Conformity:

Helmut Schoeck, Envy:

>Let us take a typical case:

A new centre of power has come into being. It may be merely a routine change, it may be usurpation or a party acceding to power by legitimate or illegitimate means, or again it may be a new departmental manager in a plant or officer in a military unit. A previously existing vacuum or balance of power has been altered; a new centre of power, whether vested in a group or an individual, exists, and it seeks to expand and to establish itself by bringing under its domination those groups and persons who have not yet submitted to it. At this stage some individuals or groups will already have lined up behind this new power, whether out of greed, cowardice, stupidity or genuine enthusiasm. But these men who have already submitted to the new power are not satisfied with conforming, themselves and almost invariably develop intense feelings of hostility towards those who continue to stand aside sceptically appraising the new power and considering whether to remain aloof. ... Tension, usually originating with the conformists, then arises between those who conform and those who do not. Why is this?

Anyone who has already adapted himself against his will, whether out of cowardice or for the sake of comfort, begrudges others their courage, the freedom they still enjoy. Anyone who has already committed himself to the new leaders, from calculation or from real enthusiasm, sees both himself and his chosen power group endangered by those who obviously prefer, and see it as politically feasible, to keep their distance. Those at the periphery of the power centre, though in no way entitled to wield authority, now begin to exert pressure on other people in the course of daily social life, within the framework of local groups and among business or neighbourhood connections, with the object of getting them to conform as well.<

Konformismus:

Helmut Schoeck, Der Neid und die Gesellschaft:

>Ein Modellfall:

Es ist ein neues Machtzentrum entstanden. Es kann sich dabei um bloße Auswechslung oder Usurpation, um eine auf legitime oder illegitime Weise an die Macht gelangte Partei handeln, um einen neuen Abteilungsleiter eines Werks oder Offizier einer Einheit. Ein vorher bestehendes Vakuum oder Gleichgewicht der Machtverhältnisse ist verändert worden. Ein neues Machtzentrum - eine Gruppe, eine einzelne Person - existiert und sucht sich dadurch auszudehnen und zu festigen, indem es ihm noch nicht ergebene Personen und Gruppen unter seine Herrschaft zu bringen strebt. In dieser Phase kommt es vor, dass einige Individuen oder Gruppen bereits in den Sog dieser neuen Macht geraten sind, teils aus Feigheit, teils aus Gewinnsucht, Dummheit oder echter Begeisterung. Diese sich bereits der neuen Macht unterordnenden Menschen begnügen sich aber nicht mit der eigenen Gleichschaltung, sondern entwickeln fast immer intensive Feinseligkeiten jenen gegenüber, die sich noch aus Ferne die neue Macht skeptisch ansehen und erwägen, sich von ihr fernzuhalten. ... Es entsteht nun eine Spannung, eine Feindschaft zwischen den bereits Konformen und den Nichtkonformen, ausgehend in der Regel von den Konformen. Weshalb?

Wer sich wider Willen, aus Feigheit oder aus Bequemlichkeit, bereits angepasst hat, verargt den anderen den bewiesenen Mut, die Freiheit, die sie noch genießen. ... Die an der Peripherie des Machtzentrums stehenden, selbst keineswegs zur Machtausübung befugt, fangen nun an, auf andere Menschen im gesellschaftlichen Kleinverkehr, im Rahmen von lokalen Gruppen und betrieblichen oder nachbarschaftlichen Beziehungen einen Druck auszuüben mit dem Ziel, diese ebenfalls zur [Konformität] zu bewegen.<

Der Tod:

Ungewissheit besteht nur, wenn etwas unterschiedlich ausgehen kann. Der Ausgang des Lebens, in dem Sinn, ist nicht ungewiss.

Filtern:

Um sich effektiv zurechtfinden zu können, in der Welt, muss man schließlich lernen, vieles nicht zu beachten, und einiges weniges, worauf es ankommt, intensiv, wiederholt und möglichst nachhaltig wahrzunehmen.

Vorträge:

Hört man sich einen komplizierten Vortrag an, und will man den Inhalt des Vortrags tatsächlich aufnehmen, macht es im Rahmen von Sterns "Willensruck-Konzepts" durchaus Sinn, den Entschluss zuzuhören nicht bloß am Anfang des Vortrags zu fassen, sondern ihn im Laufe des Vortrags wieder und wieder zu erneuern.

Begriffe:

Gemäß Kant(?) erhalten Begriffe ihren Inhalt entweder aus der empirischen Anschauung oder aus der reinen Anschauung, d.i. aus der formalen Konstruktion in 'Raum und Zeit'.

(Z.B. reelle Zahlen, in ihrer Gesamtheit, sind nicht etwas, was real existiert, was man irgendwo vorfindet. Man konstruiert sie einfach.)
(Wir können einen Punkt, einen ausdehnungslosen "Körper", nicht eigentlich anschaulich wahrnehmen. Wir können ihn aber sehr wohl konstruieren.)

Wiederholungsbereitschaft & Änderungsbereitschaft:

((o)) Immer wieder die selben Bücher lesen
// die selben Filme schauen
// die selben Orte besuchen
// die selben Gedanken denken
// die selben Gespräche führen.

((o)) Immer wieder neue Bücher lesen
// neue Filme schauen
// neue Orte besuchen
// neue Gedanken denken
// neue Gespräche führen.

Protestantism:

Cognitive Capitalism, Heiner Rindermann:

"Protestants needed to learn to read because every Christian has to read and understand the holy message. There should be no mediation between Christian and God by an institution or a third person. Requiring a personal relationship to God and having an own conscience based on individual reading of the scripture[.] ...

Education is based on the demand of autonomy of person. Autonomy (intertwined with individualism) again is the individual aspect of cultural and social liberty. Autonomy is not given without liberty and liberty not without autonomy. Autonomy again is individually based on the ability of self-regulation and self-control. Life and conduct do not depend on an external authority, but on internal control. For this, self-discipline is necessary. Discipline, order, systematology, obligation and duty mean in Protestantism to practice a godly life-style."

Conscientiousness & Agreeableness:

The Genius Famine, E. Dutton & B. Charlton:

"high Conscientiousness implies a high degree of concern for internalized social norms - a tendency to feel good (here and now) when conforming to these social norms/ values - and/or a tendency to feel bad (e.g. guilty, ashamed, afraid) when transgressing or failing to follow these social norms. 

And this is what links Conscientiousness to Agreeableness ... . High Agreeableness is a self-evaluation for having a dominating concern with the views of other people - paying close attention to knowing the emotions and wishes of others: that is, a calibration of one's own (observed or perceived) behaviors to stay in line with the expectations or desires of others[.] ...

... a person high in Conscientiousness and also Agreeableness is one who - here and now - derives the greatest satisfaction from his conformity to the social group, and is attentive to cues of social group values: and (more important) who has aversive feelings if he transgresses or he fails to follow social norms, such as would happen if creative thinking was in play."

