In NLP, one of the central Metamodel questions is, “How do you know?” An honest answer to the question provides information about a person’s “model of the world,” which is essentially a “reality strategy”—the way people decide what’s real. In most cases, what we think of as “real” is more accurately a “belief,” in some cases with very little in the way of supporting evidence. Most beliefs begin, of course, with some evidence in the external environment. Through the natural processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization, beliefs that have a logical beginning can become increasingly distorted over time. One of . . . → Read More: Evidence Procedures
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 Comments are closed  Blog  Africa, Amish, behavior, belief, belief systems, beliefs, Bible, breasts, cancer, cancerous, change, Christian, climate change, Copernicus, disasters, drought, economic policy, economics, Europe, evidence, evidence procedure, evolution, false positives, flood, floods, follow the money, food, fossil fuels, fuel, Galileo, geophysical, global warming, government, Greece, health care, history, hockey stick, human activity, human influence, interconnection, long-term, mammography, metamodel, Mideast, perspective, prosperity, PSA, PSA test, public education, public schools, real, reality, regulation, relief, Richard Bandler, risk, scarcity, science, scientists, short-term, Spain, strategy, survival, tax policy, technology, the world, thermography, time, U.S., X-ray (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’)); In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post (Liberals and conservatives don’t just vote differently. They think differently.), Chris Mooney addressed some of the reasons the differences between liberals and conservatives have become so acrimonious over the past few election cycles. According to Mooney, “There’s now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information . . . → Read More: Possibilities and Necessities Comments are closed Blog "other", abortion, Chris Mooney, conflict, conservatives, conversation, cultural dynamics, different drummers, discovery, Eve, exploration, failed, forgiveness, George Lakoff, Gomorrah, Greek myth, job-killing, Liberals, Muslim, NLP, nurturant parent, Obama, Pandora, perdition, political, punishment, reality, reckless agenda, Republican Party, self-reliance, self-responsibility, sexuality, sin, slavery, slaves, social degeneration, Sodom, straight and narrow, strict father, strict rules, talking points, transgressions, Washington Post, women One of the things I’ve been paying increasing attention to (perhaps because of the ongoing political debate in the U.S.) is fear marketing. I find it amazing at how pervasive “fear appeals” are and the various ways they are used to sell “stuff,” including politicians and political “talking points.” The basic concept is that we really need to be afraid of X, and, if we want to be safe, we need to stock up on (or vote for) the anti-X. The world has a lot of risky stuff in it, of course, and we are undoubtedly safer when we . . . → Read More: Selling Fear in the New Year Comments are closed Blog 2012, advertising, airport, Alabama, ancestors, B.F. Skinner, ballot, big government, bogeyman, corporate profits, deficit, Democrats, elections, emotion, evidence, evil, FDR, fear, fear marketing, goblins, goons, Hell, illegal immigrants, jungle, Korzybski, long-term, metamodel, persuasion, persuasive appeals, political advertising, politicians, reality, reality-based, Republicans, risk, risk aversion, safe and secure, Satan, security, security theater, serious injury, smoke detectors, snakes, socialism, statistical, talking points, Tea Party, tobacco, trickle down, TV, voter fraud, warning, X-ray In case you haven’t noticed, the United States is embroiled in a political and financial conflict that is influencing the stability of world financial markets. One of the headlines of a recent (9 August 2011) New York Times article states, “Wave of worry threatens to build on itself: Hesitation over the uncertainty of the economy can make things worse.” That led me to wonder the degree to which perception can actually determine reality. The term I associate with perception as a determiner of reality is self-fulling prophecy. Although the concept of prophesies determining future events is ancient, its modern . . . → Read More: Perceptual Frames and Self-fulling Prophesy Comments are closed Blog Abraham-Hicks, beliefs, Byron Katie, conscious awareness, Darwin Awards, desire, desires, disappointment, economic bubble, FDR, fear, fold 'em, heliocentric, herd mentality, hold 'em, hope, Kenny Rogers, law of attraction, map, mirror neuron, optimism, optimistic, perception, perceptual frame, planking, planning, real, reality, Richard Bandler, Robert K. Merton, self-fulfilling prophesy, social structure, social theory, south sea company, stock market, territory, the Gambler, Wall Street In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following: The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For . . . → Read More: Coping with Complexity Comments are closed Blog argue, arguing, binary choices right/wrong, climate change, complexities, complexity, conservative, Critchley, debate, economics, economy, evolution, Fiorest Gump, fundamentalists, good/evil, intelligence, Islam, Islamic fundamentalists, Korzybski, macro-economics, mental maps, modern world, NY Times, Paul Krugman, reality, Republicans, Richard Bandler, sanity, science, slaves, territory With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”: One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”: Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy) Comments are closed Blog A Day in the Life, advertising, Beatles, belief, Chicago, corrupts, debt, deficit, Detroit, economy, evidence, experience, fiscal, history, hotel maid, hypnosis, IMF, Internet, John Edwards, Korzybski, lamestream, leaders, Lord Acton, map, media, men, metamodel, news, NLP, placebos, platitudes, political, politicians, politics, power, primaries, pundits, question, reality, Republican, Sarah Palin, scandal, Schwartzeneger, talking points, tax rates, taxation, taxes, territory, TV, Twitter, U.S., unemployment, Weiner If you’ve been paying attention for the past 20 or 30 years, you’ve probably noticed that “Science” keeps changing its mind about a lot of things. Also, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that Galileo’s “problems” with the Catholic Church have been a recurring theme. It seems to me that the conflict between “science” and “faith” is at the center of a number of what might be called “modern problems.” Problems of the sort that Galileo had with the Church have, of course, occurred in a variety of ways over the years. In general, . . . → Read More: What’s the Deal with Science? Comments are closed Blog awareness, bogus, change, church, Copernicus, doctor, doctor hypnosis, double-standard, federal, flip-flop, funding, Galileo, hypnosis, mental maps, Neurolinguistic, NLP, nominalization, observation, pharmaceutical, phobia, politician, Programming, progress, real, reality, Roman Catholic, science, snake oil, territory, tobacco, weight loss, white coat syndrome, winning The “Bell Curve” is the common expression for what is otherwise known as Standard Normal Distribution. The concept basically states that in any category, most members of the category will be grouped in the middle, with fewer members at the extremes. Wikipedia provides a fancy definition: In probability theory, the normal (or Gaussian) distribution, is a continuous probability distribution that is often used as a first approximation to describe real-valued random variables that tend to cluster around a single mean value. The graph of the associated probability density function is “bell”-shaped, and is known as the Gaussian function or . . . → Read More: The Bell Curve Theory of Life Comments are closed Blog apple, bell curve, black/white, blueberry, Byron Katie, conservative, Democrats, demonization, demonize, frame, framing, frozen evaluation, George Lakoff, liberal, lobbying, map, marketing, men, mental maps, metaphor, Pareto, perception, perspective, pie, pigs, polarization, poor, progressive, public relations, reality, Reification, Reify, Republicans, rich, standard normal distribution, strategies, strategy, territory, universal quantifiers, values, wealth, women |
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Metaphors We Die By (and For)
Way back in the pre-Internet days of 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published Metaphors We Live By. This landmark study of the metaphors we use in daily conversations illustrates the ways common metaphors shape our thinking and behavior. One of the examples often cited is “argument is war.” Ideas are attacked, defended, and shot down. We may even “destroy” someone’s theory or “kill” his or her idea.
A few weeks ago, while watching political commentary on TV, it occurred to me that we not only live by metaphors, but also die by them. This is a broader, and . . . → Read More: Metaphors We Die By (and For)
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