Photo: Photos.com

Q. Im fascinated to see studies (such as Horses Ask Humans for Help With Unsolvable Tasks,) on horses possibly trying to communicate with humansits rather like scientists trying to tell us the world is flat when we can see perfectly well it isnt!

Most of the problem equine behaviors result from blinkered or ignorant humans not understanding what horses are desperately trying to tell them. For instance, Im bucking because the saddle pinches, Im kicking because you havent noticed Im saying youre hurting me, Im chewing my stable because Im sick to death of being cooped up, etc. My very hairy Minis push their heads at me only when they need their eyes cleaned; they and my horse vocally communicate using the same intonations as humans do; they complain if I dont feed them at the usual time. And my horse understands pointing directions to a fair extent.

My last horse got put in a different stable for a day, where the water basin was filled with rotting months-old crud. When I found him and opened the door, he grabbed the shoulder of my jacket and dragged me over to the corner in front of the basin to show me and indicate he was disgusted, very annoyed, and desperately thirsty. He drank nearly two buckets of fresh water when I offered it. How can any sensible person suggest that horses might be trying to tell us things?

All creatures who evolved to live in social groups must have the ability to communicate and often, if not always, between species. Prey animals know when predators are not interested in hunting them, they learn other species predatory calls, and many species will adopt and raise different species young and manage to communicate well enough. The more I see of this kind of scientific research, the less respect I have for the researchers, who must not be very observant or animal-orientated to doubt the obvious.

Gill Evans, via e-mail

A. I certainly can relate to your exasperation with researchers investigating a question that, to you, seems so obviously already known to anyone paying attention. Over my long career in horse research, I very often have been similarly frustrated when asked, wheres the scientific evidence? on topics in horse management and behavior that seemed to be obvious facts requiring no peer-reviewed scientific research to back them up. And there have been times it led to research that demonstrated the exact opposite of what I thought was the no-brainer interpretation.

The way scientific knowledge advances is to actually start with what seems like the most basic questions, formulate and then test hypotheses such as this, and report the results for further scientific scrutiny and refinement. In the case of interpreting animal behavior in terms of communication and the underlying cognitive processes, I can guarantee you that, as you say, not everyone sees the same thing, and the interpretations that seem just as obvious to individual observers vary widely. And without scientific knowledge, there is no way to know which interpretation among the many is correct. These different interpretations in scientific terms are essentially untested conflicting hypotheses.

I personally have come to realize that it is becoming more and more important to better understand equine cognition, particularly as it relates to horse-horse and horse-human behavioral interactions. Its not just trivial information, since our interpretation of a horses behavior and complexity of cognition and motivation often has welfare/safety implications both for the animal and for us. So these basic studies on equine cognition and communication, as silly as they may seem to you, really do need to be done. And the results need to be carefully scrutinized and scientifically refined for decades to come. I am looking forward to reading the full scientific report from the study you mentioned when it comes out. No doubt it will generate a lot of discussion among behavioral scientists, with most likely disagreement concerning the adequacy of the methods, the interpretation of results, and the validity of the conclusion. This is especially the case for a very new science such as this. That discussion/disagreement will hopefully stimulate further research.

Sue M. McDonnell, PhD, is a certified applied animal behaviorist and the founding head of the equine behavior program at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine. She is also the author of numerous books and articles about horse behavior and management.

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Studying the Obvious - TheHorse.com

The number one reason you should deal with that toxic person at work? Counterintuitively, says Joseph Grenny, business social scientist at VitalSmarts, you should do it because you deserve it. While some think confronting a toxic person is about sacrificing for the team or the greater cause, Grenny says its really about being responsible for your wellbeing and emotional health.

Being around people who are dysfunctional is a huge drain on our quality of life, says Grenny.

Grenny, co-author of Crucial Conversations, has seen it all when it comes to toxic co-workers: the conniving team member, the boss who bullies employees, the co-worker who always plays the victim.

If you have never worked with a toxic person, Grenny says to consider yourself lucky. While theres not a clinical definition for a toxic person, it could be someone who bullies, spreads gossip or is consistently negative. When someones behavior creates misery for others at work, chances are that person is toxic.

Group dysfunction

The problem usually isnt the toxic person, though. The problem often stems from the dozen people around the toxic person who enable the behavior to continue. Basically, toxic behavior continues in the workplace when theres active cooperation from people who think theyre victimsbut who are actually enablers.

The most important thing to remember is that youre responsible for your own boundaries, Grenny says. You have to decide what the effect is on you.

Sometimes toxicity is a passive-aggressive boss, for example. Grenny says he once sat down with a CEO for a coaching session. The CEO started going through his employee list. When he got to certain names, he told Grenny he wished he could fire them based on poor performance.

It struck me as oddbecause he can do that, Grenny says.

