How Cultural Narratives Influence Perception

This kind of silly video is a great example of how 'framing' an idea can really affect how people then perceive that idea.

Narratives are constructed not only about ideas, but about products, political parties, minority groups in society. Parents construct a narrative about their kids, and that narrative affects their kids' perception of themselves.

Basically, the stories we tell influence our thinking as much as or more than the subjects of the stories do.

Like last week, we're going to practice using our critical faculties and intuition. As we watch the video together, we'll share the thoughts that occur to us, and create the discussion together.

Video Transcript:
Here are definitive scientific facts that prove that cats are better than dogs.
Here's a picture of a dog after a grueling and demeaning day working the pole at a local strip club.
Here's a picture of the cat after only five minutes, at the same club.

Coding a Better Government

Today we're going to try a little experiment. We'll watch the video together, and I'll keep my hand hovering over the 'pause' button. The instant anyone has a question or comment we'll stop the video and talk about what they have to say.

8/25 討論逐字稿 Competition

We discussed "Competition".

This corresponds to how I think society should work.
How so?
People are supposedly natural-born communitarians, based on scientists studying how people arrange resources.
How do people arrange them?
People who major in economics tend to try to monopolize all the resources.
What were some of the proofs that people were communitarian by nature?
They gave children 100 dollars. They tended to equally divide into two parts.
And the economists were like here, give me all the money and I’ll invest it for you!
The economics students would take 98% instead of 50/50.
98?
Or 99.
Wow.

Professional or Human Being? Can we be both?

For today's discussion there are three ideas to explore. The first area has come out of our 8/21 discussion of Aliens vs. Robots:

"Professionalism is about controlling emotions to appropriate expression.
Emotional expression is sometimes a burden on other people, and at the same time sometimes it's the most respectful thing."

For the following questions, I want to understand two things:
What's the standard cultural opinion as you understand it?
Do you have a different opinion on this than the standard cultural opinion?

When is emotional expression 'drama', and when is it 'authentic'?
When is emotional expression 'appropriate'? When is it not appropriate?
When someone can't avoid emotional expression in an 'inappropriate' situation, what is the person's responsibility in that situation? What are others' responsibility in that situation? Meaning, what is the appropriate way to handle it?

8/21 討論逐字稿 SuperBetter

We discussed Jane McGonigal's two TED talks about gaming.

Closing Statements
Firstly, when I saw this topic, I was a little bit shocked, because I used to play console games when I was a kid. I enjoyed myself. But I did my homework, actually, and I would finish as quickly as possible in order to play games. When I grew up, again, I used to indulge myself in Sudoku games, I played this a lot. So, the first time I saw this video's title, I think, it's totally a waste of time, playing games! Because I really didn't do anything, and I really spent most of my time on it. So it shocked me that she can see things in this way. So the most impressive part of the video is maybe the final part. She wants to design a real world into a game world.
I think she wants to make the world into a game.

After she explained the difference between the reality and the game, I think it's really cool to think this way, if we really can do so, it's brilliant, totally. And, but at the same time, I just wonder that, why people can trust each other easily in the game, is there something different from the game and the real world we are living in? Or it's like, people just get rid of their sense of embarrassment when they are in the game?

8/18 課堂筆記 Aliens vs. Robots

Concluding statements:

Today we talked about professionalism, the first thing that came to mind is related to doctors.  In addition to being a music educator, I’m also working on projects related to medical ethics, so this really interests me.  I think there's a lot to talk about in medical ethics, how we train doctors to become empathic to human beings, and also not to lost professionalism, when they are treating a patient, and trying to communicate with them.  But from working on these projects, I find it's hard to teach ethics, in a widely accepted way.  And so this topic becomes quite interesting.  But I deeply believe that, being a doctor, since I work with a lot of doctors, and try to help them, and as a research assistant try to help them build medical ethics, I think a professional doctor, it's not mutually exclusive to be a good doctor and a good person.  And sometimes, it's interesting to see how doctors from older generations, in their time there were no medical ethics, in fact, but they were great doctors, and they care about their patients as much as young doctors do, even though the were not taught medical ethics, they just do things based on their experience.  So I think, yes we should teach this, but it's also not something you teach, you just expect doctors to be this way.  We should carefully select those who want to dedicate their lives to medical practice.  It's the person that makes him or her be a good doctor. 

