Tag Archives: psychology

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Brain Hacks for Writers: new Futurismic column from Luc Reid coming soon

I very nearly didn’t bother emailing Luc Reid earlier this week. “C’mon, the guy’s probably waaaay too busy with other stuff to take on a monthly column for Futurismic, Paul,” I told myself… but I’m very glad I ignored that inner cynic, because he mailed me back just a few hours later, pretty much asking when he could start.

So, allow me to introduce Futurismic‘s newest columnist! Luc Reid is a short fiction author whose writing advice I’ve read (and linked to) frequently, and he also runs The Willpower Engine, a blog about self-motivation. As its title should suggest, his Brain Hacks for Writers column will cover the area where those two fields intersect. Here he is explaining it in his own words:

Unlike most writing resources […] BHfW will be solely about the practice of writing and not the craft of writing: it will cover topics like productivity, writing motivation, goals, and learning, but generally won’t touch on style, voice, point of view, characterization, or other features of actual stories. It’s not about what you write, but about how you approach the job of writing.

Speaking for myself, I think I’ve read more advice on the craft of writing than I’ve ever needed (indeed, I think I’ve read so much of it that it’s made me a worse writer rather than a better one, because I find myself trying to obey a multitude of contradictory instructions). But advice on the practical side is much harder to find. Luc’s plain talking style and deep interest in motivational psychology should make it an enjoyable and educational topic, too… and a fine addition to the Futurismic stable. I’m really chuffed to have the man on board. 🙂

The first Brain Hacks for Writers column will be published next month. In the meantime, if there are any burning writerly topics you’d like Luc to cover, why not mention them in the comments here?

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No fate but what we make… or maybe not. Is free will an illusion?

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A dilemmaBiology professor Anthony Cashmore at the University of Pennsylvania reckons that free will is illusory, and that believing in it is something akin to religious faith:

One of the basic premises of biology and biochemistry is that biological systems are nothing more than a bag of chemicals that obey chemical and physical laws. Generally, we have no problem with the “bag of chemicals” notion when it comes to bacteria, plants, and similar entities. So why is it so difficult to say the same about humans or other “higher level” species, when we’re all governed by the same laws?

As Cashmore explains, the human brain acts at both the conscious level as well as the unconscious. It’s our consciousness that makes us aware of our actions, giving us the sense that we control them, as well. But even without this awareness, our brains can still induce our bodies to act, and studies have indicated that consciousness is something that follows unconscious neural activity. Just because we are often aware of multiple paths to take, that doesn’t mean we actually get to choose one of them based on our own free will. As the ancient Greeks asked, by what mechanism would we be choosing? The physical world is made of causes and effects – “nothing comes from nothing” – but free will, by its very definition, has no physical cause.

All of a sudden, I’m reminded of Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument – perhaps the reason we can’t see a mechanism for free will is that we’re not actually real? Which is a heavy thought for a Monday morning… compare and contrast with Luc Reid’s summary of the neuroscience status quo, and it’s plain to see there’s a whole lot we just plain don’t understand. [image by Julia Manzerova]

Personally, I’m currently leaning somewhat toward the idea that our consciousnesses are enabled by quantum effects caused by entanglement with near-identical minds in universes closely similar to our own… but that probably has more to do with the fact that I finally finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem last week than anything else.

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Humans may have a brain-deep aversion to income inequality

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… or at least that’s the case according to researchers at CalTech, who’ve been using fMRI to examine how the human brain responds to rewards [via Freakonomics; image by jsmjr].

… what was unknown was just how hardwired that dislike really is. “In this study, we’re starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from,” he says. “It’s not just the application of a social rule or convention; there’s really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations.”

The brain processes “rewards”—things like food, money, and even pleasant music, which create positive responses in the body—in areas such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and ventral striatum.

Procedural and methodological stuff follows, so let’s skip to the kicker:

As it turned out, the way the volunteers—or, to be more precise, the reward centers in the volunteers’ brains—reacted to the various scenarios depended strongly upon whether they started the experiment with a financial advantage over their peers.

“People who started out poor had a stronger brain reaction to things that gave them money, and essentially no reaction to money going to another person,” Camerer says. “By itself, that wasn’t too surprising.”

What was surprising was the other side of the coin. “In the experiment, people who started out rich had a stronger reaction to other people getting money than to themselves getting money,” Camerer explains. “In other words, their brains liked it when others got money more than they liked it when they themselves got money.”

“We now know that these areas are not just self-interested,” adds O’Doherty. “They don’t exclusively respond to the rewards that one gets as an individual, but also respond to the prospect of other individuals obtaining a reward.”

That’s a lovely interpretation that I’d dearly love to believe in, and I have not even a fraction of the medical knowledge I’d need in order to attempt to refute it, nor refute the way the research was framed.

So instead I’ll pose a question: if we’re so hardwired to loathe income inequality, and those starting with greater fortunes are supposed to enjoy seeing others rewarded more than themselves, why exactly is income inequality such a widespread feature of almost every culture on the planet?

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Neurocapitalism

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Move over, neurocinematics – neurocapitalism reaches far beyond the theatre and focus group in its all-pervasive influence! Well, not quite, but Martin Börjesson responds to an article that uses the term as its title in order to make a point about the increasing ubiquity of neuroscience and the effects that it will have on every aspect of our lives, be they public or private:

The real reason why neurophysiological knowledge will have huge impact is rather that we are heading into a world where 1st person experiences, emotions and perspective will dominate. This shift is very well matched to what neurophysiology is promising: e g to solve people’s (perceived) disorders and fix (perceived) shortcomings, but also to boost experiences and create (artificial) peace of mind. Institutions will, part from selling all the neuro-based drugs, devices and services to people, use the new knowledge to both manipulate people but also get new insight in what people wants in order to be able and develop and market products and services more efficiently and effectively.

So even if we will not have a Neurocapitalism, we will most likely have a market in where many, many products and services will be based on or transformed by the new knowledge, ideas and innovations that stem from neurophysiological research.

As with basic psychology, knowledge is power; if you want to be able to resist the imminent finely-crafted importunings of anyone who can afford the right neurological research, you’ll need to learn which tricks they’ve found effective so as to protect yourself against them. But start small – why not learn a little about the emotional psychology of retail as a warm-up [via BoingBoing; image via Hljod.Huskona]?

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Cheer up, emo writer – maybe positive sf really could make you more positive.

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Well, it turns out my mother may have been right after all* – listening to music with positive messages in the lyrics encourages consideration and empathetic behaviour in teenagers, according to research at the University of Sussex here in the UK. Apparently, people who listen Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” are more likely to help pick up some knocked-over pencils than those who’ve listened to a neutral or negative tune. [image by Vagamundos]

(I’ve obviously been emotionally mutilated by a lifetime of listening to hirsute and/or black-clad people torturing guitars… if presented with a bunch of pencils in the presence of Michael Jackson songs, my first instinct would be to jam one up each nostril and headbutt the nearest desk until I achieved release.)

But this throws an interesting light on Jetse de Vries’ call for optimistic science fiction – if the same psychology pertains to the written word as it does to music, perhaps science fiction readers (and writers) really would be more positive in their outlook if there were more stories written in such a mode.

[ * – This sentence is purely included for stylistic effect; as should be completely obvious, my mother was always right about everything. ]