Evolving Systems course, week 10: exploring stories of individual change

The end of our discussion today really interested me- the struggle of reaching intellectual heights or reaching social heights, if we might do both, and trying to come up with perfection. Perfection is such a funny thing-- we know there is no way we can really make perfection because it is impossible, but we try anyway. Perfection must be perfect to everyone but only certain people find certain things perfect, and we are imperfect beings so how could we possibly correctly identify and/or create perfection anyway? Why do we care so much? I think a little bit is that to many people perfection involves ease. It's hard to not want something to be easy (I know it is for me, at the very least), and to not want everything to just work itself out with minimal effort. That's half of what our society today focuses on: making everything as easy as possible. After all, if it's easy than everyone can access it and then there are fewer problems. But maybe we should be focusing on making more people capable of dealing with the complex, because no matter how much we want it to be otherwise, our world is complex. If all we know is easy, I don't think we can reach our potential or truly understand the world around us.

Which brings up education all over again. I think of the education system (in this country at least, cannot speak for anywhere else) as how we teach socialization, at least until the college level where theoretically we are allowed free access to knowledge. We can't get dessert or the cool toys until we learn how to play nice. Learning how to socialize is aggravating, from my experience. I used to continuously entertain the idea of how I would teach children, and most of the time it was just letting the kids loose on some books and stuff and hanging around to answer questions. This is partially based off of personal experience: this was how my educational experience began, and I always felt I learned better and was happier that way, so I want other people to experience the same. Who knows what's really right or good though?

Gosh, morality is so frustrating. Thinking about it makes me just wish someone would write a big book (no, not the Bible) that defined, for everyone equally, what is moral and what isn't. Then people would lose points for each rule from each category (some being more severe than others) they broke- kind of like a credit score. Finally, people would live with other people of the same level of morality as them and we could all be happy.

"The Moral Life of Babies" really intrested me. My initial reactions were "Looking time is bs" and that it would be easy to skew the results with bias researchers and that whomever made up these experiments is really smart or crazy or both. But towards the end of the (very lengthy) article, I became very intrested in what the results really indicated.

First, the results showed that a majority of the babies thought the same- choosing the good toys over the bad ones. For my purpose, I'll ignore the few who didn't choose the good toys as having been confused. Does this mean we are not just born with morality, but equal "amounts" of it? So is morality not like other traits, a combination of "nature and nurture"? In order for it to be so, the "nature" aspect could not be equal in all because if it was then it could be said we are only affected by our enironment. Therefore, thus presuming there is not genetic component involved with morality, we could be living in peace and harmony if only our environments would allow for it?

In biology, we looked at this: V_P= V_G + V_E. I forgot what the letters exactly stood for but 'E' is environment and 'G' is genes and 'P', I guess, is kind of like the final product. If V_G is equal to an arbitrary number, say, 10 for everyone- then this indicates we have huge control over what our societies could be like and there is nothing stopping us from living in a perfect world except for the cultures and environments we have already set up. If any of this is really possible, then I'd say it's time to set up some universal socialism and hope for the best.

We don’t usually say individual evolution, possibly because that people do not change physically despite the normal routine of aging, and that people’s thoughts are too hard to have a fixed definition of its nature. We can change our thoughts in one second only by one other thought or suggestion, but if thoughts still follow a certain pattern and if they are changing and developing in a collective way, the evolution of individual might come to light.

However, I doubt that frequent and random changes are the only left nature of thoughts. I tried to record my impromptu melody sometimes and listened to it after few months or even one year. It turned out that when I was listening to it, I could sing out the exactly the same melody synchronously with my record. This is not a famous melody or a rigorous composition, but it lies in my memory as a complete and fixed pattern, with my understanding of music. I could not remember it when you want me to sing, but as the first few seconds of my record rings out, I know it and I could sing it out. Is that a sign that thoughts could be a pattern which falls into a road to evolution?

Also, I don’t know if we are really focusing on one individual evolution while we have to give an extension to our in-class discussion. Which is more important? Maybe when we are trying to give proof that individual can evolve,  we still need more than one individual to show our point. I want to connect music and memory and Beethoven altogether, but the problem is how I can know about all aspects of his life, including his thoughts. And this leads to another question. Collection of data is required for a relatively objective empirical observation. We can see that in the evolution of one population. But when it comes to individual, which world and principles, like Russell’s student pointed out, are we referring to?

And what is more challenging is that, if babies can think and tell the truth, how do they do that without learning to have a human logic reasoning? Instinctions?  This may suggest a totally different understanding of reasoning, which is the foundation of all laws and regulations of human society. Or maybe the power babies have is just a prompt of nature suggesting that we can never be the smartest, and we could end up in involution or degeneration as we grow up.

 Last week’s discussion is really interesting addressed the topics about moral lives of babies and book of Logicomix. There are several interesting points I want to point out.

