#pragmatism — Public Fediverse posts

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that a person’s emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements, typically called emotional expressions or facial expressions. This assumption influences legal judgments, policy decisions, national security protocols, and educational practices; guides the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, as well as the development of commercial applications; and pervades everyday social interactions as well as research in other scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and computer vision. In this article, we survey examples of this widespread assumption, which we refer to as the common view, and we then examine the scientific evidence that tests this view, focusing on the six most popular emotion categories used by consumers of emotion research: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state. Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another. We make specific research recommendations that will yield a more valid picture of how people move their faces to express emotions and how they infer emotional meaning from facial movements in situations of everyday life. This research is crucial to provide consumers of emotion research with the translational information they require.

link

Maybe it’s just me, but I have always thought these findings were extremely obvious. What is obvious is not just facial expressions. The same rough analysis applies to tone of voice, word choice, gesture, body language, perceived meaning, pragmatics of speaking and everything else involving interpersonal communication. For these reasons, I developed the FIML technique. FIML reduces the ‘irreducible complexity’1 of human interactions by examining small bits of interpersonal communications in real-time, real-world situations. Perfect communication between two humans (the smallest unit) is not possible. BUT, much better communication IS. FIML is not hard to do if you have a good partner who can understand why it is necessary. The world is a lonely place and good partners are rare mainly because interpersonal human understanding is really bad, frightfully so. If you do FIML, everything will be better for you. ABN

1. See A theory of FIML ↩︎

Have you tuned in to our latest episode yet? In it, @xtinadlr, @fastfrwrd and @arielkroon discuss #idealism and #pragmatism - and #incrementalism, too.

We spend the first part of the episode defining terms and discussing examples, then we dive into the second half where we talk about how we think these ideas might apply (or don't) to #solarpunk.

Take a listen here: https://shows.acast.com/solarpunk-presents/episodes/810-solarpunk-presents-idealism-versus-pragmatism

#SolarpunkPresentsPodcast #episode #season8 #discussion #podcast

'We identify how narratives of “pragmatism” are used by politicians... to promote incremental rather than transformative change, to defend fossil fuel companies, and to dismiss “extreme” calls for a more rapid climate transition'.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-025-03987-4

#pragmatism #spinning #desire #com #comStodon #climatePolicy #climateAction #climateChange #politics #UKPol

On a sunny note...

So far... a 'fair and balanced' cartoon feed today, between florid #TrumpVirus #insanity and 'better angels' of #democracy - and #DogDays

#Snoopy #rest #hope #optimism #CarpeDiem #pragmatism

Domain rebranded from the.kalvin.blog (RM169.99/year) to the.kalvin.click (RM53.99/year). Saves RM116 annually. The choice is not preference — it is survival within family budget constraints and chronic uncertainty.

https://the.kalvin.click/the-kalvin-click-rebranding-to-survive/

#rebranding #domain #cost #survival #budget #poverty #anxiety #uncertainty #blogging #infrastructure #digital #choice #necessity #hardship #pragmatism

DOJ Says Law-Abiding Americans Can Carry Guns in Public Post Offices

The United States Department of Justice has released a formal Office of Legal Counsel memorandum opinion clarifying that law-abiding Americans may carry constitutionally protected firearms into publicly accessible post offices for self-defense without violating federal criminal law. The opinion, dated August 12, 2026, and authored by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora C. Pettit, interprets 18 U.S.C. § 930(a), the longstanding prohibition on possessing firearms or other dangerous weapons in federal facilities, as not reaching ordinary self-defense carry in post offices open to the public.

Section 930(a) makes it a federal crime to knowingly possess a firearm in a federal facility, defined as a building or portion thereof owned or leased by the federal government where federal employees regularly perform official duties. Post offices clearly qualify under this definition. However, subsection (d)(3) creates an explicit exception for the “lawful carrying of firearms or other dangerous weapons in a Federal facility incident to hunting or other lawful purposes.”

The OLC concludes that self-defense constitutes a paradigmatic “lawful purpose.” Critically, the opinion holds that no special nexus is required between the reason a person enters the post office and the reason for carrying the firearm. Simply entering a public post office while lawfully armed for self-defense falls within the statutory exception.

link

US immigration officers will be given gloves that deliver powerful electric shocks to anyone resisting them

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be supplied with gloves that deliver powerful electric shocks. 

The gloves are designed to cause pain and impair a person’s ability to respond within seconds.

The devices, known as the GLOVE (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter), are normal patrol gloves until an officer presses a button to activate them. 

They must be in direct contact with someone’s skin to administer a voltage that causes pain, which is intended to incapacitate those who are shocked. 

link

I'm not an Hegelian, I think. Maybe an indirect Hegelian via Dewey?

