Eight – Dhairya

Proposal for Music Exoskeleton

MusiqueExoskeleton

8 Cassandra

Intelligence transfer through habits

Since elementary school, I have gone to school with friends smarter than me. It has been a laborious battle to accumulate knowledge to impress them. At one point, on the weekends, I sat in the middle of the floor with a circle of open textbooks, shifting clockwise from one book to another, so that even as I came to be bored with one subject matter, I could maintain a constant rate of learning. I developed heuristics for studying such as minimize the amount of material you need to memorize in favor of deriving concepts from previously learned concepts and notice big ideas applicable to multiple domains. Whenever I discovered and adopted a new learning heuristic—it rapidly accelerated my rate of learning—much more so than picking up a one-off fact about something like the xylem in plants (the conduit for transporting water in plants, by the way).

As I moved onto even more difficult proving grounds, the people around me became even smarter and seemed to have better heuristics than me. One friend has amassed a network of dense and compact knowledge, in contrast to the superficial and thin veneer of knowledge that is easy to accumulate through rote memorization, by using analogies and even stretched analogies to link new material with previously acquired knowledge. Another friend is one of the best programmers in the world as ranked by international competitions—and from working with her on joint programming assignments, I noticed that she reflects continuously about the bigger picture of the problem (and change plans early if something better comes up) even in the midst of working on gritty implementation details.

From personal observation, some of their heuristics (let’s call them good learning habits, if they employ the heuristic over a long period of time) were major factors for how they were able to accumulate so much intelligence! As I got more involved in the field of intelligence augmentation, I asked my dear friend of ten years and involuntary subject of my one-way academic rivalry, if he had any habits responsible for making him smart. He offered this rule, always be thinking. He noted that even at MIT, there were instances he would hear people say, “I am so tired. I don’t want to think right now.” “No!” he says, “You always want to be thinking. Thinking is fun!” He said that he keeps a short list of problems on hand that he would think about for fun during all the little extra margins between events of his day. Apparently, my friend’s rule has been derived and employed by the great physicist, Richard Feynman, as well.

A recent heuristic that I have personally adopted and have found to accelerate the rate of learning or at least to give the illusion of control over it is, if you aren’t learning fast enough, learn another way. If what you are doing is not working, then you need to switch algorithms or twiddle the parameters. It makes no sense that if you are not achieving your desired output to wait, hope, and pray for variance and noise to push you over the edge. It is time to swap out your algorithm for another—any other—even if the potential algorithm does not appear to be better than the one you currently use. Your current algorithm has been empirically validated to not work, so science tells you that you should test another one. This heuristic has helped me a lot in grad school thus far, because whenever I get stuck because it does not afford me the opportunity to stay stuck. I always have the option of changing my routine (and as a computer science major, I like the idea of programming and optimizing my life.)

These word-of-mouth testimonials about heuristics begs the scientific question—can we measure the use of these heuristics in a controlled manner? Yes, we can!  Research in this area that I will name “intelligence transfer through habits” is not new and highly cross-disciplinary. Education researchers have for more than fifty years studied what they call “teaching thinking” in which they attempt to teach kids to think like a physicist, mathematician, or historian [1]. Another education researcher by the name of Costa has even drafted a list of sixteen good habits of mind [2]. Costa’s rules are more general but very much in the flavor of the heuristics that I presented earlier. Unfortunately, as noted by David Perkins of the Harvard Graduate School of Education [1], research in the area of teaching children how to think has fallen out of popularity with the emergence of rival camps of educational philosophy, in combination with the fact that short-term benefits of teaching students how to think are less observable than rote “back to the basics” repetition of the three R’s.

In another discipline entirely, behavioral biologists have greatly advanced the study of habits. They have noted that habits may account for much of unconscious behavior and that we only limited mental capacity to make conscious decisions  [3].  In addition, there has been work on how to form and break habits [4].

For particular domains such as computer science and mathematics, experts have worked to actively consolidate the heuristics that have worked for them and have used them to publish books such as The Pragmatic Programmer [5] for computer science, How To Solve It [6] for math, and Getting Things Done [7] for efficiency. None of these rule compilations have been systematically tested but they seem to work—again by testimonials from those I respect and their overwhelming sales volume . The act of learning from an expert offers hints as how to proceed for intelligence transfer via habits.

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The end-goal of this research related to the problem of intelligence augmentation—how to amplify the natural born intelligence of humans—from the vantage point of interfaces for transferring “intelligence” from one person to another. One likely way to transfer “intelligence” is to transfer habits. Applications could be built upon wearable platforms like Glass or smartwatches to just-in-time prompt people to execute a particular habit at the appropriate situation.

For this class project, I hope to settle a few matters of scientific curiosity. While it is possible to ask people to adopt an arbitrary collection of habits, would we get a different result by asking people to adopt someone else’s habits? My hypothesis is “Yes!” due to nature of humans as social beings. In fact, I believe that asking people to adopt someone else’s habits would facilitate adoption and retention rates. The basis of this conjecture is evolutionary. Humans have evolved to mimic others in our social group through our body posture and facial muscles. We have higher cognitive functions that facilitate admiration and emulation of those we respect. In addition, there may an emotional or social component of using something originating from another human being. And lastly, there may be a factor of the tried-and-true success narrative that will boost results based on rationality or placebo effect.

