Human behavior is the most complicated thing on the planet. The only thing more complicated than human behavior is string theory, Leslie Lowe said.

After a full 40-year career in marriage and family counseling and mediation, she is retiring this month.

H&N sat down with Lowe to hear about the journey her life has taken her on, and to glean some of the universal truths shes learned about how people can better relate to each other.

I guess what I will miss most is what drove me into getting licensed the opportunity to help people have better lives and relieve them of some of their personal pain, she said.

Lowe is originally from Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley.

I was raised in a very dysfunctional family. And thats why a lot of people go into counseling is their own personal experience, and wanting to try to understand and cope with it, she said.

I did not grow up with healthy self-esteem. I didnt have healthy conflict management skills. I certainly didnt have control of my emotions, because in my family screaming was the way everybody worked, she said.

Lowe explained that problems in relationships often stem from childhood problems, and one of the most important parts of learning how to get along with other people is to understand where your hang-ups come from.

Before you can talk about how to have a good relationship with somebody, you have to talk about how to manage your own brain and be in control of your own emotional stuff, she said.

If youre not in control of your emotional stuff, you lay that on the other person and that frequently creates conflict, she said.

Lowe began her higher education at UC Santa Barbara in 1964, where she studied psychology, but the program wasnt all she hoped it would be.

They were not doing the kind of psychology I wanted to do, she said.

I switched over to religious studies. The reason I did that is that looking at the structure of religious groups gave me more information about human dynamics. I learned a lot about human dynamics by studying religious studies, she explained.

After a year and a half of religious studies, a divorce caused Lowe to move to Berkeley and drop out of school.

When I decided a year and a half later to go back to school, they didnt have a religious studies department, they only had a theology department, which I didnt want, because Im an atheist, she said.

Lowe recalled with some pride that she was able to negotiate a major that suited her. It was technically an independent study and religious studies major, although she said on paper it was more of a literature degree.

Lowe ended up going back to school a few times, picking up degrees in English, teaching and finally in marriage and family counseling.

Her personal life has been just as interesting and dynamic as her path to becoming a marriage counselor.

Shes had her fair share of romance. Lowe has been married five times, an irony that isnt lost on her. She recalled the tales of her past marriages, sharing a few lessons she learned along the way. The man she is married to now she is very in love with.

Were going to celebrate 31 blessed years, she said with a smile.

100 years ago, people were so focused on just surviving, getting food, having shelter. The whole concept of marriage was completely different back then, she mused.

People, for the most part, in human history did not marry for love. For the most part, they married in order to be able to raise a family, which was the cultural expectation. Thats not whats going on today.

People get together because the other person is supposed to make them feel good. And if the other person stops making them feel good, because those emotional bank accounts have been withdrawn till they leave. So people are ping-ponging in and out of relationships, just like I did, she said frankly.

The emotional bank account is a concept widely used in psychology which Lowe explained.

An emotional bank account is opened whenever you develop a relationship of any kind with anybody. And you each engage in some kind of behaviors that make each other feel good, those are deposits.

And then frequently, relationships get to a point where the honeymoon is sort of over. And then people start showing their true colors. At that point, the withdrawals occur.

When the withdrawals start happening, if they as a couple dont catch those withdrawals and turn them around to the kind of problem-solving that prevents those withdrawals from drawing down the bank account, suddenly someone is bankrupt, there just isnt anything left.

Thats usually the point at which the other person wants credit. Because they wake up and go Oh, give me another chance. But at that point, the other persons kind of drained out. There isnt another chance, she explained.

Lowe reflected on some of the common avoidable mistakes that many make as married people.

What happens to a lot of couples is they wait too long to come to counseling. And so they come in as a last-ditch effort to show that theyve tried everything and its too late, she said. The first time they start having problems that are tough to resolve is when they should come in for therapy.

She said many people dont know the difference between healthy fears and healthy worries in their lives.

Healthy fear is future based. You see something that could potentially be harmful and you problem solve the best you can to take care of yourself. Healthy worry is backward based.

Something has been happening that bothers you. And you have to do some problem solving so that it doesnt pop up in the future, she said.

I think thats the biggest problem that I see today is that people are stuck in their fears.

When youre in the middle of emotional conflict, and it has to do with how your brain works, your brain is in fight or flight mode, youre really in animal survival. Versus your frontal lobe, which has the ability to more calmly look at all the choices available to you evaluate data and make better choices. People spend far too much time in that [survival] part of their brain, she said.

Lowes career in Klamath Falls has been full, and shes been active in many groups, including the League of Women Voters, Klamath Wingwatchers, Klamath Sustainable Communities and more.

She says shell continue her leadership efforts in those other organizations, but her time as a marriage and family counselor is drawing to a close.

