intelligence Archives - Jineral Knowledge

Emotional Intelligence

Posted on 18/09/201711/04/2019 by Jinavie

Out of all the traits and skills we value, admire and teach to our children, one of the most neglected seems to be that of emotional intelligence. Most people are not even aware what emotional intelligence really means.

Emotional intelligence can be summarised as the ability to recognise, analyse and control the emotions of yourself and others around you. It begins with recognising the presence of an emotion, either through mindfulness or empathy. Once the emotion has been identified, analyse that emotion: where it came from, what effect it is having on the current situation and what the subtext may be. Lastly, use this information to prevent yourself from overreacting, or to understand why someone may be reacting so defensively or aggressively and how to defuse the situation.

Harnessing the power of emotions is a very useful skill. We like to think of ourselves as highly advanced, intelligent beings, but we are still ruled by basic instincts and emotions embedded deep in our brains. Emotional intelligence works to give us more control over our behaviour and unlocking the power to live a happier life. More importantly, it lets us improve the lives of those around us as we are less likely to do or say hurtful things, while being a more kind, supportive human being.

Let us take an example. You are frustrated at your partner because she has not texted back for over a day. Using emotional intelligence, you recognise that you are feeling angry, but also disappointment and rejection. Further analysis shows that these stem from a subconscious expectation that if she cared about you, she would have texted you. The real reason that you are angry at your partner stems from your insecurities, possibly even past trust or abandonment issues. You also remember that she has been very stressed with a project recently, so she may not be in the mood to talk. The end result is that instead of sending passive-aggressive signals at your partner and creating a rift in your relationship, you bring some chocolate ice cream to cheer your partner up.

Like any other kind of intelligence, emotional intelligence must be learned through education and practice. We cannot rein in our emotions if we have never thought about how our past affects us or what motivates or scares us. We cannot possibly understand why the other person is reacting a certain way, if we never trained the ability to see things from their perspective. We cannot help others process emotions such as depression and anxiety, if we cannot understand our own emotions.

We can teach ourselves to be more emotionally intelligent. Meditation and self-reflection allows us to catalogue and interpret your range of emotions. Reading books helps us understand that other people may have a different way of seeing the world. Having deep and meaningful conversations with your loved ones lets you clear up misunderstandings and better learn why people react a certain way in given situations.

We can then apply this knowledge to constantly hone our skills. It may sound exhausting, but every time you feel a strong emotion – whether it is negative or positive – try to analyse it with your rational mind. The more you practise, the more you will be in touch with your own emotions.

Emotional intelligence is an invaluable tool on the journey of life. With increasing levels of emotional intelligence, you quickly realise why things are the way they are. We are all scared little children in the playground, pulling someone’s hair because we cannot tell them that we love them, or punching someone in the face because we cannot withstand the inexplicable surges of insecurity and self-doubt.

Now look back on yourself: how have emotions affected your life and your relationships? What fights and sufferings could have been avoided had you stopped to interpret the emotions and simply talked things out?
The emotional side of you is an integral part of your identity. Why make it your worst enemy when it can be your best ally?

Science & Nature

Intelligent Life

Posted on 26/11/201309/04/2019 by Jinavie

One of the great questions in science is “could intelligent life develop on planets other than Earth?”. Even the general populace has heard of programmes such as SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life) and mathematical models such as the Drake equation that attempt to predict the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent civilisations. But an equally intriguing question we seem to neglect is: “could intelligent life develop on Earth?”.

The definition of “intelligent life” is hugely varying, but nonetheless attempts have been made to compare our intelligence level to other animals. From the pool of research throughout the decades, the most “intelligent” non-human animals appear to be chimpanzees, bonobos, great apes, dolphins, elephants, certain parrots, ravens and rats. There is much research on the intelligence of cephalopods (e.g. the octopus) that has shown promise. If we were to shift the focus from individual intelligence, we could also consider “civilised” animals such as ants, as they are capable of building vast cities with intricate societies. All of this shows that intelligence is not exclusive to our species. We have simply walked down the path of evolution where the trait of ever-increasing intelligence, knowledge and wisdom have allowed us to adapt to and survive our environment. Ergo, it is fair to consider the possibility that other animals are walking a similar path that may lead to the making of a species with intelligence comparable to us.

