Sat 22 Dec 2001
new devel in q computing
economist.
Jerry,
I'm sorry I haven't written back earlier, but I tend to wait until I have something to say.

I got the job as a part-time research assitant at SUNY School of Optometry, and have completed 2.5 weeks on the job. So far it has been very nice, though, I wouldn't mind being paid as much as I once was as a programmer.
The SUNY Opt. building is right near Bryant park & the Humanities & Social sciences library of the NYPL (the one with the Lions in front). I've been working approx. from 9-1, and then going for a run in central park, and then going to the research library to read things which I hope might point me in a direction of future graduate study/research of some kind.

I was dancing for a while, but learned what I wanted to, and now feel motivated to spend more time exercising my mind (in a way different than the way dance exercises it).

The research project I'm currently working on explores which visual cues affect how humans perceive surface slant and how the perception of cues of different types together affect overall perception. For that end, I've been writing scripts for 3d studio max to create the visual displays we will use in the study.

I am fairly certain I would enjoy the graduate student/research/academic/teaching life, and I generally enjoy doing research, but am still looking about for an area which I'm interested in enough to do a dissertation-scale project/lifetime research programme.

Psychology is a bit of a turnoff to me, because it seems so messy compared to the seamless beauty of the experience it attempts to study.

I also want to work in an area that is extremely powerful.

It seems as if I would like to work with data which does not rely on people's thoughts and language about behavior, but on behavior itself. Thought and language certainly is an aspect of human behavior, but I think it is the experience of emotion and sensory data of all kind that are the most defining aspect of our experience of life.

I would love to somehow record, playback, and code experience, and use it for all sorts of studies primarily related to improving the quality of human experience. It seems that Csikszentmihali has headed in this direction in the past, but did not focus on biological measurements.

I would also like to work with huge datasets, massive amounts of data.

Nanobots.
Record visual, auditory input, if possible olfactory. Proprioceptive. Feelings of body pain, body comfort. Nanobots?

Where does the power come in?

--
the phenom of noticing others are watching you.

Chinese culture
American culture.
economist articles.
Psychohistory
second foundation.
Asimov's focus on emotion
My education.
Technology future vision, and

what I'm I doing?
what was I doing yesterday evening, as I was thinking.
Casting about

"I want to focus on the dream and on inspiring
what inspires, what.
not creativity but drive.
ambition and quiescence
"
by imagining what I wanted to be doing with others, what I wanted my relationship to be, it seems I approached closer to a productive term.

I had earlier come up with the concept "defining the new ideal"
and imagined encouraging others and students to spend time considering what the ideal in various situations might be..
as well as how productive thinking in that direction can be done.

Last night I considered studying the concept of idealism as a personality trait.

But it is not idealism,
it is seeking aways to improve

"The quality is, I want the best
"the quality is, there is a better way.
and I will figure it out.
to dream
to feel power.

But how does idealism relate to those amazing thrillling powerful experiences in life?

is it the orientation which makes these experiences more likely?

If you don't define your own you will flounder and the main thrust of your life will be dire-

Devotion to pursuit of ideas.

I want to express the excitement & life of the kids at the playing field today (12/21) but
the ideas that make people leap and exclaim joy.

how corny! (that is the foe again)
Just inspiring oratory?
No, there must be solid strucutre behind it.


So, a possible research question/ orientation has been found.
That is expressible in language.
Although the word idealism, I probably should not be using- because it has other meanings which/and I don't think directly relate to the orientation I am seeking.

(1) need to define the orientation operationally
(2) need to think about the nature of its existence- does it exist, how, why, developmentally how.
(3) Need to see, once it seems to exist, what its correlates are.
(5) I want it to be powerful, and I don't know if it can be:
Oh, nice, someone has demonstrated that this particular orientation is conducive to this kind of valued behavior- we guessed it, and now a study supports it.
(7) What I'd like to see more, perhaps is:
As a child I was encouraged to think in this way, and understand what is required and why one might think in this way, and because of that orientation, I lived such a greater, more meaningful (full of experiences to lookforward to and memories to enjoy remembering, magical and powerful) life than if I had lived in an environment which suppressed/did not encourage that approach to thinking.
There is a better way.

I would like to see some things destroyed along the way, I want to see things jump in a better way.

But what is the likelihood of that?

