Month: January 2014

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The Camouflaging of Genius

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Good ideas have to be able to stand up on their own merit, without crutches or a railing on which to hold. If one judged from the public outcry and the titles of the articles below, it might at first seem that egalitarianism, conformity, and the demands of the bottom line have all but ended the era of genius.

Where Have All the Geniuses Gone?

Is Scientific Genius Extinct?

Is the end of genius near?

Are We Running Out Of Scientific Geniuses?

The democratization of genius has not snuffed them out. They are alive and well. Some are thriving, some may be hiding, but they are much harder than ever to find amidst the noise as they go quietly about their way giving facelifts to forgotten paradigms, forging new theories, and shirking popular but misguided concepts altogether.

A simple analogy from Biology 101 will explain the situation.

Monarch Butterfly: A poisonous insect colorfully marked in orange and black that warns predators. Monarch butterflies are the modern day equivalents of geniuses in modern day society, those imbued with both a natural aptitude for greatness and the environmental resources to make it a reality. Milkweed, after all, doesn’t just let itself get eaten.

Viceroy Butterfly: A tasty and delicious insect that looks like the Monarch Butterfly and has survived due to its ability to mimic the appearance of the toxic Monarch Butterfly. Viceroy Butterflies are the modern day equivalents of geniuses by proxy. They have no natural aptitude for greatness, and must work two to three times as hard to prove themselves. For starters, they have to make sure that they are running in the right pack (e.g. actual Monarch Butterflies). Secondly, they have to make sure that not too many of their own kind are running in the same pack with them (e.g. Viceroy Butterflies).  There are no herds of wandering Viceroy Butterflies, for obvious reasons.

Predators: Butterflies have all sorts of predators that prey on them. These include any number of birds, frogs, monkeys, marketers, international conglomerates, lobbyists, and politicians.

Like the Monarch Butterfly, the genius is a relatively defenseless critter through and through, though if attacked the predator learns a harsh lesson. Unlike the Monarch Butterfly, the Viceroy Butterfly and genius by proxy are completely defenseless. Whenever they grow too large in number, well… a great die out and buffet ensues.

What does this have to do with intelligence and foresight? A famous genius by the name of Isaac Newton once quipped, “If I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

I think he should have added, “…and not merely by hanging on to their coattails.”

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Why Are There Stars?

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If you have spent any significant amount of time on this website, by now you may be asking the question, “Why are there pictures of stars and galaxies in the header and not a colorful/fancy model of a brain like 99.9% of all the other psychology web sites out there?”

For starters, Affect Engineering is not like every other psychology website.

Secondly, many of you have probably heard the popular, though erroneous claim that there are more neural connections in the brain than there are stars in the universe.

In fact, every time someone says, “There are more neural connections in the brain than stars in the universe,” an astronomer somewhere explodes… maybe not like a supernova or anything, but they probably burn a little on the inside. I may have exaggerated just a bit there.

Most estimates of the number of neurons in the adult human brain are around 80 billion to 100 billion, with some quadrillion neural connections between them (10 ^ 15 or 1,000,000,000,000,000).

Estimated Number of Neural Connections in the Brain

Against this, most estimates hold that there are around 100 billion galaxies in the universe of about 100 billion stars each (i.e. 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). That would put the estimated number of stars in the universe somewhere between a sextillion (10 ^ 21) and a septillion (10 ^ 24) stars.

Estimated Number of Stars in the Galaxy

The real answer is that nobody knows for certain. They are both impressively large. The making of a claim that one gargantuan value is bigger than an also gargantuan and unknown value is something that only a human would do. In short, I felt it more appropriate to include pictures of stars and celestial bodies in the header than another picture of a brain because these images capture the mystery of the mind better than a neon-lighted rendition of the nervous system, in my opinion.

As for why there are stars in the actual night sky, they are there for us to look at in wonder, to marvel at their vastness, and to dream up what stories they may hold.

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The BRAIN Initiative: Because We Don’t Already Have Enough Acronyms

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It’s always a good idea to know where, how, and for what purpose one’s tax dollars are being spent. The BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is no exception. At its core, it is an attempt to understand how the brain works and is somewhat analogous to the Human Genome Project. The expectation is that this endeavor will lead to ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders, brain injuries, and a host of other maladies.

In the first year of funding since the project was announced last April, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) are to invest approximately $50 million, $40 million, and $20 million, respectively, to facilitate these aims. From the private sector, the Allen Institute for Brain Science ($60 million annually), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ($30 million annually), the Kavli Foundation ($4 million annually for ten years), and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ($28 million) have also joined this effort.

BRAIN Initiative

It would seem that even frugality has its price these days, and nobody wants to come off looking cheap. Hopefully they get it right and don’t contradict one another; otherwise it might set neuroscience back quite a ways, at least in that most unforgiving of eyes, the public.

In some respects, I almost feel like a kid with a new toy to show off, though on a much smaller scale. There is, of course, quite a bit of work left to do… I would not want that toy to suddenly get a case of stage fright and malfunction.

Aside from patiently waiting for my query letters to be lifted from their slush piles – my gemstones cast in the mud – there is always the fun task of editing, always.  Some other updates to the site include an RSS feed to some notable psychology articles (i.e. potential deconstruction fodder), social media links, and a follow button.

For those interested, a more comprehensive description of the BRAIN Initiative can be found at the following pages:

National Institutes of Health

DARPA

National Science Foundation

White House Fact Sheet

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Epic Poetry + Comic Strip Art = Epic Comic Strip

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New content is on the way!  Oscar the Bard, Necromors, and Wild the Muse is a side project I fiddle with from time to time, like when I should be editing my manuscript (i.e. flogging my book) or enticing literary agents into representing me (i.e. flogging my book). Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch… it’s actually informed by Affect Engineering, and it helps sate my witty side when I’m editing.  It’s not always easy to wax poetic when one is also explaining cosine functions and exponential decay. A more in depth description of my dabbles in comic strip land is also in the menu under the new Just for Fun menu bar.  I make no claim to be the fastest or best illustrator out there, so the updating of it may be sporadic, depending on my time to draw and revise or write poetry, you know, when I should be doing other stuff.

Oscar the Bard, Necromors, and Wild the Muse

Oscar Necromors Wild edited Names jpeg

Accordingly, this post is under the new Artsy-Things category.  I’m looking to add a Deconstruction category and/or Hypotheticals category to keep the content mix lively in the near future.  They’ll likely be posts where I show how Affect Engineering would deconstruct a real life and plausible situation. Real life and plausible… did somebody say tabloids?