Being Human

I just wanted to say thanks for showing the movie on evolution. I found it really interesting. It helped me understand how something can gradually develop and improve over time to the needs of the environment. I learned about evolution before, but it has been a while, so the brush up was appreciated. Thanks!

Has anyone started their Wikipedia project yet? I'd love to hear what others are planning.

So i guess that it is normal for kids to turn out some what like their parents and all because they are the biggest influence to the kid from the start. I have this friend who has a child and this man is abusive to the mother and the child sees that on a regular basis and is now 2 1/2 and is showing signs of defiant 'bully' behavior. the kid is a male so that dominate bully gene probably is already there, but will it seem more normal as he grows up to treat woman like his dad? is he doomed to begin with? i know eventually we all develop a sense of right from wrong and a conscience like when the parents aren't the only influence...i mean the kid already says swear words! is that just bad parenting? he doesn't have the best role models...his dad is an alcoholic who is consistently in and out of jail and his mom works and constently taking back and forgiving his dad for beating her..so will the kid adopt the idea that that is the way it works? I mean i know that not all kids end up like their parents...i came from living in the ghetto with a drug addictive mother and siblings and i grew up knowing that, but i saw what the drugs made them and decided that that life style wasnt for me..but this kid has some serious violent issues....is it just a stage that all little boys go through and will grow out of? or is it programed in his little mind that its ok to act the way he does and how his parents do? its like 330 in the AM and i was just kind of thinking and rambling. it was all triggered because i'm with his dad and he was telling me all the things that his kid does. and i have always wondered what his son will turn out to be like since i have known him since birth and am very aware of the at home situation. i dunno i guess if i just think about it hard enough i would find this silly and could come up with some rational explanation, but, i'm tired......

 This is a video that some one sent me a while ago. Really interesting to think about what is going on are the horses really showing emotion... what do you think?

 sorry couldn't figure out the link hope this works.

http://www.supershorts.org.uk/view.html?id=512

I noticed that very few people have added personal information, and I thought I'd mention how to do it.

If you want to add a picture or personal information, you can follow these steps:

• Click on "my account" in the top left box on your screen under your user name.
• Click on the "edit" tab in the right field of your screen. It will be below the blue bar that goes across the top.
• Click on the "personal information" link. It will be one of the options under the edit tab.
• Add info!
• Click the submit button underneath when you are done.

When you fill it out, you will have some "stuff" on your personal information page. When people see your name in blue (like in comments), they can click on it and find out who you are.

Here are some of the pages (as examples) for me, Ryan, and Annie. As you can see, these personal info pages allow you to send private messages or read other things that the same person has written. (In order to recieve private messages back, you have to go into "my account", then go into the tab "account settings". Scroll down until you see "Private Message Settings" and then make sure the box next to "Allow Private Messages" is checked. After you do that, you can get things in your inbox on this site.)

The one odd thing is that (at least on my computer) the name attached to main articles is never clickable unless it is Rick with a "submitted by Rick" tagline, so you can never click through from an original blog article. I can only get to profiles through comments or if someone is listed under "who's online" on the left side of the screen.

If you investigate the personal information area, you'll find there are places for you to put in your home page info and other cool stuff.

Okay, that might not be quite the title she has for it, but it certainly is an apt description of the preview I saw yesterday.  I thought it might be interesting to watch as she is going to be discussing children who are spoiled and who rule the roost at home.  She showed some clips of a child around 5 terrorizing her parents and another clip of a teenager who feels entitled... that she should be spoiled.  I find it interesting how some children are that way and others not so much that way.  Are some children pre-dispositioned to expect things be handed to them or to be a terror or is it the way parent's raise them? 

I really enjoyed the bit of film we were able to watch on Richard Dawkins, and was particularly enthused about the computer programs that he used to demonstrate the mechanisms of evolution.

The last program that he shared, in which he was evolving a simple creature over generations, reminded me of a new computer game that is causing a rather large buzz in the video gaming community.

It is called Spore. The game is the brain child of Will Wright, a person well known for his innovation in the industry.

