Linda Stone’s “Cute Cats Redux”

In an earlier post I commented on Linda Stones “Essential Self” ideas.  I want to look at one part of her work, and make a note to dig into this for future reference. One of the interesting points she makes, albeit pretty sketchily, is what she calls “Cute Cats Redux“.  (It’s “redux” because there have been earlier invocations of the supposed significance of “looking at cute cats on the Internet”.) She is applying solid findings from psychology about attention and stress.  In particular, she’s building on findings that there is a two way street between physiological and cognitive “symptoms” of stress.  increased/decreased heart rate, breathing, etc. can create feelings of stress and tension.  But things that create “calm” or happy thoughts also create physiological relaxation. “When we evoke feelings of love and appreciation, it can also bring us into a more balanced autonomic state.” She gives anecdotes to illustrate this, as explained in her video.  Her “essential self” devices provide easy to see feedback on the otherwise hidden physiology, which reveals (she tells us) how just “being truly grateful” about something (for example) zaps the body into a calm, less stressed state.  I You don’t need the fancy tech, except to see what works for you. Thus, her “cute cats redux” principle:  “Looking at those cute cats and puppies is not a waste of time.  It’s self-soothing.”  Sure.  And this is probably why Dogecoin was so successful at first:  people were choosing “cute puppies”. She goes farther.

“Just as we have a physical homeostasis that supports healthy regulation of bodily functions, I believe we have a spiritual homeostasis that can draw us, both individually and collectively toward what heals us.“

OK, this is a leap, jumping from pretty clearly documented behavior to speculation about “spiritual homeostasis”.  This sounds nice, but is just fluff.  (For starters, neither Stone nor anyone has ever measured anything “spiritual”.) This leaves me gnashing my teeth.  I like the way she uses psychology, and strongly agree with her approach to interfaces. I don’t even disagree with the basic idea she is talking about:  people often act in ways that are best explained as “self soothing”.  And the Internet is full of “picture of cute cats”, and always has been.  Here is a reason why this is so. But I can’t sign on to claims about mysterious “spiritual homeostasis”; not without far more substantial evidence and argument.  Any competent undergraduate can run through the standard alternative explanations that have to be considered before “spiritual homeostasis” is accepted:  chance, learned associations, other reinforcements, cultural transmission, etc.  It should show up in neural studies of the brain, and that will be revealing: what parts of the brain are involved? If this is really a neurological phenomenon, there should be both learning and habituation effects. For the record, I would expect individual differences, probably gender differences, strong effects of learning and experience, and quite possibly cultural effects.  In the last basket, I’ll toss in the role of religion and specifically personal prayer:  I’ll bet whatever you want that, for believers, prayer works in similar ways to looking at pictures of cute cats.  In fact, if we do get some better understanding of this phenomenon, I bet we’ll also see how prayer “works” psychologically and physiologically. So, to sum up:  Stone challenges me, and offers me a mix of reactions from “Well, of course”,  “That’s cool!”, to “No, that’s BS”.   Sigh.  I haven’t made peace with it yet.