And yet, the CEO hadnt taken action. He spent years only wishing he could fire these employees, and instead punished them in other ways: He wouldnt make eye contact with themin meetings. He often cut them off when they spoke. Or he rolled his eyes while the employees had the floor.

This passive-aggressive approach sent a message in the team that created enormous conflict, says Grenny. Its surprising how many CEOs Ive worked with who run incredibly functional teams, but who dont deal with accountability.

Were all broken

Some people act out their drama on other people but arent self-aware enough to notice. The first thing you can do is increase their realization by providing a high-accountability environment in the office. The second thing? Admit we all need help sometimes.

All of us are broken. All of us are toxic at different times in different relationships. The best we can do where others will address their own brokenness is to hold boundaries with them, and also work on our own brokenness.

Grenny says the ideal workplace is an environment of vulnerable self-improvement. Being around emotionally healthy people offers rewards because everyone is constantly practicing personal reflection.

Its intoxicating, he says. It inspires everyone around them.

One of the most influential things Grenny learned in the last 30 years is this: The vast majority of human behavior problems dont stem from ability or motivation problems. Thats a huge insight, he says, because we tend to tell ourselves that someone knows what theyre doing when they misbehave. But its usually because the person doesnt possess the skill set to improve.

Most of us dont realize we need additional skills and cant fathom what they would be. High-accountability environments help people learn boundaries.

Speaking up

Grennys watched this boundary situation play out dozens of times, and he says when someone in a subordinate position holds their toxic boss accountable, they arent fired as often as you think.

It works far more often that it fails and it is remarkable to watch.

He once saw a doctor say something abusive to a nurse. Later, the nurse approached the doctor and asked if he had time to talk. She quoted his words and said she felt disrespected. She then asked for the doctors commitment that he wouldnt do it again. The nurse wasnt angry or hostile, just firm and clear.

And he looked like a whooped schoolboy. Rather than puffing up and invoking his position, he muttered an apology, and I never saw him behave impatiently toward [the nurse] again. Interestingly, he continued to behave inappropriately with other nurses who didnt hold boundaries around him, says Grenny.

Overall, if a toxic work situation doesnt improve, its time to reassess.

You have to make a decision. Whats more important: a steady paycheck or the quality of your life?

Im interviewing for a new job. How can I tell if a toxic culture exists at a company?Ask inappropriate questions to find out if its a good trust environment. I might say: What is one of the biggest growth areas for your boss? What do you have to do around here to get fired? When someone gets let down with someone else, what happens here? Ask about personally uncomfortable things. Poke the culture a little bit and see their reaction. Do they smile and answer easily? Or do they shift their eyes right and left before they answer? Joseph Grenny, VitalSmarts

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Finding the Antidote: How to neutralize the toxic member of your team - Utah Business

Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg View columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He blogs at the Big Picture and is the author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.

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Human Behavior and Startups - BloombergQuint

This trash was spread around a driveway on Galveston Street in the early morning hours, Aug. 9. A few other homes in the neighborhood also had their trash disturbed recently. Photo/Angela Denning

But the bears are just doing what comes natural, according to Rich Lowell, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Bears naturally search for food and with over a thousand trash bins in town people are giving bears a lot of free meals.

KFSK reporter, Angela Denning, sat down with Lowell to talk about the bears. He says its human behavior that needs to change.

The local ADF&G office along with the Petersburg Police Department are running a live bear trap in town to try and relocate some bears. Lowell says if you see the trap in your neighborhood to keep pets and children away from it because the door is spring loaded and potentially dangerous. But, he adds, that it wont matter if bears are relocated if residents dont change their behavior. There will be more bears that come along and do the same thing.

This bear was sighted in Seversons Subdivision this month. Photo/Shauna Pitta-Rosse.

For information on electric fences for bears, check out this ADF&G webpage.

For more information about coexisting with bears, visit http://www.alaskabears.alaska.gov.

Link:
Bears in Petersburg trash a human problem to solve - KFSK

Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Alice H. Eagly, Northwestern University

(THE CONVERSATION) Its no secret that Silicon Valley employs many more men than womenin tech jobs. Whats much harder to agree on is why.

The recent anti-diversity memo by a now former Google engineer has pushed this topic into the spotlight. The writer argued there are ways to explain the gender gap in tech that dont rely on bias and discrimination specifically, biological sex differences. Setting aside how this assertion would affect questions about how to move toward greater equity in tech fields, how well does his wrap-up represent what researchers know about the science of sex and gender?

As a social scientist whos been conducting psychological research about sex and gender for almost 50 years, I agree that biological differences between the sexes likely are part of the reason we see fewer women than men in the ranks of Silicon Valleys tech workers. But the road between biology and employment is long and bumpy, and any causal connection does not rule out the relevance of nonbiological causes. Heres what the research actually says.

