Category Archives: Human Behavior

Letter to the Editor: The mental disorder theory (11/21/19) – Southeast Missourian

Since the election of President Trump in 2016 psychiatrists have come forward violating The Goldwater Rule, not personally interviewing the president, and diagnosing him as having a mental disorder. Given this, the first question an intelligent, free-thinking individual must ask himself/herself is, "Is psychiatry really science?"

The problem psychiatry suffers from is it relies on subjective views of psychology to make a diagnosis. There are 300 mental disorders outlined in the Psychiatric Association's Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. These disorders are based on subjective opinions and none are based on objective data drawn from double-blind, placebo-controlled studies. There are no biological tests substantiating that these so-called conditions exist. Lacking independent diagnostic tests, testable hypotheses, and cures for mental disorder; psychiatrists cannot accurately and reliably predict dangerousness, violence, or any other type of human behavior. In the absence of biological test, psychiatrists have proclaimed themselves "expert witnesses" in this pseudo-science. Conspiring with the media, they push the myth of the "dangerous mental patient" stereotype.

Because they voted for the president, a psychiatrist has determined that 63 million voters have a mental disorder. Think about that for a moment; Americans are mentally disturbed for exercising their civic duty?

Earnest Rutherford, a renowned British physicist, stated that "all science is physics or stamp collecting. Psychiatry seems is at best a stamp-collecting activity. ... Any attempt to manipulate behavior seems about as far from applied science as breeding plants with no concept of genetics."

ELVIS DUNN, Jackson

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Letter to the Editor: The mental disorder theory (11/21/19) - Southeast Missourian

Speech and hearing department reaps benefits of new neuroscience major – GW Hatchet

A more than 300 percent increase in enrollment in a recently created undergraduate neuroscience major could expose more students to smaller academic departments like speech, language and hearing sciences, faculty said.

Fifteen students majored in neuroscience last academic year, the first year the degree was offered, but more than 60 students are currently enrolled in the major, according to institutional data. Faculty in the hearing sciences department in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences said more students are taking advantage of the departments course offerings as a result of the new major.

Francys Subiaul, an associate professor of speech, language and hearing sciences, said several faculty in the department are involved with the major through teaching courses that could count toward the major or organizing events for neuroscience students and faculty through the GW Mind-Brain Institute, a research center designed for students and faculty members to study cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, according to its website.

These efforts in our department, the MBI and CCAS aim to provide students in GW diverse education and unique research opportunities in the neurosciences, Subiaul said in an email.

Officials announced the creation of two neuroscience majors in April 2018 in the biology and psychology departments to respond to rising interest in the field from students and faculty. Students in the speech, language and hearing sciences major can choose to concentrate in the neuroscience of language and communication, according to the department website.

Subiaul said students in the speech and hearing major who concentrate in neuroscience of language learn the specifics of language structure and how words and phrases can have different meanings based on the person speaking.

Majors in this concentration will prepare students for a variety of health fields including medicine, nursing and speech-language pathology, but also social work, education and business, Subiaul said.

He said the majority of the approximately 40 undergraduates majoring in the department are concentrating in communication sciences and disorders. Nine students majored in speech, language and hearing sciences in 2015, according to institutional data.

Language is among the most human of human behaviors and so the biological and neural basis of this fundamental behavior is inherently interesting to most, Subiaul said in an email.

He said faculty are advertising the departments most popular courses, like Autism and Brain and Language two courses that count toward the neuroscience major and designing social events to draw more undergraduates to major or minor in the department. Faculty are also creating social activities, like showing communication-themed films and inviting speakers to campus, throughout the year.

Shelley Brundage, the chair of the department, said the department changed its name from the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences to better reflect the departments more comprehensive focus and direction.

She said the change recognized the language component of the department, represented by research like Subiauls work on social communication for people with autism.

Our name used to be Speech and Hearing Science, Brundage said in an email. We changed it to Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences to better reflect the variety of research and clinical topics in our discipline.

Course offerings for majors in the department include Language: Structure, Meaning and Use and Speech and Language Disorders, according to the departments website.

Brundage said members of the department are proud of its most recent class of masters students, who graduated from the program in the spring with a 100 percent completion rate. She said the department is currently accepting applications for its doctoral program that will be launched next fall.

The new doctoral program will include courses on psychology, neuroscience and physiology in addition to speech, language and hearing sciences, said James Mahshie, the departments chair in June 2018 when the program was approved.

