Science
Mindwandering = Unhappiness?
06.03.13 Filed in: Opinion
If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a big follower of TED talks (TED.com) - lots of extremely interesting stuff to be learned there.
Recently, I came across a talk by Matt Killingsworth. He’s put together an “app” to measure happiness using a smartphone - users get “pinged” several times per day and answer a couple of simple questions to get a quantification of their happiness and also wether they were mind-wandering at the time.
In his talk, he presents a graph which which he demonstrates that “people are substantially less happy” when they are mind-wandering. The visual of this bar graph is quite striking, however - as happens often with graphs - one needs to read “between the bars” to get the whole picture. If you look on the left side, you’ll see the scale, which doesn’t go from 0 to 100% as would be expected, but from 52 to 68%. Why? Only Mr. Killingsworth knows for sure.
It certainly produces an initial “wow, look at the difference” effect visually - and if you don’t look at the scale, that will stick with you. Once you do realize the graph scale, however, the difference between the happiness level of focussed vs. mind-wandering is reduced to 66 vs. 57%… that’s 9% difference, certainly not “substantial” in my book. In fact, as with every set of scientific data, there is certain error factor that needs to be calculated into any experiment. With a subjective answer system like the app used here, an error of 10% seems pretty reasonable - which would indicate that his point that mind-wandering causes unhappiness is completely moot!
Later on, there is another bar graph that shows the correlation between happiness when focussed, and three types of mind-wandering: positive, neutral and negative. According to Mr. Killingsworth, the data seems to implicate that any type of mind-wandering leads to unhappiness - from the data, though, the level of happiness when focussed is identical to the level when doing positive mind-wandering (65%)… I’m wondering wether he has an issue interpreting his own data?
Another thing that bothers the scientific side of me is the selected group: only owners of smartphones with mobile internet access can take part in the study. This limits the selection of participants to a reduced segment of the population. Wether or not someone with a smartphone is more or less happy, or does more or less mind-wandering, is beyond me - but I’m quite certain it affects the outcome.
While the idea behind the experiment is great and certainly the topic is well worth researching, Mr. Killingsworth’s interpretation of that data is, in my opinion, quite lacking.
Recently, I came across a talk by Matt Killingsworth. He’s put together an “app” to measure happiness using a smartphone - users get “pinged” several times per day and answer a couple of simple questions to get a quantification of their happiness and also wether they were mind-wandering at the time.
In his talk, he presents a graph which which he demonstrates that “people are substantially less happy” when they are mind-wandering. The visual of this bar graph is quite striking, however - as happens often with graphs - one needs to read “between the bars” to get the whole picture. If you look on the left side, you’ll see the scale, which doesn’t go from 0 to 100% as would be expected, but from 52 to 68%. Why? Only Mr. Killingsworth knows for sure.
It certainly produces an initial “wow, look at the difference” effect visually - and if you don’t look at the scale, that will stick with you. Once you do realize the graph scale, however, the difference between the happiness level of focussed vs. mind-wandering is reduced to 66 vs. 57%… that’s 9% difference, certainly not “substantial” in my book. In fact, as with every set of scientific data, there is certain error factor that needs to be calculated into any experiment. With a subjective answer system like the app used here, an error of 10% seems pretty reasonable - which would indicate that his point that mind-wandering causes unhappiness is completely moot!
Later on, there is another bar graph that shows the correlation between happiness when focussed, and three types of mind-wandering: positive, neutral and negative. According to Mr. Killingsworth, the data seems to implicate that any type of mind-wandering leads to unhappiness - from the data, though, the level of happiness when focussed is identical to the level when doing positive mind-wandering (65%)… I’m wondering wether he has an issue interpreting his own data?
Another thing that bothers the scientific side of me is the selected group: only owners of smartphones with mobile internet access can take part in the study. This limits the selection of participants to a reduced segment of the population. Wether or not someone with a smartphone is more or less happy, or does more or less mind-wandering, is beyond me - but I’m quite certain it affects the outcome.
