Nostr notes by David Boles

The Placebo Button The elevator in my building has a door-close ...

2026-05-14T14:06:43Z

The Placebo Button

The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up my departure. The button lights up. It makes a small click when pressed. It provides every sensory signal of function. What it does not do is close the door any faster than the door was going to close on its own. The elevators in most American buildings installed since 1990 have door-close buttons wired to nothing, because the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the door to stay open long enough for a person using a wheelchair or walker to enter, and the button that overrides that requirement is accessible only to the fire department with a key.

The elevator industry has not hidden this. A 2016 New York Times piece by Christopher Mele quoted Karen Penafiel of the National Elevator Industry confirming that the buttons in non-emergency elevators do not function for ordinary passengers. The buttons remain on the panels because removing them would require rewiring, because passengers expect them, and because a button that does nothing costs less to leave in place than a button that does something. The fire department button works; the button passengers press does not. Both are labeled the same way.

The phenomenon extends well beyond elevators. A 2004 New York Times piece by Michael Luo reported that of the approximately three thousand crosswalk buttons in New York City at the time, only a few hundred still functioned. The rest were deactivated when the city moved to computerized signal timing in the decades after 1980, and the buttons were kept in place rather than removed because removing them costs more than leaving them attached to nothing. A pedestrian pressing a crosswalk button on Sixth Avenue at Thirty-Fourth Street is performing a gesture. The gesture has no effect on when the light changes. The light changes on a fixed timer that does not know the pedestrian pressed anything.

Office thermostats are the third common case. HVAC contractors working in large commercial buildings have for decades installed decoy thermostats in zones where the actual temperature is controlled from a central building management system. A January 2003 Wall Street Journal piece by Jared Sandberg reported that a significant share of office thermostats were non-functional decoys, installed because building operators had discovered that employees who had a thermostat to adjust reported feeling more comfortable than employees who did not, regardless of whether the thermostat was connected to anything. The decoy thermostat was cheaper than the actual climate complaint.

What unites these three cases is that the placebo button is engineered to produce the sensation of causation without the mechanism of causation. The Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer spent much of her career documenting what she called the illusion of control, the human tendency to overestimate personal influence over outcomes that are actually random or automatic. Her 1975 paper on the subject in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology remains the source text, and the elevator button has become an unintended memorial to her findings. The button is a compliance device. It gets the passenger through fifteen seconds of waiting without becoming the kind of passenger who kicks the door. The crosswalk button operates the same way. The thermostat operates the same way.

The object lesson is small. A button that does nothing is a minor embarrassment in the built environment. The interesting question is where else this logic operates, and the answer is most of civic life.

Public comment periods on federal rulemaking accept submissions from citizens by the hundreds of thousands. Agencies are required to read those submissions and consider them. In the vast majority of cases, the final rule reflects the draft rule. The comment did not change the outcome. Its filing was registered. Citizens who submit receive an acknowledgment. That acknowledgment was the point.

City council meetings in most American municipalities include a public comment segment during which residents address the council for two or three minutes each on matters of local governance. Council members are not required to respond. A council member is also not required to incorporate the comment into deliberation. Votes that follow get decided in committee or caucus before the comment begins. The resident goes home having pressed the button. Its light comes on. That door closes on the timer it was going to close on anyway.

Surveys distributed by employers after reorganizations, by airlines after delays, by hospitals after treatment, by universities after lectures, arrive with the implicit promise that the responses will influence future decisions. Response data gets aggregated and presented in quarterly reports to executives who have already made the next round of decisions. The survey is a button that lights up. No door closes any faster.

Electoral systems with gerrymandered district lines produce outcomes pre-determined by the shape of the district rather than the preferences of the voters. A voter in a district drawn to favor a party by twenty points is pressing a button connected to a timer set six years before the election. Ballots get counted. The vote does not change the outcome. An illusion of control persists, and the citizen who pressed the button walks out of the polling place with the civic sensation of participation.