I was thinking about a high school friend.  He used to be a very smart person, in 7th grade, he was one year younger than us because he skipped ahead.  He was a genius and he always ranked at the top, and in 9th grade he skipped again, and then got into medical school.  Lots of people go to medical school if they have high grades.   But he didn't become successful like I thought, he turned out to not really become a doctor in the end.  He said he was not perfect for it.  He liked medicine, but he felt he was not suitable for it.  So he studied neuroscience, to be a researcher instead of a doctor.  He's in medicine, but not treating patients. I would say he's a very professional person.  It's kind of that he was professional, to choose what he knew he was suited for. But it still kind of surprises me.

It seems to me that everything I said today related to not trusting professionals, so I will continue in this vein.   Well, I tend to think that the empathy thing, or being caring of 

SuperBetter

8/21課堂筆記在這裡

Today we're discussing both of Jane McGonigal's TED talks, "The game that can give you 10 extra years of life" and "Gaming can make a better world" I feel the points she is making in each talk is related. Each quote below links to the talk it originally came from.

If you can manage to experience three positive emotions for every one negative emotion over the course of an hour, a day, a week, you dramatically improve your health and your ability to successfully tackle any problem you're facing. And this is called the three-to-one positive emotion ratio.

Notes to TED Wed 8/8, The Power of Being Embarrassed

What does it mean to practice?
Doing something consciously, noticing the details, with an eye towards improving it.
Making you more familiar with what you're doing.
Broaden your comfort zone.
Trying new things in order to broaden your skills.

Is there a difference between practicing and doing?
Practicing and doing should be the same thing. Some practice is for a habit, and some doing is for real life.
Practicing is an ongoing thing, but doing is now.
Two aspects to practice:
It's a scheduled thing, you do it without consciousness.
Do it enough, it becomes part of your life, it becomes doing.
Practicing is about having a goal, but doing has no goal.
"do the dishes" = you get it done.
Practice doesn't end.
To get something done, you have to practice endlessly first.

Robots vs. Aliens

We're going to discuss Tonee Ndugu's talk. Here's the challenge, we're not going to discuss so much what he said, as how he presents it. Well, we're also going to talk about what he said, because it relates. But, if you look under the Youtube video of his talk, you see all his credentials of what he's started up and done. But if you look at how he presents himself, it's strange and weird and doesn't fit in to how a presentation, a TED talk! is 'supposed' to be. So this presentation of his, brings up some questions:

What is professional? Professional behavior?
What's the difference between an amateur and a professional?
Why is it considered good to be professional?
What are the advantages? Drawbacks?

Why is emotionalism, leaping around topic to topic, talking about oneself, or even literally leaping around on stage, suspect?
Why do we have to show a dour and reasonable demeanor?

When does being a person interfere with being a professional?
When does being a professional interfere with being a person?
Is it possible to be both?

Why is it easier to regularly have one's face looking scowly and busy than to smile at each other on the street?

Tonee Ndungu says robots vs. aliens is the greatest fight of you against you. So, what are the characteristics of an alien, according to Tonee Ndungu? A robot?
Do you know people who fall into these categories?
Are you comfortable with this characterization?

The Power of Being Embarrassed

According to John Berkavitch in his Ubud TEDx talk, there are six steps you need to take to become good at something.

1. Want to be good at that thing
2. Learn your craft. Understand it, and practice
3. Start practicing more than you're actually practicing.
4. Realizing that if you stop practicing you're not going to get better, and in fact will backslide.
5. When you're actually quite good at something, stay humble, and realize there's always going to be someone who's better than you, if not now, than eventually.
6. Listen to other people. Listen to their advice, criticism and opinions. You can't be precious about your ideas or what you're doing. Realize the everyone's opinion has value, absolutely everyone. Understand that an idea is something that can grow. The best way to make it grow is to expose it to another idea.

