Grantcoulson's Blog

   In the realm of fantasy, you can INTEND anything, DO anything, but what you ACHIEVE must be in the realm of reality. This becomes INTEND, IS(DO), DOES (ACHIEVE).

    What Man intends is usually noble and blemish free, polished to a high sheen by idealism, theory and rhetoric. The actions that Man takes can be confused, by rhetorical devices, to be the inevitable outcome of what he intends. What man achieves is rarely what he intends, but is always the consequence of his actions.

    Most psychological programs, and programs in the other social “sciences”,  are run under the aegis of politics and are useless because INTEND and IS are of paramount importance.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

      “International aid experts”, who have a record of being wrong almost always, are assuring us that “new, technologically advanced methods” can be put in place to ensure that the money transfer from the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference will be well spent– Government agencies overseeing the spending of money not their own. If this works to eliminate corruption, it will be the first time.

      Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, only the government is entitled to its own facts.

     If socialism is so natural, why must it be brutally enforced?

     If there is no Global Warming, how can there be greenhouse gases?

    Among the speeches at Copenhagen was a plea from Robert Mugabe (I’ll destroy my country if it’s the last thing I do) about the horrors of capitalism and the necessity of money from countries fueled by capitalism.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

    The official response to this (the death of a policeman at the hands of a wrongly released prisoner) was not to teach the parole board to use the information better but for assessors to write, you guessed it, better stories about inmates containing more information about their backgrounds, attitudes, mental status and, of all things, their sincerity. This report looked good and was very detailed. The new report will not make for better predictions but, since it is more detailed, will simply confuse the parole board while making them believe they have more information. The increase in the number of words only provides the illusion of an increase in information. The new "data" are worse than useless; however, and will lead to worse predictions because no studies have been done on validity. Although they might get more cautious, the decisions will not get better. Another mistake is waiting to happen when a "really sincere and repentant" offender rides to freedom on his  horse, Sincerity. If an inmate says that crime is in his future, you can believe him. If he says that he’s sincerely finished with the criminal life, this information has no value because words are under a different set of controlling variables than actions. More specifically, words spoken in front of the parole board are under a very different set of controlling conditions than actions after release from prison, and the two must not be confused by being implicitly correlated.

    A parole board is a perfect example of people trying to predict behavior  based on their firm belief in their ability to do so. Parole boards are proud of the fact that they “Take all factors into account.” What they don’t take into account is their own illusions about their ability to predict behavior. Disasters are pending which will be added to those which have already occurred.   

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson   

            Governments love monopolies when run by them, but hate them when run by others. There can be no monopoly without government assistance, but they prosecute vapors and call it consumer protection. Intel is being prosecuted because it was mean to AMD. Microsoft is “offering” new browsers as it bows to E.U. regulators. One of them said this was an “early Christmas present” to consumers.  As far as I know, you could always download other browsers. I have used  Firefox for several years to almost completely replace Windows Explorer.  I am planning to use Linux on my next computer to supplant the Windows OS. Why does any government agency need to protect consumers while the government serves up such bad products?

      “The U.N. climate-change conference in Copenhagen was supposed to be the moment when the world came together to save us from an excess of carbon dioxide. Like all such confabs, it’s coming down instead to cold, hard cash.

     On Monday, the so-called G-77—in effect, the Third World—walked out of the talks for several hours in protest of the unwillingness, as they saw it, of rich countries to foot the bill for averting or mitigating climate catastrophe in the developing world. The negotiations have since resumed, but with the most difficult questions set aside and expectations lower than ever.

    More than anything else, Monday’s walkout revealed the real reason that the developing world is in Copenhagen in the first place: They see climate change as a potential foreign-aid bonanza, and they are at the table to leverage the West’s environmental angst into massive transfers of wealth.

     In theory, the money is supposed to help poor countries pay for their transition to a carbon-neutral future. But the developed world has been pouring trillions of dollars into development aid in various forms for decades, with little to show for it. The reasons are well-known: Corruption, political oppression, government control of the economy and the absence of rule of law combine to keep poor countries poor. And those factors also ensure that most aid is squandered or skimmed off the top. Recasting foreign aid as "climate mitigation" won’t change any of that.” More of it here.

    What does this have to do with psychology, one may ask? First, a lot of human activity is guided by incorrect assumptions. Second, many people mistake intentions and predictions as reality. These two things bedevil much of human activity and explain why much of psychology, and official human activity,  is nonsense.

    I recommend two books, one by Thomas Sowell, about , as the title says, economic facts and fallacies and the other about the myths of psychology.

    from Sowell, T. (2008). Economic Facts and Fallacies, MA: Perseus Books.

