怪诞乎？不怪也！——《怪诞心理学》

别看书名起得怪诞，内容其实一点都不怪诞，就是在普及心理学的基本知识。最多，就是其中不少解释、结论与我们的直觉和常识背道而驰，而这，也是很多心理学研究结果的共同特点。
　　
这本书涉及心理学的四个分支，其中两个，的确有点小众，譬如时间心理学和灵异心理学，我想，这大概是书名译为《怪诞心理学》的原因之一。另外的原因，显然是与营销策略有关：吸引眼球、占同类畅销书籍的光（《怪诞行为学》）等等，等等。
　　
Richard Wiseman既然挂着“英国大众心理学传播第一教授”的头衔，他提供的很多趣味盎然的例子就不可避免得与大众传媒相关，而BBC更是无一例外得为他提供 实验平台与研究便利，所以，有些匠心独具的实验，还是值得一看。此外，不少他所提及的其他心理学家进行的实验研究，即便不是名闻遐迩，至少在业界也是知名 度极高，曾被不少书籍频频引用。
　　
为了克服自己日益衰退的记忆力，做笔记已逐渐成为我的一种阅读习惯。此书的结构笔记如下：
　　
时间心理学：是研究时间和心理的新学科

• 两种效应可以解释为何人们相信星象学
• 巴纳姆效应:人们很容易过于相信含糊其词的描述.
  
• 谄媚效应：大部分人更愿意相信让他们自己看起来更正面和更积极的事情。
• 出生日期
• 运动员的出生月份与他们的比赛成绩密切相关: 英国职业足球联赛、美国职业棒球大联盟、英国的郡县板球赛、加拿大的冰上曲棍球赛、巴西的足球赛都证明了这种相关性。（Gladwell的outlier一书也有提及）
• 出生日期对于运气的影响：出生时的温度对于个性的发展有着深远而长久的影响，在温度较高的月份出生的婴儿面对的出生环境相对不那么恶劣，会使他们更敢于冒险，更易接受新的机遇和经验，因此看似更幸运。
• 税收政策会影响出生日期
  
• 死亡日期
• 节日会影响死亡日期
• 生命中有重大意义的事件也会影响死亡日期
• 税收政策会影响死亡日期
  

欺骗心理学：能够辨别谎言的真实线索不是肢体语言（是否直视你的眼睛、是否有很多手势、是否坐立不安），而是遣词造句和表达方式

• 说谎者的描述通常缺少细节
• 说谎者通常会从心理与谎言保持距离，所以在说话的时候很少提到自己或个人感受
• 说话时停顿和犹豫不决的情况比较多
• 说谎者似乎都具备了超强的记忆力, 对于说真话者可能忘记的琐碎细节他们却记得一清二楚。
• 在监测谎言时，聆听是一种比观看更有效的方式。

灵异心理学

• 为什么迷信？因为确定感。在不确定性持续增加的时期，人们会迫切地寻求一种确定感，这种需求会促使他们相信各种号称可以确定他们命运的不理性因素，比如迷信和巫术。
• 为什么有那么多巧合？因为大数法则。在极为庞杂的一大群人中，存在着各种各样的行动和反应，事件的各种组合都有可能发生，许多小问题的出现看起来可能会既令人震惊又超乎寻常。
• 为什么有灵异现象？因为低频声波。次声波可能引起胸腔震动、影响呼吸，并让人产生作呕、头疼和咳嗽等现象，此外，特定频率的声波还可能引起眼球的震动，从而让视觉出现扭曲。

决策心理学：我们的思维模式和感受在不知不觉中都会受到外在因素的影响

• 我们的名字影响了我们对自我的评价和对职业的选择。
• 仅仅读一个句子就能影响我们对自身年龄的感觉和对常识的记忆
• 一个轻轻的微笑或轻微的触摸就能决定我们在酒吧和餐厅会给服务生多少小费
• 商店里播放的音乐会偷偷地溜进我们的脑海，并影响我们花钱的数量（古典音乐会让我们购买昂贵的商品）
• 身高会影响到爱情、婚姻、工资水平、职业、地位
• 毛发、脸部特征、电影中描述的刻板印象会影响到对人物个性和能力的感知
• 分享一段搞笑的经历有助于增强彼此之间的亲近程度和吸引力。(这也为当初你能迅速吸引我并让我感觉很亲近提供了一种解释。)

Inglish_28/12/09

hoi polloi: 庶民，普通老百姓
If someone refers to the hoi polloi, they are referring in a humorous or rather rude way to ordinary people, in contrast to rich, well-educated, or upper-class people.
The upper class cannot very well stand by as they begin to resemble the hoi polloi.

hocus-pocus: 哄骗
If you describe something as hocus-pocus, you disapprove of it because you think it is false and intended to trick or deceive people.
Witch doctors must have some track record or they would lose all credibility, and they do blend their hocus-pocus with genuine practical knowledge such as herbal remedies and predictions of events (for instance, the weather) that are more accurate than chance.

go out on a limb: 承担风险；to take a risk; to hazard a guess

bodice-ripper: 关于两性之间浪漫的情爱小说或电影

vis-à-vis: face-to-face with;
Others are threatened, frustrated, and even humiliated by this close contact, which, among other things, makes it very easy for people to see where they stand in the world vis-à-vis everyone else.

dead hand: 不散的阴魂；难以消除的不利影响（只用单数）；旧势力
You can refer to something which has a bad or depressing influence on a particular situation as a dead hand.
They do this in defiance of their authoritarian governments, which prefer to use their media not to encourage honest debate but rather to blame all their problems on others —on America, on Israel, or on a legacy of Western colonialism, on anything and anyone but the dead hand of these authoritarian regimes.

a level playing field: 平等状态，公平竞争环境
People can achieve their full potential on a level playing field

stave off：阻挡，延缓
The more people with the imagination of 11/9, the better chance we have of staving off another 9/11.

诗家的思考——《常识》

梁文道说“江山不幸诗家幸”，和“乱世出英雄”有异曲同工之妙：江山多事，为诗家提供了丰富的问题、资源去思考、爬梳、提炼、总结。这本书由时事政评集结 而成，但并未如他预言的：时过境迁，因为欠缺背景的铺排而变得不知所云，概因这些文字所契入的当年时空，依然历历在目，恍若昨日，有些乱象甚至反复上演。

能在两种文化体系中进入，跳出，交互省视两地诸种现象，是道长之福。谁说身份不重要呢？他因港人的身份而拥有相对内地同行更优渥的空间、更宽松的环境、更 多元的信息来源，所以才能直言如“皇帝的新装”中的小孩，才能更尖锐得为我们指认看似浅白自然的常识中的谬误与不足。他说这是个常识稀缺的年代，换言之， 这个时代缺少的是能独立思考的智者。身份，能使我们言谈举止似投鼠忌器；但它不能也不该扼杀独立思考的精神，不能言但仍可以想，不能为天下先至少也不该人 云亦云。当然，独立思考，不可能一蹴而就，那意味着大量的阅读，学习，练习，积累，也意味着得不断与无知，狭隘，懒惰，懈怠，情绪及本能做斗争，不能偏听 偏信，不能被情绪驾驭，不能轻信被呈现的事实，得细心辨析思维方式的谬误，努力还原被截取扭曲的事实，逐渐接近隐藏的真相。

这本书分上下两编，上编聚焦国内之乱象，因为少了束缚，有点看头；下编则放眼中东与美国，因为是国际事务，国内报章杂志与之相比，半斤八两(原因还可参考下编道长自己的引言）。一如以往，为了不雁过无痕，我试着鹦鹉学舌地记两三笔：

爱国主义和民族主义情绪：

• 颠倒地肯定自我，过份的敏感反应，自我贬损的冲动，是百年国耻下隐藏的怨恨心理的产物，它正扭曲着中国人的正常心智与价值观。
• 对一些历史事件的漠然，其实是不敢与真相和解、回避伤口的体现。
• 动辄将问题上升到爱国之争，是简化问题，丧失自己思考判断能力的结果。
• 热衷紧盯他国传媒，不敢监察自家媒体，是怯懦，是犬儒。
• 民族主义的另一表现则是无限扩展国家范围的能力，极度简化思考方式与想象力，容易将个别的东西和部分人的意见上纲上线成国家或民族的代表。

道长的建议：

• 国退民进，是市场经济得以健康发展的前提，但是，政府的角色需要准确定位，在教育，医疗和住房等领域不能退得太急太快，甚至完全缺席。
• 对待人才流出，应该发展出更理性的自我了解，学习到更丰富的认知方式。换掉种族主义的思考，致力于创造优秀的学术体制和文化环境，吸引各种族人才。
• 既不犬儒，也不激愤。反省国家的政治，经济和社会状况，是为了中国民众更民主理想的生活，而不是为了敌手而起，因为胜过敌手而终止。
• 要多元：明白自己习以为常的社会生活，原来没有所想的那么自然那么标准。我们习惯的正常其实不是惟一。
• 要宽容：
• 这个世界绝不可能非黑即白，我们很容易用灰色去宽容一下自己的贪心和过错。同样的，我们也该以同等的宽容去理解逝去的前人。历史绝不只是一堆事实的积累，它的书写，它的构成，全赖我们从什么角度诠释，而这个角度的选取就和许多价值观甚至政治立场有关了。
• 不同的口音和不同的地方俚语不只可以促进宽容与理解，更能够激活和扩张标准语的生命与内容。
• 不能只在国内反精英反权贵，到了国际场合，也要关心弱势群体，第三世界。
• 以平心静气的柔性态度应对国际上“中国威胁论”的恐慌心态，消除偏见，缓和对立。
• 不能硬性经营国家，政府形象，不能强推意识形态代言人，不能为了所谓的“正面”效应而任意形塑舆论环境的生态。
• 不能只求经济增长而不顾环境代价。
• 处理国家大事、民族前途要制度化，而不能靠极少数深具人格魅力的个人。
• 对官员，不奢言空泛的道德，要贯彻权力制衡，要制定职业伦理道德准则。
• 学界要独立，学术文化要相对独立，学者的发言研究应以真理的追求为目标，而非以取悦政治人物的喜好为原点。

“平 凡之恶”(evil of banality)：巨大的邪恶是由每一个人不经意的每一步逐渐积累而成的。平凡人之所以会加入邪恶，只是因为受到诱惑，只是不想与他人不同，只是想做个 乖乖听话的“好人”。心理学史上，已经有很著名的"Asch's conformity test"、“Milgram's obedience experiments" 等对此做过深刻细致的探究。可见，要做群体中的异见者，要做devil's advocate，是多么不易；而对一个群体而言，想要在正确的轨道上前进，又是多么必要。