Chris Dulla, an associate professor of neuroscience at Tufts University, said the most effective way for speech and hearing sciences department faculty to retain students who take classes in the department while pursuing the neuroscience major is to change its courses to focus on topics that students can identify with, like diseases, and provide access to related research opportunities.

University President Thomas LeBlanc has made research one of his biggest priorities since arriving on campus a few years ago. Research is one of the four pillars underpinning the Universitys next five-year strategic plan.

Most important, if the students can get lab-related research experiences, they will catch the neuroscience bug and will find that we as a field dont know the answers to many of their questions, Dulla said in an email.

This article appeared in the November 21, 2019 issue of the Hatchet.

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Speech and hearing department reaps benefits of new neuroscience major - GW Hatchet

‘Yes, No, Grow and Slow’ in our lives and prayers – Peoria Times

Lets consider two humorous prayers today with life lessons for all of us. One prayer is about prayer itself. The other is about prayer in the process of maturity in human beings. Often used and seldom understood, prayer and prayers require a bit of explanation and exploration. Lets get started with this lesson in understanding answers to prayer.

Two missionaries agree, just before they leave for their respective mission fields, once a year they will get together to go hunting on the first day of deer season. They did this for several years together.

One year as they were hunting, they came upon a clearing in the woods to find a very large bear devouring wild berries. The bear heard them, raised himself up to see better and turned to move toward the friends. They quickly became frightened. What do we do? One said, Shoot the bear! We cant! the other replied, Bears are protected in this area the fine is $10,000. The other said, Run, run, run!

They headed for the woods for protection. They could hear the deep panting of the bear gaining on them with every breath. What should we do? one friend asked the other. Pray! was the swift reply. They both stopped in their tracks and spoke the following prayer. Father in Heaven, please make this bear a Christian. Amen!

The bear then stopped dead in his tracks. The two missionaries could not hear the bear any longer. They each slowly turned around to observe the bear. The bear was kneeling on the ground with his massive arms folded in quiet reverence. Then they heard a groan from the bear that sounded like: Father in Heaven, bless this food I am about to partake. Amen.

The moral of this story is be careful of what you pray for, you might just get it!

One thing I have learned in forty years of ministry is you never want to underestimate the power of prayer. Our tendency toward self-reliance and skepticism often gets in the way of prayer. We want to be in control, doing everything on our own. But what happens when you arent in control? What happens when you have a crisis or need much bigger than your self-sufficiency? Prayer gets God involved. Prayer takes you to a Source and Resource much higher than your limited human resources.

Someone once noted God answers prayer in three ways; Yes, no, and youve got to be kidding! Can you imagine what we sound like to God in some of our prayers? I think Gods answers to our prayers are more like yes, no, slow or grow. Yes, God is a God who answers prayer. I believe that. However, when we get the no, grow or slow answer, we need to trust Father God knows best. When you cant see Gods hand, trust in His character. Dont let a few no, slow, or grow answers spoil your prayer life!

Heres a prayer about lifestyle and the process of maturity. Dear Lord, so far today, Ive done all right. I havent gossiped, havent lost my temper, havent been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or overindulgent. Im very thankful for that. But, in a few minutes, Lord, Im going to get out of bed. And, from then on, Im probably going to need a lot more help. Amen.

Like anything else, Christianity is much easier to preach than to live, isnt it? Its easy to go to church. Its hard to be the church. It easy to read the Bible. Its much harder to live the Bible. The inconsistency of knowing and living Christianity is what drives others crazy. Thats why Christians are often called hypocrites.

The truth is all people struggle to live out what they know. Every group is full of hypocrisy because human behavior is initially learned and then integrated slowly into how we live. Knowledge starts with the head, then moves to the heart and finally to the feet. The distance between the head and heart is the longest foot in the world. The idea is for what you know to be integrated into behavior exhibited consistently in our lives. Its a process more than an event. Which includes all people, not just church people.

What you know and desire to do is a belief. What you consistently do is a value. For example, I believe I shouldnt eat French fries or chips. I believe French fries are strings of carbohydrates, soaked and boiled in saturated fat that can plug up arteries. Now, ask me if I eat fries. Of course, I do. You see, I have a belief, but it is not a value. How hypocritical, huh? But as we consistently choose the act upon what we know, beliefs turn into values.

We are all works in progress. Can we give one another a little grace on this? And, besides, if a hypocrite is what is standing between you and God, it could be the hypocrite is closer to God than you are. What often makes us critical of others is we often see ourselves in others.

There you have it, some great wisdom on prayer and allowing prayer to elevate your life. After all, I dont want you to be running around with a bear behind. (I cant believe I said that!).

