Tag: psychology

Modern Male Sati

jealousy: you can’t undertake technical means to outlive your partner.

Peggy’s initial response to this ambition, rooted less in scientific skepticism than in her personal judgments about the quest for immortality, has changed little in the past 20-odd years. Robin, a deep thinker most at home in thought experiments, believes that there is some small chance his brain will be resurrected, that its time in cryopreservation will be merely a brief pause in the course of his life. Peggy finds the quest an act of cosmic selfishness.

Group think

To understand why this technology is so important, and so dangerous, you need to understand its patrimony. First, although the technology is brand new, the idea is a classic, long-time geek trope. It shows up, for example, in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, the best-selling albeit thinly-plotted space opera, in which protagonist Hari Seldon develops the science of “psychohistory”. Just as physics can predict the mass motion of a gas, even though any individual molecule is unpredictable, psychohistory allows us to predict the future of large groups of people. (It’s not hard to see why this sort of thing appeals to the socially maladroit. Forming cliques, establishing social ties– it’s complicated and messy stuff. If only there was a mathematics that laid it all out…)

But why is this technology only emerging now, not 15 or 20 years ago? For any technology, there are only 3 possible answers to this question: Moore’s law, the Internet, or the government. In the case of crowd dynamics, we have the last 2 to thank. The Internet has made the problem tractable by providing huge, easily-collected data sets of social interactions. But the government has been the real enabler. Just follow the money: nearly every relevant research project received funding from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

the state of “human terrain” research, and its applications. shades of psychohistory.

What Makes Us Happy?

For 75 years, in one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history, researchers have been following 268 men through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age.
Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers earned an average of $87K more a year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old.
Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers—but not with their fathers—were associated with effectiveness at work.
On the other hand, warm childhood relations with fathers correlated with lower rates of adult anxiety, greater enjoyment of vacations, and increased “life satisfaction” at age 75—whereas the warmth of childhood relationships with mothers had no significant bearing on life satisfaction at 75.

Vaillant’s key takeaway, in his own words: “The 75 years and 20y million $ expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward 5-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’ ”

The How of Happiness

An easy-to-follow, life-changing approach designed to increase happiness and fulfillment in everyday life furnishes a comprehensive guide that redefines what happiness and what it is not and introduces activities, including exercises in practicing optimism, tips on how to savor life’s pleasures, and an emphasis on staying active to achieve a happier life.

intrigued