I have loved working with people to help them have a better way of feeling about themselves and relating to other people. Ive loved that work, she said.

Im at a point where there are a number of factors that are emerging that tell me its time to stop. I dont hear as well as I used to. I dont process information as fast as I used to. But I think the really big thing is I dont have the patience with people I used to have, she said.

Through the hardship and heartbreak that shes experienced, Lowe said one of the most important things shes learned is to be grateful for the good things.

Life is a gift and too many people dont count their blessings. And I dont mean that in a religious sense. Theres far more good happening to most of us than bad and yet we tend to focus on the horrible stuff.

Visit link:
End of an era: Leslie Lowe finds truths during a career in marriage therapy - Herald and News

The progressive concept of cultural appropriation has become an increasingly mainstream idea. Do a Google search on, say, yoga is cultural appropriation, and youll see for yourself. What does cultural appropriation mean, though? According to law professor Susan Scafaldi, author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, cultural appropriation consists of taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone elses culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another cultures dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. Its most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways.

Even if one takes this dubious definition seriously, thoughwhat would constitute unauthorized use?policing cultural appropriation quickly falls apart when applied to actual human behavior. A group of students at Pitzer College, for example, declared that hoop earrings should be off-limits to white women. But how can any culture lay claim to determining the size and shape of acceptable jewelry for individuals to wear?

Critics should never assume, though, that bad ideas will die a natural death. In 1991, Antioch College gained national fameand ridiculeby mandating that each step of a sexual encounter receive express permission from the participants. Lawyerly protocol replaced spontaneity, and process replaced passion. Saturday Night Live mocked the school, showing hormonal undergraduates uttering stilted authorizations. But what was once fodder for comedy is now law, at least in California and New York. Progressive goals have a way of becoming mainstream edicts.

In Salem, Massachusetts, the Peabody Essex Museum offers a case study in the mainstreaming of cultural appropriation. Cross-cultural appreciation has sustained the museum for centuries. Americas oldest continuously operating museum, PEM has long displayed exotic artifacts associated with the maritime tradebut patrons must now read a guilt-ridden disclaimer when visiting the museums exhibits. Cultural appreciation and exchange are vital parts of any society, but appropriation is complicated and tied up with complex power dynamics and histories of oppression, the message reads. Cultural appropriation occurs when appreciation becomes theft, when exchange is one-sided, or when marginalized cultures are reduced to stereotypes.

As with other definitions of cultural appropriation, the PEM statement does not offer any guidelines on how to know when appreciation becomes theft or when exchange is one-sided. The best it can offer is a statement from Jezebel founder Anna Holmes: You cant always prove appropriation. But you usually know it when you see it.

No well-intentioned person favors marginalized cultures being reduced to stereotypes, but cultural-appropriation watchdogs see these offenses everywhere, even in instances where harm was clearly not intended. Consider the case of high school senior Keziah Daum, who wore a cheongsam to her prom, setting off a Twitterstorm of condemnation. Daum chose the dress because she thought that it was beautiful and would set her apart on a special night. But activists admonished Daum, who is white, for wearing a traditional Chinese garment. Her defenders, including some Chinese-Americans and native Chinese, argued that her selection complimented Chinese culture. Critics attacked them in turn as inauthentic, orin the case of Chinese nationalslacking the social authority to speak about American minorities. To Daums woke critics, every ethnic group must stay in its own lane.

Another puzzling aspect of the cultural-appropriation focus is that it seems clearly to clash with another progressive imperative: the need to nurture multicultural appreciation. Multiculturalism has been a prominent cause among progressives for more than a generation, but today, admiration for other cultures apparently comes with a warning sign: look, but dont adopt, lest you face accusations of theft or insensitivity.

Most reasonable people have no trouble understanding that to adopt an artifact or practice doesnt diminish the culture from which it originates. You cant steal a culture, as Columbia University linguist John McWhorter has observed. Cultural exchange is enriching, not impoverishing, and imitation remains, as in the old formulation, the sincerest form of flattery. Its time for progressives to decide between embracing multiculturalism or policing cultural appropriation. They cant have it both ways.

Matthew Stewart is associate professor of humanities and rhetoric at Boston University and the author of Modernism and Tradition in Ernest Hemingways In Our Time.

Photo: monkeybusinessimages/iStock

Originally posted here:
Multiculturalism, or Cultural Appropriation? Progressives Can't Have It Both Ways. - City Journal

This article was submitted in response to the call for ideas issued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the first question (part a.), which asks how will artificial intelligence affect the character and/or the nature of war.

***

Will artificial intelligence (AI) change warfare? Its hard to say. AI itself is not new the first AI neural network was designed in 1943. But AI as a critical factor in competitions is relatively novel and, as a result, theres not much data to draw from. However, the data that does exist is striking. Perhaps the most interesting examples are in the world of chess. The game has been teaching military strategists the ways of war for hundreds of years and has been a testbed for AI development for decades.