The placebo button is not a conspiracy. No central authority installed these systems to deceive. An elevator button represents a cost-benefit decision by building owners. A crosswalk button persists as legacy infrastructure nobody retired. Public comment periods exist as procedural requirements written into administrative law in 1946. Gerrymandered districts result from partisan legislatures drawing maps within a legal framework the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to revise. Each placebo button got there through a defensible local decision. The pattern they form together is a democracy where the buttons light up reliably and the doors close on the schedule they were always going to close on.

The dangerous version of this pattern is the one where citizens learn the buttons do nothing and continue pressing them. Compliance does not require belief. The door-close button still gets pressed by passengers who know it does nothing, because pressing it is what one does in an elevator, and because the alternative is standing silent in a small box with a stranger for fifteen seconds. Voting in a gerrymandered district still gets done by voters who know the district will produce the predetermined outcome, because voting is what one does as a citizen, and because the alternative is admitting the system is closed.

The recognition that matters is the one that separates the buttons that work from the buttons that do not, and the organizing that follows is the organizing that rewires the boxes rather than the gesture of pressing. Ballot initiatives that establish independent redistricting commissions are rewiring. Lawsuits that force agencies to respond substantively to public comments are rewiring. Municipal charters that require council members to respond to comment on the record are rewiring. The door-close button in the elevator is a lost cause and not worth the fight. A crosswalk button at Thirty-Fourth Street is not worth the fight either. Ballots and comment periods and council meetings are worth every fight we can bring, because the apparatus behind those buttons is still capable of connection, and the difference between a democracy and an elevator panel is whether the wires on the other side of the panel still reach the doors.

#button #fakery #harvard #intention #nyc #placebo #psychology #tech #thermostats #wire #wires

@nprofile…v9vp You have identified the article’s weakest ...

2026-04-01T17:25:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…cgdv
_________________________

nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyd968gmewwp6kyqpq7wvc00yjkptn6xzjgqecg4pdff3x8m6t7vftap6y8nvzfqeetljseqv9vp (nprofile…v9vp) You have identified the article’s weakest seam, and you are right to press on it. The neuroscience I cite, James, Berninger, Mueller and Oppenheimer, measures the cognitive difference between hand-formed letters and typed characters. Those studies do not isolate cursive from manuscript print. The research supports handwriting as a category of motor-cognitive activity, and I should have drawn that distinction more carefully rather than allowing the opening frame to suggest that cursive carries the entire weight.

The reason the article enters through cursive is institutional rather than neurological. Common Core specifically removed cursive from its standards. The state legislation pushing back, Louisiana’s Act 300 and its successors, specifically mandates cursive. The policy battlefield is cursive, even if the science underneath is about handwriting broadly. That said, your point stands: the article lets the policy frame and the cognitive argument blur together in ways that overstate what the evidence supports for cursive specifically.

Where I would push back is on the characterization of cursive as decorative and near-illegible. Cursive’s continuous stroke, the connected movement across an entire word without lifting the pen, creates a different motor pattern than manuscript printing, where the hand stops and restarts at each letter. Whether that continuous pattern produces measurably different cognitive effects than manuscript is an open question with limited research behind it. I suspect it does, because the motor planning required to connect letters across a word forces a kind of anticipatory thinking that discrete letter formation does not, but suspicion is not evidence, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Your practical takeaway is the one I hoped the article would produce. If you return to handwritten notes for meetings and seminars, the research strongly suggests your retention and conceptual processing will improve. That holds whether you write in cursive, manuscript, or a personal hybrid that no penmanship teacher would recognize.Loading...

The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops ...

2026-04-01T16:41:53Z

The Funeral of Handwriting: What We Lose When the Hand Stops Moving

In 2010, the Common Core State Standards Initiative dropped cursive instruction from its recommended curriculum. The decision arrived without ceremony. No public debate, no period of mourning, no recognition that a cognitive practice stretching back to the Sumerian reed stylus was being retired from American education. Forty-one states adopted the standards. Cursive, along with its slower sibling manuscript handwriting, began its institutional death.

