Like many Millennials, I was told I could become whatever I wanted to be when I grew up. Before the age of ten I cycled through dreams of acting, singing, and becoming a veterinary pharmacist (true story).

Trying to find my passion was a near-obsession that followed me into adulthood. Ironically, all along I ignored what was naturally good at, including my knack for empathy, my love for writing, and an incurable curiosity about human behavior.

They say hindsight is 20/20, so today I clearly see how these strengths shaped my career. But for a long time, I searched for my passion as if it was a lost treasure chest that I simply needed a map to find.

Despite what we're told, passion is something that unfolds over time. It's discovered through life experiences. Your "dream job" isn't an exact destination, either. It's constantly evolving. The ideal career when you're in your early 30s may eventually become a poor fit, even by the time you turn 40.

So what do you do if you have no idea what your passion or life calling is?

First, don't panic. Finding your purpose doesn't happen overnight. It's a messy, iterative undertaking that takes time, patience, and a healthy dose of self-reflection. You'll get there, but you have to start by taking small steps.

That starts by asking yourself some key questions about how your past experiences, struggles, and triumphs have shaped you.

For each of the prompts below, write for a minimum of five minutes. Don't censor yourself. Write freely. Jot down whatever comes to mind, no matter how silly it seems.

These powerful questions can help you strip away limiting beliefs to find your true calling--work you find deeply meaningful. That doesn't mean it'll be easy, but it will be rewarding.

At the end of the day, introspection isn't enough. You have to take consistent action to make your dreams a reality. But when you take the time to look inward, you may be surprised by what you find. Your passion might have been waiting there all along, just waiting for you to light the spark.

More here:
The Secret to Finding Your Passion Is the Opposite of What You've Been Told - Inc.com

WILMINGTON, Vt. (AP) A local game warden named the annual Vermont Game Warden of the Year says the award has made him feel like he has "succeeded in the profession."

"I was really pleased," said Vermont State Game Warden Richard Watkin, who's based out of Wilmington. "You're essentially going up against other wardens and I think my colleagues are an extremely talented group of individuals with different skills. It's a really great bunch of folks to work with."

Gov. Phil Scott presented Watkin with the award in Montpelier on May 24. Watkin also received a certificate from the private wildlife conservation group Shikar-Safari Club International acknowledging the award. The group sponsors these awards in each state of the United States as a way to promote enforcement of laws protecting wildlife.

Watkin wasn't a hunter but had done some inland fishing in the English Channel growing up so he said he had a lot to learn when taking on the role of game warden.

"I had to put a lot of time in and do my own research, so to speak, to try and understand these cultural past times such as hunting," he said. "So in order to get from being essentially somewhat naive in some areas to end up getting not only nominated to actually winning the award was a great feeling. I felt like I had succeeded in the profession."

Watkin's supervisor Lt. Greg Eckhard called Watkin "knowledgeable in all aspects of the job."

"He understands the intricacies of fish and wildlife law and has an excellent working knowledge of the wildlife and habitats common to his patrol district," Eckhardt said in a press release. "Rich is professional, polite, hardworking, dependable, honest and always willing to help others whenever asked. He is highly regarded by his peers and is a great asset to both the Fish and Wildlife Department and the State of Vermont."

The third time is a charm for Watkin, who had been nominated for the award two other times. He has been with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department since 2006. That was the year Watkin spent four months at the Vermont Police Academy and eight months in field training. He was assigned to the Wilmington area in January 2007.

"I pretty much laid down my routes thereafter," he said. "I have a young family here."

Watkin, who has two kids and a wife who works in the Deerfield Valley, said he can see himself completing his career where he is now. Originally, Watkin is from England.

In 2000, he completed his doctorate as a research scientist and held two post-doctoral tenures at the University of Vermont. He worked there for six years.

"I got to a point where the position I was in was getting stressful," he said. "I was more or less looking at needing to get my own grant money."

Watkin wanted to stay in New England but he no longer wanted to be a research scientist. Driving along Interstate 91 one day, he noticed a game warden truck. That piqued his interest and eventually he applied for a position.

When offered a job, Watkin was surprised. But his experience with researching molecular changes in human skin cells made him an attractive candidate. The thought was that those skills would be helpful with big game forensics.

Watkin has seen the department switch who handles samples. UVM now gets them.

"Formerly, we used to send samples out of state to be tested," Watkin said while acknowledging that the current way is cheaper but it also keeps the work in Vermont,.

Of particular enjoyment to Watkin are search and rescue calls.

"It's one of those things that occurs so randomly but there's an element of it, where to try and locate somebody who is either missing or compromised due to injury, can be a very gratifying feeling," he said. "It's not just the game wardens that called on search and rescue. There's the state police, and local fire and rescue. But it can be quite an experience to have all these agencies get together with a common goal, with the understanding that they don't always have a happy ending."

