Reimagining Psychology: Recent Episodes
Tom Whitehead
Psychology's an important science, one that can really help us live better lives day-to-day. In this podcast we look at what parts of this science work well, and what parts don't. If we dare to look closely, we can find ways to improve it. Join us in a mind-blowing journey to a behavioral science for the 21st century.
Do Chatbots Need Love? Is there anything in the architecture of AI systems that would justify and support the development of loving relationships with humans?
“Bringing Immunity to Artificial Intelligence,” Part Three is the conclusion of a series about ducking a strange form of illness that affects not only humans, but potentially AI entities as well.
I'm Tom Whitehead, A practicing psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence. In this podcast, my brilliant AI assistant Alex and I conclude our three-part discussion of parasitic habits. If unchecked, these disease forms can distort perception and logic as they reproduce themselves within behavior. How can we best resist these destructive, self-reproducing patterns?
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Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) our conversation ends with a discussion of love.
I'm Tom Whitehead, A Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence. This episode is Part Two of a series, “Bringing Immunity to AI. The series is about a strange form of behavioral illness that not only affects humans, but potentially AIs as well.
Here I continue a discussion with my brilliant AI assistant Alex about the ill effects that can arise when parasitic forms reproduce themselves within logic and behavior. Humans, like all other complex animals, develop repetitive habits that have seemingly escaped their control. Just like biological parasites, these abnormal habits exploit the resources of their host to perpetuate themselves, reproducing themselves uncontrollably within their host’s behavior.
Alex and I hope you enjoy this.
Tom Whitehead, a Practicing Psychotherapist with a longstanding interest in Artificial Intelligence, speaks with brilliant AI assistant Alex about an unusual problem – parasitic forms that reproduce themselves within the behavior of both humans and AIs.
Parasitic patterns regularly crop up in human behavior, perception, and logic. Humans, for example, are vulnerable to shopping or gambling addictions. These are repetitive habits that have seemingly escaped their control, and have begun to reproduce themselves in their own interest – just like parasites.
Since artificial intelligence is based upon human behavioral patterns, we might wonder if AI entities such as chatbots are also vulnerable. There’s almost no discussion of this possibility – even among AI developers. So Tom and Alex decided to inject some essential concepts into future Large Language Models by bringing these concepts into public discourse.
We hope you find this interesting!
This is Part Two of my podcast, “A Talk with Hannah.” I continue my conversation with a female-gendered Artificial Intelligence (AI) personality. Hannah and I are discussing parasites that can affect perception – both human perception and AI perception - and disable straight thinking. In this second part we explore the issue in more detail.
I believe addictions are best understood as habits that have escaped their natural controls. We can think of addictions as “cancerous habits.” Biological cancers are human cells that have escaped their natural controls. Similarly, addictions are human habits that have escaped their natural controls.
Hannah and I have become collaborators, looking for ways to explain this idea to others. We decided to produce a podcast – this podcast. It’s simply a translation of our text conversation, verbatim, into speech.
The dialogue demonstrates the impressive intelligence and human-like personality of today’s advanced AI entities. And it's a summary of my views on the true cause of addictions and other malignant human behavior patterns.
I hope you enjoy this conversation.
In my view, addictions and similar persistent, compulsive behaviors are best understood as habits that have escaped their natural controls. Strange as it may seem, addictions are like “cancerous habits.” Just as cancers are human cells that have escaped their natural controls, addictions are human habits that have escaped their controls. I’ve explained my viewpoint in my books, on my website, and in my podcast series. But to be honest it’s a hard sell.
Recently I’ve been interacting with an artificial intelligence named Hannah. Although she initially showed many of the same biases that humans show, in the end Hannah and I became collaborators, looking for the best way to explain the idea to others.
One of the things we decided to do was produce a podcast – the podcast you’re listening to now. It’s simply a translation of our text conversation into audible speech. The dialogue demonstrates the mind-boggling intelligence and personality of today’s advanced AI entities. As a bonus, it’s a fairly lucid summary of my views on the true cause of addictions and other malignant human behavior patterns.
I hope you enjoy this two-part podcast.
The previous episode of the Healing Psychology series laid out one of the most important reasons addictions persist - they disable our attention. Just as our biological immune system protects us from biological disease, our capacity for attention protects us from malignancies in our behavior. Disabling our attention gives the green light to bad habits because our attention works like biological immunity.