    Sowell talks about the zero-sum fallacy about economics, held by many in the media, wherein each economic transaction involves a loss and gain. “Exploitation of the worker”, “Economic Imperialism” and other silly notions comes from this assumption.

    Another is the open-ended fallacy wherein if some education is good, more must be better and “you can never have too much”. There is much more.

    The other, Lilienfeld, S.O, Lynn, S.J, Ruscio, J & Beyerstein, B.L. (2010). 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, outlines, of course, myths. Among these are “Most people only us 10% of their brain power,”, left-brain, right-brain nonsense, learning styles, self-esteem and other shibboleths beloved of “experts” and the media.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

    The government helps you cope with the problems it creates.

     Only the government “distributes” income, the rest of us earn ours. Rewarding failure and punishing success is not a good idea. Success diminishes and failure increases.

    I have an idea, stolen from Marginal Revolution. The government taxes carbon-producing energy if the temperature rises and refunds money if it falls. In the real world, any carbon tax that is imposed, and government agencies which are created,  will not stop when Global Warming becomes Cooling. That. you can count on.

     If you torture the data long enough it (sic) will confess.

and more on criminal rehabilitation from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

     Correctional polgrams have included, but are not limited to, such silly examples as acupuncture, music therapy, art therapy, aura focus, drama therapy, drum circles, heart mapping, healing lodges, pet therapy and yoga all sanctioned by people paid by the state.

    As in other areas, professional judgement is a poor predictor of future behavior, in the case of corrections, risk of reoffending, and very inferior to statistical tools in determining the probability of recidivism. This is true in other areas of the social sciences, with different measures, where professional judgement is based on hope, belief, arrogance without performance and theory. When a government agency gives someone the label of “EXPERT”, many people, including the “EXPERT” believe the label while reality always has a different judgement.

      An Example of What Can Happen When Science Loses to Laymanship

    The debate between science and laymanship is not something for quiet contemplation by those who loll on scented beds in the ivory tower as shown by the following true story. There is a predictor of risk of returning to crime called the Level of Supervision Inventory (LSI), which could also be called the Level of Risk Inventory. This instrument, which was developed over several decades and represents one of the best examples of applied social science, is based on social learning theory and provides a summary number derived from the number of risk or criminological factors for an individual. The higher the number, the greater the chance of recidivism. Finding the LSI score for a criminal is an excellent way of determining the need for program intervention. The higher the number, the greater the need for rehabilitation.

    This is the account of a man who was convicted of several charges of violent behavior such as assault, assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm and was sentenced to prison for two years less a day. While he was in prison, he went into the usual non-data based polgrams. At his parole hearing, he was rejected as not "sincere" enough in his self-directed rehabilitation attempts. Sincerity is an easy thing to fake, so he took another polgram with a high profile and ethnic correctness to show his increased sincerity. He was successful on his second attempt and was paroled to a half-way house where immediately walked away and shot a policeman to death shortly thereafter. His score on the LSI was 37, placing him in the 92nd percentile of offenders and making him an extremely high-risk offender who should have never been considered for parole. Sincerity, however, outweighed science and he got out early. The parole board was wrong and the policeman is dead.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     The U.S. president has given himself a B+ for his performance so far. This reminds me of school teachers grading themselves. As modern education teaches us, “It’s the process, not the outcome, that counts.” Translated into more useful language, “Form is more important than function.” OR “How it looks is more important than how it works.” and that is not the tragedy of our times, it’s the tragedy of all times.

    The Copenhagen Conference is producing the usual silliness. Political posturing is bad enough locally, but internationally, it’s really good theater and if certain people make a little money by lying, what’s the hurt?

    The money you get rarely is as good as the money you earn because getting free money doesn’t mean you know how to earn it. Giving people money as a way out of poverty must be done permanently and is merely a way of keeping them helpless and entitled.

    Continuing with effect rehabilitation methods for criminals, I present another excerpt from: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

Rehabilitation of  Criminal Behavior

    The assumptions about criminals and criminal behavior held by those who work with criminals are as wrong as most other assumptions about the other kinds of clients discussed in this book. Criminals are thought of as "troubled" individuals who have "mental health" problems, but criminals are more troubling than troubled.

