Consciousness is a very difficult subject to tackle. It’s hard to even define, despite the fact that every one of us experiences it during every (waking?) moment of our lives. It’s even harder to study objectively, given that consciousness is, practically by definition, highly subjective.

Jay Ingram gives it a shot in his latest book, Theatre of the Mind. The title refers to several past thinkers who have used the theatre metaphor to understand consciousness. This often leads to problems (e.g. if the stage represents consciousness, then someone (the audience) needs to view the contents of consciousness, and thus must be conscious themselves, which leads to an infinite string of consciousnesses within consciousnesses), which Ingram points out in order to illustrate difficulties with consciousness studies. However, I like how he also explains an updated version of the metaphor to illustrate one of the current theories about what consciousness is, how it works, and how it avoids the above problem. Books like this often present a whole lot of research and anecdotes without even attempting to tie it all together. Ingram, though aware of the limitations of this approach, does bring up one possible approach (global workspace theory) to wrap things up.

Given Ingram’s origin as a host of popular science shows, it is not unexpected that the book is extremely casual and non-scientific. It is almost like watching a long episode of Daily Planet all about consciousness. This makes it an easy read, and I would recommend the book to anyone even if they have no experience with psychology or philosophy. Sometimes, however, I wished for more detail and depth. He jumps around a lot, as if unable to stay on one topic for more than a few paragraphs, which can get annoying if the topic is interesting and he suddenly moves on to something else. Ingram also adds his own anecdotes and opinions, which again makes it easier to digest, but some may view it as overstepping his bounds to be critical of an area of research which he has not participated in himself.

Another thing I must mention is that Ingram takes a very open-minded approach. Though he always warns when something is not generally accepted by the scientific community, he is not afraid to venture into territory that could be considered pseudo-science or parapsychological. One example is a researcher, Benjamin Libet, who wishes to stimulate a piece of brain which has been completely detached from the rest of the brain, but kept alive and in the skull. He believes that the rest of the brain could still react to the stimulus, because there is more to consciousness than connections between neurons. Needless to say, it’s a bit controversial, but given some of the incredible findings that Libet (and others) have already discovered about the mind and brain, I think it’s worth seeing what happens.

I recommend Theatre of the Mind to anyone looking to learn more about consciousness. It probably brings up more questions than answers, but at least it will clarify one’s thinking about a subject which is very hard to think about.

A quick review here, just so I have a record of the books I’ve read and it motivates me to keep reading instead of playing video games (which is what I’ve been doing for the last 3 days).

Angels and Demons takes place in the same world as The Da Vinci Code, with the same main character, Robert Langdon. I think that Dan Brown is secretly in love with his fictional character, and loves the name “Robert Langdon.” He always writes about Langdon’s deep manly voice and awesome tweed jacket. And instead of using pronouns, it’s “Robert Langdon touched the pope’s hat, because it was shiny and Robert Langdon liked shiny things. Robert Langdon communicated Robert Langdon’s intense appreciation for the church in that single touch.”

This also demonstrates how badly written Angels and Demons is. If you’ve read The Da Vinci Code and cringed, Angels and Demons is even more simply written. With all this said, it doesn’t really get in the way of keeping you reading and interested. The book takes place in real-time, never jumping forward or backward in time (except for flashbacks), so it’s as intense as an episode of 24.

The historical “facts” are obviously not facts. While you may feel like you’re learning something while reading this book, it’s actually making you dumber. For example, a critical plot point is that nobody could figure out how to make words read the same whether they are upside down or right side up (ambigrams). Yet … Dan Brown and Friends were able to come up with a whole bunch for this book. It’s really cool to see these ambigrams in the book, but I doubt that a fiction author is the first person in history to create them.

Still, if you go in expecting an intense novel that’s more science fiction than art history textbook, it’s a very entertaining read.

On a side note, I hear that Brown is being sued over The Da Vinci Code. A non-fiction book was written a while before Da Vinci which dealt with the same topic, and the author of that book is angry that Brown stole the idea. Brown admits to using it as a source. Now, last time I checked, fiction authors were allowed to use non-fiction sources to check their facts, and that’s not plagarism. If I write an erotic story about squirrel sex, The Discovery Channel isn’t going to sue me because I saw squirrels boinking on TV. And this is (supposedly) fact…if Brown hadn’t even read this book and had done his own research, he (supposedly) would have come to the same conclusion. Since facts are, arguably, objective.

