Research Proposal

Research Proposal

Among the social sciences, economics is perhaps the most useful for its applicability in describing the systems by which resources and people interact, yet is also the most controversial and political. The question I plan to address is whether the more objective natural laws of the universe, in particular physics and especially thermodynamics, are at all analogous to the laws of economics, and going further, seeing if such an analogy can provide useful insight on economics.  Both thermodynamics and economics pertain to the ways in which elements of systems interact with each other and the environment, though the former deals with the objective and quantifiable universe and the latter deals with the interactions between people.  The paper would propose that economics is nothing more than the principles of physics applied to human societies, and in addition, once economics is thought of in this way, one can obtain additional and practical insight about the organization of human systems.  

            The first stage of the paper will be to establish the similarity between the two systems. This will be accomplished by first analyzing autonomous systems as described by Johnson, which exhibit organized complexity in that there are simple rules for the interactions between elements (Johnson 203).  Adam Smith’s theories on economics, which is the basis for modern American capitalism (Smith), is a prime example, the many reasons for which will be explored in the paper. There is a natural law, supply and demand, that governs the economy and the distribution of wealth.  This will be compared to the systems described in thermodynamic systems, which too have their own simple set of rules. The paper will briefly summarize these laws of thermodynamics for the purpose of comparison, but will otherwise assume the reader is familiar with the sciences involved.

            While doing so, the paper will then attempt to re-frame Smith’s theories in terms of these thermodynamic laws, leading to the second stage of the paper. Many of the phenomenon described by Stiglitz, Johnson, Lethem, and Smith, can be categorized into one of these more basic laws. Most of these analogies are explicitly reviewed by Saslow, for example, the concept of utility in economics, the measure of an object’s material and subjective worth, is directly comparable to the concept of energy, the ability to do work (Saslow 1240). The paper will briefly summarize these connections. There are other, less obvious and potentially less accurate (the extent to which the paper will explore) connections, such as equation the rate of economic development with temperature (Saslow 1240).

            The third stage of the paper will attempt to glean insight having made this analogy and assuming its validity. The major example the paper will explore is how inequality is therefore an inescapable physical fact of efficient system design, examples of which are amply provided by Johnson, Lethem, and Stieglitz. The Carnot cycle, as shown by Saslow, provides a mathematical justification for how a higher degree of inequality and hierarchical structure is simply more efficient in terms of production.

research proposal

            The general issue that I plan on talking about is regarding how people living in poverty are more prone to living with depression.  This is a serious issue especially in America that has become more significant as the years are passing. It is no coincidence that people living in poverty are reported to be twice as likely to be depressed than people living in higher economic classes. This topic branches out from looking at unique factors of poverty to looking at the stigma of depression across the world and in the United States. There are two actual topics here that are interrelated, poverty in the United States and depression in specific populations. So, my research paper would address the question, to what extent do depression and poverty affect each other? What are some solutions that will alleviate the effects of depression on those living in poverty? Why are the statistics for depression in people living in poverty rising?

            This might be a controversial topic because when the Obama administration tried to make healthcare universal with Obamacare, there was such backlash and Obamacare was not able to carry out to its fullest extent due to opposition with the lawmakers. Thankfully today everybody is able to access healthcare and this can perhaps include care for mental health. This factor is a huge aid to possible solutions for lowering the rates of depression in people living in poverty because people who could not afford to get treatment before are now able to get treatment. This topic is also controversial because depression has a lot of stigma around it, which is talked about in Ethan Watters short excerpt of “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” where the stigma is extreme compared to the United States. This is not implying that the stigma of depression is not real in America, but rather, an example of how hard it is for people to recognize that depression is a real problem and can affect one’s quality of life much more than one expects. In order to solve the problem, one must realize that the problem exists, and if there is still a stigma around depression, for example, that depression is not a real disorder, then it only makes it harder to make this problem of depression rates in people living in poverty less grave than it is right now.

            According to Johnson, in the excerpt of “The Myth of the Ant Queen”, collective intelligence is a predominant characteristic in any group setting. The actions of each individual are reflected in the trending patterns in the overall group. Looking at people living in poverty as individuals first and then the general group might help explain the rates of depression and why they are so high compared to the other economic classes.

            In order to address this problem, I will talk about different case studies that were done explaining the relationship between depression and poverty. Also, I will give in depth information that explains what exactly defines depression and poverty. I will explore different factors of depression and different characteristics of poverty and see if there are any that overlap. Basically, I will look at the two separately and then compare and contrast later on. This will evaluate the similarities between the two. I will also explore the history of both depression and poverty (in the United States). This is important to note that I am talking about only the United States because if I were to talk about the world, there would be too many environmental factors to consider.

