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<DIV><FONT size=2> Right on! Another more tangible
illustration of the limits of the laboratory, is psychiatric practice. We
shrinks pride ourselves on being "scientific", but what we do is scientific only
to a point. Controlled research simply can't test psychiatric treatment as
actually practiced in the field. Research paradigms apply manualized
procedures to populations carefully selected as likely to respond to the
procedures, and sure enough, a significant number do. But I'm a VA
outpatient psychiatrist who has to treate incredibly complex disturbed
veterans with the gamut of disorders and terribly limited resources. We
must do the opposite of controlled research. We look for and utilize
whatever we can find that might help. Among hundreds or more variables
that we're constantly scrutinizing, we seek focal points that we can isolate,
change, and which when changed will lead to cascading changes throughout the
system. These occur at many levels. Sometimes great results accrue,
sometimes not. And when they do, what really led to the positive
changes? Further complicating the matter, is that I'm not the only
"therapist". Others, like AA members, specialty group leaders, friends,
and family members, are concurrently interacting -- all may have powerful
impact. And let's not forget the role of patients
themselves. How well they do varies with how much they're doing for
themselves, far more than what I do to or for them. If so, then sometimes
I can help the most by motivating self-help beyond what patients initially feel
capable. This has led me toward a "strategic self-therapy" model,
challenging patients to define and redefine their personal identities.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2> Now, how do I take stock and try to figure
out what really worked and what didn't? I'm nearing retirement and trying
to assess my results collectively. I've deliberately avoided setting up
controls or using numerical rating scales as I go, because if I did, I would no
longer be doing what I do, but biasing my treatment into something different;
and it's what I actually do that I really want to assess. I'm
currently trying to develop a strategy of rating multiple potentially
relevant variables, 0-4+, all complex in themselves, using the
clinical record as a data base, getting independent raters to test for
inter-rater reliability, and then do cross-correlations for pattern
recognition. It's incredibly difficult, and may prove futile. But I
am convinced, like Howard, that radically new methods will be needed to assess
what happens in the human sciences, health sciences, arts, politics -- those
things that actually matter the most. Hang on, Howard. Don't accept
the "scientific" adage that "untestable" means unscientific. Rather, let's
look for creative new ways to study complex systems. I wish I had a good
answer. l'm really struggling with this issue right now.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><B>From:</B> <A title=HowlBloom@aol.com
href="mailto:HowlBloom@aol.com">HowlBloom@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu
href="mailto:jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu">jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=paleopsych@paleopsych.org
href="mailto:paleopsych@paleopsych.org">paleopsych@paleopsych.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, September 04, 2004 10:21
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Paleopsych] Jaak--is the lab an
antique tool?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So for three months I tried to figure out how to put my ideas int
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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The subject matter you're studying is huge...far too huge
to squeeze into the lab. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The lab is even too limited to tell us whether our civilization is worth
fighting for.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>There are many ways to slice and splice the data. There are many
ways to quantify, if quantification is what you want.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The cyberworld may just be a convenient starting point.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>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.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It's time to practice prediction and control in the world of tomorrow's
history.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Howard</DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 PTSIZE="10"
FAMILY="SANSSERIF">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>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<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York
University; Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>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.<BR>For
information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see:
www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV>
<P>
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