Being Reasonable and Living Reasonably in the 21st Century

In our society today, does a reasonable person exist? Do we as consumers actually make decisions on our own? Most big companies will have us think that we do while we actually don’t. Being fatigued from working hard to earn money to buy stuff, we don’t always take time to make decisions about what we’re buying or what we need versus want. We are used to and familiar with this system of buy fast, buy often, and buy bigger that we never take the time to really make a decision that will be most impactful and important to us. When was the last time you read all the ingredients of different brands of canned spaghetti sauce or cereal to choose the best one? Becoming more mindful of our choices will result in choices that we feel better about making. This can result in a trickle down effect that will affect other behaviors becoming more sustainable and important after seeing the benefits to the self and environment.

But how do you to get people to turn against years of over consumption and societal norms of luxury to live a simplifier life? The Reasonable Person Model gives us a good base to start with examining our behavior and how to go about changing it. The components -model building, being effective, and meaningful action- can help usher in this new change in behavior in a way that is not forced but can happen in a more comfortable way. In order to become more mindful of decisions being made, new mental models must be made to adjust the way we think and the way we go about doing things in a more sustainable manner. These will go against our norms and heuristics we have already developed but with practice and reinforcement can be changed to reflect more sustainable, mindful ones. Our new models will not work as fast the old ones because we will be taking more time to evaluate the option that will give us the best reward. With a high satisfaction and competency with the choices we make, we will see how effective we are being and will want to continue more of these behaviors.

The last part of the RPM, meaningful action, helps to tackle this problem by showing people that living a more sustainable life should be meaningful to them as it makes them feel better and is positive for the environment. Meaningful action also means participation within a community and its effects on that. Community will become vital in the resource descent, as people will rely on others for goods, social needs, ideas, and information. One’s actions will not only be meaningful to self and family, but also community where there is interdependence upon one another. By implementing these concepts in a plan for reduced consumptions and more sustainable living, people will be able to flourish and adapt to changes better. This will be a better way of life that people won’t need to be forced into but instead will look forward to the challenges that will be present in the future. With the inevitable need to lead a simpler, sustainable life, it is important that we try to get people to change their behaviors now so they will become more acclimated to these changes.

Coping

In the midst of finals and the holiday season, we’re all coping as best we can. Coping is how people deal with unpreferred environments, both physical and conceptual. The general mechanism by which coping works is through manipulating, usually limiting, the flow of information or how it is perceived. This can be done in many ways, but I will discuss three broad methods of coping - territory, community, and interpretation - and offer some tips of how to use them in your life.

Territory allows one to cope better in difficult situations because it is a familiar, predictable environment where one has some degree of control over the information flow. People retreat to their territories, physical or intellectual, because they have well developed understandings of their territories, and there they feel safe and will not be overwhelmed by immediate environmental factors. Territory can allow people to rest and restore themselves. When confronted with a troubled relationship, an expert may bury themselves in their work or a teenager might barricade themselves in their room. When writing a daunting paper, a student will probably find themselves opening new tabs and browsing favorite internet sites instead. All of these of these are examples of coping with territory.

Tip: When you’re feeling stressed, it’s natural and even beneficial at times to go to your territory and relax - just be aware that you’re doing it, and don’t let it keep you from accomplishing other things. Plan to work or study in a preferred and familiar location, or make time in the evenings to read a favorite book instead of browsing Facebook all day.

A second category of coping techniques is coping with community. Community allows one to cope by offering both security and increased understanding. Community often goes hand-in-hand with territory, because community members often share an environment which they are familiar with and which they control access to - a house, a club, a clique, an office, etc. In a community, shared territory is guarded by all members of the community - a larger group controlling the flow of information in and out means that any one member doesn’t have to have their guard up at all times. Communities allow for individuals to be vulnerable and rest, which is important for coping with stress. Communities also foster greater understanding through the sharing of relevant information. If the entire community is coping with the same situation, then members will usually share relevant and helpful information around within the community, whether in the form of warnings, analysis, answers, etc. If a single member of the community is coping with something, community members will still usually share relevant information if they become aware that the individual is dealing with something. Community offers safety and support.