Military officials have been paying attention. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work famously used freestyle (or Centaur) chess to promote the third offset strategy, where humans and computers work together, combining human strategy and computer speed to eliminate blunders while allowing humans to focus on the big picture. Since then, AI and supercomputers have continued to reshape how chess is played. Technology has helped to level the playing field the side with the weaker starting position is no longer at such a disadvantage. Likewise, intimidation from the threat of superhuman computers has occasionally led to some unorthodox behaviors, even in human-only matches.

The experience of AI in the chess world should be instructive for defense strategists. As AI enters combat, it will first be used just in training and in identifying mistakes before they are made. Next, improvements will make it a legitimate teammate, and if it advances to superhuman ability in even narrow domains of warfighting, as it has in chess then it could steer combat in directions that are unpredictable for both humans and machines.

What Does Chess Say About AI-Human Interaction?

Will AI replace soldiers in war? The experience of using AI and machine learning in chess suggests not. Even though the best chess today is played by computers alone, humans remain the focus of the chess world. The world computer chess championship at the International Conference on Machine Learning in Stockholm attracted a crowd of only three when I strolled by last year. In contrast, the human championship was streamed around the globe to millions. In human-only chess though, AI features heavily in the planning process, the results of which are called prep. Militaries are anticipating a similar planning role for AI, and even automated systems without humans rely on a planning process to provide prep for the machines. The shift toward AI for that process will affect how wars are fought.

To start, computers are likely to have an equalizing effect on combat as they have had in chess. The difference in ability among the top competitors in chess has grown smaller, and the advantage of moving first has become less advantageous. That was evident in last years human-only chess championship where competitors had the closest ratings ever in a championship, and the best-of-12 match had 12 straight draws for the first time. There have been more draws than wins in every championship since 2005, and though it is not exactly known why, many believe it is due to the influence of superhuman computers aiding underdogs, teaching defensive play, or simply perfecting the game.

AI is likely to level the military playing field because progress is being driven by commercial industry and academia which will likely disseminate their developments more widely than militaries. That does not guarantee all militaries will benefit equally. Perhaps some countries could have better computers or will be able to pay for more of them, or have superior data to train with. But the open nature of computing resources makes cutting-edge technology available to all, even if that is not the only reason for equalization.

AI Favors the Underdog and Increases Uncertainty

AI seems to confer a distinct benefit to the underdog. In chess, black goes second and is at a significant disadvantage as a result. Fabiano Caruana, a well-known American chess player, claimed that computers are benefiting black. He added that computer analysis helps reveal many playable variations and moves that were once considered dubious or unplayable. In a military context, the ways to exert an advantage can be relatively obvious, but AI planning tools could be adept at searching and evaluating the large space of possible courses of action for the weaker side. This would be an unwelcome change for the United States, which has benefited from many years of military superiority.

Other theories exist for explaining the underdogs improvement in chess. It may be that computers are simply driving chess toward its optimum outcome, which some argue is a tie. In war it could instead be that perfect play leads to victory rather than a draw. Unlike chess, the competitors are not constrained to the same pieces or set of moves. Then again, in a limited war where mass destruction is off the table, both sides aim to impose their will while restricting their own pieces and moves. If perfect play in managing escalation does lead to stalemate, then AI-enhanced planning or decision-making could drive toward that outcome.

However, superhuman computers do not always drive humans toward perfect play and can in fact drive them away from it. This happened in a bizarre turn in last years chess world championship, held in London. The Queens Gambit Declined, one of the most famous openings that players memorize, was used to kick off the second of the 12 games in the London match, but on the tenth move, the challenger, Caruana, playing as black, didnt choose either of the standard next moves in the progression. During planning, his computers helped him find a move that past centuries had all but ignored. When the champion Magnus Carlsen, who is now the highest-rated player in history, was asked how he felt upon seeing the move, he recounted being so worried that his actual response cant be reproduced here.

It is not so much that Caruana had found a new move that was stronger than the standard options. In fact, it may have even been weaker. But it rattled Carlsen because, as he said, The difference now is that Im facing not only the analytical team of Fabiano himself and his helpers but also his computer help. That makes the situation quite a bit different. Carlsen suddenly found himself in a theater without the aid of electrical devices, having only his analytical might against what had become essentially a superhuman computer opponent.

His response might presage things to come in warfare. The strongest moves available to Carlsen were ones that the computer would have certainly analyzed and his challenger would have prepared for. Therefore, Carlsens best options were either ones that were certainly safe or ones that were strange enough that they would not have been studied by the computer.

