The Z-Day Event

They’ve Seen the Future and Dislike the Present

By ALAN FEUER
Published: March 17, 2009
Hundreds of people gathered Sunday for an evening-long forum with Peter Joseph, the director of the “Zeitgeist” films and a futurist, to celebrate Z-Day in Manhattan.
...

Mr. Fresco and Ms. Meadows are planning the production of a major feature film to bring the Venus Project to a wider, global audience. Before the night began, Mr. Fresco, a small man with a V-neck sweater and a hearing aid, sat signing books and answering questions from a dozen or so college students gathered like acolytes at his feet.
...
That’s where Mr. Fresco came in, an author, lecturer and former aircraft engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio who has spent the last six decades working on the Venus Project, a futuristic society where (adjust your seatbelts, now) machines would control government and industry and safeguard the planet’s fragile resources by means of an artificially intelligent “earthwide autonomic sensor system” — a super-brain of sorts connected to, yes, all human knowledge.
...
If this sounds vaguely like a disaster scenario out of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Mr. Fresco did not seem worried in the least. Machines are unemotional and unaggressive, unlike human beings, he told the crowd during the question-and-answer phase. “If you took your laptop and smashed it in front of 50 other laptops, trust me, none of them would care.” Read the article here...

www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/nyregion/17zeitgeist.html

The Ten Most Revealing Psych Experiments

Conformity: Not Believing Your Lying Eyes

From social identity theory psychologists got a handle on group dynamics and prejudices, how natural it is for groups to elicit conformity among their members. In 1951 Solomon Asch set out to identify just how much individual judgment is affected by the group.

In a test environment in which undergrads were asked to render a judgment after other subjects gave deliberately wrong answers, 50% of people gave the same wrong answer when their turn came. Only 25% of test subjects refused to be swayed by the false judgment of the others, while 5% always went with the crowd. The finding was that a third of people will ignore what they know to be true and go with a falsehood if they're in a group that insists on the falsehood being true. What else will people do under influence of the group? Read the rest here ...

brainz.org

Discovering Psychology

Highlighting major new developments in the field, this updated edition of Discovering Psychology offers high school and college students, and teachers of psychology at all levels, an overview of historic and current theories of human behavior. Stanford University professor and author Philip Zimbardo narrates as leading researchers, practitioners, and theorists probe the mysteries of the mind and body. Based on extensive investigation and authoritative scholarship, this introductory course in psychology features demonstrations, classic experiments and simulations, current research, documentary footage, and computer animation. This series is also valuable for teachers seeking to review the subject matter.

Produced by WGBH Boston with the American Psychological Association. 1990, 2001.

Wanna learn psychology without picking up a book? Check out the website for FREE Video-on-Demand(VOD). Request to register for streaming, select "other" on the "state" if you are not US residences. Enjoy!

Discovering Psychology website
Jump start to Chapter 1 VOD without register

The Zeitgeist Movement

The Zeitgeist Movement: Orientation Presentation by Peter Joseph, 2009 This the Activist Orientation Presentation for The Zeitgeist Movement.

Fluid social change can only materialize if two circumstances are met. One, the human value system, which consists of our understandings and beliefs, must be updated and changed through education and thoughtful introspection. Two, the environment surrounding that value system must change to support the new world view. The interaction between a person's value system and their environment is what influences human behavior.

For example, in our culture, "ethics" is really is a matter of degree, for our social system promotes and rewards competition and self-interest. This perspective doesn't just "lead" to aberrant behavior... it creates it directly. Corruption is the norm in our society and most people do not see this, for since the society supports this behavior, it is considered right and normal... or as a matter of degree.

Given this understanding, there is a fallacy that has emerged where certain groups are deemed "corrupt" and everyone else is "good". This is the age old "us and them" world view which has no basis empirically, for it is, again, all a matter of degree.

For example, there is a large movement of people who constantly talk about "The New World Order" and this notion that there is an elite group of people who have been trying to take over the world for a long time and have manipulated society in various ways to further their goals.

This, of course, is true to a certain extent.

BUT, the failure of awareness is that this "group" is not a group at all. It is a tendency.

If you took out all the people at the top who are engaged in global hegemonic rule, it would simply be a matter of time before another group stepped in to seek the same ambition. Therefore, it isn't the individual people or groups that are the problem. It is actually the conditions upon which those people have been accustomed and indoctrinated by. Of course, many argue against this view with the escapist notion that it is "human nature" that causes this competition and need for dominance. This is unsupported by the facts. In reality, we are nearly clean slates when we are born and it is our environment that shapes who we are and how we behave.