However, this only raises the theoretical possibility of intelligent life. What is the realistic, practical possibility of intelligent life developing on Earth in the near future? Put another way, could intelligent life develop in the presence of a higher intelligent life (e.g. humans)? The road that brought us to throne of “the most intelligent species on Earth” was not an easy one. We are but one of many other hominid (human-like) species that evolution produced while tinkering with the concept. For example, there was a time when we (Homo sapiens) shared the Earth with other intelligent hominids such as the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals are commonly pictured as simple, knuckle-dragging apes but in reality they were just as intelligent as Homo sapiens during that time. They had a culture similar to our own, developed stone tools just as complex and even made cave paintings in a display of art. The reason why we are not breaking bad with Neanderthal neighbours now is that (according to one theory) we successfully outcompeted them, driving them to extinction (there is debate whether genocide and cannibalism was involved).

Evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense for an intelligent species to wipe out another species trying to compete with the ecological niche of intelligence. This has been discussed in many works of science fiction, such as Planet of the Apes where the emergence of intelligent apes leads to the destruction of human civilisation. Arthur C. Clarke discussed this as a side plot in his novel The Songs of Distant Earth. Upon discovering a species of sea scorpions that show signs of intelligence such as social hierarchy and metal collecting, the scientists suggest that they should allow it to develop, but ultimately the government decides to eradicate them as soon as they attempt to migrate to land.

Suffice to say, given our track record in history involving the countless times colonists wiped out other civilisations to serve their purpose, there is a good chance that any new intelligent life would immediately be removed by us if they had the misfortune of arising during our time.

Science & Nature

Lizard People

Posted on 27/04/201309/04/2019 by Jinavie

What would the world be like if the dinosaurs had not gone extinct? In 1982, palaeontologist Dale Russell proposed a thought experiment regarding the possible evolutionary path of a species called Troodons. The Troodons were small, bird-like dinosaurs from the later periods of the reign of dinosaurs. They grew up to 2.4m in length and about 50kg in weight, standing on two slender hind legs. The most interesting feature of Troodons was their very large brain – six times larger than any other dinosaurs relative to their body weight. This would have most likely allowed the Troodons to be quite intelligent relative to other species, allowing it to utilise crude tools such as rolling a boulder off a cliff.

Russell believed that had the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event did not happen 65 million years ago (when a giant meteor struck Earth), the Troodons could have evolved in a path similar to humans, expanding their brain size and using intelligence as a tool of survival. Although its brain size was substantially lower than that of a human, he believes that through evolution, by the present its brain would be the size of a modern human’s. He also believed that evolution would have shaped the Troodons into a “dinosauroid” form, much closer to the shape of a human being. The Dinosauroid (nicknamed lizard people) would have had two fingers and a thumb, large eyes, no hair, internal genitalia (like reptiles), no breasts and a navel (the placenta is instrumental in giving birth to large-brained offspring). Their language would probably have sounded like a bird song.

Given the history of Homo sapiens and our competition and ultimate demise of similar sapient species, it is unclear whether we would have won the survival war against the Dinosauroids, or whether we would have even had the chance to evolve to our stage, as mammals rapidly filled the niche after dinosaurs were wiped out. There is much criticism of Russell’s thought experiment of the Dinosauroid being “too anthropomorphic” (too human-looking), but as suggested in the book K-PAX by Prot, perhaps the humanoid form is the most efficient natural design for an intelligent life form. Realistic or not, it is a fascinating projection of a world that could have been.

Psychology & Medicine

Viscera: Brain

Posted on 16/04/201310/03/2019 by Jinavie

(Learn more about the organs of the human bodies in other posts in the Viscera series here: https://jineralknowledge.com/tag/viscera/?order=asc)

(NB: I have written MANY ARK posts about the brain and all the delightful ways it screws up. Some of them are probably the most interesting posts on my blog. Please click the hyperlinks to check out the various related articles! 😀 Alternatively, here’s a convenient list: https://jineralknowledge.com/tag/brain/?order=asc)

Among the many organs of the human body, no organ comes close to the magnificent complexity that is the brain. The brain acts as the command centre of the body. It receives massive amounts of information through the various senses, processes it and sends out electrical signals to control how the body operates. Not only does it control “basic” functions such as movement of muscles, controlling organ functions and regulating homeostasis, it is also responsible for the so-called “higher functions” such as consciousness, emotions and cognition. It is the true seat of the mind and soul.

