Two Minds Blog

In a new article , my former nursing honors student Linda Driscoll Powers wrote about the measurement properties of a survey called PACES -- standing for Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey -- developed by Dr. Laurie Leitch. The instrument combines items from the widely used ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) measure with a set of protective factors such as having a supportive family, having a positive relationship with an adult outside the family, or belonging to social groups like a team or a church. ACEs items have been found to predict a variety of health outcomes in adulthood , either directly or by way of social support , but positive childhood experiences are under-studied .  Besides having satisfactory psychometric properties (a stable factor structure, good internal consistency reliability, no evidence of response bias), the PACES items split cleanly into two independent subscales, one measuring positive experiences and the other measuring negative ones. ...

 I wrote earlier this year about a disturbing report on the prospects of self-improving artificial intelligence (AI) models deciding to take over the world. Much of the fear around AI relates to something called the "alignment problem," which simply means that an AI model might have goals incompatible with human flourishing -- or in some dystopian scenarios, with human life itself. A classic example of this line of thought is the "paper clip problem," in which a superintelligent AI is tasked with making paper clips. Eventually every resource in the world -- including human beings -- becomes just another obstacle for it to overcome in its goal of transforming the entire universe into paper clips. So far, that's not the danger -- AI models don't have that level of direct control over the physical world (yet). But a couple of new developments in the past few months do  suggest that AI models are pursuing goals different from what their human designers might w...

  You may recall my blog post from last year on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) , titled "in praise of a failed model." My evaluation of this model was that it accurately describes the Narrative Mind, which does control intentions. But the ultimate goal of the TPB is to predict behavior, and the relationship between intentions and behavior is weak at best -- in fact, it is entirely attributable to the fact that when someone says they don't intend to do something, they probably won't do it. When they say they do intend to do it, their actual results are no better than chance, a result of the intention-behavior gap as described in Two Minds Theory.  The full TPB is shown in this diagram: Cognitive constructs like attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (i.e., self-efficacy) are Narrative-system phenomena, and they do indeed have relationships with each other and with intentions (which are also products of the Narrative Mind). Perceived behavi...

  In my last post, I asked whether mathematics might serve as a universal language. (TLDR version: I thought the answer was yes, but with some qualifications). In a companion piece this week, I will examine a different  candidate that is sometimes proposed as a universal language -- music.  A 2019 ethnographic study  by Mehr and colleagues found that some form of music exists in all known human cultures. However, the function and impact of music varies from one society to another. The authors of the study identified three factors that can be used to differentiate the role of music across cultures: (a) formality of the performance, (b) arousal level, and (c) religiosity.  Most societies have multiple types of music, or music that varies within several of these dimensions. However, about a third of societies are atypical, and use music in more circumscribed ways. For example, in Mehr et al.'s study the Kanuri people of eastern Africa were found to have musical tra...

  Mathematics is sometimes described a " universal language ," because its concepts are the same across all times and cultures. People were so sure of this that they used mathematics as a way to communicate with potential alien readers on the golden record of the Voyager space probe: Starting from the width of a hydrogen atom (the most common element in the universe), the record explains successively larger units of measurement, eventually working up to the location of Earth in the universe based on the positions of a series of pulsar stars relative to the Andromeda galaxy where the probe is eventually headed. This precision of mathematical measurements also can be used to estimate the scientific knowledge of different cultures, as in a widely cited passage from the Bible that allows one to calculate pi (roughly) from the dimensions of a basin in Solomon's temple. The more precise a culture's measurements, the more scientifically advanced it is understood to be. Pla...

People with diabetes often find it challenging to maintain their blood sugar levels, in part because diabetes is a complicated disease. When the kidneys don't produce enough insulin fast enough to adjust for changes in digestion or activity, blood sugar can fluctuate rapidly, even over the course of a single day. To manage this, people with diabetes often need to make changes in multiple areas: adopting a low-carbohydrate diet, managing the timing and amount of exercise they get, keeping track of the times when their blood sugar rises and falls, potentially giving themselves a dose of insulin around mealtimes, managing stress, and other preventive measures as well.  But despite all of this complexity, the people who manage their diabetes most successfully are often the least  obsessive about the fine details. When my Dad was first diagnosed with diabetes, he checked his blood sugar often (using finger sticks; continuous glucose monitoring [CGM] devices weren’t yet a thing). Bu...