I found a related study linked below, and it goes hand in hand with the other common sexist/racist position you see floating around this thread: confusing descriptive statements with prescriptive statements. It's an age-old pattern that goes like this:
1. discourage minority from participating in an activity. 2. look around and point out descriptively: "Gee, minority x isn't good at this activity!" 3. make prescriptive statement: "Therefore, minority x isn't good at this activity!" which in fact, discourages minority x from the activity, thereby repeating step 1. It's sort of like how if your parent or teacher told you you sucked at something, you'd be less likely to perform well at it because you'd be convinced you were a failure. Except in this case, it's applied against an entire group.
This certainly worked with racism, but it applies equally to sexism.
This is why women perform equally with men in mathematics in parts of the world where gender discrimination doesn't exist like it does here (http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math?utm_content=buffer6bc17&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer). But in this thread, looking around, some guys are claiming that women aren't good at math. As proof of this, they reinforce the old tropes that women aren't as good at math. They thereby discourage women from math/comp sci, then take the lack of women in the field as 'evidence' of what it is that 'women' really want, when women as a whole never had a fair shot to begin with.
They may say that 'leveling the playing field' is hurting the cause, but really, I see no evidence of this at all. The cause is moving forward because society as a whole has seen through the little ruse, and that's why change is happening. Tackling workplace problems facing men is not contradictory (and is often complimentary) to the cause of eliminating sexism, it's too bad they conflate the two issues.
China won't be able to pick up the pieces because a large-scale nuclear war means a decade of nuclear winter, the end of the ozone layer, and the possible annihilation of our entire species.
With our last breath, we 'won!' because it was better to go extinct than to look 'weak.'
Infiltration, astroturfing and reputation destruction are as old as the hills. Such as this not really amusing story of a Muslim organization turning in a member who was hyping terrorism, only to discover he was an FBI infiltrant:
I think such things are to be expected. It sucks, but if you've a security vulnerability in any system, you can expect it to be exploited. The question we should be asking is, can online groups adapt to account for such possibilities, and how?
Ah, the old -science will all be wrong in 20 years...
Which is wrong of course, we still make use of Newtonian physics hundreds of years later, and were you to count mathematics, some aspects of mathematics date back thousands of years. It's fair to say that 20 years from now we will still accept phylogenetic trees and we will use physics that allows us to build computers. Science is a process of refinement, a spectrum of probabilities
The strength of science is that it can in fact discard ideas quickly. If a model is no longer useful, out it goes, or it is altered. I find it odd that the parent assumes that because science has procedures built in to allow it to change when it is wrong, that this somehow equates to astrology therefore being right. Eg science will be wrong in 20 years which it wont)==astrology is right. This does not follow.
Science has predictive power. Anyone can replicate its results if they replicate the conditions of the experiment. With astrology on the other hand, lots of us have tried it, and it doesn't work. It doesn't stand up to testing. If it worked for everyone, it wouldn't be an issue, but it doesn't. Sure, there's a percentage of people out there who claim it work, but that's to be expected in a large enough population as a statistical probability. You'll find people claiming garlic cloves ward off the flu too. What it comes down to in the end isn't just that such beliefs are wrong--they simply aren't useful for the most of us.
Of course when the phrase 'be open minded' comes out, this translates as 'crowds who believe in anything for thousands of years can't possibly be wrong, blindly follow them''. When the bandwagon fallacy comes out, you know the ego is at work. Let's talk Tim Leary. Science is the real, ultimate ego death. There's no room for ego in determining objective reality, because objective reality doesn't work the way one wants it to.
The Right tends to be more of a certain Christian belief that has a deep seated fear of 'new agey', 'spiritistic', 'occult' etc practices, whereas the left has the Christians who don't care about that kind of stuff, and the secularists who are every bit as irrational.
I've noticed this trend too, having grown up amongst fundies then moving to the big city as I got older. You find pseudoscience everywhere.
My experience on the religious Right: Yoga, Meditation and Astrology open your mind to Satan. Pray to God, son. My experience on the Left: Lengthy discussions of star signs, after laughing at those damn fool fundamentalists.
It's the paraphilia I'm talking about, not what normal adults may or may not be attracted to. The latter is typically exclusive (think, as child hits mid to late teens, child discovers an inability to be attracted to his peers. However, child is unable to seek counselling for obvious reasons of social stigma). It is at least from what I have read manageable with therapy and coaching, even if, similar to other and far less harmful paraphilia, it is not -curable-.
