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Alyssa Lau

Intimate distances: William James' introspection, Buddhist mindfulness, and experientia... - 0 views

www.sciencedirect.com.esf.idm.oclc.org/...S0732118X11000699

shared by Alyssa Lau on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • Alyssa Lau
      Alyssa Lau on 07 Oct 13
       
      The idea of Mindfulness has grown in the last 60 years, it is use as an act of "therapy" rather than an act of "religion" Example of Traditional vs western ideals of mindfulness
  • approached as a therapy, to be studied and evaluated using established scientific methods, rather than as a religion
  • ‘Psychology
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Western Buddhism can be understood as a “culture of awakening,”
  • rather than a religion
  • To “wake up” existentially involves acting upon four “ennobling” tasks,
  • embrace dukkha (suffering, pain or unsatisfactoriness); let go of craving for things
  • nvolves caring for oneself and others.
  • he great risk of the engagement with mindfulness in the West, whether through Buddhist Studies or Psychology, is that it is taken as an object of study, to be written about, rather than as something to do or be.
  • Introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined – it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. Every one agrees that we there discover states of consciousness (p. 185; emphasis in original).
hannah wheeler

Nature connectedness: Associations with well-being and mindfulness - 0 views

www.sciencedirect.com/...S0191886911001711

scientific paper mindfulness nature

shared by hannah wheeler on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
    • hannah wheeler
      hannah wheeler on 07 Oct 13
       
      Scholarly source
Alyssa Lau

West Meets East - 0 views

www.psychotherapynetworker.org/...1363-west-meets-east

shared by Alyssa Lau on 07 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The new centers often were staffed by Western teachers,
  • many of whom had first encountered meditation in the Peace Corps and later trained in monastic settings in the East
  • Creating a new wisdom tradition
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • None of us wanted ou
  • supervisors or clinical teammates to think of us as having unresolved infantile longings to return to a state of oceanic oneness
  • how radically meditation practices could transform the mind. Therapists of the day typically viewed meditation as either a fading hippie pursuit or a useful means of relaxation, but of little additional valu
  • mindfulness meditation was making inroads into the medical community.
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn, who, beginning in 1979, had adapted ancient Buddhist and yogic practices to create Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester.
  • MBSR was used primarily to augment the treatment of stress-related medical disorders, and was of particular interest to clinicians working in behavioral medicine.
  • The first use of mindfulness in psychotherapy to capture widespread attention among clinicians was Marsha Linehan’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), introduced in the early 1990s to treat suicidal individuals with complex disorders for which little else seemed to work.
  • he central dialectic in DBT is the tension between acceptance and change.
  • In searching for a means of helping therapists and their clients to experience what she called “radical acceptance”—fully embracing helplessness, terror, losses, and other painful facts of life
  • Because she empirically demonstrated that DBT could help challenging and volatile patients, the method rapidly became popular
  • he next big development came from Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, cognitive psychologists in the tradition of Aaron Beck, who were working on treatments for depression in the 1990s
  • They came across mindfulness practice through Jon Kabat-Zinn and MBSR
  • Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combined elements of an 8-week MBSR course with cognitive therapy interventions designed to help patients gain perspective on their thinking and not identify with their depressive thou
  • ghts.
  • This standardized, 8-week course couched meditation practices in Western, scientific terms
  • “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment
  • Steven Hayes and his colleagues had
  • radical philosophical orientation that they called “relational frame theory.”
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which they describe as a psy
  • chological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies, together with commitment and behavior change strategies, to increase psychological flexibility
  • ACT doesn’t teach many formal meditation practices, but uses imagery, metaphor, and brief exercises to cultivate awareness of the present, loosen identification with thought, and increase openness to the experience of moment-to-moment change
  • ACT encourages clients to identify and pursue activities that give life meaning.
kyle kirby

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math | Politics News | Rolling Stone - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...s-terrifying-new-math-20120719

shared by kyle kirby on 17 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States.
  • That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere
  • the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record."
    • Gabriel Kerbs
      Gabriel Kerbs on 18 Oct 13
       
      Odd occurrences are becoming the norm.  The earth is talking to us, warning  us
  • it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees,
    • Brett Sherman
      Brett Sherman on 18 Oct 13
       
      Rain in the middle of a desert at 109 degrees, that's insane! If that's not evidence I don't know what is.
  • the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 would have marked the culmination of the global fight to slow a changing climat
  • George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend.
  • I can say with some confidence that we're losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.
    • Gabriel Kerbs
      Gabriel Kerbs on 18 Oct 13
       
      This is because global warming hasn't physically moved us yet... just wait till the first city gets engulfed
  • you just need to do a little mat
    • Gabriel Kerbs
      Gabriel Kerbs on 18 Oct 13
       
      Quantitative data has power
  • Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing.
  • Sir Nicholas Stern of Britain, called the "most important gathering since the Second World War
    • Aadil Khetani
      Aadil Khetani on 18 Oct 13
       
      The issue of global warming is considered so high and people need to notice what the problem is and identify the true source. 
  • "This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we get a new and better one. If ever."
  • Neither China nor the United States, which between them are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, was prepared to offer dramatic concessions, and so the conference drifted aimlessly for two weeks until world leaders jetted in for the final day
    • Aadil Khetani
      Aadil Khetani on 18 Oct 13
       
