Here's a rule to live by. Whenever a psychologist or a group of psychologists (probably especially when it's a group of psychologists signed onto a paper or research program) comes up with something like "speed of cognitive processing" your first reaction should be to wonder if it's something real or if it's something they just made up. How does this "speed of cognitive processing" manifest itself? If it's something like a friggin computer generated diagram, that's not evidence that it is what they say it is. The machine metaphor for life is so ingrained in Western culture, since the 17th century, that even scientists don't understand that's what they're doing as they do it. The semblance of clarity achieved through it is deceptive, there is no reason to believe that any of that is really what is going on. In the use of the term I've been refuting, they don't seem to be able to correlate "speed of cognitive processing" with either the bogus scale of measurement of intelligence, IQ or educational achievement or real life achievement, apparently. My skepticism is in light of that lack of correlation. Not to mention the idea that if there is such a "speed" that it is a constant or that its average speed in an individual mind is reliably measured within the time frame of their research protocol. I think anyone who bought such a "thing" on the basis of the description is probably kind of slow on the uptake.
But the problem didn't start with that one made-up entity. It is more basic than that. For a start the idea that "cognition" is a "process" is an unfounded metaphor, founded in the ideological position that the mind is like manufacturing of a machine and, as psychology is want to do, they then pretend that the metaphor is what is real and that it is a secure base from which to start building conjectures, and with psychology (and all the behavioral sciences) that process has meant there is no limit in the extravagance of the imaginary structures they'll build in their city of conjectures. That is until the basic problem of the ideological metaphor is exposed and the thing collapses, except for those whose professional status is dependent on what was built, those derelict structures can house entire professional establishments. Rorschach testing is still around and its junk science status was obvious from the get go. For crying out loud, there are still Freudian snake oil salesmen making good livings out of that derelict old mansion of the mind. Having the designation of science means it never goes away, especially when there's money and professional status involved.
Update: Look at what the 1970s innovation "Evolutionary Psychology" which creates invisible, undocumented "genes" and even "gene complexes" to, unseen, undocumented BE the physical origin of "traits," those "traits" also being invented at will by similar ideological processes along with elaborate scenarios in which unspecified animals in the forever lost past benefited (I'd say "or not" but they never seem to imagine "or not" scenarios in evo-psy) and produced a greater number of offspring - all existing nowhere but in the self-interested, I'd say fevered imaginations of the scientists, and all that being SCIENCE.
I still remember encountering the phrase "speed of thought" in a comic book (a Flash comic, probably). It was supposedly faster than the speed of light, and a useful concept for a story where a man becomes fast (rather than dead) because of chemicals and a lightning strike.
ReplyDeleteI think I encountered it a few more times, in more serious contexts, as an idea for speed faster than light, represented by reflex actions or decisions made in a crisis (such as steering a car out of a skid on ice or a too-fast turn, something I actually did shortly after getting my driver's license. Reflex is a bit more conditioned, like blinking as something comes rapidly toward your face; this was a complex series of actions I conducted without "thinking" about it. It seemed pretty damned fast, so "speed of thought" seemed like a real thing.).
Then it faded, as it became clear that while the speed of light can be measured, the "speed of thought" can't; any more than "IQ" can really be quantified (the more it is explained, the more ephemeral the concept of "intelligence" becomes. Is my "intelligence" "higher" or "lower" because I can do math, or because I can survive on the African veldt or live off the land in the Rocky Mountains? Which is superior, and why?).
And now, computers having taken over our metaphors, it's "speed of cognitive processing." What crap. My daughter processed the idea that if the dinosaurs (she was 4 at the time) ate all the plants, then the dinosaurs would die off. It was a very cogent causal analysis of balance based purely on "cognitive processing" and a handful of facts; but what was the "speed" of it?
And why "speed"?
As I age, I find I'm a contemplative thinker. Our age prizes the rapid reasoner, the person who can function in a crisis and see the right answer immediately. It's a TV trope, where the action needs to move forward, so the hero always runs in, guns blazing, and wins the day. In reality, the raid on Bin Laden, for example, was planned out meticulously, over a fairly long period. The military didn't just send in guns and helicopters. Still, action movies teach us decisive action is gut reaction, and the best thinker is the fastest thinker, or even the one who doesn't have to think but "knows" what to do.
More and more I don't "know" what to do, and am more comfortable thinking slowly rather than immediately. Is the "speed" of my cognitive processes all that critical to gauging...anything? We want our computers to be fast, but then, they don't really cogitate, do they?
Fast thought is not better thought. Look at Trump, who speaks whatever thought is on his mind, because he can't be bothered to contemplate at all. Is the speed of his cognitive processing a blessing? He's certainly doing some kind of thinking when he rants and raves at his rallies. Call it "cognitive processing," but it is the quality of it that matters, not the velocity.
I like how the psy-guys seemed to figure "speed of cognitive processing" meant the same thing as quality of thought. That sure as hell doesn't match my experience where sometimes it takes a while for the better idea to come out of somewhere. Where, I have no more idea than they do even when I'm the one who thought it.
DeleteAnd how fast did it actually come to you? Often it seems, to me, like a flash of insight; and then I realize (usually) it's the result of long "processing." And what was the speed of that?
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