trier

lately, I've been helping another team in our lab administer the trier test, a standardized stress induction procedure that involves subjects giving a video-recorded speech, then counting backwards by 13 for 5 minutes. it's pretty terrible for the participants (who of course don't know that it's a stress test); what I failed to realize before I actually had to administer them was how awkward it is for the experimenters. the instructions prohibit smiling, nodding, or giving any kind of positive reinforcement while the subject is in the room, which is bad enough, but the worst part of the procedure by far is having to allow 20 seconds of complete silence to elapse at the conclusion of the subject's speech before asking a question. it doesn't sound like it, but those 20 seconds last eternity when you're actually in the room. also, while the subject gets to squirm physically, you're there fighting all your deepest social instincts on the inside and you don't even get to show it.

of course, the test was invented in germany. only the people who gave us the word 'schadenfreude' could have thought it up.

another quibble

i like that "from whence" has been referred to as "a vicious mode of speech". not only is it correct, it's also much classier to drop the "from", especially if doing so elicits stares.

a puzzle

ok, here's one for you.

a psychologist sits you down and tells you that you're going to play a guessing game for some money. he pulls out a deck of (playing) cards and allows you to take a cursory look at them; only long enough to ascertain that there are indeed red and black cards in the deck. he shuffles the cards. the game is this: he turns the cards up one by one. before he turns each card up, you guess whether the card is red or black. if you're right, you win $x. if you're wrong, you lose $x. the object of the game is to win as much money as you can.

once you finish playing that game, the psychologist pulls out another deck, explaining that for this second game, the rules are exactly the same, but this time the card faces only show either a solid red, or a solid black rectangle (they have normal playing-card backings). you play the game again.

so:
1) what's your strategy for the first game, and why? if at some point you notice a duplication of cards (e.g. you see the 9 of diamonds appear twice in a row), does this change how you play?
2) what's your strategy for the second game, and why?

they've played this theme out on house over and over again, but every time they give house lines like "you don't get what you deserve. you get what you get." i know that it's true, and i think hugh laurie knows that it's true too, and then i get very sad and go and drink wine.

i find that i'm enjoying my clinic days these year more than the last. for one thing, assessment suits me much more than therapy because i actually feel like i know what i'm doing sometimes, but also, patients this year all seem to come in thinking that they're going to see a real doctor, and i do nothing to disabuse them of the notion. after all, i feel like i'm entitled to at least one day a week when i don't have to feel like i'm the lowest form of life in the universe.

i'm now sure how one is supposed to stop being a perfectionist when one has advisers and mentors who expect ones work to be perfect. to all extents and purposes anyway: one can quibble about infinitesimals, but the fact of the matter is that once you reach the 95th percentile you're so far along the exponent that you may as well call the standard perfection. you read all these articles about how to get anxiety under control, that a thesis that's good enough is good enough, and so on, but none of those things seem to apply to me, or to other people i know who are getting phds worth a whit. the real test for us seems to be how to live with the disappointment.