1.       I am really fascinated bout the idea about the formal system. I am surprised to find that the term of everything which I use every day does not exist. No matter how big the scale of everything is, there is always something bigger. Notably, the ideal model of formal system which Russell spent most of his life to establish doesn’t exist. Because the fundamental way to establish it determined that such system can be the ultimate solution to solve all the conflicts in the world. The completeness and consistence can be satisfied at the same time. Some people may consider that Russell’s entire life as a tragedy because he “wasted” his life on something can be done. However, I think he has been passionate about his career and never stop explore the boundaries of human’s logic field. I think the process of pushing himself to the limits of the humankind has been a great reward for himself. Nevertheless, the work his has achieved has laid the solid for many modern science and played undeniable roles in our today’s lives. Sometimes, you can’t anticipate the outcome, as long as you are doing better than yesterday. I consider the process as progress and success.

2.       The interesting research about babies drives my attention too. I think this also related to the topic we had last week: born with evil? This two research paper supported my opinion about babies before. However, babies are better than I expected. I always believed that babies are like sheets of blank paper. Everybody around them, everything happened around him has an inevitable impact on the growth of babies. A baby raise in a good family is more likely to behave well. However, this two study show babies have the initial psychological development already. I am wondering if the level of morality of every baby is more associated with the genetic information of the affections and contacts they have before they were born. Babies are amazing, but I am sad to the diminishing potential in babies. I hope we can figure out a way to keep the period of high capacity to learn longer.

   I wasn't in class Thursday of last week (boo.) and I'm really sad I missed the discussion about babies, because they're cute (did anyone see the movie Babies? Ohmygodadorbs). 

    Anyway, I really enjoyed reading the articles on how babies think. I remember way back when I was 13 and my little brother Arren was born. My parents would always try and get him to focus on one thing for a long time, but honestly there really wasn't much for him to focus on one he figured out the object's basic function, and he would move on. I was reminded of this when I read about the babies simply becoming uninterested after learning the function of a toy. Parents always freak out when their baby doesn't stick with one thing for at least 30 seconds, and they jump to conclusions and claim ADHD, but really this baby is just learning in the only way he can. My parents jumped to conclusions and they were entirely correct (my brother is 6 and has pretty legitimate ADHD) but I know of many parents who worry unnecessarily because they don't know that's how babies learn.

    Speaking of my parents, I'm writing about my dad this week. He had to undergo some ridiculously involved individual evolutions after I was born and has only just begun to settle down in his life and self. Actually, he told me the other day that the calm he feels is so unnatural and he doesn't know what to do because his whole life he has been changing and charging against the grain until around now. My dad is only 40, so I remember a lot of times in his life that many of you probably don't remember from your parent's lives because you were just too young when it happened. He really had a time raising me and I think he did a damn good job, myself. I really can't wait to elaborate in the paper, and if anyone wants to know I'd be glad to tell his amazing story to you over lunch or something.

     Logicomix was great because I'm a big fan of graphic novels, though defiantly not an artsy elitist or graphic novel guru. I like the idea of telling the story through conversation, and really appreciate the fact that they did that. It must have taken a lot of creativity. The actual subject matter was over my head much of the time, so I only got the basic ideas they were trying to convey (can logic solve human problems? no? ok then) but i still really enjoyed it. It's books like these that make me remember why I choose to no longer try and comprehend infinity or the 34th dimension. I don't wanna end up like those unreachable logicians.

I think last Thursday's discussion was really useful to me. After discussing the essay approach, I felt clearer about how to write this week's essay assignment. I think it is very helpful to discuss writing together in a group. We can improve by learning from each other. I think that we should have more this kind of discussion in the future. For my essay, I plan to write about Chairman Mao. 

The reason why I chose Chairman Mao is because that Chairman Mao is a controversial figure. Westerners who mostly believe in democracy usually depict him as a dictator who have organized many campaigns which caused many deaths and a huge amount of economic losses to China. In contrast, Chinese always regard him as an influential person who laid the foundation of modern China. Westerners usually think that Chinese from mainland China are radical communists. However, from my neutral opinion of our Chairman Mao, you can easily tell that we are actually liberal to ideas and we don't really care which kind of social structure we are in. As long as we can progress both socially and economically, we don't mind of accepting western ideas of capitalism. And in fact that China is working towards building a novel form of socialism with the incorporation of facets of modern capitalism in order to connect to the rest of the world. We are not ambitious of becoming the superpower and taking control of the whole world. The only thing that is on the top of our agenda is to improve our living standards, since nearly fifty percent of Chinese are still living in poverty. Moreover, as we can tell from the statistics, natural disasters occurred more frequently in recent years due to global warming. China is now trying its best to work together with other countries to achieve world peace. Maybe my idea sounds very ideal. However, this what my twenty years' experiences have told me. 

Lastly,  for Logicomix, I would like to say that I like the idea of the book. Science and logic can do wonderful things, but they also have limits. I think that nothing on earth has been proven the cause of everything.  Hence, that's why some people do not believe in science, but religion. It is because that in religion, God is the cause of everything. I think to someone this fact is satisfying and heartwarming. Whenever people come across difficulties, they can always seek comfort from God and, thus, do not feel so discouraged and disappointed.