How could this orientation intrude on the mass mind and become a greater norm. and would that be a worthwhile development.

No doubt better technology will achieve this,
No doubt certain interesting phenomena will achieve fame.

But what contributes to creating the defining predominant attitude and orientations of a culture?
What have demonstrated cultural differences been in the past?
Anthro, soc, and psych.
What differences do exist, what changes have already ocurred, and why?

Ask questions with your answer in mind and see who will come to the same conclusion you have.

My mind returns to the ecopsych discussion:
Me: your work for social change must provide emot. benefit for yourself.
other: No, what must be done, must be done, even if it makes me miserable.

So: "there is a better way" with the end-goal focus of experience.

This is continuing to remain interesting, and does offer potential to tie in with much possibly related to cultural evolution, and the individual experience.

Now,
How does this relate to (besure to back this up)
Isaac Asimov's work which I am glad that Paul Krugman pointed out as inspiring?

How did I get to j-bradford-delong's site in the first place?

(1) Isaac asimov's work itself: offers adventure and intensity of experience, and constant novelty, and twists and overturning ones conceptualization of what is going on (world view) incredibly often. Can this basic approach be adopted to make interesting writing easy?
One must have the creativity to constantly jump and switch like that, to create the new and the fantastic.
that on a pure structural level.

(2) Why do I say his foundation work is missing something, why do others agree? Why does Gabriel garcia marquez' work seem to have that quality? Is it more time spent on character and scene development, and less on pure plot twists and changes? Can such a thing be quantified (lines devoted to various activities)?

(3) The content of asimov's work and focus, the interest in the development of civilizations and the directions  of civilizations. The focus on powerful, shrewed, pivitol individuals (in spite of the science based on huge masses of people). How possible is  this (the few powerful, shrewd, huge influence) How predictable is this? Who is william cullen Bryant
how did his statue get in the park?
what did he do great for nyc?

google is amazing-
sibl quotations got me:
"Whenever a business decides that success has been attained,
progress stops" - Thomas Watson {founder of IBM}.
http://home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/sci-tech.html

What are the other databases at that library and what might be available?
what is ultrasonics?
http://www.signsanddecal.com/pages/projects/sibl.htm

What are the other quotations, why were they chosen? do they all fit so neatly into my orientation as that one? if not, what orientation do they fit into, why were they chosen?

What of bryant's quote by his statue.

wc bryant:
Yet let no empty gust of passion find an uttrance in thy lay[?]
a blast that whirls the dust
throught the howling[?] streets and dies away;
but feeling of calm power and mighty sweep
like currents journeying through the windless deep.

What does great poetry do?
What is this dreaming.

from google:
Yet let no empty gust

  Of passion find an utterance in thy lay,

A blast that whirls the dust

  Along the howling street and dies away;

But feelings of calm power and mighty sweep,
        35

Like currents journeying through the windless deep.

anyways,

What is poetry, what is that poem?
(3) the content of asimov's work, the focus on emotion

and I want my medium to be experience.

Asimov has incredible visions, in so many domains which is what is impressive. Notable, though are some anachronisms-or things they have hundreds of thousands of years in the future, that we have better of now- word processors. Or the starfield matcher.

He did take some trends of the time and fly with them. The power of psych in the 50s-70s.
Now is it noticably less powerful.

Determinations of idea power, and definition of well being.
criteria to evaluate human experience.

I still have trouble with eating, but perhaps not once my recent purchase of designer protein is gone met-rx, seems to be more appropriate, in packages.

from before:
"
(7) What I'd like to see more, perhaps is:
As a child I was encouraged to think in this way, and understand what is required and why one might think in this way, and because of that orientation, I lived such a greater, more meaningful (full of experiences to lookforward to and memories to enjoy remembering, magical and powerful) life than if I had lived in an environment which suppressed/did not encourage that approach to thinking.
There is a better way.
"

let's work with 7
remember asimovs language of the psychohistorians. he has a vistion, it seems.
Where does that vision

Dreaming also as a concept.
Time spent dreaming.
Nature of dreams.
Rebecca seems to now be doing political work.
Asimov, and other writers, dream and make up alternate realities, and inspire our 'there is a better way.'

But also, provide depths and varieties of emotional experience.

A focus on orientations. My orientation was to not read for a long time, and may remain that way. How did it hurt, how did it help?

