The Psychology of...

What's in a name? Well, some researchers, principally Dr. John Gray, believe that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is some what of a misleading title for this ever increasing phenomenon. It's not that people with ADHD have an actual deficit in attention, like they have less of it than the average person, rather it's an issue with how that attention is allocated and Dr. Gray prefers to use a term that gets at the neurological underpinnings of ADHD which is low or inhibited dopamine functioning. image from www.bbrfoundation.org Dopamine is the main neurotransmitter for our brain's reward system which in turn dictates functions such as memory, motivation, focus, and interest. Simplified, whenever we feel pleasure it is because of dopamine. If our dopamine functioning is diminished (through causes I will mention later) then we begin to rely on more intense experiences to stimulate higher levels of dopamine production. Without those intense experiences (think ...

I'm finishing up Enlightenment Now by Canadian, Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker and I came across a term with which I was unfamiliar. Here is my attempt to understand it by explaining it. If anyone out there who knows this idea better than I do, please add/revise my explanation. The benefits of simplicity are overlooked because of a bias bias . ie. Preference for more sophisticated models designed to avoid bias but may not lead to the most accurate prediction. When dealing with predictions, error occurs for two reasons, the first is due to bias , the inability of the model to represent certain patterns that are being observed. So if we're trying to predict how many men vs. women were going to apply for a job in engineering, our prediction model might be biased if we are only basing our prediction on past data, since today's women might be more likely to apply for engineering jobs than those of the past. The other type of error comes from variance, which is the ...

The stage has been set for years... Ideologically polarized media outlets editing interviews into patronizing and reductive sound bytes in order to appease the very advertisers who restrict their journalistic integrity... A post-tribal world whose borders have been redrawn across political and ideological orthodoxies. Echo chambers creating positive feedback loops that render good ideas fanatic and bad ideas unchecked. Healthy debate handicapped by motivated reasoning and inter-group loyalty signalling. A time when information, knowledge, and progress is more readily available and attainable than ever, yet we find ourselves buried deeper into our perspective teams living in parallel alternative universes. And out of this chaotic shouting match has arisen a set of new players, who challenge the existing machine, who are willing to enter the arena of debate and discuss difficult topics that strike fear into the hearts of mainstream advertisers. While they are ideologically di...