What do #children think about #climatechange? What do they worry about? What are they frustrated about? What do young people want us to know about their experiences with this often overwhelming topic? If you know a concerned kid, they should know they’re not alone.
Here's your periodic, always timely, reminder that spaced retrieval practice is a fantastic way to learn material, as this meta-analysis (one of many strong pieces of evidence) shows. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09572-8
"Tal é o temor que se apossa do homem ao descobrir a figura de seu poder, que ele se desvia dela, na ação que é dela mesma e quando essa ação a mostra nua"
Psychiatry not fit for purpose. Not new research yet the key findings make a mockery of diagnostic (and hence treatment) approaches. In particular that "almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events" shows a commonality in mental health that is all too often under-estimated.
'Professor Peter Kinderman, University of Liverpool, said: “This study provides yet more evidence that the biomedical diagnostic approach in psychiatry is not fit for purpose.'
The main findings of the research were:
• Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules
• There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses
• Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events
• Diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need
"Much of the attention of methodologists has focused on how to recognize and control for unwanted factors that can affect outcomes of interest. But psychology is also important: it tells us that own human biases can be just as important in leading us astray"
Ever since playing with ChatGPT, I've become sensitized to the way false rationality sounds ... there's a particular vibe to what is basically coherent nonsense. And now I've started to notice when people do it too. I get this crawly ChatGPT feeling when somebody is obviously making up an "authoritative" answer to a question they know nothing about. #AI#chatgpt#psychology
Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the #RichardMatheson novel is an existentialist treatise.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.
In 2015 I left my abuser of seven years, and since have been disabled with #PTSD and other chronic conditions, fighting #suicide. I was unable to work at all for five years. My personal narrative now is about recovery out of that #DarkSojourn. I'm usually in some kind of pain, and try not to whine too much about it. I'm #Genderfluid#nonbinary (they/them) of recent transition, #polyamorous, and #bisexual.
Does anyone know of any #RemoteWork out there that allows for flexible scheduling (given I'm a #SingleMom) and is not 1099 commission based? I want to remain a #SAHM but I need a steady way to make money so I can reliably cover financial necessities. I have a Bachelors in #SocialWork with minors in #Psychology and #CaseManagement who also has #Transcription experience but I'm open to any industry!! Help a girl out, Fediverse? 🥹💗 #GetFediHired
(Reposts appreciated!!)
TITLE: YouTube Pseudo-Psychology, Algorithm Traps, and How I Got Set-Up
to Look Like I Cheat
My wife and I share a YouTube Premium subscription. A few weeks ago I
was scrolling through YouTube recommendations when I came across a video
on different male personality types.
"Sure", I thought, "I'm a therapist -- why not check it out". So I
watched the video as it invited me to try and decide which type of male
I was as they described them. I noticed they made the "Sigma Male"
sound the most attractive -- which was a bit odd -- but I thought little
more about it.
A few weeks later (tonight), up popped a video on 10 characteristics of
a "Sigma Male". I was curious, so I watched it. They spent the whole
video making "Sigma Males" seem like super heroes. Suspicious now, I
went to the channel these videos were coming from to look around.
I was displeased to see that 10% of the videos were on male personality
characteristics, and 90% of the videos were dedicated to how Sigma
Males Get Women. Video after video of how to bag yourself a blonde or
brunette. Yuck.
You can guess where this is going -- now our shared YouTube
recommendations list is full of how-to videos on attracting hot women.
The uncool thing is I have never watched any such video to deserve
this. The really uncool thing is my wife will be spotting this
tomorrow. Happily -- she is very understanding and not the jealous type.
Besides -- she can always look at my view history. I'll also be sending
her this message. :)
Is there actually a valid psychological theory outside pop psychology
including "Sigma Males"? When I Google it, I get lots of pop psychology
websites, including something called the "Incel Wiki".
Now I do feel slightly ill.
-- Michael
APPENDED NOTE:
I sent the original note above out a few days ago on a national psych
listserv and it engendered some relevant psychological discussion on how
AI and algorithms effect the mental health of our clients.
Happily my wife thought the note and situation above hilarious (I
thought she might).
Part of what was so troubling to me here was the clear funneling process
being executed on vulnerable young men on YouTube:
STEP 1: Grab guys just interested in learning about themselves. (Or
psychotherapists interested in personality systems.)