观看灾难片的心理分析

看完引起热议的灾难电影《2012》，我很是失望：要情节没情节，要人性没人性，要刺激没刺激，要场面非常雷同，被人盛赞的特效也不过如此，耐着性子看完，完全不是以往同类灾难片观后那种肾上腺激素高涨，激动莫名的状态。
　　
不爽之余，我将历年的灾难大片都搜罗出来：从海难到空难，从火山融城到冰雪封城，从彗星撞击到外星人入侵，从火烧摩天大楼到水淹雾都，从海啸 到地震，从上天到入地，温习了个遍。最后，看着长长的片单——Poseidon, Deep Imapct, Dante's Peak, The Towering Inferno, The Day after tomorrow, The Independent Day, Perfect Storm, Vertical limit, Volcano, etc——叹口气：还是老片好看。想来我是老了，不知不觉已经走到生命的另一端，充满回忆而不是梦想。
　　
这样爱看灾难片，似乎有点变态。幸好最近看到一篇心理学报道，为自己找到辩护的依据。
　　
报道首先提及一部黑色幽默片《Harold and Maude》，看过的人，一定觉得片中两个主角——19岁的Harold和79岁的 Maude——的共同爱好怪诞无比，老少两人居然都痴迷于死亡，热衷于追逐灵车，参加陌生人的葬礼，甚至不断得模拟自杀。两人因此相知相惜，当Maude 在她的80岁生日那天自杀，促使Harold将他的怪癖搁置一边，热情得投入到生活中去。影片其实揭示了在文学和影视中恒常出现的一个主题：当人类愈接近 死亡，当人类愈能感知生命的脆弱性，他对生活的热情与欲望会愈发的强烈，他也会更加珍惜生命。与死神擦肩的人，往往会发现日常的平凡琐碎生活，焕发了全新 的意义。
　　
我想，搞科学研究的人，爱独立思考的人，看书观影，脑中总会比常人多绷紧一根弦，所以他们总能从我们视若无睹处，想我们所不曾想，问我们所不 能问，擦出思想火花。若能再辅佐以精巧的实验设计，严谨的科学调研，大量的数据分析，新的理论发现就诞生了，人类，接近真相的脚步又会向前迈了小小的一 步。
　　
Wray Herbert，我常follow的一个记者，最近就报道了密苏苏里大学由 Laura King领队的一组认知科学家所做的实验研究，他们针对Harlod和Maude这样的病态行为，对死亡与生命的热情两者之间的交织互动，进行了深刻的心 理学动因的挖掘，最后归结到两种：
　　
　　 1. 稀缺理论：越稀有，越珍贵。
　　 2. 价值理论：如果我们非常渴望一样东西，它一定很稀有。
　　
他们的结论就是：死亡是一种生命的稀缺状态，因此，当死亡的阴影漂浮在意识的上空时，人会更加珍惜生命。反之，亦然：当人们非常珍惜生命的价值时，他们往往会比那些不作如是想的人更能意识到生命的脆弱和死亡的无情。
　　
看来，我这样密集得重观灾难片，似乎不仅仅是《2012》在起作用...... 但，反观自己当下的心理状态，又似乎与他们的研究所得大相径庭，可见，这样的结论也值得商榷。

它山之石——《The World is Flat 3.0》

记得我还在空中飞来飞去的时候，常常在邻座看似白领精英的手上瞥到这本书；在各个机场穿梭时，也总能在书店显眼处，无一例外得遭遇这本书，且中英文版本兼 而有之。出于对时尚潮流的抵触情绪和盲目偏见，我与它保持了相当的距离，而这一冷眼旁观，就是5年。

在21世纪第一个十年快结束的时候，翻读这本增订版， 还是颇有些感慨的，因为自己，就浮沉在这股全球化的潮流中，而且生活方式，也不可避免得深受新技术的影响。Friedman强就强在能把我们都司空见惯、 熟视无睹的现实重新包装、组织、重构，再用绝不雷同的语言和丰富的事例重复但绝不枯燥得说上个几遍。等到掩卷时，仔细回想，似乎又是老生常谈，没啥新鲜玩 意，但竟然也能填满六百多页。好在普利策奖的三任得主，文笔不是盖的，读来生动流畅，以至再抬头，看出去的世界赫然已经是平的了。这个词也不能免俗地风靡 全球、深入人心了，难怪他会被誉为美国最有影响力的新闻工作者。

为了不虚此读，自己尝试着梳理了他的脉络，它山之石，可以攻玉也。

首先，Friedman以他的印度之行，开启了他”世界是平的“论述之旅。他形容自己从酣梦中醒来，赫然发现周遭的世界已经悄然变平，颇有点中国民间传说里”山中一日，世上七年“的味道。然后，他试着将全球化分为三个阶段，并对比它们的特点：

Globalization 1.0:

• Time period:1492~1800.
• World size: shrink from large to medium.
• The dynamic force: brawn, muscle, horsepower, wind power, steam power and the way to deploy them
• Key driver: Countries and governments
  
• Diversity: mainly Western
  

Globalization 2.0:

• Time period:1800~2000.
• World size: shrink from medium to small.
• The dynamic force: breakthroughs in hardware—steamships, railroads, telephones and mainframe computers
• Key driver: Multinational companies
  
• Diversity: mainly Western
  

Globalization 3.0:

• Time period:2000~now.
• World size: shrink from small to tiny.
• The dynamic force: flat-world platform, the product of a convergence of the personal computer with fiber-optic cable, with the rise of work flow software
• Key driver: Individuals
  
• Diversity: every corner of the world
  

有了这样的观察所得，他接着开始寻找让世界变平的力量。得益于他的专业背景和职业生涯，通过与五湖四海的各色人等对话、沟通、访谈，他从中筛选出十大力量：

1. 89年11月9日柏林墙的倒塌，意味着自由资本主义市场的胜利，无数被束缚了手脚限制了自由的人被释放出来，随之释放的，是多年被压抑的能量。
2. 95年8日9日Netscape上市，使互联网真正得以无缝连接并且鲜活互动起来。
3. Work Flow Software: 工作流程软件的不断创新推进了标准化进程，提高了效率，也彻底改变了商业运作模式。
4. Uploading: 上传彻底改变人们之间的沟通模式，使每个人的声音都能被听到。
5. Out-sourcing: 外包使工作岗位从高成本国家地区向低成本国家地区（譬如印度）流动。
6. Off-shoring: 离岸使制造业从劳动力成本高昂的国家地区向低成本高密度劳动力的国家地区（譬如中国）流动。(p.s.中国和印度的形象差异，由此可见一斑)
7. Supply Chain: 全球供应链，促使公司不断优化各个供应流程和环节，减少中间成本，降低产品价格。
   
8. Insourcing：崭新的协作方式，为中小型公司提供全球供应链，允许它们与拥有自己的供应链的大型跨国公司竞争。
9. In-forming：google等搜索引擎的诞生、繁荣，改变了人类学习掌握知识的方式。
10. The Steroids：不断涌现的新技术使得数字化、移动化、虚拟化、个人化成为可能，增强并放大了前9种使世界变平的力量。

之后，他并没有满足此，他开始思考各种力量汇聚后是如何改变这个世界的，也即他所谓的”Triple Convergence”：

1. 十大力量的聚合为世界创造了一个全球化的协作与竞争平台。
2. 当技术和商业运作模式、人们学习工作习惯的改变聚合起来，生产效能、创造力发生了突破性进展。
3. 当越来越多的竞争者加入到公平竞争的环境里，世界的政治、经济面貌也随之发生巨大改变。

然后，他建议读者必须梳理并思考该如何解决全球化带来的困惑和困境：

• 如何确定不同社群、利益体之间的社会及经济利益关系？
• 跨国公司又该尊重谁的价值观、促进谁的利益、忠于哪一个国家？
• 当世界从发号施令的垂直模式向联接合作的水平模式变化，员工和老板之间的分工又该如何？
• 个人该如何协调身为消费者、雇员、纳税者、公民以及公司股东的多重身份之间的利益冲突？
• 拥有权的确定，谁拥有什么？
• 就像人必须有适当的脂肪保持人体温暖一样，旧世界的有些东西是有益于社会正常运作的。关键是，什么才是真正值得保留的？

既然全球化已经是无可逆转的趋势，我们只能去适应，而不是逆潮流而行。那么，如何在新世界里找到自己的立足点，而不是被无情地淘汰呢？Friedman总结了几种核心竞争力：

• 合作能力
• 复合型能力（多才多艺，跨领域通才）
• 表达能力
• 有大局观
• 适应能力
• 拥有绿色行业等新兴领域的技能
• 能为产品注入个性化价值的能力
• 在地化能力

如何发展这些核心竞争力，从而使自己成为不可被取代的呢？Friedman有如下建议：

• 学会如何学习
• 学会如何浏览、利用网上的信息与资源
• 学会如何与人合作
• 好奇心和激情比智商更重要
• 开发右半脑：艺术能力、移情能力、大局观、追求卓越都与右半脑相关
• 教育系统必须推行通识教育，科学、人文与艺术教育必须齐头并进

紧接着，Friedman忧心忡忡得提醒美国同胞，危机正在悄然逼近美国，威胁着二战后美国一直做为世界领头羊的超级大国的地位：

• 工程师和科学家的数量在下降
• 基础学科在高等学府对学生吸引力的差距
• 野心、进取心、吃苦耐劳的差距
• 基层教育系统的不平衡导致教育出的那些低技术技能的学生，在越来越扁平化的世界很难找到适合的工作。
• 对科学研究投入的预算削减是雪上加霜的失败政策
• 网络设施发展上的差距

如果美国想要继续领跑，它必须有危机意识，改变自己，防患于未然。

谈完发达国家，Friedman转向了发展中国家，从无数事例中他肯定了全球化对发展中国家的积极作用。之后，他又将主体从国家改为公司。他列举了几条适者生存的规则：

1. 当世界越来越平，没有什么是做不到的，关键是你做还是别人做。
2. 当世界越来越平，最重要的竞争，不是公司与公司，个人与个人，而是你和你自己的想象力。
3. 小公司做大事情，要做到这一点，必须充分利用所有新兴的协作工具，以致更快、更广、更深和更远。
4. 大公司做小事情，为客户提供定制化服务。
5. 最杰出的公司是最优秀的协作者。
6. 最杰出的公司需要定期检查内部的组织结构和工作流程，去除冗余部分，为客户更有效的服务。
7. 最杰出的公司外包的目的是为了更快的创新，以更便宜的价格扩张，获取更多市场份额，雇用更多不同领域的专家，而不是仅仅是为了缩减开支。
8. 当世界越来越平，怎样做事变得越来越重要。
• 价格、产品设计和流程的差异化，不再重要，因为它们很容易被复制、抄袭。重要的是如何对待员工、客户、供应商和投资者，差异带来机会。
• 在愈来愈透明化和互动化的世界，形象、声誉愈发重要。
9. 挖掘自身潜力，不要试图建筑壁垒保护自己。

紧接着，他谈及了全球化对个人及文化形态的影响，他认为全球化虽然有同一化各种文化的可能，但更有增强文化多元性的趋势，并且是以一种前所未见的 影响力。因为新兴媒体的普及，使移民至发达国家的人群也能随时随地保持与本土文化的紧密联系。不过，象任何硬币都有正反面一样，无所不在的联接使得人们天 涯若比邻的同时，也让人与人变得咫尺若天涯。

此外，水能载舟，亦能覆舟，全球化也并不总是带来光明、进步，它也有阴暗面和毁灭性：

• 2003年SARS的肆虐、2009年H1N1的蔓延现身说法：变平了的世界在流行性病毒面前，也变得愈加脆弱。
• 在日益密切的世界面前，有些文化形态兴旺发达，有些文化却令人沮丧得衰落下去。两相对比之下，落后的人们因为挫败、羞辱而心怀怨恨，在看不到 未来、没有出路、希望破灭的境况下，会铤而走险，发泄愤怒，毁灭世界。龃龉丛生的中东地区、人体炸弹盛产地、发动9/11袭击并掀起全球反恐浪潮的基地组 织就是明证。
• 当世界失去边界，当国家失去保护壁垒，落后国家地区的人们，未必能进入公平竞争的行列，因为Mathew Effect表明，全球化造成的也许是强者更强，弱者更弱。
  

最后Friedman的结论就是：在扁平化的世界里，要活得乐观、积极而不是活在恐惧中，要为梦想而奋斗而不是沉湎于回忆，要善用新技术来建设美丽新世界，而不是毁人毁几。

伤心桥下春波绿，曾是惊鸿照影来

一到夜里的这个时候，心脏就开始跳得不规则，忽快忽慢的，喘不过气时，就只能猛咳嗽几声。有时，我忍不住想，会不会是那会留下的“病根”呢？

好久没敢听音乐了，当年添置的迷你音响也落了一层细细的灰尘，尤其是搁在上面的那张自己精心刻录的cd.