The brain is the only major visceral organ not located in the trunk (body). It is enclosed in the cranium of the skull, which acts as a protective casing. Because it is a closed box, even a small increase in volume (such as due to a bleed or a tumour) can cause extreme pressures to build, causing severe problems. The entire brain and spinal cord are bathed in a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), all enclosed by a sheath made of three layers (dura, arachnoid and pia maters). The brain sends out nerves to the rest of the body, which act as electrical wiring transmitting signals. These include the cranial nerves and the spinal cord, which leaves the bottom of the skull down the spine. The spinal cord branches off into many nerves that supply every nook and cranny of the body. The brain itself is made up of two large hemispheres, which are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Despite popular belief, the actions of the two hemispheres are much more complicated than “analytical vs. creative”. The brain also encompasses the cerebellum (the small stripey structure at the back), which controls coordination and speech articulation, and the brainstem, which is involved in autonomic control of life-sustaining functions such as breathing, and also the source of the cranial nerves.

In the last century, scientists have learned that specific parts of the brain play a specific role. This thought started with the field of phrenology, where small areas of the brain were mapped to a certain mental faculty, such as love, wit or destructiveness. Although this turned out to be complete hokum, the idea stayed and we now know the actual functions of each part of the brain. The brain is broadly divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital. The frontal lobe is the domain of thought, personality, motor function and other higher functions. The parietal lobe is related to spatial awareness and sensory functions (such as touch). The temporal lobe is linked to hearing, comprehension of language and storing new memories. The occipital lobe is primarily associated with vision. The brain can then be subdivided into more focussed areas, such as Broca’s area that governs speech and Wernicke’s area that governs listening. It should be noted that the four lobes only describe areas on the surface of the brain (cerebral cortex) where the higher functions belong. The inside of the brain is just as complicated and has many different parts, such as the hypothalamus that is involved in homeostasis, and the hippocampus that converts short-term memories into long-term memories.

How does a lump of cells weighing around 1.5kg produce such wondrous abilities such as philosophical thought, deduction, emotions and calculation? The truth is that we still do not know how the brain functions exactly. However, we know that the brain is composed of a large number of neurons (nerve cells) – about 100 billion of them. These neurons connect to one another via a synapse, which is a gap between two nerve cells where neurotransmitters travel to and fro (allowing electrical impulses to jump from one neuron to another). Using these connections, neurons form an unbelievably intricate and complex network of electrical activity. Because one neuron can connect to many more others, the number of synapses is estimated to be around 100~1000 trillion – significantly more powerful compared to any computer in the world. The number of synapses directly correlates to intelligence and it seems intellectual activities such as reading a book increases the number of synapses in the brain. We have yet to understand exactly how the brain uses this incredible computational power to produce cognition and self-awareness.

(Video of neuronal activities in a zebrafish brain)

Because the brain uses electrical impulses for most of its functions, a common abnormality that is seen with the brain is when the electrical activity becomes disorganised and out of control – a seizure. This abnormal electrical activity may be due to a focal problem such as a tumour, or a generalised misfiring of neurons or altered regulation of electrical activity. When a seizure happens, the disorganised activity results in the brain not being able to function normally. For example, the most common consequence is a fit (tonic-clonic seizure) where every muscle spasms out of control, because the muscles are overloaded with chaotic signals. Focal seizures can cause fascinating symptoms depending on the location, such as temporal lobe seizures causing religious visions (hallucination). This also disrupts consciousness, which is why most epilepsy patients do not remember the event.

Psychology & Medicine

Child Prodigy

Posted on 12/09/201209/03/2019 by Jinavie

At the age of 6, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart toured Europe to astound audiences with his mastery of the violin, organ and keyboard. At the age of 11, Judit Polgár defeated a Grandmaster in chess, later becoming a Grandmaster herself at the age of 15. By the time he finished elementary school, Saul Kripke had taught himself ancient Hebrew, finished the works of Shakespeare and mastered the works of Descartes and complex mathematical problems.

Each of these people is considered a child prodigy – person who develops and shows extreme talent in a skill at a level far beyond the norm for their age. The term wunderkind (German for “wonder child”) is also used. For some unexplained reason, these people are far beyond the average level of children at their age in terms of intelligence or a certain talent.

Prodigies are actually a subset of a condition known as precocity, where a young child shows unusually early development or maturity, especially in mental aptitude. For example, a German child called Christian Friedrich Heinecken is known to have talked within a few hours after his birth, learnt the key events of the first five books of the Torah within a year, mastered the Bible at age 2 and had a working knowledge of universal history and geography, Latin and French at age 3. Unfortunately, he was struck ill at the age of 4, and shortly after predicting his death, passed away. Heinecken’s case is an extreme example of precocity, but nonetheless most precocious children show at least an outstandingly advanced level of mental maturity compared to other children. Along with prodigies, savants and children with extraordinarily high IQ (over 160) are also considered precocious.