While the idea behind the experiment is great and certainly the topic is well worth researching, Mr. Killingsworth’s interpretation of that data is, in my opinion, quite lacking.
Comments
Advantages of a Machine Brain
13.05.11 Filed in: Opinion
There is a lot of hype right now about Ray Kurzweil’s vision of the machine intelligence and the pending Singularity.
Wether or not humans will begin to implant digital contraptions in their bodies and in their brains is up to the future - at this point, we can only speculate. Though I have to say, the idea of accessing the internet directly from my brain - without having to use a computer or tablet - is a compelling thought.
Personally, I believe the bigger issue at hand - and one we have to seriously consider very soon - is this: Given the ability to interconnect at „will”, and imparted with the objective to achieve a particular goal, machines with partial „thinking” capability will always outdo their human creators. Wether or not they are able to generate higher „thinking-throughput” is probably only secondary - it is their ability to network instantly and widely that will give them the advantage.
Anyone with even average social skills will realize, no later than 35 years of age, that the social / business network is half of the rent. Without knowing „whom to call for what”, even a highly skilled knowledge worker would soon hit uncrossable boundaries.
Give your iPad 15 the verbal command to research a particular subject, and what will it do? It will instantly thread many parallel searches on the Web to retrieve this information. It will also contact all the devices it „knows”, either because you have „paired it” with a particular device (perhaps, because that device belongs to your history professor) or because it has „met” that device in previous searches. This is called „collaboration”, something humans have done since day one, albeit not particularly efficiently.
The „root of all evil” isn’t money, in my humble opinion, it is the complexity of trying to convey your ideas, dreams and wishes in a verbal language that restrains you from communicating efficiently. Add to that the interpretability of language (again, because it is imprecise) and you get? Bad communication.
Not so with digital devices. Sure, at this point they are restricted to protocols that human beings conceived and constructed for them. Communication seems to work pretty well using these „languages” already. Give it a few more years, and you may find protocols that are constructed dynamically through „learning by doing” within the grid.
The only thing that represents a limiting factor - once this state of being has been achieved - is the throughput of the Web in the future. We already have throughput issues in certain places, as much of the traffic on the Internet is already not generated by humans anymore, but by machine2machine communication and data spiders.
And finally, we retain one important function that, at least for now, is completely in our hands: we can always pull the plug if it gets too „hot”.
Wether or not humans will begin to implant digital contraptions in their bodies and in their brains is up to the future - at this point, we can only speculate. Though I have to say, the idea of accessing the internet directly from my brain - without having to use a computer or tablet - is a compelling thought.
Personally, I believe the bigger issue at hand - and one we have to seriously consider very soon - is this: Given the ability to interconnect at „will”, and imparted with the objective to achieve a particular goal, machines with partial „thinking” capability will always outdo their human creators. Wether or not they are able to generate higher „thinking-throughput” is probably only secondary - it is their ability to network instantly and widely that will give them the advantage.
Anyone with even average social skills will realize, no later than 35 years of age, that the social / business network is half of the rent. Without knowing „whom to call for what”, even a highly skilled knowledge worker would soon hit uncrossable boundaries.
Give your iPad 15 the verbal command to research a particular subject, and what will it do? It will instantly thread many parallel searches on the Web to retrieve this information. It will also contact all the devices it „knows”, either because you have „paired it” with a particular device (perhaps, because that device belongs to your history professor) or because it has „met” that device in previous searches. This is called „collaboration”, something humans have done since day one, albeit not particularly efficiently.
The „root of all evil” isn’t money, in my humble opinion, it is the complexity of trying to convey your ideas, dreams and wishes in a verbal language that restrains you from communicating efficiently. Add to that the interpretability of language (again, because it is imprecise) and you get? Bad communication.
