My Beef with Psychology

As a part of the college experience, I have to take a introductory psychology course.

It is great.

Instructor is a cool guy who gets the point across.


But there is just something wrong with the discipline.
The textbook suggests that there is something wrong with the approach to Psychology as a whole.

A lot of redundancy and needless complication. Which is a shame because the subject matter is of supreme importance to anybody walking on the surface of this planet and existing among other people.


It is unfortunate that we are still at a point in civilization where conveying information is done in such a sterile manner. Textbooks explain things in such a convoluted way that the obvious connections between things is not readily visible.

Take for example right now - we are learning about learning.
Pavlov's dog - conditioned stimulus - unconditioned stimulus - conditioned and unconditioned responses.

A few weeks ago we were learning about memory and how the memory structure works.

Broken down to their base components - the memory system and learning system are the exact same thing.

There is a principle called habituation which is common to both. Habituation suggests that the more often something is repeated, the less likely you are to notice the details.

You REMEMBER that it is not necessary to pay attention to the details, because you LEARNED that the details are not of imminent importance.

When you take it a step further and keep the physical structures in mind (the brain and the process of perception), it becomes even more obvious that the entire process is so fluid and intricately linked that to even give one part of the process a title is to form a inaccurate separation.

That there is a long-term storage in the brain - that the most dependable type of memory is episodic memory - those memories formed by doing something - suggests that learning occurs when people are participating in actions.

These processes are actual. They cannot be accurately conveyed in a textbook - they can hardly be communicated right now in this blog.

Learning and memory are not 2 different topics.

They are as inter-related as digestion and the digestive system.

Memory is required to learn - learning is the resulted of being able to formulate a memory structure.

Learning perpetuates itself.
We learn what to and what not to remember.

I am going to have to formulate some sort of diagram of the perception/memory structure.


I swear to god i can condense this entire textbook into a series of 4 or 5 diagrams.


or maybe i am full of shit


maybe i will work on this right this minute

Here are a list of things i am going to accomplish in the next 72 hours:

1. toys built, documented, cooked, blogged
2. audio project
3. utopia comparison essay (We and The Beach)
4. studying for psychology quiz
5. preliminary work finished on box for toy - complete with a color scheme (at the least)
6. work on psychology project
7. read a chunk of Oryx and Crake for utopia class



call me Agent Clockwork

a big robotic box of creativity

Psychology Project - Funny How Things Turn Out

our big project for Psychology class is a creative project for which we had 4 options

the Instructor mentioned that if we had something different in mind, then we could run it by him to see if it would be feasible


one of the options consisted of taking a abstract 'doodle'-type drawing (something that somebody draws when they arent really paying attention), and expand it to be a larger piece which reflects their thought process



since i have been working over these past few years to obliterate my conscious and subconscious and merge them into one 'thing', i have found myself frequently putting mnemonics to use (as i mentioned in a previous post with reference to the movie 'Memento')
this got me thinking about the psych project

i had a idea to try to use all of the mnemonic structures that i am familiar with and merge them into one image - and so far (from the rough sketches) i am excited about the effects that are coming up

mnemonics rely on structures and patterns that are easy to recall and lend themselves to making connections to information

accordingly - it can be said that a 'mnemonic system' is a very structured system

the interesting effect emerges when you compile a bunch of mnemonic systems in the same place - because you get a huge shitload of 'orderly' information (structured trails and packages) in what looks to be a chaotic arrangement

here is a little sample of where this project seems to be heading:



upon completion of this project - i might sleep for a couple of months

what you see above was done in pencil crayon on a 4" x 6" sheet

i am aiming at putting the good copy on 11" x 14"


really looking forward to this one

sort of like consolidating everything i have ever done ever in a visually stimulating way


i gotta contact my boy Os3y3ris for some feedback on this one