Author: ABN

A survey to understand the experience of living with developmental prosopagnosia (face-blindness)

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

This mixed methods study examined the real-world experiences of living with developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness), a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that severely affects the ability to recognise faces despite otherwise normal vision, IQ and memory. Twenty-nine UK based adults with confirmed face recognition difficulties completed an online survey describing and quantifying their experiences of living with poor face recognition. Although the majority (62%) of participants reported being able to recognise their immediate family, e.g., parent, partner, or child, strikingly 35% reported being unable to reliably recognise their immediate family members out of context. Even fewer (45%), reported always being able to recognise their three closest friends when encountering them unexpectedly, highlighting that DP commonly affects the recognition of highly familiar faces with whom individuals have close emotional relationships. Furthermore, participants who reported being able or unable to recognise their immediate family showed no significant difference in objective face memory ability. More than two thirds of participants (65.5%) reported being able to recognise fewer than 10 familiar faces (with the most common response being none), far below typical abilities. Thematic framework analysis highlighted how low public, professional, and employer awareness of developmental prosopagnosia [DP] presented challenges across multiple domains including seeking diagnosis, social and family relationships and workplaces. Driven largely by concerns about negative evaluation by others, most participants employed a range of highly effortful, though error prone, strategies to disguise and compensate for their face recognition difficulties. Some of the strategies described may help explain why many individuals can perform within typical norms on laboratory face processing tests despite their clear difficulties in everyday life and highlight the need for ecologically valid tests. Participants’ highest priorities for future research were improved awareness of developmental prosopagnosia and interventions to improve their face recognition ability.

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I have this condition, but can come to recognize people sort of OK after interacting with them 3-7 times. Two points: 1) many people who have prosopagnosia do not know it; and 2) people with a singular appearance or who wear something distinctive, like the same hat all the time, are much easier for people with DP to recognize. I did not fully understand my own condition until well into middle age, and even then my understanding was not so good. One aspect of this condition I have not seen recognized is it greatly disturbs initial socialization with colleagues, neighbors, or potential friends. For example, my actual, innate internal warmth toward others does not activate on time toward people I have only interacted with a few times. A friendly exchange today somehow has been lost in me a week later when I see that same person again. Even if they tell me who they are and are sympathetic to prosopagnosia, an important piece of human connection has been lost in me; it as if I were talking to them for the first time again. This can easily be misunderstood by the other person as I do not like them or am cold or moody, which I am not. More people are aware of face-blindness than in the past, but the subtle social overtones of the condition—the lag in normal progress toward camaraderie, for example—may not be clear to most, including even those who have this condition. If many of your best friends, whom you took to quickly, have unique features or dress unusually, these may be signs you have DP. ABN

Game theory and interpersonal relations

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Game theory uses models to understand how people interact under predetermined conditions or rules.

The end result of any particular model is called its “equilibrium.” Equilibrium implies no one will change their input if external conditions remain the same.

One way to make a game theory model is to reason backwards from the equilibrium you want. To keep it simple, there are two players.

Let’s say we want an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life. Here is a hypothesis: an equilibrium like that should also result in psychological optimization, psychological well-being for both players.

To achieve that equilibrium, my game model will be based on the following rules:

  1. communication will be as honest as possible
  2. communication will be as clear as possible
  3. all acts of communication (within reason) will be subject to clarification, revision, correction, and explication to the point (within reason) that there is no misunderstanding and whatever ambiguity remains is reduced to its lowest practical level

To do this, players will:

  1. focus on the smallest practical units of communication because error and ambiguity (which often leads to error) frequently begin at this level; this level includes: words, phrases, gestures, tone of voice, expressions, gasps, laughter, grunts, and so on; anything that communicates; all pertinent semiotics
  2. correcting error at the above level, which we will call the micro-level, ensures that small mistakes do not lead to large mistakes; it also teaches players how to correct errors at meso and macro levels of communication
  3. since human minds are limited in what they know and can communicate, and if players are diligent in following the above rules, players will steadily become more familiar with each other; how they speak, hear, think, what their references are, their values, beliefs, and so on
  4. if they continue to maintain these practices, they will build on their mutual familiarity, eventually achieving an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life

I have played this game with my partner for over ten years and can attest that it has worked even better than we had hoped.

Not only have we achieved an interpersonal equilibrium that is honest, clear, and open to the dynamic reality of life, but also what we hypothesized has come to pass: this equilibrium has also resulted in what feels to us to be psychological optimization and psychological well-being for both of us.

The rules to our game can be found here: FIML.

Note that initially FIML will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium, whatever that may be. It cannot be otherwise. Note also that the rules of FIML will help you find or create a much better equilibrium.

If FIML is undertaken in a spirit of exploration, creativity, and fun, it will tend to self-generate or self-catalyze many new insights into your psychologies and how you interact with each other.

The ultimate FIML equilibrium is a dynamic one that keeps both partners open to the dynamic reality of life. With little or no “content” of its own, FIML rules allow partners to adapt to or create any “reality” they want.

Once understood, FIML is pretty much only difficult in the very beginning because in the beginning it will upset your normal interpersonal equilibrium. By doing FIML, you are choosing to change your normal equilibrium to a more efficient one.