#pragmatism

A quotation from Ambrose Bierce

EXPEDIENCY, n. The father of all virtues.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Expediency,” “Devil’s Dictionary” column, San Francisco Wasp (1884-06-07)

More about this quote: wist.info/bierce-ambrose/85383…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #ambrosebierce #devilsdictionary #convenience #excuse #expediency #justification #opportunism #pragmatism #rationale #selfinterest #selfjustification #virtue

A quotation from Samuel Johnson

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1750-03-31), The Rambler, No. 4

More about this quote: wist.info/johnson-samuel/22262…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #samueljohnson #cleverness #cunning #goodperson #goodness #knowledge #practicality #pragmatism #virtue #worldliness

This is a classic Plains Indian burial scaffold — a raised platform of poles built so the dead could rest above the earth, out of reach of wolves and scavengers, and closer to the sky — WindTalker

Many of the great tribes of the northern and central Plains practiced this form of aerial burial. The Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota (Sioux), Crow, Cheyenne, Mandan, Assiniboine, Blackfeet, and Gros Ventre all used it at different times and in different places. When suitable trees were available, bodies were sometimes placed high in the branches instead. The same idea guided both methods.

The body was carefully wrapped in robes, blankets, or skins and laid on the platform, often with the person’s most important belongings: weapons, tools, a favorite pipe, food, tobacco. Sometimes the heads and tails of horses were fastened to the poles so the spirit would have mounts for the journey. Orientation mattered. Crow people commonly placed the feet toward the east. Mandan often directed them southeast, toward the old country around the Heart River.

The reasons were both practical and spiritual. In winter the ground could freeze solid for feet. Wolves and dogs would dig up shallow graves. A scaffold kept the body clean and intact while the spirit made its way. Relatives could still visit, speak to the dead, and leave offerings. Some groups later collected the cleaned bones for secondary burial in the earth, in rock crevices, or in special places near the village. The Mandan arranged the bleached skulls in careful circles on the prairie.
Nineteenth-century travelers recorded these scenes in detail.

Karl Bodmer’s famous 1830s image of a Sioux chief’s funeral scaffold near Fort Pierre remains one of the clearest visual records. Later photographs from Crow and Dakota country show the same quiet platforms standing alone on open ground.

This was never a single uniform custom across all Native peoples. It belonged especially to the mobile horse cultures of the grasslands, where the horizon was wide and the relationship between the living, the dead, and the open sky was close. The scaffolds were temporary homes for the body while the spirit traveled on.

link

I've been reading #Horkheimer as my vacation book (real light reading, huh?), and it really strikes me of that all the problems that #fascism exploited, many of them are related to why #AI sucks.

In Horkheimer's view, the Nazis were able come along because society had already abandoned absolute truths and turned into #pragmatism & #positivism defining #philosophy instead of the other way around.

Today, we're basing our future on #probabilisticcomputing .. 🙈

#bookstodon

Follow the Money Toward WWIII — Russia’s $300 billion of confiscated assets make peace close to impossible

It has been said that all wars are “bankers wars,” however, against the modern era of inverted fascism where corporations tell the govt what policies take priority, the more accurate truism ‘is all wars being controlled by money’, not necessarily banks.

The European Commission has constructed a very special kind of proactive financing for Ukraine that doesn’t require them to give their own €uros to the historically corrupt country.  Partly because the EU doesn’t have their own money, and partly because everything the EU does in the sphere of finance is always a false construct, what the EU put together was a financial system based on sanctioned, confiscated (ie stolen) Russian sovereign wealth funds {citation}.

As part of the sanction regime, the EU and western NATO alliance seized roughly €250 billion, $300 billion USD, in Russian sovereign wealth assets.  As long as the USA was financing the Ukraine government and war effort, those funds sat on the sidelines undiscussed.  However, once the USA stopped writing checks to Ukraine an alternate finance system was needed.

What the EU (Ursula von der Leyen) put together was a finance package using the confiscated $300 billion in the Russian sovereign wealth fund as collateral for loans to Ukraine.  The EU would send the money to Ukraine as a loan that did not have a payback mechanism. Instead, the thinking goes that when the negotiations for a ceasefire take place, Russia would be forced to give up the confiscated $300 billion as part of a reparations package to Ukraine.

Ukraine doesn’t have to pay back the loans because Russia will be forced to give up their sovereign wealth fund, and those funds will repay the loans.  That’s the way the EU financing of Ukraine is set up. {SOURCE}  The EU isn’t giving Ukraine EU money; the EU is giving Ukraine the Russian wealth fund money.

Now, immediately you can see a few problems.

♦ PROBLEM 1 – What happens if Russia demands the return of their $300 billion as one of their baseline terms for a peace deal?  If the confiscated money is given back to Russia, the EU and Ukraine are on the hook for the $300 billion they would have spent.