Whatever. I’m just looking forward to the Smart Car chase in the movie version of The Da Vinci Code. Yay Smart Cars!

I found this groovy little illusion:  How to Stop Time.  It involves looking at a the second hand of a clock out of the corner of your eye, and it appears to stop moving.  

The site gets cheesiness points for trying to convince people that they are actually stopping time.  I do wonder what the actual explanation is, though.  I’ve read about people with brain damage who are blind to movement:  when pouring liquid out of a glass, they see it frozen in mid-pour, then the glass is suddenly empty.  Perhaps this illusion is related to that, allowing normal people to experience change blindness without ramming a pole through their brain.

I have a reading problem. It’s not that I’m illiterate (even though I just had to look up how to spell illiterate), it’s that I have trouble finishing books. Whenever I get a new book, I want to start reading it right away. Therefore, all the books I’m currently reading start seeming like a chore to read; just something to get over with so I can start the new book. Usually I give in and start the new book before finishing the old one, so I end up with 20 half-read books lying around.

So it is a big accomplishment for me to have finished reading the book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ll start reviewing books here, so I have a nice record of the books I’ve finished. Maybe it’ll motivate me to finish them.

Blink is about what Gladwell calls “thin-slicing”: making quick decisions based on very little information (i.e. a “thin slice” of information). He goes through numerous examples of this process in a variety of contexts, such as military operations and the recognition of facial expressions.

The book deals mainly with anecdotal accounts, which makes it an easy and entertaining read. Psychological research is not described in great detail, but the quick and casual descriptions are a nice change from the detailed procedures and statistics I’m used to reading. Gladwell offers a glimpse into areas many people never think about, such as professional food tasting, which is fascinating. It was also kinda cool for me to see Keith Payne mentioned … he gave a great talk at UWO recently.

However, I have several problems with the book. It reads more like a collection of short stories than a cohesive essay. It is sometimes unclear how each chapter relates to the big picture, and some of his points seem to contradict other points. I also noticed a few obvious errors which indicate sloppiness. For example, Limp Bizkit is two words. It’s not “Limpbizkit”.

My biggest problem, though, is that Gladwell is making up a new term (thin slicing) for a concept that already has too many words to describe it. My favourite term is intuition (since that’s what I’m studying myself), but it also goes by insight, implicit learning, automatic thought, etc. These are terms only briefly mentioned in the book, even though he is obviously talking about them. It is as if he is trying to cover up the fact that his ideas are nothing new. In fact, I found one of his specific examples (about a firefighter getting a bad feeling about a building before it collapsed) in a book about intuition. Intuition is already a confusing term, and calling it by other names will just confuse it even more.

Still, I would recommend Blink to both psychologists and the general reader. It’s a fun read, even though it may not be as deep or insightful as geeks like me would like. Also, I’m glad to see this topic getting mainstream attention, because it probably means the government will give me lots of money to do research on it. Mmm, money.

I’ve been in an MRI machine many times before, so I could get pretty pictures of my brain and get paid for it. Oh, and help with the advancement of human knowledge and all that too.

So it was somewhat scary to come across this web page with pictures and stories of objects flying into the MRI. Since it’s a giant magnet, any nearby metallic objects tend to fly at it with great speed. If a person had been in there when, say, the large floor buffer flew into the tube, they probably wouldn’t live to see their brain’s data in a science journal. Apparently there is also a danger of being eaten by a tiger while in an MRI.

I wonder what part of your brain lights up when you’ve been impaled by a sharp metal object?

Hi. Happy Remembrance day. Did you know that the word “remembrance” does not have the word “remember” in it? Something to think about.

So today I was walking to school when I passed a table full of stuff in bags. Some guy shouted to me “hey, want some free stuff?” I’ve never turned down free stuff in my life, so I asked him what the catch was. He told me that all I had to do was fill out a survey. I like surveys too, so I snatched up my free bag and grabbed a pen.

Then I found the catch: they were religious nuts trying to convert people. The questions on the survey were about religion and spirituality. As with most religion surveys, “atheist” and “agnostic” were two separate entries and you weren’t supposed to check more than one.