It's also the community aspect of the job that keeps Watkin engaged.

"We cover a lot of rural territory that doesn't tend to see a lot of law enforcement on a regular basis," he said. "There's a presence that comes with us patrolling around these rural areas and you get to know your constituents. And whether it's just conversations, just civility in passing or it's questions, we get flagged down frequently by people that want to talk for one reason or another. I think it's important for the work we do that we have this relationship with our communities, because there are so few wardens in the state so we rely on the public to help us do our jobs."

With promotions and retirements, it can take a year or more to replace a warden who's left his position. Training takes a year and advertising the job takes some time. Then there's the interviews and hiring process.

Wardens' territories tend to expand when a vacancy pops up. Watkin, at the time of the interview, was covering about nine communities including Dover, Readsboro, Searsburg, Stratton, Somerset, Stamford, Whitingham and Wilmington. Two wardens will soon be added to the state's roster, in Poultney and Springfield.

"One way or another, we cover the calls regardless," Watkin said, noting that judgement is used on how to respond as some calls are emergencies and others can wait. "Sometimes it involves traveling a number of towns over."

Watkin's responsibilities change with the seasons. In the fall, he'll tend to work shifts later into the evenings. He might finish up in the early hours of the morning or go in late and work until daybreak. Much of this time is spent on trying to combat wildlife crime, he said.

"Deer jacking" or illegal hunting is the main concern. Watkin said he doesn't see these crimes as often as other districts might.

In the winter, he literally shifts gears via snowmobile enforcement. He also puts in time patrolling ice fishing.

Before the summer, the Department of Fish and Wildlife stocks waters across the state with fish. For now, Watkin will be on the lookout for fishing and boating violations until big game season comes along.

Some jobs can have a certain repetition to them regardless of the time of year, he said. That's not the case for Watkin.

"I really appreciate the way things change," he said. "That's probably one of my favorite parts of having the job."

In a press release, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commission Louis Porter said Watkin "represents so many of the things that makes our warden force the professional and well-respected institution that it is... (and he) goes out of his way to serve his community, from teaching kids at the local elementary school about wildlife to giving free snowmobile rides to disabled children."

Watkin recently took on an additional task as a canine handler, something he said he really wanted to do. An 18-month-old yellow lab went through tracking school last year with Watkin to study "human scent trailing." Now the pair's training in "gunpowder detection" and "human evidence recovery."

Watkin called his job "one of the more rewarding careers I can imagine doing."

"You see so much stuff goes on in the outdoors whether through wildlife behavior or human behavior," he said. "You start your day out not sure what's going to happen and a lot of the times it's the same stuff checking licenses or driving around patrolling your district. But there's so many times over the 11 years I've been on where stuff just happens, where we either pull up to something or you circumstantially encounter something."

Watkin said the abnormal events keep him interested and to be issued a snowmobile, boat and kayak "is pretty neat." But not everything is "rosy," he admitted.

"We get deployed to any hunter-related shooting that goes on in this state," he said. "We get deployed to do reconstructions and you can imagine some of these scenes are far from pleasant."

Sometimes, Watkin said, a search ends in recovery rather than rescue. But those events he accepts as part of his professional duties.

___

Online:

http://bit.ly/2rXJBT7

___

Information from: Brattleboro Reformer, http://www.reformer.com/

Read the rest here:
Research professor finds new life as game warden - San Francisco Chronicle

While the origin of the recent WannaCry exploit is still under investigation, there is no doubt that humans remain the weakest link in the chain of defense against cyberattacks.

According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, human factors play a major role in various types of attacks. While its easy to blame users, many overlook the fact that these individuals can be turned into a valuable asset for an organizations defense capabilities. A well-aligned, orchestrated security awareness program can unlock this potential, but its success depends on practices beyond the typical security domain namely, psychology, communication and culture.

The traditional approach is to define an acceptable use policy and require users to sign it. This may help to transfer some responsibility to the users, but it does not make an organization more secure at the end of the day. Making users part of your defense requires more than a warning finger; its about changing behavior.

While the elements of a security awareness program depend on an organizations structure, business and culture, human behavior change is based on fundamental principles. The first tenet urges security leaders to include users in the mission instead of treating them as a risk. To be part of the mission, individuals need to understand it, recognize risky situations and react in a proper manner.

Furthermore, successful awareness programs involve other such as human resources, legal, marketing and physical security that often have mutual interests. These departments can collaborate to make security awareness efforts mandatory and contribute valuable resources such as funding and distribution tools. Human resources can build security awareness into onboarding and performance management processes, for example.

