insearchofsomething

Hello to everyone.  In this post we’re required to write 1500 words to describe this course. I will try to do that being spontaneous and honest. Obviously, I will not be able to write about all the things that we did during the course; I will give a general introduction about my expectation, then I will describe the spirit with which I attended the lesson, giving also some examples about specific lessons and I will conclude with what the course left in me and how (maybe) this will be useful in the future.

As I maybe already wrote in the first post, when I started this course I was expecting hard job. During the summer, I had already leafed through some books in order to see what I would have done and I had seen some mathematical formulas applied to the mind as a complex system. I had no idea about how this would have been possible; if it’s impossible for a computer (or data) scientist to recreate an algorithm similar to a mind, how would we, psychologists or however human scientists, have been supposed to study that stuff? I was at the same time very curious and scared about how all this would have been taught.

Already in the first lesson, the course revealed to be very different. We very quickly got to know that the evaluation would have been on the basis of some weekly posts and the only criterion would have been the writing (or not) of the posts, not the quality of the posts themselves; the professor has also been very clear in precising that, in the limits of decency, he wanted us to be honest in our blogs. These were not the only astonishing things: after having briefly explained the contents of the course and the methods of evaluation, he asked us to take a couple of minutes to reflect and write about ourselves; no one would have read what we would have written, it would have been an exercise only for ourselves, not for anyone else.

Even if I already wrote about this approach in the first post I think it could be fruitful to remark upon some things. In fact I believe is one of the most original feature of the course and so worth of reflections. What do I think about it? Writing this post at the end of the course, I can affirm with more confidence that I think that a similar approach gives (and I think this is also the general intention of the professor) more space to “inputs” than “answers” or “theories”. The responsibility of this is not only of the method of evaluation, but also of how the argument were presented. I can give a practical example (that besides we touched during the lessons): the butterfly effect. Two explanations can be given:

1. “A butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean,”

Obviously, given the mathematical knowledge of an average psychology (or political sciences or sociology and so forth) student, would be absurd to try to explain the second one, but I think it can be important to take into account that it exists, because it represent, obviously in my opinion, the “real” knowledge of the topic. This does not decrease the utility of the “inputs”; it only highlights how, in my opinion, they work. Thanks to them it’s possible to throw some seeds that maybe one day will bloom, becoming real flowers. Thanks to them it’s possible to arouse interest in different topics, thing that would have been impossible (for timing reasons) analyzing thoroughly everything. But how did it work (at least for me)? It worked with what in psychology is called “insight”. It’s a concept developed in the first half of the 20^th century by Gestalt movement: “in psychology, insight occurs when a solution to a problem presents itself quickly and without warning”. Obviously in the case of our lessons there weren’t real problems to solve, but I find somehow the process very similar. I gave an input to think about how the inputs work.

But let’s give some concrete examples of how some inputs worked for me.

One of the lessons that most remains in my mind was not about complexity, system theory, social media and maybe neither psychology. In that lesson the professor asked us to divide in some groups and then he asked to every group to make a drawing about (if I remember well) “complexity and rhizomes”. We really enjoyed the process; markers, colours, shapes, hands, people, voices were mixed in a joyful atmosphere. Maybe in the same way as the whole course, the important was not the outcome, but the process. In fact what was the outcome if not a childish drawing with a lot of intricate colours and shapes? Maybe nothing else. What was the process? As I already wrote, a joyful hour in which I moreover learnt something. I learnt the healing power of art; in fact, I think that doing that drawing allowed also to the shiest of us to express themselves more freely and this made me think about the power of art. In fact, if even the simple instruction of make a draw about “complexity and rhizomes” had this “freeing” effect, how much can an art therapy in a controlled setting have a healing power on the patients? Being this a “mere input”, it didn’t give me knowledge about art therapy, but it emotionally aroused interest in the topic. In fact, sometimes experience and emotion can be a more powerful engine to start to study a topic more in depth way more than every academic studying.

Until now I wrote only about experiences or teachings, but I omitted people. Another fundamental feature of this course was talking with our colleagues; in every lesson, after the initial explanation of the main topic, the professor asked us divide in groups (often couple) and, beyond asking us to discuss about the topic, he also required us to introduce ourselves and we were also required to speak every time with different people. Doing so, I got to know all the people in the course and, in general, a climate of cooperation and friendship has been established in the classroom.