Tip: When coping something, any community is beneficial and supportive. For the biggest benefit, try figuring out which of your communities will have the most shared experience with whatever situation you’re dealing with. For example, if you had the option, you wouldn’t approach your emotionally-intelligent poet friends with car trouble, nor would you go to your auto-shop community with your relationship problems.

A final category of coping methods is interpretation. Interpretation is the re-framing of a situation, thinking about it in a new and actionable way. We’re interpreting our environments all the time, but coping with interpretation require becoming aware of those existing, likely unhealthy interpretations, and supplanting them with more useful ones. Intentional interpretation is another way of controlling information flow, or at least information processing, allowing you more control over which information is relevant to you. Interpretation allows one to find the next step and the motivation to take it. An example of interpretation might be to think of a college education as an incredibly special privilege, rather than a terrifying and exhausting obligation - in the new framing, next steps become clear.Interpretation is helpful because it is highly portable, and not dependent on any place or people - you can cope with situations anywhere simply by re-interpreting them in more actionable ways.

Tip: Try asking your community for helpful interpretations of difficult situations - interpretations are easily shared and useful ones stick around as stories. Remember that the story you tell yourself actually does shape your experience of reality - interpretations are how we interface with the world. Change yours today!

Sustaining our Minds to Sustain our Future

“The eye and the hand, make some of a monkey and much of a man.” –Kaplan

Humanity is populated by visionaries. Evolution dictated humans to have advanced information processing and enhanced visual skills to aid in way finding, social connection, and obtaining resources to survive as fleshy beings inhabiting the world of the tooth and claw. In order to understand the framework for a sustainable future, it is important to analyze how the people who will create this future will likely think and act.

The Reasonable Person Model is one framework for understanding how humans can maximize their mental resources. Its three components include model building, being effective, and meaningful action. A simple example of where this model is used daily is in kindergarten classrooms. Ideas are introduced to help children build familiarity with a topic; naptime is scheduled in to help maintain clear-headedness and restore attentional resources; and they are encouraged to participate and try out their new knowledge with in-class activities and recess. I’m not saying that adults should go back to kindergarten, but if we apply the same ideas to how we motivate people and build societal expectations—in the end we might have a more productive and motivated human population.

People are at their best when they are well rested, engaged, and learning—and it is no accident that nature supports these qualities. By fostering an appreciation for nature at the start of children’s’ lives, we can help them see the full value of the natural environment. Encouraging appreciation of the outdoors through hikes, teaching them about different plants and animals and how to care for them, among other things can help build a generation that cares about sustaining the planet. Further, we can help encourage adults to appreciate nature as well in order to motivate conservational behaviors. Once humans have extended experience and an enriched cognitive map of nature and its benefits, they will be more likely to want to preserve the visuals and ideas they have in their heads. Thus, in order for a sustainable future to exist, we must first prime the human population to be sustainably minded inhabitants of this future—one that consciously enjoys and cares for the environment.

Experts and Sharing

“Aren’t you guys going to be doctors? Why don’t you know [intricate mechanisms of a specific drug] yet?”  This is a direct quote from a science professor who most likely meant well but was met with 200 blank stares as a response.  The truth is that most pre-med students enter college with zero knowledge of medicine and a limited knowledge of the building block science courses required for medical school entry.  Science courses like organic chemistry are often compared to learning a new language, and then solving problems in that language.  In my experience, I have been taught by renowned researchers who are breaking scientific boundaries in their respective fields but more times than not, that expertise does not translate to a smooth learning experience.

This does not entirely fall on the professors.  In many instances, the structure of the classes is not conducive to a beneficial learning environment.  Students are expected to pay attention and retain vasts amount of unfamiliar information over stretches of hours without breaks. Between standard directed attention fatigue and the additional stress of lacking a cognitive map for new subjects, this structure does not easily lead to retention of new information. A way to combat this issue would be to have shorter classes more times a week.  This way, professors could chunk the information to generate better understanding.  Professors should also aim to incorporate real world experiences into their teaching as much as possible.  I can recall specific lectures in which course concepts were applied to a cool facet of everyday life, like the nifty demonstrations in my physics classes.

Study groups are another helpful method to engage with difficult sciences.  While experts may have a difficult time breaking down intense concepts,  undergraduate students who have recently taken and understood the subjects have a more unique and relatable way of teaching information.  Student led study groups offer a collaborative environment where concepts can be broken down and explained in more depth than is offered in a lecture.