There is no direct causal evidence that biology causes the lack of women in tech jobs. But many, if not most, psychologists do give credence to the general idea that prenatal and early postnatal exposure to hormones such as testosterone and other androgens affect human psychology. In humans, testosterone is ordinarily elevated in males from about weeks eight to 24 of gestation and also during early postnatal development.

Ethical restraints obviously preclude experimenting on human fetuses and babies to understand the effects of this greater exposure of males to testosterone. Instead, researchers have studied individuals exposed to hormonal environments that are abnormal because of unusual genetic conditions or hormonally active drugs prescribed to pregnant women. Such studies have suggested that early androgen exposure does have masculinizing effects on girls juvenile play preferences and behavior, aggression, sexual orientation and gender identity and possibly on spatial ability and responsiveness to cues that certain behaviors are culturally female-appropriate.

Early hormonal exposure is only one part of a complex of biological processes that contribute to sexual differentiation. Driven by both direct and roundabout messages from the X and Y chromosomes, the effects of these processes on human psychology are largely unknown, given the early stage of the relevant science.

Other studies inform the nature-nurture question by comparing the behaviors of boys and girls who are so young that socialization has not exerted its full influence.

Early sex differences emerge mainly on broad dimensions of temperament. One such dimension is what psychologists call surgency; its greater in boys and manifests in motor activity, impulsivity and experiencing pleasure from high-intensity activities. The other dimension is in what we term effortful control; its greater in girls and emerges in the self-regulatory skills of greater attention span, ability to focus and shift attention and inhibitory control. This aspect of temperament also includes greater perceptual sensitivity and experience of pleasure from low-intensity activities.

This research on temperament does suggest that nature instills some psychological sex differences. But scientists dont fully understand the pathways from these aspects of child temperament to adult personality and abilities.

Another approach to the women-in-tech question involves comparing the sexes on traits thought most relevant to participation in tech. In this case, it doesnt matter whether these traits follow from nature or nurture. The usual suspects include mathematical and spatial abilities.

The sex difference in average mathematical ability that once favored males has disappeared in the general U.S. population. There is also a decline in the preponderance of males among the very top scorers on demanding math tests. Yet, males tend to score higher on most tests of spatial abilities, especially tests of mentally rotating three-dimensional objects, and these skills appear to be helpful in STEM fields.

Of course people choose occupations based on their interests as well as their abilities. So the robust and large sex difference on measures of people-oriented versus thing-oriented interests deserves consideration.

Research shows that, in general, women are more interested in people compared with men, who are more interested in things. To the extent that tech occupations are concerned more with things than people, men would on average be more attracted to them. For example, positions such as computer systems engineer and network and database architect require extensive knowledge of electronics, mathematics, engineering principles and telecommunication systems. Success in such work is not as dependent on qualities such as social sensitivity and emotional intelligence as are positions in, for instance, early childhood education and retail sales.

Women and men also differ in their life goals, with women placing a higher priority than men on working with and helping people. Jobs in STEM are in general not viewed as providing much opportunity to satisfy these life goals. But technology does offer specializations that prioritize social and community goals (such as designing healthcare systems) or reward social skills (for instance, optimizing the interaction of people with machines and information). Such positions may, on average, be relatively appealing to women. More generally, womens overall superiority on readingand writing as well as social skillswould advantage them in many occupations.

Virtually all sex differences consist of overlapping distributions of women and men. For example, despite the quite large sex difference in average height, some women are taller than most men and some men are shorter than most women. Although psychological sex differences are statistically smaller than this height difference, some of the differences most relevant to tech are substantial, particularly interest in people versus things and spatial ability in mental rotations.

Given the absence of clear-cut evidence that tech-relevant abilities and interests flow mainly from biology, theres plenty of room to consider socialization and gender stereotyping.

Because humans are born undeveloped, parents and others provide extensive socialization, generally intended to promote personality traits and skills they think will help offspring in their future adult roles. To the extent that women and men have different adult lives, caregivers tend to promote sex-typical activities and interests in children dolls for girls, toy trucks for boys. Conventional socialization can set children on the route to conventional career choices.

Even very young children form gender stereotypes as they observe women and men enacting their societys division of labor. They automatically learn about gender from what they see adults doing in the home and at work. Eventually, to explain the differences they see in what men and women do and how they do it, children draw the conclusion that the sexes to some extent have different underlying traits. Divided labor thus conveys the message that males and females have different attributes.

These gender stereotypes usually include beliefs that women excel in qualities such as warmth and concern for others, which psychologists label as communal. Stereotypes also suggest men have higher levels of qualities such as assertiveness and dominance, which psychologists label as agentic. These stereotypes are shared in cultures and shape individuals gender identities as well as societal norms about appropriate female and male behaviors.

