Advice
My advisor assigned to us the following reading as preparation for our first lab meeting tomorrow:
The anti-creativity letters: Advice from a senior tempter to a junior tempter.
Which begins thus: Note. The letters that follow fell into my hands under remarkable circumstances that I am not at liberty to reveal. The correspondence bears a striking similarity to The Screwtape Letters, edited by C. S. Lewis. In those letters, a senior devil advises a junior devil about how to win the soul of a human being for Satan. The senior devil is very knowledgeable about human psychology and is a clever student of human frailties and how to make the worst of them. Similarly, in the letters reproduced here, a senior "tempter," as he calls himself, working on behalf of an underworld figure he calls the "Anti-Muse," counsels a junior tempter about how to prevent a young psychologist from being a productive and original scientist. I think the letters constitute an interesting set of hypotheses about how to stimulate, and how to prevent, creative work in psychology. I have edited the letters very lightly, noting one or two obvious errors of fact and making educated guesses about some words that were obscured on singed portions of the manuscript. Phoebe Ellsworth, Susan L. Nisbett, and Lee Ross made comments that were helpful to me.
I think I have chosen wisely, if I do say so myself.
The anti-creativity letters: Advice from a senior tempter to a junior tempter.
Which begins thus: Note. The letters that follow fell into my hands under remarkable circumstances that I am not at liberty to reveal. The correspondence bears a striking similarity to The Screwtape Letters, edited by C. S. Lewis. In those letters, a senior devil advises a junior devil about how to win the soul of a human being for Satan. The senior devil is very knowledgeable about human psychology and is a clever student of human frailties and how to make the worst of them. Similarly, in the letters reproduced here, a senior "tempter," as he calls himself, working on behalf of an underworld figure he calls the "Anti-Muse," counsels a junior tempter about how to prevent a young psychologist from being a productive and original scientist. I think the letters constitute an interesting set of hypotheses about how to stimulate, and how to prevent, creative work in psychology. I have edited the letters very lightly, noting one or two obvious errors of fact and making educated guesses about some words that were obscured on singed portions of the manuscript. Phoebe Ellsworth, Susan L. Nisbett, and Lee Ross made comments that were helpful to me.
I think I have chosen wisely, if I do say so myself.