How to Talk to Animals

Trailer and launch in the same day?  This tutorial has a preface that provides some useful information I've gained in my collegiate education that provides a broader understanding of the subject of communication and language.  If you want more than the specific heuristics below, and want to understand how I've come up with them, check out that previous post.

Let's begin this monologue with an observation about myself:  I wouldn't say I have a personality that is instantly endearing to pets.  When a dog or cat comes up to sniff me for the first time, I could just be any human.  There is no instant connection, there's nothing special about my demeanor or identity that draws animals to me.

But in my experience, after I've spent time with animals, I form pretty strong friendships with them.  I consider pets to be family, and I would say that pets of mine have all grown to consider me either a friend or a "family" member of sorts.  People are impressed by how much pets like me.

I assure you that it is not a reflection of anything impressive about me.  I am not special.  I simply allow animals to interact with me on their terms.  I respect them, and I listen to them, and they ultimately appreciate that.  So, I'm well-liked by nonhumans who I've spent a lot of time with.  Especially if we're talking about cats.  Cats like me more than they like most people.  Dogs are naturally social with humans, but cats have to build those social bonds from scratch.

I believe I understand how to interact with animals.  I'd like to share specific heuristics for doing so, rules of thumb for what to do to understand your pet.  As subtle as it is, I think I've done enough introspection about it, and I have enough education in cognitive science that I think I can do a good job explaining this.

So, if you want to "talk to animals", then this is your guide from a first generation immigrant who's slowly picking up the language.  I'll discuss first how to listen appropriately, then how to convey what's on your mind.

Preface to "How to Talk to Animals"

My life mission is to find a way to use language to communicate with some species of nonhuman animals.  I specify "language" because language provides communicative power that is far beyond the type of communication with animals that can currently exist.  That is not, however, to say that we cannot communicate with animals.

I will write a blog entry about how to communicate with animals.  First, though, I'd like to give background that is helpful in putting that advice into perspective, and providing evidence that my what I have to say is right.  This post will be a preface to one subsequent that actually gives useful instructions.

The Fallacious Arguments of The Scientists (Animal Research)

The thing is, if your argument is fallacious, it is wrong.  Which is not to say that the fallaciousness of your argument makes your conclusion wrong, because that would be fallacious.

Many heuristics that we use in our everyday lives are fallacious.  If you intend to convince somebody, don't be fallacious.  Be logical.

Especially if you're a FUCKING SCIENTIST:

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WIRED: How do you square what you believe about animal consciousness with how they’re used in experiments?

A Mute on Extroversion and The Upcoming AI Revolution

I'd say between 8 and 10 out of 10 Rutgers students at a given bus stop or student center are plugged into the Internet or a digital music player.  As a result, when it isn't party time, people are generally quiet.  For all the negative consequences there may be of being attached at the hip to the digital world, I generally like the quiet.  So I think of this as a positive trend.

I like the atmosphere better when there is less noise, less meaningless babbling.  And to a large extent, the babbling that has been moved to the screen is empty I imagine.  Or else private (lol @ the notion of privacy in teh digital world).  It makes me feel like I'm in a natural world.

People are becoming increasingly docile.  The culture of quick captions and pithy sentiments is catching on.  Basically, 4chan culture is taking over humanity.  And as older generations disappear, this effect will increase.

I Can't Settle Into My Skin

I still haven't come to terms with myself.

When I think about my life, my identity, I still shiver with memories of depression.  I now have the ability to be happy, but I'm not precluded from feeling sad.  My emotions are, ostensibly, real.  Unfettered by that permanent malaise, but not entirely free from despair.

I'm thinking in a way that should help me become comfortable in my own skin.  But it's still really difficult, even when I have a prescription to help me with the battle that's too deep to fight alone.

I've been doing research, reading, learning.  I want to find the truth.  I want to know my place in the world.

I've been operating under the pretense that my proper place doesn't yet exist, which allows me to think of myself as a spiritual vagabond.  I don't really have a place, so whatever I've been doing is just as good as whatever else I could be doing.  My lifestyle is no better than any other I could have, because the one lifestyle I want is impossible.

But now I'm having doubts about that conclusion.  I'm wondering if there really is a better place for me than where I am?  Maybe I've been wrong to alienate myself from my identity?  Perhaps I'm going about everything in the wrong way?  How much time, how much of my soul am I wasting in my perilous pursuit of perfection?

What I can't do is forego a dream because I'm trembling about its grandiosity.  I can't be scared about pushing through and failing.  Brahms captured that lesson in his Nänie.  That's part of it, I can tell.  But there is definitely legitimacy in my desire to have something fulfilling in my life now.  I no longer feel depressed, but I've been so enthralled with the capacity to feel happy that I've been doing nothing but trying to make myself feel happy.  I've been playing Pokémon nonstop, surfing the Internet, spending time with the cats, doing simple housework, doing nice things for the people around me.  I must, at some point, return to my current career--being a student.  I have to go back to my primary endeavor.