Although precocious children enjoy their extreme talent (for which they usually have deep passion for) and may even become famous for it like Mozart, they are almost always at risk of certain problems. One common issue is that they tend to be placed on pedestals as people constantly praise their ability. This can quickly evolve into narcissism, setting a major expectation that the child battles with throughout his or her life. Children with advanced intellect are often unable to fit in to society as they are far more intelligent than their peers. Not only do other children shy away from them, but they feel too bored and unstimulated by other children and choose to alienate themselves. Furthermore, although they may have the intelligence and maturity to comprehend philosophical concepts, they still have the emotions of a child, meaning they are tormented by the dissonance between the rational mind and their emotions. All of these factors combined lead to a great increase in risk of depression in precocious children.

Essentially, the main conundrum for child prodigies is trying to balance their amazing talent with a happy life in a “normal” society. This could be achieved by parents keeping things real and not placing excessive expectations on the child, and giving the child a way to vent their genius in some way. For example, chess has been a classic way of keeping children with high intellect engaged. Having this kind of vent allows the child to still engage with other members of his or her society (other children), while honing their great skills for an even brighter future. The child must stay engaged and passionately practise and advance their skill so that they do not stay in a perpetual rut all their life.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

History & Literature

Torture

Posted on 04/04/201215/02/2019 by Jinavie

Travelling is fun. But strangely, the etymology of the word travel is the Latin word tripalium, which means “torture instrument”. This is most likely because in the old days before airplanes and trains were invented, travelling was often long, arduous and painful. Travelling is probably the least terrifying form of torture. Let us explore the various methods of torture used throughout human history. There are many types of tortures, but they can be largely divided into physical and psychological torture. The main goal of torture is to induce maximum pain to extract information from, punish or to execute a person.

Physical torture is very simple: inflict as much pain as you can. For example, you can simply tie the person to a chair and beat them senselessly, or apply pressure to a wound to cause intense pain. A useful tip for beating someone is to place a phonebook on their stomach or hand and hitting the book, which transfers pains while not leaving a bruise or any marks. A simple way to cause extreme pain is the use of fingers. Finger tips are extremely sensitive and contain many nerve endings, meaning sticking needles under the nail bed or ripping the fingernails off causes extreme pain. Like this, medical knowledge has often been used to develop new ways to torture people. For instance, heating the sole of the feet with fire causes severe pain, electricity used in the right amount can keep the person alive while causing pain and seizures, and if you lie a person flat and on a slight decline (so the head is lower than the body), put a cloth over their face and pour over it, you can induce a sensation of drowning (this is called waterboarding and is used by the CIA). Another simple, effective torture method is the joori-teulgi(주리 틀기) from Korea, where a person is tied to a chair with the feet bound, with two long sticks inserted between the thighs, crossed, then pulled down to streth the thighs apart. This causes extreme pain and suffering.

As mentioned above, torture can be used to kill a person too. The famous hanged, drawn and quartered torture was used in the Middle Ages to punish treasonists. The convict was drawn behind a horse for a while and then hanged until just before death, when they were disembowelled, beheaded and quartered. Another strange, complicated method of torture can be found in China, where slow slicing was used. Slow slicing involves tying a convict to a post and cutting slices of flesh off him until he dies. Executioners often had an art of slicing in such a way to prolong the suffering for as long as possible without killing the person. Another execution method found in both Western and Eastern history is dismemberment by horses, where the person’s four limbs and head are tied to individual horses (or cows), which are then made to run in different directions to violently rip the person up.

Animals were used in various forms of torture throughout history around the world. Tying the prisoner to an elephant’s feet to crush them to death, putting a rat on the person’s stomach then putting a pot over it and heating it with fire to make the rat burrow into the person’s guts, feeding them to lions or vicious dogs, coating them in honey and leaving them in the path of fire ants to make them get slowly eaten… Out of all of these, the most bizarre method is the goat torture used in ancient Rome. This torture involved tying the prisoner to a chair and securing their feet, which were coated with salt water. Next, goats were released around the prisoner. The goats would lick the sole of the feet to cause tickling, which over a prolonged period is interpreted as pain by the body. This eventually drives the person insane from pain.

