Season's Greetings

I hate Hallmark cards. They seem so... fake. Phonies! Every one of 'em. They seem so impersonal. Those words are not your own. How can you give me this card with these words that are not yours? I think that I shouldn't hate them. We cannot all put our thoughts and feelings into words, but that doesn't mean that they are not there. That they are not real. And yet, I can't stand to read someone else's words telling me how much you care. Maybe you carefully flipped through cards looking for the one with exactly the right sentiment. But maybe you picked the first one that was applicable. It's all the same to me. If you had something to say, why not just say it, awkward phrasing and all?
Mother gave me a Hallmark card. My first instinct when reading a card is to read only that which was written by hand and to skip anything that wasn't. They made me read it. The sentiment was nice though I have since forgotten it. She gave Father a Hallmark card too. He appreciated his more than I mine. I think he got a little chocked up reading it. I didn't understand why. I feel like Hallmark cards are full of sweet sentiments that really don't mean anything, not when you buy them. You can talk about what a kind and caring and gentle person I am, but I won't believe you. I will believe that you wanted to say something nice to me and could only think of banalities like what a nice person I am. It's the kind of thing children write about one another when they have to. Tell me to Have A Great Summer!!! why don't you.
Thinking about it, I don't have things to say about people. I don't have reasons for liking or caring about people. I just do. I have reasons for admiring people. I have reasons for disliking people. But I couldn't really tell you why some people are my friends and others mere acquaintances. There are reasons, sure, but I think most them amount to being in the right place at the right time and having sufficiently compatible personalities, not because of how great some person or another is. I guess I don't really have anything better to say to people than Hey, I like you and I like spending time with you. But at least it's genuine, or something.

A Holiday Reprise

Yes, it's that time of year again, it's time for... Holiday Angst! I leave the flashing lights and animated gifs to the reader's imagination. My Christmas eve was very efficient this year. Dinner in twenty minutes. No conversation. Presents a similarly no-nonsense affair. It's nice though. One present each and probably they're not terrible. But it still feels like something is missing, and it's not just the tree.
I think, at some level, traditions are about the hassle and the bustle. They're about doing things with your family/familial group because it's what you always do together. It's not about liking it. It's about doing a thing with your familial group to be with them.
Okay, not a lot of Holiday Angst this time around. If you're looking for more angst, check back next time!
I don't know what it is about the holidays but they make me feel lonely.

Practical Psychology

A few days ago I finished my Psych 101 course and I have a few things to share with Future Me.

The marshmallow test:
A simple test to measure, I dunno, a kid's ability to wait for shit. The point is that kids who are successful tend to be better at life, from school, to relationships, to professional success, whatever, they're better at it.
So here what you do: Give the kid a marshmallow. Tell them that you're going to leave the room for fifteen minutes. if the marshmallow is still there, they'll get a second one.
Anyway, if they fail the test, they will take it again later and again after that until they succeed. And probably again a few times after that just to make sure it isn't a fluke.

On conditioning:
Okay, so there's two types of conditioning: classical and operant. Classical conditioning associates a stimulus with a reflex. The stimulus has to come before whatever causes the reflex, so keep that in mind. Operant conditioning associates a behavior with a reward. Now, an important thing to note is that it's easier to condition people if you offer the reward every time they do the thing you want, but it's also easier to become unconditioned. If you don't give a reward every time, it encourages them to do it more and it takes longer for them to become unconditioned, even if takes longer for them to get conditioned in the first place. Strategize, Future Me!

You can also influence My Future Kids to change their attitudes. Condition them to associate ideas with either good or bad things. Influence their behavior by modeling it because they eat that shit up. Pysch Prof got his kid to wear a shirt by putting on the kid's shirt. They love that stuff. This is what advertisements are made of.

If there is one thing you didn't know that you know now and should make an effort to still know in the indeterminate future from Pysch, it's that thoughts follow from behavior, though you may perceive the contrary. Let me tell you what I mean. People do things. I don't think they know why. They may have reasons, but I don't think they know them. You get me? They do things and make up why after the fact. Maybe they're right, but who knows? Not them.
Let me walk you through an example, because I know you're a bit rusty, Future Me. Let's talk about feelings. You see a bear. Two things happen, you have the physiological response (adrenaline rush) and the emotion of fear. Common sense dictates that you see the bear and become frightened, which triggers the physiological response. False. I think current models say that seeing the bear triggers the physiological response before you ever get the feeling of being afraid. You then note the situation, conclude that you ought to be afraid and then become afraid. You don't need the physiological response, but it does help. It's like how biting a pencil makes you happier because it's kind of like smiling.
Now, before you start talking about false equivalences between behavior and physiological responses. let's talk about another study. It involved giving people a tedious task with either a large or small reward (money). People given the larger reward found the task to be more boring than those not given as much (I don't remember whether or not they were paid at all). It is thought that people who got the reward assessed the situation and assumed that they did the task even though it was tedious because of the reward whereas those who did not receive had no other reason to do it, so they must have enjoyed it.
I find this to be reminiscent of the difference between work that I have to do and work that I do not have to do. It's a lot more enjoyable when I don't have to do it even when it's the exact same work. Just keep this in mind when you're trying to get My Future Kids to do shit.

