363. Two New Biologically Incorrect Cartoons: Gonzo Science: Observer Versus Interactor Effect and the Adaptation of the Zooming Eyes

When writing an end-of-the-quarter essay for Dr. Young on Scale-based reasoning and the quest of metaphors for describing the human-environmental condition, I ended up cranking out two cartoons that I essentially manicured because I made a decision to send them to Dr. John Bohannon, a Science correspondant--err, the famous science journalist who coined Gonzo Science and started a Dance Competition for scientists--as he described in one of his articles as "part awkward and part magical... as in a wedding." (paraphrased). So, since I was sending my cartoons to the eyes of an internationally renowned journalist who helped me last summer with attempting to get a science journalism internship--I am trying again this summer, by the way--I ended up manicuring my cartoons a lot more than usual. Like triple checking for spelling and making sure I eliminated all smudges and blurs on my pencil-drawn figures of Terra and Buz. I still haven't checked my emails to see whether Dr. Bohannon responded or not. I am sure he is swamped and has not had a chance to check or respond. It's okay. I hope to encounter him at the upcoming AAAS meeting and thank him for continued inspiration in the pursuit of using art--visualization--to solve scientific and environmental problems. The current reason for why I wake up in the morning full of life and enthusiasm and purpose, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Drawing stuff is a pleasure center hit. An addictive form of therapy after writing a long, crass, boring, unemotional scientific paper. Then Terra and Buz knock on my skull and jump out of my head onto a blank sheet of paper, stating how Victoria "really thinks and feels."
The Observer Effect versus the Interactor Effect. What does science means when scientists are a part of the experiment? Fundamental shift in thinking. I have to credit Tariel for the quote of science in general: "Saving the world... after we collect more data."

And here is my story about The Adaptation of the Zooming Eyes. This cartoon was inspired by two notable incidents. First, my sister Jenny, after finishing four years of undergraduate education at UC Santa Barbara, receiving a psychology degree and an exercise-health-physiology minor, she commented to me, "You know what? Half of everything I learned in psychology the last four years was bullshxt." My eyes grew wide open. "What?! What a waste of tuition." "I know," she said, apathetically. If only you could rewind the clock. I then told Jenny that 95% of my education was DIE-HARD REAL and INTERACTIVE, but that was because I was a College of Creative Studies biology major. I was learning-by-doing, this so called "constructionist" learning. My education was anomalous and rather "old fashioned," like the interactive educational experiences of my grandfather Ray and granduncle Dwight, where they went out and learned how to build stuff, like airplanes and cabins and the like. I poked at plants, parasites, invertebrates, vertebrates, and took lots of pixies of them. Life was good... back in the day....

The second inspirational incident was a snarky comment made by Andre Folse, a CCS biology major under Armand Kuris as well (so was I). Andre, Anna, and I were all studying for Dr. Sweet's evolutionary vertebrate morphology final, and Andre popped out the question amidst our studies (in which I was doing a half-xss job, my great contribution was printing out the final). (PS I am citing Andre's brother's advisor's research up at Stanford, Joan Roughgarden, eusocial reproduction, Nash equilibrium stuff).... So... back to the point... Andre, amidst our studies blurted out, "What if everything in our education was just a joke? None of it was real or true? What if all the stories these professors were telling us and forcing us to memorize were all a farse?" Anna and I froze for a second, and after that statement I was convinced I had to make the Zooming Eyes cartoon. I proposed the Adaptation and both Anna and Andre felt that this was a high necessity. Too bad our eyes don't zoom. I guess that's why we have telescopes and microscopes in the first place. *Sigh.*

322. The Drawing and Continued Invention of Gozzie: Inspired from Conversations with Evolutionary Psychologists

The New Buz. Err. Gozzie. Err. Pev. Err. Pevo. Whatever. T-shirt says "gonzo" now. He still has his geobum t-shirt.