静静得躺在黑夜里，万家灯火在风雨飘摇的窗外次第熄灭，夜影如墨。细若游丝的音乐轻轻地叩击着鼓膜，想要和你一起在夜色里安静得聆听音乐的念想，想要让歌声替我倾诉心声的渴望，又一点点清晰鲜活起来，苦涩也一点点从心底一直泛上舌尖。

当“一切”响起，我仿佛又看见你在地铁里带着耳机泪流满面的样子，心脏，突然就停止了跳动......

Justice 听后记(5)

第十讲：The Good citizen

Aristotle believed the purpose of polities is:

• shape the character
• cultivate the virture of citizens
• inculcate civic excellence
• make possible a good way of life
  

He thought as a good citizen, you must practice in communities and politics because only during excercising you can discern paritcular features which can't be learned from reading books.

Aristotle's theory of justice is teleological, it is a matter of fit the person with their virtues and excellence to the approriate roles.

Using Casey Martin v. PGA tour case as example，Prof. Sandel helped students to understand deeply that Golf debate is not only a debate of the purpose, the teleological feature, but also the debate about allocation of the honor. If it was allowed to use golf cart in tournament, Golf is no longer viewed as a sports, a competition, instead, it would become a game of skills, an entertainment.

Further, Sandel addressed the contradiction of Aristotle's teleological theory with freedom: Be free is to be independent of any pariticular roles, traditions, conventions. Tie justice to some particular conceptions of goods restricts the freedom of individuals.

第十一讲: Obligations and Loyalties

Aristotle v.s Kant & Rawl on Freedom and Justice:

• Aristotle: We are free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential.
• Kant: We are free when we have the capacity to act automonously and capable of choosing our ends.
  
• Aristotle: Justice consists in giving people what they deserve, and a just society is one that enables human beings to realize their highest nature and to live the good life.
• Kant: A just society is to set up a fair framework of rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves.

The comparison between Aristotle and Kant also leads to the communitarian view of self: The self is claimed or encumbered to some extent by history, tradition, the family, the communities, the country.

There are two kinds of moral obligations defined by libertarian:

1. Universal duties that we owe to every human being;
   
2. Voluntary obligations that we acquire by consent, as when we agree to help someone or promise to be faithful to our partners and friends.
   

In additon to the above, Communitarian think people also have obligations of membership, solidarity, and loyalty which are not necessarily based on consent.

Several examples to weigh loyalty over duty are presented in the course, among discussion, most students voted for moral obligations to do more for people who are closer to them, even though it might compete with a universal duty to humanity.

第十二讲：Same Sex Marriage

In beginning, Prof. Sandel summarized: The love of humanity is noble sentiment, but most of time we live our lives by smaller solidarities. This may reflect certain limits to the bounds of moral sympathy, but more important, it reflects the fact, that we learn to love humanity, not in general, but through its particular expressions.

After hosting a heated debate about same sex marriage, after telling the story how the Massachusetts supreme judicial court changed its standpoint in the same-sex marriage case, Sandel concluded that government can't be neutral on difficult moral questions and reasoning about good, about purposes, and ends is unavoidable feature of aruging about justice. Put it another way, it has to figure out the essential point and purpose of moral issues before to reach a just conclusion. In that case, the exlucsive and permanent commitment of the partners to one another is the essential point and purpose of the marriage, therefore, the same-sex marriage is permitted.

Unavoidably, there is persisting disagreement about the good life and about the moral and religious questions in mordern pluralist society. Sandel suggested we can apply the method of moral reasoning which was proposed by Rawls——the method of reflective equlibrium. That is moving back and forth between our considered judgements about particular cases and the general principles we would articulate to make sense of these judgments. In Rawls opinion, a conception of justice is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view.

Finally, Sandel told us the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, the purpose of the philosophy is by estranging us from the familiar, by unsettling our settled assumptions. Once the familiar turns strange, Once we start to reflect on our circumstance, it's never quite same again.

Justice 听后记(4)

第八讲：What’s a Fair and Deserved?

什么是一个公平的开始？什么才是我们应得的？

这一讲从John Rawls的"veil of ignorance" 理论开始，探讨了收入、财富、机会和资源分配的公平程度。

根据Rawl的理论，一个社会是否公正，取决于社会制度是否是在戴上“无知的面纱”以后制定的。只有在人们不知道自己的年 龄、性别、种族、宗教、智力、社会地位、家庭背景、个人优势和人生目标的情况下，他们所制定的规则才不可能倾向其自身利益，也因此，更客观公正。他的理论 包含三大原则：

1. Equal basic liberties: Everyone should have the same set of basic liberties, including the freedoms of speech and conscience, the right to hold office and to vote for elected officials, the right to hold personal property, and so on.
   
2. Fair equality of opportunity: People with the same natural talents and the same willingness to use them should have the same chances of success, no matter how rich or poor their parents, no matter their sex, or race, or any other social distinction.
3. Difference Principle: There should be no differences in income and wealth, except those social and economic inequalities will work to the benefit of the least well-off.

学生针对人类历史上存在的几种社会财富分配体系，探讨了不公平存在的地方和各种体系的优劣：

• 封建贵族体制: 没有公平的起点，出生的偶然性决定了财富的分配。
• 自由主义体制：纯粹由市场来决定。但家庭背景、成长环境等因素决定了不可能有均等的教育机会，针对146个精英学校的学生家庭经济背景所做的调查表明，仅有3%来自穷困家庭，而70%都来自富裕的家庭。
• 精英领导体制: 看似有公平的起点，面对均等的教育机会，但天赋的差异仍旧决定了不平等的存在。特别需要指出的是：这种制度下，不可否认，个人通过自身努力抵达成功，但真 正起决定性作用的，是个人对社会的贡献结果而不是个人所付出的努力多少，这其中，依旧有与生俱来的才能、优良的家庭环境、运气等各种偶然性因素存在，而这 些并不是个人所能控制并努力就可以获取的，就此而言，成就和财富也并不完全是应得的。
• 平等主义体制：在这种体制下，人们允许发挥自己的天赋并获利，但他们的财富会被再分配，以服务于社会最底层。

Rawls因此在moral desert和entiltments to legitimate expectation之间划下分界线，他的differnence principle就是针对后者而言的。

第九讲：Affirmative Action and Purpose

这一课，从Cheryl Hopwood起诉德州法学院的官司开始，针对“平权行动”展开了激烈的讨论：学校是否有权利在招生时优先考虑少数种族？

赞成和反对的，势均力敌。其中赞成派给出的论据有:

• corrective: 修正不均等的教育背景带来的不平等
• compensatory: 补偿过去的不平等政策带来的伤害和不平等后果。
  
• diversity: 从社会使命的目的出发，为教育注入多元性的元素。
  

反对派则声称个人不应该为自己不能控制的因素而被拒之门外。

接着，亚里士多德粉墨登场，有别于kant和Rawls，他关于公正的理论则是从目的论出发点，其中涉及两个主要因子：资源，以及分配得到该资源的人。亚里士多德认为关于公正的判断应该以终为始，从目的出发，目的决定了资源的分配。

延伸阅读：刘瑜的《谁有特权上大学》，对“无知之幕”、“平权行动”、“程序性正义”及“补偿性正义”均有涉及，而且论述简洁精妙。

Justice 听后记(3)

第六讲：Motives and Morality

此讲，Sandel介绍了哲学家Immanuel Kant关于自由和道德的观点。

首先，自由是与必然相对的，换言之，所谓自由，即你的行动必须是完全自主的，你必须是跟据自己的自由意志，自己设定的规则来行动，而不是被自身的本能、欲望所驱策，不是受限于独裁者的法律，不是被环境所限制的，也不能是被他人诱导的。也就是说，autonomous 和heternomous的区别，为自由确定了界限。

也因此，对kant而言，自由和道德产生了联系。他认为道德不应该取决于行为的后果，而应该取决于初始的意图和行为的动机。也就是说，行为的道德价值，取决于行为的动机是基于自主选择的责任义务所在，还是基于自身的利益计算。Kant 认为，doing the right things for the wrong reason，不属于道德的范畴.

为此，Kant给出了三种对比：

• 关于reason, 你必须仔细区分categorical v.s hyperthetical imperatives: 其中，Kant也给出了两套规则加以区分categorical imperatives
• the formular of universal law
• the formular of humanity as ends
• 关于motive,你必须仔细鉴别duty v.s. inclination
• 关于freedom，你必须根据意愿、决断来界定autonomous v.s heteronomous.

有且只有一种行为，出自categorical imperative的reason, 自主选择的，基于责任而触发的，才是道德的。

听的时候，我不可避免得想起当初和你关于intention和effect的讨论，想起你曾引用的一句话：“A path to hell is paved with good intentions", 我不禁疑惑，究竟是intention更重要，还是effect更重要？我们是否可以因为good motive而不去计较或者原谅bad effect？我们是否可以因为good effect而不去计较bad motives？如果是Kant，他又会如何反驳这句话呢？

此外，有趣的是，在Sandel讲述必须尊重人类，不能以他人为手段来达成自己的目的时，我想起最近刚看到的一篇心理学报道，在该报道中，提到最新的实验结果表明：人类潜意识中有视他人为可利用的工具并加以类别化记忆的倾向。看来，越来越多的证据指向，”人之初，性本恶”哦。

Watch it on Academic Earth

第七讲：Lying and Principles

According to Kant, white lie is not moral. However, there is moral disticntion between outright lie and carefully evasion from truth, because the latter shows a certain homage and the elemantary respect to the diginity of the law of moral.

According to John Rawls, the principle of justice are the princples that we would all agree to if we were choosing rules for our society and no one had any unfair bargaing power. Based on this, an agreement is only fair when it is made both voluntarily and against a background of equality.

