Stages of Grief —— Grey's Anatomy S06E01

My favorite show "Grey's Anatomy" is coming back, which might decorate the thick cloud in my sky with a tiny silver lining. Looking back, it has accompanied me going through 2 autumns -- 2 melancholy seasons. Looking forward, it will help me to go through another one, as I wish.

The premiere show of this new season talks about the 5 stages of grief. I saw how my "virtual" friends went through the five stages of grief over a span of 40 days. I was touched, and couldn't help but thinking which stage I've been and how I deal with the grief in my own way.

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the 5 stages are:

1. Denial
   
2. Anger
3. Bargain
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

I had been through all these 5 stages last year, starting with denial from last June, ending with acceptance in last December. Ironically, just when I thought it would be like that forever, a new circle start over from the begining of this year. This time, the loss is even huger, the sorrow is even sharper, the pain is more unbearable, the despair is more severe, the struggle is even harder......

Now, where am I? Can I finally reach the ultimate stage?

The Paradox of Love

Miss you! As usual, what I do and what I dream include you. I just can’t stop thinking of you even for one minute.

It's a normal evening. “Eli Stone” is on screen, like a virtual friend keep me accompany, keep me in sanity. There are enormous resources of sitcoms online. Were you not to mention your favorite soap operas before, the door to this sitcom world wouldn’t be opened to me. Now I am a "fan", a big fan of them, for some reasons. Will my loneliness come to an end just like these sitcoms come to their final season?

When it came to the end of episode 3, when I heard the dialogue between protagonists, I kind of lost in flashbacks and fleeting thoughts.

The plot is simple and stereotyped. Eli gets an aneurysm in brain, he has hallucination from time to time, and is haunted by memories with his father in childhood. He decides to break up with his fiancée to keep her away from miserable future. His fiancée asks him to look at her and says: "This is simple. Do you love me?" He answers:"Yes, I love you too much to drag you into such a mess." His fiancée stares him for a while, then slowly replys: "Maybe you just do not love me for enough." Then left.

At that moment, I can’t help but wondering which thing is the right thing to do under such circumstance. To break or not to break? To leave or not to leave? To get through the worst things together or to push her away? To bear the unbearable guilt or to appease your conscience? What is true love? Which one is better? Which love is more? Which side you should take? Leave choice to her or choose for her? Are you really doing the things for her best interest?

Love is enigma, isn't it?

Arbitrary Advantage —— 《Outliers》

Malcolm Gladwell的第三度出击，解剖刀指向了成功。从改变我们理解世界的尝试(The Tipping Point)，到改变我们认识瞬间思维能力的企图(Blink)，再到重新探究成功轨迹背后的隐性逻辑(Outliers)， 他的行文风格一如既往，简单、直白，层出不穷的故事、案例依然占据了很大篇幅，所要论证的，则和中国的“时势造英雄”之说不谋而合：成功，固然离不开个人 的天赋、努力、奋斗，但机遇、出生年月、家庭背景、文化底蕴、社会环境、竞争规则、时代风尚等等随机因素，即便不是更重要，也与前者一样，在成功者攀向顶 峰的道路上，扮演了同样重要的角色。成功者的荣光，掩盖了远比我们所见到的要更复杂难解的线团。他洋洋洒洒千言，要说的无非是：造英雄者，时也，势也；有 能力，还得有机遇，才能戴上桂冠。

所谓"outliers"，就是统计样本中偏离平均值很远的个体，是不同于社会主流的异人，也是Malcolm笔下处于金字塔顶尖的成功人 士。在书的第一部分，他用加拿大曲棍球运动精英、披头士乐队、比尔·盖茨、比尔·乔伊、纽约顶级律师举例说明，社会对成功的认识理解是如何的肤浅乃至错 误；书的第二部分，则试图从人们所继承的文化遗产、不同的文化底蕴、价值取向来诠释成功；末了，则以自己的家族故事画上句号。通观全书，其实和他的前作一 样，很多理论还是换汤不换药。独独其中一个推断结论——出生年月、入学规则、选拔制度对成功潜移默化的影响，让我耳目一新。即便以前零零碎碎有个感性认 识，那不过是浮于表面的，他是我之所见以翔实的统计数据、充分有力的论证将它打包推出的第一人。当然，也可能是受我自己的阅读兴趣、范围所限，由孤陋寡闻 而致的错觉。