Der Willensruck:

William Stern, Allgemeine Psychologie, 1935:

>Jede eigentliche Willenshandlung setzt ein mit einem besonderen Akt, dem Willensruck. Dieser ist, wie aIle personalen Letzttatsachen, nicht eigentlich zu beschreiben und zu erklären; wir können ihm nur durch gewisse Umschreibungen näher kommen.
Betrachten wir zunächst die voll ausgebildeten Willenshandlungen, die eine regelrechte Vorperiode haben. Dann ist für den Willensruck die Abhebung gegenüber der Vorperiode wesentlich. Mögen seine Voraussetzungen auch in den Motivationsabläufen der Vorperiode liegen, er wächst nicht in gleitender Bewegung aus ihnen hervor, sondern springt aus ihnen heraus mit besonderer Deutlichkeit, wenn sich die Vorperiode in langen Kämpfen, Erwägungen und Zweifeln hingeschleppt hatte. Diese hören plötzlich auf, etwas Neues tritt ein - und damit wird das Gefühl der Unrast und Unsicherheit ersetzt durch ein Gefühl der Endgültigkeit, welches - trotz aller miterlebten Aktivität - doch etwas Ruhevolles hat. Diese retrospektive (nämlich vorangegangenen Kampf abschliessende) Seite des Willensrucks nennen wir "Entscheidung". (Genauer wäre "Selbstentscheidung"; denn es gibt auch Entscheidungen ohne eigenes Zutun; so wenn bei einem, vor der Berufswahl stehenden Knaben die verschiedenen sich kreuzenden Neigungen und Wünsche durch ein Machtwort des Vaters zum Abschluss gebracht werden).

Darum gehört zum Willensruck das starke Erlebnis der Selbsttätigkeit: Ich bin es, der da will. Nirgends rafft sich die aktive Ganzheit der Persönlichkeit zu einem so undiskutierbaren Erleben zusammen, wie im Willensruck: "volo, ergo sum".

Das "Sich-selbst-Haben" im Willensruck beschränkt sich aber nicht nur auf die unmittelbare Gegenwart, sondern strahlt in die Zukunft hinaus: was nun kommt, ist mein Tun. Diese prospektive Seite des Willensrucks heisst "Entschluss". Es wird nicht nur das Vergangene abgeschlossen, sondern auch das Bevorstehende entriegelt, "ent-schlossen" - und zwar von mir und meiner Tat aus. In jedem Entschluss liegt eine Art Herrscherakt, ein Anspruch auf Eingriff in die Welt. Mag während der Vorperiode noch so sehr das passive Ausgeliefertsein an die Welt erlebt worden sein, mag selbst die Entscheidung noch durch äussere Einflüsse erzielt worden sein (vgl. unser obiges Beispiel vom "Machtwort des Vaters") - im Augenblick des Entschlusses ist die Belastetheit durch Fremdes umgewandelt in eigene Wirksamkeit. Das Gefühl der Ich-Souveränität mag meist nicht lange anhalten, weil sehr bald die Welt wieder ihre Übermacht zur Geltung bringt: aber im Erlebnis des "Entschlusses" ist es unbestritten da.

Entscheidung und Entschluss verleihen auch dem gegenständlichen Inhalt der Wollung (den Zielen und Wegen) eine ganz andere Färbung, als sie in der Vorperiode hatten. Das Motiv, für welches die Entscheidung fiel, hebt sich mit siegreicher Klarheit aus dem Gewirr der Motivkämpfe heraus; die Gegenmotive verlieren viel von ihrer lockenden oder schreckenden Kraft in dem Augenblick, in welchem sie nicht mehr als Möglichkeiten des Wollens in Betracht kommen. Hilfsmittel, die in den Vorerwägungen unbenutzbar, Wege, die ungangbar erschienen, gewinnen jetzt, da man sich zu ihnen entschlossen hat, ein anderes, positiveres Aussehen. (Dies ist der Sinn des Sprichworts: "Wo ein Wille ist, da ist ein Weg".)
Der Ausklang des Willensrucks endlich besteht darin, dass aus dem rein Psychischen (Entscheidung, Entschluss) ins Psychophysische übergegangen wird: dem Körper werden diejenigen Innervationen erteilt, welche die Handlung im Sinne des Entschlusses einleiten: "ImpuIs".<

Das psychische Tempo:

William Stern, Ideen zu einer differentiellen Psychologie, 1900:

"Das Wort Tempo ist in erster Linie ein musikalischer Ausdruck; es bezeichnet das adäquate Zeitmaß einer Tonfolge. Jede Melodie hat ihr Tempo, d. h.: es giebt eine Geschwindigkeit ihres Ablaufes, welche in ganz anderer Weise als irgend eine sonstige Geschwindigkeit geeignet ist, ihren inneren Gehalt zur ästhetischen Anschauung zu bringen. Hieraus ergiebt sich schon, dass das Tempo nicht nur ein objektives Melodie-, sondern stets auch ein subjektives Auffassungs-Tempo ist. Verallgemeinem wir diesen letzten Gesichtspunkt, so kommen wir zu einer psychologischen Erscheinung, die in der Wissenschaft noch merkwürdig wenig Berücksichtigung gefunden hat. Für jeden in der Zeit abrollenden seelischen Vorgang giebt es eine bestimmte Geschwindigkeit des Verlaufs, die das Subjekt einerseits gegenüber allen anderen Geschwindigkeiten als adäquat, natürlich, sympathisch empfindet, andererseits, falls es nach eigenem Ermessen den psychischen Prozess vollziehen kann, ganz von selbst, gleichsam instinktiv, zur Anwendung bringt. Bei Wahrnehmungen (Anhören einer Melodie oder einer Rede) vermag jeder Hörer sofort zu beurteilen, ob ihm das Tempo des Gehöreindrucks zusagt; bei Willensakten, die sich motorisch äussern, wie: Sprechen, Gehen, Spielen eines Musikstücks u. s. w., wählen wir aus eigenem Antrieb eine uns natürliche Geschwindigkeit; und auch das Denken hat sein Tempo. 