Watch it on Academic Earth

Justice 听后记(2)

从第三讲开始，Sandel教授离开了功利主义，转向了自由主义这一流派。

第三讲，Freedom to Choose

与功利主义忽视个人权利截然相反，自由主义声称个人的权利是不可侵犯的，人拥有他自己。他们反对政府的家长式作风，反对道德立法，反对财富再分配，认为财富再分配等同于劳力剥削和奴隶制。这其中的代表人物是Robert Nozick。

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第四讲，Natural Rights

这一讲，Sandel从Nozick的观点自然过渡到John Locker的。Locker不是纯粹的自由主义者，他既是自由主义某些观点的支持者，又是反对者。他的两大主张是：

Private property

• The state of nature is a condition we decide to live
• The natural right to life, liberty and property is inalienable rights, we can't give up or take away from anyone else.
• The goverment is limited by the obligation on the part of majority to respect and enforce the inalienable rights, and based on consent.

Consent:

• It is the collective consent in society.
• We are giving our "implied consent" once we decided to live in society
• As long as the rule of law is not arbitrary to take of life, liberty or property-- then it isn't a violation of the fundamental rights of individuals.
• If the majority decides a generally applicable law and if it votes duly according to fair procedures, then there is no violation.

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第五讲：Army system & Surrogacy

这一讲，Sandel触及了consent的限度。围绕美国内战的征兵系统和伊拉克战争的自愿参军方式，Sandel带领学生展开了激烈的争论，并比较了三种军队征兵方式的公正程度：

• Increase pay and benefits to attract more soliders
• Military conscription
• Hire mercenaries

紧接着，针对新泽西州1988年"Baby M"的官司，Sandel要求大家投票表决是否应该强迫这个代理母亲遵守合同，放弃孩子的抚养权。他要求大家为各自的观点辩护并陈述理由，经过激烈讨论，他最后总结，公平有时并不仅仅有双方自愿的承诺和协议即可确保，因为：

• 交易双方，有可能因为地位、经济条件的不对等和环境压力而导致隐性的强迫和不公平的存在；(bargaing power)
• 交易双方，有可能因为信息不对称、不完整，并不完全意识到协议后果而导致事先的许可失去完全的公平性。(equally information)

更进一步，Sandel说明，有些东西是不可以被交易的，因为一旦以金钱来衡量，会去人性化，会被低估本身的价值，譬如尊重、爱、感激、荣誉等等。

To summarize, something can not be bought by money. Merely because conduct purchased by money are "voluntary" and consented do not mean that it is good or beyond regulation and prohibition.

Watch it on Academic Earth

Justice 听后记(1)

对公平、公正的追求，一直左右着我的人生选择，也为我带来不少困惑。感谢互联网，今日，我有缘能在academic earth上聆听哈佛教授Michael Sandel的“Justice, What's the right thing to do？"讲座，What a Serendipty!

Justice一课，是哈佛史上影响深远也是最受欢迎的课程之一。讲课过程中，Sandel常常先抛出颇具道德争议的案例来拷问学生 的良知，既有假设性的，又有真实发生的，一旦学生给出观点，他会继续追问他们的判断依据和推理过程，然后再改变事件发生的情境和条件，进一步挑战他们的道德底 线。学生往往在不知不觉中被引导入左右为难的困境，难以为继之下，Sandel开始概况、总结与之相关的哲学各流派的观点，引经据典，旁征博引，带领学生重新审视曾经习以为常、不假思索的选 择与道德判断。

在第一讲里，他首先用一个假设性问题——”如果你可以选择，会不会牺牲1个人的生命来挽救另外的5个人？”抛出主题 -The Morality of Mude。其中，发人深省的是，为什么能产生同样后果的不同行为，在不同的情境下会导致不同的选择？是什么道德准则在支配他们做出这样的选择？在师生互动 和脑力激荡后，Sandel水到渠成的说明了这之中其实隐含了两种道德判断(Moral Reasoning)标准:

• Consequentialist: 他们的道德判断是基于行为所带来的后果。 功利主义者属于这一类。
• Categorical: 这一类的道德判断是不管行为所带来的后果优劣，都必须受到一定的权利和责任的限制。一旦某种行为属于这一类别，哪怕它能带来再好的后果，也是不道德的。

紧 接着，他讲述了一个发生在19世纪的真实案例——“海难船员合谋杀死同伴，食其肉饮其血最终生还。” 模拟的学生陪审团中，就存在基于这两种评判标准而做出的不同的虚拟审判。最后，Sandel为大家介绍了功利主义的鼻祖边沁，和他们所宣扬的行事原则：最 大化群体的幸福指数，最小化痛苦总额。

Watch it on Academic Earth

第二讲伊始，Sandel用福特公司通过比较改善其中一款汽车安全隐患的收益开支后，基于功利主义 的原则做出不作为决定这一事例，进一步提出问题：生命是否有价？如果有价，又该如何计量？是否存在一种通用的统一的衡量价值的手段？该如何衡量群体的快乐 指数？为了大多数群体的利益，是否就可以牺牲少数族群的权利？这些问题其实也间接指出功利主义的三个软肋：

• 将幸福与高兴简单得等同起来。能力、成就、友谊和爱，只有在它们能给人们带来快乐的时候才意味着幸福，否则就不做计量。
• 只要是快乐，不分类别都具备一样的权重。痛苦亦然。
• 允许为多数人而牺牲少数人的利益。

自 边沁以降，反对功利主义的自然不在少数。于是，Sandel又为大家引见了另一位哲学家——J.S.Mil. 身为边沁的朋友和功利主义的忠实追随者，J.S. Mill一直试图修正并完善其中的一些论断，譬如快乐的确有高等和低级之分，譬如如何界定什么是更高层次的幸福等等等等。有趣的是，在试验Mill的界定 标准时，大部分学生都认可哈姆雷特是更高层次的精神享受，但又更愿选择能带来笑声的Simphson影片。这也侧面推翻了Mill关于快乐层次的高下之分 的定义。

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心智探奇

总算是啃完了Steven Pinker的鸿篇巨作——《How The Mind Works》。见识过白云变苍狗，经历过沧海成桑田，困惑过人的言行，在他的引领下一窥人类心智的奥秘，明白人脑是如何工作的，了解行为背后隐藏的动机， 就不失为一种答疑解惑的选择。不过，因为自身的知识储备不足之故，因为是英文原著之故，这次的探索之旅尤显艰难而漫长，却也不虚此行。
　　
认知科学是一门新近发展起来的学科，Steven Pinker是其中的佼佼者，也是备受赞誉的科普作家。读的时候，我折服于他的博学、睿智，就像一个武林高手，在心理学、生物学、语言学、神经科学、人类 学和人工智能各领域之间纵横捭阖、来去自如，观点独到精辟，立论严谨周密，论证独到犀利，例证丰富新鲜，行文汪洋恣肆；浅学陋识的我不得不放慢脚步，常常 需要回过头再读一遍，细细地咀嚼，慢慢地消化。他善用譬喻，能以我们所了解熟悉的，说明我们所不了解的陌生理论，清晰明了。此外，很多看起来似是而非的理 论，到了他的手里，三两下间就被拆解得原形毕露。
　　
Steven从人类心智的标准设备入手，以心智计算理论和物竞天择理论为纲领，条分缕析，说明心智是如何让我们能辨识影像、思考问题的，进 而，他揭示了人类的情绪谜团，详加审视了人类社会关系网络的各个节点，最后，他剖析了人类追求艺术的动机以及思索生命的意义等，通过对无数个“为什么”的 寻根究底，帮助我们理解“基因的自私”并不必然代表生物个体的自私，达尔文提出的复制、变异和淘汰三种机制又是如何决定了人类行为的每一个细节，演变出大 千世界生命现象的林林总总，并最终促进了我们对人类自身的理解。
　　
读的时候，我偶尔也会被Steven“惊世骇俗”的观点吓到，但正如他一再声明的：进化心理学的任务，不是评估人类的本性，而是以最少的心理 学假设，结合生物进化的理论，解释尽可能多的客观事实，将我们所了解的人类本性与我们所掌握的世界是如何运作的知识融会贯通起来，用科学的手段为人类提供 令人满意的洞察力和认知。此书，无关道德判断，仅仅是专注于科学假设、推断、观察和分析。

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.8 —— The Meaning of Life

In this final chapter, Steven discusses mankind's higher callings: art, music, literature, humor, religion, and philosophy.

Arts:

• Art are fascinating but biologically functionless activities, they are nonadaptive by-products based on the critieria for biological adaptation.
• People pursue the arts because that art is the proof of status.
• People evolved pleasure-circuts that gave them trickles of enjoyment from the art.

Music: As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless. Then why music is pusued? Steven suspect that music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our mental faculties.

• Language: Music has been called "heightened speech," and it can literally grade into speech.
• Auditory scene analysis:When we hear harmonically related tones, our auditory system is satisfied that it has successfully carved the auditory world into parts that belong to important objects in the world, namely, resonating soundmakers like people, animals, and hollow objects.
• Emotional calls: melodies evoke strong emotions because their skeletons resemble digitized templates of our species' emotional calls.
• Habitat selection: some of the stripped-down figures and rhythms at the heart of a melody are simplified templates of evocative environmental sounds.
• Motor control: Repetitive actions have an optimal rhythm which is the universal component of music. We get moderate pleasure from being able to stick to constant rhythmic pattern, Music recreates the motivational and emotional components of movement.

Movie/Literature:

• provide delight
• simulate a triumph over tragedy.
• give obvious strategic advantages in the games of life: gossip is a favorite pastime in all human societies because knowledge is power.
• supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them.

Humor:

• Laughter is a form of communication: it is noisy not because it releases pent-up psychic energy but so that others may hear it.
• Laughter is involuntary for the same reason that other emotional displays are involuntary: The brain broadcasts an honest, unfakable, expensive advertisement of a mental state to convince an audience that an internal state is heartfelt rather than a sham.
• Laughter is a signal of mock aggression
• Humor is often a kind of aggression.
• Humor is also a prized tactic of rhetoric and intellectual argument.
• Humor begins with a train of thought in one frame of reference that bumps up against an anomaly: an event or statement that makes no sense in the context of what has come before. The anomaly can be resolved by shifting to a different frame of reference, one in which the event does makes sense. And within that frame, someone's dignity has been downgraded.
• What is humor for:
• Humor can be an anti-dominance weapon.
• Dominance is impotent before a mob who are united by humor.
• Humor is an effective weapon that forces people, at least for a moment, to agree to things they would otherwise deny.
• Kidding is a precision instrument for assessing the kind of relationship one has with a person.