   I really have to say our Esem is awesome before giving my afterthoughts. I had a discussion with two girls about Esem yesterday during dinner. Hearing them saying bad words about their Esem, I could not even say a single sentence except I enjoy my Esem so much. Anyway, it’s good to feel out of place at that time and I’m so glad to have such a class. Love you guysJ

Now, back to our topic in the class. We talked about competition and cooperation on Tuesday and it makes me think a lot. If asked to choose from competition and cooperation, I think I will definitely choose cooperation because it is more likely to mutually benefit people. But my unconscious choice amazed me when I was told that a piano recital will be held next Sunday in my piano class. My professor wants us to show what we’ve learnt, comment on each other and try to make progress by playing for others. Obviously, he wants us to cooperate to get improved, while I was so stressed after hearing it. It was embarrassed but I have to confess that I feel stressed because I am afraid that I couldn’t play as well as other people. It is weird that under such a relaxed atmosphere, my willing to compete is more than my desire to cooperate in some extent. Why do we, or at least I, prioritize competition?

I read the article about babies that night. It was so interesting because it relates to what I’ve learnt in psychology recently. In the class, we talked that research shows infants in every culture are able to perceive all phones when they are very little so they are equipped to learn whatever language they hear in their environment. By 12 months, when expressive language acquisition usually begins, they no longer can discriminate sounds they do not hear in languages input. So they become more efficient at processing functionally meaningful contrasts in their language and at ignoring irrelevant ones. And phonemic categories that are going to matter in their language are those they continue to discriminate.

I’m thinking about if this psychology theory contributes to the interpretation of competition and cooperation. Say, we were born with equal tendency to compete and cooperate. While as we grow up, the stress in this competitive society forces us to compete with ourselves and to defeat others to get better. Babies learn to walk by overcoming imbalance. Children study hard to get into a good school. It’s not to say we don’t want to cooperate, but since we are more exposed to a competitive environment, we are more likely to process competition thought rather than cooperation.

What I noticed on Thursday,is that none of us like change. We had the opportunity to change location, teacher, and peers but none of us want that there was a lot of resistance.

Why is that? If we want to evolve then we must experience change. Many of us, a couple of weeks ago said, that change is much more common in culture than in biological evolution. If that were true then wouldn't our culture change after our experience with a new class. I still see the same things occurring.

I am now very interested in what will happen to this culture we have created.

In my head,

culture is a group of people with certain values or ideas or just a similar agenda that run away from change.

I actually think that our class has become a culture.

Well in my definition.

So I don't really want to post my research on here (as was suggested as a posting option in class), but I feel like the person I'm researching bears mentioning, because her evolution and its result has affected all of us in this class. I'm researching M. Carey Thomas and what may have molded her into the headstrong woman she grew up to be.

I just started thinking about nina44's post and her point about babies preferring to look at faces of their own race. If we take the evidence gathered by the researchers as valid (going back to the whole can-we-really-tell-babies'-thoughts-by-their-gaze-time business), what does that tell us? I mean, is it just the simple fact that those faces clearly do not belong to mom, as babies first recognize? Does this whole thing suggest that not just racism, but fear of the generally unfamiliar are qualities we're born with? And are we really "born with" anything more than a blank slate, a brain with all of the physical and biological potential to be molded into the thinking organs we use as adults? I don't know. It's 1:30 in the morning right now, so everything's kind of out there for me.

Before the other day I had never really thought much about babies except for how cute they are. During our discussion it was interesting to see how their were different opinions about babies and how some of us felt they were in a were evil and other felt they were good. I never thought that a baby was evil, I just could never look at one and believe that.

One thing about the article that is really interesting is that it tells you that babies have a preference to look at faces of their own race. Does this in a way instil in us early on some racial prejudice? Hmmm food for thought I guess.

As for Logicomix, I just wanted to say that I found the book very interesting, and was very pleased with my first reading of a graphic novel. This story is something that I never would have come across on my own and I felt like the graphic novel setting was great as a supplement to the reading. It made it more interesting and understandable for those of us who never knew there were such things as logicians and the study of logic.

 Hi All! I do feel excited to write in here after our integrated classes; I feel as if I have a little more familiarity with all of you.

In PG's class today we discussed how our little cultural clash between each section can be seen writ large in modern day clashes between "the East and West," or "Christianity/Judaism and Islam." Whereas ours proved to be an uncomfortable clash with minor tension at most, it is easy to see how ideals of normative values can expand to cause death and destruction. I'm not attempting to simplify these wars, understanding that meshed in with the ideals are competitions for resources and land. Yet the ideals certainly count.

I'm very interested in this concept of knowledge as divided between expressible and inexpressible depending on the form of logic being employed. It seems to allow us to level the playing field of truths. I am scared, however, of the extent to what that can be taken. There are some things that seem to be intrinsically wrong, or right. For example, I cannot imagine a situation when rape would be okay.

I mentioned in class today that I'd be interested in seeing babies from other cultures and seeing if they displayed the same traits as the American babies in the articles we read. Are there universal "human" rights and wrongs that all babies learn early on? Like not hurting others?