At the very least, I can take solace in the knowledge that an intense gauntlet of schoolwork and academic studies will not be able to inflict depression on me.  As long as I have my newfound line of defense, whatever I make my lifestyle will make itself mine.  My happiness will adapt to the things I do, and my rosy outlook will paint these difficult challenges as pleasurable activities.  I will like doing what I'm doing, even if it's not something that gives me instant gratification.  I will then, because these more difficult activities are incredibly rewarding, find fulfillment.

So I know what I have to do:  cut out distractions, make a plan, follow the plan.  Don't move in circles, don't fret about the inevitable failures.  Do recognize that I can take steps to avoid many of those failures, and when I choose short-term happiness over success, it's largely because of fear.  And fear is the only thing worth fearing.  So:  Fear fear.  Be brave.  Do the data structures homework assignment.  Do discrete.  Read physio psych.  Make an agenda. Write all this stuff into a to-do list.  Look at the to-do list regularly.

Signing off.  Perhaps to write something more philosophical, about what is required for a paradigm shift.

Mt. Holyoke Concert et al

So, for lack of something creative to say, I'll give a rundown of what's been going on in my life:

For quite specific reasons, I've been feeling an incredible amount better lately.  That will continue, I believe.

I got into Advanced Neuro Lab 2, which is the lab I really wanted to take, and which has a class size of 8 people.  Happy, happy, happy!  I'm rather surprised by this, because my Adv. Neuro lecture test scores (which were apparently the only metric used to choose people) were nowhere near what I would have hoped them to be, due again to an epoch of malaise.  In any case, that makes my life far easier than it could have been.

I might pass biochemistry... Now that I'm in a better place and lots of glee club stuff is done with, I can probably focus on some hardcore studying.

I'm doing a lot of Internet research into things that personally interest me, which is cool.  I tried doing that to some extent before, but eventually dropped it because I started at a time when I was extremely busy.  Now I actually have a paper to write that depends on doing such research, so I'll probably actually do all of that reading.

I finished Coatzee's Disgrace, and loved it.  Coatzee really resonates with me for some reason, and I love his style.  A breath of fresh air, despite the moroseness of the book's content.

Hosted some women from Mt. Holyoke in my house, and I have to pay much humble respect to my wonderfully thoughtful housemates who cleaned the house beautifully while I was at rehearsal.  The exchange concert was phenomenal:  Biebl's Ave Maria, Sametz' Ein Keloheinu, Spratlan's Rainbow over the Seine, Rachmaninoff's No. 7, Whitacre's Lux Aurumque, and Rahman's Wedding Qawwali comprised the RUGC set.  Then, Mt. Holyoke had their own wonderful pieces, and a beautiful joint performance of Brahm's Nänie.  At the end of that, I got to give a bouquet, picked out by a wonderfully tasteful senior in club, and recordings of our past performances to the other choir's director.  That brought together the weekend for me, and I was happy to learn that the Mt. Holyoke singers had only positive things to say about their stay, especially considering there are usually some small or large issues that come up when you have people from a women's college housing with Rutgers students.  I wonder if that comes, in part, from the efforts we've made this semester to push through the feminism-friendly alma mater lyrics change.  The increased awareness of the importance of gender equality and the positive messages of Dr. Gardner and a trans advocate in our club must have had some small positive impact.  That, and our business manager had a keen eye for the kind of guy who would make a good host.

Now, off to study for a Neuro exam in.  I don't really know what we were supposed to have learned, even though I was more or less completely paying attention to what was going on in class.  Not sure if the focus is going to be on how to read scientific papers, or what the contents of those particular papers were.  Lucky I'm already in Neuro lab, I guess.

Listening to ERAAS, Reflektor, and meditative Mass Effect/Kelly Bailey OST.

Emotive Babbling

Nothing intellectual, just a diary entry in preparation for tomorrow's biochemistry examination.

:

I've been feeling better lately.

I'm just now catching up to some of the things I've left undone for a long time.

Recently, I've had greater resolution and emotional strength than I could previously muster.  That means I have been able, once again, to plunge myself completely into my studies and work.  Now I can encompass all of the thought processes that are necessary for me to find my way.  I can do things that would have otherwise required too much energy.  I am thinking positive thoughts, I'm having new ideas.

I'm out of the rut.

Mostly.

It's not yet perfect, but it's significantly better.  I am gradually exploring what the future has in store for me, which is necessary because of the immensity of what I'm considering as my set of possibilities.  Each thing that I want to do is enormous, and I can't do it by myself in a single lifetime.

So my debacle is this:  do I set out to do as much as I can to further each of those ambitious potentialities, in earnest and without giving a second thought, or do I step back and consider which of those things I can do?

I think that the answer is that I simply don't know enough to rule out possibilities.  And the cost/benefit analysis, if everything is possible, pushes me towards the most difficult option.

...I wonder if even I will be able to understand what I've written here in a month's time.  Cryptic non sequiturs and emotive babbling.  Ideally, they'll be enough for me to keep track of my life in retrospect, but not enough to convey much of meaning to the observer.