Religion:

• Religion is a desperate measure that people resort to when the stakes are high and they have exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success—medicines, strategies, courtship, and, in the case of the weather, nothing.
• Religious concepts are human concepts with a few emendations that make them wondrous and a longer list of standard traits that make them sensible to our ordinary ways of knowing.
• Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Philosophy:

• Some philosophical enigmas baffled human for millennia like:
• consciousness in the sense of sentience or subjective experience
• the self
• Free will
• meaning
• Knowledge
• morality
• Our thoroughgoing perplexity about these enigmas may come from a mismatch between the very nature of these problems and the computational apparatus that natural selection has fitted us with.
• Our bafflement at the mysteries of the ages may have been the price we paid for a combinatorial mind that opened up a world of words and sentences, of theories and equations, of poems and melodies, of jokes and stories, the very things that make a mind worth having.
• Philosophers try to clairfy these problems, chip off chunks that can be solved, and solve them or hand them over to science to solve.
• The computational aspect of consciousness (what information is available to which processes), the neurological aspect (what in the brain correlates with consciousness), and the evolutionary aspect (when and why did the neurocomputational aspects emerge) are perfectly tractable, thus can help us make progress and eventually reach a complete understanding.

白发如新——《认得几个字》

认字有盲点吗？
　　
张大春的答案是：有。他用89个俯拾即是的例子告诉我们：穷尽我们之一生，未必能有机会完完整整地将听过，说过，读过，写过几千万次的某个字 认识透彻。常常地，我们以为我们已经认识的人，了解的字，明白的意义会忽然以陌生人的姿态出现，吓我们一跳。而之所以误读，误写，误以为是，是我们对于认 字这件事想得太简单，用字遣词或不知不解得人云亦云，或不求甚解得望文生义，或一知半解得浅尝辄止；这其中，固然有文字在长期演化变迁中的意义流失，面目 全非之外因，更有我们自己的诸多内因之故：有懒惰懈怠造成的轻率遗漏，有随波逐流引起的积重难返，有缺乏好奇心导致的囫囵吞枣，不知为知之。
　　
读此书前，我知道自己因生性一向疏懒之故，读书不愿多翻字典，满足于浅表之见，识字肯定不算多；读完此书，背上一片微凉，从此以后，不敢妄称 识得几个字。所幸，闻道虽迟，知耻而后补之永远不嫌太迟，自今起，不妨学做有心人，上书山，下辞海，追根朔源，探究曾经习以为常的字词背后的文化故实，即 便不能与字词倾盖如故，也断断不能白发如新。
　　
此外，捧读之际，张大春膝下一双垂髫小童，惫赖模样，跃然纸上，稚言趣答，让人忍俊不禁；他的舔犊之情深，教育之用心良苦，流转于字里行间，让人心有所动；他父亲的”遗士“风范，他的孺慕之情，父与子的吟唱作答，父爱的浸润传承，让人心有所感。
　　
此书，的确如阿城之言，是有体温的。

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.7 —— Family Values

This chapter is about the psychology of social relations. It explores the distinct kinds of thoughts and feelings about kin and non-kin, and about parents, children, siblings, dates, spouses, acquaintances, friends, rivals, allies, and enemies. Meanwhile, several controversial opinions and ideas are discussed and presented, which should be cautiously seperated from the morality's standpoint. When you finish this chapter, you will know, in short, people's social motives are strategies that are tailored to the tournaments they play in.

The characteristics of Kinship:

1. Kinship is digital: you are either kith of somebody or not, can't be in between.
   
2. kinship is a relation.
3. kinship is topological: Everyone is a node in a web whose links are defined by parenthood, generation, and gender.
4. kinship is self-contained.

The theory of parent-offspring conflict：

• In essence it is sibling rivalry: siblings compete among themselves for their parents' investment, whereas the parents would be happiest if each accepted a share proportional to his or her needs. Put into another way: children want to take more than what their parents want to give.
• It offers a straightforward explanation to Opedial complex & Electra complex: Delay the day of their baby brother or sister coming by competing with fathers for their mothers' attentions.
• It also subverts the biology-culture distinction theory: Personality is not a product of socialization by parents, actually, it is proved that about 50% of the variation in personality has genetic causes.

Why is there sex to begin with?
The best theory is that sex is a defense against parasites and pathogens: Sexual reproduction is a way of giving its offspring a head start in the race against the germs.

The cause of sex differences --the theory of parental investment: The greater-investing sex chooses, the lesser-investing sex competes.

1. Male competition for access to females
2. Female choice in males: men vary in their ability and willingness to invest in their children

Why people developed marriage?

1. Men and women live together in large groups, men need to compete for sexual access to women
2. Men invest in their offspring, women need to compete for men's ability and willingness to invest
3. In marriage a man and woman form a reproductive alliance that is meant to limit demands from third parties for sexual access and parental investment.

From reproductive success point of view:

• A part of the male mind should want a variety of sexual partners to increase reproduction.
• Another part of the male sexual mind is an ability to be easily aroused by the faintest hint of a possible sex partner.

Polygyny v.s Monogamy:

• Inequality has allowed a kind of polygyny to flourish.
• Under polygyny, men vie for extraordinary Darwinian stakes—many wives versus none.
• Marriage arrangements are usually described from the man's point of view, not because the desires of women are irrelevant but because powerful men have usually gotten their way.
• Polyandry is vanishingly rare. It only happens in very harsh environments, but the arrangement collapses when conditions improve.
  
• In a freer society polygyny is not necessarily bad for women, on financial and ultimately on evolutionary grounds, a woman may prefer to share a wealthy husband than to have the undivided attention of a pauper, and may even prefer it on emotional grounds.
• Legal monogamy historically has been an agreement between more and less powerful men, not between men and women.
• Laws enforcing monogamy would work to women's disadvantage.
• Rootcause: a single difference between the sexes--men's greater desire for multiple partners.

The sex difference in adultery/jealous:

• A woman has an affair because she feels that the man is in some way superior or complementary to her husband.
• A man has an affair because the woman is not his wife.
• Women should squirm at the thought of their husbands or boyfriends giving time, resources, attention, and affection to another woman.
• Men should squirm at the thought of their wives or girlfriends having sex with another man.
• Women's jealousy appears to be under the control of more sophisticated software, and they can appraise their circumstances and determine whether the man's behavior poses a threat to their ultimate interests.
  
• Men's jealousy is cruder and more easily triggered.
• men may be upset about affection because it could lead to sex;
  
• women may be upset about sex because it could lead to affection.

Status:

• Status is the public knowledge that you possess assets that would allow you to help others if you wished to.
• The psychology of status was driven by four "pecuniary canons of taste":

1. Conspicuous leisure
2. Conspicuous consumption
   
• It is counterintuitive because squandering wealth can only reduce it, bringing the squanderer down to the level of his or her rivals. But it works when other people's esteem is useful enough to pay for and when not all the wealth or earning power is sacrificed.
• It works when only the richest can afford luxuries.
• People at the top of social ladder try to look different from the people below them.
• People try to mimic and look like the people above them.
• The style trickles downward from upper classes to lower leads to the fashion.
3. Conspicuous waste
4. Conspicuous outrage.

Friendship:

• Cooperativeness can evolve when the parties interact repeatedly, remember each other's behavior, and reciprocate it.
• The point of friendship, in evolutionary terms, is to save you in hard times when it's not worth anyone else's trouble.

War:

• War is a game that benefits men (natural selection favors traits that increase fitness on average) more than women.
• The coalition acting together can gain a benefit that its members acting alone cannot, and that spoils are distributed according to the risks undertaken.
• Men are willing to fight collectively only if they are confident of victory and none of them knows in advance who will be injured or killed.
• People's mind is equipped to volunteer for a risk of death in a coalition but only if we do not know when death will come.

Inglish_24/11/09

nuclear family: 核心家庭; 基本家庭; 小家庭; a family that consists of father, mother and children, when it is thought of as a unit in society.
Not everybody nowadays lives in the conventional nuclear family.

dead as a dodo: 绝迹的；失效不复存在

egg on : 怂恿某人(煽动某人)

If you egg a person on, you encourage them to do something, especially something dangerous or foolish.
Wouldn't the proverbial smell of fear just egg on one's enemies?

hash sth out: 把复杂麻烦的事情快速解决
hash out a problem: 经过长时间讨论解决一个问题

The teacher asked them to sit down together and hash out their differences.

run-of-the-mill: 普通的；A run-of-the-mill person or thing is very ordinary, with no special or interesting features.

It made the case seem too familiar, and thus run-of-the-mill and simplistic.

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.6 —— Hotheads

In this chapter Steven presents a distinctly unromantic theory of the emotions which combines the computational theory of mind with the modern theory of evolution. He demonstrates that the emotions are adaptations, well-engineered software modules that work in harmony with the intellect and are indispensable to the functioning of the whole mind. Via reverse-engineering he also proves emotions are designed to propagate copies of the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral values.

Emotion v.s. Intellect

• The emotions come from nature and live in the body. They are hot, irrational impulses and intuitions, which follow the imperatives of biology.
• The intellect comes from civilization and lives in the mind. It is a cool deliberator that follows the interests of self and society by keeping the emotions in check.

The triune brain theory proposed by Paul Mac Lean: the human cerebrum is an evolutionary palimpsest of three layers.

1. Reptilian Brain/the basal ganglia: the seat of the primitive and selfish emotions driving the "Four Fs": feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sexual behavior.
2. Primitive Mammalian Brain/the limbic system: dedicated to the kinder, gentler, social emotions, like those behind parenting.
3. Modern Mammalian Brain/the neocortex: houses the intellect.

Why the triune theory is incorrect:

• The forces of evolution do not just heap layers on an unchanged foundation: Though our bodies carry vestiges of the past, they have been modified to fit features of the human lifestyle.
• The evidence shows the emotions are easy to reprogram.
• The human cerebral cortex does not ride piggyback on an ancient limbic system, or serve as the terminus of a processing stream beginning there.The systems work in tandem, integrated by many two-way connections.

The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain's highest-level goals. Each human emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and reproducing in the cognitive niche.

Disgust:

• The psychology of disgust obeys the two laws:the law of contagion and the law of similarity.
• Disgust is an adaptation that deterred our ancestors from eating dangerous animal stuff.
• Disgust is intuitive microbiology, so we disgust things contaminate everythings they touch.
• Disgust insects and small creatures: From optimal foraging theory point of view, animals allocate their time to maximize the rate of nutrients they consume. Thus insects are absent from the diets of cultures. Since in the minds of eaters, whatever is not permitted is forbidden, those cultures find them disgusting.
• The food taboos are weapons to keep potential defectors in.

Fear:

• Fears in modern city-dwellers protect us from dangers that no longer exist, and fail to protect us from dangers in the world around us.
• Fears do change with experience.
• Fears can be easily conditioned only when the animal is evolutionarily prepared to make the association.

Happiness:

• The function of happiness would be to mobilize the mind to seek the keys to Darwinian fitness.
• People are happy when they feel better off than their neighbors, unhappy when they feel worse off.
• People adapt to their circumstances. The baseline that people adapt to, on average, is not misery but satisfaction.
• Losses are more keenly felt than equivalent gains.

Delay of gratification:

• Future discounting: prefer a large late reward to a small early one. Discounting the future (good things now and better things later) is part of the logic of choice for any agent that lives longer than an instant. Whether going for the quick reward insteat of a distant payoff depends on:
• How important the short-term gratification is to you now.
• How likely you are to get for the distant payoff and how big this payoff is.
• How long you expect to live
• Myopic discounting: flip our preference from choosing a large late reward to a small early one as time passes and both rewards draw nearer.