This shouldn't even be the least bit surprising if you've spent any time at all looking at the current research in the field, suggesting a combination of both environmental and neurological factors. It's like any other 'variation' in human sexuality, statistically you will find it anywhere given a large enough sample. Yet our solutions are entirely reactive rather than preventative. The solutions the experts propose repeatedly are simply never going to happen. This is a field where people assume getting really angry is the only way to fix things, and stopping to understand the problem and break it down into its components is somehow condoning it. Understanding criminal behavior with prevention in mind is 'hugging a thug' instead of getting tough on crime and we must operate under that false dichotomy.
If we fixed electronics like we treated society's ills, we'd take a sledgehammer to them accompanied by 'die MOFO die!' (a la office space) every time there was a problem. And we'd have a pile of wasted and broken things, and even more problems to deal with as a result... And well, that's what we are seeing, and will continue to see, until we get smart about this problem and start listening to what experts are saying.
I'm not entirely sure the human equation has changed even if the tech has. I've met my fair share of quiet, introverted thinkers over the years and quite frankly this is a human nature thing. Some people are more outgoing than others, some are social butterflies who are busy networking, some like to stay at home and tinker. Some function well in groups, some do not. It's got nothing to do with smarts. People just think differently. It's a shame the thread has to turn smarts into an accusatory contest. Also, that the person you're responding to reacted in such an irate way seems to indicate to me that a nerve was poked: there is still a negative stigma attached to being a nerd that the person wants to overcome. That at least clearly has not changed.
And of course I do agree that the technology situation has changed, computers are ubiquitous now whereas in the 80's my ability to use a computer set me apart from my peers.
(Note, I'm not responding to the criticism of the not-peer-reviewed study in the article which I agree is a useless study, but rather its later assertion).
Which seems to indicate that there is some basis for comparability between the two, even if they are different, and further research is needed.
"the articles from this symposium provide evidence that neurological similarities exist in the response of humans (6) and rats (7,9) to foods and to drugs. Two of the reports (6,7), as well as our own work (14–16), suggest that even highly palatable food is not addictive in and of itself. Rather, it is the manner in which the food is presented (i.e., intermittently) and consumed (i.e., repeated, intermittent “gorging”) that appears to entrain the addiction-like process. Such consummatory patterns are associated with increased risk for comorbid complications as well as relapse and make treatment particularly challenging. The topic of food addiction bears study, therefore, to develop fresh approaches to clinical intervention and to advance our understanding of basic mechanisms involved in loss of control."
Go look up the 'adventure' section on Steam for tons of examples! If you're looking for major titles, then you might only find passing nods to it here and there (aside from something like Portal 2).. but there are countless independent games that focus on rich atmospherics combined with puzzles. On iOS The Room is a short but fantastic example of this that anyone who loves Myst should really check out. Kairo (multiplatform) is kinda interesting too, how about Braid, shall we go on and on?
In line with what you are saying, most teenagers do not have fully developed frontal lobes until around the time of legal adulthood. More contemporary research I've seen suggests the brain continues to develop until around age 25.
I do indeed remember what it was like to be a youngster. I had a lot of fun. I was also a bit of a dick. I knew Star Wars was fake. I got way more into simple pixelated video games than I'm capable of doing now. When I played Venture on ColecoVision, my heart burst out of my chest when the pixelated monster came into the room to eat me.
I might not have known that cops weren't supposed to needlessly abuse people they arrested though, since the media portrayed that as the way things are done. Of course there's adults who still don't get that, either.
The RIAA was silent on the standard industry practice of directly ripping off the hard work and experimentation of underground alternative rock and electronic artists without so much an iota of credit.
What I have discovered is that when you are anxious, your body is wired to self-destruct. I find as one grows older, the physical side effects get worse. When you are young and anxious/depressed, you might be catatonic, you might not sleep well, but you bounce back. When you get older, now you've got things like constant IBS, nevermind the lack of sleep catches up with you. In short, a vicious circle. As we know now too, such illnesses can fuck up everything from how the body processes fat, releases insulin, to even changes in brain structure (increased amygdala, shrunken hippocampus.. fortunately what I was taught is that this can heal with time).
I too try to approach it from the technical standpoint. The science is pretty clear these days, it takes away the ability of people to point fingers and blame once you really know what's going on. I think both that and the subjective are needed though, not everyone thinks the same.