Gender stereotypes set the stage for prejudice and discrimination directed toward those who deviate from gender norms. If, for example, people accept the stereotype that women are warm and emotional but not tough and rational, gatekeepers may close out women from many engineering and tech jobs, even those women who are atypical of their sex. In addition, women talented in tech may falter if they themselves internalize societal stereotypes about womens inferiority in tech-relevant attributes. Also, womens anxiety that they may confirm these negative stereotypes can lower their actual performance.

Its therefore not surprising that research provides evidence that women generally have to meet a higher standard to attain jobs and recognition in fields that are culturally masculine and dominated by men. However, there is some recent evidence of preferential hiring of women in STEM at U.S. research-intensive institutions. Qualified women who apply for such positions have a better chance of being interviewed and receiving offers than do male job candidates. Experimental simulation of hiring of STEM faculty yielded similar findings.

Many pundits make the mistake of assuming that scientific evidence favoring sociocultural causes for the dearth of women in tech invalidates biological causes, or vice versa. These assumptions are far too simplistic because most complex human behaviors reflect some mix of nature and nurture.

And the discourse is further compromised as the debate becomesmore politicized. Arguing for sociocultural causes seems the more progressive and politically correct stance today. Arguing for biological causes seems the more conservative and reactionary position. Fighting ideological wars distracts from figuring out what changes in organizational practices and cultures would foster the inclusion of women in tech and in the scientific workforce in general.

Politicizing such debates threatens scientific progress and doesnt help unravel what a fair and diverse organization is and how to create one. Unfortunately, well-meaning efforts of organizations to promote diversity and inclusion can be ineffective, often because they are too coercive and restrictive of managers autonomy. The outrage in James Damores manifesto suggests that Google might want to take a close look at its diversity initiatives.

At any rate, neither nature-oriented nor nurture-oriented science can fully account for the underrepresentation of women in tech jobs. A coherent and open-minded stance acknowledges the possibility of both biological and social influences on career interests and competencies.

Regardless of whether nature or nurture is more powerful for explaining the lack of women in tech careers, people should guard against acting on the assumption of a gender binary. It makes more sense to treat individuals of both sexes as located somewhere on a continuum of masculine and feminine interests and abilities. Treating people as individuals rather than merely stereotyping them as male or female is difficult, given how quickly our automatic stereotypes kick in. But working toward this goal would foster equity and diversity in tech and other sectors of the economy.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/does-biology-explain-why-men-outnumber-women-in-tech-82479.

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Does biology explain why men outnumber women in tech? - San Francisco Chronicle

This post was written with Chris Kerlow and Craig Basinger.

The essence of money management can be encapsulated in searching for investments that are trading below their intrinsic value.

In theory, it works like this: Buying these companies low, and as the market comes around to realize their intrinsic value, the price moves higher and we sell for profits.

This is the activity of price discovery and makes for a healthy market as participants buy and sell in the attempt to profit from the return to intrinsic value, see chart. But there is a new big player in the market that doesnt care about price discovery, the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) or other passive index investment strategies. A passive ETF is price agnostic. They need to buy the shares of the underlying basket of stocks that comprise the index, regardless of the price of those stocks. Their mandate is not to buy low, sell high; it is to buy quickly, minimizing tracking error, giving investors the exact exposure they are looking for. Most indices are based on market weight, and do not discriminate for liquidity.

With ETFs swelling in assets and active managers shrinking over the past years, the number of participants embarking upon the admirable task of price discovery is lower. All else equal, this suggests it will likely take longer for the true intrinsic value to be found. Meaning that the Warren Buffet style investors will need to wait longer for the tide to go out and show who is swimming naked, as the oracle from Omaha eloquently once said. This could be one of the reasons why active management has lagged for the past several years, as the bull market marches higher and passive funds pile more and more capital into the fastest growing stocks, with no regard to price or value.

Active managers typically classify their style into specific architypes. Value investors buy beaten down companies that are believed to have a larger gap between the current price and intrinsic value. Growth managers buy at higher levels, thinking that the market is underestimating the growth prospects. Top down managers make macro bets, focusing on sector allocation and picking the best solution to portray their view. Or, a manager might focus on specific factors like large cap, dividend companies which narrows their focus and inherently investment outcomes.

All things considered, most managers use a varying combination of different approaches. All are buying companies they believe to be below intrinsic value and selling those at or above intrinsic value. But with a weaker price discovery mechanism in the market, perhaps it is time for active managers to change their approach. We believe active managers can add the most value when the market is inefficient see chart below. And inefficiencies are often caused by human behavior.

Where do these inefficiencies stem from? The innate human behaviors that have helped us survive and work our way to the top of the food chain also come with flaws that are exhibited in investing. We are accumulating a variety of research on these biases and looking for investing opportunities that these repeating tendencies present. We will highlight several of these behavioral biases to help our readers try to avoid them in their own portfolios and potentially profit from taking advantage of others irrational behaviors.