Social Emotions:

• Selfish Gene theory's explanation:
• Natural selection selects selfish replicators. It is gene not body replicate, and that means that genes not bodies should be selfish.
• The way for a gene to do that in an animal with a brain is to wire the brain so that the animal's pleasures and pains cause it to act in ways that lead to more copies of the gene.
• Kin selection: Altruism evolves because the altruist is related to the beneficiary so the altruism-causing gene benefits itself. It has another name -- love.
• The essence of love is feeling pleasure in another's well-being and pain in its harm.The sacrifices made for love are modulated by:
• The degree of relatedness: the closer, the more sacrifications.
• The expected reproductive life of the beneficiary: the longer the beneficiary live, the more sacrifications.
• the beneficiary's own feelings of love: you help people who enjoy helping you and helping your relatives
• Do not misstate the "Selfish gene" theory:
• People's genes are not their true self
• The metaphorical motives of people's genes are not the real, deepest, truest, unconscious motives of the persons.
  
• Love, compassion, and empathy are invisible fibers that connect genes in different bodies.

The moral emotions are designed by natural selection to further the long-term interests of individuals and ultimately their genes.

• The demands of reciprocal altruism are probably the source of many human emotions. Collectively they make up a large part of the moral sense.
• The minimal equipment is a cheater-detector and a tit-for-tat strategy that begrudges a gross cheater further help.
• Liking is the emotion that initiates and maintains an altruistic partnership.
• Anger protects a person whose niceness has left her vulnerable to being cheated.
• Gratitude calibrates the desire to reciprocate according to the costs and benefits of the original act.
• Sympathy, the desire to help those in need, may be an emotion for earning gratitude.
• Guilt can rack a cheater who is in danger of being found out.
• Righteous anger, and the attendant thirst for redress or vengeance, is a credible deterrent if it is uncontrollable and unresponsive to the deterrer's costs.
• Romantic love is a emotion that was not triggered by your objective mate-value and so will
  not be alienated by someone with greater mate-value; An emotion that the person did not decide to have, and so cannot decide not to have. An emotion that is guaranteed not to be a sham because it has physiological costs like tachycardia, insomnia, and anorexia.
  
• Grief are powerful reminders to protect and cherish a loved one in the face of myriad other demands on one's time and thoughts.
• Self-deception makes us feel right when we are wrong and emboldens us to fight when we ought to surrender.

Facial Expressions:

• Facial expressions need to be broadcasted to show the passionate emotions which are guarantors of threats and promises.
• Facial expressions are useful since they are hard to fake: Emotions are so intimately tied to the body, because the major human emotions seem to have grown out of evolutionary precursors, each of which engaged a suite of involuntary physiological responses.

塞壬之歌

最近在啃读Steven Pinker的鸿篇巨作《心智探奇》，读至“Hotheads”这一章节，我就象一个小心翼翼在雷区穿行的士兵，前功尽弃，触雷倒下。

是的，我又想起了你，又想起了那早已远去的岁月。抬头，侧耳，我甚至可以听见时空深处你不无惊讶却又满是温柔痛切的声音：“怎么会？你呀你，入魔太深了......”

是的，怎么会？怎么会无时无刻不忆念起你？怎么会无事无物不联想到你？这魔力，竟是经年不曾消减丝毫。

也许是因为对你的忆念漫过心田，不顾一切得要找个借口决堤而出；也许是因为永不再见的悲伤，无可挽回的悔恨，如窥伺一旁的恶魔，觊觎着每一个时机，狠狠得窜出来吞噬我；也许是因为他对人们选择delay of gratification是否明智的论述触痛了我敏感的神经。

曾经，那个满是离殇的冬夜，塞壬在四周游弋，她的天籁之音在耳边低吟浅唱，我将自己牢牢束缚在桅杆上，绝望得与自己挣扎，竭尽全力抵抗着蛊惑，拒绝臣服于内心涌动的激情，在 short-term gratification和long-term interest中，选择了后者；在昙花一现的当下与风雨如晦的未来中，选择了未来；在确定与不确定中，选择了不确定。当曙光一点点撕开黑幕，当帆船渐行渐远，当塞壬的身影逐渐消失在水平线，疑惑、懊恼、憾恨也渐次将我淹没。我没想到的是，即便做出了这样的“牺牲”，这一错身，依旧是永远——永不能见。



后来，在无数个寂寂长夜，我远远地回望，这一怀愁绪，几年离索，满腔热望，一身孤寒，竟是无从说起。后来，在咸涩的泪为没能说出的话没能做过的事而流淌时，我开始一遍又一遍得质疑自己的self-control，对吗？错了嘛？那样的错失，值得 嘛？后悔吗？后来，我开始懂得，无论是怎样的抉择，结局其实不可避免。因为，历史已经被白纸黑字地写下，我所有的虔诚都不能使它有一丝挽回，我所有的眼泪 都不会让它有一点改变。

身外身内，从此烟飞烟灭。唯有，昨日的歌声，一声声里，依旧有被恋慕的名字在回荡......

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.5 —— Good Ideas

This chapter is about human reasoning: how people make sense of their world. Steven tries to elaborate it in 4 steps.

Step 1: Distinguish people's intuitive science and academic science

Why people don't really work like scientists:

• Natural selection shaped us to master the local environment not to earn good grades in science class, and that led to discrepancies between how we naturally think and what is demanded in the academy.
• The cost of science is expensive: In a large society with writing and institutionalized science, the cost of an exponential number of tests is repaid by the benefit of the resulting laws to a large number of people.But for the provincial interests of a single individual or even a small band, good science isn't worth the trouble.
• Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Conflicts of interest are inherent to the human condition, and we are apt to want our version of the truth, rather than the truth itself, to prevail.

Step 2: Explore how our intuitions work

People form concepts that find the clumps in the correlational texture of the world.

• Why people has the urge to classify?
• Not because the mind need to reduce the memory load.
• Not because the brain is compelled to organize.
• It is because the mind has to get inference out of forming categories.
• People form two kinds of categories:
• Fuzzy categories: come from examining objects and uninsightfully recording the correlations among their features. Their predictive power comes from similarity.
• Crisp categories: work by ferreting out the laws that put the clusters there. They fall out of the intuitive theories that capture people's best guess about what makes the world tick. Their predictive power comes from deduction.

People have several ways of knowing, or intuitive theories, adapted to the major kinds of entities in human experience: objects, animate things, natural kinds, artifacts, minds, and the social bonds and forces.

People wield inferential tools like the elements of logic, arithmetic, and probability.

Logic:

• Logic refers to inferring the truth of one statement from the truth of other statements based only on their form, not their content.
• The mind seems to have a cheater-detector with a logic of its own. When standard logic and cheater-detector logic coincide, people act like logicians; when they part company, people still look for cheaters.
• The mind does seem to use logical rules, but they are recruited by the processes of language understanding, mixed with world knowledge, and supplemented or superseded by special inference rules appropriate to the content.

Mathematical:

• Mathematics is part of our birthright.
• natural selection gave children some basic mathematical abilities: determining the quantity of small sets, understanding relations like "more than" and "less than" and the ordering of small numbers, adding and subtracting small sets, and using number words for simple counting, measurement, and arithmetic.
• Formal mathematics is an extension of our mathematical intuitions:
• Counting —>arithmetic and number theory
• Measuring —> real numbers, calculus, analysis
• Shaping —> geometry, topology
• Forming —> symmetry, group theory
• Estimating —> probability, measure theory, statistics
• Moving —> mechanics, calculus, dynamics
• Calculating —> algebra, numerical analysis
• Proving —> logic
• Puzzling —» combinatorics, number theory
• Grouping —> set theory, combinatorics
• 2 ways used that people can use their Stone Age minds to wield high-tech mathematical instruments and get to mathematical competence:
1. to set mental modules to work on objects other than the ones they were designed for.
2. practice: Mathematical concepts come from snapping together old concepts in a useful new arrangement.

Probability:

• The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe.
• The brain can process limited amounts of information, so instead of computing theorems it uses crude rules of thumb.
• the more memorable an event, the more likely it is to happen.
• the more an individual resembles a stereotype, the more likely he is to belong to that category.
• "Probability" has many meanings.
• relative frequency in the long run.
• subjective confidence about the outcome of a single event.
• Our ancestors' usable probabilities must have come from their own experience, and that means they were frequencies.
• When probablity is presented in terms of frequencies not in terms of single-event, people are more accurate.

Step 3: Where our intuitions come from

• The mind couches abstract concepts in concrete terms. It is not only words that are borrowed for metaphors, but entire grammatical constructions.
• Two fundamental metaphors in language: space and force
• Parts of our mental equipment for time, animate beings, minds, and social relations were copied and modified in the course of our evolution from the module for intuitive physics that we partly share with chimpanzees.
• Metaphors can be built out of metaphors, and we continue to borrow from concrete thoughts when we stretch our ideas and words to encompass new domains.

Step 4: How intuitions are elaborated and polished to give the virtuoso performances of modern civilization

How is the human mind adapted to think about abstract entities?

• We have inherited a pad of forms that capture the key features of encounters among objects and forces, and the features of other consequential themes of the human condition such as fighting, food, and health.
• By erasing the contents and filling in the blanks with new symbols, we can adapt our inherited forms to more abstruse domains.
• Some of these revisions may have taken place in our evolution, giving us basic mental categories like ownership, time, and will out of forms originally designed for intuitive physics.
• Other revisions take place as we live our lives and grapple with new realms of knowledge.

Because human thoughts are combinatorial (simple parts combine) and recursive (parts can be embedded within parts), breathtaking expanses of knowledge can be explored with a finite inventory of mental tools.

Geniuses are wonks(Similar to Malcolm Gladwell's 10000 hours theory for success):

• The typical genius pays dues for at least ten years before contributing anything of lasting value.
• The epiphany is not a masterstroke but a tweaking of an earlier attempt.

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.4 —— The Mind's Eye

In this chapter, steven explores how vision turns retinal depictions into mental descriptions.

The definition of vision: a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information.
What description means here is: mental symbol, and the mental propositions that capture the spatial relations among objects.

Correspondence problem in stereo vision: matching up the marks in one eye with their counterparts in the other.

In order to solve the matchup in mind, there are 3 built-in assumptions about the world we evolved in plus constraint satisfaction:

1. every mark in the world is anchored to one position on one surface at one time.
2. a dot in one eye should be matched with no more than one dot in the other.
3. matter is cohesive and smooth.

Constraint-satisfaction technique: make tentative guesses and hash it out among themselves until a global solution emerges

Stereo vision is a mixture of nature and nurture:

• different forms of stereoblindness suggest is is genetically determined
• stereo vision is not present at birth, and it can be permanently damaged in children or young animals if one of the eyes is temporarily deprived of input or disrupted by experience.