Doch mit dieser Formulierung ist die psychologische Bedeutung des Tempos noch nicht erschöpft. Es haftet nämlich nicht an dem einzelnen sich zeitlich abspielenden Seeleninhalte (dem Melodieeindruck, den Sprachvorstellungen u. s. w.), sondern an dem Individuum als Ganzem. Das Tempo ist die natürliche Ablaufsgeschwindigkeit des psychischen Lebens überhaupt und bildet somit eines der wesentlichsten Charakteristika der Individualität. Vergleicht man den neapolitanischen mit dem friesischen Fischer, so wird man finden, dass die Gegensätze in der Schnelligkeit des Sprechens, in der Vorliebe für flotte oder getragene Melodik, in dem Tempo des Gehens, Tanzens oder anderer Bewegungen, in dem Fluge oder der Schwerfälligkeit des Vorstellungsfortschrittes auf einen Grundgegensatz zurückzufuhren seien, der die zeitliche Struktur des ganzen Seelenlebens überhaupt betrifft. Und was wir hier im Groben an den verschiedenen Rassen exemplifizierten, das bestätigt sich im kleinen und feinen bei der Vergleichung beliebiger Individuen. Welche Mannichfaltigkeit der seelischen Tempi verraten die Sprech- und Bewegungsgeschwindigkeiten, die man in einer Gesellschaft, in einer Schulklasse beobachten kann! Die Typik der „Temperamente" beruht wenigstens zu einem Teil auf dem verschiedenen Tempo der geistigen Funktionen; und wie bei den typischen Bildern der Nationalitäten, so spielt auch bei denen der Altersstufen und Geschlechter das Tempo eine wesentliche Rolle. Für die Individualitätsforschung scheint nach alledem die Bestimmung des psychischen Tempos eine wichtige Aufgabe darzustellen. Werden wir uns mit qualitativer Kennzeichnung begnügen müssen oder ist eine quantitative Messung denkbar? Ich will versuchen, für letztere ein Verfahren vorzuschlagen. Die messende Psychologie darf sich nicht allein auf Festlegung von Maximal- oder Minimalwerten beschränken, sondern muss auch auf Optimalwerte bedacht sein. Nicht nur die höchste Geschwindigkeit, mit der ein Mensch eine gewisse Bewegung zu produzieren vermag, sondern auch die ihm natürliche und adäquate Geschwindigkeit bei Vollzug der Bewegung, d. h. sein „psychisches Tempo" ist einer Bestimmung zugänglich. Es gilt also, eine Bewegung zu suchen, für welche 1. jeder Mensch ein Vorzugstempo finden kann, bei welcher 2. die Ausführungsgeschwindigkeit lediglich vom psychischen Tempo der Personen, nicht von anderen Momenten abhängt, und die 3. so einfach ist, dass sie sich als Vergleichungsmaßstab bei Menschen verschiedenster Art, Lebenssphäre, Nationalität u. s. w. anwenden lässt. ..."

Anspannung & Entspannung:

Die Kunst besteht darin, regelmäßig Anspannung zu forcieren, und dennoch dabei den Bogen nicht zu überspannen. Wer Zeiten der Anspannung forciert, hat regelmäßig Zeiten der Entspannung einzuplanen:

Zu weit getrieben Verfehlt die Strenge ihres weisen Zwecks,

Und allzu straff gespannt zerspringt der Bogen.

Friedrich Schiller

Edward Dutton, Bruce Charlton, The Genius Famine:

"we would emphasize that to understand intelligence requires understanding that sometimes a person may be of high intelligence and not have a similarly high IQ score (in other words, their IQ score is under-estimating their intelligence) - and that this may be the case no matter how validly, how often and how carefully the IQ is measured and calculated. And another person may have high IQ scores, measured in the best ways and by the best methods, yet not be of similarly high intelligence (in other words, their IQ score is over-estimating their intelligence).

Highly intelligent people who do not score highly on IQ tests are easy to understand - because anything which reduces test performance could lead to this outcome: illness, pain, impaired consciousness and impaired concentration from sleepiness, drugs, drug-withdrawal, mental-illness ... there are multiple causes, and some are chronic (long-lasting, perhaps life-long).

And people with high IQ scores who are not of similarly high intelligence to their scores are familiar to anyone who has attended a highly-selective college or educational programme or who are members of intellectually 'elite' professions; since they typically make-up a large proportion of participants."

On Cognitive Limits:

Charles Murray, Real Education:

"I have no statistics on the percentage of gifted children who are raised in homes where they have been constantly praised for being smart and at the same time have not been strenuously challenged academically. It should go without saying that this description does not fit all gifted children or perhaps even most. But it corresponds with the milieu in which many gifted children grow up, with the observed behavior of many gifted children in college, and with the current state of knowledge about the effects of praise.

There is a healthier alternative - healthier for gifted children and for the society that some of them will run as adults. Since they are in fact academically gifted, it is fine to tell them that. Trying to hide their academic ability from them would be futile anyway. But they must also be told explicitly, forcefully, and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift that they have done nothing to deserve. They are not superior human beings, but very, very lucky ones. They should feel humbled by their good luck.

At that point, praising them for actual accomplishment produced by hard work does no harm. But even then, we know from our own experience that the mentors who made a difference in our lives were seldom the ones who praised us effusively but those who demanded our best. At the end of it all, the praise may have been no more than the mentor looking up from our last, best effort and saying “Not bad.” That’s the praise we still cherish years later. That’s what today’s gifted students will cherish if we give them teachers who demand their best.

This healthier alternative also means making sure that at some point every gifted student fails in some academic task. There is no sadism in this, but an urgent need for our luckiest children to gain perspective on themselves and on their fellows. As matters stand, many among the gifted who manage to avoid serious science and math never take a course from kindergarten through graduate school that is so tough that they have to say to themselves, “I can’t do this.” Lacking that experience, too many gifted graduates are not conscious of their own limits. They may acknowledge them theoretically, but they don’t feel them in their gut. They don’t know, as an established fact, that there are some things they just aren’t smart enough to figure out.

Everybody else knows that for a fact. Children of low academic ability have to deal with that knowledge in elementary school. Children of average academic ability have to deal with it in high school. Children of moderately above-average academic ability have to deal with it in their postsecondary education. Even the children with stratospherically high academic ability who get deep enough into mathematics have to deal with it. It is said that there comes a point in every mathematics student’s education when he hears himself saying to the teacher, “I think I understand”— and that’s the point at which he has hit the wall. Making sure that all gifted students hit their own personal walls is crucial for developing their empathy with the rest of the world. When they see their less lucky peers struggle academically, they need to be able to say “I know how it feels”— and be telling the truth."

Umstände und Entscheidungen:

"Umstände und Entscheidung sind die beiden grundlegenden Elemente, aus denen sich das Leben aufbaut."

Ortega y Gasset

Epistemic Rationality:

"Epistemic rationality describes a truth- and search for knowledge-orientated attitude in thinking guided by logicality, empiricity and argumentativity. It starts with an orientation in thinking (Kant, 1786). That is to say, the willingness and ability to align one's thinking to truth; to direct it towards correctness, justification and argumentation; an attitude to admit objective problems for one's own thinking and to consider them as problems that are solvable by thinking; to avoid solving problems by intuition, tradition, majority opinion, zeitgeist, compulsion or violence; to choose an attitude based on arguments in interaction with oneself, with others and problems; to accept only logic, empirical evidence and good reasons; not to accept persuasion by others, reputation or power or other criteria not based on arguments; to use in epistemic communication an appropriately precise and comprehensible language, including the language of mathematics.

This also includes trying to rationally reconstruct the statements of others. The ideas of others are apprehended in a productive way as valuable ideas for epistemic purposes. Truth is in single statements, not in the characteristics of the proponents of statements (even where they are empirically correlated). Statements in their logical, empirical and argumentative substance are important, not what a person as an individual thinks or has mentioned at other places. Theories are developed based on observations and thinking, and observations and thinking serve as criteria of theories. Inductive and deductive reasoning work together.