Overreaction

Markets are largely efficient, some more than others, but it is undeniable that inefficiencies are present. Some inefficiencies take time to rectify themselves and some come and go quickly. These aberrations are highlighted by the markets reaction to earnings and brief periods of extreme volatility (flash crashes).

As an example, during the May 2010 flash crash, we saw the U.S. market lose a trillion dollars of market cap in 36 minutes, only to rebound quickly thereafter. It would be interesting to hear Eugene Fama explain how that is a characteristic of an efficient market. Regulations were put in place to avoid such an event from occurring again (LULD) but they proved to be inadequate. On August 24, 2015 we experienced another flash crash with many ETFs becoming unhinged from their implied value. The limit up, limit down (LULD) regulations put in place during the previous flash crash exacerbated the problem as market markers of ETFs were uncertain of the true value of the basket that investors were trying to buy / sell, so the market makers vanished.

We vividly remember sitting at our desks that Monday morning as the Dow fell 1,000 in just minutes. What caught our attention more than the massive fall in stock prices, was the dislocation between sector ETFs and the basket of stocks they were built to follow. IAK, the iShares insurance ETF was down 42% in the first 12 minutes of trading, while at the same time the largest underlying constituents like AIG and MetLife were down only 10%. The market makers had seemingly disappeared. Everything did come back to reality just a short while later as the ETF rallied 68% off the lows, as shown on the chart below.

Although this exact scenario may not happen again, over reaction to new information will. This stems from the availability heuristic where investors focus on the most recent information often ignoring the long term picture. Our Market Ethos on Earnings Overreaction, goes into detail on how high quality companies that see a share price slammed on a negative earnings report tend to make back the share price loss quickly, while low quality companies that gap up on earnings tend to give back the gains.

Confirmation Bias and Herding

Two weeks ago we wrote about the flaws in investing with the herd. Our innate tendency to follow the herd has been ingrained in us through Darwinism and is glaringly obvious in investing, but often ends poorly, especially for those late to the party. The next chart exemplifies what we are referring to. You can see when the herd, in this case speculators on the Canadian dollar, gets to extreme levels, it has been the exact time the momentum shifts in the other direction. Adding to this problem is a confirmation bias, when investors place more value on information that corroborates with their own opinion. The flaws are simply human nature and unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Understanding that, if you are able to get in early before the herd follows, you should be able to make some nice profits. To do so, you need to take a contrarian view, which conflicts with the comforting feelings you get from going with the herd. Back in April, we published a piece that outlined a strategy to take advantage of these biases. Best to be Unloved goes into greater detail but the idea is simple: companies that are largely unloved by the analyst community, but then start to get upgraded, have seen outsized gains versus companies that have mainly buy ratings, last chart. The premise is rather simple, these unloved companies could have depressed valuations because they do not have the herd supporting the stock. Then as analysts start to recognize a change in business fundamentals, they upgrade the stock. Often other analysts follow their peers, subsequently upgrading their rating of the stock. More upgrades tend to follow, giving investors confirmation and feeding the herding behaviour.

Conclusion

These are just a couple of examples of how our hardwired heuristics and bias show up in investment decisions. We are engulfed in the subject matter as we continue to research behavioral finance to help avoid pitfalls in our own investment process as well as find ways of exploiting these repeated flaws exhibited in the broad market. We look forward to sharing the findings with you, our readers, to help you avoid making behavioral mistakes.

Charts are sourced to Bloomberg unless otherwise noted.

Twitter:@sobata416 @ConnectedWealth

Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.

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Uncovering Value: Price Discovery And Irrational Investing Behavior - See It Market (blog)

While Donald Trumps mighty guns of August are locked and loaded, this piece will try to revive the protracted duel between reason and emotion.

Its a debate that never dies: What defines and animates humanity? Is it calculating reason that invented the tools and amenities of civilization, or what the painter Vincent van Gogh called the terrible passions that drove us to where we are now?

If we survey the events of history all the way to that fateful day a wily serpent tempted an innocent Eve to eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, it is undoubtedly the passions that largely rule our behavior. Rationalists may declare with certitude the unstoppable, onward march of reason to the omega of human evolution, but immortal myths and facts on the ground tell a more convincing story of an untamable animal spirit that drives human thought and action: the lust for adventure, the inordinate appetite for fighting, hurting, and dominating others in short, the desire for mate, love, revenge, power and glory.

Think of the wars, great and small, that have been fought because of matters of emotional fury. Think of the mythical thousand ships launched by the Greeks to bring back the beautiful Helen from the arms of Paris in Troy; think of the mesmerizing beauty of the Taj Mahal built by the grieving emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz; recall the hundreds of millions of people who lost their lives in numberless killing fields throughout the world; and more recently, dance to the irresistible beat of Despacito which briefly united us in over four billion views. Finally, think of the staying power of the great religions of humankind, and you get some insights into human passions in all their mystery, splendor and savagery.