In conclusion: what did the course leave to me? It didn’t leave me with much more knowledge about something (yes, now I know a little more about System Theory and Complexity, like some specific vocabulary (Anthropocene, just to give an example), but not so much) because I already knew some notions about the topic. As I largely wrote before, it left me more with something to think about, to study more in depth in the future; it left me with more doubts than answers and in some cases it left me with some admonitions for the future, the most important of them is maybe to be careful with simple answers. Let’s take an example: the case of reductionism.

We largely spoke about it, about its risks and about how to avoid them, but, also in this case, I think we didn’t give a definitive reason on the problem: should we definitively avoid determinism? Should we be reductionist, but only in some cases?

For example, I think that demonizing it is really dangerous and symptom of an equally dangerous ignorance. Who would deny that thanks to reductionist methods science like chemistry, physics or medicine have improved the life of individuals? Maybe someone would argue that thanks to those sciences the human being (and with him all the living being) are about to extinguish, but is it the truth?

The doubt and the questions that I exposed here are a perfect example of what this course left in me: a critical (and doubtful) way of thinking.

How can I utilize this knowledge in my personal or professional life? I strongly believe that a critical sensibility is essential, in every area of life, personal or professional, and in this course I learnt how to develop it, challenging some of my personal beliefs (for example before I was a convinced reductionist).

I think that the goal of the excerpt was to demonstrate how the cooperation could be not only the best solution in order to reach equality or fairness, but also the most practical and effective way to preserve the life and the health of every individual, so being a sort of passepartout for every type of situation.

Even if I agree with the general moral of the story, I wouldn’t consider the story itself as a “proof” of the efficacy of cooperation in every context. In fact, in my opinion, the whole report has not more than an anecdotal value. This doesn’t mean that it hasn’t value at all, but only that it shows possibilities, not definitive answers. In fact, I believe that in the context of values and virtues, definitive answers don’t exist and, in the same way, it’s really difficult to find empirical proofs that can support our moral; the answer is inside us, not outside.

Given this, I think that however the text can encourage the people to reflect about the fact that the egoism is often harmful, that often isn’t useful neither for ourselves.

In conclusion I can add that, in order to support a thesis like the aforementioned one (that I can summarize with “cooperation will lead to a better outcome”), I prefer (supposed) rigorous experiments, with a procedure with which an experimenter can manipulate variables in order to explore more thoroughly what influence what in a more controlled setting. Even if with a different goal, an example in which the role of cooperation has been investigated has been the one of Sherif about the ingroup-outgroup dynamics.

The thing that most impressed me about the last lesson was the “art therapy”. Obviously we didn’t do something that can be rightly called “art therapy”, but in my perception the result was very similar. I remember the general atmosphere of childish pleasure felt by everyone (or at least by everyone of my group) in drawing the complexity or the “rhizome”. And it was childish not only the pleasure, but also the drawings; the good thing was that no one cared about it. We used a lot of markers, with many colours and everyone added to the painting everything that passed in his or her mind. Someone draw a tree, someone a world, someone an abstract entanglement and all shined of bright colors. Thanks to this activity I experienced the effect of the “art therapy”, that in this case has been very random and spontaneous, but however it brought good mood and lightness; I can’t imagine how much it can be useful if applied in a proper way to help someone to heal. In fact, thanks to art, some people feel freer to express themselves and to relax many of the usual inhibitions and this cannot be but useful for the healing of many pathologies. Maybe, if I ever become a psychologist, one day I will remember about this course, about this lesson, and I will study and then (I hope) successfully apply art therapy techniques to my patients.

I wish you the best holiday and see you the next year!

This lesson has been different from the others. We wrote about our cities. The instruction was something like “write about your cities, but not in a standard, encyclopaedical point of view. Describe them in a personal way. It could be the dance course of salsa that you did there”. Normally I’m not enthusiastic about my city, but thinking about it, made me remember about how actually I’m a bit attached to it. Moreover, seeing the description of the other cities, I thought about how much the places from which we come from can be different one from the other. Athens is different from my city, but not so much. But what about Leninsk-Kuznetsky, a small town in Siberia, very connected to a mine and with temperatures about -20” degrees? Or what about Hurdegaryp, a really small town (5000 inhabitants) in the Netherlands? How can living in very different places affect the mentality of the people? Do we, maybe because of the globalization, all think in (more or less) the same manner (at least in Europe) or does instead our geographical and cultural context shape our mind?

