How do we think of other's thoughts?

 

 "I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."

                                       Alan Greenspan

 

 

Recently I watched a very interesting Ted talk about the ability of our brain to read, understand and judge others’ minds. Rebecca Saxe is a researcher and a teacher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Saxe (2009) presents her research on the discovery of special brain region for thinking about other people’s thoughts. She explains that some of the differences between people, in how we judge others, can be explained by differences in their brain system. She assumes that all people have mind and are interested to know what others want or believe. It reminded me about an American romantic comedy “What women want” directed by Nancy Meyer, Helen Hunt and Mel Gibson. In reality we are not able to hear the thoughts of other people as Mel Gibson does; therefore we try to understand them by moral judgment.

According to Saxe our brain is made up of pieces, brain cells that we share with all other animals, with monkeys, mice, etc. While putting them together in a particular network we get the capacity of the brain to think about minds which is called Right Temporo-Parietal Junction (Right TPJ). It is above and behind our right ear and it is not used for solving any other kinds of logical problems. So, the job of Saxe’s field of cognitive neuroscience is to try to understand how you can put together simple units, simple messages over space and time, in a network, and get that amazing capacity to think about minds. Saxe also notes that although human adults are really good at understanding others’ minds, we weren't always that way; it takes children a long time to reach to that level. Saxe presents her interview made with three to seven year old children and adults showing that children think differently while using Right TPJ. Then she put children into the brain scanner and observed what is going on in their brain as they develop this ability to think about other people's thoughts. So the first thing they saw in children was that the same brain region, the Right TPJ, is being used while children are thinking about other people, but it's not quite like the adult brain, whereas, this brain region is almost completely specialized in the adults.  But of course, people differ from one another in how good they are at thinking of others’ minds, how often they do it and how accurately.

 

So the question was, could differences among adults in how they think about other people's thoughts be explained in terms of differences in this brain region? And Saxe explains that over the course of childhood and even into adolescence, both the cognitive system, our mind's ability to think about other minds, and the brain system that supports it are continuing, slowly, to develop.

Saxe’s research was quite interesting and on point when it comes to other peoples thoughts and brain differences. For me the most amazing part of the speech was the notion of morality in the three to seven year old child during the interview. I noticed two interesting things: First, the event must have a cause and next, one needs a hypothesis to explain the event or the nature of the cause, no matter how irrational that hypothesis is.

Doodlers, unite !

I am sure that all pupils, students and even businesspeople often make masterpieces like in the pictures; the reasons and stimulus are different: the person is just scribbling while thinking of other things, the person is simultaneously drawing the thoughts in her/his mind, the person is sketching a plan for later actions, etc. That process may be helpful, very important or just a waste of time depending on the reason, time and place. However, Sunni Brown claims that it is an efficient way of learning regardless of the circumstance and the reason.

Sunni Brown is co-author of GameStorming: A Playbook for Rule-Breakers, Innovators and Change Makers. She is the leader of the Doodle  Revolution – trying to expose the myth that doodling is an obsession. Sunni states that doodling moves people into higher levels of visual literacy. Her second book, The Doodle Revolution, will be published in 2012. 
Brown (2011) assumes that people are averse to doodling at schools, universities, workplace, and meetings: it is perceived as inappropriate time waster. Maybe the reason is that there is no definite understanding of what is doodling. Brown found out that in 17^th a doodle meant a fool, in 18^th century it became a verb and was understood as to mock, taunt, deride, and nowadays, doodling means making meaningless marks, doing something of little value or just doing nothing.  According to Oxford English Dictionary, to doodle means to do spontaneous marks to help you think. But, again, It is perceived as an inappropriate, not serious practice: they say that a person was caught, discovered while doodling in an important meeting. However, brown assures that doodling is a magic tool to supplement you to learn, remember, and digest the information.

Actually I agree with Brown in some sense, because I use doodling as well when the information is too wordy, messy or difficult to understand and remember.  But I did not exactly catch her idea of encouraging simple scribbling or similar time-wasters during class time. I had an insight that she was just presenting her personal opinion on doodling, because no reference to data sources, surveys or any kind of basis for such claims was presented. However, being more confident in its statements and tying them to real examples, Brown can succeed in her Doodle Revolution, as doodling indeed has great importance when used timely and in the presence of necessity. 

What is the right thing to do?

     Everyday people encounter with the following type of questions that have no definite answers: Is torture ever justified? Would you steal a drug that your child needs to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Can a lie be justified? How much is one human life worth? Can one decide on a person’s life? 