Not so with digital devices. Sure, at this point they are restricted to protocols that human beings conceived and constructed for them. Communication seems to work pretty well using these „languages” already. Give it a few more years, and you may find protocols that are constructed dynamically through „learning by doing” within the grid.
The only thing that represents a limiting factor - once this state of being has been achieved - is the throughput of the Web in the future. We already have throughput issues in certain places, as much of the traffic on the Internet is already not generated by humans anymore, but by machine2machine communication and data spiders.
And finally, we retain one important function that, at least for now, is completely in our hands: we can always pull the plug if it gets too „hot”.
Glass Sponges
14.03.11 Filed in: Opinion
Yesterday evening, I watched a program I had recorded off ARTE a few days ago, about Biomimikry. While the concept of biomimikry isn’t particularly new (i.e. looking at how nature does things to make human engineering better), it is now, apparently, taking off not only in engineering, but also in architecture.
But what amazed me most is a section of the film that talked about glass sponges - creatures living in depths of up to 1.000 meters that produce an endoskeleton made of pure glass. The fascinating thing about this glass is: it seems by far more durable than any glass made my humans.
How on earth do you fabricate glass without a kiln? Well, that is certainly something scientists are now trying to find out. Interestingly, according to the film, about 5% of all CO2 emissions produced by mankind stem from the production of glass and cement. Being able to produce glass without the heat would really make the material that much more „green”.
The film goes on about the special structure, in which the sponge puts his skeleton together. It looks a bit like a hair curler with diagonal strands every four squares or so, along with little „U”-shaped things jutting out that connect some of the crossings. When scientists did stress-testing on constructions made of plastic that increased in complexity from that simple hair curler (basically a tube made of longitudinal strands and regularly crossing rings) to the actual structure of the sponge’s skeleton, they realized a giant increase in resistance to crushing.
The sponge also uses the optical characteristics of the skeletal glass to transmit light. It has some very special glass structures at the base, where luminescent bacteria grow, and distributes this light throughout its body so that it actually glows in the complete blackness of the deep sea.
But what amazed me most is a section of the film that talked about glass sponges - creatures living in depths of up to 1.000 meters that produce an endoskeleton made of pure glass. The fascinating thing about this glass is: it seems by far more durable than any glass made my humans.
How on earth do you fabricate glass without a kiln? Well, that is certainly something scientists are now trying to find out. Interestingly, according to the film, about 5% of all CO2 emissions produced by mankind stem from the production of glass and cement. Being able to produce glass without the heat would really make the material that much more „green”.
The film goes on about the special structure, in which the sponge puts his skeleton together. It looks a bit like a hair curler with diagonal strands every four squares or so, along with little „U”-shaped things jutting out that connect some of the crossings. When scientists did stress-testing on constructions made of plastic that increased in complexity from that simple hair curler (basically a tube made of longitudinal strands and regularly crossing rings) to the actual structure of the sponge’s skeleton, they realized a giant increase in resistance to crushing.
The sponge also uses the optical characteristics of the skeletal glass to transmit light. It has some very special glass structures at the base, where luminescent bacteria grow, and distributes this light throughout its body so that it actually glows in the complete blackness of the deep sea.
Podcast Recommendation: Quirks and Quarks - Science on your iPod
02.07.09 Filed in: Review
Publisher: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
Moderator: Bob McDonald
Language: English
URL: www.cbc.ca/quirks
This is one of my all-time favorites.
If you’re interested in Science, then you need to subscribe to Quirks and Quarks.
The host interviews scientists (and sometimes book authors) on their very current discoveries.
Topics are very varied, covering all forms of Science.
Moderator: Bob McDonald
Language: English
URL: www.cbc.ca/quirks
This is one of my all-time favorites.
If you’re interested in Science, then you need to subscribe to Quirks and Quarks.
The host interviews scientists (and sometimes book authors) on their very current discoveries.
Topics are very varied, covering all forms of Science.