Epistemic rationality can also be used as the landmark for navigating through scientific thunderstorms: science sometimes creates tensions between research findings and society. It becomes quite difficult to overcome the dominance of the political within research. Epistemic-scientific principles can be in conflict with, in their frame, legitimate economic, cultural and ideological interests, usually represented by the political class, media, church or intellectuals. However, in hotly debated areas of research, fundamental principles of scientific thinking should be maintained. Here, too, the aim is to find knowledge: true and new knowledge. Scientists write for a rational reader who can be convinced (a willingness and an ability) through argumentation using logic, empirical facts and systematic reasoning. Freedom of research and respect for others in their scientific endeavour are helpful for the scientific community to progress in this direction (e.g. Mill, 1859; Flynn, 2007).

Other orientations, which may be legitimate in their fields, can be empirically relevant as catalysers or obstacles, but not for science as an endeavour to pursue truth. In science, from an epistemic view, only the truth or falseness of statements matter and an angel's truth is as true as a devil's truth. It is irrelevant if a statement is blue or red, progressive or conservative, up or down, right or left, politically correct or not, morally superior or not, published here or there, welcomed  and repeated by the right or wrong people. Of importance is if it is correctly describing the world and explaining it, and secondly, if it is new and helpful for the development of inspiring theoretical approaches. Statements, developed by Marxists, burghers or reactionists, men or women, Christians or atheists, Westerners or marginalised, of people we like or not, can be true. If Hitler (or Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein) would have said on Friday 'tomorrow is Saturday', this is more true than if Jesus (or Marx, Buddha, Nobel laureates) would have said on Friday 'tomorrow is Thursday'.

Not all of those acting and arguing in science and the media dealing with science have always observed such principles. Some participants of past conflicts have suffered from offensive treatment, including violent attacks. However, intellectual conflicts are not new in the history of thought, as the fate of scholars like Thomas Aquinas, Galilei, Spinoza or Darwin showed. From  today's perspective many past disputes sound quite ridiculous and their formerly not questionable 'arguments' are today scientifically and ethically disapproved. But those conflicts have been important in developing in the  long run a climate of legitimate argumentation and thinking. The frequently difficult process of enlightenment would not been strengthened if people shied away from such conflicts.

Today, due to its increased 'embeddedness' in society, research on disputed subjects is becoming even more difficult. The influence of media, political interest groups, politics and economic pressures is stronger than around one century ago. It becomes difficult to imagine an independent person such as Max Weber for today's science. A scientific orientation needs not only to be established in society, but in science and among scientists themselves, in science as institutions (universities, journals, publishers) and in science as individual researchers.

An obvious problem of an epistemic rationality approach is that it does not provide researchers with an operating manual describing in detail what to do. But researchers cannot delegate their task to deal with questions of how to do research. Research only implementing given standards is less science than a routine carried out in a quasi-authoritarian manner. A further problem is that many people in scientific institutions, including those in leading positions, are strongly interested in non-scientific aims. They are occupied with keeping things running; papers and presentations have to be produced, funds raised, success of oneself and one's staff to be promoted. Success in these measures is more important than any reflective approach towards science. Not uncommonly, practised science lacks a scientific orientation.

The aims of research cannot be to repeat zeitgeist. Science is not the Vuvuzela of currently dominating views. But science also does not have the task of provoking those views. It simply pursues epistemic aims, whether there is an overlap with the zeitgeist or not. This includes overlaps with what is known as 'Mokita' or 'stereotypes'. 'Mokita' or 'Elephant in the room', is the term for the truth that everybody knows but no one expresses and all agree about not expressing. Statements that are known as 'stereotypes' or 'prejudices' are usually considered to be essentially wrong; however, they can also be true and empirically they are among the most correct existing statements (Ashton & Esses, 1999, Jussim, 2012): according to self assessment and measured objective data and including meta-analyses, the average correlation between stereotypes and criteria as group averages is about r=.81. This correlation is much higher than the average effects and replication rates in social psychology. And it is of similar size to the correlation between two measures of an identical construct on the country level - of GDP Maddison and Penn with r=.87."

Heiner Rindermann - Cognitive Capitalism

"Selbstfindung"

Ein wichtiger Aspekt der "Selbstfindung" besteht im Suchen und Finden von Zielen, für die es sich zu leben lohnt. Ein weiterer Aspekt besteht darin, über ein ausreichendes Maß an Selbstkontrolle zu verfügen, um gefundene Ziele auch effektiv anstreben zu können.

[Siehe auch: Personality traits and their cybernetic functions]

Konformitätsdruck:

Warum findet sich bei manchen Menschen so ein außergewöhnlich hohes Maß an Motivation, das Verhalten und die Meinungen anderer Personen auf Konformität hin zu überwachen? Es ergibt sich der Eindruck, als ob der eigentliche Konformitätsdruck innerhalb einer Gesellschaft meist nur von einem kleinen Bruchteil an Personen dieser Gesellschaft hochenthusiastisch ausgeübt wird.

Sexual Signal Loss

Sexual Signal Loss: The Link between Behavior and Rapid Evolutionary Dynamics in a Field Cricket
Marlene Zuk, Nathan W. Bailey, Brian Gray, John T. Rotenberry; 2018

Summary

1. Sexual signals may be acquired or lost over evolutionary time, and are tempered in their exaggeration by natural selection.

2. In the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus, a mutation (“flatwing”) causing loss of the sexual signal, the song, spread in < 20 generations in two of three Hawaiian islands where the crickets have been introduced. Flatwing (as well as some normal-wing) males behave as satellites, moving towards and settling near calling males to intercept phonotactic females.

3. From 2005-2012, we surveyed crickets and their responses to conspecific song, noting the morph and number of males and females before and after experimental playbacks. The three Hawaiian islands consistently contained different proportions of flatwing crickets, ranging from about 90% of males on Kauai to 50% on Oahu to rare on the Big Island of Hawaii.

4. Flatwing and normal-wing males do not appear to differ in responsiveness to playback, a behavior that should influence the likelihood of a male encountering a phonotactic female. Instead, male and female crickets from populations in which little to no calling song is perceptible during development tended to seek out callers more readily than crickets that developed in noisier environments. Such increased phonotaxis makes females more likely to find either the caller to which they are responding or to encounter a flatwing (or normal male satellite) that has also been attracted to the song.

5. Our evidence suggests that pre-existing behavioral plasticity (manifest as flexible responses to social – particularly acoustic – information in the environment) is associated with the rapid spread of the flatwing trait. Different social environments select for differential success of flatwing or normal-wing males, which in turn alters the social environment itself.

