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Website is finally done! February 22, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 2 comments

It only took about two months longer than planned, but I finally have a website for my public speaking career. Ironic as it may be for someone who keeps a public blog, I really really hate selling myself. I feel really self-conscious, the same feeling I get when I’m watching a video of myself. I’m just glad it’s finally written.

I’m not quite emotionally ready yet to link to it and take it public, however. I’m working up to that.

Your thoughts?

We need more foreign graduate students February 21, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Life, the universe, and everything , 3 comments

I had an interesting discussion a little while ago with a ex-coworker. Since 9/11, it has become harder and harder to get an American visa. Student visas in particular are far less attainable. We haven’t seen any signficant effects now, but my coworker is convinced it is a ticking timebomb.

We’re losing other countries’ intellectual elite. Not just their presence, but their hearts and minds. In the old days, if you were brilliant, you attended an American university, and that was that. Perhaps you didn’t agree with the American way of life, but after spending a number of years here, at least you could understand it.

And more importantly, once you returned to your home country and America did something stupid, you would understand our motivations.

We have now taken the position of denying the world’s intellectual elite the opportunity for an educational and cultural experience in our country. These are the people who will one day be wielding powerful influence in their own countries. These are the people whom we would really like to understand our lifestyle, whether or not they agree with it. These are the people who will control the countries of the world and now their only impression of America is what they are fed by the people around them.

It is a timebomb that is going to explode in our children’s faces.

Your thoughts?

Daygame, part 2. Newbies only. February 20, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Dating coach , add a comment

Last week’s day game session was great, but there’s more I want to teach. This week: the advanced stuff. Playful approaches, eye contact magic, and more…

The girl of your dreams is waiting for you, but not in the drunken sausagefest that is the Seattle bar scene. That smart, sassy, sexy financial analyst isn’t spending her weekends getting drunk at the bar and hanging off random guys.

You’ll find her somewhere else. Maybe you’ve already seen her. At the supermarket, at a coffeeshop, or maybe just walking down the street. She has a life, after all, and can’t be bothered to go out and get drunk every weekend.

This Friday, learn to meet people during the day. I’m keeping the seminars newbies only, however. If you’re experienced, if you’ve already found a path that works for you, don’t bother showing up.

If you’ve attended before, we’re switching rooms. We will be in the smaller room, which doesn’t have a window, so it will be a little harder to get someone’s attention to let you in. Good luck.

I’ve rented a room again at Solid Ground (formerly the Fremont Public Association) where we can have some privacy. Plus, the money is going to a good cause. Come around to the back and knock on the back door.

1501 N 45th St.
Seattle, WA 98103

As before, the evening is “pay-what-you-can-afford”. Hopefully I’ll remain motivated to keep doing this, no one will be excluded because they can’t afford it, and we’ll all live happily ever after. This is your only chance to work with me for much less than my usual $200/hr. Also, bathrooms are out of order, so take care of that before you come.

See you this Friday, Feb 22, 7-9pm! If you haven’t attended before, RSVP to me by email.

-Niels

P.S. Newbies only, as always.

Your thoughts?

I’m learning to live with faceblindness (prosopagnosia) February 18, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , 7 comments

Awkward situations

I’ve been bad with faces my whole life. There was my friend Emily, to whom I re-introduced myself every time I met her for the first three months of college. More recently, there was my roommate’s friend Tracy, with whom I’ve hung out on several occasions and have not recognized yet. And just a few days ago, a new friend found it hard to believe that I couldn’t pick her out in her own photo album.

Dating is particularly problematic. When meeting a girl I’ve only seen once before, I go into the date aware that I’m not going to recognize her. Generally I get around this by arriving first and smiling at every cute girl who walks in the door, knowing that eventually one will smile back and sit down with me.

I have trouble following some movies because I can’t tell which characters I’ve seen already. (Especially troublesome: mob movies like The Godfather, where everyone’s wearing a suit.) Last Monday, I met a girl at a dinner party, had a great conversation for twenty minutes, and then thought she was a complete stranger an hour later.

I traded emails recently with another faceblind guy who sympathized: “I often say that I never have trouble with the first impression,” he said. “Its typically the second impression that gets me.”

But none of this ever bothered me too much. Having never experienced life any other way, I never felt like I was missing out on anything. In fact, until a few months ago, it never even occurred to me that my experience was unusual.

Self-diagnosis

The turning point occurred when I moved to Seattle last July. Since moving here, I’ve been meeting a lot more people and very quickly found myself dependent on my roommate to keep track of whom I’d met before and whom I hadn’t. It started off being a bit of a joke, but after a few months it became clear that I was significantly worse than everyone I knew at recognizing people.