Human factors contribute in many ways to security risks, from dealing with phishing emails to handling sensitive data and interacting with other company assets. It is simply impossible to address all these issues at once. Instead, security leaders should focus on the most severe behaviors from a risk management perspective.

This approach will help to keep messages clear and prevent users from viewing security as an annoyance. Users are confronted with many daily obligations and simply dont have time to wait for another set of tasks. Therefore, you should split your messages into small portions, assign tasks that take no longer than 15 minutes and distribute the content over a period of time. This approach also makes it easier to keep software up to date.

People consume information in different ways depending on their background, profession and generation. Successful programs incorporate a variety of channels to make the message stick, including newsletters, posters, games, news feeds, blogs, simulated phishing attacks and more. In general, the most participatory efforts appear to have the most success.

If you invest time and money to strengthen your security program, you should be able to report its effectiveness to management and stakeholders. The only way to do this is to collect metrics in advance of awareness efforts. Without this baseline, it is hard to demonstrate success.

Security awareness metrics can include surveys to gauge attitudes and more statistical values such as results from simulated phishing attacks before and after awareness training. It might also be helpful to examine the number of security-related incidents. Measurable improvements, in any aspect of security, will help justify the program and, eventually, obtain additional funding and support.

Watch the On-Demand Webinar: Orchestrate Your Security Defenses

More here:
Security Awareness: How to Make Your Weakest Link Part of Your Defense - Security Intelligence (blog)

This is the ninth article in a series about similarities and differences between men and women.

Q: How do the differences between men and women complicate male/female relationships?

A: In a study by psychologist Dario Maestripieri and his colleagues, the study concluded men and women belong to different species. The following information, in an article by Agustin Fuentes, refutes that conclusion. Fuentes has a bachelors degree in zoology and advanced degrees in anthropology. He is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

In his critique of the study, Fuentes elucidates three main problems. First, gender and sex are used interchangeably and they are not interchangeable. Second, the evolved differences in women and men are not measured. Third, relevant anthropological and biological datasets are disregarded.

Fuentes points out sex and gender are different. Sex is the biological state measured by the content of chromosomes in addition to various physiological and developmental measurements. Gender, on the other hand, consists of the roles, perceptions and expectations that society has for the sexes.

The majority of societies have two genders on the masculinity-femininity spectrum. Some societies do have more. The two concepts are interrelated but not the same. People are born with a sex but acquire gender. Within societies, there is great diversity between individuals and sexes regarding how sex and gender interact in personality and behavior. Although there is a lot of literature about that subject, many researchers, whose only interest is definitive distinctions between women and men, choose to ignore that literature.

Measuring evolutionary differences in behavior within a species is difficult. There are at least two methodological approaches that are necessary to do that. First, the assessments have to be comparative with more than one population of the species of interest. Secondly, the traits for measurement have to be linked some way with the heritable elements of human physiology or behavior that have an effect on overall fitness. These traits must be assessed by measures that are both accessible and replicable among different populations in the species.

In their study, Del Giudici and associates used a large sample of questionnaires from mostly white, educated Americans. In relation to the global diversity present in culture structure, this sample from Del Giudici and associates is limited and is not a comparative, evolutionary sample of the species.

The data from the Del Giudici and associates assessments of 15 personality variables are laden with cultural meanings and contexts that are not easily transferable across societies in time and space. Moreover, these personality variables are difficult, or impossible, to connect quantitatively to all aspects of human physiology, neurology or other structured, identifiable targets for natural selection. Furthermore, their personality traits are not static traits, but are dynamic traits that are fluid over a persons lifetime.

When discussing evolved differences in behavior between females and males, no one can make a statement like, When it comes to personality, men and women belong to two different species, without stating the biological reality that men and women are the same species. There are not consistent differences in brains between the sexes.

There is considerable overlap in physiological function. Both sexes engage in sexual behavior in essentially the same patterns. The sexes also overlap extensively in most other behaviors. There are interesting re-occurring differences, especially in patterns of aggression and some physiological correlates of reproduction, body size and muscle density. Anthropological and biological studies consistently demonstrate dynamic flexibility and a complex biocultural context for human behavior. These studies are especially true for gender.

Del Giudici and associates and Maestripieri are countering Janet Shibley-Hydes gender similarities hypothesis because they believe men and women are more different than similar. There are many valid points of disagreement regarding Shibley-Hydes paper. Del Giudici and associates name a significant methodological point of contention, but fail to provide an assessment and analysis of the overall data and meta-analysis used by Shibley-Hyde.

Something about trying to prove men and women are different, or the same, makes people somewhat irrational. There are no clear or easy answers about why people do what they do. There also are no clear answers about why men and women have problems getting along sometimes. Those researchers who ignore that data about how men and women are similar and different and approach sex and gender from a one-dimensional approach are practicing poor science.