What is happening when I read, write.
roger Schank, ask systems.

And also doing nothing.

ok, now,
(7.1) How to best proceed in direction and experience I will love?
I think that means graduate school, but should I write or educate.

You want to share the awe, inspire the 'there is a better way', and inspire the dreaming, value and recognize the great poets, analyze the writer, as well as cultural trends and change.
Focusing on the possibilities and what will happen when many think in your way and share your focus.

_will the effect really be positive_? both for one's own experience and for others?

The answer is yes, because of the dreaming,
the
'there is a better way'
looking at it throughout history,
understanding the purpose of poetry and literature....
or its function for the writer and it's larger influence on the experience on other individuals.

How big and how productive can this focus be?
how big and how productive

will I be able to define it in such a way that others see its value and follow it?

And what other work is being done in this area?

What will my expression, in words, life and action be?

What of dance?
What of lincoln center?
What of all my neglected correspondences, what of peace pilgrim. Grace llewellen, unschoolers, thoreau, the nearings, my sisters, the earthfirsters, the guy in copenhagen, the guy on the ecovillage, bob, tory,

who have been all the other dreamers/people of drawing orientations
what of my correspondences, I should write those orientations.


Can we run with this, and can we run well?

ok. let's see what else we can find on the net and then go for a run in the twighlight at 4 - 4:30.

In the realm of
search words:
pragmatic idealism, the various definitions.
I'm afraid we may be stuck in personality psych, but perhaps we can move into sociology... And I do want to present the most powerful ideas, and also to work with the most powerful people, and to be in the most powerful position, so the best, and I want my idea, and presentation of it to be what gets me in. So the programme and path has to be well thought out, the past work in the area, well reviewed.

'there is a better way'
'ideals of unschooling (if there are any)' work with grace lewellen.
What are the processes the unschooling environment might educate, what types of encouragement make that environment most successful

Also, what of the despondent, the walking dead- the woman in the elevator, the older library student on the subway (if I was going to be anything, I would have done it already).

It seems like I've opened a flood which could whirl and die away, but in any event, I need to focus on the path of the experience for me that will be the most powerful.

Was it faith I had to do this for myself:: write about that orientation: must also work with the quiescence, the one straw revolution,

The people in italy- I need to fill that out and get their emails, but I expect I'll be threshing this out for quite some time first.

Check back in a few weeks, could it be that I will still be working on this orientation then?

let's just be fairly quiet, and read now.

behavioral measurements of focus and what they signify. have I been more focused while writing this stuff than usual.. no matter.


http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html

Stallman's def, in relation to meaning, meaninglessness and saving the world.

I need to have an approach for dealing with guys like this guy next to me who comes in and plays his music so others can hear it, and when asked to turn it down, does not, when asked twice still does not, though he says it is.
There has to be a reasonable- what are my choices, and what are the possibilities, and what is most effective for the end goal, the quality of my experience. I think I'll ponder this later, perhaps with the help of some friends. more interested in other things.

He is an interesting problem.
I've got it, "how about you let me turn it down until I can't hear it?"

Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism.

My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software which forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better.

---
Ethical idealism
The solution is not working the guy, doesn't really care, and I don't think I've done anything to help him see the other perspective... hmm. He finally started making threats after I asked him to turn it down, and now. But the guard does his job.


What will the search, the be, is he a dancer, is he an artist...

And so he left, taking a while, babbling something, I think rapping, seeming to be related to white oppression of black people, perhaps, and also, imagining my thought "oh, look, the black guy got thrown out, isn't this cool, I wish I could do this every day"

to which, I said nothing, because he gave no indication that he was really talking to me.

Probably I should not have said, yeah I understand when he asked me if I understood that if I touched him again there'd be a fight of some kind.
Physically I'm not well, I've been sitting here to o long, I haven't run, and my stomach, does not feel too good.

But what if people are not to do what I did, about people throwing trash on the ground, playing their headphones loud, etc? What if people do not make an effort to stop the terrorists, hardly the same, but the same, in different degrees.

What will the search term be.
psychinfo, not idealism though, perhaps optimizing orientation.
If there were no previous work, how would I define it, how is idealism currently defined. dictionary, philosophy, popular use.
In the times it appeard in articles related to public service.

Need better search terms, let's go now.

needs work, needs thinking, let's go.




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