Eventually, a friend sent me a link to this site on prosopagnosia, or faceblindness. I read the entire site, and it resonated with me. And then I started taking surveys, and it was like the authors were describing my life.

There were questions like “I have trouble recognizing people when they are in uniform” or “I treat strangers as if I know them to avoid offending people I might already know.” I actually have a particular smile that I use when greeting someone that can be interpreted as either, “Hi, nice to meet you” or “Hi, nice to see you again.” I remember when I showed the expression to my roommate and he fell on the floor laughing because he’d seen me make that face so many times.

And then there was this question: “I can recognize particular cats and dogs.” What? I had no idea that most people could do that. I can tell animals by their behavior, or by a distinctive pattern on their coat, but if they’re colored the same, I always assumed no one could tell them apart. My roommates just shook their heads at me…

I don’t like calling it faceblindness because it sounds like something I made up, like how some people say, “Oh, I’m just not good with names.” But there are tests you can take online. I tried one that asked you to recognize eyeglasses, names, and faces. I scored 55th percentile on the eyeglasses, 48th percentile on the names, and 9th percentile on the faces (my detailed results here). It certainly seems like something’s up.

I’ve asked around to see if professional diagnosis or support was available, but the consensus seems to be that the problem is so new and so rare that there are no reliable tests and no real treatment. The analogy is that no one needs a professional to “diagnose” their sexual orientation. In the same vein, if you think you’re faceblind, you probably are.

Life goes on

The most frustrating thing for me is how difficult it makes it for me to connect with new people. Trust me, I wish I could recognize you. I just can’t. When I walk past you and don’t acknowledge you, I’m not snubbing you. And when I recognize your friend but introduce myself to you for the sixth time, it’s not because I like your friend more than I like you. In fact, I might actually think he’s a douchebag, but he’s a douchebag with distinctive, easy-to-recognize sideburns. It can be hard for “normal” people to fully empathize with what it’s like to go through life faceblind, but Face-Blindness and Stones gives some great insight.

I’m learning all sorts of interesting things about prosopagnosia. For example, most people have trouble recognizing faces if the face is upside down. Our facial processing circuitry gets thrown out of whack when faces aren’t oriented the way we expect (case in point, the Mona Lisa illusion). However, some face blind people actually recognize faces better when they’re upside down, because it bypasses the faulty face recognition circuitry and goes straight to the standard pattern recognition circuitry.

I’m learning about myself, as well. I’ve started paying more attention to how I actually recognize people. Clothes seem to be the most important factor, followed by hairstyle (though not hair color), which does explain why I have so much trouble recognizing people on separate occasions. In fact, one of my earliest memories, from when I was still in my crib, is being scared of my own mother, whom I didn’t recognize because she’d just cut off her long hair.

The bright side of all this is that I’m very functional. I read one blog by someone who can’t even recognize herself in the mirror, and someone else who can’t recognize her husband or children. I’m on the milder end of the spectrum, where it just takes some people a lot longer to register in my memory. And once I do learn someone’s face, I have no problem remembering, it’s the initial recognizing them as someone I’ve seen before that trips me up. Most importantly, I can read emotions, getting 29 out of 36 on the Baron-Cohen Eye Test. So I’m not autistic, just faceblind. That’s a relief.

Your thoughts?

Faceblind test results February 18, 2008

Posted by Niels in : Personal , add a comment

My results from the first time I took the Recognition Memory Profile.

Face Recognition Memory

In the face recognition test, you were asked to learn the faces of 10 women. When you were tested on these faces, you had to indicate whether a face on the screen was one you learned or one that you hadn’t seen before.

Out of 20 familiar faces, you correctly responded that you had seen 17 faces before.

Out of 30 unfamiliar faces, you correctly responded that you had NOT seen 19 faces before.

Overall, you got 72% correct! The average score on this test is 85% correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 9.

Object Recognition Memory

In the object recognition test, you were asked to memorize 10 images of eyeglasses. When you were tested on these eyeglasses, you had to indicate whether a pair of eyeglasses on the screen was one you learned or one that you hadn’t seen before.

Out of 20 familiar eyeglasses, you correctly responded that you had seen 20 eyeglasses before.

Out of 30 unfamiliar eyeglasses, you correctly responded that you had NOT seen 24 eyeglasses before.

Overall, you got 88% correct! The average score on this test is 86% correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 55.

Verbal Recognition Memory

In the verbal recognition test, you were asked to learn the names of 12 men. When you were tested on these names, you had to indicate which of four names was one of the names that you had learned.

Out of 12 sets of names, you correctly chose the familiar name 9 times.

Overall, you got 75% correct! The average score on this test is 77% correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 48.

Your thoughts?