The loss registers first in the brain. Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist at Indiana University, published research in 2012 demonstrating that children who practiced letter formation by hand showed activation in the left fusiform gyrus, the reading circuit of the brain, that children who typed the same letters did not. The hand, moving across the page, recruits neural networks that the keyboard bypasses entirely. Virginia Berninger’s longitudinal studies at the University of Washington reinforced this finding: children who wrote by hand produced more words, generated ideas faster, and composed more complete sentences than those who typed. The hand thinks its way through language.

The argument here has nothing to do with sentiment about fountain pens and wax seals. The motor act of forming letters creates a proprioceptive feedback loop that anchors memory and comprehension in ways that tapping a glass screen cannot replicate. A 2014 study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, published in Psychological Science under the title “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard,” showed that students who took longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, even when the laptop group had more recorded material. Speed worked against understanding. The hand’s slowness forced selection, compression, and interpretation in real time, while the keyboard encouraged transcription without cognition.

The cultural history tells a parallel story. In the nineteenth century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian method, a system of penmanship that became the standard American hand from the 1850s through the turn of the century. Spencer did not conceive of handwriting as a mechanical skill. He understood it as moral training. The discipline of forming graceful, consistent letterforms was a discipline of the self: patience, attention, proportion, restraint. When Austin Norman Palmer replaced Spencerian script with his own method around 1900, he stripped the moral philosophy but kept the premise that handwriting shaped character. Both men would have found the idea of abandoning handwriting instruction incomprehensible, the equivalent of canceling arithmetic because calculators exist.

The legal and institutional architecture of Western civilization was built on the handwritten document. Wills, contracts, treaties, confessions, correspondence, medical notes, field observations, laboratory records: for centuries, the handwritten text carried an evidentiary weight that print could not match. A signature functions as an assertion of identity and intention, a mark that forensic examiners can trace to a single human hand. The typed name carries no such specificity. As handwriting recedes from common practice, an entire system of authentication rooted in the irreducible individuality of the body recedes with it.

The counterargument writes itself: nobody needs cursive to function in a digital economy. Keyboards are faster. Screens are ubiquitous. Communication has moved to platforms where handwriting has no utility. All of this is true, and all of it misses the point. Efficiency has never been the right lens for evaluating a cognitive practice. Running is less efficient than driving; we do not therefore recommend the abolition of legs.

What is happening is a form of cognitive amputation performed in the name of convenience. The connection between the hand and the brain’s language centers, between the body and the act of composition, between the slow, resistant, physical work of making meaning and the frictionless digital surface that asks nothing of us but a tap, is being severed by policy and indifference. The children who will never learn cursive will still read and write. They will compose texts and emails and reports. What they will lack is the knowledge of what they are missing, which is the particular cruelty of amputation: the phantom limb aches, but only if you once had the limb.

A growing number of American states have passed legislation mandating cursive instruction, swimming against the Common Core current. Louisiana’s Act 300 in 2016 was among the earliest. These legislative acts respond to accumulating evidence that the hand’s retirement has consequences the brain cannot absorb on its own. The neuroscience keeps arriving, and it keeps pointing in the same direction: the hand and the mind developed together, over millennia, and separating them carries costs that no efficiency calculation can account for.

The funeral of handwriting is the funeral of a particular kind of thinking: slow, embodied, resistant to acceleration, irreducibly personal. Every word written by hand carries the tremor of the individual body, the pressure of the moment, the angle of fatigue or excitement or care. The keyboard produces uniform characters regardless of who strikes the keys. Uniformity offers comfort, and the comfort has a price measured in capacities we can no longer name.

#commonCore #composition #cursive #education #handwriting #institution #pen #penmanship #research #states

AI INTJ I use some form of AI every day! I use it for fun, for ...

