Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit on NDT philosophy

 Kevin, I actually followed most of that.  I would point out areas where I am not so sure I agree, but overall, the passages are not all that novel in character.  Again, I would ask for further condensation and repeat "Please, for the sake of argument of this thread, list the top 5 novel insights of NDT, and we can judge as to whether it differs from what other trainers and behavioral researchers say."

I do not ask for a list of points to beat you on the head with, I am merely getting at what it is that you think is so novel in NDT.  For instance, when I read your book a decade back, I was taken by the notion of animal energy, but later realized that other trainers, notably Cesar Milan, use the same notion.  

 Believe it or not I tried to be brief, but these are big questions and in the shortness of time allotted, I might have overshot the runway but wanted to be comprehensive. I don't really know if these are the top five, but they seem to flow logically (in my mind) so they are listed in this order and to address the thrust of your inquiry. Let me also say that I do appreciate someone taking the time to read this (and I am going to watch Panskepp tonight). Thanks.

"Please, for the sake of argument of this thread, list the top 5 novel insights of NDT, and we can judge as to whether it differs from what other trainers and behavioral researchers say."
1) All animal behavior is a function of attraction. If this is true, then behavior is a function of energy and has specific properties and follows principles of movement (emotional conductivity and which is easiest to see in dogs given evolution of wolf (it hunts by feel) and domestication of dog (amplified the group/hunting dynamic, i.e. heart). It follows from this that these innate principles/properties of energy is responsible for a group consciousness, in other words, the information is in the energy, not in the brain. Social structure is a bubble-up-from-below principle of conductivity rather than trickle-down-from-a-leader-above phenomenon. Now if someone like Cesar uses the term energy, then by definition they do not believe in a dominance hierarchy or learning by reinforcement theory since these are mutually exclusive. Logically they cannot coexist. (For example an electrician works with energy when he wires a house, but he must work according to its principles of conductivity, the "design" of everything in that electrical grid and system follows these laws. Therefore a dog doesn't listen to an owner because such a person is dominant or loving, only whether or not that behavior in that instance leads to an increase in energy. So in short, dogs adapt to human ways because they feel what humans feel and can do so in our world of a high rate of change due to a high enough emotional capacity by way of the wolf that was inadvertently augmented exponentially by domestication.
2) Stress is the physical memory of an attraction that didn't run to completion. Conserved in this state it polarizes an individual and this is a higher order of information yet, as in how to connect with another like-emotionally ionized indiviual, and, how to overcome objects of resistance. Hence, any two dogs living together invariably manifest equal and yet opposite personality traits, and these are not a function of social status or the result of individual experiences that have been shaped according to a learning theory of reinforcements. It is indicative of emotional synchronization (sexuality and personality) in order to "revolve" around the group center, i.e. the owner.
3) The body/mind is organized around these principles of energy so that it serves as 1) a conduit for flow of emotion, 2) an emotional battery for stress 3) an emotionally inductive dynamo so that individuals that synchronize with each other (via their physical memories) and will thereby experience more pleasure then they can reap singly, as well as being informed how to overcome higher objects of resistance in order to reap more energy for their sustenance and social way of being. This is why animals play as well as why dogs love to ride in cars, to synchronize themselves around a direction of flow so that their physical memories can be changed from stress to pleasure. (Candice Pert in "Molecules of Emotion" in her description of natural opiates articulates the physiological/neurological basis for this claim.)
4) Practically speaking, if emotion is the basis of a group consciousness, then "problem" behaviors and "disobedience" are functions of a dog not feeling attracted enough to its owner and thereby not being able to go by feel, thus instincts and/or judgments (in the human) are in the way. Various exercises can address this impasse.
5) Aggression for example is a function of blocked attraction and such a definition defines its own solution; i.e., remove the block by fulfilling the attraction. So if a dog wants to bite me, I don't perceive it as intending to hurt/dominate me or defend its territory, but that it is attracted to me with an intensity that overwhelms its capacity to feel, and therefore stereotypical instincts are running its mind. (These may very well intimidate me and protect the dog owner's territory, but that isn't going on inside the mind of said dog.) So I don't teach such a dog not to bite, rather I teach it what to bite, when to bite, how to bite and where to bite. The dog then gives me credit for it feeling good. We then develop a bond and from here I can teach it to trust strangers no matter what they might be doing, even threatening the dog due to their ignorance of how dogs perceive things.This is in contravention to a dominance or learning theory which believes that puppies should learn bite inhibition, which in an energy model is likely to cause aggression by creating a block (overloads the emotional battery) and that then triggers instincts. (In our domestic world instincts are always maladaptive in a moment of crisis.) I articulated these concepts in 1992, have been teaching them since the mid eighties in seminars and to clients, and the entire behavioral marketplace is moving in this direction and trying to bring such practices under their theoretical umbrella. My point isn't to claim authorship per se, but that we need a new terminology to properly articulate why these things work and why dogs do what they do. As far as a basic training approach, if a dog "agrees" with its owner as to what constitutes a predator and what constitutes prey (these are the two basic traits of Temperament and which organize every interaction between any two animals no matter the context or the relationship) then it is well-trained. Today many dogs are learning complex skill sets and are heavily inculcated in the pack instincts, but have not been emotionally developed so that they can align with their owners around these two fundamental energy poles, and thus don't develop the emotional capacity to innately "know" what to do on their own. 
  