Adopting Sustainable Behaviors Through the Lens of the Reasonable Person Model

Humans are information processors that can take current and past experiences and make predictions about future situations and outcomes. Prospection is the ability to set plans for future goals in the short, medium, and long term and to alter present behaviors to achieve those goals. How people come to prospect can be explained using the Reasonable Person Model. This expansive framework works to reduce the processes of how humans interact with the world into three intersecting categories; building models, being effective, and taking action. Building models is the idea that we are internally motivated to seek new information to construct a base of knowledge. This base of knowledge helps us in taking action, as it allows us to estimate the ways our participation can be personally rewarding and yield the best results. Those results produce information that is absorbed through model building and can guide the ways we take action in the future. But how efficiently we build, act, and link the two depends on our ability to be effective. This is our capacity to utilize our cognition and put our directed attention to good use. Successful model building and restorative behaviors elevate our ability to be effective, while failure and usage of directed attention can deplete it. It is in these ways that the three spheres of the Reasonable Person Model feedback into each other. When people can fulfill the Reasonable Person Model, it makes it easier to prospect and achieve the goals one sets.

These two main themes can be used as a framework to interpret the successes and stagnation of movements towards environmental sustainability. Take the act of turning the lights off when you leave a room, for example. Our mental models allow us to map locations of bulbs and switches in a room when we enter and they are important for navigating rooms to leave and turn switches off. It is easy to be effective in this task because the act of flicking a switch as you walk by is not attentionally expensive. Lastly, the act of turning lights off is a simple act, requires little motivation to act out, and has virtually no cost compared to the reward. For these reasons, the sustainable choice of turning non-essential light bulbs off fits successfully into each sphere of the Reasonable Person Model. In terms of prospection, the convenient locations of switches leave only a little amount of planning that needs to be done to get to them. Because of how easily this sustainable behavior melds with our psychology, it is clear why many people have adopted it.

Compare this to another, less practiced, sustainable behavior; cutting red meat out of our diets. Most of us have cognitive maps that contain the locations of all of the nearby hamburger shops. The smells, sights, and sounds of cooking red meat can be involuntarily fascinating, meaning it takes a lot of directed attention to turn focus away from them. Lastly, normalization of meat eating in our culture makes it so eating vegetarian or vegan doesn’t offer the same positive social feedback that being an omnivore does. That these factors are positively associated meat eating means it requires a lot of effort in attention, learning, and restricting behavior to change the way we, as individuals eat. So even though it may be easy to prospect and create plans to eat less red meat, the difficulty in realizing those goals can be partly explain by the concept’s incongruence with the Reasonable Person Model. 

Companies Creating Sustainable Living for the Future

Various new companies, and new divisions within existing companies, are forming to meet the growing need for environmentally and socially sustainable products. These companies generally aim to continue business-as-usual, by innovating products and services to fit our techno-industrial society and continue techno-growth or at least green stability. SolarCity, one of Elon Musk’s many companies, is attempting to tackle these innovations.

SolarCity is a sustainably and future-driven company that creates roof titles with built-in solar cells that are undetectable to the naked eye. These roof titles are covered in tempered glass that make them highly durable, lasting from cradle-to-cradle. Furthermore, this option is affordable, costing less than a similar, non-solar panelled roof, when considering the long-term energy savings. SolarCity’s solar titles are a futuristic technology-based solution for the energy-descent scenario.

Ultimately, there should be a balance between innovating green technologies and changing behaviours. Although eventually we will be forced to change, institutions should be set in place to begin shifting consumer behaviour, changing cognitive maps, and preparing for resource descent. Once the Elon Musk’s solar roof and those like it are widely adopted, consumers’ internal representations of a roof will begin to shift, including environmentally friendly and renewable energy options. I hope the shift will happen more rapidly with these new technologies arising that make communities more familiar with the concept of sustainability.