Also, it looks like, as long as you're rich enough (i.e. not poor), there isn't much you can do to make My Future Kids smarter except bang smart people. So good news there. And no need to worry! Thanks, science!

Oh, and if you feel like tricking My Future Kids when they are young (5ish), they really have no sense of conservation (except for numbers <= 5 or so). The point is that taller and more spread out is more. So guess who's getting 5 pieces of Halloween candy until they understand there are numbers greater than five? It's not you, Future Me. Reese's Cups are for people who can count them. Tough luck, My Future Kids.

Speaking of child development, apparently bilingual kids are better at some sorting game, indicating that they're better at switching modes or something. I don't really know what the study meant. Anyway they're better at it so I guess that's cool? I don't think that being bilingual makes them smarter, but it doesn't hurt, so why not?

That's all I can remember for now. Godspeed, Future Me.

It Takes a Network

I just watched a really depressing movie. Now I'm too sad to work and too caffeinated to cry myself to sleep. Also Roommate told me to journal about the feels, so here I am.
I can't really pinpoint what I'm feeling except that it's bad. I just feel kind of shitty. It kind of reminds me of how I felt after watching Requiem for a Dream, except a different kind of shitty. The movie I watched was Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father: Basically, it's a documentary full of all the memories about a man who was murdered by an ex-lover who was pregnant with his child. The movie was made by his best friend from childhood and features his parents prominently. I think the parent-child relationships really get me. And those relationships where you really, really, love each other. There is something really beautiful and heartbreaking about that kind of love. This guy had tons of people who really loved him.
I wonder, and I feel bad for wondering, if I could be any of those people. Do I, will I ever have relationships like those? I can imagine my dad in the place of his dad. Typically calm and logical, with a good hold on his emotions, suddenly mad and sad and angry. My parents would act like his parents even though I don't have as good a relationship with them as he did. It makes me feel bad that I don't make more of an effort to stay in touch with the 'rents, but it also makes me uncomfortable when people love me a lot more than I love them. So that's that.
I have accepted, though, that my relationship with My Future Kids will be much the same. I will love them rather a lot, and they will love me rather less, and that's okay. I do hope that I will know My Future Kids better than Parents know me. I feel like that network of family and friends is so important and I kind of feel like I missed out on that. I've seen Mother's side of the family once in my life and do not even know their names. I know Father's immediate family and progeny but only Grandmother and Cool Aunt lived nearby. No one is even my age, really. I'm probably closest in age to my cousin's kid who's starting high school, I think. I'm not even friends with any of the people I was friends with in elementary school.
Sometimes I wonder where the line is between a friend and an acquaintance  I'm friendly with more people than I used to be, but I don't exactly hang out with people. In typical Midwestern Fashion, I'm not really into having a lot of friends, more a few very close friends. I have a couple, but sometimes I worry about being left behind. There are a few people that I like a lot, and it doesn't really matter to me how they feel about me. I wonder if that's why I don't have many friends: because I tend not to care what people think of me; I think it's a vulnerability thing. I'm trying to be more open. To make friends by being happy to see everyone. I don't really know if it works. I'm still kind of afraid of people.
On a related note, I just unbuttoned Roommate's pants for her because she just painted her nails. So I guess I can't be that badly off.

My Future Scientists

I watched a TED Talk today that inspired me. Children are actually brilliantly creative. Possibly because they haven't quite gotten to the point of feeling the pressures of societal expectations or the idea of others judging their work.
My theory is that children are all roughly the same. They may have different personalities, but I suspect that children are all in the same general range in terms of intelligence and creativity. This makes children somewhat like tools that you can use almost interchangeably. Tools for science.
The talk I watched was about using a bunch of kids to write a scientific paper. Kids love science. I can get My Future Kids to do science. Get them to write a paper. That would be awesome. I could get them to do it all the time. Once or twice a year, maybe. What are kids in elementary through middle school even doing anyway? Acquiring general knowledge and waiting to get older so they're easier to work with. Pah! They could be doing science! Real science. Not that stuff that's learning about other people's science. Real science! I will probably need to find out how they prompted the kids to get a question out of them and found the resources to try to answer that question. I hope they wrote a paper on getting kids to do some real science.
I remember trying to do science in 5th grade or so. That science was terrible. I only really tested things that I already knew the answer to and that would be easy to perform. I think the trick is to start by asking a lot of questions and then finding someone with a lab and the resources to help you answer that question.
I think the framing is important too. It's a lot easier to think of things to explore when you really are exploring. Much easier than when a teacher says "do some science for me, you'll need to start with a hypothesis...". For some reason it's a lot easier and more fun to do things that you don't have to do. I don't really know why. Maybe it's a motivation thing. Once you have to do something, the motivation is that you have to, whereas if you don't, the motivation is that it's an interesting thing that you want to do and can stop if you don't want to do it anymore.

