Memory, paranoia and paradigms is one of a series of documents examining memory, including its relationship to intelligence.
5 - what is memory, or intelligence? Incautious claims of ‘IQ’
|1||I have spent several years laying down empirically sound logic for psychological and related fields. The logic should be applicable elsewhere. This has included case-studies of individual psychology.||
|2||In the last two or three years, I have been applying this logic to social (that is, group) analysis.|
|3||This document is, potentially, very complex, dependant on the depth to which you wish to understand it. It bears on decisions you may wish to take in organising and running your society, and in the manner in which you wish to educate the young. |
|genetic component predisposing to ‘schizophrenia’|
|brain damage to verbal areas|
|genes and behaviour, context|
|paranoia, prediction and prejudice|
|make friends, not enemies|
|paradigms and algorithms|
|algorithms and individuals|
|the evolution algorithm|
It is interesting that sleep deprivation can also disrupt short-term memory:
Sleep deprivation more than five hours after learning does not disrupt the learning:
In other words, the effect was only observed when it was necessary for the mice to integrate the new learning into what they already knew. Sleep deprivation did not disrupt ‘new’ learning which was out of previous context, for instance ‘surprise’ events.
Now here is another item related to interference of free flow of ‘ideas’. The work suggests that, upon damage to the verbal areas, the brain functions more pliably.
|Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley [unread]|
April 29, 2003; HarperCollins; 0060006781; hbk
7 April, 2003; Fourth Estate; 1841157457; hbk
Also by Matt Ridley
Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters [link to recommended reading]
Paranoia is two people with guns pointed at one another, each attempting to persuade the other one to put the gun down first. 
Feedback often produces undesirable outcomes, through logical paths from irrational assumptions. If you approach people with expectations that they will attack, you will often evoke the very behaviour that you fear.
To take an extreme case: if you point a gun at each person with whom you have a conversation, in fear they might attack, it is quite likely that they may regard you as insane. At the very least, next time they will come armed, and so be more dangerous.
While you may think that this is abnormal, the paranoid person tends to be ready to hit out at the slightest imagined [predicted without adequate cause, and incorrectly] provocation. They may well approach you in a gruff manner, they are fearful and ready to take offence. A milder form of this behaviour is often described as ‘defensiveness’. But this is no way to win friends and influence people.
Even in an untrusting society, if you approach a person openly and with some trust, you may well be attacked or taken advantage of; but at least you will then discover whether that person is inclined to attack. If you approach people in a friendly and open manner, they are more likely to feel at ease and you will, on average, get on better with them and develop friendships more easily.
It is foolish to approach the world with expectations or preconceptions [predictions, assumptions], it is best to cultivate a relaxed and peaceful demeanour, while remaining alert; neither gush, nor be prickly and defensive. That is to say, you cultivate an internal stillness or, as aikido instructors put it in the physical training, learn to ‘keep one point’.
Taking this behavioural route, you will often be cheated, but you will know who are the cheats. When you approach everyone as if they are liable to attack, you will miss finding out which are the friendly ones who were not going to attack in the first place.
This reminds me of a story:
Young lad to his more sophisticated, big brother—
Paranoia has negative paybacks:
It is known that interviewing is next door to psycho-bunk. To illustrate this Myers  uses the following example:
But further, what is interesting is that any testing differences between the original 800 also could not have been useful in predicting ‘success’.
Stereotype threat :– reductions of performance related the stress resulting from a fear of being stereotyped.
Thus the students suffering from a stereotype threat reaction are exhibiting prejudice towards those who are judging them, by guessing that those people (‘judges’) will be prejudiced against them! This is a form of paranoia.
Paradigms may be distiguished into several types:
The evolution paradigm is not formalised, neither is a crossing-the-road algorithm. With the crossing-the-road, some attempt to algorithmise it is made for children. Obviously, workers in biology attempt to fit data into some roughly recognised evolution algorithm.
A mathematical algorithm is already ‘defined’ or automated. The intention being that it is repeatable and communicable, and that the algorithm does not vary from place to place, or from worker to worker. But, of course, the algorithm does so vary (see equality); however, any differences are ignored. Apparently, in the consciousness of the users of the algorithms, the differences are intuitively imagined ‘not to matter’. The differences may matter, they may even very well matter yet go unnoticed. The very assumption of ‘invariability’ introduces a lack of rigour, an element of approximation to realities.
These differences can matter to the extent of fatality, if the algorithm for road crossing either fails, or is insufficiently followed. (See Balance and judgement). By fails, I mean that the algorithm does not match reality sufficiently for the circumstances encountered. For instance, a car swerves onto the pavement, or goes the wrong way down a one-way street, while you are using an insufficiently complex algorithm.
Such failures of algorithms matter when dealing with individual humans. No wholly satisfactory algorithm for dealing with people can be developed, as every person is different . Paranoia in one individual is not paranoia in another, neither is ‘schizophrenia’. These are symptoms, not well defined ‘diseases’ caused by a recognised bug. The symptoms may be for many different reasons, just as a raised temperature may be from multiple causes. Genetic predisposers, environmental causes including present stresses, may generate the ‘symptoms’; just as a high temperature may be developed by bugs, by lack of efficient genetic temperature regulation, or being stranded in the desert and, doubtless, by many other situations.
With psychological unease, our understanding is running well behind our physiological knowledge. Our categories are often very unsure. It is known that different ‘psychologists’ will ‘diagnose’ the same patient as suffering from various different ‘diseases’. Therefore much caution is advised in taking claims seriously.
What is the purpose of the evolution algorithm? Well, this algorithm is not ‘fully’ defined, there remains much we do not know. The algorithm is continually being refined as we gain more real-world data. To adjust the road-crossing algorithm as a vehicle bears down on us may be a bit late in the day, but we have more time with the evolution algorithm.
For human advance, paradigms must be subject to change/development. Much of this comes from real world input—“knowledge is first in the senses”. The senses of our machines are as yet more limited than our own range of peripherals (sight, taste, etc.), but it need not always remain so: infrared, molecule detection that no human can distinguish, telescopic sight and so on.
To return to paradigms, to refer to something as ‘stereotype threat’ or as ‘paranoia’ requires caution. These are categories we use to communicate, and to attempt to discuss and understand the world and ourselves. They must be approached with due caution – in a tentative and exploratory manner.
We are gradually beginning to link physiological changes in the brain and we are gathering genetic knowledge, but we are very early in this process. We must take very little for granted, or as ‘dogma’. The terms may sometimes be exploratively useful, but they are no sane basis for high confidence.
A person who lives has clearly developed their approach to the world, and their paradigm/s, on the basis of their real experiences. Their paradigm/s, however ridiculous they may seem, have still allowed, or even enabled, the person to survive – or they would not be presently standing in front of you! It is empirically obvious, even if that is not always intuitively clear, as I have demonstrated in many other places, that the internal paradigm/s of every person differ at every detail.
Your basis for assuming that another person is ‘paranoid’ or ‘mad’ are, somewhat, a matter of taste and of comparison with your own internal paradigms of the world.
|Related further reading|
5 - what is memory, or intelligence? Incautious claims of ‘IQ’
email abelard at abelard.org
© abelard, 2003, 11 july
the address for this document is http://www.abelard.org/memory.htm