Let me go on a bit of a rant. It is completely possible to be both atheist and agnostic (here is a nice article about this issue). The reason is that atheism deals with belief about God(s), while agnosticism deals with knowledge about God(s). I do not believe that God exists (atheist), but I also do not know whether God exists or not (agnostic). In other words, it’s highly unlikely that God exists (there is no evidence for God, and most concepts of God logically contradict themselves), but I don’t know for sure either way. Maybe tomorrow, scientists will discover incontrovertible evidence for the existence of God. And maybe tomorrow a magical fairy will fly into my bedroom with a few million dollars and all the cheesecake I can eat, but I’m not holding my breath.

If you want to get more picky, you can divide things into weak atheism and strong atheism, then weak agnosticism and strong agnosticism. Pickier still, you can point out that everybody is an atheist in some way: do Christians not deny the existence of Zeus and Aphrodite?

Anyway, I bet you’re dying to know what was in the bag of free stuff. Obviously there was a cheap bible in there, but also a nifty book about Jesus, a CD, and a DVD. If only they included some cheesecake, I might have been converted.

Oh, also, I have finally started running participants for my thesis. Yay! Four down, ninety six to go.

Now I sit at home, playing with Willow. She’s becoming bored with her toys and can only have fun by being chased around by me.

According to this Psychology Today article, coffee is good for you in all sorts of ways. Hooray! Now I don’t feel so bad that the only liquid I’ve put in my body today was coffee.

Now what I’m wondering is whether all the research we heard about a few years ago – about coffee causing heart disease and being addictive – is now not true any more. OK, so coffee prevents cancer now. So will I live a cancer-free life, only to die of a heart attack while I’m trembling in the line at Starbucks waiting for my next fix?

Whatever. That picture to the right is making me want some coffee. Mmmm, coffee.

Lately I’ve been into podcasts. Podcasts are basically radio shows which are recorded as mp3s, and can be set to automatically upload to your mp3 player (such as an iPod) whenever a new episode comes out.

For psychologists, a very useful podcast is Mind Podcast. It’s not flashy and exciting or anything, but this guy goes over whatever psychology topic he is studying every day. It’s like having a study buddy reading notes to you through your mp3 player. A study buddy with a cool accent. For grad students, it will mostly be review of the basics, but we can all use that once in a while.

The show is on a break right now, but I’ve been emailing back and forth with the dude who does this, and he says it will be back sometime (though maybe not as frequently…every day was a bit excessive anyway).

Note that you can get to older episodes by clicking on the Archives on the righthand side, then clicking on individual episode titles.

The other night, Willow (our dog) was hyper yet bored. We were watching TV and ignoring her. So she started playing with her tennis ball. At one point, it rolled onto her blanket. She then decided to grab the edge of the blanket and yank it up, so that the ball went flying off to the side. She decided this was a fun game, so she chased down the ball, put it back on the blanket, and sent it flying again. She did this over and over, until she got bored of that too.

This got me thinking…can animals be creative? My research involves creativity, but I haven’t really come across (or looked for) anything about animal creativity. Most people seem to think that creativity is uniquely human. I’ve seen it referred to as the very thing that makes us human. Yet there was my dog, coming up with a new way to combine two items in a way she had never witnessed before. She then used this combination to satisfy her goals (i.e. having fun by chasing a ball). Is that creativity?

Usually we define creativity as doing something that is both novel and useful. This seems to satisfy both requirements. Maybe she wasn’t the first dog in the history of dogkind to come up with this game, but it was certainly new to her, and useful in alleviating boredom. So yeah, animals can be creative, by that definition. I’m sure monkeys and apes come up with even more amazing stuff than tossing a ball using a blanket.

Speaking of which, I’m listening to the new Gorillaz album for the first time, and it is just spiffy. Go buy it.

You know what I think I’ll do with this web site? I’ll make it my “professional” site, where I can record my school and career related activities. Sort of like a super-detailed CV / resume. I can also deal with topics directly related to my schooling and research, like philosophical and detailed psychological stuff. It will probably not be interesting to anybody except me, but that’s OK.

Unfortunately, I’m too lazy to start today, so this will have to remain as a crappy under-construction site for now. Later!

~Mike