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'Yes, No, Grow and Slow' in our lives and prayers - Peoria Times

Stephen Wolfram on the future of programming and why we live in a computational universe – TechRepublic

The brains behind Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language talks about how programming languages need to develop.

Image: Wolfram Research, Inc.

When it came to figuring out which computer scientist should help linguists decipher inscrutable alien texts, it was Stephen Wolfram who got the call.

Sure, these extraterrestrials may only have existed in the sci-fi movie Arrival, but if ET ever does drop out of orbit, Wolfram might well still be on the short list of people to contact.

The British-born computer scientist's life is littered with exceptional achievements -- completing a PhD in theoretical physics at Caltech at age 20, winning a MacArthur Genius Grant at 21, and creating the technical computing platform Mathematica (which is used by millions of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers worldwide), plus the Wolfram Language, and the Wolfram|Alpha knowledge engine.

His role advising for Arrival came out of the blue, when what he says was an interesting script crossed his desk with a request for help in consulting and creating some visuals for the soon-to-be-shot movie.

While Wolfram's involvement was mostly advising on some of the science and technical references in the script, his son Christopher was charged with devising a way in which linguists might decode these alien writings with next to no frame of reference, which meant the Wolfram Language also got some screen time.

At points during the film you can see Wolfram Language code being run as it deconstructs the alien logograms, slicing them up to help the on-screen linguists infer meaning from common patterns.

"The thing that was interesting is it's an alien first-contact story, and it's all about language and how we understand things," says Wolfram, explaining why he and his son took up the offer.

"Since I've spent much of my life as a computational language designer, I better be interested in how one can communicate thoughts with things like language."

SEE:How to build a successful developer career (free PDF)(TechRepublic)

For all his other achievements, Wolfram is probably best known for launching Wolfram|Alpha, the computational knowledge engine that underpins Apple's Siri digital assistant's ability to answer questions from "What's the tallest building in the US?" to "How many days until Christmas?".

Wolfram|Alpha has a grand mission: To make it possible to answer any question, immediately and automatically from accumulated knowledge of our entire civilization. An engine that doesn't simply direct users to a particular web page, but that comes to answers by computing them using models, built-in algorithms, and trillions of pieces of curated data.

While a search engine mostly serves up web pages as answers to questions, Wolfram|Alpha takes a different route, dynamically calculating the answer so that the answer to "Where is the International Space Station?" will be different each time, depending on where it actually is at that time.

Wolfram|Alpha can help with queries across a wide range of disciplines, from algebra to physics, food and nutrition to personal health. All of these capabilities involved building in the models needed to compute the problems, as well as gathering and curating the data needed to run these calculations.

Another way of looking at it: Google is, at its most basic, a magnifying glass for finding particular bits of text on the web, and giving you lots of options as to which might be the right one. Wolfram|Alpha is a Swiss Army knife, filled with tools aimed at helping you find the single answer to a question.

And yet, perhaps because we've been trained by years of googling to look at knowledge in particular ways, Wolfram|Alpha probably isn't for everyone. While it can work out the orbital path of the Hubble space telescope, or the number of pennies to cover two square miles, it has a harder time with questions like "Which are the best coffee shops in Shoreditch?".

That's not to say it is entirely humourless; if asked, it will deny that it is Skynet, noting "Unlike Skynet I enjoy interacting with humans in ways that do not involve the launching of nuclear missiles," and will give you an estimate of the number of alien civilizations in the Milky Way (10).

Since its launch in May 2008, as well as fuelling Siri, Wolfram|Alpha has been added into chatbots, tutoring systems, and smart TVs. It was announced in January 2019 that Wolfram|Alpha would provide some of its intelligence to Amazon's Alexa, allowing that digital assistant to answer questions like "Alexa, how many cups does 12 tablespoons make?," or "Alexa, how far is the Voyager 1 satellite from Earth?".

As well as the public Wolfram|Alpha, there are enterprise versions that can answer questions using not only public data and knowledge, but also the internal data and knowledge from those organizations.

Wolfram|Alpha is in turn underpinned by Wolfram Language, a project that has been running through most of Wolfram's life. Wolfram Language effectively allows questions asked using natural language to be understood by a computer.

Wolfram|Alpha is now over a decade old. While it hasn't overtaken Google and still looks very complicated to the average new users, that hasn't dimmed Wolfram's ambition for it.

"What should Wolfram|Alpha know about? My goal has always been to have it eventually know about everything. But obviously one's got to start somewhere," he said earlier this year.

