Hopefully Anonymous

Blind Spots -book list on Amazon

This post started off as speculation on why "social science blind spots" (ironically? recursively?) yields only 2 links.

I ended up on this amazon link doing a related search. The book title looks great but is panned in the most salient review I read. However that review and amazon's own algorithm recommends other good books too, to improve decision making.

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Smart-People-Things/dp/1591025095

Distinction: Ideological Capture vs. Ideological Posture

Can be hard to detect the difference, but one who successfully suicide bombs was probably ideologically captured. One who flexibly changes their public ideological stances may be engaging in ideological posturing.

C-block Imperative: Ethicist takes on pick up artist community

Professor Cave labels pick up artists "unsavory seducers" and lays out his ethical framework here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/85528875035x14g8/

Professor Adolph "The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge"

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514

"Abstract
Annual Review of Psychology
Vol. 60: 693-716 (Volume publication date January 2009)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163514)

First published online as a Review in Advance on September 4, 2008
The Social Brain: Neural Basis of Social Knowledge

Ralph Adolphs

California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, California 91125; email: radolphs@caltech.edu

Social cognition in humans is distinguished by psychological processes that allow us to make inferences about what is going on inside other people—their intentions, feelings, and thoughts. Some of these processes likely account for aspects of human social behavior that are unique, such as our culture and civilization. Most schemes divide social information processing into those processes that are relatively automatic and driven by the stimuli, versus those that are more deliberative and controlled, and sensitive to context and strategy. These distinctions are reflected in the neural structures that underlie social cognition, where there is a recent wealth of data primarily from functional neuroimaging. Here I provide a broad survey of the key abilities, processes, and ways in which to relate these to data from cognitive neuroscience."

DNI Blair, CIA Panetta Rivalry -fascinating organizational behavior

Here's the link

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1936129,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

"social construction of height" vs. "social construction of race" and "social construction of gender"

"Social construction of race" and "social construction of gender" each have about 3 million google search results. "social construction of height" has 3 google search results, an extraordinary 7 order magnitude of difference. Although I suspect these are three of the biggest phenotype trait attributes shaping  microsociological interactions, and that height is roughly equal in shaping these interactions (specifically, I don't think the difference in effect is anything approaching a 7 order magnitude of difference).

Empirical microsociology, quantitative microsociology

Empirical microsociology gets almost no google hits (although they're good) and neither does quantitative microsociology. I think what the modern pick up artist community does should fall under the category of empirical microsociology.

Google Scholar Search, Microsociology, for 2009

There are 140 results for google scholar, "microsociology" for 2009.

And they look pretty good.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microsociology&as_ylo=2009&as_vis=0

Grade for this post in maximizing my persistence odds: 9.65

Not much to say

I haven't had that much to say, and I haven't had that much time to say it.

I have a bunch of mundane things to do to improve the quality of my analysis and decision making. High on the list is improving my quantitative skillset.

Grade on the degree to which this post helps maximize my persistence odds: 9.0

Optimimizing and Modeling key life events

1. First an overdue recommendation for Synedoche, New York. I saw it a few weeks ago, and there were a few brilliant and relevant scenes in it, mostly moments where the protagonist is observing his theatrical simulations of his life, and the simulations within the simulations. Kaufman joins a select group of thinkers that simultaneously had ideas that were kicking around in my head for awhile.

I'd like to simulate three particular categories of microsocial experience (the third type is regularly simulated with regards to professional life).

Type 1 is daily, weekly, and monthly routine social experiences. They can be broken down into stages like morning household experience, travel to work, work experience, travel to after work activities, afterwork experience, travel home, evening household experience. Each has a staging ground, a relatively fixed time period, a regular cast of characters or type of characters, and me, engaging in micro-social performances that can be optimized. Individual performances tend to be lower stakes, but performances over time tend to be higher stakes.

Type 2 is seasonal events, such as family thanksgivings, family holiday gatherings, friends and network holiday gatherings, annual profession, trade, or interest conferences. Individual performances (for example at family thanksgivings) can be higher stakes.

Type 3 is life arc events. funerals, weddings, job interviews, promotion interviews, significant birthdays.

I'd like to optimize all three categories of experience, using the best of micro-social theory, simulation, and skill-building (improv, pua training, negotiation training, game theory, etc.) with an eye to maximizing my persistence odds (not getting my motivation hijacked by trying to get laid, get high status, etc. disconnected from trying to maximize my persistence odds).

I rate this post a 9.75 in terms of maximizing my persistence odds.