Despite volumes of information on how things like depression and anxiety are both physical and mental, sometimes inheritable, linked to genes that regulate serotonin, linked to biological (hormonal eg glucocorticoid) markers, and have drastic physical consequences on the body in terms of elevated stress responses that affect a manifold of parasympathetic CNS responses, and with that increased risk of major illnesses, despite all the information in the world detailing how it is real, you'll still find lots of people who claim it isn't, or that people are just making it up to be victims. They don't get that the brain is a physical thing, and what happens to it affects YOU, everything you do, your decisions, emotions, etc. It's almost like they are naive dualists who don't know they are espousing dualism. I mean the top rated posts in this thread are great, but you know the types, the ones who give out terrible and useless advice. It's ironic how mental health issues turn ordinary people who claim to like science into much the same as creationists: utilizing straw men, attacking caricatures of real science, doing anything but addressing the real issues the science brings up. And yes, as others have hinted, one can be incredibly intelligent, productive, one can be anything really, and still fall victim to it./end rant
The arms manufacturers are actually anything but shady in the article, as they've been transparent about the entire process (the games industry would have looked a lot better in this article if they had acted the same way, rather than acting defensively, although we've no way of knowing exactly what questions they were asked).
This article does a great job pointing out the 'shadiness' of the NRA's about-face in participating in the video games industry, then turning around and declaring it the root of all evil. I think really, what this article demonstrates though if anything, is that the average consumer doesn't stop to think about how every realistic item that appears in media is probably either licensed or promotional.
That's not the People's Front of Judea, that's the Judean People's Front.
I suppose the proceeding post might be funny in different ways, depending on whether or not one perceives the difference between clearly defined procedures, -tools- (like hammers, saws, and the scientific method), and -beliefs- (religion, solipsism, logical positivism). Of course, when it comes to belief systems, I am not an atheist, so I'm not entirely sure how the schisms in their alliances work. I have read very interesting criticisms of scientific methodology and empiricism (eg Alfred North Whitehead), however they typically are rooted in understanding its mechanisms and history.
Slashdot Mirror
I found a related study linked below, and it goes hand in hand with the other common sexist/racist position you see floating around this thread: confusing descriptive statements with prescriptive statements. It's an age-old pattern that goes like this:
1. discourage minority from participating in an activity.
2. look around and point out descriptively: "Gee, minority x isn't good at this activity!"
3. make prescriptive statement: "Therefore, minority x isn't good at this activity!" which in fact, discourages minority x from the activity, thereby repeating step 1. It's sort of like how if your parent or teacher told you you sucked at something, you'd be less likely to perform well at it because you'd be convinced you were a failure. Except in this case, it's applied against an entire group.
This certainly worked with racism, but it applies equally to sexism.
This is why women perform equally with men in mathematics in parts of the world where gender discrimination doesn't exist like it does here (http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math?utm_content=buffer6bc17&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer). But in this thread, looking around, some guys are claiming that women aren't good at math. As proof of this, they reinforce the old tropes that women aren't as good at math. They thereby discourage women from math/comp sci, then take the lack of women in the field as 'evidence' of what it is that 'women' really want, when women as a whole never had a fair shot to begin with.
They may say that 'leveling the playing field' is hurting the cause, but really, I see no evidence of this at all. The cause is moving forward because society as a whole has seen through the little ruse, and that's why change is happening. Tackling workplace problems facing men is not contradictory (and is often complimentary) to the cause of eliminating sexism, it's too bad they conflate the two issues.
China won't be able to pick up the pieces because a large-scale nuclear war means a decade of nuclear winter, the end of the ozone layer, and the possible annihilation of our entire species.
With our last breath, we 'won!' because it was better to go extinct than to look 'weak.'
I'll vote for cooler heads.
You do realize if the US burns, you'll freeze, starve, and wind up with cataracts in the inevitable nuclear winter right?
Infiltration, astroturfing and reputation destruction are as old as the hills. Such as this not really amusing story of a Muslim organization turning in a member who was hyping terrorism, only to discover he was an FBI infiltrant:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2946...
I think such things are to be expected. It sucks, but if you've a security vulnerability in any system, you can expect it to be exploited. The question we should be asking is, can online groups adapt to account for such possibilities, and how?
Ah, the old -science will all be wrong in 20 years...
Which is wrong of course, we still make use of Newtonian physics hundreds of years later, and were you to count mathematics, some aspects of mathematics date back thousands of years. It's fair to say that 20 years from now we will still accept phylogenetic trees and we will use physics that allows us to build computers. Science is a process of refinement, a spectrum of probabilities
The strength of science is that it can in fact discard ideas quickly. If a model is no longer useful, out it goes, or it is altered. I find it odd that the parent assumes that because science has procedures built in to allow it to change when it is wrong, that this somehow equates to astrology therefore being right. Eg science will be wrong in 20 years which it wont)==astrology is right. This does not follow.