 Well, Number 5 struck a positive chord, with me.

I know you're a serious thinker so I'll take that as high praise indeed. 

 I still have difficulty working with your language but will with try to avoid this and write within my framework to get some convergence. I usually work with gun dogs, poodles and some herding dogs. I don't work a whole lot with guarding breeds. I have worked with some pretty wierd breeds though!

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Ok, i am going to try and point out where you and i might agree in very simple terms ( I hope).

1)  I say a mammal's emotional system is bounded. It isn't too far off the push pull but is multi dimensional. This is based on reserach and some idea of the energy consumption and environemental constraints  of an animal. For example an animal can not be always in seeking mode, it would make it vulnerable to the environment around it, so it is inhibited by other emotions such as fear and panic and physical signals such as  appetite satisfaction. You can easily write many chapters on how and why these other emotions may inhibit or excite, and under what conditons appetite may increase or diminish the seek emotion

An animal listens to it's owner in simple terms because it either has memories of positve affective states or wishes to avoid negative affective states which cause appropaite changes in the dogs brian wiring. I can't get energy into this at all. Energy consumption is a really weird thing in animals. There are several statergies that seem to work in nature... We are very adaptive and use a truckload of energy. Many reptiles use stuff all. There seems to be a trade off between energy use and adaptability.

The use of the word energy is often made abstract when it isn't at all. Like that person gives off negative energy. Energy has a very defined physcial definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy 

 "Disobedience " happens for several reasons. One is that the environment is just plain a hell of a lot more interesting, we haven't found the reason to hang around the owner yet. In my training there is a balance between teaching the dog to work a hell of a long way away from me and do very intense intersting things (SEEK mode) and listening to me when i say so. So i have to teach my dog two competing things, it is ok to work away from me, but you have got to listen. I need to work out a communication strategy to get through to a dog that has "gone deaf" to do it's job.

 Ofen with pet dog owners disobedience is because there is stuff all emotional connection, there is no understanding of the needs of a dog.

You don't have a relationship you have a naggingship. There is just no reason dog wise to do anything at all that the owner says. We need to break this down further for a lot of these owners who have no  interest in further training. I say simply give the dog a reason to "do something" reward rather than nag it to death for not doing something or something that you wish it to do. For many pet dog homes, an introduction to some kind of reward system seems to make every body including the dog  happy.

 I Have to leave three alone. I think that your use of the word energy really is diffuclt for my understanding.

I have two very strong personality dogs. The theory is that they should not be able to live together. The practice is that they do and do very well. Every once in a while they have a quick blow out. It is usually the result of the older female dog action like a police woman and the younger dog fianlly saying "enough leave me alone!"

5) Aggression is a complex area, but very simply many dogs are actually fear aggressive, or taught quite accidentally to be aggressive. So we are dealing with dogs that really don't have any other outlet for their concerns /anxieties than to have a go at another creature (We agree). I certainly would prefer to cue dogs to do a behaviour than eliminate it. Good luck with eliminating an instinctive behaviour!! I belive though that dogs should learn bite inhibition along with an outlet to bite in play . The best defence to aggression is a dog that is confident and gets it's needs met. Having said that , my own breed (min poodles) can be prone to dog aggression. Most of it is all show and no go, almost part of how they communicate with each other. Some of it is just plain neccessary. If a large dog is hovering over one of my dogs looking like it doesn't have peaceful intentions there are two possible options. Some take the later more aggressive option.