The path that led to Wolfram Language and Wolfram|Alpha is long and winding.

As a schoolboy his first love was physics, with Wolfram possessing a precocious talent that saw him publish his first scientific paper at age 15.

While he first saw a computer 50 years ago, at the age of 10, he wasn't enthralled straight away, initially seeing the machine as a useful tool for exploring his interest in physics.

"The first computer that I actually touched with my own hands was probably in 1972 or 1973, it was a thing called the Elliott 903, a British computer that's long extinct and rather exotic, the size of a large desk and programmed with paper tape," he says. "I always viewed it as being a tool for doing stuff that I was interested in, and I tried to simulate physics on the computer."

It was several years later that Wolfram began to develop an interest in computations and how computers worked, when studying particle physics at Caltech in 1979.

"I did a lot of programming computers to carry out some of the mathematical calculations you need for physics," he says.

"In 1979 I started building my first computer language, which was intended to be a language for doing computations you need in science. But I went back and tried to understand more about the nature of computation, in order to design the most general language. So that caused me to kind of go back and study mathematical logic and the origins of computing and so on," he says.

Wolfram co-designed a computer algebra system called SMP, a process he found useful when he started building Wolfram Language several years later.

At the same time Wolfram remained interested in how computers could simulate phenomenon such as the Big Bang and early galaxy formation, as well as neural nets, an idea that has taken off in the past decade thanks to advances in processing power and availability of training data.

It was studying how complex behavior could arise from simple rules that led Wolfram to what he considers one of his most significant discoveries, made while scrutinizing one-dimensional cellular automata.

Cellular automata offer a model for showing how simple rules determine the behavior of a system, with some rules resulting in complex and seemingly random outcomes. The importance of cellular automata hit home for Wolfram when he discovered "rule 30", which he calls "probably the single most surprising scientific discovery I had ever made".

The illustration below is created using rule 30 and begins with a grid of empty cells. Starting with a single black cell in the center of the top line in the grid, the rule stipulates whether cells in each subsequent line should be shaded black or left empty, depending on the color of the cells around them. From just four lines of instructions in rule 30, irregular and complex patterns emerged, a discovery that led Wolfram to argue "it is this basic phenomenon that is ultimately responsible for most of the complexity we see in nature".

This illustration is created using rule 30, which Stephen Wolfram calls "probably the single most surprising scientific discovery I had ever made".

Image: Stephen Wolfram, LLC

"I was studying these different examples of how you could make complex behavior, and I thought 'Let's try and make the simplest possible model that can capture the essence of what's going on in these different systems.'"

Wolfram set out his arguments that the complexity of the natural world -- even the formation of the universe itself -- could spring from these very simple rules in A New Kind of Science, a best-selling book he spent more than a decade working on, living "as something of a hermit", before publishing it in 2002.

The book, with its bold ambition to "transform science", proved divisive, with some praising it for being a "first-class intellectual thrill", while others felt it was too speculative and didn't properly acknowledge how it built on earlier discoveries.

"Some people were like: 'Oh great, a new thing, we're so excited,' and other people were like, 'Oh no, no, we don't want anything new. We're just fine doing science or whatever it is the way we've done it for the last few hundred years'," says Wolfram.

Stephen Wolfram's bookA New Kind of Science

Image: Wolfram Science

His recollection of the time and effort it took to write the book is aided by the trove of data he's captured on the minutiae of his life for more than three decades. The number of steps he's taken, how many emails he's sent and received, the meetings he's had, and every keystroke he's typed -- more than 100 million.

Doing so has allowed Wolfram to interrogate his past in unusual detail, and spot interesting patterns such as the dip in meetings when he took time out to write A New Kind of Science or how many new words are cropping up in his correspondence.

"Every so often there's something interesting that I want to look up about myself and then, as I passively collect tons of data because it's easy to do, very occasionally I'll want to answer some question, and then go and figure it out from that data," he says.

"I've realized that the main compensation for getting old is that you lived longer, so you know more stuff, you've experienced more things. The way that you really take advantage of that is to have good access to that whole history of yourself. At a meta level, that's the thing that I only really realized this comparatively recently."

Since A New Kind of Science was published, Wolfram says an increasing number of models of human behavior and physical systems are built around this idea of a "computational universe".

"It was interesting to me, the paradigm shift of thinking about things computationally, rather than mathematically," he says.