Science has predictive power. Anyone can replicate its results if they replicate the conditions of the experiment. With astrology on the other hand, lots of us have tried it, and it doesn't work. It doesn't stand up to testing. If it worked for everyone, it wouldn't be an issue, but it doesn't. Sure, there's a percentage of people out there who claim it work, but that's to be expected in a large enough population as a statistical probability. You'll find people claiming garlic cloves ward off the flu too. What it comes down to in the end isn't just that such beliefs are wrong--they simply aren't useful for the most of us.
Of course when the phrase 'be open minded' comes out, this translates as 'crowds who believe in anything for thousands of years can't possibly be wrong, blindly follow them''. When the bandwagon fallacy comes out, you know the ego is at work. Let's talk Tim Leary. Science is the real, ultimate ego death. There's no room for ego in determining objective reality, because objective reality doesn't work the way one wants it to.
Agreed, it's not a misread. If you RTA, the stats clearly line up with other demographic groups and other findings.
The Right tends to be more of a certain Christian belief that has a deep seated fear of 'new agey', 'spiritistic', 'occult' etc practices, whereas the left has the Christians who don't care about that kind of stuff, and the secularists who are every bit as irrational.
I've noticed this trend too, having grown up amongst fundies then moving to the big city as I got older. You find pseudoscience everywhere.
My experience on the religious Right: Yoga, Meditation and Astrology open your mind to Satan. Pray to God, son.
My experience on the Left: Lengthy discussions of star signs, after laughing at those damn fool fundamentalists.
I think that justice should be what benefits society the most in the long run, but that's not how it seems to work in practice.
It's the paraphilia I'm talking about, not what normal adults may or may not be attracted to. The latter is typically exclusive (think, as child hits mid to late teens, child discovers an inability to be attracted to his peers. However, child is unable to seek counselling for obvious reasons of social stigma). It is at least from what I have read manageable with therapy and coaching, even if, similar to other and far less harmful paraphilia, it is not -curable-.
Yes. I think two researchers summarized the problem well.. the 'Dunning-Kruger' effect.
This shouldn't even be the least bit surprising if you've spent any time at all looking at the current research in the field, suggesting a combination of both environmental and neurological factors. It's like any other 'variation' in human sexuality, statistically you will find it anywhere given a large enough sample. Yet our solutions are entirely reactive rather than preventative. The solutions the experts propose repeatedly are simply never going to happen. This is a field where people assume getting really angry is the only way to fix things, and stopping to understand the problem and break it down into its components is somehow condoning it. Understanding criminal behavior with prevention in mind is 'hugging a thug' instead of getting tough on crime and we must operate under that false dichotomy.
If we fixed electronics like we treated society's ills, we'd take a sledgehammer to them accompanied by 'die MOFO die!' (a la office space) every time there was a problem. And we'd have a pile of wasted and broken things, and even more problems to deal with as a result... And well, that's what we are seeing, and will continue to see, until we get smart about this problem and start listening to what experts are saying.
A very small start, just the tip of the iceberg:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/15/our_approach_to_pedophilia_isn%C2%B4t_working/
I'm not entirely sure the human equation has changed even if the tech has. I've met my fair share of quiet, introverted thinkers over the years and quite frankly this is a human nature thing. Some people are more outgoing than others, some are social butterflies who are busy networking, some like to stay at home and tinker. Some function well in groups, some do not. It's got nothing to do with smarts. People just think differently. It's a shame the thread has to turn smarts into an accusatory contest. Also, that the person you're responding to reacted in such an irate way seems to indicate to me that a nerve was poked: there is still a negative stigma attached to being a nerd that the person wants to overcome. That at least clearly has not changed.
And of course I do agree that the technology situation has changed, computers are ubiquitous now whereas in the 80's my ability to use a computer set me apart from my peers.
(Note, I'm not responding to the criticism of the not-peer-reviewed study in the article which I agree is a useless study, but rather its later assertion).
Which seems to indicate that there is some basis for comparability between the two, even if they are different, and further research is needed.
"the articles from this symposium provide evidence that neurological similarities exist in the response of humans (6) and rats (7,9) to foods and to drugs. Two of the reports (6,7), as well as our own work (14–16), suggest that even highly palatable food is not addictive in and of itself. Rather, it is the manner in which the food is presented (i.e., intermittently) and consumed (i.e., repeated, intermittent “gorging”) that appears to entrain the addiction-like process. Such consummatory patterns are associated with increased risk for comorbid complications as well as relapse and make treatment particularly challenging. The topic of food addiction bears study, therefore, to develop fresh approaches to clinical intervention and to advance our understanding of basic mechanisms involved in loss of control."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2714380/
All I can think of is the size of exoskeleton life that used to exist on this planet (some of which when the oxygen levels were higher).
http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-could-seriously-mess-you-up/
A perfectly valid analogy, in my objective opinion.