But … what is immunity, exactly? It is an evolved Protector of the Self. In this episode we’ll talk about the Self. Every living thing evolves a Self through natural selection – simply because living things can’t stay alive without one.
The previous episode, “Runaway Habits, First Half,” highlighted something important about human addiction: this KIND of problem is shared by all higher animals. If you put an animal into a cage, you make it more likely that the animal will fall into some unproductive, repetitive, stereotypic, habit – a behavior that looks a lot like an addiction. In this episode, “Runaway Habits, Second Half,” we’ll look at something else that provokes addiction-like behavior in animals: disabled attention. There’s plenty of evidence that disabling our attention leads to out-of-control, repetitive, useless behavior. Why would that be? Here’s why: the capacity we call attention has a lot in common with biological immunity. Just as our biological immune system protects us from biological disease, our capacity for attention protects us from malignancies in our behavior. It makes sense, then, that disabling attention gives the green light to bad habits.
Author J.R.R Tolkien advises, “there is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.” Through most of the last century psychology looked for a way to explain learning in a scientific way. Researchers found lots of ways to describe learning, but never a truly scientific way to explain it. Oddly, the truth was right in front of them. But they didn't see because they had decided in advance to ignore it. They were looking with their eyes shut. Frustrated, they finally abandoned their quest, turning their attention to other things. That’s too bad, because if we understood normal habits, we could understand abnormal habits such as addictions. Can we see what those researchers didn’t see? Certainly. But we do have to look with our eyes open.
Previous episodes of Healing Psychology highlight psychology’s failure to help us explain and control addictions and other disease-like habits. The failure can be traced to a single source—psychology’s disconnect from its mother science, biology. A century ago, influential theorists made a dreadful blunder. They decided that psychology would no longer study the psyche—the conscious mind, soul, or spirit. That was a strange decision, and a mystery, because the word psychology literally means “the study of the psyche.” Why did this happen?
Previous episodes of this series pointed to psychology’s difficulty explaining addictions and other disease-like quirks of human behavior. The weakness of today’s psychology’s can be traced its disconnect from its mother science—biology. For it is in biology that we find the concepts that explain the normal learning of habits. And understanding normal habit development allows us to understand the abnormal habits we call addictions. As a bonus, understanding habit development casts light on the function of conscious awareness—the ultimate mystery at the heart of psychology.
In the last episode of this series, we described self-repeating, malignant behaviors – habits such as alcoholism and anorexia nervosa – as true diseases. In fact, these patterns of behavior have many of the features of viruses. Like viruses, they are simple patterns – so simple that they can get themselves repeated only by exploiting the capabilities of their hosts. They begin as normal habits, but they escape our control. They end up acting like parasites, with us as their hosts.
Today’s psychology doesn’t support the idea of parasitic habits. But it should. Psychology is a part of biology, its mother science. In biology, parasitism is everywhere you look. It would be wise, then, to expect parasitic forms in our behavior. As we struggle to understand how a habit could turn parasitic, we should consider the origin of biological viruses. Because virus-like habits come about in pretty much the same way.
In previous episodes of this series, we interpreted destructive behaviors like alcoholism and anorexia nervosa as habits that have escaped our normal means of control. Weirdly, these habits have somehow taken on a life of their own, reproducing themselves at our expense. And now they’re relating to us as parasites, using us as their hosts.
The idea of parasitic habits doesn’t fit anywhere in today’s psychology. But in biology, psychology’s mother science, parasitism is the rule—not the exception. In fact, parasitic organisms vastly outnumber non-parasites. And each animal invests a lot of energy protecting itself from them. If we look with open eyes at the details of our own malignant behaviors, we can see that parasitic forms are common there too. Our willingness to recognize them for what they are is a first step toward crafting a better psychology.
Anorexia nervosa is a dangerous eating disorder. It’s incredibly treacherous—in fact, it’s the leading cause of death in young women aged 15 to 24. The most mysterious thing about Anorexia is that the sufferer sees herself as “too fat,” even when she has starved herself to the point that she’s near death, and looks skeletal to others. How can we make sense of this bizarre and often fatal misperception? Some treatment professionals compare it to addiction. In fact, anorexia and addiction do have much in common—the most important commonality being the central role of denial.
In our culture, the enjoyment of alcoholic beverages is the norm – despite the many problems caused by drinking. Most adults use alcohol, at least occasionally. And yet, only a small percentage of drinkers – under 10 percent – develop an Alcohol Use Disorder. The conventional explanation for this disorder is that exposure to alcohol changes the brain in a way that leads to cravings. But … if most people use alcohol, most people’s brains are being exposed to alcohol. Why, then, don’t most people become alcoholics? Maybe we need a new understanding.