New Book: Cognitive Capitalism - H. Rindermann

Cognitive Capitalism: Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations 

Heiner Rindermann

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (February 15, 2018)

Disziplin & Interesse:

Was vermögen Disziplin und Selbstkasteiung beim Lernen? Wie viel vermag das Interesse? Manches scheint durch Disziplin erreichbar, was bloßem Interesse unerreichbar scheint. Zu manchem Wissenserwerb leistet wohl Interesse einen Beitrag, wie ihn Disziplin kaum leisten kann. Vermutlich haftet beiden Herangehensweisen ein jeweils eigener Vorzug an. Besser ist es, sich keiner Herangehensweise exklusiv zu verschreiben.

-----

Verbale Stoffe sind in der Regel nicht sonderlich schwer verständlich, anders verhält es sich mit  Stoffen aus der Mathematik oder den Computerwissenschaften: Hier kann man sich zwar vorübergehend Zeit nehmen und den subjektiv besonders interessanten Aspekten des Lernstoffs Aufmerksamkeit widmen. Darauf macht es aber Sinn, systematisch vorzugehen, und gerade mühsame und schwer verständliche Aspekte des Lernstoffs hochkonzentriert durchzukauen.

Selbststeuerung:

Das Laienkonzept der Selbststeuerung besagt schließlich, dass wir auf unser Denken, Wahrnehmen, Handeln und Fühlen einen gewissen richtungsweisenden Druck ausüben können. Schuldig macht sich dem Konzept zufolge derjenige, der diese Druckausübung unterlässt.

Self-Control (II):

"The frontal cortex makes you do the harder thing when it's the right thing to do."

Robert Sapolsky

The Lobster Trap:

"Consider the lobster stuck in the lobster trap: poor beast, he doesn’t realize that exiting the cage means backtracking to the cage’s center, that he needs to go deeper into the cage to make it out. A lobster trap is nothing other than a local maximum made of wire—a local maximum that kills."

B. Christian & T. Griffiths - Algorithms to live by

Pomodoro-Methode:

Die Idee der Pomodoro-Methode besteht darin, dass wir für eine gewisse Zeitspanne, z.B. 20, 25, oder 45 Minuten, einen gewissen Druck auf uns selbst und unser Verhalten ausüben. Im Anschluss an solch eine Einheit entspannt man sich für 5, 10, oder 15 Minuten und hat somit wieder ausreichend "Kräfte" für die nächste Einheit gesammelt. Pausen sind wichtig, damit während den Einheiten tatsächlich ein höherer Grad an Anspannung möglich ist. Ein vier Stunden langes Durcharbeiten wäre dementgegen tendenziell nur mit deutlich geringerer Anspannung und Intensität möglich. Darum der stete Wechsel zwischen fokussierter Anspannung und gezielter Entspannung.

William James on Attention (II):

Talks to Teachers on Psychology, William James:

"Whoever treats of interest inevitably treats of attention, for to say that an object is interesting is only another way of saying that it excites attention. But in addition to the attention which any object already interesting or just becoming interesting claims — passive attention or spontaneous attention, we may call it — there is a more deliberate attention, — voluntary attention or attention with effort, as it is called, — which we can give to objects less interesting or uninteresting in themselves. The distinction between active and passive attention is made in all books on psychology, and connects itself with the deeper aspects of the topic. From our present purely practical point of view, however, it is not necessary to be intricate; and passive attention to natively interesting material requires no further elucidation on this occasion. All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on. I must say a few more words, however, about this latter process of voluntary and deliberate attention.

One often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of sustained attention, and the popular impression probably prevails that men of genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in this direction. But a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary attention cannot be continuously sustained, — that it comes in beats. When we are studying an uninteresting subject, if our mind tends to wander, we have to bring back our attention every now and then by using distinct pulses of effort, which revivify the topic for a moment, the mind then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with spontaneous interest, until again some intercurrent idea captures it and takes it off. Then the processes of volitional recall must be repeated once more. Voluntary attention, in short, is only a momentary affair. The process, whatever it is, exhausts itself in the single act; and, unless the matter is then taken in hand by some trace of interest inherent in the subject, the mind fails to follow it at all. The sustained attention of the genius, sticking to his subject for hours together, is for the most part of the passive sort. The minds of geniuses are full of copious and original associations. The subject of thought, once started, develops all sorts of fascinating consequences. The attention is led along one of these to another in the most interesting manner, and the attention never once tends to stray away.

In a commonplace mind, on the other hand, a subject develops much less numerous associates: it dies out then quickly; and, if the man is to keep up thinking of it at all, he must bring his attention back to it by a violent wrench. In him, therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. It is your despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the faculty in question is always kept in training. A genius, on the contrary, is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

Voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair. You can claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by commanding it in loud, imperious tones; and you can easily get it in this way. But, unless the subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to interest the pupils, you will have got it for only a brief moment; and their minds will soon be wandering again. To keep them where you have called them, you must make the subject too interesting for them to wander again. And for that there is one prescription; but the prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit.

The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. You can test this by the simplest possible case of  sensorial attention. Try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall. You presently find that one or the other of two things has happened: either your field of vision has become blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct at all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in question, and are looking at something else. But, if you ask yourself successive questions about the dot, — how big it is, how far, of what shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other words, if you turn it over, if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of associates, — you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time. This is what the genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates and grows. And this is what the teacher must do for every topic if he wishes to avoid too frequent appeals to voluntary attention of the coerced sort. In all respects, reliance upon such attention as this is a wasteful method, bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well as imperfect results. The teacher who can get along by keeping spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with the greatest skill.

There is, however, in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that must be dull and unexciting, and to which it is impossible in any continuous way to contribute an interest associatively derived. There are, therefore, certain external methods, which every teacher knows, of voluntarily arousing the attention from time to time and keeping it upon the subject. Mr. Fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention, and he briefly passes these methods in review; the posture must be changed; places can be changed. Questions, after being answered singly, may occasionally be answered in concert. Elliptical questions may be asked, the pupil supplying the missing word. The teacher must pounce upon the most listless child and wake him up. The habit of prompt and ready response must be kept up. Recapitulations, illustrations, examples, novelty of order, and ruptures of routine, — all these are means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest to a dull subject. Above all, the teacher must himself be alive and ready, and must use the contagion of his own example.

But, when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence, and can make their exercises interesting, while others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper springs of human personality to conduct the task."

Abschreiben als Lerntechnik:

Abschreiben ist insofern keine sinnvolle Lerntechnik, da man beim Abschreiben dem Lernstoff gleichmäßig Aufmerksamkeit widmet, nicht aber, wie es für effizientes Lernen angebracht wäre, das Relevante mehr beachtet, das Irrelevante weniger beachtet.

Intuition:

"Many famous scientists have identified stages of problem-solving; these nearly always include a central stage during which unconscious cerebration, mentation, or whatever predominates. Thus Helmholtz (1896) postulated an initial investigatory stage, during which he became saturated with the large body of relevant facts. This was followed by a stage of rest and recovery, during which he gave no conscious attention to the problem, and finally a stage of illumination, when he had sudden insight into the solution - the 'aha!' experience."