    One of the problems with correctional rehabilitation is that most correctional specialists are trained under the influence of sociology which, in North America, as a primarily academic concern,  has long been dominated by Marxists and other left-leaners who are more concerned with their notion of social justice and other leftist beliefs than with rehabilitation. They share these suppositions with the great majority of university professors in the arts and social sciences who filter everything through socialist assumptions. These axioms lead them to require that poverty causes crime which implies that abolition of poverty will result in the elimination of the production of criminals, a position which postpones any solution until Nirvana has been reached. Crime will cease with the creation of the New Soviet Man which will occur, in turn, once the socialists have finished finessing Human Nature. Naturally, these assumptions should go south to join Central Planning, Collective Farming and Five Year Plans on that famous “ash heap of history” where Individual Striving has been sent thousands of times by Those Who Know How to Arrange Things Properly. Never seems to stay there. Crime rates do not go down in times of prosperity, nor up in times of recession. In addition, the sociological tradition is interested in class, rather than individual behavior, and this makes rehabilitation unwieldy, the rehabilitation of an entire class being difficult, although believers in “social justice” are always on about rehabilitating entire classes by giving each member plenty of money. Correctional rehabilitation has the same characteristics of bizarre usage as other areas. The techniques least used are the most effective and the ones most used are the least effective. The livelihood of  practitioners does not depend on productivity, so fads are prevalent.The main problem of the practice of correctional rehabilitation, of course, is that outcomes have no economic consequences for practitioners. The professional working for government  fills a  position. He is not expected, as in free enterprise,  to produce results. Therefore, he can operate on the basis of any theory, no matter how unproductive or bizarre, that strikes his fancy so long as his position is filled. In other words, the practitioner must deal with the difficult problems of, a) getting the job, and, b) showing up. Glib talkers can exchange what passes for witticisms with other glib talkers and reap the benefits by being promoted, especially if they are politically adroit.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

    Paul Samuelson, eminent economist and producer of elementary textbooks, including the one used for my introductory class, has passed away at age 94. Among his beloved predictions was this from a popular university  introductory textbook on economics made in the 1989 edition, published just before the Soviet Union dissolved, from, among other reasons,  an inability to make toilet paper, computers, cars, and a variety of other consumer goods. Samuelson said, “The Soviet economy is proof that … a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.” It never thrived, and then, didn’t function. Sales of the textbook continued unabated after this massive predictive failure. Now this was a predictive failure, a failure in the easiest of all the scientific steps, not even a failure in doing something useful. Woops.

    Another thing that Samuelson’s textbook said was the notion of the “multiplier” or “seeing-eye dollar” from government spending. According to this, government spending produces a multiplier of, it is said,  X3. Empirical evidence has show that the government multiplier is actually rarely positive. Well, he wrote a lot of books.

    Global Warming is so awful that Alberta Standardbred racing has been shut down for the past week because of the cold. That takes some doin’.

    On a more scientific basis, consider the sunspot data.

    “Since the sun, and not carbon dioxide, is the principle driver of climate change, a dearth of sunspot activity would herald a repeat of the Maunder Minimum, the name given to the period roughly from 1645 to 1715, when sunspots became exceedingly rare and contributed to the onset of the Little Ice Age during which Europe and North America were hit by bitterly cold winters and the Thames river in London completely froze.”

    The Copenhagen Hysteria conference better hurry up and pass its pointless and Draconian laws before Global Cooling removes their always-shaky basis.

    Today, we consider criminal rehabilitation and effective methods which are neglected.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

An Abbreviated History of Corrections

    Incarcerating criminals is relatively recent. In the past, criminals were beheaded, tortured, transported, banished, hanged, disfigured or made to pay fines for acts which are currently followed by lockup. Early confinement required prisoners to maintain total silence, kept them in isolation, worked them on treadmills and treadwheels, and frequently subjected them to a bread and water diet. These conditions were designed to reduce recidivism, or reoffending, but studies were not done.  Incarceration rates and crime rates vary among countries with a high rate of one not necessarily associated with a high rate of the other. Correctional rehabilitation efforts, early or current, make exactly the same  mistakes as other applications of social science, with failure to evaluate, believing an intention is a result, confusing current correctional philosophy with outcome, and using popular theories about the nature of society and\or Human Nature to determine  rehabilitation techniques.

    The guiding assumption of correctional rehabilitation shifted from evil to illness, so that well into the twentieth century criminals, and others who deviated the wrong way from average behavior, were deemed to be “sick” and in need of a “cure”. This assumption, which still has much reach, came from the success medicine had with the many diseases which yielded to the application of new findings in microbiology and pharmaceuticals. The belief that medical analogies and metaphors are useful in human action appears frequently in the study of behavior, but has little to offer in producing useful treatment. One of the implications of this point of view has been indeterminate sentencing for those deemed to have acted criminally because of “a mental illness or defect” where the criminal behavior is evidence of the mental illness which caused the behavior.