I certainly agree that emotional "blocks"( I would prefer to say frustration) causes redirected aggression. I sometimes watch dogs really arc up at each other in a couple of very poorly run quite tradtional classes that i see. The dogs are subject to quite arbitray corrections, and are put through a solid hour of square bashing. I think that the owners may be OCD about it, that walking up and down jerking a lead once in a while gives them some solace. I can see no other reason as the standard that they achieve is extremely poor. The poor dogs show in every way possible that they would prefer to be somewhere else.

 I think in play we have to loose some dogma. Not every dog wants to tug or bite. Some of it is breed and genetics based. My labs would depserately want to pick something up and bring it back, my poodles want to go to the nearest poodle parlour.. actually they have the greatest variance of all. The oldest (female) Luci just loves to run and run and kill a toy throughly, and also loves playing tug.

Sam will not run and run. If you throw something he brings it back for a game of tug.,

corgidog

you say above that kbehan is lying. can you go on record and clarify how kbehan is lying and explain dr margulis's view on symbiogenesis and evolutionary biology as it relates to this discusion?

I say this because I am deeply familiar with the Margulis' work having read most of her published output, an I did not bring it up, he did. I merely pointing out that he is wrong.  Nothing in the quotes supports Behan's assertion.

Kevin Behan

It's not God-like powers, one's digestive system recognizes the essence (energy) of things. At the risk of being graphic, if a dog has an unformed bowel movement, disgusting. If it has a formed one, not disgusting. Food that is plated and eaten in a civilized way, not disgusting. Food mashed together and eaten with mouth open, disgusting.

There's nothing mystical about what I'm saying, the confluence of energies in the body and brain (these are real because they are generated by the body and brain's physiological and neurological processes) are attracted to emotional grounds, and this can be verified by anyone who pays attention to how one feels. 

In fact a 50% divorce rate proves that attraction cannot be extinguished because due to the principle of conservation, a state of attraction is conserved as its equal and opposite form, stress, hence the divorce. 

 

That's puerile nonsense. The digestive system doesn't recognize energy, it recognizes molecules.  Your ability to spout lies is quite tiresome. The brain is not required for digestive processes and experiments with decerebrate animals proves this.  Once again you fabricate counterfactual claims for the sake of convenience.  Get some facts.

 I might also add that the ORN  (Olefactory Receptor Nuerons) system of a dog can be kept alive outside of a dog for up to 24 hours. It just keeps on keeping on...

Now since this is seperate too and is molecular based (right molecue or particle causes neural signal, system actually conditons the signal so it is recognised by the brain..

Where does that leave us energy wise?

What in earth is an emotional ground? If you are talking electrically, you are really are off center. Emotions operate in neural circuits. These circuits have potentials. These potentials cause currents to flow. They aren't neccessarily grounded at all. An interesting way to look at the sequence that an ORN goes through to conduct a potential and how the system extends the original detection of a particle.

TheMilkyWay

That's puerile nonsense. The digestive system doesn't recognize energy, it recognizes molecules.  Your ability to spout lies is quite tiresome. The brain is not required for digestive processes and experiments with decerebrate animals proves this.  Once again you fabricate counterfactual claims for the sake of convenience.  Get some facts.

I have noticed this phenomena of streching scientifc work to suit with a lot of the more marginal  dog gurus. Breathlessly we are told of the results of a paper, the conclusion of a book, the results of an experiment to find out that no sane person would ever draw those conclusions unless their reading glasses were heavily tinted with the expectation of a prior conclusion. I get how dogs may or may not behave, but really the only charitable way i can handle a lot of this babble is to excuse it on the basis of a kind of religous fervour. I also excuse them the need for facts, we are never going to see them . Now the challenge is to refrain from snapping once in a while and to try and intperet what is there. The best tools for analysis that i have got for it is the papers i did in Religous studies many years ago. I just can't quite manage that level of non judgement!