"In the last 15 years or so, if you look at new models that people make of things, whether they're of behavior of humans on the web or about plants -- whatever it is -- the vast majority of those new models are made in terms of programs, not in terms of mathematical equations."

To tap into the power of this computational universe, Wolfram says what's needed is what he calls a "computational language".

"It so happens that I've spent the last three at least decades working on building this computational language that we call Wolfram Language that is an effort to try to be able to express computationally anything about the world," he says.

Wolfram Language draws upon much of the same underlying technologies as Mathematica and is the basis of Wolfram|Alpha.

Wolfram has described Wolfram Language as a "knowledge-based language" that has built into it "a vast amount of knowledge about how to do computations".

"So, right within the language there are primitives for processing images or laying out networks or looking up stock prices or creating interfaces or solving optimization problems," he said.

This broad sweep of built-in capabilities gives Wolfram Language abilities that aren't found in most other languages out of the gate; for example, typing currentImage[] captures the current image from the computer's camera. As such, the language can natively handle a wide range of data, everything from written language to geographic information, and visualize that data using relatively few lines of code.

But it was Wolfram Language's educational and mathematical focus that led to it being bundled with the official operating system for the $35 Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is designed to be a low-cost computer aimed at teaching kids about computers, and the Pi's official Raspbian OS bundles Wolfram Language alongside many other tools for learning about programming, ranging from Python to the drag-and-drop language Scratch.

SEE: Raspberry Pi: More must-read coverage (TechRepublic on Flipboard)

Wolfram Language has limitations, and has been described by some users as better suited to solving a wide range of predetermined tasks, rather than being used to build software. It also seems there is still a way to go for Wolfram Language it didn't, for example, feature in the IEEE's recent list of top programming languages.

Wolfram has said that Wolfram Language is not just a language for telling computers what to do, but a way for both computers and humans to represent computational ways of thinking about things.

Of late Wolfram has been more bold in how he talks about Wolfram Language, describing it as a "computational language" that could even help bridge the gulf between ourselves and future non-human intelligences, be they artificial intelligence (AI) or extraterrestrial.

As esoteric a pursuit as it might seem, Wolfram believes the need for this lingua franca is timely, as machine-learning systems increasingly make decisions about our lives -- whether that's screening loan applications today or maybe even choosing whether to kill people tomorrow.

"One of the places where that's important is in expressing the computational thoughts that might define the overall behavior of AI," he says, adding that Wolfram Language "gives one a language in which to express computational thoughts".

The focus on abstracting away much of the underlying technical detail in Wolfram Language -- the nitty-gritty of how a computer is instructed to check stock prices online -- also reflects Wolfram's view of what computing should be for most users.

He's skeptical of the recent push towards teaching more people to code for getting too bogged down in minutiae such as programming language syntax and control flow statements, the implementation details he feels aren't interesting to most users.

"We're now on about the fourth wave of attempts to teach programming/coding to kids," he says.

"The problem is that teaching raw programming, rather than computation about things, is ultimately rather boring to most people."

The majority would be better served by tools that allowed them to use computers to do whatever they're interested in, Wolfram believes.

"The interesting stuff tends to be the computational X, where X is whatever you might care about, whether it's journalism or literature or art history or whatever it is," he says."That's the place where most people are going to want to go."

Stephen Wolfram's new book Adventures of a Computational Explorer -- a series of essays in which he explores science, technology, AI, and language design -- is available now.

Never miss one of our in-depth, up-close feature stories. Previous topics include NASA's VR training for astronauts, the remarkable odyssey of Apple's first employee, and the females who broke Hitler's codes in World War II. Delivered Occasionally

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Stephen Wolfram on the future of programming and why we live in a computational universe - TechRepublic

FBI worried about criminals access to encryption technology – fox5sandiego.com

EL PASO, Texas El Pasos new FBI chief is worried about an old problem: advances in encryption technology that may allow criminals to plot or commit crimes with impunity.

Something that concerns not just the FBI but all law enforcement is what we call lawful access. Technology companies are deploying encryption software in which the customer can encrypt and only (they) and the end-user can access, said Luis M. Quesada, special agent in charge of the El Paso Field Office as of this month.

Encryption is useful when it comes to protecting private information like banking, he said, but unrestricted use of this technology could pose a threat to the public. It means we couldnt follow kidnappings, child pornography, terrorist acts the lone terrorist shooters which usually communicate through (digital) platforms, he said.

One example cited is the Sutherland Springs, Texas, shooting, in which a gunman killed 26 people and left 20 others injured at First Baptist Church. The shooters phone was encrypted and police didnt at the time have the technology to find out if he had co-conspirators.