I have designed two experiments to test this hypothesis. The first experiment attempts to measure if habits are more likely to stick coming from another person. I plan to:

• Give people super long list of vocab words to learn
• Measure the number of words learned (3 groups) and rule adoption rate / persistence (2 groups)
• Experimental groups:

–      Control: Ask them to maximize the number of words they learn that week

–      Ask them to follow some rule in order to maximize the objective

–      Tell them some rule is someone else’s habit: then ask them to follow some rule in order to maximize the objective

The second experiment aims to test if adopting someone’s habits change you as a person. I plan to:

• Ask people to self-evaluate their personality
• Help people to encode their daily habits
• Ask people to wear someone else’s habits for one week
• Ask them to re-evaluate their personality

References

1. Perkins, D.  40 Years of Teaching Thinking: Revolution, Evolution, and What Next? 
2. Costa, A. L., & Kallick, B. (2000). Describing 16 habits of mind.
3. Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American psychologist, 54(7), 462.
4. Duhigg, C. (2013). The Power of Habit: Why We Do what We Do, and how to Change. Century.

Assignment 8 – Sophia

Mindfulness Bracelet

Mindfulness is the state of being aware in the present moment as well as taking a non-evaluative and non-judgmental approach to one’s inner experience.  Adopting new habits and new ways of thinking is very difficult.  New books and studies are constantly released with methods for self-improvement and the secrets to happiness, but trying to remember these in the midst of the hecticness of life can seem impossible.  Practicing mindfulness is one way to improve awareness of habits and goals during those busy moments, but remembering to be mindful itself can be hard! Is it possible to build a device that can improve mindfulness?

To change habits and reach goals we need to remember our intentions at the right time.  Existing tools for remembering and achieving goals are evaluative and can feel judgemental, two qualities which go against the teachings of mindfulness. Notes, visualizations, inspirational images, logging tools, point systems…even tying a string to your finger…are all easy to ignore when your attention is elsewhere and not easy to take with you.  Calendar reminders and alarms feel judgemental and intrusive.  Devices like Fitbit and reflectOns are evaluative and may feel judgemental to some. In general, systems that use rewards or punishment to motivate are shown to not be as effective in the long run.  Once the system is gone, the person’s behavior tends to go back to normal.  In addition, happiness and satisfaction also lessened using punishment and reward systems because the accomplishment feels less authentic.  Developing intrinsic motivation through a mindfulness meditation practice is supposedly one of the best ways to train yourself for awareness, focused attention, and willpower, but it can be hard to integrate with your daily routine. 

Some people are already experimenting with devices to bring awareness to emotions.  The EmoBracelet (http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/gadget-warns-online-traders-of-dud-decisions-20091015-gy7d.html) was developed for stock traders to be mindful of stress and overexcitement.  The Noumic (http://www.noumic.com/) was developed for use as a meditation tool.  However, both of these use lights and/or sounds, which are disruptive and attract attention, and the Noumic is not wearable and must be held. 

I propose to build a subtle yet stylish bracelet that provides gentle reminders during your daily routine.  Embedded within the bracelet is a sensor to measure galvanic skin response.  Galvanic skin response is used to measure emotional arousal.  In response to strong emotions, the bracelet would become warm and give the user’s wrist a gentle hug to remind the user to be aware of her actions and mental state.  Galvanic skin response can show whether you are excited or stressed but it has trouble distinguishing between the two.  Though for other applications this can be a problem, mindfulness requires a non-judgemental approach and this would actually be a benefit in this application.  The user would be reminded to reflect during all kinds of heightened emotions, which is what mindfulness encourages.

I would find such a device useful within my own life.  For example, I am reading Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.  In this book, he describes methods for making our work feel more meaningful and increasing happiness through focused attention, challenging myself, etc. It is very hard to remember his methods when I am actually in the middle of my work and stressed out. What if the bracelet gave me a reminder through warmth and a gentle squeeze to think about these methods that I want to remember?  Also, affirmations (shown to be effective at increasing happiness, decreasing stress, and changing habits) and calming exercises are also hard to remember.  Could my bracelet detect my stress and then subtly remind me to relax? Could such a device be used to help during meditation? During meditation, it is extremely easy to let your mind wander. Could I use a sensor to detect my wandering attention and gently guide my thoughts back to my meditation?

To implement this this device, I would start simple, maybe just using heat. Flexible heat circuits are easy to get and could be sewn into fabric or cast into flexible silicon.  Galvanic skin response sensors are also available online, but I believe that this bracelet would be effective even if it only went off randomly.  Currently, I don’t know how I would implement the gentle squeeze functionality, but I think the bracelet would work with just heat.   For a device like this to be useful, it would have to have good battery life and recharging would have to be easy.  It would also have to be stylish and unobtrusive so the user wouldn’t mind wearing it.  Ideally, it would be nice to have a small screen on the bracelet so you can optionally use it to remember different things.  Also, it might be useful if the bracelet can be tied to other devices using bluetooth or some other type of wireless communication in order to be able to tie it in with different contexts and perhaps do some logging.

Through this project, I hope to demonstrate that I can increase the likelihood of changing my behavior, habits, and thought patterns. I believe that this will be effective even if the reminders are done randomly, reinforcing pathways and associations during all kinds of situations. I also hope that the bracelet can be so subtle that it can eventually trigger different thoughts and behavior even if the user isn’t fully conscious of the physical signal.