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Intuition:

"To link intuition with exactitude, correctness, precision or truth would be a mistake; intuition can be as wrong, treacherous, mistaken and erroneous as logical thinking; it is no guarantee of truth. The adjective 'intuitive' refers to the method of arriving at a conclusion; not any property of the conclusion itself. Intuition is the basis of the 'aha!' experience, but how many 'ahas' have had to be retracted?"

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Defensive Reactions to Uncertainty:

"In defensive reactions to uncertainty—those related to Neuroticism and especially Withdrawal—interpretations, strategies, or goals that led to perceived error are deprioritized or simply abandoned. This is contractive learning, in which the individual learns what not to do or to believe, whereas exploration involves expansive learning, in which the individual creates new goals, interpretations, and strategies."

Colin DeYoung

On Genius:

>'An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark.'

This is another way to characterize the intuitive ('magician') as opposed to the analytical ('ordinary genius') scientists or mathematician (and probably, ceteris paribus, artist as well); we see the intuitive worker as intrinsically more 'creative' just because the origins of his creativity are hidden in the unfamiliar cliffs and caves of the unconscious.<

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Disgust as a Mechanism for Decision Making Under Risk

Disgust as a Mechanism for Decision Making Under Risk: Illuminating Sex Differences and Individual Risk-Taking Correlates of Disgust Propensity.

Sparks AM , Fessler DMT , Chan KQ , Ashokkumar A , Holbrook C; 2018

Abstract

The emotion disgust motivates costly behavioral strategies that mitigate against potentially larger costs associated with pathogens, sexual behavior, and moral transgressions. Because disgust thereby regulates exposure to harm, it is by definition a mechanism for calibrating decision making under risk. Understanding this illuminates two features of the demographic distribution of this emotion. First, this approach predicts and explains sex differences in disgust. Greater female disgust propensity is often reported and discussed in the literature, but, to date, conclusions have been based on informal comparisons across a small number of studies, while existing functionalist explanations are at best incomplete. We report the results of an extensive meta-analysis documenting this sex difference, arguing that key features of this pattern are best explained as one manifestation of a broad principle of the evolutionary biology of risk-taking: for a given potential benefit, males in an effectively polygynous mating system accept the risk of harm more willingly than do females. Second, viewing disgust as a mechanism for decision making under risk likewise predicts that individual differences in disgust propensity should correlate with individual differences in various forms of risky behavior, because situational and dispositional factors that influence valuation of opportunity and hazard are often correlated across multiple decision contexts. In two large-sample online studies, we find consistent associations between disgust and risk avoidance. We conclude that disgust and related emotions can be usefully examined through the theoretical lens of decision making under risk in light of human evolution.

Rejection:

Mark Manson - The subtle art of not giving a ****:

>As an extension of our positivity/consumer culture, many of us have been “indoctrinated” with the belief that we should try to be as inherently accepting and affirmative as possible. This is a cornerstone of many of the so-called positive thinking books: open yourself up to opportunities, be accepting, say yes to everything and everyone, and so on.

But we need to reject something. Otherwise, we stand for nothing. If nothing is better or more desirable than anything else, then we are empty and our life is meaningless. We are without values and therefore live our life without any purpose.

The avoidance of rejection (both giving and receiving it) is often sold to us as a way to make ourselves feel better. But avoiding rejection gives us short-term pleasure by making us rudderless and directionless in the long term.

To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it. There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives.

The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life, that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgies an important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on my ability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejecting trashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yet they require rejection at every turn.

The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X.

That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all.

The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, the desire to attempt to accept everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they give a fuck about is sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of their life, to pretend the suffering away.

Rejection is an important and crucial life skill. Nobody wants to be stuck in a relationship that isn’t making them happy. Nobody wants to be stuck in a business doing work they hate and don’t believe in. Nobody wants to feel that they can’t say what they really mean.

Yet people choose these things. All the time.

Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no.” In this way, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional lives healthier.<

Bright College Days:

Gregory Cochran:

"Bryan Caplan’s view is that most people don’t like school – find it boring and rapidly forget most of what they do learn. Largely true, I think. I don’t much care about how boring school is – if lots of useful information were retained, it would be well worth it. But that doesn’t appear to be the case: surveys generally indicate that adults don’t remember much of what they studied in school, and in general don’t know much. ..."

Open-Mindedness & Transparency:

Ray Dalio - Principles:

"Learning is the product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see their outcomes, and improve our understanding of reality as a result. ... The more open-minded you are, the less likely you are to deceive yourself—and the more likely it is that others will give you honest feedback. If they are "believable" people (and it’s very important to know who is "believable"), you will learn a lot from them. Being radically transparent and radically open-minded accelerates this learning process. It can also be difficult because being radically transparent rather than more guarded exposes one to criticism. It’s natural to fear that. Yet if you don’t put yourself out there with your radical transparency, you won’t learn."

"You must be willing to do things in the unique ways you think are best—and to open-mindedly reflect on the feedback that comes inevitably as a result of being that way. ... Imagine how many fewer misunderstandings we would have and how much more efficient the world would be—and how much closer we all would be to knowing what’s true—if instead of hiding what they think, people shared it openly. I’m not talking about everyone’s very personal inner secrets; I’m talking about people’s opinions of each other and of how the world works. As you’ll see, I’ve learned firsthand how powerful this kind of radical truth and transparency is in improving my decision making and my relationships. So whenever I’m faced with the choice, my instinct is to be transparent. I practice it as a discipline and I recommend you do the same."

"[Embracing honesty and transparency will bring more meaningful work and more meaningful relationships.]"

Episodisches Nachdenken:

Flexible Wanderungen durch Raum und Zeit.

The Status Competition Model of Cultural Production

The Status Competition Model of Cultural Production
Bo M. Winegard, Ben M. Winegard, David C. Geary (2018)

"After years of arduous study and labor, Immanuel Kant, then in his upper 50’s, published his magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason. Few people could understand his abstruse book (Kuehn, 2001). More mysterious perhaps than Kant’s genius and indefatigable effort is a simple question: why would evolution craft a creature who would devote an inordinate amount of time to writing a recondite book about human knowledge (epistemology)? Darwin’s (1859/1958) theory of natural selection suggests that such effort should not be dedicated to the production of a book that does not improve one’s ability to survive. To our knowledge, developing an expertise in epistemology does not allow one better to navigate the environment, avoid predators, or discover patches of valuable resources. One currently popular answer, the cultural courtship model (CCM) , argues that cultural productions like Kant’s book are designed to enthrall the other sex—that they function like the brilliant plumage of a peacock to capture the attention and tap into the aesthetic preferences of potential mates (Miller, 1999; 2000). 

In this article, we argue that the cultural courtship model, although a marked improvement over the often vague functionalist theories propounded by some cultural anthropologists and sociologists, explains only a special subset of cultural productions. We propose an alternative model, the social competition model (SCM) of cultural production, which contends that men and women produce cultural artifacts and displays chiefly to obtain status and prestige from peers and high status others (see also Irons, 1979, and Price & Van Vugt, 2014, for similar analyses). Prestige and status, once achieved, can be traded for a variety of resources, including, but not limited to, other mates (Perusse, 1993). We argue that the SCM allows a more complete understanding of cultural production and the subsequent mating decisions that such displays affect than current theory affords."