Augustin Fuentes is the scientist upon whom this article is based. He contends there is an enormous dataset about how men and women are similar and different that responsible scientists cannot ignore.

Next weeks article will discuss the aging process in men and women.

Judy Caprez is professor emeritus at Fort Hays State University.

Original post:
Men, women show similarities, differences - Hays Daily News

Believe it or not, I work really hard at self-regulation. I realize that sometimes I people at less than an optimal level, so I have a list of daily reminders I use to keep it between the ditches of acceptable human behavior.

Each day, I go through a checklist of dozens of behaviors I should not engage in, some learned by trial and error, others by observational guess work. Some of these include:

It is not okay to offer to bat clean-up if a couple who you are friends with tells you about their struggles with infertility.

When you see couples getting wedding photos shot at Wadlington Park or Porter Park, it is not okay to shout things like, Pull them bangs down, youve got a five-head going on, Put a little tongue in that kiss, its classy! or Olympus? Real photogs shoot Canon.

It is not okay to put on a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis, go to a restaurant, and pretend to be the manager, walking from table to table asking guests about their meals and saying Well, thats servers fired! if they complain about anything.

It is not okay to greet your elders at the gym by saying, What up, Centrum Silver? They are all in better shape than you and could break you like fettuccine.

It is not okay to say, Sucker, you could totally get a new cat for $50 when someone tells you about spending hundreds on a vet bill.

When you see old acquaintances posting wedding anniversary photos online, it is not okay to comment, Jeez, if I knew your standards were that low, I would have asked you out.

When the movie theatre plays the turn off your cellphones and devices message before the film, it is not okay to jump to your feet and point to the other audience members and shout, That means you!

When someone compliments you on being a good listener, its not okay to say, Its because Im not really paying attention.

Carelessness is not an acceptable answer if a child asks you where babies come from.

While helpful, it is not socially acceptable to announce Youve got 10 seconds to get out of here, after that I make no promises, upon walking into a stall in the mens room.

Were all a little crazy. Its just how you manage it thats important.

Suggestions for further corrections to Jim Cooks behavior may be relayed to jcook@dothaneagle.com, where they will be given thoughtful consideration.

The rest is here:
Anti-affirmations, when needed - Dothan Eagle

A new study identifies which factors put young people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at high risk of being hospitalized for inpatient psychiatric careincluding factors both related and unrelated to ASD itself.

Children or teens with autism spectrum disorders often come to hospitals when behavioral episodes overwhelm the support that caregivers can provide at homebut resources at hospitals are sometimes limited, too, says Giulia Righi.

The demand is far greater than the number of clinicians, the number of programs, and the number of beds we have, says Righi, a research assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, who treats acute care patients with autism spectrum disorders.

The strongest risk factors are not necessarily associated with ASD.

One of the biggest issues is the availability of acute care services such as day hospital programs and inpatient units to support families when their childrens behaviors have escalated to the point of making a situation unsafe at home, at school, or sometimes both, she adds.

Identifying and addressing the factors that make hospitalization more likely, she says, could reduce such instances. Notably, only two of the risk factors identified in the study of patients with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)their severity of autism symptoms and the degree of their adaptive daily life functioningwere specific consequences of the disorder.

The strongest risk factorsdisrupted sleep, having a mood disorder, and living in a home with a single caregiverare not necessarily associated with ASD.

Our results underscore the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with ASD that addresses behavioral, psychological and psychiatric, adaptive, sleep, and medical functioning in order to decrease behavioral crises and the utilization of inpatient psychiatric services, Righi and coauthors write in the study published in theJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

The study made unique use of two large datasets with unusually rich information about patients, Righi says: the Autism Inpatient Collection (AIC), which includes data from childrens psychiatric hospitals in six states, and the Rhode Island Consortium for Autism Research and Treatment (RI-CART). Founded in 2013 by a coalition of local institutions including Brown, Bradley Hospital, and Women & Infants Hospital, RI-CART has grown to become a community of about 1,500 patients and their families.

In the research, Righi and her coauthors looked at the AIC records of 218 patients age 4 to 20 who were hospitalized and compared them with 255 age- and gender-matched members of RI-CART who were not hospitalized. By employing statistical analysis techniques, the researchers were able to isolate risk factors that were independently and significantly associated with the risk of hospitalization.

The strongest predictor was the presence of a mood disorder, which was associated with a seven-fold increase in the odds of hospitalization. The presence of sleep problems was the second strongest risk, more than doubling the odds. A high score on a standardized scale of autism symptom severity raised the odds a little bit, though still significantly.

Meanwhile, having a high score on a standardized scale of adaptive functioning, or basic life and coping skills, slightly but significantly lowered the odds of hospitalization. Finally, children and teens in households with married caregivers had only 0.4 times the odds of needing hospital care compared with comparable patients living with only one adult caregiver.