♦ PROBLEM 2 – With #1 in mind, there is now an incentive to never reach a peace agreement or ceasefire; at least never reach a solution that would consider the return of the $300 billion.  Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has previously said the stolen money belongs to the Russian people and must be returned; he will never accept the theft.

link

There is more than just this very important factor. It strongly appears that the Iran War is spreading and merging with the Ukraine War, which indicates top Western elites are not giving up on destroying Russia, and probably Europe as well. Chaos always favors the strongest players, who may overestimate their positions. Only time will tell. I dislike predictions but do like seeing the signs of things that may come to be and assessing them based on what seems probable. WW3 is a constantly increasing possibility and has been on a front burner since Gaza, and now Iran. If USA agrees to marry Israel’s IDF, that will mean WW3 will follow with much greater probability. Notice the many ties between China and Israel, as both deeply infiltrate USA and Europe with many similar aims. I can imagine an Israeli-Chinese plot to goad Europe and USA into war with Russia, while China and Israel wait on the sidelines to reap the spoils. China will gain territory from and power over a war-torn Russia, while Israel will increase its control over USA and Europe, and probably take full control of Ukraine, if not more. ABN

"This conception of mind as an isolated being underlies the conception that esthetic experience is merely something “in mind,’ and strengthens the conception which isolates the esthetic from those modes of experience in which the body is actively engaged with the things of nature and life. It takes art out of the province of the live
creature."

John Dewey, Art as Experience, p.264

#pragmatism #art #philosophy

Real Story Behind State Department Cuba Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhFujpXonOg

Left vs Right

Modern psychology is almost entirely the theory and treatment of the ‘self of the gaps’

The “self of the gaps” is the self that fills in the many gaps of understanding that occur during interpersonal communication.

These gaps can be small or large, but they are always there and there are many of them. Almost all people everywhere build their personalities on their need to fill these gaps.

They have been with you since you became conscious, You were raised on them. You can will yourself through them. Or theorize yourself over them. You can be confused by them or you can use them to confuse and control others. Malignant egos and narcissists thrive on gaps of understanding. Kinder people can be and often are devastated by them.

No one is free of them. Gaps arise frequently and can perdure for decades, whole lifetimes.

Communication gaps are filled with assumptions, illusions, wishful thinking, paranoia, emotionality, habit. When people visit a psychologist, a root cause is always going to be many painful gaps that have been internalized, reified, filled with wrong assumptions, make-believe.

The only way to correct a “self of the gaps” is FIML practice. Only FIML focuses precisely on real-time, real-world communication gaps and fixes them several orders of magnitude better than what they were.

FIML or something similar has never been discovered before because it comes very close to violating a fundamental language instinct; the instinct to recoil at being questioned personally and quickly. Almost all people feel threatened, insulted, attacked when questioned quickly, especially if the question involves something we just said. More precisely: especially if the question involves “personal” contents of the working memory, out of which we just spoke. Doesn’t have to be anything bad in the working memory; it’s just that that information is close to home and almost never shared for itself.

FIML “comes close to violating” this instinct but it most assuredly does not actually do that. Instead, it assuages our tendency to fear being questioned. FIML is never a gotcha question. It is always a question that arises out of an explicit previously made agreement. Any FIML question can be truthfully answered, “I would rather not say.”

By doing FIML, malignant old gaps are gradually filled with truthful data while new gaps are much less likely to form or grow. FIML can be difficult to understand because it entails an entirely new way of looking at human psychology. By focusing on small segments of conversation (psychological morphemes) FIML enables partners to see and understand how their minds are actually working in real time.

This replaces the need to rely on external theories of psychology by just examining what is actually there.

PS: My SO and FIML partner came up with the term “self of the gaps” this morning.

Big Government vs small farmer

This kind of problem is fixable. The more people aware of food quality and the importance of small farms, the better. We go out of our way to buy good food from quality local farmers. ABN

Glad to see #pragmatism advancing arguments and evidence about #intuition and #reflection. I've applied it to
- #CogSci and #metaphilosophy broadly: https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12534
- #AI and #PhilMind: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.22987

A new paper extends it to #Sociology: https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.70053

Respect if she does it

link

Declining population RAISES incomes — Peter St Onge

The Save Europe Act has officially hit the streets of Europe!

All poster, flyer, sticker, and header designs are now available for free on our website. When you put them up, be sure to take a photo and use #SaveEuropeAct so we can repost you!

link

The greatest outcome of this Act would be if all of Europe rose up and led the rest of THE WEST—USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc—to retake Western civilization and all together make it better than ever before! There is strength in optimism and optimism in strength! ABN

🚀 Behold the "Best Simple System for Now," where complex buzzwords go to die! Dan North graces us with the revelation that #perfectionism and #pragmatism are not mutually exclusive—who knew? 🙄 In just 26 minutes, this masterpiece of redundancy assures us that we can have our cake and eat it too, if only we follow the sacred tenets of #XML streaming and #JSON library worship. 🍰💻
https://dannorth.net/blog/best-simple-system-for-now/ #BestSimpleSystem #HackerNews #ngated

America is now paying foreign aid to 177 countries. And Congress just shipped another $50 billion — Peter St Onge

It’s an odd way to run an empire when Washington’s cutting checks to basically the entire planet while Americans buy groceries with credit cards.

Carney Calls It a Rupture. Trump Just Cracked Iran After 47 Years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr579oCbnrI