Selbstverständlichkeiten:

"Die Aufgabe des Sozialpsychologen liegt nicht darin, an den Selbstverständlichkeiten anderer Kulturen Kritik zu üben oder die seiner eigenen Gesellschaft zu verteidigen; er muss sie sehen - soweit ihm dies bezüglich seines eigenen Standortes überhaupt möglich ist - und er muss verstehen, dass jede Gesellschaft einen Kern selbstverständlicher Annahmen entwickelt hat oder - im revolutionären Falle - zu entwickeln trachtet."

"Selbstverständlichkeiten [werden] eigentlich erst dann auffällig ..., wenn sie nicht mehr in uneingeschränkter Weise Anerkennung finden. Insofern dies der Fall ist, pflegen Gesellschaftsformen ihre Selbstverständlichkeiten sehr energisch zu schützen. Diese erlangen damit Tabu-Charakter, und Vorstöße gegen sie werden entweder als 'verbrecherisch' oder als 'krankhaft' gebrandmarkt, manchmal als 'Hochverrat'."

Einführung in die Sozialpsychologie - Kröner, 1973

Suchrahmen:

Wenn der Suchrahmen einer Antwortsuche sehr eng ausfällt, enthält dieser verhältnismäßig häufig keine adäquate Antwort. Wird der Suchrahmen verhältnismäßig weit gewählt, enthält dieser zwar mit größerer Häufigkeit eine adäquate Antwort, doch bedarf es zur Auffindung dieser Antwort gegebenenfalls einen deutlichen Mehraufwand an Zeit und Ressourcen.

'Information-Gathering':

"To use the terms of the twentieth-century psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896-1980), Aristotelian intelligence involved not only 'accommodatory' re-arrangements of learning and adjustive re-structuring, but also the 'assimilatory' processes of intake that inform them. In the language of today's cognitive psychology, intelligence involved not only high-level, overarching strategies, heuristics (formulae) and 'meta-processes' (principles about processes) but also information-gathering from the environment and very 'basic' processes of transmission of simple information."

"....perhaps psychologists would have come to understand g earlier if they had considered that, in English, the term 'intelligence' has particular reference to information-gathering (as in its classic military usage) rather than to the final use of such information, which is often distorted by features of motivation and temperament."

Chris Brand

Creativity & Playfulness:

"I’m entirely sure that playfulness and creativity are indistinguishable."

John Cleese

Beziehungen:

Es gibt Paare, wo beide Beziehungspartner äußerst daran interessiert sind, zu erfahren, was tatsächlich im Kopf des anderen Beziehungspartners vorgeht, und es gibt Paare, und deren vermutlich nicht wenige, wo kein Interesse am ehrlichen Ausdruck der Gedanken des Beziehungspartners besteht. Im zweiten Fall ruft der ehrliche Gedankenausdruck verhältnismäßig häufig eine Negativreaktion hervor, wodurch sich Beziehungspartner gegebenenfalls gegenseitig Verstellung bzw. eine Falschheit im Ausdruck ankonditionieren.

Models:

"If one examines almost any modern statistics book or paper, one will see the word 'model' appearing. This word, and the concept it represents, has become ubiquitous in statistics. To a statistician, a model is a summary description of data."

"a model is a description of data as it occurs, summarizing its distribution, relationships between the observed characteristics, and so on ..."

David J. Hand

Aggregation:

"In the nineteenth century it was referred to as the 'combination of observations.' The phrase was meant to convey the idea that there was a gain in information to be had, beyond what the individual values in a data set tell us, by combining them into a statistical summary."

Stephen Stigler

Abstraktion:

"Abstraktion heißt: das Unwesentliche an der Beschreibung eines Problems weglassen. Dann ist das Problem immer noch da, aber seine Beschreibung ist einfacher geworden, und die Chancen, es zu lösen, sind größer."

Klaus Lagally

"Die Kunst der Abstraktion ist, das Wesentliche zu erkennen und das Unwesentliche wegzulassen. Abstraktion ist ... ein effizientes Mittel, um die Komplexität eines Systems zu verringern."

Goll & Heinisch

"Ein Modell ist ein System, das angefertigt wird, um ein anderes System zu verstehen. -> Wiedergabe der Wirklichkeit in den wesentlichen Aspekten. -> Abstraktion durch Weglassen unwesentlicher Aspekte. -> Ein Modell, das die Wirklichkeit perfekt wiedergibt, ist wie eine Straßenkarte im Maßstab 1:1."

Unterlagen eines Workshops

"Abstraktion ist das Weglassen von unwesentlichen Details, so dass die Essenz der Sache übrig bleibt. -> Bsp.: Karte der U-Bahn in London"

Reiner Nitsch

"Das Wort Abstraktion bezeichnet meist den induktiven Denkprozess des Weglassens von Einzelheiten und des Überführens auf etwas Allgemeineres oder Einfacheres."

"In der Philosophie bezeichnet Abstraktion ein gedankliches Verfahren, durch das von bestimmten gegebenen, jedoch als unwesentlich erachteten Merkmalen eines Gegenstandes abgesehen wird. Auf diese Weise soll sich das Augenmerk auf das Wesentliche konzentrieren, d. h. auf eine ganz bestimmte begriffliche Bedeutung der so erfassten speziellen Merkmale."

Wikipedia


"Der Prozess der Abstraktion vernachlässigt individuelle Merkmale von Phänomenen und hält Gemeinsamkeiten und Regelhaftigkeiten fest."

Fritz Simon


"Abstraktion beschreibt in seiner ursprünglichen Bedeutung den Vorgang des Absehens von Einzelheiten."

Andre Zimpel

Creativity in the Universitary Environment:

"In my experience, the most creative of my students and colleagues have had the most difficulty in finding recognition, acceptance, and research opportunities; they do not fit in, their very desire to devote their lives to research is regarded with suspicion, and their achievements inspire envy and hatred."

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Informationssuche:

Das Lesen von 'Sachbüchern' lässt sich dahingehend als Informationssuche verstehen, als wir im Lesevorgang das Buch auf relevante Informationen hin absuchen. Wir können uns nun in der Wahl des 'Sachbuchs' fehlentscheiden, indem wir uns für ein Buch entscheiden, das entweder keine relevanten Informationen enthält, oder das bloß eine unter einen gewissen Threshold fallende Konzentration an wesentlicher Information aufweist.