Experts and Sharing

One benefit of attending the University of Michigan is being taught by professors with such success, intelligence and experience in their field of study, however the experts are not always the best at sharing information. In my Biochemistry course, for example, we are being taught by professors with multiple awards in the biochemical sciences, currently discovering groundbreaking scientific information. Although it is such an honor to learn from experts in the field, I’ve started to feel that some of these professors may have forgotten we, the students, are new to this area of study. Almost daily, we are listening to lectures for two hours with no break where our directed attention is being strained along with an overwhelming amount of new information being taught.

Resources like Khan Academy come in handy for times like this. Khan Academy is a free online learning resource that provides exercises, instructional videos, and personalized tutoring for a variety of subjects. Focusing again on biochemistry, this resource teaches the same concepts that are taught in lecture, however, the information is given in a way that makes sense and promotes involvement. There are visual references (graphics) that make the information easier to follow, along with analogies and examples. In order to prevent overwhelming the learner, information is chunked, and videos are made into short segments providing time to test their knowledge and make predictions. Additionally, the language used is understood with greater ease, eliminating the use of big words to prevent confusion. The videos are setup to limit distractions with a plain black background and colored markers to clearly illustrate major principles and concepts. When possible, concepts are made into a “story”, providing mystery and fascination. All of these features make Khan Academy an effective and efficient source of sharing information.

Expert Knowledge and Information Sharing in University Classrooms

“Every year I teach this class I get worse and worse at teaching it because it is increasingly harder for me to understand why students are unable to grasp the material.”

This is how my GSI started off our first discussion for my applied geophysics class. Of course, this got a good laugh from the discussion section, but after the snickers died down, he followed it up saying he was, in fact, serious—his first year it had been easy for him to understand the errors students were making and to help them through these problems . However, he was now in his fourth year of being a GSI and was now such an expert that he was unable to understand what was confusing us as students because the material seemed basic to him.

This brings up the interesting idea, that even though somebody may be one of the most intelligent people in their field, this has little relationship to how successful they are at teaching others about the topic they are an expert in. This can be an issue in educational settings such as universities and high schools. Over my past years at the University of Michigan, it has been quite clear to me that all my professors are incredibly intelligent and influential in their field of study. Many have done groundbreaking research and published important articles or books. Yet, among these professors, some stick out as being the most inspiring, influential, and effective teachers, while others left me confused and uninterested.

Many times I attributed my success and interest in a class to the success and effectiveness of the professor. However, the system by which college classes teach may also be part of the flaw. Providing opportunities for restoration and task switching are necessary for successful information sharing. In universities, information sharing generally takes place in the form of lectures—where professors  are not easily able to provide opportunities for restoration or task switching. Well-structured information is another guideline for effective information sharing, conversely, this is something that professors have control over and whether or not lectures are organized and presented effectively impacts how effectively students learn the material.

For this reason, I believe it would be effective for universities to implement more recorded lectures. Students would be able to watch these lectures online, and if they had trouble understanding or were experiencing directed attention fatigue, they would be able to pause the video and restore their directed attention by taking a walk, playing a game, watching a sporting event, or many numbers of other activities. Similarly, they would also be able to switch to a different task—another strategy for improving effective information sharing that is not possible in a typical 90-minute lecture.

While many people would not utilize this option, it would allow more flexibility in learning styles. Today, it seems more and more that schools only cater to one specific learning style, and do not do enough to recognize and provide alternatives for people who do not learn best in this one specific style. Having lectures recorded would provide students with more control over their learning and would benefit students due to its incorporation of more factors useful for effective information sharing.

Coping: Interpretation Josh Ellis

Another Riveting Installment of: Put Your Phone Away

If this post applies to you, you probably don’t want to hear it yet again, but this is an entire post about this habit of yours, your… cell phone use. Specifically, I want to talk about how I think that the moment someone takes out their phone to browse social media and/or zesty memes is when they’ve begun divesting interest from whatever was previously engaging them. Now you might be tempted to invalidate this by saying how arbitrary of an observation it is to make, which isn’t entirely incorrect, but there’s so much more going on when one purposefully diverts their focus from whatever important activities they’re engaged in to take their phone out of their pocket and check their mail (this also goes out to those of you who check mail on your laptop in class, you “I’m too productive to listen and take notes” doofuses).