      Measure of Success In Criminal Rehabilitation

    Recidivism is a measure of criminal activity which occurs in a given period after release from incarceration or after treatment is terminated. The measure of recidivism can be as simple as a yes/no indicating whether the person was charged with a crime during a period,  the number of offenses in a period, the length of the sentence(s) given or a combination of many measures of criminal activity.  A rehabilitation program for criminals is deemed successful if the recidivism rate of its graduates is significantly lower than the rate of a similar group which has not enjoyed the program.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

    The only people who think they are smart enough to tell others what to do aren’t.

    The chapter on psychotherapy concludes with an exemplar program to alleviate depression. As usual, it will not look like any of the stuff that passes for psychology in the media. What it lacks in drama it makes up for in effectiveness. The program is multifaceted, outcome oriented and well scripted.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

A Multi-Faceted, Data-Oriented Program to Decrease Depression

    Depression, like most undesirable human conditions, has two parts. The first is feeling "lousy", "awful", "blue" and, in the extreme, suicidal. The second is a behavioral deficiency which means that behavior related to work, recreation, interpersonal relationships and household chores occurs less frequently than before. At the extreme of this decrease, the person may sit in pyjamas all day, staring. In one case of extreme depression, a client was advised by several psychiatrists that, since there was nothing organically wrong, it was "…up to you to snap out of it." I wonder how long one needs psychiatric training to formulate that treatment program? In these extreme cases, the depression "feeds upon itself" so that lack of activity produces a reduction in reinforcers which decreases activity further.

    The forerunners of some depressive episodes are fairly easy to identify such the death of a loved one, loss of a job or loss of a relationship or worse, several things at the same time. In other situations, depression may be part of a manic-depressive cycle or a biological deficiency. Most frequently, depression is caused by environmental deficiencies such as loss of or lack of, reinforcers. For one person’s life, the following occurred in fairly rapid succession: He found he could not get employment in spite of having a doctorate in astrophysics. His wife became pregnant. He committed suicide shortly after his car broke down and needed replacement or extensive repair. He was under psychiatric care at the time and was taking anti-depressants. This is an extreme and depression usually doesn’t lead to suicide, although depression usually precedes suicide.

    N.H. Azrin and a colleague, V.A. Besalel conducted an experiment to alleviate depression by simultaneously using a variety of data-based techniques. Their concept of depression is that it is "…an emotional state induced by a reduction of reinforcers, either real or apparent, which results in loss of the behaviors maintained by the reinforcers and generalizes to other behaviors as well."

    The results were that the four different depression indexes of the 29 subjects in the experiment dropped, or in the case of goal attainment, increased, significantly during and after the average of 6.8 sessions of 1.5 hr each. For example, the percentage of time spent being unhappy was 56.5 at the beginning of treatment and 12.5 at the end. Goal attainment was 12% at the beginning and 87% at the end.

    The program was intended to increase the number of positive events during the client’s day. The program consisted of 14 procedures designed to increase reinforcers or have the client think or say positive things about him\herself. These procedures consisted of: 1). Filling out a list of Desirable Attitudes which they possessed, such as "Caring about people.", 2). Listing the "…activities and events that were pleasant, meaningful or interesting to you in the past.", 3) Listing the Possible Pleasant Activities in which the person now engaged or would like to engage and rank them on a scale of 1-4., 4) Listing all the people the client liked., 5) Practicing making positive statements about him\herself using the qualities listed in 1)., 6) Keeping a daily and weekly schedule which kept track of the activities listed above., 7) Filling out a Traumatic Events List of events which were unlikely to occur such as "My house burned down." to use as events to induce behavioral contrast with the aversive events the person had experienced., 8) Listing nonaversive correlates of traumatic events such as not being stuck in a dead-end job because of being fired., 9) Positive interaction training which included training in giving compliments, showing appreciation and prompting appreciation from others., 10) Training in marital, vocation or educational skills. If the person were having marital problems, he\she would receive brief marital counseling. If the client had vocational problems, he\she would receive training in the Job Club format of finding a job. If the person had study problems, he\she was shown how to arrange and follow a study schedule., 11) Filling out a "Happiness Scale" which identified areas such as sex, communication and money which were sources of happiness or unhappiness. If the rating of an area were low, skill training was given for the specific problem., 12) When depression occurred, the attempting mood reversal by engaging in self-praise statements., 13) Establishing specific behavioral objectives such having a certain number of job interviews per day until a job resulted., 14) Using a reminder list to ensure that the client would engage in those aspects of the program relevant to him\her. During each session, the counselor reviewed what the client did during the preceding week and reviewed and role-played the procedures of the program.