以下是他书中几个“旧貌换新颜”的理论：
　　
Matthew Effect: 富者愈富，穷者愈穷。

It usually refers to a situation where "a false definition, in the beginning...evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. 又称"selffulfilling prophecy"。中国也有句类似古谚：一着先，着着先。
　　
其实很容易理解，你与竞争者起始的差别可能非常微弱，甚至是一些随机因素给了你虚假的优势，可是一旦你抢占了先机，在同等努力的前提下，舞台上的你与舞台下的竞争者之间的差距，只会随着时间的流逝不断扩大的，你会因为“累积优势”事半而功倍。
　　
可见，要成功，首先得要有一个舞台。这进一步让我联想起公司里的绩效曲线图：在underload的曲线一端，你因为缺乏挑战和表现机会，绩 效表现不过尔尔，长期以往，你会rust out; 如果给予你富有挑战力的任务，你的绩效会与压力、工作量同比增长乃至到达顶峰；当然，超过一个平衡点，长期在overload和高负荷下工作，你的绩效又 会下降，你会burn out。
　　
The 10,000-Hour Rule:
　　
这个就更容易理解了：成功只光顾有准备的人。天资再优秀，没有准备，舞台给你了也是白给。Malcom通过披头士、莫扎特、比尔·盖茨、比尔·乔伊成功之前的努力来证明，非10，000小时的汗水浇灌，纵是神童，也难以成为个中翘楚。
　　
Threshold effect:
　　
智力高低对于成功的影响是有一个阈值的。在这个阈值以下，智力是关键因素，可是一旦超过这个阈值，对于成功起决定性作用的，则是其他，譬如实用智慧、情商、沟通能力......
　　
美国原子弹之父Robert Oppenheimer和美国最聪明的人、智商高达195的Chris Langan的不同人生轨迹给出了鲜明而深刻的对比。不可否认的是，家庭教育、生长环境是其中一只“看不见的手”。中产阶级的美国家庭，通常采取 “concerted cultivation”的教育方式（actively foster and assess a child's talents, opinions and skills），而疲于维持生计的穷苦家庭，则采取听之任之的教育方式（natural growth: care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own）。从实际的层面来讲，前者显然要比后者有优势得多，父母的言传身教，因势利导，会让孩子从小学会如何去争取自己想要的、应得的东西，如何从自己的 利益最大化角度出发适应环境、利用环境、影响环境。也之所以，Oppenheimer能在企图毒死导师的情况下还可以留校察看、继续学业；而Langan 则仅仅因为提交财政证明的期限已过不得不和奖学金擦肩，导师拒绝为他调整上课时间不得不中断学业。两个高智商的人，从此走上不同的人生道路，纳入视野的风 景也因此迥异。
　　
当然，命运的翻云覆雨，从来不是人力可以预测。世事无常，逆境可以转换为机遇，出生的时代、人类生育的高峰低谷，都有可能影响你成功的几率和 拼搏的结果。言而总之，也许正如Malcolm所言：Success is a gift to person who have been given opportunities first, and have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them. Success is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky—but all critical to making them who they are.
　　
此书给予我们的另一个启示是：社会或者可以重新审视一下现行的竞争选拔机制，也许，一个小小的改动，更多的人会被给予施展能力的舞台，更多的成功者会从中涌现。

何以为怀抱？

如果，我心安处是吾家；那么，我不过是个漂流在时间之海的畸零人。
...
亦癫亦痴情难禁，
不生不死最堪伤
...

What is Love?