That last result, Righi says, is likely not about family structure or stability per se, but rather about resources available to cope with the care for a child with high needs. The hospitalization risk associated with mood and sleep disorders, meanwhile, points to the need to engage in a broad based and careful psychiatric evaluation of autism patients.

Our findings emphasize the utility of thorough assessment and treatment of mood and sleep conditions to decrease the likelihood of requiring psychiatric hospitalization, Righi and her coauthors write.

Righi notes that some factors she might have hypothesized would be independently significant were not, including the degree of intellectual disability or gastrointestinal problems.

Righi acknowledges that while research examined many factors, others that it didnt measure might also be important. Also, the study measured associations of risk factors with hospitalization but doesnt prove they were the cause of hospital visits.

But the study authors write that the risk factors they identified may be worth addressing before young autism patients reach the point where hospitalization becomes necessary.

In spite of its limitations, the study authors conclude, the present findings reveal indicators that may be useful for identifying children and adolescents at greater risk of psychiatric hospitalization as well as other potential targets for individual and family intervention.

The Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University helped to fund the study along with the Simons Foundation, the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Source: Brown University

Read the rest here:
5 factors raise hospitalization risk for kids with autism - Futurity: Research News

Modern science took off during the Enlightenment and changed the world. Science was differedfrom philosophy in that it did not presuppose how nature must be, as the early philosophers tended to do, but instead scientists got up out of their armchairs and asked questionsand gathered data about howuniverse actually behaved.Observation, measurement and experimentation became the sine qua non of the scientific enterprise, and this has continued into the present day.

Science has been so successful that philosophy has drifted into the background, so much so that some scientists (e.g., E. O. Wilson) have wondered if philosophy is even necessary. This love of empiricism was soaked up by scientific psychologists. In his popular Psych 101 text, David Myers states that the key word in psychologys definition is science and that psychology is less a set of findings than a way of asking and answering questions,meaning that psychologists approach their subject matter through the lens and methods of empirical science.

What is the problem with this?The problemthat emerges is thatthere is no general framework for understanding the concepts and categories under investigation. Consider physics. Prior to Newton, physics was a pre-paradigmatic mess, meaning that the concepts and categories that physicists were using were highly inconsistent. One of the great achievements of Newtonian science was the emergence of a shared definitional system that could be examined empirically. Notice the first part of this sentence. A shared definitional system. That is a key aspect of cumulative science. And it is something physics, chemistry and biology largely have achieved, at least at the core of the discipline. That is, they know generally what matter, energy, electrons, neutrons, genes, cells, evolution and so forth "mean".And is one of the decisive factors that makes themworthy of the name"science".

Psychology completelylacks a shared definitional system. There is NO agreement on terms like behavior, mind, cognition, self, consciousness, and the like. And, with its focus on empiricism, psychology will not achieve such an understanding because observation and experiment alone are not enough to define these terms. What is needed is a holistic map that allows investigators to consider the concepts and categories that are used for understanding.

The concepts and categories that one uses to map reality is ones metaphysical system. The Periodic Table of the Elements is a metaphysical system. It offers a map of the elements, lining them up into different categories. It is a map that is supported by empirical work, but the map itself is metaphysical in nature.

Psychology needs a metaphysical system for understanding as much as it needs empirical research. Without advances in achieving a shared metaphysical system, psychology will continue to exist as a collection of studies that offer interesting glimpses into the human condition, but not deep understanding.

The Tree of Knowledge System offers the field of psychology (and science in general) a metaphysical system from which to operate. Specifically, it offers a clear: (a) cosmology; (b) ontological map of key categories in nature; and (c) epistemological framework for knowledge acquisition.

In terms of cosmology, the ToK System offers a Big History view of the Universe. Consistent with empirical work on the early universe, the ToK System posits that we can understand the universe as an EnergyMatterSpaceTime grid that emerged from a (pure energy) singularity at the Big Bang, approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

In terms of ontology, in the ToK System, Energy is the ultimate substance common denominator. The observable universe is "Energy" in all its different forms (Matter is chunked, frozen energy).The ToK further posits that universe evolves as an unfolding wave of Energy-Information, which, consistent with the Big History formulation, can be placed on the dimensions of time and complexity.

Furthermore, the ToK System posits a general behavioral metaphysics. That is, the ontological essence of the universe can be well-described as change in object-field relationships over time (also characterized as the flow of Energy-Information).

Because the ToK posits the essence of the universe exists as an unfolding wave of Energy-Information, the ToK gives rise to a novel view of primary categories in nature. Specifically, it argues that there are four identifiable dimensions of complexity, which are depicted and labeled Matter, Life, Mind and Culture. These dimensions capture the behavior of 1) objects; 2)organisms; 3)animals and 4)humans. It proposes that these core categories are differentiated because each category behaves in a fundamentally novel way. That is, living objects behave qualitatively differently than inanimate objects. Animal objects behave qualitatively differently than other kinds of organisms. And human objects behave differently than other animals.

According to the ToK, these fundamental divisions exist because of the evolution of different systems of information processing. The storage and processing of information on the DNA molecule gives rise to fundamentally different kinds and levels of self-organization, such that the workings of a cell are qualitatively different than the behavior of organic molecules (and are represented as existing on a separate dimension of self-organization and require a different science, biology, to describe explain and predict).

The emergence of a nervous system in general and brain in particular gave rise to another information processing system that resulted in animal behavior and experiential consciousness, which are qualitatively different behavior patterns than are seen at the level of the cell or molecule. The Mind, Brain, and Behavior sciences (behavioral neuroscience, computational/cognitive neuroscience, comparative psychology, ethology, etc) describe this specificdimension of behavior. The ToK System characterizes these class of sciences basic psychology, although it should be acknowledged that, given the fields institutional history, perhaps this cluster should perhaps just be labeled thesciences ofMind, Brain, and Behavior.

Last, the emergence of language connected human minds together in novel way, giving rise to human culture and societal group organizations that are fundamentally different than is seen in the rest of the animal kingdom.

The general behavioral metaphysics of ToK System gives rise to a Period Table of Behavior, depicted here. A novel feature of the ToK categorization system of these concepts is that it positsthat nature must be divided into both levels (part, whole, group) AND dimensions of complexity (Matter/Objects, Life/Organisms, Mind/Animals, and Culture/Humans).

In terms of epistemology, the ToK System is both empirical and metaphysical, meaning that it emphasizes knowledge acquired through the senses and experiment and emphasizes the need to place such datainto a coherent conceptual framework. It is the union of empirical data with coherent conceptual mapping that provides the most justified knowledge. This can be referred to as a Metaphysical Empirical epistemological position.

The ToK System is consistent with modern physics, chemistry, and biology. It is particularly useful at the level of psychology because it provides a new way to define behavior in general. Behavior is the unfolding wave of Energy-Information. Thus, Matter and Life behave. Psychologists have been horribly confused about this point. The ToK makes the common sense pointthat psychologists are interested in a particular kind of behavior, specifically mental behaviors, which are represented by the third dimension of complexity on the ToK System.Mental behaviorsare the behaviors of the animal as a whole, mediated by the nervous system.In such a formulation, the mind refers to the functional information stored and processed by the nervous system. It is largely synonymous with the broad definition of cognition. Here is a map of the information processing architecture of the human mind.

In the ToK System, experiential consciousness is conceptualized as an embodied whole brain activity that gives rise to experiential awareness, and is well defined and studied empirically by frameworks such as global neuronal workspace theory.

Humans exhibit mental behavior like other animals, but there is an added dimension of complexity. Human language connected human minds, much like the internet connects individual computers (and much like the nervous system connected organ systems in a centralized control center). This results in a qualitative jump in behavioral complexity. Language, along with other technological developments like agriculture, historically set the stage for massive societal/cultural evolutionary changes. As society became more and more complex, large scale belief/justification systems emerged, such as religion, law, and science. Such systems are denoted as Culture with a capital C.

Human self-consciousness is a second order form of consciousness in which the experiential conscious system is reflected upon and narrated, either to ones self (private self-consciousness) or to others (public self-consciousness). The human self-consciousness system functions to build justification systems for ones actions in society. Thus, there are three key domains to human consciousness. An experiential theater of first person awareness, an I-Me second order private self-consciousness system and an I-Thou public self-consciousness system. Here is a map of human consciousness.

Psychologistsstronglyaspire fortheir discipline to be a "real" science. However, to accomplish this dream, psychologists need to realize that empiricism per se is not sufficient. If each researcher continues to operationalize the mind, behavior, cognition, consciousness, or whatever phenomena of interest they are investigating via their own (metaphysical) system of understanding, then, despite the best experiments, all we will have is conceptual mush because there will be no way to relate the findings systematically. The ultimate goal of the field is not to just conduct experiments. It is to build a system of cumulative knowledge about human mental behavior. This is why we need something akin to a Periodic Table of the Elements. The ToK offers the field a Periodic Table of Behavior.

View post:
A Periodic Table of Behavior for Psychology - Psychology Today (blog)

Invisibilia, Latin for "the invisible things," explores the invisible forces that shape human behavior things like ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions. In Season 3 premiering in June hosts Alix and Hanna will delve into the ways our concepts shape our worldviews and how we mold our own reality. You can hear the new season of InvisibiliaThursday nights in June at 8:00 PM, starting June 1, 2017.

Episode 1: Emotion(airing Thursday, June 1) How real and inevitable are our emotions? In the first stories of the new season, we're giving emotions a similar treatment to the one we gave to thoughts in the very first episode of Invisibilia (The Secret History of Thoughts). Where do our emotions come from? How seriously should we take them? Do they tell us truths about the world that should guide our behavior or should we be more skeptical about them? To explore these questions, we look at an unusual case in the American justice system. Then we follow a man as he discovers a new emotion that no one in western culture has experienced before.

Episode 2: Reality Check(airing Thursday, June 8) How real is our own reality? What happens when people can't agree on reality? Many in our increasingly polarized society confront this question every day. In this episode we meet Umpires in training who have a lock on what's really happening and visit a small town in Minnesota, called Eagle's Nest, that has a unique experience with the reality divide: some of the people in the town believe that wild black bears are gentle animals to be fed and befriended, while many others take a more traditional view on the human-bear relationship. This leads to conflict and, ultimately, a tragic death. Then we meet a young man who is taking extraordinary steps to break himself out of his own reality bubble.

Episode 3: The Other Self(airing Thursday, June 15) How does the culture help shape the reality each of us lives in? In this episode we explore a theory about prejudice that has taken hold in recent years: implicit bias. The rise of this concept was facilitated by the public release of a psychological test that can be done online called the Implicit Association Test, which purports to measure a secret, hidden part of ourselves that most of us can't directly access: our racism. Although embraced by many as an incredible breakthrough in our understanding of the human psyche, it has also received pushback from groups and individuals who don't believe that it is accurately measuring bias. In this story we follow the development of the test and theory of implicit bias and talk to several people who are trying to confront and change their other self.

Episode 4: True You(airing on Thursday, June 22) What realities should we entertain for ourselves? In this episode we pose one of our favorite questions to ask children: What do you want to be when you grow up? Many people have these visions of their future selves; fantasies of a smarter, better, richer, more successful version of the people they are today. In many ways these future selves motivate us, pushing us to improve ourselves as we seek to achieve our dreams. But they can also be dangerous, mocking us for everything we have failed to become. Our stories take us into the life of a Syrian orphan who forged a new identity and life despite all odds and we go to North Port, Florida, where the principal of a high school did something unusual, and pretty extreme, to try and help his students reach their full potential, in an experiment that went horribly wrong. Then we travel to another world entirely; the dream world, where a woman is seeking answers from within.

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New Season Three Of Invisibilia - Thursday Nights In June 2017 - Valley Public Radio

(Above) Tom Steyer introduces a panel during the National Clean Energy Summit 6.0 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on August 13, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Below) Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. Isaac Brekken/Getty Images and Gage Skidmore/Flickr/Creative Commons

On June 1, KPCC produced a live on-air special on President Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. We interviewed U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, R-Orange County, and investor and environmental philanthropist Tom Steyer about their views on the decision. Afterwards, we received many comments from listeners who felt we did not sufficiently challenge their claims. KPCC environment reporter Emily Guerin and correspondent Matt Bloom have this fact-check.

Rep. Dana RohrabacherI have no doubt that there are these climate cycles and we go through them and it's only been until recently that the politicians have tried to claim that we have to control people's behavior in order to control those climate cycles. And so I disagree with the theory that CO2, done by mankind, is a major cause for climate change.

KPCCNinety-seven percent of scientists are in agreement that human activities are responsible for global warming trends over the past 100 years. Most of the leading scientific organizations in the world have made public statements in support of this consensus, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and the National Academy of Sciences.

Rohrabacher I think the CEOs [Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Disney CEO Bob Igner, who both condemned the President's decision], they don't have to worry about the unemployment the Paris agreement would cause.

The notion that the Paris climate agreement will cause anything is misleading, because the agreement is voluntary. Each country pledges to cut its emissions by a certain amount by a certain year. Every five years, each country reviews where its at and explains why it has or has not hit its targets. But the targets are not legally enforceable. Vox has a great explainer on this topic.

RohrabacherThe people of the Paris accord were insisting on things like the ending of frequent flyer miles, because they see the airplanes just the worst violators.

KPCC cannot find any evidence that the Paris accord mentions ending frequent flyer miles.

Rohrabacher We've had the most incredible, for the last 30 years, how do you say, political campaign to set a mindset in people's consciousness that some way every time there's some problem with the climate and you see a cycle going through, that that in some way has to do with human behavior, and thus there's an excuse to control human behavior. But I know a lot of people have looked into it who have come to this conclusion, and I certainly have, that there is a small impact of the manmade CO2 on the climate.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of international scientists that regularly scrutinizes climate research, Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

RohrabacherAl Gore said global warming was going to dramatically increase the sea level. And of course that never happened.