We want to know if the shooter was communicating with somebody else, if he was being radicalized. It could lead us to somebody else to prevent the next event. Or if we arrest a child pornographer wed like to know who hes communicating with so we have a map of who hes (talking to) and save more kids, Quesada said. He suggested the problem could be addressed through legislation of these technologies.

Quesadas comments on Tuesday echoed concerns expressed in July by Attorney General William P. Barr and, more recently, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL). Some of it centers around Facebooks plan to provide state-of-the-art encryption on messages in all of its platforms, but concerns other companies applications as well.

At the July technology conference at Fordham University, Barr noted that one Mexican drug cartel was using WhatsApp as its privacy communication method to keep U.S. authorities from finding out when the next fentanyl shipment would be sent across the border.

Efforts to curb unfettered access by the general public to encrypted technology go back to the Obama administration and further. Back in 2015, then-FBI Director James B. Comey warned the Senate Judiciary Committee that malicious actors could take advantage of Web technology to plot violent crimes, steal private information or sexually abuse children. Back then the catchphrase wasnt lawful access, but instead going dark.

Former El Paso Border Patrol Sector Chief Victor M. Manjarrez said law-enforcement officials have been fighting criminals use of technology since the days of two-way handheld radios.

We came across encrypted radios used by drug traffickers in Southern Arizona in the early 2000s. You could hear them talking but couldnt (make out) the words, he said.

Manjarrez, now associate director of the Center for Law & Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso, said even if Congress were actually cooperative with each other and restricted encrypted technology, organized criminals will eventually find a way to defeat it.

The problem is that technology changes so fast that transnational criminal organizations can overcome obstacles much quicker than we can change or legislate policy, he said.

Manjarrez said the only way law-enforcement agencies can prevent crimes shielded by technology is to be proactive.

Law-enforcement by nature is reactive. At some point we need to decide we have to be proactive. Just like the Department of Defense in terms of counterterrorism, they seek out the threats. At some point, I think, well have to accept that in law enforcement, he said.

Visit the BorderReport.com homepage for the latest exclusive stories and breaking news about issues along the United States-Mexico border.

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FBI worried about criminals access to encryption technology - fox5sandiego.com

The creator of Oh The Stories We Tell Gives The Answer to Unlocking Why Humans Suffer and How to Create Greater Meaning – PRUnderground

One of lifes greatest quests is to understand the human condition and how to cope with lifes struggles. Yet, most fail to realize they must first look at the stories of these struggles they tell, and how they inevitably shape the course in which their life leads. These struggles could be in relationships, at work, dealing in personal finances, or how one views themselves and others. Regardless of the situation, these struggles can leave a person feeling stuck. Some individuals contend with these struggles and wear a happy face, others have a more bitter outlook, and sometimes, its a bit of both.

Model developer, Chris Templeton, explores the integral role of storytelling in our lives by saying, We all tell stories, and while some of these stories do serve a greater good in our lives, those that do us a disservice have the greatest impact on how we live our lives. As you become aware of these stories and the world around you, you begin to stop living life by default.

Templeton pinpoints the first step to being freed from the weight some of these stories carry is to answer three simple questions. The questions are:

When one addresses their lifes stories through these questions, they can begin to create new and more authentic stories that serve their best interest. Each question develops a higher level of self-awareness that aids in dramatically improving well-being and creates a far more meaningful life. It provides the ability to tap into passion, redefine life, and let go of the things that cannot be controlled.

Once these questions are answered, Templeton points to renowned Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, for the next step in shaping a life with meaning. Frankl states, Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

By harnessing the power of self-awareness, one can then begin the process of increasing the space between stimulus and response. With that space they are able to move from default stories to deliberate behavior that serves them and those they interact with. As a result, it gives the ability to build the foundation to understand other human behavior, drive the development of healthy relationships, and have the utmost control of both the perception of others, as well as how others perceive things and people around them.

For more information visit http://www.ohthestorieswetell.com.

About Chris Templeton:

Driven by the strong desire to better understand the dynamics of personal and professional relationships, Chris Templeton began studying the reason behind human suffering in 2003, thus borning the Oh The Stories We Tell model. After years of studying and analysis, he has gone on to practicing the model through consulting individuals and organizations seeking to uncover and relieve themselves from their lifes sufferings. This is the first article in a multi-part series that will explore the process of removing ones self from stories that are not subservient to their well-being and crafting a life of meaning.

About Oh The Stories We Tell

Oh The Stories We Tell is an inspirational website founded by Chris Templeton.