Sadly, the marvels of science and cybertechnologies that have reduced Earth to a small village of competing tribes have not freed humanity from its Neanderthal moorings. As in the past, its swords, guns and bombs, not plowshares and classrooms, that make the difference.

And so, unsurprisingly, we find lunatic nations like North Korea, enamored of their newfound nuclear toys, and great powers like China and America, playing out their existential imperatives on the world stage, while a fearful humanity holds its breath, knowing that any miscalculation could lead to nuclear war and global catastrophe.

Is reason really impotent when besieged by the passions? If there is one big lesson to be learned from human frailty, its that we have not learned from history. Barbara Tuchman inferred in her classic The March of Folly that governments throughout millennia have never learned how to tame the passions. Thus, since governments advent in 2000 B.C., there has been no marked improvement in it as an instrument for the rational and just management of human society. And if we cannot learn from our mistakes (follies), we are certainly doomed to repeat them.

Serious students of human behavior conclude that while the sciences have progressed by leaps and bounds, government has been at a standstill no better conducted now than 4,000 years ago.

David Hume believes that reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. Translation: Passions, not the cold logic of reason, motivate human action. Thus, in our world of dizzying technological developments, beware of the many disguises of the passions used by those in power to make their lies appear palatable and reasonable.

In the Philippine context, that could mean that propaganda its arsenal of alternative facts, half-truths, and post-truth that flood social media actually speaks the language of reason even when its aim is to fool people because its authors know that their real target is the passions. Thats what makes it so dangerous to a gullible, undiscerning public.

If there is a moral to this piece, it is that we must realize we live in a maddening world where real truth is often stranger than fiction; that in a larger sense, the conflict between the passions and reason has barely begun. The passions and reason are what make us uniquely human. They are inseparable and need each other, for good or ill.

* * *

Narciso Reyes Jr. (ngreyes1640@hotmail.com) is an international book author and former diplomat. He lived in Beijing in 1978-81 as bureau chief of the Philippine News Agency.

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Taming 'the terrible passions' - Inquirer.net

The seven helium-filled white globes that hover, swarm, and form kaleidoscopic patterns above visitors to Londons Roundhouse are neither friend nor foetheyre inanimate drones programmed by an algorithm to move, and to respond in turn to the various movements of people below them. And yet their behavior is familiarly, unsettlingly alive. They seem curious at some points, breaking away from their pack to investigate individuals on the ground. Theyre menacing at others, gliding gracefully into imposing structures overhead. Theyre sometimes clumsy, colliding with each other and veering awkwardly upward. And theyre mesmerizing, evoking entities as disparate as birds and bacteria in the ways they gently dance and dip under the Roundhouses domed ceiling.

The balloon-drones are Zoological, a flock of autonomous, flying spheres created for the installation +/- Human by the studio Random International, the artists best known for Rain Room. That work, which debuted at Londons Barbican in 2012, helped usher in a new age of Instagram-friendly immersive artworks, attracting day-long lines when it moved to New Yorks Museum of Modern Art prior to a 15-month stint at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But where Rain Room allowed visitors to feel omnipotent, walking freely through a room of falling water without getting wet, Zoological encourages a sense of vulnerability. The ever-shifting constellations overhead are beautiful and unsettling: They catalog and respond to human behavior. This is an artwork that you observe while aware that its observing you right back.

Art for Instagrams Sake

+/- Human includes dance performances choreographed by Wayne McGregor, devised to provoke and create new patterns of movement as the dancers and the spheres interact. During the day, visitors can simply enter the Roundhouses space and move around underneath Zoological, which is accompanied by original music composed by Warp Recordss Mark Pritchard. The score is pivotal, offering ethereal layers of electronic harmonies, and then jarring, discordant sounds of exaggerated humming or screeching. At times the room feels like a scene from Denis Villeneuves Arrival; at others like a particularly traumatic episode of Black Mirror. The drones are benign, staying out of arms reach, but their behaviorboth pre-programmed and responsiveis impossible to predict.

Zoological, as a work, seems intended to play on subconscious anxieties about everything from driverless cars to alien invasions to mutating pathogens. The ways in which the spheres rise and fall around each other mimic the ways birds fly, and bugs swarm, and computers generate graphics that move to music. Its eerily familiar, but inhuman. Random International describes the work as an amplified and physical manifestation of our lived experience in a world increasingly run by algorithms, and its rendering of our uncertain, symbiotic, increasingly dependent relationship with machines and code captures the flux of an era in which technology is evolving faster than our ability to devise ethical frameworks for it. The spheres in Zoological are harmless, but for how long?

Its perhaps less instantly gratifying and joyful than Rain Room, but much more thought-provoking. Its also of a piece with other recent works of art and entertainment that try to wrestle with how drones are changing the nature of warfare or how technology will ruin humanity if were not perpetually vigilant. Its a theme Random International has considered over and over, in a series of Swarm Studies that examine and mimic collective behavior, and in works that reflect the human form in motion as pinpricks of light. Zoological, fascinating and occasionally alarming, encourages engagement, but the underlying note is one of caution.

