Yes, that is all the test is, non concrete correlations used to calculate the likelihood of various mental illnesses. Unfortunately, that is the current state of the art in psychology. Someday we'll be able to point an MRI or something at our heads and say, "Yup... schizophrenic!" with 100% certainty, but as it stands now we don't even know for sure what causes schizophrenia, so we can't even begin to devise any concrete tests for it. All we have are correlations.
That's okay though, because we don't have much in the way of treatment, either. Sure, there are studies that can tell us that a certain type of talk therapy might help x% of people with depression, some sort of antidepressant helps with y%, and talk therapy plus antidepressants help z%, but we can't say whether any of these things are going to help any given individual with any certainty. The state of the art in prescribing psychological drugs is basically trial and error. You make a rough diagnosis and a first guess as to what will help, try it, and keep trying new things until you find one that works or the patient gives up. At least we can compare various treatments and say which is most likely to be effective.
Yes, yes, I know, those silly soft sciences and their correlations and their statistical methods and whatnot, hmph, they aren't real science. Sociology? Come on! It's just dudes going around talking to people, how is that not subjective? Ecology? Is that even a science? Economics? Don't get me started!
The reason the images should not be known by the testee beforehand is very simple: the correlations are based on not knowing the images beforehand. All those lovely correlations becomes useless if the circumstances are changed from the baseline. Psychologists would have to gather a whole new set of data from people who DO know the images, diagnose them using other methods, and redraw the correlations.
The inkblots aren't random. Well, they were generated randomly, but there is a specific set. And it is not just the interpretation of the image, specific things such as touching the cards, turning them around, and so forth are also measured. And it isn't just interpreting things like 'it looks like a butterfly.' For instance, it says something specific about a person's psyche if they see all the images as simple, static pictures of things like butterflies, and something different if they say something like, 'it looks like a butterfly flying over a field of flowers.' Schizophrenics, as an example, usually have a hard time seeing anything but a random inkblot.
If you see a flower in a particular inkblot, that means nothing on it's own. And (as an example I'm just making up because I don't know the specifics of Rorschach interpretation) a flower is a puppy is a truck as far as the test is concerned, but a flower isn't a young girl being tortured in a church or an extraterrestrial named Ramzoz who comes into my dreams at night. Get it? The specific image seen does not matter as much as the type of image seen. Wild, outlandish images tend to mean one thing, prosaic images mean something else, violent images a third thing, and so forth.
These are just correlations, though, and can not provide a concrete diagnosis on their own. Not every sociopath sees dead kittens. There is little explanatory theory behind the test, no reason given why sane people see one type of thing and crazies see another, there are just a ton of observed correlations. The test does not purport to provide anything more than statistical likelihoods. Your common sense idea of the way people 'should' interpret these random images simply does not jibe with reality. People aren't that random, the common results are surprisingly common. Sorry if that saddens you, but it is so. There is another psychological test that simply uses pairs of colors, and asks which of the two the person prefers. It is surprisingly accurate. Weird, huh? The brain is a funny thing.
Just as an aside, you've obviously not studied this at all, yet you seem confident that your uneducated opinion trumps that of several generations of Ph.D level specialists. Not that I'm trying to argue from authority here, but when I know absolutely nothing about a subject, my first impulse is to listen and study rather than make the assumption that my general intelligence and expertise in an unrelated field make me an expert. It is as if you just heard about quantum physics and said, "A wave AND a particle? Bah! Have you ever seen anything that was a wave and a particle at the same time? Impossible! Stupid physicists and their wacky theories."
This type of intellectual arrogance is disturbingly common here at Slashdot. I think smart nerdy types tend to overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate everyone else's. I find it laughable when people bring up elementary points as if they were brilliant insights that everyone else must have missed, accuse the scientists or whatnot of having missed that basic point, and smugly invalidate the whole idea. These people seem to think they are demonstrating their intelligence. In a way, they are. One can easily demonstrate that one lacks something...
Printing out a new set of ink blots for each person would make the Rorschach test absolutely useless. How would anyone interpret the results? The test works through observed correlations, if there are none, there are no results. You have no understanding of how the tests are purported to work, yet you feel confident spouting off about them. What do you think THAT says about your psyche?