What I'm talking about, is how going to work, lecture, doing homework and chores require one to get out of their regular daily routine, to turn their mental efforts onto models and knowledge used almost exclusively for these tasks. Seeing as how these tasks draw one away from your preferred environments, pulling out ones phone re-establishes ones link with wherever they last left off. Switching back and forth from these two sets of mental models is extremely taxing, and when one has the potential to be addicting across a variety of personality types, I feel that it would be imperative to maintain a habit of checking phones only when leaving an environment meant for learning.

By creating a dichotomy of thought between a private world and current life, we drastically inhibit ourselves reduce the amount of uncertainty in our information processing. Outside of the incredibly capable, this leads us to the false mindset that this allows us to interpret our current situation more methodically, when approaching it from a familiar place (looking at things we're responsible for, alongside our facebook feeds or what have you). Furthermore, we always will have our phones on us, no matter what new content we'll face during the day, so no matter what new stranger's we'll see, we'll be able to not exist in their world as long as we have these wonderful little machines.

Coping - Interpretation

     Coping is a response that college students are all too familiar with due to the large amounts of stress that they are under at any given time. This response is natural and innate, and was advantageous to our ancient ancestors as it allowed them to persevere in times of great stress, rather than simply falling apart and risking danger. However, being mindful of behavior and tweaking coping mechanisms can lead to the behavior having a more profound and successful effect, allowing for greater mental clarity and the ability to overcome the stressor(s) with ease. One such manner is through interpretation. 

      Interpretation is beneficial in unpredictable, uncontrollable, or highly stressful environments when our brain struggles to make sense of the situation. Often, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of information as our brain rapidly attempts to form a plan, but this can be subverted through a change of interpretation. Adopting an interpretive strategy aids in decision-making and understanding and facilitates the creation of an action plan. These strategies also differ from person to person due to the fact that each individual has a lifetime of experience. Due to this experience, there is a different "most-beneficial" interpretation for everyone, but interpretations can be easily shared and adopted among two or more people. 

     A time I used an interpretive strategy was when I was younger, and used to have terrible stage fright. Unfortunately for me, my parents decided the way for me to face this fear was to sign me up for a theater camp in which we would eventually put on the show Peter Pan. Since my name was Peter, I was given the lead. I was terrified. I came home from camp more nervous every day, constantly looking ahead with dread to the eventual performance, imagining all the possible things that could go catastrophically wrong. I felt that my embarrassment was inevitable. However, my parents noticed my nervousness and decided to intervene. They told me that instead of thinking that I was performing in front of the audience, I should pretend we were simply rehearsing. This way, I would go into the performance much calmer and would see any mistake that I made as just a part of practice. At first I doubted that anything could alleviate my nerves, but as I began to use this strategy I noticed with surprise that it was actually working. The stage lights were too blinding for me to see the crowd, so it was easy to imagine they were not there. From there, it was a simple change of mindset to believe that this was not a performance at all, and the only people around were those on the stage with me. In this way, I learned the power of interpretation, and continue to use it to aid when situations seem too daunting to face as they are. 

Coping Interpretation: Graduation Edition

Coping is something that we do often as humans when we are put in situations that we cannot control or aren't comfortable in. Sometimes in the situation, its all about how we interpret things. I have found this very useful in the realm of graduation. This is my last year here at this wonderful university and I've been trying to enjoy myself all while impending adulthood has been looming over my shoulder. At first, I was terrified. I have been in school since I was in Pre-K and the thought of not having to take a class, write an essay, take an exam, fill out a FAFSA, etc. was refreshing yet scary. I don't know how to be an adult. I don't know how to pay bills, file taxes, budget, or any of the things that adults are supposed to be able to do. Needless to say, I was panicking. But something in me was forcing me to find some solutions, some clarity to ease my troubled brain. And what I discovered was the power of reinterpretation. Once, I decided to change how I viewed my situation, I realized that impending adulthood wasn't so scary at all. One interpretive strategy that I have used and found very helpful is discussing my situations with others who have been in my position. They helped me to understand that graduating was not as scary as one might think, its actually very liberating. Others have helped me to see that after graduation I am free to do what it is that i want. I can travel, go to grad school, get a job, etc. The possibilities are endless. I also had to realize that there are just some things that you simply cannot control, and thats very helpful in and of its self. Interpretive strategies have been very helpful for me and hopefully they can help others as well.