            Donald Ohuoha published a paper called “Depression and Poverty I. Psychosocial and Cultural Determinants,” in the Jefferson Journal of Psychiatry, and in it he talks about the possible psychosocial causes of depression, and the role of poverty on the rates of depression. I will use this paper to further my knowledge on both depression and poverty, especially the cultural factors. Ohuoha’s paper talks about the world though, and uses different countries such as Afghanistan and Japan for behavioral examples.

            My hypothesis is that the high stress, less time to invest in oneself, harder access to healthcare, and the stigma around depression are some of the major factors of depression of people that are in poverty. And so, to address these factors, our policy makers must make healthcare more accessible universally, educate our society on the realness of depression, and make healthy foods more affordable in order to promote healthier lifestyles.

Annotated Bibliography

Joseph Stiglitz, Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society (p. 393)

This excerpt talks about how vast the economic gap is from the people living in poverty to the top 1%. The fiscal inequality that comes with this huge contrasting wage gap cannot be ignored any longer. This will relate to my topic of social welfare and its policy in the lower class because the economic gap contributes significantly towards policy making for welfare.

Steven Johnson, The Myth of the Ant Queen (192)

In Johnson's excerpt, he mainly focuses on how the collective intelligence of a group is far superior to the intelligence that an individual can exhibit. He gives examples of how cities form, how ant colonies behave, etc. 

Ethan Watters, The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan (512)

Watters talks about how the stigma of depression and other mental illnesses are so severe and extreme in Japan. Although a lot of people do suffer from these illnesses, it is kept under the rug and very hush hush.

Kaushik Basu, Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)

This is an analysis found in Stiglitz's excerpt that says that under ieal conditions, everybody in the economy should be faring well and the ideal economy is like a scale, where if somebody is better off that is a direct result of somebody becoming worse off. 

Francois Bourguignon and Sebastien Dessus, "Equity and Development: Political Economy Considerations" 

This article is talking about how those in power give up their power for the greater good. 

Annotated Bibliography

Fredrickson, Barbara. "Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become." The New Humanities Reader. Comp. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 5th ed. United States: Cengage Learning, 2015. 105-26. Print.

In these excerpts from her novel, Fredrickson redefines love as the forging of connections with another person, and details the scientific basis behind our connections with others. Through exploring the effects of neural coupling, oxytocin, and the vagus nerve, she brings to light a whole new meaning to what we may think “love” is, and how it continues to affect our behavior even when we do not realize it.

Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime." The New Humanities Reader. Comp. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 5th ed. United States: Cengage Learning, 2015. 148-62. Print.

In this essay, Gladwell questions whether it is possible to control and direct cultural change simply by controlling the context. Specifically, he mentions crime rates in New York City and poses the idea that people continue to commit crime in the city because they see the chaos around them and decide there are no consequences if they add to that chaos. Their actions seem okay in that context, yet when put in a different situation would seem very wrong. This raises the question of whether or not our surroundings play a subconscious part in our actions.

Holt-Lunstad, Julianne et al. "Influence of a “Warm Touch” Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol." Ovid. Ovid Technologies, 4 June 2008. Web. 27 Oct. 2016. <http://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&CSC=Y&NEWS=N&PAGE=fulltext&AN=00006842-200811000-00004&D=ovft&PDF=y>.

Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues investigated “whether a support intervention (warm touch enhancement) influences physiological stress systems that are linked to important health outcomes” (Holt-Lunstad et al). To do so, they tested a number of married couples and randomly monitored their behavior and physical states of being. In their results, they found that the more warm touches a couple shared, the greater the beneficial influence on multiple stress-sensitive systems.

Mauss, Iris B. et al. “Don’t Hide Your Happiness! Positive Emotion Dissociation, Social Connectedness, and Psychological Functioning.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100.4 (2011): 738–748. PMC. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

In this scientific article, Mauss and her colleagues discuss why positive emotions lead to an enhancement in our physical functioning. Their study hypothesized and later proved that “positive experience-behavior dissociation predicted social connectedness such that greater dissociation was associated with lower social connectedness” (Mauss). Therefore, we can see that positive behavior is beneficial to our physical well-being, and as such, negative behavior should produce the opposite effect.

Sacks, Oliver. "The Mind’s Eye." The New Humanities Reader. Comp. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 5th ed. United States: Cengage Learning, 2015. 328-48. Print.