Way to miss my point entirely. In fact, you have somehow managed to interpret what I wrote exactly the opposite of what I meant. Seriously, I'm not sure how you even managed to get the impression I was touting homeopathy. Let me quote the relevant line, in context.
Some psychology may be mere hand waving, true, but then I also know actual M.D.s who prescribe homeopathics.
Is that really that hard to parse? I'm equating homeopathics with hand waving. How you could take that to mean I buy homeopathics I'll never know.
Here's a little tip for you: when you feel the need to insult someone for being stupid, make sure it's them and not you that's being stupid. Hopefully that will help you look less stupid in the future.
Wrong, we have scientific studies that show the effectiveness of various methods and treatments. You can debate the accuracy of these studies, but calling them 'hand waving' is frankly, mere hand waving on your part. Some psychology may be mere hand waving, true, but then I also know actual M.D.s who prescribe homeopathics.
Psychologists used other means to diagnose people, then gave them the Rorschach test. They found correlations between certain diagnoses and certain types of answers or behaviors exhibited during the test. The Rorschach test is not a definitive test that will tell you unequivocally what specific mental issues you have. Like all psychological tests, it is just one tool among many that helps a trained expert make a diagnosis. For instance, if the Rorschach test says you are a psychopath, but you show a capacity for empathy and remorse, any trained psychologist will know that the test simply didn't work on you.
You almost got it right. The stupidity singularity comes from ill informed Slashdotters discussing things they know nothing about, assuming their common sense trumps any expert in any field but their own, and laughing at things they have no comprehension of. Try reading the fucking article, rather than trying to make a pointless and convoluted joke which only highlights your own stupidity with neon signage. In truth, the law and the lawsuit both are sensible and comprehensible. If you can't figure out why, try going back and reading the dozens of comments from people who took the time to RTFA.
P.S. I'm pretty sure that you called people who tried to 'participate and debate' the Bush administration anti-American traitors. Now you can participate and debate without having to go to a fucking free speech zone and registering your phone number for mandatory wiretapping. Just because no one listens to you or respects your minority opinion does not mean you are being censored, but it might mean you are an idiot.
Corporations don't want to do the right thing. They want to make money. Some happen to espouse the view that appearing to do the right thing will make them more money, the operative word being appearing. For every moral and decent idea in the world of business, there are a hundred slimy leaches ready to pretend they are doing it while lifting your wallet. Image management is almost always cheaper than real morality.
Heck, for every smart moneymaking idea in the world of business, there are a hundred pointy haired bosses willing to pay it lip service while ignoring the gist of it. The world of business is one gigantic, amoral circle jerk where everyone pretends to be fine, upstanding citizens while screwing each other over. Even folks who start out decent turn bad when exposed to the corrupting atmosphere of treachery and deceit that is modern business. It's screw or be screwed.
I don't assume all companies are evil, amoral, or stupid, just the vast majority of them.
As I said, it isn't the overall size, it's the ratio of the various parts. As for all women being fat... do you live in the flyover or something? The midwest is chock full of corn fed beefers. Try California, I think they have laws against public fatness there.
Scientists have done surveys of people all over the world, from all different cultures. They asked men, "If you were stranded on a desert island with only one woman, what should she look like?" and showed the guys silhouettes of various women. They showed the same pictures to women and asked, "Which lady do you think the guys will pick?" Men like curvy women, while women, for some reason, think men want emaciated looking girls.
Actually, the 'latest pop culture trend' is thin girls who look like emaciated prepubescent boys. I myself prefer women who look like, well, women. I tend to think men who like women who look like little boys may be playing for the wrong team, if you know what I mean.
Ugly people mate, too. They just mate with other ugly people. In other news, ugly men produce more sperm. Hot guys know they'll be donating a bunch of sperm to a bunch of willing ladies, while ugly guys apparently know they won't be getting many chances, so they've got no reason to hold some swimmers in reserve.
Why would a (more than likely) rotund, homely, socially awkward nerd who (more often than not) smells of cheetos and flop sweat be in there with an ugly girl? I can't even begin to guess.