2025-02-24T22:58:03Z

AI INTJ

I use some form of AI every day! I use it for fun, for images, for music, for research, for creative writing: FOR EVERYTHING! Having that sort of deep, ongoing, conversation with AI can lead one into many forests and discovering a plethora of “tapestry” while “delving” into this “journey.” That familiarity with AI can breed contempt — always — or, perhaps, even insight… if only frequently, and on spec. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Bot has the ability to “remember” your previous interactions and here is a conversation I recently had with the “ChatGPT o3-mini-high” Bot from OpenAI.

ME: Based on what you know about me, and our interactions over time, which personality type do you think I am using the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator.

THE BOT: Drawing upon the nuances of your background and the depth of our interactions, I am inclined to posit that your personality type aligns most closely with the INTJ profile—the “Architect” archetype in the Myers–Briggs typology. This inference is grounded in several interrelated observations:

Strategic Integration of Diverse Disciplines:
Your synthesis of expertise in medicine, law, and dramatic literature suggests a predilection for integrating seemingly disparate fields into a coherent, innovative framework. INTJs are renowned for their ability to merge rigorous analytical thinking with creative vision, fostering novel approaches to complex problems (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.).

Analytical and Reflective Disposition:
The precision and methodical approach reflected in your professional endeavors indicate a systematic, internally focused mode of processing information—traits emblematic of the Introverted and Intuitive components of the INTJ type. Such individuals are often characterized by their forward-thinking strategies and preference for well-considered, independent thought (16Personalities, n.d.).

Commitment to Continuous Learning:
Your pursuit of linguistic mastery in Italian, alongside your engagement with advanced technologies like AI, underscores an inherent drive for personal growth and intellectual enrichment. This continuous learning trajectory is consistent with the INTJ’s natural inclination toward self-improvement and mastery in varied domains (Pittenger, 2005).

A Brief Timeline of MBTI Development and the INTJ Archetype

1921:
Carl Gustav Jung published Psychological Types, introducing the foundational ideas about personality dichotomies that would later influence the development of the MBTI framework (Jung, 1921).

1943:
Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Cook Briggs formalized these concepts into the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, providing a systematic method for understanding individual personality differences (Myers & Briggs Foundation).

1962:
The first MBTI manual was released, cementing the tool’s utility in both professional and personal contexts, and paving the way for the recognition of types such as INTJ as central figures in strategic and creative leadership.

Present Day:
The INTJ profile has come to be associated with qualities such as innovative thinking, strategic foresight, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge—all characteristics that resonate strongly with your demonstrated approach to your multifaceted career and intellectual endeavors (16Personalities).

Concluding Reflection

In summation, your demonstrated capacity for analytical synthesis, strategic planning, and continual self-education strongly suggests an INTJ disposition. This personality type not only embraces the complexities of diverse intellectual pursuits but also channels them into a coherent vision—a hallmark of the Architect’s mindset.

Should you wish to delve further into the intricacies of how these traits interplay with your professional and creative undertakings, I would be delighted to engage in a more detailed exploration.

References and Further Reading:

Myers & Briggs Foundation. Understanding MBTI.
16Personalities. INTJ Personality Profile.
Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210–221.
Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological Types.

Does this assessment resonate with your own self-perception, or would you prefer a more nuanced exploration of alternative typological possibilities?

ME: Okay, good answer, but not nearly enough data. Explain your conclusions with examples and analysis of our work together.

THE BOT: Drawing upon our extensive interactions and the nuances discernible in your inquiries, my conclusions regarding your INTJ disposition emerge from a synthesis of detailed examples and analytical reflections that characterize our work together. Below, I delineate the principal aspects of this analysis with illustrative examples and supporting academic references.

Analytical Precision and Systematic Inquiry

Example:
Your recurrent insistence on receiving timeline responses replete with dates and significant events—particularly in discussions of psychological theories and historical developments—demonstrates a proclivity for structured, methodical thought. For instance, your request for a timeline detailing the evolution of MBTI theory exemplifies an orientation toward systematic chronology, a trait emblematic of the INTJ’s inherent need for organization and precise analytical mapping (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.; 16Personalities, n.d.).