This essay challenges the previously accepted idea that the brain was a fixed structure, unable to change or adapt. Sacks argues that people are able to overcome challenges they face after experiencing perceptual deprivation, such as blindness, and by doing so, compensate for their lack of sight by making up for it in other areas. For example, he delves in the paradox of seeing even better when a person is blind, merely due to increased powers of visual imagery. Because our brain is able to change in response to these environmental and situational factors, we have to wonder whether or not it can work for things outside of visual perception (or lack thereof).

Annotated Biboliography

Turkle, Sherry. “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.” in The New Humanities Reader, pp. 458-478. 

Turkle analyzes the possibility for machines to go beyond being a tool for human use. Turkle list various examples of people creating intimate relationships with technology whether it be students interacting with a complex AI or children playing with their tamagotchi's. Within our modern era people have begun to project their own emotions onto machines and have humanized them in doing so. This source ultimately discusses the emotional relationships created between people and their technology.

Johnson, Steven. “The Myth of the Ant Queen.”in The New Humanities Reader, pp. 192-208.

In his essay Johnson reviews different groups of individuals that function as a whole to form "collective intelligence". One of the examples listed described the way "demons" in AI programming function to created intelligence. This example not only go over the functions that an AI takes to think but also helps to lay the different capabilities we can see from an AI. 

Sacks, Oliver. "The Mind's Eye." in The New Humanities Reader, pp. 328-350.

Sacks essay helps give insight as to how the human brain functions and adapts. He describes different accounts of people going blind ranging from various ages and causes yet they all manage to slowly adapt to their lives being blind. In almost every case of blindness the person began to develop as skill known as visual imagery which allows a person to see their own version of the world in their minds. This essay ultimately shows how capable human minds are at making change and how the brain preforms task even with limitations.

 Moren, Janne. "How AI Is Affecting Kids’ Brains." N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 26 Oct. 2016.

In this article Moren looks at the ways AI is affecting the minds of children. "Humanish" is a term being used to describe both technology and people in our modern era and usage has caused children to believe that AIs have human capabilities. AIs are now being seen as loving companions and often elicit powerful emotions from children. If an AI can learn and even feel with a child what is to say an AI cannot be human?

Szolovits, Peter  "Artificial Intelligence and Medicine."  Chapter 1 in Szolovits, P. (Ed.) Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.  1982.

In this source Szolovitis looks at the implications of AI in the medical field. He first defines the relationship between and AI's intelligence and a human's intelligence and admits that while an AI does not have the same understanding as a person in terms of behavior an AI functions almost identically to how a human would. What is ultimately deduced is that it is not an AI's intelligence that hinders it use in the medical field but its understanding of the situation at hand.

Source Analysis

The text “An Army of One: Me” explores the concept and evolution of the meaning behind “self”. Twenge states, “Your love for yourself... should be your ‘first love’” (Twenge 488); feeding a self desire is a natural occurrence ,and in many cases in our modern society, feeding this self-desire often involves breaking the law.

Furthermore, the text discusses the Baby Boomers and the culture of this generation in general as well as that of GenMe. Information regarding their background may aid in understanding their decisions. Jean Twenge even goes on to explain how “much of the ‘common sense’ advice that’s given these days includes some variation on ‘self’” (Twege 491). One of the statements states “What’s the good thing about your alcoholism / drug addiction / murder conviction? ‘I learned a lot about myself’” (Twenge 491). Although this has a slightly sarcastic tone, it does hold some truth. A lot of people fall into these addictions, not because they are criminally insane, but because they made a simple mistake, they’re emotionally lost, etc.. The stories behind the incarcerated vary heavily and no one crime can be pinpointed to one reason. There are near infinite reasons behind why an individual may choose to abuse illegal substances. The text further delves into the concept of self-esteem and its influence throughout development (as well as subconscious external influences on self-esteem) and this as well can play a role in the development of an addiction. Ultimately, it may be a complex series of events or simply one accident that leads one to the path of crime. The American justice system, fair in some ways, seems to have an unfair system of punishment. For example, possession of drug paraphernalia by a non-student near a school zone is given the same minimum sentence as 2nd degree manslaughter, 1st degree kidnapping (with or without firearm), 2nd degree assault with firearm, etc. (in the state of Connecticut). Overall there appears to be a heavy need for reevaluation of the justice system or the effectiveness of mass incarceration as a whole.

Twenge, J. “An Army of One: Me” The New Humanities Reader. 5th ed. Stamford, CT: Cengage, 2015. 486-511. Print.

Annotated Bibliography

Equality vs. Efficiency: What should society value more, and how do we achieve it? 