Nicotine use widespread in Trump administration

~ ABN ~ 4 Comments

Donald Trump‘s administration may be addicted. 

The consuming craving: nicotine pouches from the popular tobacco-free product Zyn, an oral substance that poses itself as a healthier alternative than chewing tobacco. 

The sleek disk-like containers are ubiquitous throughout the administration. Employees across the various departments have been partaking, noting the pouches’ mentally invigorating effects. 

From the White House to the Department of Commerce and beyond, staffers can be seen carrying the tins close for whenever they need a dose.

They are so popular that even Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr swears by them. 

‘Nicotine pouches are probably the safest way to consume nicotine,’ he told a Brazilian radio host last year. 

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Ha, I love it! I myself am a big fan of reasonable use of nicotine. If Big Pharma came up with a pill that confers the benefits nicotine does, it would be splashed across all media and tens of millions of Americans would start using it. You can do your own research and find that nicotine prevents dementia and Alzheimer’s, sharpens the mind and even wards off viruses and bacterial pathogens. I do not use Zyn, but do use a 7mg nicotine patch fairly often. I also occasionally use a small piece of organic tobacco leaf, not so much as chew but rather as nibble. Ground organic tobacco mixed with high quality cannabinoids (emphasis on high quality, 3rd-party lab tested cannabinoids, especially CBG and CBD) can be used as occasional snuff. This mixture has helped me a great deal with a case of mild vertigo that would not go away. I see tobacco as a natural herb, which if used wisely, does much more good than harm. (BTW, I had my first exposure to cigarettes when I was four years old and loved it.) Tobacco and nicotine are not for everyone. I am not advising anyone to do anything. Definitely not promoting smoking anything. Just saying what has worked for me. ABN

LIVE With Victor Marx: What Did He Know About 9/10? | Candace Ep 341

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UPDATE: This is an interesting episode for several reasons. For non-Christians, it provides insights into both Catholicism and Evangelical, or Born Again, Christianity. With regard to Candace, it displays her bad side more than any other episode I have watched. She is a very good talker, and like all very good talkers can use speech with aggressive, devastating effect. For me, she went too far with Marx, who relies on emotional appeal more than rhetorical skill. He did come off as arrogant, especially in the beginning, but settled down considerably after about ten minutes. At that point, he sort of got the moral or histrionic upper hand over Candace, imo. He describes real experiences, does not appear to be a child abuser or trafficker and was reasonably polite toward Candace. Another side of this interview is it shows how powerful crowd-sourcing has become and how interesting people like Marx and Owens can be. I am a fan of Candace’s work and have praised her many times. I know very little about Marx. He also appears to be an interesting character but I doubt I will pay much attention to him unless something new happens. Lastly, from a Buddhist POV, I have to say both of these people embody a deep power which only Christians appear to have. They are both doing a lot; they are both forceful and generous personalities; they are both very much in this world, and also deeply immersed in their versions of spirituality. Most Buddhists are more withdrawn, even avoidant, and most of us do not do stuff nearly as passionately and with such perseverance as Christians. ABN

COVID changed my worldview permanently — Kenny Carmody

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Nearly six years after COVID began, not one world leader has seriously examined what the vaccines did to the people they harmed.

Not one investigation. Not one parliamentary inquiry with genuine teeth. Not one head of state who has stood at a podium and said, we owe the injured an honest accounting and we are going to provide it.

The silence is universal. And it is coordinated in a way that individual negligence cannot explain.

This is the observation that matters most to me, more than any document, more than any leaked communication, more than any specific piece of evidence. Because the behaviour of every major government simultaneously tells you something that the individual pieces cannot tell you alone.

Genuine public health emergencies produce genuine review. What worked. What did not. Who was harmed and how. That is what accountable institutions do.

What we have instead is a wall.

And on the other side of that wall, the vaccine injured, still without diagnostic codes, still without compensation, still without the basic acknowledgment that what happened to them was real.

While Long COVID is promoted heavily by the same governments and the same media that will not ask a single honest question about the injections. The parallel presentations. The overlapping symptoms. The convenient framing that points everywhere except at the product.

The universal silence of world leaders on vaccine injury is not the behaviour of people who have nothing to hide.

It is the behaviour of people who have collectively decided that the cost of honesty exceeds the cost of continued silence.

That decision is itself the answer.

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Politicians represent the ruling elite or are part of it. The ruling elite manages and exploits the populations politicians pretend to represent. It shows in everything they do. The covid vax was a bioweapon that yielded mind-control and a further weakening of the populations politicians pretend to represent. ABN

Trump Walked Into China and Killed Kissinger’s Thucydides Trap

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

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The analysis presented in the above video is the best alternative to the notion that Trump has gone crazy and is destroying USA and the world… I dislike making predictions because they turn thoughtful analyses into gambling, so I will not speculate about the future of the world. But if Trump is doing what Kokinda says, which appears to be the case, I hope he succeeds, and it appears he may very well do so. I hope readers of this site will at least listen to the argument above. ABN

Continue reading “Trump Walked Into China and Killed Kissinger’s Thucydides Trap” →