I used to think quite a lot about love such as: What is true love? What's the main characteristics of love? Without longing, desire, jealousy, is love still love? How to love appropriately? Why love? Why do we love one particular person rather than someone else? Must love be exclusive? Can we truly love more than one person at a time? All these questions have whirled around fiercely in my head quite a lot time, and I still get no single answer in black and white.

Recently I happened to watch the old informative talk given by an famous anthropologist Helen Fisher, in which she tried to explore the role human brain plays in love.

She mentioned 3 main characteristics of romantic love:

1. craving, an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally.
2. motivation: want this person irrepressible
   
3. obsession: all day, all night, you just can't stop thinking about this person

It was said there are three brain systems:lust, romantic love and attachment. These three brain systems don't always go together, which means you can have a deep attachment to one person while you feel intense romantic love for someone else. In other words, we are capable of loving more than one person at a time.

Today is a really bad day for me. No way to be out of the glum silence, no one to share, I turn to surfing again. (Yes, I know I'm desperated. If it were before, I can call you. You used to have such magic power to change my mood in one second just by chitchat. ) Then one post written by another famous sociologist Li Yinghe is catching my eyes. She is defensing for a trendy lifestyle with multiple intimate relationships among a small group. She refers the exclusivity of love to a way of thinking, an ethic, not to be born with nature.

Well, it also occurs to me that the characters, the plots in some movies like "The Gloomy Sunday", "The End of Affair" are not too eccentric to imagine, not too weird to exist. At least, there are reasonable explanations and evidences both from psychophysiology and sociology.

Though they still can't answer all my questions clearly, to some point, they provide a new angle to see.

Inglish_04/09/09

far cry: 差别悬殊
His last statement was a far cry from his first story.

in a nutshell:简言之；概括地说；总而言之

Do you see where he's going with this? In a nutshell, Raskalnikov thought such individuals are justified in doing anything, including murdering ordinary people, if they have a good purpose..

bum rap: 不公正的惩罚/判决
Introversion also gets a bum rap.

hands down: 轻而易举的(无疑的)

The second piece of bread won hands-down in taste tests every time.

flying colors: 飘扬的旗帜,胜利,成功

He passed the examination with flying colors。

rattle off 飞快地说出
The next time you or one of your people starts rattling off the obvious truth by heart, wonder about whether it's obvious because it's true, or true because it's obvious.

bare bones: 梗概

The professor asked him to present the bare bones of his thesis.

sleight of hand: 花招; 手段; 手法敏捷 (prestidigitation, quick fingers)

They're masters of drug trial sleight-of-hand and know research methods inside out.

on the prowl : 徘徊;悄悄调查寻找

While some affairs may start because the cheating husband is "out on the prowl" looking for a mistress, other affairs may start because a mistress is knowingly on the prowl for a married man.

well-rounded:丰满的; 多才多艺的; 面面俱到的; 有表达力的

Is it OK if children are not "well-rounded," as long as they are following their curiosities?

pan out: 结果成功，有成果；If something, for example a project or some information, pans out, it produces something useful or valuable. (INFORMAL)

Bored of waiting to see how the current swine flu pandemic will pan out?

nitty-gritty: 事实真相，本质

When you get down to the nitty-gritty, when you ask specific questions about specific friends, it’s surprising how often you don’t know the answer

头脑迷思之七 —— The Paradox of Choice

Life is a matter of choice.

We all agree that a life without significant choice would be unlivable. But this is only right to some degree. As revealed by recent studies in pshchology the explosion of choice often makes for misery. Barry Schwartz had a talk in TED to share his deep insight of the negative effects coming from abundant choice:

1. It will produce paralysis rather liberation. —— With so many choices to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all.
2. Even we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of our choice than we would be.