Now, since I, Victoria, am changing rapidly, almost on a momentary and daily basis, I have come to realize that my old model of “Buz” needs a huge overhaul and reconstruction. And that this quarter is a giant investigation of the structure of Buz. Essentially, Terra and Buz (from Question Reality) have had a long break from each other, and they have returned to encounter each other and rapidly indulge in each other’s mind. Terra and Buz had become increasingly layered in complexity as well has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Terra still wears a biogeek shirt, but as you can observe, there are some structural and functional changes of Buz. Buz now has a few nicknames, to which I am not sure which ones I am akin to: Gozzie, Pev (for Evolutionary Psychology), and Pevo (phonetically pronounced Peevo. But his core name is Buz and now he just has a lot of petnames. The two other major structural differences is that his hair is part wavy, part curly (adapted partially from the curly fro of Dr. Steven Pinker. I admitted to Julian last night that I have an academic crush on Dr. Pinker, goodness forbid, who wouldn’t?), and that his t-shirt states GONZO instead of GEOBUM. Buz, as a geologist, had branched out into the arts and social sciences to some degree. He considers himself to be a gonzo scientist (just like Terra). He, the scientist is not separate, but part of the experiement of study. He, himself is the guinea pig of the scientific experiment, but at the same time, he has to analyze his guinea pig state. Welcome to being inside the Matrix! Therefore, Buz acknowledges that his “scientist” hat is subjective—largely intersubjective, and refuses to longer subscribe to the notion that science is “objective” and “universal.” Buz assumes that (1) science is done by humans, so we must account for the quirks of human beings (as quirky biological machines and (2) the “environment” is a construct of the human mind. So we must understand how the mind generates and perceives and interacts with the “environment” (like some form of internal neurological video game cognitive map box).

So, given these features and characteristics, Terra and Buz, err, Gozzie, err, Pev, get along very well. They are both eager to understand the core essence of existence of human consciousness in concern of human relationships to the environment. They both practice the “buddy system” because an adventure into the thick and dangerous university jungle of collective human consciousness should not be explored alone. One must have at least a buddy. And even, a band of buddies. Besides, this adventure through the university jungle is an adventure of a lifetime!

Due to my existentialist experiences with Julian (and Nick) last night (both are grad students in the evolutionary psychology lab under Drs. Tooby and Cosmides), I felt like it was much easier to create the Gozzie character, to which I will continue to explore. Earlier this week, I felt like a spread out amoeboid blob, but last night and today—after talking with Julian and Dr. Sam Sweet—I feel like I am associating with humans who centralize and embody the core of my existence. It’s a very zen enlightenment sort of thing. Don’t worry. I’m not on acid or anything. It’s called non-acid trance. These people place my mind on non-acid trances. Non-pot trances. Natural highs. Sublime, though.

Last night, when talking with Julian, I felt like I was truly inside myself and that I could be very open and expressive. I could tell Julian (even Nick) about the subliminal questions and longings within the lair of my brain (and my journal writing) and they would understand with a knowing smile. And they would even comment on it and provide additional feedback. To talk with an ev psych grad student—to talk with Julian—it was like I was having a discussion with the ultimate Shrink of all Shrinks. Well, besides my EEMB teachers.

I told Julian (and Nick) some really deep, subliminal stuff in my head that I hardly tell anyone. For example, I explained how in college I started writing obsessively. Mostly streamline journal writing. And then I started wondering, “What am I writing? What is the order of which I am writing? And why am I thinking and writing about what I think and write? How come I don’t think and write about other things? Why am I conscious of certain elements of my surroundings and why does my mind tune out other element? Where do these ideas come from?” And then I told Julian how I came to realize that inside my brain there were multiple distinct, yet intertwined processing layers—rational, emotional, primal—that were generating thoughts, that were all deeply intertwined with this feedback of my internal perception with my mind’s construction and perception and interaction with my environment. Outer environment. A dialogue between the interior and exterior self. And through this feedback, I started establishing a chronic mental flow experience.