On Chunking:

"chess masters do not deal with the individual places of the pieces, but with positions, i.e. chunks involving many pieces simultaneously. Thus when pieces are distributed randomly on the chess board, and subjects are allowed to view them for a limited period, chess masters are no better than others at remembering the positions occupied by the pieces. But if the pieces actually illustrate meaningful positions, chess masters produce very much higher scores. To them this is not a meaningless collection of so many different pieces, but the position arrived at after 25 moves in the CapablancaTartakover match of 1925. Thus they have to remember one item, not hundreds, as must the unfortunate novice.
Some 50000 chunks, about the same magnitude as the recognition vocabulary of college-educated readers, may be required for expert mastery of a given field. The highest achievement in scientific disciplines, however, may require a memory store of a million chunks - probably the equivalent of 70 hours of concentrated effort each week for a decade even for a talented student! Without chunking the whole process would be utterly impossible.
Child prodigies and exceptionally early achievers, to quote the title of an interesting book by Radford (1990), seem able to curtail this prodigious expenditure of mental energy; a Mozart, Newton, or Einstein, by combining outstandingly high IQ, special abilities, motivation and creativity may get by with less, and achieve outstanding success at an abnormally early age. But even for them a long period of information acquisition is needed before creativity can emerge to restructure the chunks now available. Because not only do we have to transmute the material in question into chunks, these chunks are themselves tied together with pretty pink ribbons, and the most difficult task of the genius is to undo these ties, and fit the chunks together in a different pattern."

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Zeit für Gedanken:

Man sollte sich täglich zumindest eine Viertelstunde Zeit nehmen, das eigene Gedächtnis nach interessanten Objekten abzusuchen.

Intelligence and Creativity:

(1) All cognitive endeavours require new associations to be made, or old ones to be reviewed. (2) There are marked differences between individuals in the speed with which associations are formed. (3) Speed in the formation of associations is the foundation of individual differences in intelligence. (4) Only a sub-sample of associations is relevant in a given problem. (5) Individuals differ in the range of associations considered in problem-solving. (6) Wideness of range is the foundation of individual differences in creativity. (7) Wideness of range is in principle independent of speed of forming associations, suggesting that intelligence and creativity are essentially independent. (8) However, speed of forming associations leads to faster learning, and hence to a greater number of elements with which to form associations. (9) The range of associations considered for problem-solving is so wide that a critical evaluation is needed (comparator) to eliminate unsuitable associations. (10) Genuine creativity requires (a) a large pool of elements to form associations, (b) speed in producing associations, and (c) a well-functioning comparator to eliminate false solutions. 

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

"Indeed, often the most creative act is the selection of the problem! Such a selection takes into account the importance of the problem, how much is known about it, previous attempts, possible remote sources of information not previously considered, probability that the problem is soluble at the present time, and many more;"

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Association and Creativity:

"As a preliminary statement, we may consider the usual associationistic approach to creativity (Spearman, 1931), according to which a creative idea results from the novel combination of two or more ideas that have been isolated from their usual association. Mednick (1962; Mednick and Mednick, 1964) has defined the creative process as 'the forming of associative elements into new combinations which either meet specified requirements or are in some way useful. The more mutually remote the elements of the new combinations, the more creative the process or solution' (Mednick, 1962, p. 221). Creativity thus becomes a function of people's 'associative hierarchy', which can be defined as generalization gradients of differing degrees of steepness, with associations to words, percepts or problems ranging from common to unique. Individuals with steep gradients are likely to give common associations at high strength, but few or no uncommon associations; persons with less steep or even with flat gradients are more likely to make uncommon or unique responses."

Genius - H. J. Eysenck

Solution Horizons:

"In Eysenck's (1985a, 1986a, 1987b) theory of intelligence, speed of information-processing is a crucial ingredient, itself a consequence of (comparatively) error-free cortical processing. What, in such a scheme, would be the role of creativity? Any meaningful mental search process which has some empirical support requires qualification of the search domain in terms of relevance. Given a particular problem, we only search our memory store in terms of the requirement of that problem. Given the problem: 

1 3 6 10 15 21 ? 

we do not draw upon our knowledge of the causes of the Peleponesian War, or the quantum mechanics 'graviton' theory of gravitation; we confine ourselves to a heuristic search for numerical solutions fitting the progression indicated by the problem. Any problem defines its solution horizon, limiting its search to a given, circumscribed area. While Campbell, Simonton and Furneaux do not formally state such a limitation on their concepts of random or blind search, it does not seem likely that they would disagree and would insist on a truly blind/ random search involving the whole of our knowledge background. However, they fail to introduce the important concept of relevance, which clearly needs explicit treatment - particularly as it is a vital component of creativity."

Genius, H. J. Eysenck

Über den Umgang mit der Zeit:

"Dementsprechend haben wir alle unsere Privatmethoden, mit der Zeit umzugehen:

Da sind einmal die Tüchtigen, die ein Arbeitsprogramm aufstellen und mit eiserner Energie durchführen. Was nicht unbedingt dazugehört, wird konsequent auf die Seite geschoben; Vergnügen und sonstige Allotria werden nur rationiert genossen. Zweifellos leisten diese Menschen erstaunlich viel Arbeit; indessen ist es fraglich, ob sie - und insbesondere ihre Familien - damit auch glücklich sind.

Am entgegengesetzten Ende stehen die Augenblicksmenschen. Diese stellen nie ein Programm auf, sondern handeln nach dem augenblicklichen Einfall. So haben sie für den gegenwärtigen Menschen immer Zeit; sie sind verfügbar, wenn man sie ruft; alle Leute haben sie gern. Dafür können sie keine Verabredung einhalten; denn immer wird sie im letzten Augenblick von etwas anderem durchkreuzt. Leicht fangen sie ein Werk an, nie wird es beendet, da inzwischen zehn andere begonnen und verlassen wurden.

Zwischen diesen beiden Extremen stehen wir alle, die wir aus der Menge unserer Aufgaben eine gute Auswahl zu treffen versuchen."

Theodor Bovet

[Auf der einen Seite Personen, bei denen das Planen ins Zwanghafte geht. Das andere Extrem repräsentieren jene, bei denen Spontanität weit eher als hochgradige Desorganisiertheit bezeichnet werden müsste.]

Prospection Theory:

"pragmatic prospection theory says the main thrust in thinking about the future is less to predict what will happen than to predict points at which multiple different outcomes are possible and incompatible (so some will come true while others will not) - and, crucially, that oneself can exert some control over which ones come true. The important thing is predicting the choice points, not the eventual outcomes. Put another way, the purpose of prospection is not so much to predict future reality as to predict future possibilities - especially situations based on offering competing, incompatible ones. Those choice points and performance demands are the raison d'etre of agency.

Indeed, ... we seriously entertain the notion that consciousness creates alternative possibilities (in the sense that it makes it possible for them to become reality). It is precisely because people can imagine alternatives to the present that they can implement them, sometimes by creating a future situation that is importantly different from the present one."

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"People think about the future, not primarily as an attempt to predict what is bound to happen, but as a series of points at which events can go in different directions. The future is less a matter of something to be known than something to be shaped and guided amid multiple alternative possibilities."

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Consciousness of the Future as a Matrix of Maybe
R. F. Baumeister, H. Maranges, H. Sjåstad (2018)

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