    The Azrin and Besalel procedure has attracted little attention although it fulfills many of the requirements of a superior program. It produced dramatic results,  required all involved to be active throughout and  used many different techniques simultaneously. It was scripted, time-dense, gave immediate, continuous feedback, was based on principles of learning, had the agility to adjust to individual circumstances, was integrated, contained techniques for transfer to the “real” world, and dealt directly with the problem. It should be replicated.

Azrin, N. H., & Besalel, V. A. (1981).  An operant reinforcement method of treating depression. Journal of  Behaviour  Therapy and  Experimental Psychiatry, 12(2), 145-151.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     We had about 8 inches of Global Warming three days ago. Now, Global Warming has produced really low temperatures. I’m concerned, perhaps we should put government experts in charge of fixing the problem. Because, if they can’t fix the weather, who can?

    According to most “mental health experts” almost all of us have serious  problems which they, of course, are well suited to fix.

    “The Department of Energy believes that geothermal energy holds enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy while decreasing our carbon pollution,” said Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman. Statement made after millions had been spent on a useless “project”.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

1. Drugs are useful. They are, but only for a much, much smaller group of people than currently receives them. As Michael Frank says, "No drug can teach you effective … skills. …no drug can make your environment more positively reinforcing." If something is in the medical tradition and can be treated with drugs, it appears more legitimate. If something can be linked to biological factors, it appears more legitimate. A psychologist in Britain, referring to violence on British roads, had an explanation dealing with the atavistic or "older brain" taking over in times of conflict. This explains nothing and, more importantly, doesn’t tell how to prevent or minimize violence. I try to keep an open mind on these issues so perhaps removal of the atavistic parts of the brain will decrease violence on British roads. Why stop there? Removal of the entire troublesome organ should solve the problem completely.

2. Long-term change can only occur because of long-term therapy.  This is just wrong without qualifiers. Long-term treatment implies a worthless procedure. If someone is really suffering from "psychological" distress, long-term treatment allows time to produce the cure, which it does without treatment. If things are really bad, they tend to get better over time because it’s highly unlikely that they will become worse.

3. The change must occur in the deep structures of personality. To repeat: Dealing with theoretical entities produces theoretical results. The engine of change is in the environment, not the psyche.

4. No one will change unless they (sic) want to change. This apparently comes from the religious notion that you must accept (favorite religious icon here) before you reach (Heaven or whatever state of grace you fancy). This assumption has led to the alienation of thousands of people who won’t assume the stance of, "I’m awful. You’re omniscient and omnipotent and must save poor little me with your vast superior ability.", in order to be saved. There’s no evidence, except from the deadly useless notion of "clinical experience", that this assumption is true or useful. It is one of the jobs of the therapist to get the client to cooperate in the program, not discard the client if he\she is not a sufficiently subservient true believer. New Mexico is a state. Virginia is a state. Denial is not a state. Client "resistance" is not a valid excuse for a therapist’s inability to be useful. Motivation is the therapist’s job. Miller and Rollnick show how "motivational interviewing" can greatly increase the number of people entering and engaging in therapeutic programs. Michael Frank shows how to analyze and remove "barriers" to treatment. Motivation is the therapist’s job.

5. Profound change can only occur with talking therapy in which the client talks, the therapist listens and may or may not offer advice. Now let’s see. The person talks to a therapist each week and then goes forth and everything is changed. The client will automatically know how to act differently, although most therapies concentrate on how the client feels or how the client responds to paper and pencil tests designed to measure their deep personality structures. The evidence for this hypothesis is thin. It does, however, make some therapists very rich. Does anyone see contingencies here which have nothing to do with effectiveness but result in therapists receiving money for each of many return visits?

6. No data are taken. Apparently the client gets better and everybody will know when this happens. If there are no goals for the treatment program, there can be no disappointments. Happily, treatment can go on with consequent economic benefit to the therapist.

7. Problems come from traumatic events or early life experiences. Lots of drama and little evidence in this one. If this theory guides therapy, the therapy is bound to fail.

Frank, M. J. (1995). Do You Really Want to Get Better: Learn to Eliminate Those Behaviors, Thoughts, and Feelings That Are Barriers to Your Happiness. Toronto: Bridgerock Press.

Miller, W.R. and Rollnick, S. (2002). Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People to Change. NY: Guilford Press

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson