Did you know the subject of Rolling Stones song Mother's Little Helper is....diazepam?
"...doctor please, some more of these!"
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Mother's Little Helper
Psychiatry fact for today:
Did you know the subject of Rolling Stones song Mother's Little Helper is....diazepam?
"...doctor please, some more of these!"
Did you know the subject of Rolling Stones song Mother's Little Helper is....diazepam?
"...doctor please, some more of these!"
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
What I've Been Reading
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman.
I rarely read a book that profoundly changes the way I think about the world, but this is one of them. I first read it a few months ago and was so impressed I reread it the next month. Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, summarizes the previous decades of his research on cognitive biases, focusing on why we think the way think, how we as humans systematically make cognitive errors and why, and what can be done.
Essentially, Kahneman believes that the human brain can be heuristically divided into two parts, "fast" brain and "slow" brain. "Fast" brain is automatic; our impulses, snap judgments, sex/food/preservation desires are all in this domain. The "slow" brain is "lazy" and represents our analytic, logical, rationalist part; it acts as an error checker on the "fast" part. However, "slow" brain is energy intensive (uses lots of glucose) and very lazy; without conscious effort, we don't often use our "slow" brain to check the vast majority of things we assume, believe, or do. David Hume wrote that "reason is the slave of the passions" (or something similar, too lazy to find exact quote), and Kahneman makes a very compelling case that this is indeed true.
Psychology is somewhat of a joke field, plagued (perhaps incurably) by junk research methodology, but this book represents the best that the field has to offer from the last 50 years.
The Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch
Excellent book. Narcissism is the primary pathology of America, and Lasch details how narcissism at the individual level aggregates into societal manifestations in government, law, medicine, education, and religion. He unfortunately uses worthless Freudian vocabulary, but I strongly agree with his analysis.
For those non-psych folks, narcissism is essentially a disorder of shame. The narcissistic individual, deep down, is an ashamed little boy/girl who has a limited sense of self. He spends his life seeking external validation. It is easy to identify this as the primary American pathology.
The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl Popper.
Pretty hard to summarize this book in a paragraph and I'm too lazy to do more than a paragraph. Essentially, Plato is a wicked, wicked man for introducing to the world the idea that social engineering is possible and that philosopher kings have a right and duty to better society via social engineering via their superior "general factors" (my phrase). The 'intellectual' tyrants of the past few hundred years have all justified their actions by referencing thinkers who all derive from Plato. Popper also really doesn't Hegel. A good, dense read for those who wonder how the modern world came to be.
The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
Interesting pop psychology book. Essentially, the collective response of a crowd will always be more accurate than a smaller group of very high IQ individuals, but if and only if the question is sufficiently general. A crowd will not be more accurate than a small group of mathematicians in responding how to solve a differential equation. Crowds will be more accurate that experts in any test of general knowledge.
All of Malcolm Gladwell's Books - Malcolm Gladwell
He writes well. His books are pop psychology at their worst (best?). Gladwell's reasoning amounts to thus: _Interesting Anecdote!_ -> Universal Generalization About Human Behavior! Don't waste time with him.
I rarely read a book that profoundly changes the way I think about the world, but this is one of them. I first read it a few months ago and was so impressed I reread it the next month. Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, summarizes the previous decades of his research on cognitive biases, focusing on why we think the way think, how we as humans systematically make cognitive errors and why, and what can be done.
Essentially, Kahneman believes that the human brain can be heuristically divided into two parts, "fast" brain and "slow" brain. "Fast" brain is automatic; our impulses, snap judgments, sex/food/preservation desires are all in this domain. The "slow" brain is "lazy" and represents our analytic, logical, rationalist part; it acts as an error checker on the "fast" part. However, "slow" brain is energy intensive (uses lots of glucose) and very lazy; without conscious effort, we don't often use our "slow" brain to check the vast majority of things we assume, believe, or do. David Hume wrote that "reason is the slave of the passions" (or something similar, too lazy to find exact quote), and Kahneman makes a very compelling case that this is indeed true.
Psychology is somewhat of a joke field, plagued (perhaps incurably) by junk research methodology, but this book represents the best that the field has to offer from the last 50 years.
The Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch
Excellent book. Narcissism is the primary pathology of America, and Lasch details how narcissism at the individual level aggregates into societal manifestations in government, law, medicine, education, and religion. He unfortunately uses worthless Freudian vocabulary, but I strongly agree with his analysis.
For those non-psych folks, narcissism is essentially a disorder of shame. The narcissistic individual, deep down, is an ashamed little boy/girl who has a limited sense of self. He spends his life seeking external validation. It is easy to identify this as the primary American pathology.
The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl Popper.
Pretty hard to summarize this book in a paragraph and I'm too lazy to do more than a paragraph. Essentially, Plato is a wicked, wicked man for introducing to the world the idea that social engineering is possible and that philosopher kings have a right and duty to better society via social engineering via their superior "general factors" (my phrase). The 'intellectual' tyrants of the past few hundred years have all justified their actions by referencing thinkers who all derive from Plato. Popper also really doesn't Hegel. A good, dense read for those who wonder how the modern world came to be.
The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
Interesting pop psychology book. Essentially, the collective response of a crowd will always be more accurate than a smaller group of very high IQ individuals, but if and only if the question is sufficiently general. A crowd will not be more accurate than a small group of mathematicians in responding how to solve a differential equation. Crowds will be more accurate that experts in any test of general knowledge.
All of Malcolm Gladwell's Books - Malcolm Gladwell
He writes well. His books are pop psychology at their worst (best?). Gladwell's reasoning amounts to thus: _Interesting Anecdote!_ -> Universal Generalization About Human Behavior! Don't waste time with him.
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