Therefore, in order for TRUE change to occur, we must spend less time battling the products of this sick social structure and more time trying to change the root causes. As difficult and daunting as it may be to think this way, it is the only way our world will change for the better.

TheZeitgeistMovement.com

認識既熟悉又陌生的信任

認識既熟悉又陌生的信任

這學期是我研究所生活的開始，上課的閱讀和生活周遭的經驗來回，有時讓人開心有時讓人挫折。開心的是課堂上的學習可以讓我更進一步的去思考工作世界發生的種種；挫折的是學習和現實世界的無法連結，其中包括寫我不熟悉的報告文體，往往不知如何下筆而感到懊惱。

《領導心理&社會劇碼》這堂課開在星期四晚上，每次上課都是帶著疲累的身軀去上課，回家的時候卻是疲累的身軀加上滾滾的熱血。每次上課都會讓我對信任有更深的認識，這個認識來自課堂閱讀和討論，沒有像做研究那般的嚴謹，我們都被允許探索「信任」，去說說它不是甚麼的同時，挑戰它是甚麼。從信任我們又談到「角色」與「真我」，用各自的經驗回答一些看似無解，卻有趣的問題：「角色」與「角色」之間有信任嗎？只有「真我」出現的時候才有信任嗎？「角色」與「真我」同時出現的時候，信任又是怎麼一回事等等。我喜歡這樣的討論，因為這樣的討論並沒有太快進入理論的抽象層次，反而是在偶爾七嘴八舌偶爾沉默思考的上課氣氛，我們都是在嘗試著逼近「信任」。可惜，課堂結束時，我們似乎懂了甚麼又不知道懂了些甚麼。

借這次寫《高等組織心理學》期末報告的機會，我想要更進一步的探究信任在組織的研究是如何被定義和進行研究的。於是，我開始找近期有哪些信任的研究，正巧2008年Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP) 第93期就有2篇：Antecedents of Coworker Trust: Leader’s Blessings (Lau & Liden, 2008)和Trust That Binds: The Impact of Collective Felt Trust on Organizational Performance (Salamon & Robinson, 2008)當時，我還沒有決定要用這兩篇寫報告，而是因為看了Lau and Liden (2008)所提到的Direct and Indirect Effects of Third-Party Relationships on Interpersonal Trust (Ferrin, Dirks, & Shah, 2006)。Ferrin et al. (2006) 在文章一開頭提到了一些信任的回顧性文章，即然要知道學術界如何討論信任，我就看了其中的兩篇：The Role of Trust in Organizational Settings (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001)和Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Emerging Perspective, Enduring Questions (Kramer, 1999)。

看完兩篇回顧性的文章後，我大概了解了狀況，也就比較看懂之前在JAP第93期的那兩篇了。因此這份報告，我會大略的介紹三篇文獻，即Lau & Liden (2008)，Salamon & Robinson (2008)和Ferrin, Dirks, & Shah (2006)，再綜合三篇文獻，提出我自己的見解。

閱讀回顧性的文章，信任這個主題，被來自不同的領域的學者研究和定義，這些定義大概可以分為兩大類：（一）信任是一種心理狀態和（二）信任是選擇行為 (Kramer, 1999)。前者將信任視為對於需要依賴的他人的未知動機、意圖和行為，採取一種願意承擔可能會被傷害或冒險的狀態。後者則是將信任視為一種理智的抉擇行為，是大部分的社會學家，經濟學家，政治學家會採用的定義。此定義包含兩個部分，即（一）甲是否對乙有足夠的了解，和（二）信任乙所帶來的好處。

學術上研究信任的文獻大概可分為兩種：（一）信任作為一種主要效果(Main Effect)和（二）信任作為一種調節效果(Moderating Effect) (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001)。主要效果的影響是直接的，譬如：在高度的信任下，我們會預期有正向的工作態度、良好的上司下屬關係、營造出合作性很高的工作氣氛、提升工作效能甚至團體績效等。更具體而言，研究者是將信任視為其他工作行為的預測指標，比如：信任和對團體間溝通的開放性是正相關的，即越高度信任的團體，其團體間的溝通更活絡。而信任作為一種調節效果的研究有別於主要效果，這類研究並不視信任為直接影響工作表現的因素。換句話說，信任是合作行為、高績效或一些正向態度等發生的條件之一而已，比如：之前對主管的信任會調節未達成的諾言和之後對主管的信任。

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Crisis of Credit

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
Jonathan Jarvis have done the writing, direction, animation & sound all alone to produce this lovely piece of useful and clear information on his thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I love his idea of not only getting his thesis done well, but also take the chance to share and inspire others through his work. Bravo!

www.crisisofcredit.com