Monday, October 24, 2005

I hope this is the right choice

I hope we can get the apartment at cypress point without problem. I hope the land lady will fix the things in apartment and I hope Noel can safely bike to work without me worrying much. I hope I will learn to like the appliance in the apartment, not complain of it not being the newest but appreciate it's durable and usable and not creating unwanted garbage in the landfill. I hope I can do a good job finding good place for all our belonging (including the iron shelf) and make a beautiful, peaceful living environment for anybody that visits.

I need to stop worrying like Rick says. He's a great guy. I guess I worry because it's my comfort zone. What would my Behaviorism class professor say about this situation?

Thank you for watching over me, my mom, our family and rest of everybody.

Friday, October 21, 2005

What to focus on

I might not completely and whole heartedly understand the realm of Behaviorism, or believe it can solve every world problem, but I do admit it helps me to know myself better and work with myself better.

I realized I am more sensitive to punishment then reinforcement. It must have to do with the chinese upbringing. It's a world revolves around punishment. I guess knowing that is good because it's half of the battle.

Now I can tackle on what I need to do. I realized I dread my to-do list because I just focus on the not-fun part of it and not focusing on when I finish how great I feel. My todo list needs to change from the process to emphasis the result. After all, isn't that what marketing people do with all the ads? That should be enough to motivate me, to get me going instead of procrastinating.

Let's change "Go through bookmarks" to "Knowing your favorite bookmarks and be able to access it easily! :-)"

I need to be my own cheerleader!

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Anterior Cingulate

I understood the idea of behaviorism after the first lecture, but I certainly had a deeper understanding after few more sessions. Professor Hall argues it from many different point of view and that certainly helped deepen the understanding. However, I find myself forming the opposite stand from him. He think that if any field of psychology should be eliminated, it should be cognitive psychology. I think if there's any branch of psychology I am mostly interested, that would be it.

Why?

Well, there isn't much to behaviorism. Yes, it's all based on the very straight forward concept of Law of Effect by Thorndike. But that's not magical. So what if you can explain "anterior cingulate by the following:

"Although the functions of the anterior cingulate are very complex, broadly speaking it acts as a conduit between lower, somewhat more impulse-driven brain regions and higher, somewhat more thought-driven behaviors. The Stroop effects sensitivity to changes in brain function may be related to it's association with the anterior cingulate." "The Stroop Test provides insight into cognitive effect that are experienced as a result of attentional fatigue"

Yes, you can explains the whole "Stroop Test" by saying because we are conditioned to read the word instead of the color of the word, but how does that help me refer to what's happening in the brain. Yes, you can explain everything by "it's doing this because it's used to getting that result", but that doesn't give me a specific of referring to the brain function.

Behaviorism criticize mentalism's use of mind, intelligent and other things it cannot observe and considers unnatural. If all other philosopher were like that, not using their imagination to explain the observed, then no other science would have been burn. As the technology advances, we can see that some of the assumptions by scientist were able to be proven correct. Did not Einstein form his theories before they were proven able?

To answer the question Professor Hall asks in class: How much of what a person becomes is nature vs. nurture? I think it's more nature then nurture. How do you explain things like attention to detail? How do you explain some people's brain just cranks slower then other? I just think nature has more of an impact then nurture.

I just find it more interesting to know human nature and use that as a tool to uncover other things then working to change people's behavior. Perhaps it's because it's usually harder to change people's behavior? Unless you have a great dominance of people's environment. But knowing people's nature will aid as a tool to change that person's environment then behavior.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the law of effect and other behaviorism ideas is just a small equation in the whole world of psychology.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

In the mood for love

I saw "In the mood for love" for the second time on IFC. I was very impressed by 2046 and couldn't believe how boring I though the "mood" was. Wanted to see what I missed. I realized I wasn't impressed by the "mood" first time because I did not get it. That's why I thought it boring. Everything was very subtle. So delicate that you miss it if you weren't paying full attention.

I learned to love the subtle things this time around. For example, I love the simplicity of buying noodle soup in that era, where they bring their own container. So much more intimate then the disposable containers we have now that's creating too much garbage. I love Maggie Chueng's figure. Loved how chi-pow looks so great on her and how the neck of the dress was just a bit longer to accentuate her beautiful elongated neck.

Beautiful. I would consider owning the movie.