[Paleopsych] Re: Jaak--is the lab an antique tool?

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

I doubt that in my lifetime I'll figure out how to make replicable 
experiments in the world of mass emotion and mass culture.  The big problem is 
replicability.  

Culture and mass moods are different from one day to the next.  The global 
context that tweaks these moods is constantly changing.  New ideas, new 
technologies, new world views, and new relationships between people, between 
subcultures, between nations, and between supranational movements make the cultural 
context of one day very different from the cultural context of the day that 
follows.

One way to see the shifts of mass perception and mass emotion is to look at 
the news.  News hunts for anomalies, for differences.  It may return to the 
same story over and over again, but it looks for the change in that story.  Why?  
Because human curiosity demands change, shift, and the new.

This restlessness in itself is worthy of scientific study.  Those who are 
content will die without the antsiness of the restless.  Tom Seeley has shown 
this in his work with bees.

Neil Miller managed to extract predictable patterns from the news with his 
frustration-agression hypothesis.  He started with history and current 
events--lynchings in the south.  Then he hypothesized and demonstrated a relationship 
between lynchings and cotton prices.  Finally he predicted that lab rats 
subjected to frustration or pain would lash out with aggression.  Then he proved it.

My work is more in the nature of what Darwin did in South America.  I'm 
adventuring in the hope of tapping into experiences few folks in science gain 
access to.  I've learned how to make replicable predictions about how to build 
superstars.  But those have been based on a combination of reason, analysis, broad 
knowledge, and...the hard but essential part...gut level, highly-trained 
intuition.

At this point I should be working to express those gut-intuitions in words 
and in testable principles.  Alas, my gut and my reason predicts that a 
superstar of history, Osama bin Laden, may soon end the civilization that gives you 
and me the privilege of participating in the scientific process.

So I've been forced to try to stop the very thing my intuition and reason are 
predicting--the destruction of key cities in America by nuclear, chemical, 
and conventional means.

This is an experiment in history, but one that's not replicable or 
measurable.  The hypothesis it's based on is that there is a pecking order of groups, a 
pecking order of subcultures, a pecking order of nations, and a pecking order 
of civilizations.  Groups periodically battle for alpha position.  The 
sub-hypothesis is that groups battle not when they are deprived, but when they are 
flush with resources and see an opportunity to take over.  They judge their 
chances much as Franz de Waal's beta chimps judge the right moment to take their 
next incremental move toward the top.

A bunch of extraordinarily rich kids--Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and 
others like them--are trying to topple America, Russia, Western Civilization, 
and a clutch of principles they regard as Satanic.  They are out to eradicate 
the following Satanic notions:

1) that man can make his own constitution and laws
2) that man can separate himself from Koranic mandates by promoting a 
heretical notion that we call "freedom"
3) that man can promote what we call human rights
4) that man has a right to promote what we call gay rights
5) and that man has the right to speak ungodly and unislamic words in the 
name of a false principle we call freedom of speech.

This worldview takes our values and turns them into moral poisons.  It makes 
Islam the only religion that understands purity, and it makes us the epitome 
of corruption and evil.

In other words it uses ideas to turn the tables and make our group the dirt 
under the sole of humanity's feet.  It puts us on the bottom of the 
hierarchical totem pole of groups.  And it puts Islam on the top.

It is natural and just that those who understand purity, truth, god's laws, 
and god's justice should rule god's planet.  So a perceptual trick of hierarchy 
has set the stage for a power grab, a grab for the number one military and 
political position.

But this time round the weapons of a cumpulsory Holy War are no longer 
swords, they are the nuclear fires the Koran predicted would torture unbelievers.

There is science in here somewhere--a science of the forces of history.  But 
right now I have to do everything in my extremely limited power to make sure 
that my own predictions do not come true.

Onward--Howard

In a message dated 9/9/2004 4:00:07 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
jpankse at bgnet.bgsu.edu writes:
Dear Howard,

Interesting, but must make my response short since I am on a month long 
lecture tour in Europe, and jumping from one place to another every few 
days, often with inadequate time or computer links to keep up on e-
mails. 

I have no major disagreements with what you said. . . no question that 
laboratory research imposes enormous constraints on certain phenomena, 
while allowing others to be studies incisively with all the traditional 
controls. Whether the cultural world can really be used as a laboratory 
sremains to be seen.  I think here we may be really bouncing off the 
traditional world of science, where things really cannot be adequately 
measured and the precictions often are weak.  That is why cultural 
studies are usually in the humanities, giving us many useful and 
contentiously useless and often hard to comprehend perspectives.  

I am all ears for a more compelling approaches that have the earmarks 
of traditional science. . . replicability.  No question that current 
scientific methodology has enormous constraints in dealing with the 
ultra-complexities of many cultural and mental dynamics.  Just attended 
the 5th Neuro-Psychoanalytic congress in Rome where such complexties 
and difficulties where very evident.