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The Follow-Up to Rain Room Is Brilliant and Unsettling - The Atlantic

With the spectacular success of Hamilton, musical theater has moved from a niche market to the national stage in recent years. And for good reason the impact of Hamilton has has reached far beyond the entertainment world, spanning culture in general, rap, education and even Congress. Among other things, it has shown that musical theater can offer a fresh, exciting way to learn about history and culture, and it can offer much more than that even to those who dont aspire to perform on Broadway.

Indeed, musical theater is a powerful art form that can transform the lives of those who take part, but its power is often overlooked. Now is the time to pull the curtain back.

Reams of statistics show that learning a musical instrument can lead to a whole host of benefits, from improved discipline, perseverance and collaboration to enhanced cognitive skills and positive neurological effects. While these benefits are beyond dispute, its worth considering that musical theater mostly left out of conversations like this expand upon them.

Among other life lessons and traits, musical theater can teach and foster these important skills:

1) A deeper understanding of human behavior and psychology: Researchers have argued that psychologists can look to how actors create emotions to understand human nature in a new way. Thats because a performer must understand others actions and the meanings behind them to convincingly portray another character, environment and tone on stage. In doing this, they conversely learn to identify their own innate biases and practice empathy when interacting with the people around them.

2) A sense of ownership and independence: In a theater production, theres no sitting on the sidelines! Theres only one person for each role and a small margin for error, so performers must learn to work independently and arrive prepared. They are expected to pull their own weight and sometimes even more -- to produce the best show possible.

3) Creative thinking and problem-solving skills: Anyone partaking in a production is involved in the business of creation whether its building scenery, a script, a costume, props, and so on. On stage, performers create characters, moods and settings. They must also use problem-solving skills to decide how a character will react, what decisions they will make, and how their actions will help tell the story.

4) How to give and take feedback effectively: Giving and receiving constructive feedback is a regular part of any form of theater. Performers understand that feedback is a useful part of the learning process and how to channel it into success. At the same time, they are also challenged to give feedback to their peers that is respectful and useful. Critical thinking and listening are just as an important piece of the puzzle as performing on stage.

5) The importance of teamwork and the unique value that every individual brings: Musical theater is arguably the most collaborative form of creative expression. It takes a range of people writers, actors, designers, directors, choreographers, and more to put together a successful performance. Performers cant get on stage without the help of the off-stage crew; what happens behind the scenes is just as important as what happens when the curtain rises. Theater demands that anyone working on a project is an important part of the show the final product can never be completed unless every team member is working toward the same goal.

As executive director of Kaufman Music Center in New York City, Ive seen this first-hand at the organizations annual Summer Theater Musical Workshop, where young people of all backgrounds and interests learn to shine on stage. The workshop is primarily for kids with various interests, not just for those who want to spend their lives professionally on stage. For those who may already be instrumentalists, musical theater takes them further, allowing them to express their musical talent through their own body. It helps the shy or quiet child come out of his/her shell and boost confidence, and has been known to turn the class clown into a real star. For many people, theres something about singing with a group, working with others to pull off a number and flexing many different talents singing, dancing, acting, writing thats stimulating, moving, motivational, fun and inspirational. At the same time, it leads to a mastery of stage presence a boon for any musician, attorney, physician, teacher and the list goes on!

For an experience that will have a long-lasting and potentially life-changing impact, everyone and anyone should take part in musical theater. You might be surprised at the result, and have a lot of fun as well.

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Kids & Musical Theater: The Off-Stage Impact - HuffPost

Due to our earlier ancestors tribal rivalries, slavery, racism, segregation, oppressive issues, and racial profiling, Black people have yet to heal their Black wounds. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is something that has impacted the Black race for many years to come. We have yet to heal those color complex wounds, and progress beyond it. Due to the Willie Lynch Syndrome, colorism, ageism, educational status, social economic status has created division within the Black race. With so many nationalities, groups, organizations, and running circles, Black people have learned to stay divided, verses working together in unison, while still respecting one anothers differences.