Why the more is not always better than less? Several factors are contributing to this conclusion

• Regret: It's easy to imagine that you could have made a different choice that would have been better. This imagined alternative induces you to regret the decision you made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfication you get out from the decision you made, even it was a good decision. The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the option you chose. Kind of a double whammy.
• Opportunity cost: The quality of any given option cannot be assessed in isolation from its alternatives. How much the way in which we value things depends on what we compare them to as indicated by Dan Gilbert in another TED talk. Opportunity cost substract from the satificaton we get out of what we choose, even what we choose is terrific. The more options there to consider, the more attractive features of these options are going to be reflected by us as opportunity cost. The problem of opportunity costs will be worse for a maximizer (the best standard) than for a satisficer (good enough philosophy).
• Esclation of expectations: Adding options to people's life can't help but increase the expectations people have about these options would be, and what that's going to produce is less satification with the fruits of their efforts. On the other hand, people's adaptation will result in good feeling satiate and bad feeling escalate over time.
• Self-blame: when we make decisions, experience the consequences and find that they do not live up to expectations, weblame ourselves.

All these points made by Barry Schwartz support my previous arguement, if you love sb. enough, do not let her choose when facing important and difficult decision-making. You can take her needs into consideration, you can discuss with her thoroughly about pros and cons of different choices, but it should be you to make the tough call. Otherwise, you are shifting your responsibility to her. You are making her more depressed when the choice can't live up to your expectations and aspirations.

Besides, this is also supporting another "theory" in my youth, that is, I prefer the deep relationship with less friends to the shallow relationship with more friends. In general, it gives me a very clear priority list and is not hard to choose when conflict happens.

p.s. Barry Schwartz should take all the credits for this post. If you are interested, go here to watch it and there to read it.

The Essential Reading (5)

Source: Talking about art can alter our appreciation of it

Various studies show that attempting to verbalise our feelings can distort our later choices. Coincidently it is also mentioned in Malcom Gladwell's best selling book 《Blink》 which I just read a few days before.

Source: A cognitive metamorphosis

Do you like the Kafkaesque literature or other existentialist writing? Have you ever thought about how these seemingly nonsense connected to our cognitive need?

Recent studies suggest that Kafkaesque threats on life’s meaning might actually prime our need for (and perception of) order and pattern in the world. A disorienting literary experience appears to have sharpened the volunteers’ yearning for meaning on a fundamental cognitive level. As irrepressible meaning makers, the need for order and predictability may be fundamental to the human condition.

Source: Placebo Effect

A series of articles discussed the effect of placebo. Though I knew it for a while, the following distinction is new for me:

The term 'placebo effect' is used to refer to two things in the medical literature. The first is a statistical concept and it refers to the improvement in patients given an inactive treatment in a drug trial in comparison to those given the actual drug. The second is a psychological concept and it refers to improvement due to expectancy and belief.

The Myth Behind the Locked Door —— 《Blink》

《引爆点》一书也顺势引发我对Malcom Gladwell后续之作《Blink》、《Outliers》的期待。做为一个跨界的新闻报道者、专栏作家，他无疑是一个善讲故事的个中能手，借助职业之便，各种趣闻轶事、令人耳目一新的心理学实验结果信手拈来，以浅显直白之语串联，为读者呈现大量有价值的信息，偶而于我们习焉不察、熟而相忘处剔隐抉微，激发我们脑细胞的活动之余，也顺便带我们隔岸观赏一下漂浮于社会心理学水域的冰山一角。另一方面，这本书继承了《The Tipping Point》的风格，并没有什么独家见解，只是打造几个新鲜出炉的名词，将专业领域的知识重新包装整理并传播到普罗大众中去。从Amazon的销量排名来看，毋庸置疑，Malcom本人就是他所定义出的salesman，而且非常成功. 　　 　　

