You seem to value fairness and justice. I worked at a shelter and it’s often not as simple. Often, the dependency that children have with their abusive parents (or partners with their abusive partners) is something that needs to be worked on first, before any attempt to leave is made.

Some people understand the history and the opportunities of living in a country without tying their identity to the country. They can contribute to it, accept diversity, and yet have a more trascendental sense of self. They understand the state can be helpful for certain goals, and not for others.

It’s like money. If we all agree that a piece of paper and some metal is valuable, then it is. We don’t have to worship it. We can use it when it’s helpful and not when it’s not.

Turns out, the more educated, wealthy, and connected a whole population is, the more they are able to go from conceptual senses of self like “I am French” to a more trascendental sense of self like “I am a living being like so many others, and I happen to live in France”. This can also be achieved with certain wisdom traditions, like with loving-kindness meditation. More broadly, it can also be achieved with reflection.

Not me, but a friend believed Obama was not American. Conversations over time (couple of months) changed them.

Not a proper conspiracy theory, but I used to be a dualist, thinking that souls exist and they’re separate from bodies. All of this changed with a long conversation with a materialist. He helped me see how my beliefs were historically determined, socially programmed, and not based on atemporal scientific principles. Overnight change to materialism.

The answer is contextual, just like people are contextual. Sometimes, my circles are all busy or stressed out and we can’t really be there for each other. Other times, strangers have saved me, like the couple that took me in when lockdowns started and I was far from home.

Have you heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment? Or the Princeton Seminarian experiment? Or the Milgram Experiment? All of them confirm that people are contextual. That’s lesson 1 in psychology, but we humans easily forget it. We focus on the person and forget the context. That folly of ours even has a name: Fundamental Attribution Error.

Thanks for the suggestions. Had time to try to print it. Didn’t work. I’ll try the other options later.

You have a good point! It does sound like my suggestions only help for repeated behaviors. For example, Tiny Habits seems to indicate that it’ll work for habits but not for novel situations.

You explicitly mention that it’s unlikely that research covers situations that are entirely novel and rare. Do you know about schema theory or relational frame theory? I ask because both of those theories explicitly deal with how entirely new information (such as entirely new situations) is processed in the human brain and how, depending on the schemas or relational frames that a person already had, the person will react in different ways.

But we don’t have to go into the theoretical weeds. The popular books that I mentioned earlier deal with novelty. For example, Lakoff shows how, inside the head of any person, a small set of beliefs can end up guiding most of the person’s moral thinking and therefore their choices. Not only that, but even the book titled Tiny Habits has sections dedicated to one-off behaviors. Heck, the book Drive deals with teams that are at the bleeding edge of knowledge and techniques, technologies and workflows that no human has ever dealt with before, and yet the book is able to show how there is a set of evidence-based principles that consistently motivate (or not) those very teams.

The fundamental issue is whether humans are able to recognize a situation and know what to do about it. Our brains have been endowed with the capacity to derive thoughts, to think up entirely new situations, to imagine scenarios. We can use that to increase the odds of responding effectively to situations we have never been in before.

Sure, recognizing the light when it’s eclipsed by plenty of shadow can seem cartoonish. We can decide to close our eyes and be left in the darkness. We can decide not to pay attention or learn from something we deem unacceptable.

Is there absolutely nothing that China is doing that the rest of the world could learn from? Do you know how much China is investing in green energy in relation to the west? Do you think I am unable to recognize problems in China while at the same time recognizing that it is the single largest investor in green energy on Earth today? Do you think I’m unable to recognize that the United States has a great elite educational system? Or that I’m unable to recognize that the USA has amazing elite research facilities? Or that during the twentieth century it was a world leader in terms of State investments in strategic technologies?

It sounds as if you’re frustrated at her for not recognizing that people disappear in China, sometimes people like critics of the government. Do you think there’s absolutely nothing good that China does?

I understand you’re trying to increase the odds that people will intervene and that this horrible kidnapping would not be successful.

However, the fund for rewards is not the way to go.