It is essentially a much more complex version of Richard Dawkins' program, in that it is a "game" of evolution. You start out as a single celled organism and evolve depending upon how you use what you are originally given. The game moves from single celled organism right up to a social society that engages in space exploration, with many stops inbetween (obviously).

In the June issue of Computer Gaming World magazine, they asked Wright what his biggest hope was for the game.

"I want it to change their self-perception of how creative they are or can be. And I hope it makes them think about the nature of life and ponder some of the philosophical questions around life."

I wonder whether people playing this game will get a bit of a boost of understanding about evolution? While it isn't a highly technical look at the process, I think it could help kids to understand how small adaptations over time can lead to big changes. It is also interesting seeing complex "evolutionary" algorithms try to imitate life.

Then again, it does put someone behind the creation of objects and lifeforms in the game. Even when the computer takes over life forms and runs them through the evolutionary process (since critters and objects from other players will be sort of cross-pollinated with the worlds of others and then computer controlled), there was a jump start at the beginning by someone with intention. So, perhaps it will reinforce that all things start with intention (and that intention is on the part of an intelligent being). Who knows?

 I am very interested in what other class mates think of the reading (who am we)?  I was disturbed at some of the comments that were made. I would like to throw a few at you to get some input. 21 year old college senior defends his characters as "something in him, he would rather rape on MUDs where no harm is done?

A girl who doesn't always agree with her father was told by him, if she grows too many thorns, she will never catch a man. WHAT ? Maybe this might explain why I am still single, are we suppose to be submissive to please a man? what kind of man would want a woman without a mind of her own? I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I sure would like to hear what others think. This poor girl has to express herself in a video game because she is not able to in real life?

My next and last question (sex and fidelity) emotional intimacy with someone other than one's primary partner? Is infidelity in the head or in the body? In my opinion they seem to be connected, how in the world can you have one without the other? these are the kinds of readings that make me go hmmmmmm. I always have so many questions and there are never enough answers. Help me out.

are we made (for lack of a better word) who we are more by our society/environment or our biology/genetics?

In my seminar group the topic of feral children was briefly brought up. I found this documentary on YouTube that is pretty interesting.

You can also go here to watch it.

I found this video really interesting in that it lets you see some of the behaviors that Piaget studied and has more history on the man himself.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-9014865592046332725&hl=en       

All the discussion this evening about the eye tickled a memory of mine.  Here is a link to an experiment about eyesite on website that has a bunch of interesting games and experiments related to psychology.  Enjoy!

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/blindspot1.html

So in tonights discussion following seminar we talked about media and the effects of children.  I had to find out a little more, but realized that I am not to invested on the subject.  But others seemed to be, so  what I found was a report by the Kiaser Family Foundation on the subject.  They completed a survey on about 1,000 parents.  Check it out if you want more info.  Right now my mind has thought to much, and I need to zone out infront of the picture box for awhile.

Children and Electronic Media

Recent years have seen an explosion in electronic media marketed directly at the very youngest children in our society, yet very little is known about how these changes have played out in young people's lives. In order to help understand the implications, the Foundation conducted a national study of more than 1,000 parents of children ages six months through six years. The findings are published in the report Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers.

 http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia052406pkg.cfm

Just heard this fascinating installment of Open Source Radio about the ways in which marketing has dialed in to the mechanisms of the mind in order to manipulate our choices, especially about food, with such efficiency that we are unable to resist eating stuff that we don't want. This program is very relevant to the discussion that we've been having about the structure (and vulnerabilities) of the human mind.

Link.

Hey Team,

So.... I am online right now and when I read the posts they are one really long sentance. I have to drag the page horizontaly to read the blogs. On top of that, there is a line through the blog. In addition, all of the responses are also one singular line. This is very time consuming to read and post. How do I fix this? Please help.

Descartes' Baby helped me with a huge break-through in my therapy... The discussion of the development of mind reading really boggled my brain and this is why. Children before the age of two, before they can even speak, can understand that other people have desires. Not only can babies understand their own likes and dislikes they empathize with others. This creeps me out because before children have the vocabulary to tell their parents to not pass their personal baggage, and set up healthy boundaries, babies are empathizing with their parents. Before the development of language babies are sorting through transitions by their feelings. I am sure all of my personal emotional "crap" that I don't know where it came from can be traced to my development of "mind reading" my parents.

