The Need to Know

The 'Need to Know' is a requirement in the public service to be able to access information that is considered sensitive or classified (if compromised, might cause harm to personal or national interest). The need to know requirement means that just because you have personal security clearance up to a certain level does not entitle you to be able to see all the information at that level. You have to be able to show that you need it to fulfill the duties of your job.

Well, it's BULLSHIT. In today's information age, people expect to get access to government information. How is it that I can file an ATIP request to get access to just about any bit of government information WITHOUT making a case for my 'need to know'? Public servants are on our dime and we're entitled to know what they are doing and what they are not doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big advocate for privacy. But personal information can easily be severed to protect privacy and 3rd party confidences. Too many civil servants hide behind this paternalistic 'need to know' and unjustifiably mark their documents 'secret' to keep others out.

I predict that this so-called 'need to know' will die it's rightful death within the next 10 years. I'd like to personally do what I can to make it happen too.

You're Just Saying That!

I often find myself recoiling when my partner pays me a compliment. I accuse him just wanting me for sex. I hate feeling objectified and his horniness really cramps my desire for him. Of course he's been accused of this so many times now that it's no wonder he doesn't pursue me anymore.

I'm starting to have empathy for his position. "All you want is sex". Yes! He wants sex. Guess what, he's a virile male. And he happens to want sex with ME, the love of his life no doubt. So what's the big deal? Why am I punishing him for wanting what's natural?

I forget what sex means to him. It allows him to feel the LOVE. As archaic as this sounds, it's true. He has a hard time expressing his feelings, being tender, giving me the affection I crave. He can't tap into any of this unless he's feeling the LOVE. And that begins and ends with sex. I notice it almost immediately -- after a roll in the hay, he gives more of himself, has more patience with the kids, is more agreeable. He's just easier to live with. And so am I! It's the only way to release the stresses of the day. I admit it, I'm also an Alpha Male and I need sex as badly as my partner. So I'm going to stop making him feel dirty for wanting it. We are married after all. Guilt-free sex is part of the reason we did this. Let's just enjoy it. More.

Desperate Love

"In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.”

This quote from Eat, Pray, Love is all over the web. It's so utterly honest. Big *SIGH*. No wonder this book has universal appeal! We want so desperately to surrender our hearts, and to what -- someone who doesn't even exist -- the man of our dreams, the one who will never disappoint, who is perfect for us in every way.

 

Later in the book, the author talks about the intensity and devastation of her rebound relationship : " Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted -- an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted. Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to thave that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. " ...

 

I can't quote more, it's too painful. It takes me right back to that place of self-loathing and desperation in my 20s. They were never what I truly wanted and yet all I wanted was their love. Ugh, I see some father-daughter neurosis rising up here.

Let's hear it for marriage! Yes, it's endlessly boring. But it's SAFE, and STABLE.

Emotional Decisions are a Good Idea

Last plug for the book "How We Decide". Lots of great research throughout and in the end it boils down to letting your emotions guide decisions that mean a lot to you. Turns out our prefrontal cortex cannot handle too many variables. It's best to let your gut instinct guide you. One of the experiments that Lehrer references illustrates this point well. When students were asked to rate strawberry jam from best to worst, their results were in-line with tasting experts who had done the same. But when asked to re-do the taste test but additionally explain their choices, the results were completely backwards! They started making up reasons that had no bearing on the taste -- like that they preferred a smoother looking texture. Their rational brain interfered with the wisdom of their emotions which are very good at judging preferences. Another good example of where rational decision making falls down is for house buying. People often end up with the bigger house in the burbs because they focus on less important quantifiable facts like square footage rather than future emotions, like the frustration of a longer daily commute.

This was a relief to learn because I find myself questioning my gut instinct and rationalizing too many important decisions. There's nothing wrong with tapping into your intuition. In fact for complex decisions, it's often your best bet.

More on Dopamine

I feel a bit like Robin Williams in the movie Awakenings having just discovered the miracle of dopamine, but I need to write down more of this great book, "How we Decide" before it goes back to the library. Earlier I wrote about how the author explained how when our expectations have been met, our brains dopamine neurons fire away to give us those warm and fuzzy feelings about our decisions and when we make mistakes, those same neurons make us feel discomfort and at the same time correct themselves to formulate new expectations, which explains how learning from mistakes work.

Well unfortunately there's a fatal flaw with this too. The dopamine hit you get when you've been rewarded is even greater than when you receive an unexpected reward. For example, in the case of Pavlov's dog once he's learned to expect a treat at the sound of a bell, the bigger delight is in receiving the treat before the bell is rung -- hells yeah! This is why gambling is so much fun. You pull the slot and out comes the money, unexpectedly. Our dopamine neurons automatically start trying to form patterns to predict when money will likely drop, but then we soon realize that it is completely random, so we give up. Unfortunately those with abnormal dopamine levels never surrender -- they are in a constant state of blissful reward. This explains why some Parkinson's patients who are administered dopamine altering drugs also become gambling addicts as a side effect. It also explains why that first kiss is so euphoric. Sadly, expectation kills the thrill of newness and surprise.