Engels, Frederick. "The Condition of the Working Class in England." Conditions of the Working-Class in England Index. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

This book, which was written by Engels in Manchester during the Industrial Revolution (as said by Johnson), argues that the effects of industrialization on the working class was extremely negative. He describes the inequalities inherent in the system and the exploitative nature of capitalism in England

Johnson, Steven. “The Myth of The Ant Queen.” The New Humanities Reader, edited by Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer, Cengage Learnin, 2015, pp. 192-209.

Johnson describes in an objective tone the manner in which systems are capable of organizing themselves. This is based on a notion of "organized complexity", wherein millions of elements interact with one another under basic rules to form a macro-behavior. He specifically describes the city of Manchester, which while able to run itself in a laissez-faire fashion, was rampant with inequality.

Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” The New Humanities Reader, edited by Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer, Cengage Learnin, 2015, pp. 211-234.

Lethem heavily criticizes the notion of intellectual property, saying that any and all information is a gift for the public to use. He specifically attacks Disney for what amounts to hoarding intellectual property, which ultimately hurts society.  Yet, Jefferson granted intellectual property rights centuries ago to promote the arts. This argument can be boiled down into what essentially is a criticism of government-granted monopolies, in this case on intellectual property

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. Accessed 26 October 2016.

Smith has the complete opposite argument of Engels. He argues that in an industrial society, people will attempt to fulfill their self needs in such a way that society's efficiency is maximized through competition and laissez-faire policies, a notion known as the "Invisible hand". This is an example of Johnson's self-organized system, and is the basis for American Capitalism. Despite this, even Smith recognizes the dangerous power of monopolies.

Stiglitz, Johnson. “Rent Seeking and the making of an unequal society.” The New Humanities Reader, edited by Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer, Cengage Learnin, 2015, pp. 394-417.

Stiglitz is highly critical of both the government and powerful private institutions. Powerful individuals can engage in nonproductive economic activity known as "rent seeking", which is both extremely inefficient and perpetuates inequality. He argues that this arises as a result of the combination of bad government policy and unfettered capitalism, and that good government policy is needed for both the efficiency and the equality of an economy

Annotated Bibliography

Research on Development and Expression of Self Identity in Various Social Settings

Davidson, Cathy. “Project Classroom Makeover.” Miller and Spellmeyer, pp. 48-70.

                Davidson argues that the current educational system is outdated and hinders the expression and development of self identity because of its standardization. The top down system of teacher to pupil is force-driven and lacks involvement from the student end, subsequently lessening their interest. Davidson describes how standardized tests expect students to conform to a specific mold rather than develop individual talents. The green-haired girl in the classroom is an example of how true self expression in modern classrooms (and society) is somewhat frowned upon. I can use this source to show how the act of conforming to a set mold is a change of self identity according to setting.  

Johnson, Steven. “The Myth of the Ant Queen.” Miller and Spellmeyer, pp. 192-208.

                Johnson describes the effects of self organized systems, which rely on members pursuing individual tasks or operations that constitute their desired self identities. Since there is no hierarchical direction telling each member what to do, each is allowed to express their identities independently of command. I can use this source to show how this lack of structure leads to “organized complexity”, which is a portrayal of numerous self identities functioning smoothly and simultaneously.

Turkle, Sherry. “Selections from Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.” Miller and Spellmeyer, pp. 458-478.

                Sherry claims that technology, namely social media, is becoming an extension of one’s self identity. The way humans control virtual realities is a statement toward who we are currently and our ideal versions of ourselves. Self identity is expressed in an unnatural way that adopts the use of technology to achieve optimal aesthetics; the idea of technology achieving its own identity on a human level is also explored. I can use this source to explain the impact of social media and technology on expressing one’s self identity.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004. Web.

                In Free Culture, Lessig claims that the movement of America from a “free culture” to a “permission culture” is slowly being made. He argues that creativity and self expression are being restricted because of copyrights being controlled and regulated too heavily by the government. His argument is that the development of self identity and thus creativity is heavily contingent upon the influence of others; if access is not allowed to work with what is offered by others, not much advancement will be made in terms of individual or larger scale development. I can use this source to show how self identity is shaped by the influence of others.

Twenge, Jean M., and W. Keith Campbell. "Age and Birth Cohort Differences in Self-Esteem: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis." Personality and Social Psychology Review 5.4 (2001): 321-44. Web.

               Twenge provides statistical evidence of increases and decreases in self-esteem according to various ages within a lifetime. These spikes and falls are correlated to events in the environment of the subjects, such as divorce rates, unemployment, and more. Self esteem is a pivotal aspect of one’s self identity and it is often quite dependent upon the social setting one is in. I can use this source to provide statistical support of my claim that one’s self identity (and self esteem) is heavily shaped by the conditions and status of the respective social environment.