此书灵感的触发纯属作者一时兴起留长头发的副产品，据称他蓄发后给人的第一印象分不增反减，生活自此多了种种麻烦，于是引发作者关于人类潜意识、瞬间决断的思考。而所谓blink，即人类一眨眼的两秒钟时间，虽转瞬即逝，我们的潜意识仍可以做出决断并据此迅速反应。然而，和我们脉络清晰的理智相比，潜意识更象是紧锁的房门之后的密室，充满神秘与不可知的影响力。作者发愿通过此书达成三个主要目的： 　

1. 让我们懂得决断两秒间的威力——直觉感知所得并不比深思熟虑、缜密推理离真相更遥远。 　
2. snap judgment具有一半是天使、一半是魔鬼的特性——意味着我们需要在何时应该相信直觉和何时应该保持警觉之间善加抉择。 　　
3. 说服我们：快速认知能力并非神秘天赐，并非仅仅属于少数幸运之人，并非不可控制，而是一种可以被教育被培训被控制的卓越能力。 　　 　　

作者首先以1983年加州Getty博物馆围绕一尊古希腊青年雕像的真假风波做引，指出人类似乎居住在一个对快速认知存有根深蒂固的疑惑的社会，他们相信经年累月的调研论证结果更甚于第六感直觉告知他们的。接着，他开始铺陈大量实例：Iowa的赌博实验、John Gottman的love lab、二战英军摩斯码拦截员对德军发报者的破译能力、陌生人通过对学生宿舍观测所得而做的个人性格评估实验，来建立自己的Thin-slicing理论，即：人类的潜意识能基于经验在极短时间內从有限信息中识别模式，寻找关键特征，过滤无用资讯的杂音，对世界做出迅捷而准确的认知（也即我们通常所说的第六感、灵感、hunch、gut feeling)。 　　 　　

接着，作者从翔实的资料中分析出快速认知能力所赋予人类的优势：即潜意识在暗中替我们照管了生活中很多需要大脑处理的各种细节，从而为我们的意识腾出空间，专注于手中更重要的问题。进一步的，他总结了瞬间思考力的特点： 　

1. 瞬间思考能力虽然能迅捷做出结论，但我们往往只知其然而不知其所以然，网球教练的双发失误判断即为明证。 　　 　　
2. 额外的信息不但不能成为一种优势，有时反而会误导我们。美军Millennium Challenge的战争演习中红队击溃蓝队的事实,Goldman心脏病诊断算法即详尽得论证了这一特性。 　　 　　
3. 我们并不真正理解自己，更不能完全洞悉自己的需求和行为背后的真实动机，此外，我们还是非常糟糕的故事讲述者。心理学家在速配实验的测试中得出这个不容忽视的结论。 　　 　　
4. 当我们需要针对自己的判断决定给出逻辑解释时，我们的瞬间思考反应能力不但会大幅度下降，还会不知不觉得影响改变自己真实的倾向喜好。这也说明有时候不假思索的思考所得是浮于浅表的，而非来自于对事物的深刻理解，也因此极易被外界的各种因素所影响改变。 　　 　
5. 美国最糟糕总统Warren Harding的竞选胜出，世界五百强的CEO平均身高，西方古典音乐演奏家的选拔变革，在在都说明我们的以貌取人远比想象的顽固且影响深远，而且第一印象非常容易受各种因素的影响，于无形中左右我们的认知和决断。 　　 　　
6. thin-slicing要给出正确结论必须有其上下文的情境，市场调研的可信度也取决于调研的方式方法。1984年可口可乐新品危机，在sip test遥遥领先的百事可乐却不能将其优势扩展到真实世界的分析，被业界人士寄予厚望的摇滚乐手kenna却遭遇市场调研的惨败，都很好得验证了这一特性。 　　 　　

最后，作者借Paul Ekman在人类脸部表情识别领域所取得的成就，借对纽约警察面对生死抉择时各种“本能”反应的分析，借纽约警署对出巡警力的重新部署调配，指出浮出我们潜意识表面的气泡并非不可控制，我们可以通过改变事件发生的环境来控制我们的快速认知能力。更重要的是，快速认知能力并非与生俱来的，而是一种可以通过训练、经验累积和时间获取的技能。 　　

有时候，你不得不赞叹西方人的能说会道，翻陈出新，总结概括的能力。

Addendum: Today I encounter with another phrase: eagle eyes, which refer to almost the same meaning of thin-slicing created in this book. What interested me is indicated by an chinese saying: “英雄所见略同”.