Aside from its meat entities, a corporation has no cares, thoughts, or motivations. I could have been more clear, but by 'share price' I meant both the price of the shares, and the dividends provided to shareholders, which equate with profits. The corporation does not care about profits, it's shareholders care about profits, which they receive through dividends and increased share price. The corporation is simply a mechanism to allow the shareholders to profit without feeling personally responsible for the actions which generate the profit.
You've made the classic mistake of assuming corporations have any motivation to do the right thing, as opposed to the profitable thing. They don't give a rat's ass who is using this hack. All they care about is the price of their shares. If keeping a dangerous vulnerability semi-secret for a few more months will help their share price, they don't really care how many people get screwed over. Think of it this way: if their ATMs were electrocuting people at random, they would do a cost benefit analysis to figure out the likely damages awarded at trials, and compare that to the cost of fixing the problem. If fixing the problem were more expensive, the company would happily go on killing people. You think they care about your freaking finances?
Quoted from the wiki page on Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
The first chapter of part II, "Darwinian Thinking in Biology", asserts that life originated without any skyhooks, and the orderly world we know is the result of a blind and undirected shuffle through chaos.
That's all I'm saying. Adaptation is a continual process. As creatures adapt, they change their environment, which changes the selection criteria. Are wings 'progress?' Not to a worm. Are eyes? Not to a cave fish. Any thing in evolution that you can point to as 'progress,' I can point to a counter example where the exact same thing would be a liability.
No, it doesn't. Sure, today's genetic parasite might be tomorrow's genetic savior, which is why I said 'tends to muck things up.' We're talking about transposons, sections of DNA that (apparently) don't do anything except jump around and mess up other sections of the genome.
To put it another way, throwing this stuff away has been advantageous. Whether it will be in the future remains to be seen. We could be walking down a dead end street here, and the other critters, who haven't been cleaning house, could be the ones who have gotten it right.
Wrong. There is no better or worse in evolution. What is good one day sucks when the environment changes. Evolution is not directed towards anything, it can not progress or retreat. There is no 'should have died young.' There is no natural and unnatural. By helping people procreate who might not have, all we are doing is changing the selection criteria, which are changing all the time anyhow.
However, you got the first part wrong too (assuming you are the same AC) The mammalian genome is not losing information that is valuable, it is losing genetic parasites. The genome has been throwing out the trash that tends to muck things up.
Are you seriously suggesting that freelegoporn.com was NOT intended to be a money-making venture?
Eh? Who cares? Was Lego planning on getting into the porn business? No? Then I could market my 'Lego' brand of porn without infringing. Just like Apple Records and Apple Computers can coexist.
Ah, but trademark rights do not protect against parody in the first place. You wouldn't even need to use a fair use defense, if you aren't using the trademark as a trademark on similar products then you aren't infringing the trademark rights.
I failed to address your scenario? You failed to even read my reply. What part of 'there are situations where the free market works much better than government currently does' do you not understand? Are you really this dense, or are you playing at being dumb for some kind of rhetorical purpose?
Let me be clear: not everyone in government is working on your behalf. But government as a whole is supposed to, and in our style of governance, if it isn't, then the citizens are to blame, because only they have the power to change things.
In private enterprise on the other hand, everyone is working to take as much of your money as possible while giving you as little as possible. The system is designed that way. In fact, if a company does not try it's hardest to screw you over, its shareholders can sue. This is democracy of a different style: one dollar, one vote. Those with the most money get to decide who works at what, and who gets screwed. If you have no money, you have very few ways of pulling yourself out of poverty, and you are powerless.
There are places where there is no government. Perhaps you should move to Somalia and experience the joys of a government-free existence.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that is all the test is, non concrete correlations used to calculate the likelihood of various mental illnesses. Unfortunately, that is the current state of the art in psychology. Someday we'll be able to point an MRI or something at our heads and say, "Yup... schizophrenic!" with 100% certainty, but as it stands now we don't even know for sure what causes schizophrenia, so we can't even begin to devise any concrete tests for it. All we have are correlations.