Moreover, I thought also about how living in a different city would be for me. For example, I’m used to a quite big city and Athens is even bigger, but how would it be to live in a village? Living in a city guarantees anonymity and variety of contexts, people and activities, while in a little town (or village) anonymity and choice are obviously more limited: how would I adapt to a similar situation. And this is only one of the possible examples: I can also wonder how it would be to live in a very cosmopolitan and “hyped” city like Berlin or in the aforementioned little town in Siberia. I don’t know, but maybe imagining it can show different paths of life to which I didn’t think before.

First of all I apologize for writing this very late.

Apart from that, I would really like to comment some of the themes that came out in the previous lesson. The most general topic was the future and our run toward it: acceleration, singularity A.I. and so forth. One of the topics that draw more my attention was the acceleration in modern days. “More is better, fast is better”. Sometimes I perceive it in my environments, but I didn’t know that it was so common throughout the world. I don’t think it’s a problem in itself, but it can lead to a world of cutthroat competition and to a complete disregard of the consequences of the “progress”. Here I can connect to another theme of the lesson, the technological progress, its effects and the concept of transhumanism. The last one is a movement that predicate the enhancement of the human condition with the help of technology, for example improving longevity, happiness and intelligence with machines or chemistry. Many people can be scared by it, but I think that, with the proper precautions, the benefits brought would be more than the disadvantages. An example that comes always to my mind is a pill able to improve the mood of the people (or, being extreme, lead to their happiness) and I think it would be a big step beyond in the history of humanity. The usual objections are “but it would be artificial happiness” or “but if you are always happy it’s like you are never happy, because you cannot perceive happiness without having perceived sadness”. This is only one of the relevant themes in this field. Other can be: do we really want to prolongate the length of the life? And the eternal life? Do we really want to be more intelligence? At this level of technological development, wouldn’t be better to stop and focus to other problems, like inequality, famines and wars?

As always, I asked question more than I gave answer. Good reading.

In this lesson we talked about linear causality and complex causality, watching some videos about a singular or a double pendulum that served as an example. The we talked about the butterfly effect. seeing his representation in a diagram and the formulas that describe it.  While watching these complex phenomena, I was really fascinated, both by the double (or triple) pendulum and by the Lorentz attractor. What is there behind a formula like dx/dt=σ(y-x) and how can you use a formula like this to predict atmospheric phenomenon? It seems a beautiful mystery.

Then we saw the case of DDT, announced like a sort of miracle, able to defeat malaria and save millions of live (we also watched a surreally funny video in which a man ate the substance to demonstrate its harmlessness) and then proved to be a huge menace for many animals and men. The reason because of we analyzed this case was that even something that at the beginning (or from an analytical, reductionist point of view) seems very reliable and useful, then (or from a systemic point of view) it can be proven to be dangerous and harmful. This kind of argument surely deserves to be considered, but I don’t know which conclusions can be drawn starting from it. That we have to consider better the consequences of our actions (especially if they are scientifical or institutional actions)? But what does this mean in practice? For example: can we say that in the case of DDT scientists didn’t consider enough carefully the harm that the substance would have been able to create? But if they have been thought more about the consequences of the substance, wouldn’t many more people meanwhile have died? So, in light of these considerations, what’s right balancing between considering carefully every consequence and do things immediately in order so save suddenly as lives as possible? I don’t have an answer, but I think that, mostly in these times of global pandemic, these types of questions are worth being discussed.

This lesson left its mark more than others, although in a different manner. I will write some scattered comments about it.

Anthropocene video; that video touched me, but maybe in a particular sense. Nowadays human beings can do anything; digging for the oil, burn forests to create, sculpt statues, reflect on their existence… These are only some of the things that our species can do. Obviously, they aren’t all positive, but, when I watched the video, I can’t help but think about greatness and evolution. But now we have to save the nature and ourselves from that greatness and evolution.

Sir Ken Robinson: the question is not how much we are intelligent or creative, but how we are creative and intelligent. I think that this is a great way to deal with education. In my opinion there are people more “intelligent” than others if we use a conventional definition, but maybe we do not have to preoccupy about that for a lot of reasons. First of all: what is intelligence? To be able to solve some logic riddles? To be apt to live in the best way? To manage to be happy despite the difficulties? I think it is very difficult to give a satisficing answer. Moreover, even if we managed to give an answer, would be useful to have so defined better people and worse people according to our definition? I don’t want to demonize the concept of intelligence or of the resulting social hierarchy, I only want to question it, to think about it and about the social consequences that come after it.

