Mindframe

W. Edwards Deming might not be a household name, but his fingerprints are virtually all over the stuff in your house. That is, assuming you own anything made since the late 1960’s.  Born on October 14, 1900, Deming is considered by many to be the father of modern manufacturing principle. Particularly in Japan, he is hailed as a hero. After World War II, Deming traveled to the war-torn country as a statistician to help rebuild the economy. There, he developed his 14 key principles . These 14 commandments of modern manufacturing helped turn Japan into the global powerhouse it is today. Central to Deming’s philosophy is the notion that, when solving a problem, it is first necessary to identify the root cause. On the surface, it doesn't seem too groundbreaking. (But then again, neither does washing your hands before surgery and that only caught on in the twentieth century.) F ailing to follow Deming's root cause rule has caused incalculable cost ...

So what is intelligence, or more importantly, how does it work? The U.S. federal government recently announced it has budgeted some 3 billion dollars to mapping the human brain in hopes of answering these kinds of questions. (I would be happy to know why I struggle with driving directions.) The larger question for the scientific world is: how does the brain make sense of the trillions of data bits thrown at it everyday? Many scientists subscribe to the theory that once data goes into the brain and gets processed, we can measure intelligence as subsequent behavioral output.   The idea being, the more complicated behavior, the more demonstrated intelligence.   For example, the fact that I can read a newspaper suggests I am more intelligent than my dog, who can fetch the newspaper but couldn’t make it past the first headline. Famed mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing took this concept to its logical conclusion: something is intelligent the more it behaves like ...

  Let's talk about diet. 
No, I'm not going to lecture you on your food choices this week. This blog entry is designed to make everybody feel a little crummy (I mean enlightened), regardless of the contents of your fridge. This is a story about what you're feeding to your brain--your information diet, if you will. In The Information Diet: a case for conscious consumption, Clay Johnson likens the explosion of information technoligies to the industrialization of the food business. “Just as food companies learned that if they want to sell a lot of cheap calories, they should pack them with salt, fat, and sugar — the stuff that people crave — media companies learned that affirmation sells a lot better than information. Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they’re right?” In other words, we consume at the mercy of our confirmation bias.   Johnson’s premise is that, despite the hype, we don’t suffer from information overlo...

The relationship between your basal ganglia and your working memory is a little like the one between Tonto and the Lone Ranger. [Editor's note: presumably minus the old-timey racism?] The basal ganglia acts the role of faithful servant. How does it serve? It converts patterns into little bits of neural code (your brain’s version of personal software programming--or more accurately, wetware programming) to ensure that a particular habit lives on in your subconscious. This frees up your working memory from having to remember and execute a particular task. Faithful servitude aside, however, your basal ganglia doesn't seem to have a horse in the race as far as your mental or physical health is concerned. It takes no side in whether the habituation it programs is good or bad. Balancing your checkbook every evening, practicing the piano five hours a week, staying up until four in the morning, all feels the same to your basal ganglia. What’s interesting is ...

Suppose you are a visitor from another planet. You’ve been sent down to Earth to observe human shopping behavior.   You find yourself marveling at a female shopper who has just discovered some sort of strange garment store. (Tragically, Earthlings have yet to master changing their skin patterns with the power of their minds.) You notice the woman pausing at the doorway, scanning the shop's contents for several seconds before declaring to her husband, who is at least two steps behind her, “There is nothing in there for me.” The spouse, in the middle of what can only be described as a dead man's shuffle, groans, “That’s impossible--how could you possibly know that?” She dismisses his comment and turns on her heel, in search of another store. You don’t have to be a space alien to wonder what's going on. What you might not realize is that, much to her husband’s surprise, neuroscientists would suggest her assessment is probably correct. How does it work? Esse...