Full Blog Openning Skinners Box

Summary:

This book took a look at different and extreme cases of psychology in order to learn more about behavior an interactions. All tests involving cases sought out to understand behavior in humans and animals. It starts off from the case of conditioning a new born child’s mind and finishes off with ways to change or alter the adult mind such as lobotomy or medication. This books takes an in-depth look at the psychology of the mind with extreme tests and helps understand ourselves more

Discussion:

I enjoyed this book a lot and can see how understanding people and they way they think can help influence the field of CHI. Understanding the psychology of the user is one way to be able to design something more suitable for that person. I recommend this book to anyone and is as much an interesting read as it is an educational one that spans across different disciplines.

Book Reading #36 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 12

The chapter deals with the changes that occur in an adult male’s and female’s life. The 2 major changes observed were those that happen when people get married and when they get old. When people get married, they are not considered a household unit, but are still tied to their family households. With age, a man’s role is decreased while a woman’s increases due to her growing knowledge.

 

Discussion:

This is very different from our own culture although Mead does point out some similarities. It is just a unexpected how a male’s importance dwindles over time. I did expect older aged folk to be regarded as wiser and important but I did not think it would pertain only to women.

Book Reading #37 - Obedience to Authority

Summary:
Ch 9
Milgram discusses the differences between conformity, imitation, and obedience, hierarchical. Conformity is more implicit in its actions where obedience is more explicit. It then describes the experiments done with the teachers and shocking. This is shown in the museum exhibit where patrons follwed the instructions of only walking on the black tiles.

Ch 10
The root of obedience is sought in this chapter and also describes agentic state which is the condition a person is in when they see themselves as an agent carrying out another's wishes. This is seen in the shocking experiment where participants do as they are told while checking with the experimenter.

Ch 11
Milgram digs deeper to study the factors that impact a subject before experiments. Things such as their family structure, settings and environment, and reward system are analyzed. There is also an analysis when the subject is in the middle of an experiment to look at factors such as perception of authority figures, the appearance of authority, and the lack or excess of authority. It also discusses the famous prison experiment.

Ch 12
This chapter takes a look at disobedience. This is a way people release stress from strain by denying authority and becoming disobedient. Disobedience is a mechanism for avoiding or denying strain.

Ch 13
This chapter deals with aggression and different experiments conducted on the subject.


Ch 14
Discusses the findings of all his experiments indicating that all subjects met the typical expected findings and that they could be applied out of a laboratory setting.

Discussion:
The experiments and observations made are very shocking but this book intrigued me so much i could not put it down. I enjpyed this read and Milgram's experiments.

Book Reading #34 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 10

Summary:
This chapter talks about psycho surgery and the effects it has. The surgery is described as injecting alcohol into the brain to kill nerve tissue, thus "curing" the patient. It goes further by comparing it with Prozac by stating that it is unclear how it works but that it works none the less.

Discussion:
This chapter reminded me of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind because it aims at helping people by causing brain damage. I also feel that if the surgery provides results with the results outweighing any side effects, the people should continue doing so. I say this because I have taken Prozac and I feel the side effects are sometimes worth the results.

Book Reading #33 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Chapter 11

Summary:
The chapter mostly deals with girls who have broken away from the group for either one of two main reasons: they wish to have more freedom that is usually granted or are considered delinquents.  The chapter then goes into further detail with the recounts of several groups of girls that fall into one of those two categories. The main difference is the conflict that arises with their families if they are delinquents.

Discussion:
It was interesting to see what differentiated girls who wanted more freedom from troublemakers.  I got a better sense of Samoan life with the different accounts from the different girls. It made this chapter seem less generalized to all Samoans by focusing in on a few.

Paper Reading #13 - Gestalt: Integrated Support for Implementation and Analysis in Machine Learning

Comments:
Joe Cabrera
Stuart Jones

Reference Info:
Gestalt: Integrated Support for Implementation and Analysis in Machine Learning
Kayur Patel, Naomi Bancroft, Steven M. Drucker, James Fogarty, Andrew J. Ko, James A. Landay
UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology


Summary:
Gestalt provides users a graphical way to display and perfect the field of machine learning. Gestalt allows users to implement the learning, analyze data and provide easy transitions from implementation to data. Widgets were also added that gave different abilities to the users such as parsing data or train and test models. There is also a table with shared analysis so that developers may see what attributes were used to classify things in the learning. Test data was presented was used to test against the learning code.

Discussion:
I enjoyed this paper because I feel I understood it more having taken AI and a good foundation of machine learning. This tools seems like a great way to test machine learning, especially when one needs instant results of the code displayed. I feel like this if a big step forward in machine learning and hopefully will help out the field alot.

Book Reading #32 - Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 9


Summary:
This chapter starts of with the tale of a tragedy in which a doctor tries to cures a patient's epilepsy by performing surgery. In doing so, he cures the boy of epilepsy but also takes the boy's ability to form memories. Kandel then uses this story to research memory and how it works. He uses sea slugs as his subjects and discovers that memories are best made by electrochemical produced in the brain. Through further research, he hopes to one day may a drug that will enhance memory.

Discussion:
This seems like the plot to some Hollywood blockbuster. It seems like an interesting concept, pills that increase memory. I can see these as being considered only as a subscription medication and not for everyday use. I think it would follow the same paths of Ritalin and Adderall.