Strange

Sunday, February 26, 2012

What Is The Extent Of Confidentiality Or NDA?

I have been thinking about confidentiality.

A confidentiality agreement, even if it is only oral and not a legally signed document, is similar to a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) between two parties. There are standard clauses (what cannot be disclosed to a third party) and standard exceptions (what can be disclosed and when) . The usual exceptions are when the information given to a recipient is already in the public domain or when the government demands for the information then this demand overrides the NDA.

This post is about confidentiality of the non legal variety, one that involves two individuals. Specifically, to what extent is a person bound to not reveal what was told to him by another person in confidence. Including what is told by an individual to a priest during confession or by a person to his lawyer or doctor.

I started to google today and opened a bunch of relevant links. But I stopped. I wanted to express my thought before it was affected by what I read about the stance of the church or the ethics committees.

My post is about what I feel should be confidential and what need not be.

A conversation can be divided into 2 parts: (a) that is about events that one talks about to another in the conversation. (b) the names of the parties or entities involved or any specifics that could lead to their identities.

I believe that part (a) of the conversation which leaves out names and any common means of identification of entities involved is not bound under the confidentiality agreement.

Lawyers and doctors use part (a) in their research. They discuss this among themselves. Perhaps a good amount of this research can come to a stop if patients or clients insisted on a total ban including not only (b) but also part (a) of their conversation with the doctors / lawyers.

I have established a "precedent" to indicate that part (a) is not ethically protected by confidentiality. At this point in time I am unable to see that non-protection of (a) is deleterious to the person(s) concerned.

It is my decision hence that (i) all conversation that anyone may have had with me is open for research, discussion or presentation in any mode or forum as long as (ii) part b of the conversation is never revealed. This decision overrides any promises I might have made in any form to anyone. This is applicable with retrospective effect.

Additional reading:

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=18186 (Read last para by Carson Weber dated: 03-05-2002, 08:09 PM)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_of_the_Confessional_and_the_Catholic_Church (Read box in the section titled History and the last para in the section titled "In Practice")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_confidentiality

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Value Of (Female) Virginity

While the trend is changing, Indian culture traditionally had placed a lot of value on virginity. A girl was and, to an extent, still is expected to remain a virgin until she gets married (that reminds me, didn't they conduct the test on Princess Diana before Charles and she got married? Chastity is supreme).

Not only do others expect this, many a woman herself considers her virginity to be her most important possession.

That caused me to think. What is this emphasis on virginity? What exactly does this thought signify? When a person considers that the best she can offer is her virginity, what are her values?

When a product owner considers that the best feature of the product he sells is that it has never been used before, what do we think of the merchant? When the most important point is that the package has never been opened, what is the package all about? How good is it?

When you can't return the product because the seal has been tampered with and hence it is rendered unusable/unsaleable, what is the quality of the product? How useful is something if it largely loses its value / price because its package has been opened?

Should we price a product because it is good or because it is unused?

Do we want to buy/have a product which derives its maximum value only when it's unopened?

I am not saying that virginity is bad. But if this is the best thing that a woman has to offer, eeeek.

Additional reading:

Monday, February 20, 2012

When Do Women Feel Irritation

i was talking to my friend Ana when I realized the intricacies of the feminine mind (well I am calling the one inside their head "mind" kinda loosely for want of a better word).

She explained that when a man questions a woman why she is online so late at night... the woman feels great irritation.

A ha. "So she doesn't like possessive men", I enquired gently probing her 'mind".

She explained "NOOO it isn't that. We were just friends. If we were in a relationship it would be something else".

Ohhh.. I thought, so women like men who are possessive only when they are in a relationship with them? I asked Ana that question.

She pointed out. NOOO, when in a relationship women like freedom. They don't like men breathing down on their shoulders.

The summary is : Women don't like a man to ask such a question whether the man is in a relationship with them or isn't. The reasons for the irritation in each case are different though.

Hmmm. I got to note this down in my diary. Another pearl of wisdom added.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

What Is A Connect

I often think about a connect in relationships.

What is this Connect? What causes it to happen? What causes it to end? How is it like when a Connect exists? And when it doesn't?

A Connect exists when we don't want any disturbances when we are connected. Are we annoyed when we have to answer a doorbell or a telephone call? if the answer is no, we are not connected.

A Connect is absent when we don't mind a disturbance and attend to the disturbance with as much interest as the interest we had in what we were doing now. We may even tend to forget what we were doing now and don't feel a pain. A feeling of guilt in such cases is not an indication of a Connect, it's an indication of manners ("Oh I am so sorry, I kept you waiting"). There is sympathy for the other person which is different from the anger that one feels when one is Connected and has to temporarily switch context because of a disturbance.

Having defined Connect, let's see what causes this Connect and what causes it to be absent. When we are Connected we feel pleasure. We also want to give more to the activity ensure the supply of pleasure for us. We do whatever we can to ensure that. A Connect has ceased to exist when we don't want to give to the other person, which would happen when we don't derive as much pleasure as we used to earlier.

Now why would we stop deriving pleasure? Perhaps the novelty has worn off. Novelty is a good initiator of a Connect. But it cannot sustain a Connect.

DisConnect happens when the activity (that we do with a person) does not address what we deeply seek. Then we no more derive great pleasure from the activity. And in turn we lose interest in doing the activity with the person. We aren't annoyed by disturbances to the activity. We have lost the Connect.

What sustains a Connect? That activity (perhaps with a specific person) which continually stimulates us, makes us feel pleasure and hence catalyzes us to respond more to it which in turn stimulates us more and hence causes a virtuous cycle and results in a Connect.