Psychological research about human motivation shows that expecting external rewards reduces personal motivation (or, as psychologists would say it, extrinsic motivation can hinder intrinsic motivation). When humans do things because they expect external rewards, they stop doing it for the sake of it and expect higher and higher rewards over time.

Pay children to draw and they lose their interest in doodling or drawing for fun. Pay your team members for being kind and they will be less kind overall.

So what can we do? You talk to people. You understand their concerns and wishes, and you have them understand your concerns and wishes. You use frames that they already have in their head so that they can see your point of view. You set implementation intentions.

It’s a matter of values and the capacity to do the behavior.

Of course, if you’re in a dictatorial regime, stopping a state-approved kidnapping will be illegal and get you in lots of trouble. That’s why activism also seeks to change root causes. What kinds of root causes? That will depend on who you are. Some people blame the electoral system in the USA, so maybe changing that could help. Other people will blame other causes and therefore will suggest other changes.

This may be abstract, and I wish I had the time to make it less so. Unfortunately, I don’t have time right now, but you can check out sources that talk about this. Check out Drive by Pink to learn about motivation. Check out Don’t think of an Elephant by George Lakoff to learn about moral reframing. Check out Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabriele Oettingen or Tiny Habits to learn about implementation intentions.

If you look at the human empowerment model, it will all depend on whether the technological conditions, the educational resources, and the connective resources have gotten worse or not. If not, then people will mobilize and the massive protests will demand change, regardless of the government’s forceful opposition.

The critical question is whether the institutions of a nation are more or less democratic than its people. The World Value Survey clearly shows that some people like hierarchy, strict gender roles that confine people into little boxes, and clearly-defined “me-versus-them” boundaries. Those people will not protest against dictatorships. The rest will.

If you want more information on this, check out Freedom Rising by Christian Welzel.

If you’re going to download it, try the torrent option! That way, you can give back to the community that gives you LibreOffice.

Ah. I see that it seems as if I’m saying that hand-washing is the result of a theory of cognition, and that this theory of cognition suggests that hand-washing has been deeply ingrained in our psyches for millenia, somehow eliciting the results from the experiments.

I am not suggesting that. Sorry for not having been clear before. I’m tired so I’m sorry if this response is not clear as well. I’m happy to clarify any further misunderstandings.

This is the theory that I’m referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnSHpBRLJrQ (of course, there are academic publications on Relational Frame Theory, but this video shows its practical implications quite well)

Learn it in one. Derive it in two. Put it in networks, and that’s what you’ll do.

We have relational frames surrounding hand-washing. We also have relational frames for thousands of other thoughts and behaviors. When those two (hand-washing frames with other frames) combine, they can affect the way we think and act in ways that are novel and perhaps unusual.

Please let me know if this isn’t clear.

Europe isn’t a brand, it’s a life/style.

Yes. I suppose I’d like to try it. Maybe the cost is worth the benefits.

This gave me chills and teared me up. A friend is paralyzed from the waist down. I really hope I can see them walk again with something like this.

Indeed, it is a small sample size.

However, I think it’s possible that these results are true. If you understand relational frame theory, then you can see how the act of washing hands can activate some schemas or deactivate others.

Seen through this lens, the results of these experiments are not special, but are simply implications of an already established theory of cognition.

That’s alright 🙂

No login at all. You just open the URL and there’s a text box waiting for you to send a message to me.

Oh wow. That’s a pleasantly surprising code of conduct. If the code of conduct is consequential, I stand corrected about my view of Graphene OS.

• “Respectful and kind”. Amazing.
• “Harassment is not tolerated”. Hell yeah.
• “Be respectful and constructive.” Brilliant.

You’re bringing up a fair point, similar to “can you separate the art from the artist”? I think it’s possible; I’ve seen mean and disparaging people do amazing work. Heck, at times I’ve been a cranky worker cranking out good work.

However, I also know that toxic people are hard to work with and limit their own potential and that of others. A quick look at the ACT literature, the intrinsic motivation literature, the learned-helplessness literature, and the Lybomirsky et al. meta-analyses from 2008 and 2018 all point to the same idea: psychologically flexible people are happier and that leads to better work and more productivity, but not the other way around.