     Last year I and my classmates were trying to understand the logic of moral judgment and decision making with our instructor of Business Ethics in ATC. Ethics is the feeling of a person about what is right and what is wrong. It is actually a very interesting subject or a philosophy that helps you understand what you already know. I liked the subject very much and I was very glad finding a related podcast in www.ted.com. In his “What is the right thing to do?” talk Michael Sandel explains moral principles to his students of what is right or wrong, good or bad. Michael J. Sandel is a professor at Harvard University, where he has taught political philosophy since 1980. His has published five books and the next will be published in spring 2012. Sandel is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations.

     During this episode Sandel (2009) presented very interesting cases that help students to understand the difference between categorical and consequential moral reasoning. For instance, imagine a situation when you are the driver of a trolley and you have jumped the tracks. Now you have two alternatives: you have to decide whether to kill one person and save the lives of five persons or vice versa. If you will sacrifice that person’s life for the sake of five lives, then this is an example of consequential moral reasoning, which locates morality in the consequences of an act. But if you think that every person has the right to live even if you will save five persons’ life with the well being of their families by killing just one person, then it is an example of categorical moral reasoning, which locates morality in certain duties and rights regardless of consequences. The other scenario was as follows: you are standing on the bridge beside a man and a high-speed trolley is coming  to the direction of five people. You can save the lives of those five people by pushing the man beside you to the trolley. Will you do that? This is a very hard question, because in this case you are just a bystander and you can just not take the responsibility in you. But the moral is the same - sacrifice one life for the sake of five lives.

     Over one hour I was enjoying the video. Sandel's clear pronunciation and pure presentation of the matter were delighting. He describes cases and welcomes students to present their point of view about the morality of the issue. This interactive question-answer procedure helps students to comprehent the material. Approximately one thousand students are sitting in the Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre and listening to him with great admiration. Therefore it is no surprise that Sandel became one of the most popular teachers in the world due to his undergraduate course on Justice. I also dreamed of taking that course with him and fortunately it is not far from reality. Jutice is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online - www.JusticeHarvard.org - and on public television.

Do we really have too few businesswomen?

  I am sure that all girls have ever heard such a thing in their life – “You are a girl, it’s not your place; you should be in the kitchen laying a table”. This is what we call gender discrimination and I think that we and the next generation will not hear this sentence any more. Let’s see what Sheryl Sandberg thinks.

  Sandberg (2010) presents a speech about why we have too few businesswomen. She has been the chief operating officer of Facebook since 2008, prior to which she has been the vice president of Global Online sales and Operations at Google. Moreover, before joining Facebook she was considering becoming a senior executive for the Washington Post Company. She is a successful businesswoman and obviously has the dignity for that. While imagining these positions and the responsibilities tied to them, we may think that women are not in a so bad situation as the topic implies. However, Sheryl thinks that women are not reaching the top of any profession anywhere in the world. She believes that women are dropping out of the Fortune 500 CEO jobs or other equivalent positions and there are a few reasons for that:

•  women underestimate their abilities
•  women do not negotiate for themselves in the workforce
•  women attribute their success to external factors

  She is right in a sense that there is still the influence of historical mentality about women being the housekeeper and the men bringing the money. Consequently we need time to get out of that shackles. Nowadays the picture is completely different and will be much better after a few years. For already a decade women are very active in terms of their careers and I have many bright examples of successful businesswomen. Not going too far, I am working in a company the director of which is a woman for already 15 years. We have three departments two of which are headed by women. Two weeks ago we had an order of writing business plan for a Policlinic the director of which is again a very successful businesswoman. One might think that they are extremes, but such examples are too many to be extremes. This is Armenia, which is a country with people still having conventional mentality. I guess in more developed countries women do not stand down. Moreover, if you open the door of any classroom in any University, 60-70% of the students are girls and if not all of them, but at least 10% will succeed in their careers.

  According to Sheryl, women do not succeed because they do not believe themselves, they do not think that they deserve promotion and they don’t even understand their own success. The fact that Sheryl stated and I think is more likely to be the major reason of women escape from workforce is the family and child. Statistics shows that women of higher positions either do not have children or have not more than one. On the contrary higher positions do not affect the number of children that men have. As Sheryl notes this is because men do not share the housework with women. I think that this is true especially for Armenia.  

  Overall I liked the podcast; the topic was relevant to the image of Sandberg as a woman on the peak of her career and giving women an advice to be self-confident.  

                                                           

                                                            You choose !