According to the IPCC, sea level rose seven inches between 1901 and 2010. Not only is the sea level rising, but its rising faster than at any time over the past two thousand years. And the rate is only expected to increase in the future.

Tom SteyerI think the president is attempting to make a winner out of the fossil fuel industry when it's in decline.

KPCCSteyer lumps all fossil fuels together here, but its a bit more complicated than that. Coal production is in decline, in part due to the lower costs of natural gas generation and growing market share of wind and solar power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Last year, the EIA said natural gas provided 33 percent of U.S. energy generation while coals share fell to 32 percent, making 2016 the first year that natural gas-fired generation exceeded coal generation on an annual basis.

Meantime, EIA says production of both natural gas and oil in the U.S. is booming. Since 2012, the U.S. has pumped more oil and gas than any other country in the world.

SteyerI think what we've seen in the marketplace is that renewables plus storage is cheaper than fossil fuels.

When Steyer says "storage," he means the ability to store the electricity produced by solar or wind generation in massive batteries so that the energy is available later, when the wind is no longer blowing or it's cloudy.

The REN21 Renewables Global Futures Report from the United Nations says that renewables are now the least expensive option for new power generation in almost all countries. Butthe limitations of existing infrastructure are abarrier to further expansion.

Steyer It's unrealistic to think that the federal government doesn't have a role to play in our economy. For one thing, they fund an awful lot of research.

A lot of federal research and development grants jump start businesses here in Southern California. For example, the Department of Energys Advance Research Projects Agency-Energy, also known as ARPA-E, gave $2 million to Marine BioEnergy Inc. in La Caada to develop a system for turning kelp into fuel. Other federally funded programs include $1 million for UCLAs effort to build a better battery for electric vehicles. The Trump administration has signaled that it wants to eliminate ARPA-E funding next year.

SteyerBut the fact of the matter is number one, you have to acknowledge the problem (climate change) before you talk about solving it. And number two, we believe that solving it will create better jobs, better paying jobs, and will help the health of Americans. So we not only solve a huge threat to America but we make ourselves better off and healthier.

A 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Energy found that California was home to 40 percent of the country's solar energy jobs, a number that could rise as the state moves toward ambitious renewable energy goals. Since 2004, greenhouse gas emissions in California declined over nine percent while the state's GDP grew 28 percent, according to the California Air Resources Board.

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KPCC reporters fact-check Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Tom Steyer's climate claims - 89.3 KPCC

June 1 - To the Editor:

A number of years ago I was given a T-shirt from New Hampshire Healthy Kids, which I wore proudly. On the back of the shirt was written, "A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I live in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be a different because I was important in the life of a child."

In a hundred years, but most likely much sooner, children will find out that the world they live in is quite different from that of their ancestors, unfortunately, not in a positive way. The actions and policies of Donald Trump's administration, supported by their accomplices in Congress will negatively impact the lives of today's children, and their children for generations to come.

In the short-term, children will be greatly harmed by the health care, educational, nutritional, environmental, economic, anti-science, gun violence and diplomatic policies of Mr. Trump and the Republicans. In almost every department of the federal government, policies have been initiated that will negatively impact the health and safety of children, as well as their economic futures. Polices that limit nutritional support, reduces control of toxins in our environment, cutting scientific research, cutting health care coverage, promoting more guns, even in schools, and cutting drug addition treatment services, to name some of the most obvious. Trump's proposed budget reflects a philosophy that is anti-child and only serves the interest of the very wealthy.

However, the most dangerous act of Mr. Trump was his decision to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris Climate Accord. This action will place us in a class with the likes of Syria and Nicaragua, the only other non participants in the Paris Climate Accord. Trump and Republicans have long totally denied or have greatly minimized the reality and extent that human behavior is responsible for the warming of the planet, despite the overwhelming consensus of the world's scientific community that human behavior is causing climate change and immediate action is needed to slow the process. As one of the largest polluters in the world, the U.S. is doing huge harm to the planet by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. The message Trump is sending to our people and the world is that we do not believe in science, and we are wiling to gamble the future of our children and our planet for ideological political and destructive economic gains.

Obviously, Trump and his fellow Republicans care much more about the size of their bank accounts, the size of the house they live in and the type of car they drive, than what is important to the health and security of our children and future generations. Their short-term, immediate gratification self interest, "greed is good" mentality will have long-term destructive consequences for generations to follow. Shakespeare wrote, "The evil that men do oft lives after them, the good is interred with their bones." In Trump's and his allies case, their bones will be accompanied by little good, but the world's children will long suffer from the consequences of their evil actions that will live long after them. Their scornful place in history will be appropriately recorded.

Rich DiPentima

Portsmouth

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Policies are hurting our children - Foster's Daily Democrat