In the lesson of this week, we spoke about some of the concepts related to system science. We analyzed the concepts of reductionism, self-organization and emergence. The concepts were quite interesting, but it seemed to me that something was missing. I don’t know if the reason has been that they were concepts very similar to others that I previousy encountered (in my life, but also in the previous lessons of the course), or something else. Maybe I would like to see more concrete example of the applications of system theory, but not examples related to animals or bacteria, but something more related to the human being and his psychology, that can allow me to better understand the meaning of what we’re doing and maybe give me some inputs for the future. Or maybe I need something more systematic, more analytical. I don’t know, but I’m optimistic because the name of the word is “system theory, psychology and social media”, so sooner or after we will do something more applied and I’m very curious about it and about how all this system theory will be connected to psychology and social media.

However, I, as always, appreciated the inclusive atmosphere, the professor and the exchanging ideas moment, in which I got to know a person with who I never talked before. It has been a nice conversation (mostly) about us and (less) about the topic: she had a very different cultural background and to talk with people different from us is often an occasion to enrich ourselves.

Ps. After reading some comments about the lesson, I reconsidered my opinion. Those comments made me connect the ants video with the theme of human connection and cooperation, so valorizing a video to which at the beginning I didn’t give so much importance. Maybe this could a practical example of the interdependence of the parts that constitute a system and of how the way of working during this course can be actually very useful and rewarding!

In this lesson we started to go a little bit more in depth with the concept of system theory. We discussed the concept, talking about what’s a system (a football team, a basket of fruits) and what’s not (a shopping list for example), starting to bear in mind that what makes a set of things a system is not the set itself but how we consider it. Let’s take an example: the shopping list. Someone could say that it is not a system, because if a take one thing out of the list, the remaining parts of the list itself will not be modified by the changing; instead, some others can say that it’s a system because if, for example, I want to cook a cake and I don’t buy eggs, everything else in the list will be useless. In consequence, what often makes a set of elements a system is the purpose. However, the purpose is not the only factor that can connect elements, so creating a system. In order to explain that and to clarify the concept of the system itself we watched a video, that explained how even elements apparently completely separated (in this case wolves and rivers) can create a system.

Now, a more personal comment, a comment about my ambivalent feelings toward system theory. In fact, I think that system theory can be very useful to interpret the actual world, but at the same time I consider it somehow scaring. In fact, I feel like reductionism can be very reassuring because it gives you the hope that one day everything will be explained by a single, perfect theory and so, now, we only must work in order to reach that theory. Conversely system theory describes a more complex world, a world in which nothing will be completely explained. In fact with a systemic approach you will be able always able to find new connections and this can create a sort of a never-ending process of acquisition of knowledge that can be, because of his impossibility to reach completeness, at the same time beautiful and discomforting.

“System theory, psychology and social media” was a really intriguing name. The name reminded me something harsh, something related to math and physics and a fast skimming of some books of the bibliography seemed to confirm my expectations. I was very curious, but at the same time scared about the difficulty of the course.

When the professor started to explain the situation seemed suddenly different. He was very friendly, more person-centered that goal-centered; he explained that we will go through a lot of practical experiences and that the mark of the course wouldn’t have been determined by a normal exam or a paper, but by the simple participation to the course and by writing some weekly posts and comments in a blog. I have been really amazed from this approach, also because I’ve never found anything similar in my life, but a lot of questions came to my mind. Is this the right method to teach or the students will be lazy and they will not put so much effort in the writings? Would this approach be doable also for other subjects, fundamental for the career of the student (like anatomy for a doctor or psychopathology for a psychologist)? Will this way of teaching foster a real interest in the student, so encouraging to not to learn by heart, but to actually internalizing the concepts?

But this hasn’t been the only thing that surprised me. “Before the break take two minutes in order to concentrate on your thoughts, on your feelings, on your perceptions and write something about it. In our everyday life we have not so much time to stop and think: this could be a good occasion to do it”. Really strange for a University lesson, but I really liked it, because I agree with the fact that in our lives we never stop and we rarely concentrate on the present.

In conclusion, I’m looking forward to the next lessons with a lot of curiosity. What can I expect from a professor with a mixed background in Psychology and IT that wants to make us do practical experiences in order to learn about System Theory, Psychology and Social Media without judging us with marks, but only looking at our real participation?

I don’t know, but I want to find it out.

#emergence