      The US and the Chinese must take responsibility in resolving the issue or providing an effective solution. 
  • COPENHAGEN: THE MUNICH OF OUR TIMES?
  • "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius."
  • "we agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required... so as to hold the increase in global temperature below two degrees Celsius."
  • about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit – the accord ratified positions taken earlier in 2009 by the G8, and the so-called Major Economies Forum.
    • Gabriel Kerbs
      Gabriel Kerbs on 18 Oct 13
       
      2 degrees seems small, but is actually a drastic change for the environment
  • So far, we've raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has caused far more damage than most scientists expected
    • Aadil Khetani
      Aadil Khetani on 18 Oct 13
       
      What was the number of years that the number increased the most and around which time period did it occur? What happens if the number goes over 2?
  • that two degrees is far too lenient a target.
  • All told, 167 countries responsible for more than 87 percent of the world's carbon emissions have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord, endorsing the two-degree target.
    • Alex S
      Alex S on 17 Oct 13
       
      great way to start of with some number. but i can see how briing up all the warmer weather can set the stage.
    • Alex S
      Alex S on 17 Oct 13
       
      this shows how there are still leaders who dont put environment/climate change at the top of their prioritys
    • Alex S
      Alex S on 17 Oct 13
       
      does this # of 2 degree C change with the times (like temp inflation) or will it always be the benchmark?
  • no one paid it much attention,
  • prescription for long-term disaster.
  • Its purely voluntary agreements committed no one to anything, and even if countries signaled their intentions to cut carbon emissions, there was no enforcement mechanism
    • kyle kirby
      kyle kirby on 18 Oct 13
       
      I find it ludicrous that countries can just say they will do something to help the betterment of the world, then just do the exact opposite when it helps the bottom line.
kurt stavenhagen

When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans? - 0 views

nymag.com/...-hot-for-humans-annotated.html

shared by kurt stavenhagen on 04 Oct 17 - No Cached
    • kurt stavenhagen
      kurt stavenhagen on 04 Oct 17
       
      rhetoric!
    • kurt stavenhagen
      kurt stavenhagen on 04 Oct 17
       
      Does plausibility work for this topic? Sharing of fear that paralyzes?
  • set of propositions that animated the project from the start: that the public does not appreciate the scale of climate risk; that this is in part because we have not spent enough time contemplating the scarier half of the distribution curve of possibilities, especially its brutal long tail, or the risks beyond sea-level rise; that there is journalistic and public-interest value in spreading the news from the scientific community, no matter how unnerving it may be; and that, when it comes to the challenge of climate change, public complacency is a far, far bigger problem than widespread fatalism — that many, many more people are not scared enough than are already “too scared.” In fact, I don’t even understand what “too scared” would mean. The science says climate change threatens nearly every aspect of human life on this planet, and that inaction will hasten the problems. In that context, I don’t think it’s a slur to call an article, or its writer, alarmist. I’ll accept that characterization. We should be alarmed.
  • But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough
kurt stavenhagen

Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds | The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...hy-facts-dont-change-our-minds

shared by kurt stavenhagen on 25 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • toilets, zippers, and cylinder locks. They were then asked to write detailed, step-by-step explanations of how the devices work, and to rate their understanding again. Apparently, the effort revealed to the students their own ignorance, because their self-assessments dropped
  • illusion of explanatory depth,
  • People believe that they know way more than they actually do
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • no sharp boundary between one person’s ideas and knowledge” and “those of other members” of the group
  • favor (or oppose) an immigration ban without knowing what I’m talking about
  • The farther off base they were about the geography, the more likely they were to favor military intervention
  • As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,”
  • If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless.
  • much detail as they could, the impacts of implementing each one. Most people at this point ran into trouble
  • pent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views.
  • science is as a system that corrects for people’s natural inclinations
  • by researchers who have no motive to confirm them. And this, it could be argued, is why the system has proved so successful.
  • field may be dominated by squabbles, but, in the end, the methodology prevails
  • experience genuine pleasure—a rush of dopamine—when processing information that supports their beliefs. “It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong,
  • At this point, something curious happened. The students in the high-score group said that they thought they had, in fact, done quite well—significantly better than the average student—even though, as they’d just been told, they had zero grounds for believing this
  • Once formed,” the researchers observed dryly, “impressions are remarkably perseverant.”
  • Even after the evidence “for their beliefs has been totally refuted, people fail to make appropriate revisions in those beliefs,” the researchers noted
  • that reasonable-seeming people are often totally irrational
  • “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them.
  • Those who’d started out pro-capital punishment were now even more in favor of it; those who’d opposed it were even more hostile.
  • Such a mouse, “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner.
  • we’re quite adept at spotting the weaknesses. Almost invariably, the positions we’re blind about are our own.
  • ewer than fifteen per cent changed their minds in step two.
  • getting screwed by the other members of our group.
  • There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments
  • roviding people with accurate information doesn’t seem to help; they simply discount it. Appealing to their emotions may work better, but doing so is obviously antithetical to the goal of promoting sound science. “The challenge that remains,” they write toward the end of their book, “is to figure out how to address the tendencies that lead to false scientific belief.
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