Greetings from Cambridge,

Warm regards, 

Jaak  

---------Included Message----------
>Date: 4-Sep-2004 23:21:38 -0400
>From: <HowlBloom at aol.com>
>To: <jpankse at bgnet.bgsu.edu>
>Cc: <paleopsych at paleopsych.org>
>Subject: Jaak--is the lab an antique tool?
>
>You tossed me an intriguing challenge when you came over to the bloom 
>brownstone a year or two ago. I've been chewing on it, using it for 
mindfuel, ever 
>since.
>
>To make my theories count, you said, I had to be able to translate 
them into 
>predictions that could be proven or disproven in the lab.  Good 
point.  What 
>can't be operationalized and what can't be tested isn't science, right?
>
>So for three months I tried to figure out how to put my ideas into lab-
able 
>terms.  That isn't easy.  These concepts were seeded by 15 years of 
study in 
>theoretical physics, microbiology, psychology, religion, history, and 
the arts.  
>
>Many of the questions were tweaked and shaded by riding the rails and 
>adventuring. Then came the real deal--20 years of fieldwork in popular 
culture, in 
>visual art and music, in making superstars, in creating cultural 
whirlwinds 
>where there were only breezes before, from making hurricanes of 
passion in the 
>real world where a film like Purple Rain by Prince becomes a cultural 
legacy, 
>where it becomes the most popular makeout film for hormonally-driven 
teens who 
>were born long after the day I had to save Purple Rain from being 
canned by 
>Warner Brothers.
>
>In the world of pop culture you do have to demonstrate science's 
basics, 
>prediction and control.  You are forced to form hypotheses, then make 
predictions 
>about the next career move for Michael Jackson, Billy Idol, Billy 
Joel, Bob 
>Marley, or Joan Jett.  An artist's lifetime work depends on whether 
your 
>prediction turns out true or false. The gifts or curses that reach the 
public depend 
>on your observation, your insight, and your accuracy. 
>
>But your hypotheses are often formed by your gut, your intellect, and 
your 
>intuition all working in parallel.  You can't necessarily explain the 
things you 
>suspect, much less the things you know.
>
>The subject matter you're studying is huge...far too huge to squeeze 
into the 
>lab.  
>
>So how DO we test the making of a culture storm in a lab on a 
university 
>campus in Boston, New York, Berkeley, or Bowling Green?  The answer, 
it finally 
>dawned on me was not in trying to shrink hurricanes of mass emotion 
down to 
>something that can be replicated in a-pencil-and-paper test given to 
60 students 
>in exchange for credit toward their psychology requirements.
>
>The problem you posed may not be in the nature of ideas generated in 
the 
>field, ideas generated by observational and participatory science.  
The problem 
>may be in the lab itself.  
>
>It could be that the lab is the Oldowan stone tool of science.  It has 
been a 
>great tool for the last 120 years or so.  I could never have 
formulated my 
>ideas without what the lab-work of Neil Miller and his proteges gave 
me in mouse 
>research.  I could never have done it without the work that you have 
given me 
>with your laughing, tickled, and play-deprived mice.  I could never 
have done 
>it without the lab-work neuroscientist like Ed Taub gave me in his 
work with 
>chimpanzees.
>
>But, Jaak, the lab is not the solution, it's the problem.  The lab is 
too 
>limited to catch most of what human behavior is about.  It is too 
limited to 
>catch the mas passions that make a Hitler, an Osama Bin Laden, a 
Beethoven, a 
>Shakespeare, a Winston Churchill, or an FDR.  It is too limited to 
assess whether 
>the CIA and the Mossad destroyed the world trade center or whether al 
qaeda 
>did it.  If al qaida was the culprit, the lab is too limited to tell 
us what to 
>do next--what to do to defend our civilization from collapse.
>
>The lab is even too limited to tell us whether our civilization is 
worth 
>fighting for.
>
>Are these questions science must address?  You bet.  So the real 
question is 
>this.  How do we make a genuine science of human passions, of mass 
emotions, 
>of mass perceptions, of popular culture, of high culture, of politics, 
and of 
>history.  What new tool can we invent that takes us beyond the lab?
>
>One clue is this.  There are several real-world measures of mass moods 
and 
>mass perceptions.  One is the stock market.  Another is the real world 
>interaction that takes place in IMs, videogames, role playing games, 
and chat rooms.  
>In the cyberworld, every word and every nuance is recorded.  All one 
needs is 
>permission from the participants to use the mass of data. 
>
>Another advantage of the cyberworld: folks from all over the world 
kick in.  
>An online group like the one devoted to the Philosophy of History is 
based in 
>Siberia and reaches out to Europe, the United States, South America, 
and 
>Australia.  
>
>There are many ways to slice and splice the data.  There are many ways 
to 
>quantify, if quantification is what you want.
>
>But it's critical to realize that some of the greatest distortions in 
the 
>sciences of the psyche have been created by the physics-and-equation-
envy that 
>seize many of us and remove us from the real world.  
>
>If quality is what you want (and you, in particular, often do) not 
just 
>measurement, then getting our sciences out of the lab and into the 
real world is 
>critical.
>
>The cyberworld may just be a convenient starting point.
>
>My job, it turns out, is very different.  After 20 years at the top of 
the 
>star-making business, 20 years of gut-hypotheses, it's time to do 
something very 
>difficult.  It's time to translate what my muscles and my viscera know 
into 
>words.
>
>And it's time to continue to practice the process of shaping human 
perception 
>in the real world so an Osama doesn't outdo us by understanding the 
human 
>passions far better than we in science do.
>
>It's time to practice prediction and control in the world of 
tomorrow's 
>history.
>
>Howard
>----------
>Howard Bloom
>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the 
Forces of 
>History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang 
to the 
>21st Century
>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; 
Faculty 
>Member, The Graduate Institute
>www.howardbloom.net
>www.bigbangtango.net
>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: 
Epic 
>of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; 
founder: The 
>Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, 
American 
>Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological 
Society, Academy 
>of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 
International 
>Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; 
executive 
>editor -- New Paradigm book series.
>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
>www.paleopsych.org
>for two chapters from 
>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History, 
>see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the 
Big Bang 
>to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
>
>
---------End of Included Message----------

----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty 
Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy 
of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive 
editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang 
to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
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