STEP 2: Make "Sigma Males" sound like the most attractive type so they
are identified with. (Lonely geeks are recast as desirable lone wolf
types with all the skills of alpha males.)
STEP 3: Game the YouTube algorithm so the next recommendations are how
"Sigma Males" get women. (I decided to bail at this point so I am not
going to view what is being recommended. Judging by the fact that "Sigma
Male" connects in Google searches to Incel websites, I shutter to think...)
[It's possible that "Sigma Male" is a term from a legitimate personality
system, but if so, its been at least partially co-opted by pop psychology.]
A discussion commenter stated: /"The mental health challenge is to help
people become aware of how AI is taking over their lives so that they
can manage the AI rather than have the AI manage them."/
My new resolve to periodically create new YouTube profiles to get out of
old tracking algorithms is one example of an adaptation.
*People need other ways to escape tracking to get out of boxes* -- like
the old BBS (bulletin board systems) that let you read (or not read)
every community comment from every poster without algorithms tailoring
your newsfeed.
*People need tools to recognize when they are being herded into specific
ways of thinking.* Like many of our political silos. Like my original
example above of an interest in male psychology potentially leading to
Incel-like "education" on how to be a "Sigma Male" who gets all the women.
*Businesses need some government regulation in what tracking they can do
-- in all environments, but especially the free ones.* People may need
to return to PAYING for their information sources so they themselves are
not the product.
Ironically, it was GOOGLE, whose "I'm feeling lucky" button below the
search engine field used to take users to a random website somewhere on
the Internet.
*We are now in need of actively maintaining personal ways to randomly
escape our information bubbles so as to better recognize them.**
***
-- Michael
*Michael Reeder, LCPC
*
*Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location*
*410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
#psychology #socialwork #psychotherapy #research #incel #AI
#artificialintelligence #youtube #mentalhealth @psychology@a.gup.pe
@socialwork@a.gup.pe @psychotherapists@a.gup.pe @psychiatry@a.gup.pe
#Algorithms #personalitytests @silos
Guess my #introduction is overdue. I have been an IT Manager for most of my adult life and went back to college as an older student to get my degree in #PublicHealth and #Psychology (Summa Cum Laude...who knew?).
I have volunteered at Covid vaccine clinics and for the National Park Service. I have often worked in negative pressure rooms treating covid patients.
I'm overdue for an #introduction, especially with all you new followers…so here goes.
I'm a software engineer with a degree in Anthropology. I highly recommend the combo.
Most recently I was tech lead for Scaled Human Review at Meta. I worked in the Integrity Foundation (what other companies call "Trust and Safety") on Better Engineering initiatives and #Metaverse integration, with the teams that build human review software for the 30-40K external reviewers. I'd sworn I’d never work at Facebook, but I decided to see if I could make a difference. I couldn’t. And it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But I learned a lot about how the sausages are made and why they have such a hard time with #contentmoderation.
I've been on #socialmedia for four decades (seriously, I saw someone catfished in chat in 1978—this stuff isn't new), and virtually everyone I know I met online somewhere—many I've still never met in person. Needless to say, that's made me pretty passionate about making online communities safe for everyone, and especially marginalized groups.
I'm now a freelance #consultant, working on my own projects (I'll write more on that later), and with my wife's #consulting company (see below). I'm planning to do a lot more writing about #society and #technology (as well some #SFF), and to travel more.
I tend to write long posts (like this one). They may get shorter once my blog is back up. I don't stick to one topic, but I'll try to tag them so you can filter. I post about tech stuff (recent, as well as old geeky #Unix stuff), #social issues, #LGBTQ issues (especially the T), pretty #photos, and random personal anecdotes. When I boost, it's because I think it's something that might be interesting to someone, or some group, that follows me. Those tend to include all the above topics, plus SF&F-related things, and cool science stuff.
I'm #pan, #poly, #nonbinary (or #genderqueer, if you prefer). I prefer "they" for pronouns, but "he" is fine. I spent most of my life thinking I really was a straight cis man who just happened to be a bit quirky and a passionate and tearful ally, so I'm not too picky about how you refer to me. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions about all that, public or private.