Unlike physical torture, psychological torture induces shame and fear rather than pain. Threatening, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, rape and sexual torture, sensory deprivation, exploitation of phobias, loud noises (such as banging on a door constantly), blindfolding the person and rubbing a balloon on their cheeks, placing foreign objects or snakes in the anus or vagina, leaving them in a container full of insects… Psychological torture has just as much a variety as physical torture and can have longer lasting effects on the person. Furthermore, as it leaves no external marks, it is still frequently used in the modern day.

No matter what the method, inducing extreme pain to control people, extract information and cause suffering is an inhumane act that cannot be tolerated. If mankind had focussed their creativity and effort into more constructive and altruistic things rather than discovering various ways to cause pain, we would probably be living in a much better world.

Science & Nature

Alex The Parrot

Posted on 08/02/201215/02/2019 by Jinavie

Alex (Avian Language EXperiment) was the name of an animal psychology experiment that ran for 30 years starting from 1977. The experiment was designed to see if birds could undertake complex problem solving and learn languages like primates. For this, Dr Irene Pepperberg bough an African grey parrot, named him Alex and started teaching him how to speak. Before Alex, scientists believed that animals needed a large enough brain like a primate to handle the complex problems related to language. But Alex proved otherwise.

Before Dr Pepperberg, scientists failed to establish any two-way communication with parrots. She used a new training technique called the model/rival technique, where two trainers act in front of the parrot to teach it things. The method is as follows. One trainer (the rival) shows the other trainer the desired student behaviour they want the parrot to learn. The other trainer then compliments the trainer and shows attention. The parrot sees that the behaviour gets the trainer’s attention and learns it to compete with the rival. This technique was extremely successful and Alex began picking up words at a very fast rate (technically it was more of a two-way communications code than “language”).

Once communication was possible, Dr Pepperberg taught Alex many different concepts. Over the course of his life, Alex learnt 150 words, how to differentiate between seven colours and five shapes and also understood the concept of numbers and sizes. If you showed Alex two objects, he could answer many questions regarding one object (thus showing that his response was not a conditioned one). For example, if you showed him a small blue key and a large green key, he could answer what colour the larger key was, or which one was the green key. Furthermore, if a plate full of objects of different colours and shapes was presented to him, he could correctly count how many green blocks (or any other shape or colour) there was among the objects. The important point here is that he could pick out just the green blocks, excluding green balls or blue blocks from his answers (showing he fully understood the question and could attribute more than one characteristic to one object). He knew how to express himself, such as saying “Wanna go back” when he was tired, and would give playful, incorrect answers when bored of the repetitious experiments. According to Dr Pepperberg, Alex had the intelligence equal to a dolphin, a great ape or a five year-old child. He also knew how to attain knowledge by asking questions, such as when he asked what colour he was to learn the word “grey”.

Alex, who told us so much about the intelligence of a parrot, unfortunately died in 2007. The night before he died, he said the following last words to Dr Pepperberg: “You be good. I love you”.

History & Literature

Spy

Posted on 29/12/201115/02/2019 by Jinavie

Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu dealt with the topic of spies extensively in his book The Art of War. He believed that information and intelligence determined the flow of war and spies were a vital element. Sun Tzu talked about five types of spies.

Local spies (鄕間): Use the enemy’s people
Internal spies (內間): Use the enemy’s officials (like a resident spy)
Double spies (反間): Use the enemy’s spies to feed the wrong information
Dead spies (死間): Has a possibility of betraying, so use them to spread misinformation, leading the enemy to persecute them
Living spies (生間): Use agents that can gather intelligence and return safely back to report their findings, the most useful type of spies

History & Literature

To Win A Hundred Battles

Posted on 28/12/201115/02/2019 by Jinavie

According to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, there are two ways to victory. The first is winning without fighting the enemy, the second is to win after battling the enemy. The former is the better, wiser option with the latter being the second best choice. Even if you win a hundred battles, it is not the idea victory. Achieving victory without a battle is the far better option. The best method is to predict the enemy’s movements and outwit them. The second best method is to sever the ties between the enemy nation and their close allies, isolating them. The third method is to engage in battle with the enemy and the worst method is to attack them using all means and resources.

To avoid a war and still achieve victory you must anticipate the enemy’s plans and to do this you must gather intelligence. Thus, whether you win or lose a war depends on whether you have the right intelligence. 지피지기 백전불태(知彼知己百戰不殆, jipijigi baekjeonbultae): If you know the enemy and know yourself, even if you fight a hundred battles you are not in danger. If you fight only knowing your military capabilities and not the state of the enemy, the chances of victory is half-half. If you do not know the enemy’s or your own military’s capabilities, then you will lose every fight.