mrrmrr @mrrmrr-blog-blog - Tumblr Blog

This comes close to the end of the story as it is now, but she can’t really end with the devil and a train ride.

Lydia Davis, “The Center of the Story” (via fwriction)

Subjective/Objective

Subjective: relating to or determined by the mind as the subject of experience; characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind; phenomenal; arising out of or identified by means of one’s awareness.

Objective: existing independent of mind; belonging to the sensible world and being observable or verifiable especially by scientific methods; expressing or involving the use of facts; derived from sense perception.

If you find it difficult to define exactly where sensory observation ends and individual awareness of that observation begins, you understand the problems of addressing this area of controversy. Even those who chose to selectively define the underlying terms must depend on another’s perception of that definition to have a meaningful discourse. The very nature of the argument is one of definitions.

[Some physicists] even propose that the distinction between subjective and objective is functionally non-existent. In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot explains that "there is compelling evidence that the only time quanta ever manifest as particles is when we are looking at them." Nick Herbert comments that this interpretation has sometimes caused him to imagine that behind his back the world is always "a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup".

Reality, that ultimate test of objectivity, may only be an individual subjective experience created by our participation and observation. Our collective reality may be constructed and rearranged by our thoughts, intentions and expectations. In the light of this "new science", the relative value of subjectivity versus objectivity, especially for the purpose of scientific investigation, seems to be as meaningless as the pre-Columbian debates over whether there were monsters at the edge of the known world or just a bottomless pit.

#unknowns #perception #interaction

nemtin

#other #writing

"I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again."

#emotions #relationships #unknowns

Some of our inability to recognise crises before they become dangerous is due to denial & other psychological responses that provide succour & protection for our emotions. The effect of our inability to attend to the likely results of our actions can result in crisis.

Ian I. Mitroff

#empathy #neuropsychology #crisis

Counter/Assumptions

A fundamental characteristic of problems is that when they first arise, they are highly ambiguous; in other words, problems are not separable from ambiguity. Indeed, if anything, problems are extracted from ambiguity. For something to be a problem it has to be infused with ambiguity, for the nature of most complex problems is not clear or well known in the beginning. This certainly applies to crises; rarely is the full nature of a crisis known when it first presents itself.

There is no one best or superior language in which to state a problem. The notion of "best language" already assumes that one knows the problem or, at the very least, knows a great deal about it. Certainly, most of our critical problems cannot be stated unambiguously, let alone in the restricted language of mathematics.

In principle, complex problems are not decomposable into a finite set of seperate & simpler problems. To the contrary, by definition, complex problems must be treated as "wholes" - in other words, complex problems possess overall properties that none of the parts can sustain outside the whole.

#crisis #language #unknowns

Amygdala Hijack

Term used to describe emotional responses which are not only immediate & overwhelming, but also out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat. "Emotions make us pay attention right now, providing an immediate action plan without having to think twice. The emotional component evolved very early: Do I eat it, or does it eat me - you don't sit around and Google it." This emotional response "can take over the rest of the brain in a millisecond if threatened. & while today's threats are more symbolic ('he's not treating me fairly'), we respond with the same biological response."

World-renowned emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman calls this eruption an "amygdala hijack". The amygdala is the center of the brain that controls this response, and also controls empathy; when it feels threatened, it can respond not just irrationally, but destructively.

"The human brain hasn't had a hardware upgrade in about 100,000 years," says Goleman. "Most of us are still acting out of the ancient fight-or-flight response, and that upgrade is long-overdue."

#empathy #neuropsychology #evolution

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw

#happiness

The Empathy Bell Curve

"Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to that person’s thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion. This suggests there are at least two stages in empathy: recognition and response. Both are needed, since if you have the former without the latter, you haven’t empathized at all."

#empathy

But then it’s Wednesday afternoon, and he takes a personal day and drives out to the suburbs, pulling into the rectangular library’s parking lot. He sits behind the steering wheel, looking through the windows at the shapes of people moving behind the streaky glass. There are nine or ten of them, all in jogging outfits, and then there is Jill, and she has a whistle around her neck, and there is a row of folding chairs, and the people in the class are all sitting and standing, sitting and standing, all with their narrow arms extended, each of them smiling, as if this repeated movement is one of the most interesting activities in the world. It has to be one of the weirdest things Daniel has ever seen, a roomful of people sitting and standing over and over again, as if by learning this simple movement again all the questions they have about their lives will be suddenly flooded with meaning. And then it becomes beautiful, the repetitive movement, a mottled choreography: the unmatched jogging pants, the group of rare, smiling faces, the most tremendously profound of human situations. We sit. We stand. We sit. We stand. A civilization, a species, all contained in one singular movement. Daniel watches them a while longer before finally making up his mind. And then, going inside, he hears: OK. Let’s begin again.

Joe Meno, "HOMO SAPIENS"

#inspiration #fiction #shortstories

Researchers Identify Gene Variants Affecting Human Lifespan

#epidemiology #overarchingthemes

Review sequence alignments and variant calls from the 1000 Genomes Project. Download genome slices of sequence and alignment data or genotype calls. Resource overview, access instructions, basic search strategy and examples available on NCBI Fact Sheet.

#epidemiology #overarchingthemes

re-up

From here out, I'll be reviving this long-dormant space as a repository for thesis research & development, with the extended goal of occasionally posting in-progress writing samples for review. Posts will likely come in waves, & will be tagged based on my own reference system, which I am not even going to begin to explain. Information &/or images I stumble upon in my research will likely also make their way in, regardless of their relevancy. Cat videos are unlikely. I apologize to no one.

I WILL NOT GET SUCKED IN TO THE INTERNET TODAY.

#mantra #internet

"An Insistent and Eager Harmoniousness to Things"

by David Keplinger

—David Abram

Like an enormous leech the pancreas lies with its head tucked into the duodenum, upside down, the tail outstretched over it, an animal curled in on itself. In the preserve jar of the belly, it wriggles like a strange, medieval cure. When we sleep, Anicka, the pancreas secretes its juices, reverting tonight’s toutlerre into Germanic syllables again:cake, meat, blood. All of this healing is out of our hands. I turn to you, completely unconscious. Completely unconscious, you turn to me.

#poetry #inspiration

Contemporary Chinese Warriors Yue Minjun, 2006 Milwaukee Museum of Art

“A smile doesn’t necessarily mean happiness; it could be something else.”

#Milwaukee Art Museum #art #china #my photographs

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

mrrmrr