I grew up mostly in #Maine and then lived in Massachusetts for a long time, but I now live on sovereign #Swinomish land in #WashingtonState (US), on the edge of the San Juan islands. Despite my first name (that's a story) and current location, I'm not Native American, although I focus a lot on Native American rights. My parents were both active in that area, and that was my introduction to civil rights in general.
I've been a #software engineer at various levels (from programmer to CTO to company founder) for 40+ years. I learned BASIC in high school, taught myself Pascal, FORTRAN and PL/1 in college, learned C as an intern at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, one floor up from the Unix crew), and went on from there. In college, I majored in #Anthropology with a concentration in #Psychology, and that's influenced the way I look at software ever since. Software is designed for people. Software systems build communities (whether intended or not). Anyone who does that damn well better understand how people and #communities work.
I've worked for Bell Labs (psych stats), Sperry Research (window systems, UX design), Apollo/HP (programmable shell, windowing systems, Unix porting, UX design), Bright Ideas (cookbook, educational games), OSF (windowing standards), Alfalfa (multimedia email - SMTP and X.400 :)), Wildfire (phone-based voice assistant), Utopia/USWeb (web and security consulting), Saroca (small boats), Messagefire (anti- #spam software), MessageGate (corporate compliance software), Somewhere (software consulting), ZeeVee (web video aggregation, metadata scraping), TiVo (video content correlation, #metadata pipelines), and Meta. Plus a few others.
I've been with my wife, Dr. Mollie Pepper, for over a decade. She's a #sociologist with a focus on #refugee migration, #gender, and violence; the kind of work that gives you PTSD. She did her dissertation on women's roles in the (now extremely defunct) peace process in #Myanmar (aka #Burma). A year ago she was at a military base frantically processing thousands of Afghan refugees and managing translators. She has a consulting company that specializes in evaluating and designing refugee service and placement programs. You can find her at https://carlsonpepper.com/. Everything I know about #feminism, #intersectionality, #queer theory, #CRT, and #racism I either learned from her, or she gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand them properly.
I have two grown daughters from my first marriage with Nassim Fotouhi; a kick-ass software engineer/engineering manager who came to the States just before the Iranian revolution.
Shadi Fotouhi is an artist (see my profile background photo, go look up the drug codes and compare them to the mermaids' behavior) turned software engineer; building dynamic room installations will do that to you. She worked in QA at a gaming company, and then at Jibo; a robotics startup. Now she's a senior software engineer at Wayfair--Kubernetes, release configuration, and all that fun stuff.
Shireen Hinckley is a documentarian, digital image technician, video editor, and co-founder of Somewhere Films (https://www.somewherefilms.com/shireen-hinckley); a womxn's filmmaking collective. She works for #Beyoncé at Parkwood Entertainment, where she's an editor and post-production supervisor for all of their video releases. She worked on "Black is King" and just about every video since then, whether it's for Instagram, Times Square, Tiffany's, the Oscars, or Chloe x Halle. No, I can't tell you when the Renaissance visual album will be out—but it will be amazing.
I'm incredibly honored to have those wonderful women in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
A couple other things that may come up, especially in my photos. My mother is an artist who lives in Maine in a round house she designed, and the family built, when I was in high school. And I'm part owner of a #lighthouse on Cape Cod.
Hi! I'm Morgan, a #Software engineer living in western #EU. I work as a lead developer, with an increasing focus on the #HumanFactors involved in making software. I'm also pursuing a #Psychology degree with the aim of becoming a better #UX#UI designer. When I write code I use #Java and #Typescript but i'd like to go back to #Ada someday.
I also love #Music (yes, all of it)! Share your favorite song with me! 🎶 I'm learning how to play #Drums and might dip my toes into #MusicProduction in the future.
I've been interested in decentralized tech like #Matrix and #IPFS for quite some time. And I still hold a tiny bit of hope that #Blockchain might yield something good eventually (but I don't have a pyramid scheme to sell you I promise).
Here's my delayed #Introduction - I'm a psychotherapist living in New England, in the U.S. I have a partner, kids, dogs, goats, cats, chickens. Living on four acres, far from the madding crowd. My interests are wide ranging - I'll drop some general hashtags below. Dark humor gets us through tough times. I might shitpost. I am not great at writing introductions.