Nuremberg Code principles for human experimentation
- Required is the voluntary, well-informed, understanding consent of the human subject in a full legal capacity.
- The experiment should aim at positive results for society that cannot be procured in some other way.
- It should be based on previous knowledge (e.g., an expectation derived from animal experiments) that justifies the experiment.
- The experiment should be set up in a way that avoids unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injuries.
- It should not be conducted when there is any reason to believe that it implies a risk of death or disabling injury.
- The risks of the experiment should be in proportion to (that is, not exceed) the expected humanitarian benefits.
- Preparations and facilities must be provided that adequately protect the subjects against the experiment’s risks.
- The staff who conduct or take part in the experiment must be fully trained and scientifically qualified.
- The human subjects must be free to immediately quit the experiment at any point when they feel physically or mentally unable to go on.
- Likewise, the medical staff must stop the experiment at any point when they observe that continuation would be dangerous.
Psychology is a self-generating, auto-catalytic system
Human psychology is self-generated in the sense that it takes ideas and energy from other people and then interprets and builds on that.
Our cognitive systems self-generate with what we learn from life and other humans—language, ideas, philosophies, behaviors, emotions, almost everything.
Auto-catalytic systems are systems that are able to catalyze their own production. You learn something, combine it with something else and then auto-catalyze that combination into something new, something that is unique to you.
The problem with being a self-generating, auto-catalytic system is you need a way to unify your system. It has to make sense to you, has to have meaning. Part of it is copy-paste from other people and part of it is DIY. It’s hard to do.
Human games make it easier. Games are things we do with our psychological systems. Many games unify our systems for a short period of time. Sports, cooking, reading, TV, etc. provide “meaning” or systemic focus long enough for most of us to experience a sense of contentment or purpose. Religions, careers, philosophies, etc. are meta-unifying games that provide unification or meaning at meta levels and for longer periods of time.
A big problem here is as self-generating systems we make mistakes, and many of them compound.
Self-generating auto-catalytic systems are complex and difficult to manage. They can induce terrible misery if they fail to bring unity and meaning to themselves.
How signals form in the brain
Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour have discovered that:
“…nerve cells collect evidence for the alternative choices as minute voltage changes across their surface. These changes build up over time until they reach a hair-trigger point, at which the nerve cell produces a large electrical impulse. This impulse signals that a decision has been reached.” (Source)
Lead author of the study behind these conclusions, Dr. Lukas Groschner, says:
“We have discovered a simple physical basis for a cognitive process.
“Our work suggests that there is an important analogue component to cognition. People sometimes compare the brain to a digital machine operating with sequences of impulses and silences. But much of what looks like silence is actually taken up by analogue computation.” (Ibid)
The study, which can be found here, worked with a small number of nerve cells important for decision-making in fruit flies. One can imagine that similar processes occur in human brains.
If decisions are based on electrical charges that “build up over time” as analog computations, many aspects of thought become clearer. Indecision, abrupt decision, and mistakes as well as rational analysis all show signs of a mounting and wavering of voltage prior to decisive action. Frequently, the deciding “voltage” is an emotional burst or a bias.
It seems clear to me that decisions are built up over time (experience, training, rumination, unconscious accumulations) before they are made, often seemingly spontaneously.
As humans, we are particularly susceptible to a bias toward familiar or authoritative human semiotics. This is why propaganda works so well or why Google can swing an election without consumers of its products being aware they have been manipulated.
That humans copy and follow other humans is the basis of sociology and psychology. Culture is much like a Google algorithm that all but forces us to “decide” between limited options that have been “built up” over time by social inertia or manipulated by people who control social semiotics or the algorithms that select the ones we see.
Interpersonal pragmatics in real-time
Interpersonal pragmatics are absolutely fundamental to human psychology.
Understanding interpersonal pragmatics in real-time is the holy grail of human psychology because there is nothing else that reveals as well how human psychology actually functions.
Pragmatics “is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.” It is the study of why we say what we say when we say it and how that is understood by others and vice-versa.
Real-time interpersonal pragmatics are highly idiosyncratic. This means that psychological generalizations can be and often are seriously misleading when applied to real-time interpersonal pragmatics. And this means that you will never figure out your own psychology or anyone else’s if you do not have a method for understanding real-time interpersonal pragmatics.
One day AI will help us with this task and when that day comes, our understanding of human psychology will change completely. After that day, people in future will have a very hard time understanding how and why we are so limited today in our comprehension of human psychology. They will see that, yes, we functioned, but Lord what a mess we make of it!
The way to understand interpersonal pragmatics in real-time today is FIML and I do not believe there is any other way. At least I have not found one after over ten years of searching.
The following comments are for readers who already practice FIML and/or those who are contemplating doing it or just getting started:
- It is very important to fully grasp the difference between knowing that real-time communication details are extremely revealing of something else (how your mind functions) and becoming lost in the emotions of those details.
- It is very good to be passionate about wanting to understand the minutiae of real-time communication but very bad to get embroiled in the emotions of those small, originating exchanges.
- FIML works with small bits of data because only these can be reliable isolated and viewed analytically.
- To lose perspective and become emotionally embroiled in these bits of data because they are being focused on (for FIML reasons) is to waste time and create unnecessary problems. Don’t do it. Be smarter than that.
Technology and human transformation
Most fundamental changes in human societies happen due to technological advances.
The next big change in human psychology will come from inexpensive, very sensitive brain scans.
These scans will show millions people in real-time how their brains are actually behaving and reacting. Presently unnoticed or concealed twinges of emotion will become conspicuously visible on a screen or within a hologram that surrounds our heads.
People will be able to use this technology in the company of a computer program or with a human partner. A good AI program will use brain-scan information to reveal much about us. We will learn stuff about how we actually function that very few are aware of today.
Having this knowledge will change the way we understand ourselves and our interactions with others. Rather than work almost exclusively with the vague stories we tell ourselves, we will be able to see how our brains (and bodies) actually function in real time.
The difference between our stories and how we actually function is very great. Great enough to completely change the landscape of what we now think of as human psychology.
There already exist inexpensive EEG rigs that are sort of good at measuring moods and honesty. There are also expensive ones with more capacity. Within a decade or two, these devices will be much better. An accurate lie-detector will surely be included in the consumer package.
This technology will rewrite our understanding of human psychology and remake the ways we think of human society today. If you want to get a head start on the future, learn how to do FIML now.