I even mentioned a strange phenomenon in which last year I had dinner with a guy named Jay (and a bunch of CCS alumni) and I owed him $10. For the last year, I hardly even saw Jay, and when I did, I didn’t have any cash at hand. But inside me, I was always disturbed and pissed off. I simply would not forget that I owed him $10. And then finally, I had an opportunity to pay Jay back. Both Nick and Julian chimed in. The brain has an internal conscious checks and balance system in terms of how I interact with humans. This internal checks and balance system can be in the form of cash, or can be in the form of resource-communication exchange. So, my check and balance system will not be cleared (to do list scratched off) and my memory won’t go away until I paid Jay the $10 back. Now I owe a girl named Wendy about $8. Shxt. Not again. I am sure I will pay her back soon. And then with the case of Tariel, I suppose it was largely a one-way street in the end, and then I was essentially abusing myself for attempting to give, and now all strings are cut off. Mutualism never really existed anyhow, though the illusion of mutualism seemed present for a while, in the form of excessive control and presence. So much for communication. Same with the roommates. I even told Nick how I cannot forget how people in the past stole my money. I cannot forget, and that it keeps bugging me to this day—which is better because it forces me to be more cautious and change my behavior. For example, I still ave $150 from LAP records to be used. This guy named Correy in Riverside still has $300 in video games of my money. He supposedly will take pictures of me. Hah. What else bugs the shxt out of me? Now it involves the police. I lost $1450 to a Craigslist spam involving a macbookpro computer. Shxt. I still need to follow up. The worst part is that I found out that the police and detectives of Santa Barbara won’t keep track of Craigslist and simply don’t care. Even though I told them that all you need to do is send a cop to The Bank of America of Calle Real in Goleta and speak with this Assistant Manager. He has all the information about the transaction. Same with an ipod. My $127 ipod shuffle was stolen at a 24-7 Kinkos by an African-American man in a suit and tie. The store even caught it on tape 10:41 am. An employee had a full description of the African-American man and the manager of the Kinkos did whatever he could to retrieve records. Despite all this effort, no police man went to Kinkos (though it was literally less than a mile away from the police station). Some police officer filled out a report, and after paying $16 two months later to retrieve a copy of this report, I found out they marked the entire well-documented situation as “petty theft” and the police office was transferred to another district without even informing me of the situation. FXCK! I deserve to cuss! This is dire an frustrating! I can’t even believe or trust police officers anymore. My blinding Hollywood over-glorified perception of police officers swiftly dissolved (as the veil of reality was lifted) as I came to realize that in the SCALING EFFECTS OF MASS INSTITUTIONAL OPERATIONS, “INSTITUTIONS DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. ONLY PEOPLE DO,” If illegal occurrences are inflicted upon me, I will ultimately have to take the matters of law within my own hands. The police have other priorities and fundamentally operate the pace of a slug. They don’t care about me. Fxck whatever. When I croak, I bet there might only be five people in the whole world (though I supposedly encountered a few thousand, million or so) who might even wink and notice that I croaked. That is humanity for you.

Well, essentially Nick stated that my brain (the human brain) most likely evolved through selection pressures to keep some form of “altruistic” checks and balance system in terms of resource and communication exchange among group members, because essentially you have to identify those you can stay on par with and those who are then defined as “cheaters” “liars” and “thieves.” There is some form of evolutionary process in the generation of consciousness and distinguishing between truth and lies, and the entire skew of gradients in between.

I only lie in the world given that it protects my own privacy and benefit. I make sure that if I lie, it will essentially not hurt other people, it will fundamentally protect myself. For example, time shifts. Canceling appointments. Am I really sick? Or do I pretend to be sick? Well, the issue is, it’s not really a lie. I am not physically sick—like a cold or a bacteria—but I tend to be MENTALLY SICK and need time to myself to write and do art just to heal my brain, eh? Ya.

HOW AND WHAT WE DEFINE AS GOOD OR BAD IS LARGELY DEPENDENT ON SCALE OF THE SYSTEM. What may be good or bad at small scale societies may not be GOOD OR BAD at large scale societies. Overall, the larger the system, things start to slip and interactions among humans start to become careless and loose, simply because you don’t have the mental capacity to keep track of all transactions. I feel like anorexia embodies a mass accumulation effect of self-environment interactions, involving the loss of meaning and excessive attempt to keep track of all transactions.

Checks and balances are hard to keep track in mass-scale societies. Things start to slip very quickly. For example our own global economics and the collapse of the stock market. My roommate Kyle was stating that economics and money value can be so magnified in the mind—like it’s the value of the dollar is on Disney’s cloud. It can spiral upward like a staircase without any functional and structural support beneath it, and then suddenly it spirals downward and collapse to real value after such a lengthy time of artificial definitions of value.