That's okay though, because we don't have much in the way of treatment, either. Sure, there are studies that can tell us that a certain type of talk therapy might help x% of people with depression, some sort of antidepressant helps with y%, and talk therapy plus antidepressants help z%, but we can't say whether any of these things are going to help any given individual with any certainty. The state of the art in prescribing psychological drugs is basically trial and error. You make a rough diagnosis and a first guess as to what will help, try it, and keep trying new things until you find one that works or the patient gives up. At least we can compare various treatments and say which is most likely to be effective.
Yes, yes, I know, those silly soft sciences and their correlations and their statistical methods and whatnot, hmph, they aren't real science. Sociology? Come on! It's just dudes going around talking to people, how is that not subjective? Ecology? Is that even a science? Economics? Don't get me started!
The reason the images should not be known by the testee beforehand is very simple: the correlations are based on not knowing the images beforehand. All those lovely correlations becomes useless if the circumstances are changed from the baseline. Psychologists would have to gather a whole new set of data from people who DO know the images, diagnose them using other methods, and redraw the correlations.
The inkblots aren't random. Well, they were generated randomly, but there is a specific set. And it is not just the interpretation of the image, specific things such as touching the cards, turning them around, and so forth are also measured. And it isn't just interpreting things like 'it looks like a butterfly.' For instance, it says something specific about a person's psyche if they see all the images as simple, static pictures of things like butterflies, and something different if they say something like, 'it looks like a butterfly flying over a field of flowers.' Schizophrenics, as an example, usually have a hard time seeing anything but a random inkblot.
If you see a flower in a particular inkblot, that means nothing on it's own. And (as an example I'm just making up because I don't know the specifics of Rorschach interpretation) a flower is a puppy is a truck as far as the test is concerned, but a flower isn't a young girl being tortured in a church or an extraterrestrial named Ramzoz who comes into my dreams at night. Get it? The specific image seen does not matter as much as the type of image seen. Wild, outlandish images tend to mean one thing, prosaic images mean something else, violent images a third thing, and so forth.
These are just correlations, though, and can not provide a concrete diagnosis on their own. Not every sociopath sees dead kittens. There is little explanatory theory behind the test, no reason given why sane people see one type of thing and crazies see another, there are just a ton of observed correlations. The test does not purport to provide anything more than statistical likelihoods. Your common sense idea of the way people 'should' interpret these random images simply does not jibe with reality. People aren't that random, the common results are surprisingly common. Sorry if that saddens you, but it is so. There is another psychological test that simply uses pairs of colors, and asks which of the two the person prefers. It is surprisingly accurate. Weird, huh? The brain is a funny thing.
Just as an aside, you've obviously not studied this at all, yet you seem confident that your uneducated opinion trumps that of several generations of Ph.D level specialists. Not that I'm trying to argue from authority here, but when I know absolutely nothing about a subject, my first impulse is to listen and study rather than make the assumption that my general intelligence and expertise in an unrelated field make me an expert. It is as if you just heard about quantum physics and said, "A wave AND a particle? Bah! Have you ever seen anything that was a wave and a particle at the same time? Impossible! Stupid physicists and their wacky theories."
This type of intellectual arrogance is disturbingly common here at Slashdot. I think smart nerdy types tend to overestimate their own intelligence and underestimate everyone else's. I find it laughable when people bring up elementary points as if they were brilliant insights that everyone else must have missed, accuse the scientists or whatnot of having missed that basic point, and smugly invalidate the whole idea. These people seem to think they are demonstrating their intelligence. In a way, they are. One can easily demonstrate that one lacks something...
Printing out a new set of ink blots for each person would make the Rorschach test absolutely useless. How would anyone interpret the results? The test works through observed correlations, if there are none, there are no results. You have no understanding of how the tests are purported to work, yet you feel confident spouting off about them. What do you think THAT says about your psyche?
Way to miss my point entirely. In fact, you have somehow managed to interpret what I wrote exactly the opposite of what I meant. Seriously, I'm not sure how you even managed to get the impression I was touting homeopathy. Let me quote the relevant line, in context.