Lives of Scale

I was at a talk about start-ups today. I'm not really interested in starting a company, but they mentioned something interesting.They said that it's easier to transition from being a student to running a start-up than from working for a large company to running a start-up. You know, because students are poor and work all the time and so do start-up owners, whereas people at large companies get paid a ton and have very set hours. Once you get paid more, you start spending more. I notice this a bit when I actually started getting the meager income I do from student employment. I sometimes buy things because I want them now. I'm still a cheap bastard, but how will that change when I actually start making real money? 

At some level, the more fund you have, the greater your tie to your money, and the less freedom you have. Suddenly the things you do cost money. Suddenly you have a mortgage; you have responsibilities. Suddenly you can't just get up and leave. And what if you wake up one day and don't like where you are?

At some point or another, My Future Kids will exist, I will have very real responsibilities regardless of how much money I make. Until then, however, it will just be me and maybe Spouse. Don't get me wrong, I want to work for some company and make the big bucks. I just don't want the big bucks to hold me back, well as little as possible, anyway. I realize that any kind of job security with the big bucks comes at a cost. But I decided something. If I don't have to live paycheck to paycheck, I won't.

But I can see how the money is dangerous. Why would I live with roommates if I don't have to? Why would I live an hour away from my work if I don't have to? Why would I live in a tiny, grody, apartment when I can afford a nice one? But it comes at a price. If I stop bringing in the big bucks, will I still be okay?

I don't want to be stuck somewhere that I don't want to be. At some level, I don't even want to stuck somewhere that I do want to be. Ideally, I will be able to make enough money, and live in such a way that if I so decided, I can pack up and go and still be able to sustain myself for a while.

One of the things that frightens me the most is the slow death of complacency. It's so tempting to take the easier route. I like to pretend that somewhere, out there, there is something that I'm passionate about. But suppose no such thing exists, suppose I only find things that I'm merely happy or satisfied doing, if that. This is the reason that I'm afraid of going to grad school right after getting my degree. What if I never leave academia because it's so much easier to go to school for the rest of my life? What I never leave my cushy job at Major Company because it's so much easier to rake in the dough than to do something that excites me? Becoming dependent on my job at Major Company will only make it easier to shut my eyes and forget that there was anything else that I wanted to do. It's scary to throw your fortune to the wind. But being scared is something that I need to do. To be a better person or some shit. Are you ever more alive than when you are scared for your life? I don't really know. I've never done it, but it's a romantic idea I suppose. 

My Future Slutwhores

In all likelihood, one day My Future Kids will fall in love and one day they will have sex. If they are normal, well-adjusted human beings, this post can be forever ignored. Otherwise, they can take solace in the fact that Their Future Parent is also mal-adjusted? Hopefully, one day Future Me, too, will be normal and well-adjusted and upon rereading this post will smile and shake my head knowingly remembering the times before my happy and sexy relationship with Spouse. But we can't all be normal and well-adjusted and that's why this post exists.

I am a bit... quirky in terms of how I relate love and lust. More specifically, I don't. Sometimes I want lovin' and sometimes I want lustin', and however pleased I would be to have a relationship that involved both, I somehow can't put them together. I just don't really see how they're related.

I sometimes think that I would make an excellent prostitute. Well, as far as not being too concerned with exchanging sex for money is concerned.

When I was younger I had crushes. Great crushes that lasted years. I stopped getting them since high school. I once dated a person that I had a crush on for over a year (though not while dating them). It wasn't great. And it only lasted as long as it did because of its expiration date. I don't have crushes anymore, but I do have people that I want to respect me. However, these people are not people I would be particularly interested in getting naked with, or like, kissing them and stuff. So maybe the crushes of the past were kind of dumb but at least they were clear. Now all I have is people I would be interested in kissing and people I want to hang out with as mutually exclusive set.

Maybe my problem is that I know the people around me too well. They've all settled into their respective groups and are there to stay. New people that I meet often seem both interesting and attractive, so maybe I just need to get out more.

Anyway, the reason that I decided to write this is because I've been thinking. I tend to think that as a rule, I don't mind people wanting me for my body. But actually, sometimes I do mind. I mind when people who are supposed to like me for me use me for my body. I'm not really sure why. But I do mind. Maybe it's because I don't like feeling used? At least when I'm not also doing some using? That doesn't seem quite right. I don't want people I want to be friends with to only hang out with me to get in my pants. Maybe I just get uncomfortable with their ability to associate love and lust.

Welp, My Future Kids, I hope that someday you will read this and thank me for your flourishing escort service.