Go look up the 'adventure' section on Steam for tons of examples! If you're looking for major titles, then you might only find passing nods to it here and there (aside from something like Portal 2).. but there are countless independent games that focus on rich atmospherics combined with puzzles. On iOS The Room is a short but fantastic example of this that anyone who loves Myst should really check out. Kairo (multiplatform) is kinda interesting too, how about Braid, shall we go on and on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain_development_timeline#Current_Research
In line with what you are saying, most teenagers do not have fully developed frontal lobes until around the time of legal adulthood. More contemporary research I've seen suggests the brain continues to develop until around age 25.
I do indeed remember what it was like to be a youngster. I had a lot of fun. I was also a bit of a dick. I knew Star Wars was fake. I got way more into simple pixelated video games than I'm capable of doing now. When I played Venture on ColecoVision, my heart burst out of my chest when the pixelated monster came into the room to eat me.
I might not have known that cops weren't supposed to needlessly abuse people they arrested though, since the media portrayed that as the way things are done. Of course there's adults who still don't get that, either.
The RIAA was silent on the standard industry practice of directly ripping off the hard work and experimentation of underground alternative rock and electronic artists without so much an iota of credit.
(one of countless examples: http://flavorwire.com/newswire/is-kehas-stage-show-ripping-off-the-residents)
What I have discovered is that when you are anxious, your body is wired to self-destruct.
I find as one grows older, the physical side effects get worse. When you are young and anxious/depressed, you might be catatonic, you might not sleep well, but you bounce back. When you get older, now you've got things like constant IBS, nevermind the lack of sleep catches up with you. In short, a vicious circle. As we know now too, such illnesses can fuck up everything from how the body processes fat, releases insulin, to even changes in brain structure (increased amygdala, shrunken hippocampus.. fortunately what I was taught is that this can heal with time).
I too try to approach it from the technical standpoint. The science is pretty clear these days, it takes away the ability of people to point fingers and blame once you really know what's going on. I think both that and the subjective are needed though, not everyone thinks the same.
Despite volumes of information on how things like depression and anxiety are both physical and mental, sometimes inheritable, linked to genes that regulate serotonin, linked to biological (hormonal eg glucocorticoid) markers, and have drastic physical consequences on the body in terms of elevated stress responses that affect a manifold of parasympathetic CNS responses, and with that increased risk of major illnesses, despite all the information in the world detailing how it is real, you'll still find lots of people who claim it isn't, or that people are just making it up to be victims. They don't get that the brain is a physical thing, and what happens to it affects YOU, everything you do, your decisions, emotions, etc. It's almost like they are naive dualists who don't know they are espousing dualism. /end rant
I mean the top rated posts in this thread are great, but you know the types, the ones who give out terrible and useless advice. It's ironic how mental health issues turn ordinary people who claim to like science into much the same as creationists: utilizing straw men, attacking caricatures of real science, doing anything but addressing the real issues the science brings up.
And yes, as others have hinted, one can be incredibly intelligent, productive, one can be anything really, and still fall victim to it.
You can be moral, and distinguish between fantasy violence and the real world. Some prefer to keep it that way from start to end.
The arms manufacturers are actually anything but shady in the article, as they've been transparent about the entire process (the games industry would have looked a lot better in this article if they had acted the same way, rather than acting defensively, although we've no way of knowing exactly what questions they were asked).
This article does a great job pointing out the 'shadiness' of the NRA's about-face in participating in the video games industry, then turning around and declaring it the root of all evil. I think really, what this article demonstrates though if anything, is that the average consumer doesn't stop to think about how every realistic item that appears in media is probably either licensed or promotional.
That's not the People's Front of Judea, that's the Judean People's Front.
I suppose the proceeding post might be funny in different ways, depending on whether or not one perceives the difference between clearly defined procedures, -tools- (like hammers, saws, and the scientific method), and -beliefs- (religion, solipsism, logical positivism). Of course, when it comes to belief systems, I am not an atheist, so I'm not entirely sure how the schisms in their alliances work. I have read very interesting criticisms of scientific methodology and empiricism (eg Alfred North Whitehead), however they typically are rooted in understanding its mechanisms and history.
That is a paper I'd like to read!