I told Julian and Nick that I was testing the Scaling Law of the Mass Institutions by parking my car “illegally” around the UCSB campus. I am not worried about the act of getting a ticket. I was more so curious about testing the PROBABILITY of getting a parking ticket. In the name of the masses, the null hypothesis is that the system doesn’t care about me. And when I actually DO get a parking ticket, it is an epic symbol that someone bothered to care about the existence of myself through my car. And for $40 of mindless rituatlistic humanity of receiving a parking ticket, though I am pissed off, I am slightly touched that someone bothered to notice the presence of my car. What divine beauty of humanity!

Also to mention, I just paid off my last set of parking tickets. I bought a parking pass for the year, which was $324. Which means I don’t have to purchase a poorly ergonomic bike for which I have to sell all over again, like the last two times. I have had bad luck with bikes as of late. It was a tremendous relief not to worry about my probabilistic, stochastic models of the likelihood of getting parking tickets at UCSB given my obscure, strategic parking tendencies!
Those days are over. Now I can think about other things.

I was so open-ended with Julian that I even told him about me and my friend’s systematic experiments with Craigslist. How you could do text-mining and analysis of words, comparing men for men, men for women, women for men, and women for women. And then how my other friend designed five different ads for craigslist with very specific systematic needs, from visceral to needs of higher consciousness. He would see how people would respond and how many people would respond to each ad. The other problem is that (1) Where is the location? What city? (2) Do the ads represent the same person overall, or multiple different people? The same person with new layers of information? (3) What time of the week do people respond? Have to know about the audience of Craigslist and the activity of Craigslisters. And then, I told Julian, wait a second. You should not be a test subject. You should be a real human! Let me get you out of the experiment. Here is my real email! So, I told him all these things that I had never told really anyone before. Julian told me about how one guy met his wife because she was a test subject for his experiment. Ha, ha! Funny. Academic demands versus evolutionary, evolutionary demands. Funny thing. Cute. Whatever.

I find people who have the capacity to organize my thoughts as very, very beautiful. Divine. I have a feeling I am going to be in total intellectual nirvana hanging around evolutionary psychologists. Wowee. It’s gonna be fun. I will be attending a lab section next Tuesday around 130pm.

I also kept blahing to Julian about the tremendous implications of evolutionary psychology, scale, and storytelling design in literature and multi-media. The implications are just huge, tremendous! I think evolutionary psychology has more powerful reasoning tools than the Communications or Film and Media Studies Department! Julian said that Drs. Tooby and Cosmides tend to have sympathetic ears for scientists who have felt like outcasts and then come stumbling into their direction. I guess I am another one of those. That is good to hear.

I also bugged Julian how evolutionary psychology should have a blog. Julian said it would take a lot of time to maintain, BUT, the second situation is that there are problems in concern of discussion of ideas that have not been published yet. Oh ya. Ouch. Then I explained to Julian that I blog because I don’t care if I get scooped. I am a risk taker and have nothing to lose. I am a nobody graduate student who no one cares about. I am a nobody intellect who no one take any form of seriousness for inventing a new word—ecopistemology? So, I have to blog. I have to vent. Otherwise, I will live for twenty years with my mind being bureaucratically constipated, waiting for people to accept my ideas. I don’t have 20 years. Sorry, I am just throwing it out to the public for anyone to see and have access to. Survival, in the end, individual and collective, has no economic value. It is free. I must do whatever it takes to survive.

Heck, I have been meditating for such a long time to write a series of essays entitled EV PSYCH IN MY DAILY LIFE, which are philosophical meditations about what I do and think about, and exploring deep down into the rabbithole of proximate and ultimate meanings of my thoughts, behaviors, and perceptions of reality.

So now, I to show a proof of ownership of the word, I will have to purchase a series of domain names:
http://www.stokastika.org
http://www.ecopistemology.org.
http://www.biologicallyincorrect.org
http://www.questionrealitymedia.org
http://evpsychinmydailylife.org
http://alternativeaddictions.org
and point them all to my main blog: http://www.biologicallyincorrect.blogspot.com.
Gratitude. Morality.