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From article: > Studies, such as those highlighted by Jeffrey M. Schwartz in "The Mind and the Brain," illustrate how our neural pathways strengthen with repet

From article: > Studies, such as those highlighted by Jeffrey M. Schwartz in "The Mind and the Brain," illustrate how our neural pathways strengthen with repetition, making familiar behaviors easier to perform over time. When change is introduced, the brain must adapt, creating new pathways and weakening old ones, a process that can feel uncomfortable and energetically expensive.

dash2 2y ago
That sounds like the kind of over/misinterpretation of a scientific result which is typical with this stuff. How do you get from "neural pathways strengthen with repetition" to "people are resistant to change"? Is "can feel uncomfortable" in the scientific article, or is it just the pepped-up management consultant assuming that anything which takes energy must feel uncomfortable sometimes? (By logic!) Presumably salamander neural pathways also strengthen with repetition. Are they resistant to change too?
xorcist 2y ago
There's a useful label for all this technobabble: Not even wrong. You don't "feel" neural pathways in any sense of the word. While the description of how pathways strengthen may be correct on a high level, there are likely details that matter how those processes actually work (I'm won't pretend to understand this stuff), but that doesn't matter here because an individual neuron is a completely different thing than a complete brain, and the inner workings of the brain is a completely different thing than the social mechanisms of the workplace. They could just as well have described a proton-electron pair and saying it's the same attraction mechanism behind heterosexual love. Not wrong but not true in any meaningful way.
- psychoslave 2y ago
  Thanks for the example, I wasn’t sure I got you point until I reached it and found it brilliant and illuminating all the rest.
corsac 2y ago
I took the time to borrow Schwartz's book from Libgen, skim through it, and read the parts that seem relevant to that claim (it didn't look worth reading in full--lots of fluff about "quantum theory rehabilitating the basic premise of moral philosophy" etc. etc.). I also took a glance at a few of the cited studies. Schwartz's main point has nothing to do with the brain "naturally resisting change"; the book argues rather that our brains remain malleable and are continually shaped by our behavior, and the studies he highlights are in support of those points. In his own words, he is arguing for "the brain’s astonishing power to learn and unlearn, to adapt and change"--so it looks like the article-writer drew a very different conclusion from the same undiscussed studies. The article also mentions neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps's research to support an attendant claim that "When the prefrontal cortex is under stress, our capacity for learning, memory, and decision-making is compromised". But her research on stress's effects on cognition that I can find actually suggests stress is often beneficial to learning and performance, and her work on fear response conditioning focuses on timing of interventions, not energetic expense or discomfort. What's so worth hating about this kind of vacant-eyed patronizing crap, this "neuroscience-based approach" and "blueprint for L&D professionals", is how it authoritatively name-drops experts and science-y words as an appetizer, without inviting any actual engagement or understanding, and proceeds to dish up warmed-over PD workshop slop for the next 9/10ths of the article. Those L&D professionals may have no substantive understanding of neuroscience, but they know that you need to feel "discomfort" and bear "energetic expense".
psychoslave 2y ago
"Repetition is to education what repetition is to education". It tooks me time to strike me with its second mesmerizing effect: I had to hear this sentence a single time before it deeply engraved in my mind, in such a way that it most likely will stay there until I die. Not all learned/acquired behavior works like that, at least at the subjective level that we can experience as human being (putting apart obviously the fact that we all have different subjective experiences).

dash2 2y ago

That sounds like the kind of over/misinterpretation of a scientific result which is typical with this stuff. How do you get from "neural pathways strengthen with repetition" to "people are resistant to change"? Is "can feel uncomfortable" in the scientific article, or is it just the pepped-up management consultant assuming that anything which takes energy must feel uncomfortable sometimes? (By logic!) Presumably salamander neural pathways also strengthen with repetition. Are they resistant to change too?

xorcist 2y ago

There's a useful label for all this technobabble: Not even wrong. You don't "feel" neural pathways in any sense of the word. While the description of how pathways strengthen may be correct on a high level, there are likely details that matter how those processes actually work (I'm won't pretend to understand this stuff), but that doesn't matter here because an individual neuron is a completely different thing than a complete brain, and the inner workings of the brain is a completely different thing than the social mechanisms of the workplace. They could just as well have described a proton-electron pair and saying it's the same attraction mechanism behind heterosexual love. Not wrong but not true in any meaningful way.

psychoslave 2y ago
Thanks for the example, I wasn’t sure I got you point until I reached it and found it brilliant and illuminating all the rest.

corsac 2y ago

I took the time to borrow Schwartz's book from Libgen, skim through it, and read the parts that seem relevant to that claim (it didn't look worth reading in full--lots of fluff about "quantum theory rehabilitating the basic premise of moral philosophy" etc. etc.). I also took a glance at a few of the cited studies. Schwartz's main point has nothing to do with the brain "naturally resisting change"; the book argues rather that our brains remain malleable and are continually shaped by our behavior, and the studies he highlights are in support of those points. In his own words, he is arguing for "the brain’s astonishing power to learn and unlearn, to adapt and change"--so it looks like the article-writer drew a very different conclusion from the same undiscussed studies. The article also mentions neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps's research to support an attendant claim that "When the prefrontal cortex is under stress, our capacity for learning, memory, and decision-making is compromised". But her research on stress's effects on cognition that I can find actually suggests stress is often beneficial to learning and performance, and her work on fear response conditioning focuses on timing of interventions, not energetic expense or discomfort. What's so worth hating about this kind of vacant-eyed patronizing crap, this "neuroscience-based approach" and "blueprint for L&D professionals", is how it authoritatively name-drops experts and science-y words as an appetizer, without inviting any actual engagement or understanding, and proceeds to dish up warmed-over PD workshop slop for the next 9/10ths of the article. Those L&D professionals may have no substantive understanding of neuroscience, but they know that you need to feel "discomfort" and bear "energetic expense".

psychoslave 2y ago

"Repetition is to education what repetition is to education". It tooks me time to strike me with its second mesmerizing effect: I had to hear this sentence a single time before it deeply engraved in my mind, in such a way that it most likely will stay there until I die. Not all learned/acquired behavior works like that, at least at the subjective level that we can experience as human being (putting apart obviously the fact that we all have different subjective experiences).