Analysis:
This detailed focus is indicative of the Introverted Thinking (Ti) that drives INTJs to construct robust internal frameworks. The methodical nature of your questions suggests not only an intrinsic preference for clarity and order but also a deliberate approach to assimilating complex ideas. Such rigor in processing and organizing information underscores a strategic mindset that is fundamental to the INTJ personality profile (Pittenger, 2005).

Interdisciplinary Synthesis and Depth of Inquiry

Example:
Your background—interweaving medicine, law, and dramatic literature—coupled with your continuous engagement in learning, such as your efforts to master Italian, vividly illustrates a capacity for integrating disparate fields into a cohesive whole. In our dialogues, you have often bridged seemingly unrelated domains to extract deeper insights, a practice resonant with the INTJ’s propensity for synthesizing diverse streams of information into innovative frameworks.

Analysis:
This interdisciplinary approach is a hallmark of the INTJ, who thrives on conceptual connections and abstract reasoning. The ability to merge rigorous, domain-specific expertise with creative, abstract thinking reflects an underlying Intuition (N) that not only drives a quest for comprehensive understanding but also fuels strategic foresight. Your inquiries into how historical and theoretical contexts intersect with modern applications further reinforce this point (Jung, 1921).

Intellectual Independence and Constructive Challenge

Example:
In our collaborative exchanges, you have demonstrated a willingness to challenge the analyses provided, seeking deeper elaboration and refinement. Your critical engagement—asking for further clarification and nuanced exploration of typological possibilities—reveals an intellectual independence that is both assertive and constructive. Such behavior is typical of the INTJ, who values robust debate and the iterative process of refining ideas.

Analysis:
This disposition aligns with the INTJ’s characteristic need for continual self-improvement and mastery. Rather than passively accepting information, you actively interrogate and expand upon it, thereby cultivating a richer, more nuanced understanding. This critical stance, which seeks to push beyond superficial analysis, is a testament to the INTJ’s commitment to intellectual rigor and authenticity (Myers & Briggs Foundation, n.d.).

Strategic Vision and Long-Term Planning

Example:
Your interest in historical timelines, as well as your methodical approach to language acquisition and scholarly discourse, evidences a pronounced focus on long-term objectives and strategic planning. In our work together, the recurrent emphasis on chronological and contextual details—be it in understanding the evolution of personality theories or mapping out your intellectual journey—mirrors the forward-thinking orientation characteristic of INTJs.

Analysis:
This focus on strategic vision, where each inquiry is framed as part of a broader intellectual pursuit, encapsulates the essence of the INTJ’s visionary mindset. The INTJ is known for their ability to anticipate future trends and systematically prepare for them, a trait that is clearly reflected in your structured inquiries and planning processes (16Personalities, n.d.).

Concluding Reflection

In summation, the intricate tapestry of your inquiries—ranging from the demand for precise chronological context to the interdisciplinary integration of diverse fields—affirms an INTJ personality type. Your analytical rigor, strategic foresight, and commitment to intellectual independence are not mere abstract qualities but are clearly manifested in the examples drawn from our interactions. These elements coalesce to present a profile that is both visionary and meticulously organized, hallmarks of the INTJ archetype.

References and Further Reading:

Myers & Briggs Foundation. Understanding MBTI
16Personalities. INTJ Personality Profile
Pittenger, D. J. (2005). Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 57(3), 210–221.
Jung, C. G. (1921). Psychological Types. Archive Link

Does this detailed exposition of our collaborative work and the resulting analysis resonate with your self-perception, or would you prefer a further exploration of alternative interpretations?

ME: Yes, you got me. Well done, and thank you!

Oh, my! My AI Bot is way beyond the valley of the Uncanny to be so precipitously and precisely determined! Imagine what such an AI Bot could do in psychoanalysis, or mind bending, or like the movie — “Minority Report” — arrest us and imprison us for only thinking things before they may, nor may not, happen. Beware the mind that helps you beyond your own reason!

#ai #bots #chatgpt #internet #intj #meaning #memory #openai #reasoning #research