Due to our Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Black people need help to heal their wounds. Understanding the psychology of behavior and embracing the need for therapy could be helpful, except Black people have yet to respect therapy nor psychology. Due to syphilis studies completed on Black people, injustices with the judicial system and Black people being used as guinea pigs by white America, Black people have learned to distrust psychology, believing it's some sort of hocus pocus. Psychology is something Black people also do not trust, due to Pre- conceived notions about the field. Although many people of all races have misconceptions about the field of psychology, many Black people view Psychology as a form of mind manipulation, mind trickery and a way to control or mess with someones head. They also believe it is a White man's science that can only benefit the White race. When many Black people think of psychology, they have visions of Freud, White men, and hypnotherapy. People who misunderstand psychology have little to no understanding that, it is a science which studies human behavior, social influence and animal behavior. Psychology bases its studies on empirical evidence. Psychology is the study of the brain and mind and how earlier experiences, forming core beliefs effect present situations. Psychology is a healing field, designed to treat and diagnose those with psychopathology and or help people with normal stress. There are also different fields in psychology, like, Clinical Psychology; Neuro Psychology; Social Psychology; Forensic Psychology; Human Factors; Applied Behavioral Analysis etc Due to people being experts at being a human and having a great understanding of their self, their friends and family, they believe they have psychology nipped in the bud, without considering the fact of their own biases, transference issues, projections, which cloud their objectivity. These differences are what separates the field of psychology as a scientifically based field, versus normal populations with pre-conceived notions about the field of psychology.

Many people assume the field of psychology can be summed up with two theorists, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Although both are two important figures in psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were founding members of psychoanalysis. They did not begin the field of psychology. Many theorists in psychology exist and theorists continue to evolve. Psychology is ubiquitous and it is the study of people. Psychology began the moment humans were created. The moment Lucy, aka The Real Eve was created to be the mother of civilization, psychology begin to unfold then. The field was created to help bring an understanding to human behavior.

Psychology can help heal Black people. Due to many Black people lacking proper communication styles within their family systems, etc those attachment styles carry into their friendships and relationships. Many Black people would rather curse one another out and use defense mechanisms to cover their wounds. The proper psychology has not been learned to communicate pain in a healthy way. The average Black person will go from hurt, to combat in a matter of seconds, without understanding the neurotic vicious cycles which are created when one assumes something of another and projects that expectation, which triggers reactions in others. Black people have learned how to talk to one another harshly and use defense mechanisms to repair broken egos and narcissistic injury. Black people have even learned how to use retorts that appear cool so that humor makes up for hurtful situations (Laughing to keep from crying). The average Black person would rather trade wise cracks with one another, verses using healthy psychology and proper communication to hurt feelings. Respect is a huge thing one demands but never gives. Black people have yet to be apologized to by racist people, society nor the members in their family, significant others and friends that have hurt them. Therefore, they are unapologetic. Lacking empathy is a familiar trait in the Black race, because it is considered weak to show feelings. Anger is accepted but showing emotion is rejected. Whenever Black people show empathy, it must appear cool and be accepted by the race. For example, "RIP to all my n*****" or "Where i come from, it goes from respect, disrespect, total disrespect to eff everybody". Both examples communicate emotional pain, but it is communicated in a "I'm so cool and will not show weakness" kind of way. Many Black people have experienced harsh treatment and compassionless from outsiders, members in their own families, relationships and friendships, therefore, they have not learned to control their impulses nor empathize with those they harm. Hurt people are conditioned to hurt others. Instead of hiding behind narcissism, defense mechanisms, unconscious conflict, mommy and daddy issues and developing unhealthy relationship patterns, learn to embrace psychology healing you from dysfunctional behavior.

Black people are the mother and father of all races and they are strong and resilient, therefore, they have learned how to push forward in life and continue moving and living with hurt. Since slavery Black people have been mistreated and have not learned how to deal with their wounds and unconscious conflict. Transference is a form of earlier childhood experiences being projected onto new objects, for example, people, places and things. A good example is, someone who might be attracted to certain people, rather good or bad because they are familiar spirits, with characteristics of their earlier experiences. Transference shows up in many of the things we choose in life, from friendships, relationships, jobs, places etc. A woman who was abandoned by her mother or father may choose men or women in her life who are emotionally unavailable or unsupportive during the most important moments. A woman who wasn't raised with her father may have unresolved daddy issues, while men who were also not raised with their father have a need to be a woman's daddy, to make up for their loss manhood. The decisions we make are mostly unconscious, so this information may be rejected consciously because the intellectual mind does not understand why they would choose people who remind them of the disappointments of their earlier experiences, but the unconscious mind chooses people and situations to work through the conflict. The Black woman choosing men who will not father her children, consequently playing both the mother and father in her household has been common since the early 70s. The Black man missing from the household has also been common since the early 70s. Although some Black people were raised with both parents, many broken homes in the Black race exists. Due to this family dysfunction, many members within the Black race are choosing the wrong people and making many wrong decisions, because they have not worked through their transference issues. You will find many men who are misogynistic or disrespectful towards women because they have issues with their mother and they never saw a man love their mother properly, therefore, they grow up to be just as unloving and hateful until they become healed. We usually learn from and repeat what we see and experience. According to Melanie Klein, children learn about love from watching their parents. They repeat what they see and do not see in their relationships and friendships.

Psychology can help heal Black wounds. Dr. Joy DeGruy and Dr. Umar Johnson are both Black scholars who discuss the Black condition today.

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Excerpt from:
Healing Black People - HuffPost