Day 126: My friend Blitzen

Blitzen is the female Siamese cat among Samantha's last litter of kittens; she'll be 2 years old in September. She's wary but interested - if we're doing something outside like mowing the lawn, she'll watch from a distance. She doesn't mind being in close proximity to me, like when it's time to feed her, but she's never sought out contact, and I've mostly respected that, except for giving her a few pats while she's eating and doesn't notice.

A month or two ago, she followed me to J's front porch and I sat on the steps while she circled me, nuzzling against the steps and the plants, and coming within a few inches of me but then dashing off. I accepted that that was her form of affection; all good.

Tonight I was walking up the driveway, looking to see if it was dark enough to find the comet, and she came running toward me from Mercy's house and followed me up to J's porch. She also likes to look through the outer, glass, door, so I thought that was what she had in mind. Then I decided to crouch down and see what she thought. She sniffed my hand a few times, then I went and sat on the steps. Then she circled past me and... I reached out and pet her. So strange, she thought, as she collapsed the main part of her body toward the ground to get it away from this strangeness. Then she realized... she liked it. She circled past me a bunch more times, and I pet her a bunch more times, and she thought that was great.

Blitzen has taken our relationship to the next level.

Book completed

Rationality and the Reflective Mind, by Keith E. Stanovich. I tried that read-an-academic-book-in-a-single-day thing again, and it worked out well again. I skimmed the few pages that were about the brain.

If you saw my last blog post, you'll know that psychologists think in terms of two parts of the mind that are important for decision-making - the mental shortcuts and the more effortful thinking. I'd heard that this book was about ways to divide that "more effortful thinking" part into two functions, an algorithmic one and a reflective one, with the latter being used for simulations. I thought, "ah, like perspective-taking, as in empathy." So what I typed just now wasn't actually incorrect, but my inferences didn't match what the book is about. For him, these aren't just two different ways we think, but rather, his reflective part is the part we use to govern our more algorithmic part. IQ tests measure the algorithmic part. The reflective part is more in charge of deciding what we should think about, more abstract, able to think about hypotheticals.

So that leaves me back where I started. If the reflective part is running these simulations, using the algorithmic part, where does empathy fit in? It's a simulation that doesn't involve analyses so much as use the very emotions and vividness that the mental shortcuts do, just... hypothetically. He never addresses this in the book. Maybe I'll need to ask him.

J. and I took a walk to the far end of our neighborhood park and discussed the book the whole way, which was fun.