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The creator of Oh The Stories We Tell Gives The Answer to Unlocking Why Humans Suffer and How to Create Greater Meaning - PRUnderground

MIT Researchers Teach Autonomous Cars to Predict Driver Behavior – Geek

Self-driving cars are already hitting roads across the country.

But for all their high-tech whositswhatsits, they still lack one important element: social awareness.

While autonomous technologies have improved substantially, they still ultimately view the drivers around them as obstacles made up of ones and zeros, rather than human beings with specific intentions, motivations, and personalities, according to MIT CSAIL.

The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has been exploring whether self-driving vehicles can be programmed to classify motorists social personalities and better predict what other cars will do.

Using a psychology tool called Social Value Orientation (SVO), scientists classified driving behavior based on the degree to which someone is selfish (egoistic) versus altruistic or cooperative (prosocial).

The system estimates motorists SVOs to create real-time trajectories for autonomous cars.

Working with and around humans means figuring out their intentions to better understand their behavior, graduate student Wilko Schwarting, lead author on the paper, said in a statement.

Peoples tendencies to be collaborative or competitive often spills over into how they behave as drivers, he continued. In this paper, we sought to understand if this was something we could actually quantify.

Testing their algorithm on cerebral tasks like merging lanes and making unprotected left turns, the team showed they could better predict the behavior of other cars by a factor of 25 percent.

In left-turn simulations, for example, their car knew to wait when the approaching vehicle had a more egoistic driver and to make the turn when the opposing motorist was more prosocial.

Existing technology can warn operators of oncoming traffic or blind-spot automobiles. But CSAILs platform takes it a step further by, for instance, providing a warning in the rear-view mirror that an oncoming car has an aggressive driver.

Creating more human-like behavior in autonomous vehicles is fundamental for the safety of passengers and surrounding vehicles, since behaving in a predictable manner enables humans to understand and appropriately respond to the AVs actions, Schwarting explained.

Moving forward, the team plans to apply their model to pedestrians, bicycles, and other components of driving environments, as well as robots that regularly interact with humans.

The MIT CSAIL systemnot yet robust enough to be implemented on real roadsis described in full in a paper published this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Disney and the Password Reuse Problem – Security Boulevard

Disney+ Launch: A whole new world of excellent content, the same password reuse problem

Consumers and critics alike have long clamored for the Disney+ streaming service, however, its recent launch has once again exposed the risks with password reuse. Even a mega-brand like Disney has password risks.

An investigation found that less than 48 hours after launch, thousands of exposed Disney+ passwords and accounts were already for sale. It appears the site was targeted by a credential stuffing attack. In other words, cybercriminals took exposed username and password pairs from a previous data breach and then automated the process of trying these compromised credentials to gain access to consumers Disney+ accounts, this is known as account takeover.

The reason credential stuffing attacks are successful is that many users continue to reuse passwords across multiple accounts. Recent research from Google found that a staggering 52 percent of people use the same password for multiple accounts, and even worse, 13 percent use the same combination for every account! The sheer scale of a site like Disney+ increases the probability that credential stuffing attacks will be successful.

Expecting human behavior to change quickly is not a good solution as customers and users are just too lax about passwords and protecting their own accounts. Therefore, companies must anticipate that password reuse will continue due to its convenience and add in steps to reduce the risk.

One simple way is to have a pop-up box reminding users at account setup about the importance of selecting a strong, unique password. Companies could also add a link to a free password check tool that allows the user to check if the password has already been exposed.

To reduce the risk from automated attacks, organizations should make good password hygiene a priority and implement a multi-layered approach. There is no panacea to the problem, but by applying a layered approach, the risk of credential stuffing attacks is reduced.

With these credential screening measures, organizations can easily avoid the negative media coverage and more importantly, customers would know if their accounts are at risk for account takeover. This would be helpful for Disneys recent password issue.

In the digital age, hackers covet consumer credentials with the same fervor Darth Vader displayed in trying to turn Luke to the Dark Side. And while its impossible for any company to entirely prevent against credential stuffing or other forms of attack, eliminating password reuse goes along way in strengthening the Rebelthat is, consumerAlliance. May the force be with Disney+.

The post Disney and the Password Reuse Problem appeared first on Enzoic.

