Category Archives: Psychotechnology

Choosing Your Lens at Will

Science in all its amazing advances still admits it does not know the ultimate truths of our existence — who we are, why we are here, what reality is. In place of this knowing some choose faith as one lens e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, et al. Even though perhaps attending a specific church, many slide easily into the prevailing unspoken lens of our times — the lens that earlier science gave us and which still sticks in our head (and eyes). We assume unthinkingly that the lens of science has not changed in 200 years.

The old lens is the lens of materialism, which says matter is the primary constituent of the universe. The lens that says the universe is an accident, and the force of its accidental explosion into being caused and still causes most major interactions to occur through collisions, e.g. stars, planets, satellites, asteroids, comets. The lens that says life also began by accidental collisions forming chemicals and then proteins and eventually life. Life then evolved through the destruction of all but the accidentally survivable species. And life then evolved consciousness accidentally, and the consciousness we experience is a phenomenon projected by the material brain somehow, all on its own. And of course, each consciousness is forever separate, cut off, and in competition with everything else in the universe for survival, eking out as much contentment as possible against great odds.

Science has matured enough to realize that the latter is all a lens and not proven truth. In fact its central premise, all that exists is matter, has been utterly blown away. Matter turns out to be (as Indian sages said thousands of years ago) an appearance of what is really going on, which when you are able to detect really small interactions, everything is ultimately not matter, but energy. Matter is made of energy. Another way to see this is that the macro phenomena we associate with the word “matter” are illusions of the interactions between our sensory apparatus and the energy swirls in our immediate vicinity. One scientist once said it this way (wish I remembered which scientist): matter is just light revolving rather than moving in a straight path.

My favorite physicist John Wheeler then decomposes energy as the ultimate substrate of matter by saying that information is even more basic and foundational than energy to what the universe is.

These are all still lenses, ways of gestalting the universe. Not scientifically proven truth, nor fact. Models. Constructs. Ways of talking about things, ways of looking at things, ways of seeing them.

It’s good to be able to remember this and not be stuck in making fixed immovable assumptions that are hidden from ourselves, based on the autonomic and forgotten use of lenses. Because then we use these hidden assumptions as the basis for decision making, even when we do not realize we are making decisions every moment. Choices that keep us moving in a direction that at the same time might be a direction we complain about.

In the absence of knowing much, there is a way of making decisions that works extremely well when it is actually applied. This is called Game Theory.

With Game Theory, when you don’t know what the outcomes will be, you list possible outcomes and then see which ones you like. Then you see if you can convince yourself to make the decisions that will get you moving in one of those preferred directions.

How much meaning do you want to see in life, in your everyday, second-to-second life? If you want there to be rich meaning abounding, then choose a lens that gives you that view. A lens that makes things more explainable and understandable. Remember, it is still just a lens!

For example, let’s say that in terms of the nature of reality, there are really only two clusters of lenses to choose from. One says there is something like a God, and the other says there is nothing like a God.

Through the lenses that say there is something like a God, there appears to be an abundance of meaning in our lives. In the other cluster of lenses, there appears to be a dearth of meaning — much happens that makes no sense, nor do we expect it to make sense.

I was in this lens for many years. It came from being so impressed by science as a kid. I can testify that there are good things about this lens. For one thing, it makes one feel terribly independent, an independent thinker, since most of the world is in the other lens cluster. It sometimes strips away so many considerations that you can quickly look at situations and see the barest of elements, the quintessence. There is a certain minimalist “cleanliness” if not clarity.

Emotionally the lens of being alone in an unbenevolent universe can be toughening, allowing you to more easily become fatalistic and to shed many of your attachments. You get in the habit of not making assumptions but rather being very commonsense and down to earth. Very empirical. You don’t lean on illusions or faith or anyone else to define reality for you. All of which can be good.

The God lens from the standpoint of Game Theory has its benefits too. Again we are not saying anything definitive about the true nature of reality. We are only discussing the lenses we can look through.