 

The fatal flaw is making decisions based on patterns where there are none. We think pro athletes have hot streaks or that we can beat the stock market when really the world is a lot more random than we think. This is the gambler's fallacy -- thinking that something is more or less likely to occur based on whether that event has recently occurred. It also explains stock market bubbles. When the market booms, investors keep investing because they don't want to regret not investing and losing out on potential gains. They keep investing because they think they've figured out the market and they ignore the possibility of loss. And when the bubble bursts (because it is after all random), these same investors can't wait to get out because they don't want to regret staying in -- they panic and run. Lehrer says the best way to beat the market is to accept that it's nothing more than a random walk with an upward slope. Pick a low-cost index fund and wait -- don't fixate on what might have been, just do nothing. You'll beat the average 'active' investor by 10%!

 

Lastly, the other faulty part of purely emotional decision making is being tempted with instant reward. Our emotional brain has a hard time dealing with long term consequences, so we tend to gravitate to instant gratification. We also over-value loss -- in fact we avoid it like the plague, which is why credit cards are so appealing. You don't really feel like you are spending money. The author quotes research that shows paying with cc's reduces activity in the insula, part of the brain associated with negative feelings. THIS is very telling. I have a hard time saving for my long term goals like paying off my mortgage or my retirement and am often tempted by the immediate reward (did I mention that I really want another pair of boots?). Learning to compensate for the deficiencies of my emotional brain might be my panacea! Perhaps I should try paying with cash this month? Yikes. I do love a challenge though ...

Dopamine

Having just read "How We Decide", I'm scrambling to jot down a few take-aways for a book so chalked-full of fascinating bits of research. How come Pysch was not this exciting in university?

The author, Jonah Lehrer  talks about the role of emotions in decision-making. Down-played and misunderstood for many years in favour of the rational and logic-based decision model, emotions are finally given the credit they deserve. That gut-instinct can actually be physiologically explained. Here's my "tell it to me like I'm ten" version:

The neurotransmitter dopamine basically controls all emotion, including pleasure. Think of the crack addict who's just gotten a fix -- major dopamine OD. The dopamine neurons of our brains are generating patterns based on experience. We learn what will give us pleasure and it's the expectation that actually fires dopamine, as well as the reward in getting what you expect. I think of Pavlov's dog -- the bell that rang before the treat was given taught the dog to salivate at the sound of the bell. The pattern was learned by dopamine neurons.

 

When the expectation is false (there is no treat), the brain generates an 'error-related' negativity signal -- also known as the "oh-shit circuit". The anterior cingulate cortex where all of this happens, helps remember what the dopamine cells are learning so that expectations can be adjusted in light of new info (e.g. there is no treat now, so stop expecting it when you hear the bell). That is how we learn from mistakes. Brilliant.

Motion sickness is due to this dopamine prediction error -- there is a conflict between the rocky experience and the expectation of solid ground, which results in nausea. Thankfully the dopamine neurons revise their model and the sensation goes away. Of course there are some of us that never learn from our mistakes ... we continue to make the same bad choices ... sigh. Wait, this is not about me.

 

One of the best parts of the book was how the author related this to PRAISE. Remember that famous experiment in which young children were administered a test -- half were praised for their effort and the other half were praised for their intelligence? The first group went on to tackle more challenging problems without missing a beat while the ones who were told they were smart choose easier tests and their confidence dropped along with their scores. These children were afraid of failure -- they felt pressure to continue to show they were smart. The smart compliment was in fact detrimental. Whereas the students who were praised for their effort felt the intrinsic reward of success. The 'smart' kids tried to bolster their own self-esteem by comparing their scores to those who did worse. But the kids praised for their effort were interested in those who scored higher. They wanted to understand their mistakes and learn how to do better. OMG, this hits close to home ...

Learning from mistakes is crucial -- unless your brain experiences the discomfort from being wrong again and again, it will never revise its model. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no short-cuts to this process. Brilliant!

Let Down

Today was rough. I kept waiting for that warm Christmassy feeling to come over me and it just didn't happen. I usually get it on the night of the 24th -- an incredible feeling of peace and gratitude. It's so uplifting and comforting. What happened? Maybe I'm just too old to feel the Christmas spirit. I can't help but feel like Christmas has let me down. Hopefully tomorrow will be brighter. Gotta keep looking for that silver-lining, even if it's not there today.