally; friend is another word for any life. If you feed the child chicken you make sure he doesn’t first meet the hen, or you’ll have a holocaust scene at the table. This becomes a weakness only in the pet shop, when the adoption instinct takes charge. And of course in the world of evil! How does one explain to a child that since paradise there has been this plague spreading over the planet, and it’s his own species? The crimes against children are numerous, and yet they can’t suspect the existence of them at first. They have a notion that only God can have children, but in conscious we have a usurper to the throne of entity, the delusion of entity. And this delusion has children (and infects other species). Without it none of us would.


When we are grown up we have the sense to suspect some things of some people, but since everyone becomes a consummate actor around puberty this is an extremely limited sense. Mostly people are about as attuned to human reality as Winnie The Pooh. We have wandered through the world looking at the facades of respectability, never learning to penetrate them. It is in this accumulated experience of facades that conscious takes form. It is "life” in the "world” having deposed or dethroned Life in the World.


Now we have a couple of experiments which hopefully many people will have a chance to perform. Discovery is the purpose, and hence the mind must be free of conclusions. Something will show up that we couldn’t anticipate.


Discovery Moment, in psychological research, is the study of a peak in brain activity that occurs when something we are looking at suddenly makes perfect sense to us. The duration of the peak is very short. The most memorable example of the pictures we saw on SVT when it presented the study was perhaps a photo of a room where everything is white with rather random black irregular spots. At first we don’t see anything but white with spots; we assume it is just a pattern. Finally, after coming back to it a few times, we realise there is a Dalmatian dog sitting in the picture in a room furnished to match its coat. It’s a photo of a dog that wasn’t there to the viewers first effort to understand the picture.


Most of my art is discovery moment oriented. It is complex and specific, while, at first, the viewer often assumes it is just stylised doodles. What I am hoping you will find time to do is "Comparative Discovery Moment” with children. Look at the images together with the children, preferably a whole class because we prefer diversity, and with a minimum of discussion. All the children know is that no one knows what each picture is a picture of. You start together, so that you also don't know, and never look at the images except together. The images are always right side up, and you access them by using the URL at the bottom. When a child is sure, just to himself, that he has seen clearly what the picture is, he lets you know, writes it down if he is old enough, but doesn't tell anyone, so that each one has a chance to find out in his own time.


I have labelled only one image, which I expect to upload today, because "Poison Ivy" doesn't grow in Sweden. It's a gorgeous vine when it turns red, clinging to trees like part of them. Like nettles, one has to watch out for it unless one is immune, which a fair minority are.


In some cases the discovery may take days, and in others some child or children may discover the images on the first try. Once you have discovered them it is hard to believe they are not obvious to everyone. Be careful not to make any sign of disbelieving the child when he declares what he sees, if you yourself haven't seen it yet or can't see what he says he sees. He could draw you a picture of it, but what we want is just a list of what each child says and approximately how long he has been looking at it when he says it.


Each image is like a sentence, saying exactly what it says and in no way failing to say only and exactly that. These are not like inkblots, where they merely remind you of something.


There are two Discovery Moment experiments, one with my pictures and one with astronomy. I’ll be adding images to the fws1 website, maybe improving the presentation. Hopefully I will even put up some pertinent astronomy images before long. So if you catch this on the day I first post it, don’t despair.


http://lil0.fws1.com/


A few more images: http://picasaweb.google.com/DrDplEmuvd/Art

Av dennis hägglund - 7 juni 2008 15:37

Experiment:

We collect various dung samples from the wild, and also samples from cows, dogs and people on a Western diet. We arrange these samples at random and introduce the eggs of the same species of fly to each so that they will hatch one very generous batch per day. The fly species was selected to find all the samples acceptable. This means that each day we have a large number of flies from only one dung sample.

When each batch of flies was ready it was tested by putting part of it in a room with students, part in a room with dogs, part in a busy petting zoo and part in a picnic outdoors. The videos were compared.


Result: the flies that grew to maturity in the wild dung consistently proved benign to all concerned compared to the flies grown in the other three.


Conclusion: flies have emotions, and are disturbed if they have been cultivated in unnatural dung, dung from creatures who deviate from their niches. They transmit these emotions to those they socialise with. We further conclude that the same will prove true using bacteria.

Av dennis hägglund - 7 juni 2008 15:07

Experiment:

Preschoolers are selected who have never used a pair of binoculars, and whose vision seems normal in both eyes. They are taken to a field where they can see their friends, who they have not seen all that day, playing, but at a distance where they can only recognise them through the binoculars so that at first they are not aware of them. The binoculars are set up, pointed, focused and adjusted for the child so that all he has to do is set his eyes to them to find his friends.


Result: The children see their friends and forget they are seeing them through the binoculars, so that they call to them in a normal voice, a voice designed to reach about a tenth of the distance. Usually they then look inquiringly at us, as if finding it inexplicable that their friends don’t answer, wondering if we would explain it. Some of them do the same thing three times in a row.


Conclusion: we presume it is reasonable to equate binocular-obliviousness with self-obliviousness, a tendency to ignore that perception is rooted in the body, which derives from an intensity of perception peculiar to the earliest years of human development (and to people who have had LSD-like drugs administered to them as done in Germany for curing addiction).


Av dennis hägglund - 7 juni 2008 14:31

Experiment:

Two dogs and their owners standing next to each other, a series of volunteers from the student body, one monitor who also serves refreshments, one or two escorts and a camera person.

First the volunteer is introduced to the owners and the dogs to make sure he has no issues with them. Then the escorts take each victim some distance away from the dogs, owners, etc. and drop a firecracker behind him without warning, watching to make sure there is a gratifying effect. The volunteer is then escorted to the place where the dogs, owners, and monitor are waiting.

The volunteer is presented with two cocktail glasses full of sparkling water by the monitor, one for each hand, and is asked to take these to the dog’s owners several paces away and hand them both over simultaneously; and he is told that part of the test is to see how much of the water will actually get delivered.


Result: the volunteer approaches the dog’s and owners with the two glasses of water, but before he can hand these to the two owners he has a fit of panic just like the one he had when the firecracker was lit behind his back, and he spills a good deal of the water.


Observation: from the video we conclude that the hormones of the panic emotion are discovered by the dogs, but in the discovery process these hormones are not excreted into the dog's blood; rather they are excreted into the volunteer's blood by the dog's discovery. We are calling this a "self-oblivious” discovery or emotion. In the dog it is an emotion of the mind, which is a difficult thing to define, while in the volunteer it is an emotion of the blood. The dog understands the feeling perfectly without physically feeling it, but not without re-inducing it in the volunteer.


The experiment is repeated to try to determine if it matters to the dogs if they have heard the firecracker or not.


Then the experiment is repeated using an embarrassing wet spot, where the volunteer puts a spot of water on his clothes where it may be misconstrued. He then is given a folded paper to hide it with while he is walked through a crowd of people. Hiding it this way he does not look quite natural, and inevitably he becomes embarrassed just the same.

When the spot has dried and the embarrassment is presumed gone he is taken to two dogs and their owners who are close together to see if the dogs will discover the emotion as before.


Result: There was no way to check the hormones without more invasive technology than a camera, but the volunteers agreed that the dogs brought the embarrassment back. One volunteer denied the feeling, but he also became suddenly visibly angry with the dogs for some reason at the point where the other volunteers nodded.

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