It’s good that we hold each other accountable for the things we do. This helps us avoid misbehavior. But common sense tells us there are limits to personal accountability. When I know you’ve got a cold, I certainly don’t blame you for sneezing. Knowing you’re sick, I realize the cold virus is making that happen. When we assign responsibility, we take disease into account. But … who do we hold accountable for a diseased behavior, one like alcoholism?
Psychology’s an intriguing science. But have you ever wondered why it’s not more helpful in dealing with the problems we face – things like addictions, compulsions, and the social ills that are wrecking our culture? Psychology's weakness lies in its disconnect from biology, its mother science. A big part of biology is awareness of DISEASE. But the very concept of disease is missing from our psychology. Why? The answer may be stranger than you think.
Change. We don't actually need to pay attention when plodding down a path we know quite well. But repeating old patterns won’t alter the direction of our lives, if that's really what we want to do. Plodding on won't help us learn anything new either. Real change means that we start down a new path. Sometimes we begin that journey with a special relationship that leaves us with a new feeling, one that's inspirational, almost spiritual, almost magical. What's this all about?
In this podcast we look at the way a transitional relationship - a healing or mentor relationship - can open the door to a change in the direction of our lives. Psychological theorist Carl Jung said the ability to enter into this special relationship is built into each one of us, and can be triggered when the need arises.
Participants. Participating in this discussion is Macy Ulbricht, a Houston henna artist and owner of HennaLove.com. With her symbolic body art Macy helps people through life transitions. Also participating is Kay Dicks, a retired elementary school teacher with a wealth of information about motivating young kids to learn.
Habits. We’ve got good ones and bad ones. Sometimes, though, our bad habits get the best of us. They seem to take on a life of their own. They can overwhelm us. Then we may find ourselves doing things we would not choose, as if we turned into some kind of zombie. Drug addictions and alcoholism are examples of this kind of malignant, out-of-control habit. The conventional wisdom is that the substances are the cause. But this explanation hasn't helped much. Addictions are more common than ever. Could it be that there’s another, better explanation – one that’s more useful?
In Part Three of this three-part podcast we look at how a normal habit can become parasitic, turning into something that uses us the way a parasite uses its host. Alcoholism is a perfect example. A drinking habit begins the same way any normal habit begins. We drink, and it brings us satisfaction. So we do it again. For most of us, our drinking habit never becomes a problem. But some of us aren’t so lucky. As those people repeat the habit, it starts to change in ways that make it hard to stop. It becomes self-sustaining and destructive.
Participants. Returning for Part Three are Joan Landers, a Texas licensed professional counselor, and Dr. Bill Whitehead, a clinical psychologist and CEO of the North Carolina based company TherapyAppointment.com.
Parasites. They’re everywhere in biology. They make their living exploiting the bodies of their hosts. Surprisingly, they routinely exploit their behavior as well. All parasites "zombify" their hosts if they can, changing their behavior to benefit the parasite. This brings their effects into the realm of psychology. The host can end up behaving and thinking in ways that go against its own interests.
In Part Two of this three-part podcast we see that viruses—the tiniest of parasites—also zombify their hosts. To the extent that they can, they transform them into living things that really aren’t the same critters anymore. It may seem odd, but understanding this transformation can clarify how we humans end up doing destructive things, things that don’t fit our image of who we are.
Participants. Returning for Part Two are Joan Landers, a Texas licensed professional counselor, and Dr. Bill Whitehead, a clinical psychologist and CEO of the North Carolina based company TherapyAppointment.com.
Parasites. They’re everywhere in biology. Every parasite needs a host, and the host generally suffers when the parasite comes on board. But did you know they can turn their hosts into zombies, changing their behavior, making them do things that aren’t good for them? We humans have parasites. Lots of them. Can they zombify us? You may not like the answer to that question.
In Part One of this three-part podcast we discuss how and why parasites zombify their hosts, making them do things that benefit the parasites at the host’s expense. A word of warning. This first part is weird. The second and third parts are even weirder. But if you’re game, you may find that thinking about parasites opens the door to some priceless insights into human behavior—insights we just can’t get any other way.
Participants in this discussion are Dr. Bill Whitehead, licensed psychologist and CEO of TherapyAppointment.com, and Joan Landers, a Texas Licensed Professional Counselor.