A visual system make us see the most probable state of the world given the retinal images via probability theory -- Bayes' theorem（贝叶斯方法）: assigning a probability to a hypothesis based on some evidence. That is, the odds favoring one hypothesis over another can be calculated from just two numbers for each hypothesis:

1. prior probability（先验概率）: how confident are you in the hypothesis before you even look at the evidence? （假设本身独立的可能性大小）
   
2. likelihood（相似度）: if the hypothesis were true, what is the probability that the evidence as you are seeing it now would have appeared?

How we see the world around us:

1. We see only what is in front of our eyes; the world beyond the perimeter of the visual field and behind the head is known only in a vague, almost intellectual way.
2. We see surfaces, not volumes.
3. We see in perspective.
4. We don't immediately see "objects".
5. We see in two and a half dimensions. Depth is whimsically downgraded to half a dimension because it does not define the medium in which visual information is held (unlike the left-right and high-low dimensions)

In order to access the visual information properly, Reference frames are inextricable.

• rentina's frame: allow us to judge the location via compensating for movements of the head and body.
• world-aligned reference frame: allow us to judge the genuine angles and extents of the matter outside our skin.
• the inner ear's frame: allow us to judge the direction of gravity

Motion sickness is triggered by the mismatch signals sent from the retina's frame and inner ear's frame.

Several theories used in shape recognition:

1. geon theory (by Irv Biederman):
• geon is simple geometric part of objects. ( Like protons and electrons making up atoms)
• Geons can be assembled into objects with a few attachment relations like "above", "beside", "parallel" etc. (These relations are defined in a frame of reference centered on the object not the visual field)
• Geons are combinatorial, like grammar. (an object is not the sum of its geons but depends on their spatial arrangement;) 24 types of geon, 15 different sizes and builds, 81 ways to join them.
• Left hemisphere: has the ability to recognize and imagine shapes defined by arrangments of geons.
• Right hemisphere: to measure whole shapes like taller or shoter, nearer or distanter.
2. multiple-view theory: people create a separate memory file for every orientation in which an object commonly appeared.
3. mental-rotation theory: people rotate shapes in their minds. When a shape appeared at a new, unfamiliar orientation, the farther it would have to be rotated to be aligned with the nearest familiar view, the more time people took.

When to use which theory for shape recognition:

• when a shape's sides are not too different, geon theory is used.
• when the shape is more complicated, multiple-view theory is used.
• When the shape appears at an unfamiliar orientation, mental-rotation theory is used.

What is mental image for:

• A mental image is a pattern in the 2 and 1/2 -Dimension sketch that is loaded from long-term memory rather than from the eyes.
• Mental imagery is the engine that drives our thinking about objects in space.
• Mental imagery help creative people to "see" the solution to a problem.
• Images drive the emotions as well as the intellect.

Thinking in images engages the visual parts of the brain.

• the Perky effect: holding a mental image interferes with seeing faint and fine visual details.
• Mental images of lines can affect perception just as real lines do: they make it easier to judge alignment and can even induce visual illusions.

Thinking in images has some limitations:

• Images are fragmentary.people cannot reconstruct an image of an entire visual scene.
• images are slaves to the organization of memory.
• images cannot serve as our concepts, nor can they serve as the meanings of words in the mental dictionary.

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.3 —— Revenge of Nerds

In this chapter, Steven mainly explains how the human mind evolve over eons in the light of natural selection and distinguishs the evolutionary theory from other plausible theories.

Evolution is about ends, not means; Intelligence isn't for every species because:

• organisms don't evolve toward every imaginable advantage.
• An organism that devotes some of its matter and energy to one organ must take it away from another.
• Organs evolve only when their benefits outweigh their costs.

Based on this premise, it explains why some creatures do not evolve a humanlike brain:

1. the brain is bukly, which makes people more vulnerable.
2. the brain needs energy. 2% weighted brain need to consume 20% energy and nutrients.
   
3. the brain take time to learn to use.
4. simple tasks can be slow.
   

Rickard Dawkins's evolutionary theory v.s Directed/Adaptive mutation:

• mutations are indifferent overall to the benefits they confer on the organism. (a cornerstone of the scientific worldview)
  
• mutations can not respond to organisms' needs in general.
  

The Baldwin effect: learning can guide evolution. The sustained behavior of a species or group can shape the evolution of that species.

Four traits make our ancestors easier to evolve better powers of causal reasoning:

1. vision: depth perception and color vision together have pushed the primate brain into splitting the flow of visual information into two streams: a "what" system, for objects and their shapes and compositions, and a "where" system, for their locations and motions. The human mind grasps the world—even the most abstract, ethereal concepts—as a space filled with movable things and stuff.
2. group living:
   
1. several advantages:
• protect themselves better
  
• foraging efficiency
• the benefit of the knowledge and the benefit of whatever it can get in trade for the knowledge.
2. Group living could have set the stage for the evolution of humanlike intelligence in two ways:
1. the value of having better information is multiplied
2. The other way in which a group can be a crucible of intelligence is that group living itself poses new cognitive challenges.
3. the hand and fully upright posture
4. hunting: provides sporadic packages of concentrated nutrients so that we could afford our expensive brains, can be traded for other resouces.
   

Inglish_10/11/09

mise en scene: 上演; 舞台调度; 导演; 布景和道具
we need more than a terse mise en scene to make our way around the world.

spell out: 讲清楚; 清楚地说明
I want to spell out the case for this foundational idea.

bric-a-brac: 小古董; 小古玩
Living things are not just pretty bits of bric-a-brac, but do amazing things.

nuts and bolts: 基本要素, 基础部分，
The evolution of information processing has to be accomplished at the nuts-and-bolts level by selection of genes that affect the brain-assembly process.

If You Knew —— 《My Sister's Keeper》

想找的，不过是一个可以流泪的借口。
　　
当泪水真的涌出，心中涌起更多的，是思念，是孤寒，是哀伤，是惘然，是苦涩，是痛切......
　　
If you knew......
　　
Something in your eyes, makes me wanna lose myself
Makes me wanna lose myself, in your arms
There's something in your voice, makes my heart beat fast
Hope this feeling lasts, the rest of my life
　　
If you knew how lonely my life has been
And how long I've been so alone
And if you knew how I wanted someone to come along
And change my life the way you've done
　　
It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me
It feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
It feels like home to me, it feels like home to me
It feels like I'm all the way back where I belong
　　
A window breaks, down a long, dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But I'm alright, because I have you here with me
And I can almost see, through the dark there is light
　　
Well, if you knew how much this moment means to me
And how long I've waited for your touch
And if you knew how happy you are making me
I never thought that I'd love anyone so much
......
　　
If you knew something would last longer than you thought they would.
If you knew......

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.2 —— Thinking Machine

This chapter mainly deals with 2 questions:

What makes intelligence possible?

Two meanings of "intelligence": aptitude and rational, humanlike thought.

The characteritics of intelligence:

• To make decisions "rationally," by some set of rules (applying a set of operations that reduce the difference.)
• Wanting and pursuing something in the face of obstacles (specifying a goal)
• To use the rational rules to attain the goal in different ways, depending on the obstacles to be overcome. (assessing the current situation to see how it differs from the goal)

Intelligence does not come from a special kind of spirit or matter or energy but from a different commodity, information. Information is a correlation between two things that is produced by a lawful process (as opposed to coming about by sheer chance).

2 properties glued together in the entity we call a symbol:

1. carries information
2. causes things to happen.

The computational theory of mind is the hypothesis that intelligence is computation, which demystified mentalistic terms.

• Beliefs are inscriptions in memory
• desires are goal inscriptions
• thinking is computation
• perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors
• trying is executing operations triggered by a goal.

The computational theory of mind also rehabilitates once and for all the infamous homunculus.

1. Homunculi don't duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain, instead, a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to produce the intelligent behavior of the whole.
2. A representation is a set of symbols corresponding to aspects of the world, and each homunculus is required only to react in a few circumscribed ways to some of the symbols.

How a symbol in a mind can mean something:

• a symbol is connected to its referent in the world by our sense organs.
• the unique pattern of symbol manipulations triggered by the first symbol mirrors the unique pattern of relationships between the referent of the first symbol and the referents of the triggered symbols.
• Together the causal and inferential roles of a symbol determine what it represents.

Human brain uses at least four major formats of representation:

1. visual image: like a template in a two-dimensional, picturelike mosaic.
2. phonological representation: a stretch of syllables that we play in our minds like a tape loop. This stringlike representation is an important component of our short-term memory. Phonological short-term memory lasts between one and five seconds and can hold from four to seven "chunks."
3. grammatical representation: nouns and verbs, phrases and clauses, stems and roots, phonemes and syllables, all arranged into hierarchical trees.
4. mentalese: the language of thought in which our conceptual knowledge is couched, the medium in which book's content or gist is captured

Minds is a special case of modular, hierarchical design in all complex systems.Complex systems are hierarchies of modules because only elements that hang together in modules can remain stable long enough to be assembled into larger and larger modules.

Neural networks is more like everything-connected-to-everything network, which sometimes called auto-associator, has five nifty features:

1. a reconstructive, content-addressable memory.
2. use a preponderance of mutually consistent pieces of information to override one unusual piece. "graceful degradation" helps deal with noisy input or hardware failure,
   
3. do a simple version of the kind of computation called constraint satisfaction.
4. ability to generalize automatically.
5. learn from examples, where learning consists of changes in the connection weights.

Two laws governing the thought of the association of ideas (associationism: 观念联想论):

1. contiguity: ideas that are frequently experienced together get associated in the mind. Thereafter, when one is activated, the other is activated too.
   
2. resemblance: when two ideas are similar, whatever has been associated with the first idea is automatically associated with the second.

Five feats giving human thought its distinctive precision and power, but they are the problems for associative network:

1. individuality: neural network has problem to distinguish individuals with identical properties from classes, but human mind can.
2. compositionality: the ability of a representation to be built out of parts and to have a meaning that comes from the meanings of the parts and from the way they are
   combined. Compositionality is the quintessential property of all human languages. Human thoughts are assembled out of concepts; they are not stored whole.
3. quantification (or variable-binding): It arises from a combination of the first problem, individuals, with the second, compositionality. Our compositional thoughts are, after all, often about individuals, and it makes a difference how those individuals are linked to the various parts of the thought. Hooking up concepts to their roles is not enough. Logicians capture these distinctions with variables and quantifiers.
4. recursion: the ability to embed a proposition inside another proposition bestows the ability to think an infinite number of thoughts. Unless neural networks are specially assembled into a recursive processor, they cannot handle our recursive thoughts.
5. People think in two modes, that is, fuzzy and crisp versions of the same category can live side by side in a single head.
   

• People can form fuzzy stereotypes by uninsightfully soaking up correlations among properties, taking advantage of the fact that things in the world tend to fall into clusters
• People can also create systems of rules—intuitive theories—that define categories in terms of the rules that apply to them, and that treat all the members of the category equally.

When the "ideas" were replaced by stimuli and responses, associationism became behaviorism.

What makes consciousness possible?