TheMilkyWay

corgidog

you say above that kbehan is lying. can you go on record and clarify how kbehan is lying and explain dr margulis's view on symbiogenesis and evolutionary biology as it relates to this discusion?

 

I say this because I am deeply familiar with the Margulis' work having read most of her published output, an I did not bring it up, he did. I merely pointing out that he is wrong.  Nothing in the quotes supports Behan's assertion.

"The digestive system doesn't recognize energy, it recognizes molecules. Your ability to spout lies is quite tiresome. The brain is not required for digestive processes and experiments with decerebrate animals proves this."

 I am getting tired of all the convienient relabeling. It is like talking in German or something for us poor English speakers with one important exception. I can actually read the German to English dictionairy. Your dictionairy changes as the speaker or writer  reads and writes.It is tiresome in the extreme.

A nervous system alone in our poor language is not regarded as a brain. You might like to give the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain a bit of a bash and get back to us.

Now you are really pushing the boat out  on the energy thing. We are intersted in non causal and also non casual events. We could also get some side arguments going on the heat energy of the food itself and the temperature that it is served at. Next thing i guess is that the carbon footprint of molecules. Now here is the rub. The energy involved in planting or reaping many foods may exceed the solar energy involved in the photosynthesis of that crop. Now if we harvest animals.....

What your statement says is that if i have  a molecue that comes from a food that is X and is formed by the process of photosynthesis

then it will be treated differently than the same moleclue X that is formed by another process. I hope that you cans see that there is no detector in digestive systems that do this. That it is the molecule type that causes the digestive system to adapt and differntiate.

 I think your arguement is on very thin grounds.Here is another little article to have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy

Personally i am quite intersted in the whole energy picture of food. If the sack cloth and ashes view of technology is to be used and we start to look at where energy and land use goes, then one personal change that many of us may have to make is a reduction in our meat input. But that is a red herring and  i am signalling it!!!

 On the most basic level, an emotional ground is anything a dog smells (as smell is the safest means of physical ingestion), and on any level of elaboration, it is that which makes a being feel "grounded."For example, if someone loves a book they say they could "really sink their teeth into it." Thereafter such a book serves as an emotional ground.

Question, if your heart starts palpating, is that energy? And does that affect your behavior? And if you look at something and your stomach ties in a knot, is that energy? And does that affect your behavior? 

And a quick note, the internal affective states that Panskepp refers to, on their most basic level are functions of energy. 

 You watched the vid, then.

On energy, it surely is everywhere, even in a rock.  Gasoline provides the energy to propel a car, but my fellow civil engineers who study and manage traffic can completely ignore it in the course of dealing with congestion or safety issues.  Much the same about psychotherapy and its underlaying neural systems. Right?

Yes, I greatly enjoyed it and am working on a response.

In regards to traffic and ignoring energy concepts, I would say yes and no. Obviously when you're working on a grand scale of the system, you need not be concerned with it, but if it wasn't for the internal emotional charge that each car contains in the person of its driver, and the deep physical affects which inform them, there wouldn't be any traffic to manage. It's just as if each car is a charged particle that experiences pressure when the conductivity of the conduit isn't smooth, and then can collapse if two poles touch, and then can be deflected around each other in order to maintain a rate of flow. The physical systems of the driver are transposed onto the vehicle itself. My feet actually feel as if I'm on slippery ice when I sense the wheels slipping on the road. There's an interesting book called I believe the "Zen of Driving" and the author asserts that if everyone followed the rules, traffic would bog down. Smooth flow of traffic depends on the individual autonomy within the overall framework. I believe in Europe there is a movement to remove traffic constraints in congested areas so that the burden of responsibility is thrown back onto the driver rather than a strict adherence to regulations. In my region, I believe the cross walks and stop for pedestrians is increasing the danger for pedestrians although the stats probably don't back this up and I think this is because it has made me far more nervous about a new class of pedestrian that just steps out into the roadway in the assumption that the car will stop. At any rate, my point is that in an energy system the individual and a bubble-up system of organization is the central player. But I'm not going to go to the mat on my traffic theories, I just find it interesting that all these millions of cars weaving in and out of cities are guided in the final analysis and on the finest scale of granulation by an emotional "charge."