So if the ability of humans to sort of empathize with others and understand that other people have their own beliefs, thoughts, and motives is innate, what about animals? If theory of mind is innate, then it would follow that most humans are genetically endowed with the potential for it. And if it is just a specific phenotype of a certain gene, then couldnt some other animals have the same potential, or at least some form of it?

The only article I could find on the issue was by Cecilia Heyes, and she did not seem to think that primates (who are the most commonly studied animals for theory of mind) had any form of it. heres the link if anyone's interested. http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/05/46/index.html

I could be way off the mark, but I have had experiences personally with pets of mine where they seemed to be able to read my mood and act accordingly. Like my cats. They can usually just tell when Im in a bad mood and just seem to know to give me space. Or when Im in a good mood, they are more likely than normal to approach me looking to get petted. And admittedly, this goes back to the thread about pets, and i could just be projecting what seem to be motives onto my cats. But based on experience, I think some animals have at least some form of theory of mind. Maybe not as evolutionarily fine-tuned as humans, but I think there is some capacity there.

I was just wondering about this whole nature vs. nurture debate. I mean, it seems to me like there aren't really many developmental psychologists (or just people in general) who think that human behavior is due to only one of the two extremes. Most would probably say it's a mixture of the two... I realize that "nature vs nurture" is a rather large, nonspecific topic, which can one could relate to many of the other topics we've discussed in class so far.

But I guess specifically, I recently got to thinking about how developmental psychologists study certain traits, and then make a reasoned determination as to whether they are more genetically heritable, more socially conditioned, or both. Like Steven Pinker, for example, can classify several personality traits as being in either camp: "concrete behavioral traits that patently depend on content provided by the home or culture—which language one speaks, which religion one practices, which political party one supports—are not heritable at all. But traits that reflect the underlying talents and temperaments—how proficient with language a person is, how religious, how liberal or conservative—are partially heritable."

What puzzles me is how a researcher would define a personality trait. And how they would then accurately rate a person according to that trait. It seems inaccurate to lump all of the possible positions on the vast spectrum of human emotion or temperment into a few representative categories. It makes me wonder how a person would ever rate a thing like intelligence. How can you classify something as either genetically heritable or socially conditioned when the definition of the trait varies from person to person? Wouldn't the researcher's unique perspective inherently bias their interpretation?

Anyway, that's just something I was wondering about.

Well I finally got my descartes Baby book.  In the first chapter Bloom discusses that when a infant is shown a item on the floor and then it is covered up.  The child believes that the item has disappeared and is surprised when it is uncovered.  Could this be why playing peek aboo is so entertaining to infants, but if I was to do it class everyone would think I on drugs?  The thing is now my duaghter will grab a blanket or hide behind a door ( not all of her just her head) and play peek aboo with herself, and still laughs and acts surprised when the world is uncovered to her.  Sometimes I wonder if she is just trying to figure out how it works.  After reading this chapter I started to wonder how much money toy companies have put into figuring out what will hold a babies attention the longest.  Looking around my living room while I read this made me start to think, So thats why they have the lights do that, or sounds or levers.  anyhow just random thoughts for the day.

I can't help but continue to ponder about Saturday's debates that we watched. I found the second debate by the women (sorry, can't remember her name) very interesting. Especially interesting was the comment about how parents treat their children differently, i.e. boys and girls are treated differently. This fact also tied into some of the reading this week about a woman's role in a man's life cycle. I believe that the parents do treat their children differently, although not necessarily on purpose. It seems from birth the girls are the pretty, sensitive, fragile beings that we must protect. They are taken in under their mother's wing. On the other hand, it seems that although boys to are nurtured by their mother, they are taken in under their father's wing and shown "the way to be a man," and "how to be tough." I found the perceptions of parents regarding their children in the studies profound. Just the simple fact that parents of boys reported their boys as being talented in math more than the parents of girls was pretty eye opening. Parents' perceptions influence their children's actions. That is why I think gender stereotypes live on, because to some extent they are true....and this is because it is a learned behavior....such as the girls helping mom in the kitchen and the boys out in the garage helping dad.