Different meanings/interpretations of consciousness:

• intelligence:
  
• self-knowledge: an intelligent being can have information about is the being itself.
• access to information: this meanings embraces Freud's distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind. That is: the mass of information processing in the nervous system falls into two pools:
  
1. One pool, which includes the products of vision and the contents of shortterm memory, can be accessed by the systems underlying verbal reports, rational thought, and deliberate decision making.
   
2. The other pool, which includes autonomic (gut-level) responses, the internal calculations behind vision, language, and movement, and repressed desires or memories (if there are any), cannot be accessed by those systems.
• sentience: subjective experience, phenomenal awareness, raw feels, first-person present tense. The main features of this sense of consciousness: sensory awareness, focal attention, emotional coloring, and the will.

Any intelligent agent incarnated in matter, working in real time, and subject to the laws of thermodynamics must be restricted in its access to information because information has costs:

• space: the hardware to hold the information.
• time:Solving a problem in a hundred years is, practically speaking, the same as not solving it at all.
• resources:Information processing requires energy. working brain tissue calls more blood its way and consumes more glucose.

Access-consciousness has four obvious features:

1. we are aware, to varying degrees, of a rich field of sensation: colors, shapes, sounds, smells, the pressures and aches etc.
• Our immediate awareness seems to tap the intermediate levels, does not exclusively tap the lowest levels of sensations and the highest level of representation, either.
2. portions of this information can fall under the spotlight of attention, get rotated into and out of short-term memory, and feed our deliberative cogitation.
3. sensations and thoughts come with an emotional flavoring: pleasant or unpleasant, interesting or repellent, exciting or soothing.
4. an executive, the "I," appears to make choices and pull the levers of behavior.

Notes on 《How the Mind Works》Ch.1 —— Standard Equipment

The rationale for reverse-engineering living things comes from Charles Darwin.

• In forward-engineering, one designs a machine to do something;
  
• in reverse-engineering, one figures out what a machine was designed to do. Psychology is engineering in reverse.

Evolutionary psychology brings together two scientific revolutions:

1. the cognitive revolution of the 1950s and 1960s: helps us to understand how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have.
2. evolutionary biology of the 1960s and 1970s: helps us to understand why we have the hnd of mind we have.

How to connect the ethereal world of meaning and intention, the stuff of our mental lives, with a physical hunk of matter like the brain? The computational theory of mind resolves the question:

• beliefs and desires are information, incarnated as configurations of symbols
• The symbols are the physical states of bits of matter
• symbols bump into symbols, one belief give rise to another belief, eventually, the bits of matter bump into bits of matter connected to the muscles, and behavior happens.
• the content of brain activity lies in the patterns of connections and patterns of activity among the neurons.
• Minute differences in the details of the connections may cause similar-looking brain patches to implement very different programs.
• The same basic neural tissue embodies all of these programs

The mind is not a general problem solver. The mind has to be built out of specialized parts because it has to solve specialized problems.

To say that the mind is an evolutionary adaptation is not to say that all behavior is adaptive in Darwin's sense. Because:

1. selection operates over thousands of generations.Our brains are adapted to that long-vanished way of life, not to brand-new agricultural and industrial civilizations.
2. Our minds are designed to generate behavior that would have been adaptive, on average, in our ancestral environment, but any particular deed done today is the effect of dozens of causes.

The gene-centered theory of evolution does not imply that the point of all human striving is to spread our genes.

• Our goals are subgoals of the ultimate goal of the genes

• our goals are about health and lovers and children and friends.
• gene's goals are replicating themselves.
• By making us enjoy life, health, sex, friends, and children, the genes reach their goal
  

The three supposed implications of an innate human nature are wrong:

1. an innate human nature implies innate human differences, this is no implication at all.
2. if our ignoble motives are innate, they can't be so bad after all. (It is the naturalistic fallacy, that what happens in nature is right.). Happiness and virtue have nothing to do with what natural selection designed us to accomplish in the ancestral environment. They are for us to determine.
3. Blaming bad behavior on our genes, to understand is not to forgive.
   

Many computational faculties engineered by natural selection is our best hope for a grasp on how the mind works that does justice to its complexity.

Inglish_04/11/09

cozy up to: 奉承(拉拢, 取悦)
J. T. thought Venkatesh was crazy, literally—a university student wanting to cozy up to a crack gang?

out of place:不在适当的位置; 不合适的, 不相称的, 不恰当的

He felt so out of place there—like a white man working at Afro Sheen headquarters, he liked to say—that he quit.

ripple effect: 连锁反应
The Butterfly Effect is the theory that a small action in one place may have a ripple effect that creates a dramatic action in another place

bona fide: 真实的; 有诚意的

It offered a set of bona fide heroes rather than simply a dearth of villains.

pecking order： 长幼尊卑制度, 权势等级

Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the pecking order.

willy-nilly：不管愿不愿意的；乱糟糟的

If something happens to you willy-nilly, it happens whether you like it or not.
If someone does something willy-nilly, they do it in a careless and disorganized way, without planning it in advance.

to wit：那就是说; 即; 就是

He will leave at the end of term, to wit 30 July.

Thinking By Numbers —— 《Freakonomics》

我是抱着较大的期望读这本《Freakonomics》的，既因为它与最近我所追看的剧集《数字追凶》和两本行为经济学读物不无相关，也因为Malcolm Gladwell的推荐。看完之后，坦白说，有点失望。一方面，此书所陈述的所谓的离经叛道、有悖于传统思维的观点，没能如宣称的那般让我大跌眼镜，另一 方面，它也没能如一些书评人所言，像一本一流的侦探小说一样让我屏住呼吸。总体而言，该书讲故事比不上Gladwell的精彩和张驰有致，论信息量，又不 如《摇摆》姐妹篇的密集丰富。当然，它的亮点也不容置疑，就是Steven Levitt的巧思妙问和细致的数字解读方式。

读的时候，我时不时会想起《数字追凶》的片首语：

We all use maths everyday!

To predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. But maths is more than formulas and equations, It's logic, it's rationality.

We also use maths to analyze crime, review patterns, predict behaviours.

It's all about numbers. Using numbers we can solve the biggest mysteries we know.

当Steven Levitt运用大量的数据遴选出芝加哥教育系统中的“黑羊”老师时，当他揭示了日本相扑运动员比赛中作弊的模式时，当他求证出房地产经纪人并不会为他们 的客户达成最好的协议时, 当他自问自答了为什么毒品贩子还会和父母一起住在救济屋里时，当他推算出70年代流产的合法化才是美国90年代犯罪率显著下降的原因时，我的脑海中常常会 浮现出腼腆的 Charles在加州大学的教室黑板上运笔如飞、在自家车库的资料堆里冥思苦想、在FBI透明会议室的白板前对着一脸茫然的探员口若悬河的画面。看来，才识渊博的学者放下身段，走出象牙塔，走进世俗世界，跨领域合作研究，已是一种不可抵挡的潮流。无巧不巧 的是，号称经济学界的“印第安纳琼斯”的Steven，他的研究兴趣之一也聚焦在犯罪领域，区别是他手持的是经济学理论武装起来的解剖刀：从小处着手，剥 开现象的表层，在数字中寻找隐含规律，仔细辨析相关性和因果关系，冷眼解读事物的本质。

也许正如两位合作者所宣扬的，掀起了”苹果橘子经济学“热潮的这本书，致力于为我们提供一种独特的视角和另类的解释，来理解这个社会究竟是如何运行的、并试图破解那些平时根本无法破解的迷团。而这一切，都基于他们所提出的5个基本点：

1. incentives are the cornerstone of modern life
   
2. the conventional wisdom is often wrong
   
3. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.
   
4. "Experts" use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
   
5. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.-- There is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction.
   

归根结底，一旦找到合适的切入点，看似复杂无序的世界，会变得简单清晰起来。

P.S 此书第三章节还可观看Steven Levitt在TED关于毒品贩子为什么是个糟糕行业的风趣生动的演讲。

Addendum: A new post "When data and decision collide" from Seth Godin questions well how we should react when facing counter-intuitive data-driven findings, which I think sort of related to the points of this book.

Inglish_01/11/09

slam dunk: 很有把握, 肯定会发生的事情;a very impressive act;

Always keep in the back of your mind that no evidence will be a slam dunk that gets the job done conclusively.

mug shot: 嫌疑犯照片; a photograph of sb's face kept by the police in their records to identify criminals.

Tomkins, it was said, could walk into a post office, go over to the “Wanted” posters, and, just by looking at mug shots, tell you what crimes the various fugitives had committed.

airy-fairy: 不切实际的，天马行空的

Many explanations of behavior have an airy-fairy feel to them because they explain psychological phenomena in terms of other, equally mysterious psychological phenomena.

lingua franca: 混合语，a common language used by speakers of different languages

tease out: 梳理, 拣选出 If you tease ot information or a solution, you succeed in obtaining it even though this is difficult.

The key to measuring the Weakest Link voting data is to tease out a contestant’s playing ability from his race, gender, and age.

quid pro quo:赔偿; 报复

The most logical explanation is that the wrestlers made a quid pro quo agreement。

Save Me!

Another day passed, a new month begins, life stays the same......

I sat beneath the fall of tears as salt as yours, hearing the sighing years. I lied there drearily, wondering how I can find the peace in my mind, how long I could keep my sanity......

I can hear the voice wuthering from my deepest heart: my beloved, come back, save me, please. Days and nights, they drive me crazy......



How I wish I could hear you again, How I wish I could whisper to you again, How I wish I could hold you again, How I wish I could lie in your arms again, How I wish......

I wish for the millionth time......

To Understand Is Not To Forgive

Lately I start to read Steven Pinker's highly-acclaimed book —— 《How The Mind Works》. Not like other book-reading experience such as 《Sway》、《Predictably Irrational》, it turns out to be a strenuous journey to digest such a witty, erudite tome on human mind, especially as a laymen. So, I have to change the habit of having a summary in the end to taking notes whenever I feel necessary.

When he discussed the implications of an innate human nature in charpter 1, Steven raised a very good point in the absurdness of blaming human bad behavior on our genes.

First, he refuted the concept that uncaused causation underlies the free will, and the uncaused free will underlies moral responsibility. Because:

1. Science see the world has no really uncaused events. Behavior is a complex interaction among:
• genes
• the anatomy of the brain
• the biochemical state of the brain
  
• person's family upbringing
• the way society has treated him or her,
  
• the stimuli that impinge upon the person.
2. According to chaoes theory, an unpredictable factor can be a cause of a hurricane of behaviors.
   

Second, he argued that science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning, we need to separates causal explanations of behavior from moral responsibility for behavior.

1. Science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entity in the world.
   
• Science treat people as material objects, explain the physical processes that cause behavior.
  
• Ethics treat people as free-willed agents as long as there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, assign moral value to behavior through the behavior's inherent nature or its consequences.
2. Depending on the purpose of the discussion, a human being is simultaneously a machine and a sentient free agent, different theories need to be applied to correspondingly.
3. Only by recognizing scienc and morality as separate can we have them both.

That means, we need to find a way to reconcile causation (genetic or otherwise) with responsibility and free will, we can't use gene to excuse our faults. To understand what cause we behave badly under given circumstance doesn't mean to forgive our faults easily. We are masters of our own fates.