Now this activity is person dependent. We unconsciously respond to some things. Each person's behavior has a certain pattern. We keep doing certain things. When a person is his normal self and does something to/with us, does that activity make us feel good, feel pride, feel joy? Then we respond involuntarily. And if our way of response creates the same feeling of joy in the other person, there is a Connect.

Thus for a Connect with a person to sustain, each person's natural instincts, desires, actions, character should evoke a pleasure in the other person. If the intensity of desire for the activity is very different in the persons, the person with the lower desire tends to disengage by creating space. A need for space is a clear indication of a disConnect. A Connect can never be created by showing interest that we don't naturally feel. A Connect is the outcome of joy we derive; not just of sympathy or concern we have for someone. There has to be a personal gain which causes us to reciprocate.

If the natural responses and actions of a person do not thrill us, we don't respond. A disConnect happens. And then it's downhill from then on. The Connect caused by novelty has run its course and there is no more fuel to sustain the Connect.

Now what gives us pleasure? What kind of a person could we likely be Connected to? Look at the people in the past/present we felt a Connect with for a long duration. What were they like? It is likely that only a similar person can create a Connect with us.

Additional reading:
http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2012/01/modified-five-factor-personality-type.html
http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2012/01/predicting-relationship-success.html

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Modified Five Factor Personality Type Model

I had earlier written about Predicting relationship success through the use of personality types. While I had read about multiple models none of them seemed quite right.

In the Myers Brigs (MB) model, three parameters Sensing, Thinking and Judging seemed to overlap.

When I discussed this with my friend Guruji, it struck us that both MB and Five Factor Personality (FFP) models missed important factors like passion or fairness. These two attributes are important parts of a person's personality.

Additionally we had problems with the definitions of two of the attributes in the FFP: Openness (O) and Neuroticism (N). We took the definitions of the 5 attributes or factors from http://instantpersonalitytest.us/Personality-Ebook/Types.pdf. The five factors are Openness (O), Neuroticism (N), Agreeableness (A), Extroversion (E) and Conscientiousness (C).

We will define the factors here so there is no ambiguity:

Conscientiousness (C) is the trait of being painstaking and careful. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting). Conscientious individuals are generally reliable. This definition was adapted from Wiki.

Neuroticism (N) talks about control of mood and negative emotions. And whether people are calm usually. Now how does one interpret this? Is a person who gets into conflicts often with others often high on N? I thought not since this is already covered under Agreeableness (A). So I would prefer to define N as the ability to remain calm, unworried, controlled and not depressed when not interacting with another individual, typically when the person is alone.

Other factors A, E, O will have the same meaning as in http://instantpersonalitytest.us/Personality-Ebook/Types.pdf.

Coming to Openness, it is defined as how a person is open to new ideas, actions, feelings and values. Here I sensed a problem. None of the attributes O, N, A, Conscientiousness (C) and Extraversion (E) talked about passion, intelligence and conviction to own thought or fairness.

We hence have a problem here. We are missing an attribute which would include passion, intelligence and conviction to own thought. A person with that attribute would explore more and more, he develop a better understanding, he would create. Other things do not matter. Lack of rewards does not matter. He would see rewards as being incidental. Let's call this Purpose (P). Persons like Hitler or Roark would have a very high P. King Harischandra would have a high P, he would not compromise.

Initially I wondered whether O and P are inversely correlated and hence basically whether the two factors were at opposite ends of the same attribute. I thought people would either want to experience new things or create new things. But I realized this is not so. I have seen people who have high O and P as well as people with low O and P. O and P are hence independent factors.

There are people who consistently do a great job but take up nothing new nor explore but do the same things exceptionally well. I would say these people are low to medium in P and high in C. An example of such a character may be Eddie Willers.

Again, none of the five attributes deals with Fairness (F), knowing right from wrong, to not ask for something that is unfair. Fairness has to do with purpose in life. What is our aim or philosophy? What do we expect from others in order to achieve this aim?
Do we want special consideration (Yes)? Do we like to operate in a "free market"? Do we deserve what we want (No)? Do we think our needs give us a right to certain things (Yes)? Do we like to follow the same rules we expect others to follow (No)? If the answers to the questions are as mentioned in the brackets then we are low in F. We included Fairness as a 6th attribute while also redefining O and N. With this we believe that we may have a comprehensive set of minimal factors that define a person's personality. Hitler, Ellsworth Toohey and Gail Wynand would both rate low in F.

Thus we have the taken the basic FFP model and we have modified the definitions of C and N, we added two new factors P and F. We retained A, E and O as they were.

Henry Cameron in Fountainhead would have low O, A, E, N and high P, C, F initially. When his career was over he felt defeated, his P would have been low and N high. I believe P and N are negatively correlated.

We propose to see whether we can use this Modified Factor Personality (MFP) to define people well. And this means that two people who have the same scores in all the factors (P O N A C E F) cannot be different in their personalities. I would assume that these factors are independent of each other and having a high value in any one factor does not mean that the person would hence have a high/low value in another factor. To that extent N is a derived parameter. One wonders whether N should be retained or removed from the list of factors.

The next step is to see which factors when mismatched between two people will cause the maximum conflict between them.

Additional reading: http://vbala99.blogspot.in/2010/09/big-five-personality-test.html

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Predicting Relationship Success

I came across Myers - Briggs (MBTI) model recently. It is based on personality types:

While it answers some questions that have been on my mind, the model confuses me quiet a bit. I can't seem to differentiate easily between Sensing and intuition (maybe this, this and this one help). Similarly Sensing, Thinking and Judging seem to overlap.

Some basic definitions:
http://www.personalitypage.com/html/partners.html (Relationship concepts defined)
http://www.socionics.com/rel/rel.htm and http://www.socionics.com/articles/charts.htm (Different types of relationships explained)

The following table shows the mapping of quality of relationships between different personality types is based on the data from here:

ESFp