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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Enzoic authored by Enzoic. Read the original post at: https://www.enzoic.com/disney-password/

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Disney and the Password Reuse Problem - Security Boulevard

#FOCUSCLIMATECHANGE: Reflecting on the 2019 of ‘Blade Runner’ in the 2019 of Today – The Montclarion

Pollution and clutter fill the crowded streets. Sprawling billboards stretch across the long faces of buildings, illuminating the ground far below. Corporations are looming over every strip of the city. A change in climate has made much of the Earth uninhabitable. This is the November of 2019 that Ridley Scott depicts in the 1982 film, Blade Runner. Strangely enough, the 2019 of today does not stray too far from some aspects of the world in the movie.

Blade Runner finds beauty in depicting a world that suffers from many of the problems we face today. It finds pleasantness in the imperfections of the world that are in large part caused by humans. Its ability to attempt to warn of the dangers of human behavior assist Blade Runner in retaining its relevance in culture to this day.

Illuminated billboards crowd countless frames in the film, representing the ever-present and intrusive nature of corporations in society that not unlike the scene, one would find stepping foot into Times Square in New York. The stunning postmodern architecture that fills the landscapes of Blade Runner is constantly hidden under a blanket of advertisements, causing those in the world to neglect the beauty in the environment that surrounds them.

Mike Sano, a senior at Montclair State, reflects on what he took away from the movie.

Electronic billboards fill Times Square in New York City. Photo courtesy of Times Square District Management Association, Inc.

The beauty of the architecture is clouded by obnoxious, bland ads, Sano observed. As for today, all of these things are happening; not as rapidly as it happened in the film, but were getting there.

Although beautiful, Sano also describes the architecture in the film as extremely cluttered.

[The architecture] takes away from the personal, individual human experience, Sano said. Its no longer about having positive mental health, its about using what you see to sell you things.

Now, more than ever, corporations are bounding further away from serving the needs of individuals. With constant buyouts and mergers, we are seeing the number of corporations dwindle while the survivors grow larger by the day. This is reflective of the world in Blade Runner.

The Tyrell Corporation is, in part, everywhere in the world of this story. The same couple of advertisements are depicted on the billboards every time they are on screen. When we open up our computers or turn on the TV, we see the same cycle of commercials and advertisements, tailored to our unique selves.

Lilly Rapps, a sophomore at Montclair State, reflects on what she finds most striking about what Blade Runner accurately depicted about 2019.

A sprawling electronic billboard in Blade Runner (1982). Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros.

The best prediction by far was the electronic billboards and how society relies so heavily on the advertisement industry, Rapps said.

The society in the film and the one in which we live, embrace what advertisers push onto us, to the point where the advertisements influence people more than people influence the ads. People are now a product of the products they are consuming.

Sano also notes that the cluttered feel of the city and the intrusive nature of corporations and advertisements in the films world take away from the personal, individual human experience.

Smog fills a decrepit building in Blade Runner (1982). Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

The human experience is a motif that the story of Blade Runner revolves around. The audience is constantly forced to ask themselves what being human actually means. The replicants, bioengineered individuals that are identical to humans, saved for their lack of emotion, show time and time again throughout the film that there is a profoundly blurred line between being human and being less-than.

Our Nov. 2019 bears some resemblance to the likes of that in the film Blade Runner. Nearly forty years ago, the film warned against many of the dangers that our society continues to face. It is time to remember to embrace the human experience before all of our moments are lost in time, like tears in the rain.

#FocusClimateChange is a School of Communication and Media-wide project that focuses on how climate change affects our world on local, national, and international scales. To see all pieces of work related to #FocusClimateChange, please visit focusclimatechange.org.

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#FOCUSCLIMATECHANGE: Reflecting on the 2019 of 'Blade Runner' in the 2019 of Today - The Montclarion

Podcast: Why Is There So Much Discord? Carmine Savastanos Three Origins Of Violence Provide An Answer Mike Swanson (11/21/2019) -…

In this podcast talked with Carmine Savastano who runs the Neapolis Media Group and is the author of the book Two Princes And A King, about the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Carmine is also coming out with a new book in February titled Human Time Bomb: The Violence Within Our Nature. You can pre-order this book by going here:

Pre-order Human Time Bomb: The Violence Within Our Nature

Carmines new book came about as part of his research into the origins of violent human behavior. We live in times of discord and cultural mania and his work sheds led on some of the reasons why. This discussion with Carmine also was provoked by his publication of an article he wrote titled Origins of Violence that you can find here with summary and resource links:

https://www.tpaak.com/origins-of-violence

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Podcast: Why Is There So Much Discord? Carmine Savastanos Three Origins Of Violence Provide An Answer Mike Swanson (11/21/2019) -...