What does it mean to practice?
Is there a difference between practicing and doing?

討論逐字稿 Self-Nurturing as the Ultimate Leadership

How would you define self-centered? Selfish?
I thought they're similar.
Well if they're similar, what do they both mean?
Because if I know someone, only take care of themself, and only want other people to follow their opinions, then I will think he is self-centered. But if use another stronger words, maybe we will say, he is very selfish! So it's similar. No, no, no, it's different.
What's different?
No, selfish is he only cares about he or herself, but self-centered want others to...
Take care of--
...follow his or her opinions, but he only cares about him or herself.
I agree with your first one. And I think, a selfish person, he or she always thinks his opinion is right. Or they are the most smart, others are stupid.
I think self-centered is just care about themselves, and selfish, I think it might harm other people. And self-centered, you don't think about harming other people.
I guess selfish has benefit involved. Selfish people care about what benefit they will get.

討論逐字稿 The Courage to Live

We discussed "The Courage to Live".

Saturday Transcript
Concluding Statements
Recently I’ve come here several times, this is the third time. You know, and every time I have to encounter a bunch of questions that challenge me a lot, but this means that I'm kind of in a stage of lots of chaos. Lots of thoughts in my head that I can't put them together to produce something meaningful. But by looking at these questions, not just including this time, and the several questions that were posed last Saturday or Wednesday, so I’ve found out that I might have the gift of giving strategies or solutions. Like two days ago I ate in MacDonald's, and I saw a couple of middle aged women sitting next door, and they were trying to solve a particular problem, and I just couldn’t help but to try to figure out something for them. I knew that it wasn't my business, but I just couldn't help to offer them a solution.
Were they surprised?
It was okay. Kind of, but they were friendly. So, returning to today's article, and especially the last part of the article, which gives us step-by-step solutions to find what we want to do, to realize the kind of personal goal, and I start thinking that I may do it in this way. It does offer me a practical solution to my personal problem. And here comes another fear, that where I am earning my money for, it's the fear that I do not want to continues, so and then there comes another fear that I may have to offer this for free and don't have a real job for awhile, so yeah, it's complicated. And, another thing I want to say is that, um, the reason why I want to study abroad and pick up something, that is because I want to gain some financial details or knowledge ...
But sometimes, I even challenge to my own thought in this question, by this I mean that, when I really have to obtain some knowledge, I still can gain it on my own. Yes, so, sometimes I don't know what to do in the next step, anything could happen. So embrace anything. Embrace that possibility, I think.

Ever since my mom told me she couldn't afford to let me go to cram school, I have suddenly realized there is something I can't control. Before that, I may even believe I can achieve anything. And this kind of crushed me down. And then, I start to conceal myself. By this I mean, I will evaluate whether the problem I'm encountering can gain help from others, otherwise I will keep it to myself. The reason why I stopped learning in both junior and senior high, may be due to the fact that I can't deal with the obstacle I have to face. So I kind of abandon myself, and the high school teacher, although the high school teacher came to ask me what's the problem, I still didn't tell them. Despite that I feel 'what's the point of studying hard and working hard', I haven’t been able to find the real thing I really want to do. So, maybe that's also why I always come back to study hard.
Because it's what you know how to do.
Yeah. Compared with work for some idiot, study is a kind of paradise for me.
Yes, I think this is the reasoning of a lot of people in graduate school.
But recently, I’ve come to know you, Angela, and you kind of reinvigorate, you make me feel this world is still interesting. So that I can still find something I can devote myself to. And all the way, I try to study abroad, or try to improve my English proficiency. In the beginning, it's almost impossible for me, but now I'm glad I insisted on this goal. And maybe the best thing about this whole process is that I have the chance to meet some good people. And I also start to realize sometimes I have to reveal myself to others. And so I'm kind of happy I start to get in touch with my friends too.