When asked afterward if he had considered a relatively obvious option that he didnt chose seven moves later in the game, Carlsen joked that Yeah, I have some instincts I figured that [Caruana] was still in prep and that was the perfect combination. Fear of the computer drove the champion, arguably historys best chess player, to forego a move that appeared to be the perfect combination in favor of a safer defensive position, a wise move if Caruana was in fact still in prep.

In war, there will be many options for avoiding the superhuman computing abilities of an adversary. A combatant without the aid of advanced technology may choose to withdraw or retreat upon observing the adversary doing something unexpected. Alternatively, the out-computed combatant might drive the conflict toward unforeseen situations where data is limited or does not exist, so as to nullify the role of the computer. That increases uncertainty for everyone involved.

How Will the U.S. Military Fare in a Future AI World?

The advantage may not always go the competitor with the most conventional capabilities or even the one that has made the most computing investment. Imagine the United States fighting against an adversary that can jam or otherwise interfere with communications to those supercomputers. Warfighters may find themselves, like Carlsen, in a theater without the aid of their powerful AI, up against the full analytical might of the adversary and their team of computers. Any unexpected action taken by the adversary at that point (e.g., repositioning their ground troops or launching missile strikes against unlikely locations) would be cause for panic. The natural assumption would be that adversary computers found a superior course of action that had accounted for the most likely American responses many moves into the future. The best options then, from the U.S. perspective, become those that are either extremely cautious, or those that are so unpredictable that they would not have been accounted for by either side.

AI-enabled computers might be an equalizer to help underdogs find new playable options. However, this isnt the only lesson that chess can teach us about the impact of AI-enabled supercomputers and war. For now, while humans still dominate strategy, there will still be times where the computer provides advantages in speed or in avoiding blunders. When the computer overmatch becomes significant and apparent, though, strange behaviors should be expected from the humans.

Ideally, humans deprived of their computer assistants would retreat or switch to safe and conservative decisions only. But the rules of war are not as strict as the rules of chess. If an enemy turns out to be someone aided by feckless computers, instead of superhuman computers aided by feckless humans, it may be wise to anticipate more inventive perhaps even reckless human behavior.

Andrew Lohn is a senior information scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. His research topics have included military applications of AI and machine learning. He is also co-author of How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War? (RAND, 2018).

Image: U.S. Marine Corps (Photo by Lance Cpl. Scott Jenkins)

See the original post here:
What Chess Can Teach Us About the Future of AI and War - War on the Rocks

It can be useful and instructive to observe the turning of a decade by looking back on what life was like in America a mere 100 years ago.

On Jan. 2, 1920, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 108.76. Today it is over 28,000 points.

In 1920, the United States had become an economic power, which is remarkable considering the bloody "war to end all wars" that ended just two years earlier. Republican presidents shifted their attention from foreign entanglements to economic growth (sound familiar?).

The beginning of the Roaring 20s featured new rights for women, including the right to vote, daring flapper outfits and cigarette smoking. It also included Prohibition, which led to the rise of Al Capone and the Mafia. People should have been convinced that attempts to regulate human behavior by government fiat only work if the public is willing to obey the law, which in the case of liquor it clearly was not.

The one thing that hasn't changed in the past 100 years and for that matter since the first humans walked the earth is human nature. One can change styles of clothing and hair, change modes of transportation, even change politicians, but human nature never changes. Greed, lust and the quest for power are embedded in each of us in every generation.

The impact of the Industrial Revolution found more people living in big cities than on farms for the first time beginning in 1920. That year also launched what we today call the "consumer society." America's total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929.

As the website history.com notes: People from coast to coast bought the same goods (thanks to nationwide advertising and the spread of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the same slang. Many Americans were uncomfortable with this urban, sometimes racy mass culture, and for many people in the United States, the 1920s brought more conflict than celebration.

Isn't it the same today? Have we learned nothing? The tension between people with opposing political and social views and religious beliefs has increased these past 100 years because of contemporary social media and the 24/7 news cycle in which revolution sells better than resolution.

Cars, washing machines, new forms of birth control and other creations gave especially women new freedoms. Radio united the nation and phonograph records, which sold 100 million in 1927 alone, created a common culture, even if some older people didn't like the "modern" music.

As with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the 1940s and 50s, some older folks in the 1920s rejected the dance hall lifestyle and what they saw as the vulgarity and depravity of jazz music and the moral erosion they claimed it caused. But for the younger generation, it was a new world in which the future looked bright.

What will America be like in 2120? In 1920 no one could have foreseen a Great Depression, or a second World War, much less the prosperity and cultural changes that would come, or the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The saying that "the more things change, the more they remain the same" has never seemed more accurate and providential.

Read more from the original source:
CAL THOMAS: As we move into new decade, at look at life 100 years ago - SCNow