Through the lens that says the universe is not accidental and intelligence was present from the beginning, intelligence may indeed be the ultimate “information processor” that both started the universe and is the universe. Everything else — information, energy, matter — is epiphenomena arising in appearance from this intelligence as the single existent thing in the universe.

This is somewhat of a new lens — I might even be inventing it — in the cluster of lenses I have dubbed the “Something like God exists” cluster.

The other lenses in this cluster are more “religious” in their depiction of the underlying intelligence. Mine is more “scientific”. On the other hand, when one looks back through history for others who have espoused lenses similar to mine, one goes all the way back to native shamans and to what for a long time we have called “pantheism”. Certainly all mystics use lenses that come close to mine in the sense that they are mystics — admitting they still operate in the mists, with no one fixed ideology.

This scientific-mystic lens affords meaning to everything. Use this lens (without believing it to be the truth, nor disbelieving it) if you yearn to have more meaning in your life. You will always see the meanings as tentative without become locked into them, but at least you will see a wealth more meaning in your life.

Since meaning adds a sense of value to all human beings, the Game Theory “bet” on intelligence behind the universe is a better bet than the opposite bet, because it imputes more value to life.

However, I am not saying you should make a bet, just continue to keep an open mind, and experiment with both lenses.

In fact it will help you shoulder on the mantle of this lens to remember that you don’t know the meaning of life or reality — nobody does, it is all a wonder-fully thrilling awesome unknown. This makes it interesting, mysterious-mystical, immense, awe-inspiring. Wouldn’t we be missing something if we did know everything?

Since a universal intelligence of some kind cannot be ruled out, this lens allows you to entertain explanations for things in every moment both with and without God or Universal Intelligence in your mindstream.

Wearing this pure empirical maximal-skeptic lens you will start to see possible reasons why certain things happened — as if the universe is trying to help you — even by putting certain training obstacles in your path. I call this noia — being the opposite of paranoia.

By seeing things as possible gifts from the universe even if they are not, and even if they don’t feel like gifts, you gain some leverage from being able to see how to use the event better. Game Theory.

You benefit most by being able to switch lenses at will. Have fun!

Best to all,

Bill

David Brooks the Star of ARF AMS 6.0

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I really enjoyed the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement Symposium 6.0, the largest audience measurement conference in the world. I always do — and this time, with my own papers co-presented there, and David Brooks’ keynote, it was better than ever.

Best-selling author and well-known columnist for The New York Times, David eloquently summarized some of the key learning from his new book The Social Animal.

Because David is talking about psychotechnology, which is the work we have done for years at the Human Effectiveness Institute, I was thrilled that such an important public figure and best-selling author is now calling attention to this crucial area.

David of course does not use our terminology. He talks about reviewing our cognitive processes, thinking about how we think, and making improvements in those processes. He is tapping into the latest brain science and popularizing the learning so that it is accessible and valuable to the entire culture not just to brain scientists. This is a very worthy activity. He joins us in this, with the kind of immediate impact we hoped someone would have someday. That day is here.

First he talked about the unconscious/subconscious part of our minds. He pointed out that only 40 bits of the 12,000,000 bits of info entering our brains each second reach conscious attention — the rest goes into the unconscious mind.

He went on to say that emotion — rather than being a flaw as it has been characterized tacitly by this rational culture* — is not in fact a flaw. Emotion is the foundation of reason, because it determines what we value and then reason is a means we use to go after what we value.

Here we differ slightly — emotion and intuition together actually are the foundation for our perception of what is valuable to us. As Jung pointed out, emotion and intuition are actually two different functions — two of the four functions of consciousness (intellect/reason, feelings/emotion**, intuition and perception).

The Human Effectiveness Institute (THEI) considers intuition to be an important part of our minds that has been relatively ignored by the scientific community. THEI also aims to improve people’s performance and their lives by focusing on what works in a pragmatic manner. We have observed that when one gives mental management advice, it is very easy for people to take it the wrong way and then more harm is done than good. The exact wording is mission critical. I am guessing that David knows all this and could not pack it all into one short speech.

If you tell people that emotion is the foundation they are likely to take it that they should simply follow their feelings. People leaving the ARF conference for example could have this as one of their takeaways from David’s talk. However, following one’s feelings as the Rubicon without some balancing rules as regards what to do about reason, intuition and perceptions often has disastrous consequences. In fact when emotion is negative and there is no cognitive tool for processing out the negativity before action, it always leads to disaster of small or large kinds. We welcome the opportunity to explore this further with David. Meanwhile, I am enjoying his book.

In the next posting we will continue to report on David Brooks’ incredibly valuable contributions to our culture, and will continue to point out how we feel his ideas could be sharpened to be even more positively effective.

Best to all,

Bill

*We would add that this bias began in Greece in the Golden Age, circa 400 BC.

**In recent psychology parlance, emotion is actually the physical manifestation of feelings (heart rate, breathing rate, adrenalin concentration in the bloodstream, etc.) so when discussing consciousness/mind, the more appropriate term is feelings rather than emotion — but this is just semantics.

Psychotechnology for the 21st Century

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This post will overview the Institute and our work. As a media researcher I’ve analyzed large databases, done surveys, measured brainwaves, tracked eye movements, absorbed a vast amount of information, and thought for the past 40 years about the way media affect the mind.

I started using computers in the 60s and was on the Internet in 1980 when it was called Arpanet. My exposure to computers during this period as they ascended to a major role in our culture got me to think about how the mind and the computer work in similar ways.

In my childhood my showbiz parents put me on stage from age 4 onward. The pressure of being on stage gave me the experience of “flow state” – almost an out of body experience, watching myself perform as if from the outside. These experiences made me intensely curious about what was going on in my head not only at these times, but all the time.

I have always been a meditator and contemplator, having discovered the techniques myself, under pressure to perform at above what I thought was my ability. What do these words mean to me? Contemplation is immersive observation, and can be focused on any subject. Meditation is when the focus of contemplation is one’s own self. You observe your self without identifying with the feelings and thoughts that arise, observing them as if from afar.

All of these currents in my life coalesced into a set of theories that are the basis for my nonprofit work, which is the Institute.

THEI as I call it for short has the Mission of disseminating useful psychotechnology – tools for internal information processing optimization – similar in a way to the media optimization tools I’ve helped invent for the marketing industry. Tools for sublimating negative emotion into learning and into action items. Leaving only positive emotion.

The Vision is that one day, maybe pretty far in the future, the whole human race will be using such psychotechnology on a continuous basis. Because this will avert war at the individual level and cause a shift from competitiveness to cooperation and mutual nurturing. May it come as soon as possible.

The history of the human race is uplifted over and over again by the introduction of bits of such psychotechnology, which in the past has manifested as yoga, Zen, religion, mysticism, philosophy, science, psychology, morality/ethics, aesthetics, and many other good things.

THEI’s psychotechnology is in the realm of science and specifically relates to translating ancient and self-discovered practices into the language of information processing so that it may be considered objectively by all parts of the population including people normally biased against such possibilities.

My book MIND MAGIC is an experiment to see if this personal psychotechnology (it has been proven to work in my own life, or I wouldn’t pass it on) could actually be transferred to anyone else. About 2000 letters, cards, and emails indicate that the original version worked at least for some people. Including a range of well-known folks from Norman Cousins to John Lennon, Ram Dass and Daniel Goleman. Also some bank officials, corporate executives, Army Generals, Colonels, Navy Captains, et al, people in jail, teenagers, seniors, without any known group excluded.

Why do we need psychotechnology? It helps reduce stress, improve health, increase emotional intelligence, maximize performance, make you able to enjoy moment to moment Life even during downturns. It is speed learning. The element that it controls is attention – where you place it, where you don’t, and how to withhold the autonomic response that gets you stuck in every feeling and thought you have before you can apply quality control.

Some free samples of THEI psychotechnology are being offered in these blog postings and on our site. We hope you get something valuable out of THEI psychotechnology and give us feedback to help us make it better.

All the best,

Bill