Some psychology may be mere hand waving, true, but then I also know actual M.D.s who prescribe homeopathics.
Is that really that hard to parse? I'm equating homeopathics with hand waving. How you could take that to mean I buy homeopathics I'll never know.
Here's a little tip for you: when you feel the need to insult someone for being stupid, make sure it's them and not you that's being stupid. Hopefully that will help you look less stupid in the future.
Wrong, we have scientific studies that show the effectiveness of various methods and treatments. You can debate the accuracy of these studies, but calling them 'hand waving' is frankly, mere hand waving on your part. Some psychology may be mere hand waving, true, but then I also know actual M.D.s who prescribe homeopathics.
Psychologists used other means to diagnose people, then gave them the Rorschach test. They found correlations between certain diagnoses and certain types of answers or behaviors exhibited during the test. The Rorschach test is not a definitive test that will tell you unequivocally what specific mental issues you have. Like all psychological tests, it is just one tool among many that helps a trained expert make a diagnosis. For instance, if the Rorschach test says you are a psychopath, but you show a capacity for empathy and remorse, any trained psychologist will know that the test simply didn't work on you.
You almost got it right. The stupidity singularity comes from ill informed Slashdotters discussing things they know nothing about, assuming their common sense trumps any expert in any field but their own, and laughing at things they have no comprehension of. Try reading the fucking article, rather than trying to make a pointless and convoluted joke which only highlights your own stupidity with neon signage. In truth, the law and the lawsuit both are sensible and comprehensible. If you can't figure out why, try going back and reading the dozens of comments from people who took the time to RTFA.
P.S. I'm pretty sure that you called people who tried to 'participate and debate' the Bush administration anti-American traitors. Now you can participate and debate without having to go to a fucking free speech zone and registering your phone number for mandatory wiretapping. Just because no one listens to you or respects your minority opinion does not mean you are being censored, but it might mean you are an idiot.
Corporations don't want to do the right thing. They want to make money. Some happen to espouse the view that appearing to do the right thing will make them more money, the operative word being appearing. For every moral and decent idea in the world of business, there are a hundred slimy leaches ready to pretend they are doing it while lifting your wallet. Image management is almost always cheaper than real morality.
Heck, for every smart moneymaking idea in the world of business, there are a hundred pointy haired bosses willing to pay it lip service while ignoring the gist of it. The world of business is one gigantic, amoral circle jerk where everyone pretends to be fine, upstanding citizens while screwing each other over. Even folks who start out decent turn bad when exposed to the corrupting atmosphere of treachery and deceit that is modern business. It's screw or be screwed.
I don't assume all companies are evil, amoral, or stupid, just the vast majority of them.
As I said, it isn't the overall size, it's the ratio of the various parts. As for all women being fat... do you live in the flyover or something? The midwest is chock full of corn fed beefers. Try California, I think they have laws against public fatness there.
Scientists have done surveys of people all over the world, from all different cultures. They asked men, "If you were stranded on a desert island with only one woman, what should she look like?" and showed the guys silhouettes of various women. They showed the same pictures to women and asked, "Which lady do you think the guys will pick?" Men like curvy women, while women, for some reason, think men want emaciated looking girls.
Actually, the 'latest pop culture trend' is thin girls who look like emaciated prepubescent boys. I myself prefer women who look like, well, women. I tend to think men who like women who look like little boys may be playing for the wrong team, if you know what I mean.
Ugly people mate, too. They just mate with other ugly people. In other news, ugly men produce more sperm. Hot guys know they'll be donating a bunch of sperm to a bunch of willing ladies, while ugly guys apparently know they won't be getting many chances, so they've got no reason to hold some swimmers in reserve.
Ah, the wonders of nature.
Why would a (more than likely) rotund, homely, socially awkward nerd who (more often than not) smells of cheetos and flop sweat be in there with an ugly girl? I can't even begin to guess.
Not if you are a monkey, asshole. Monkeys have fur. Duh.
Aside from its meat entities, a corporation has no cares, thoughts, or motivations. I could have been more clear, but by 'share price' I meant both the price of the shares, and the dividends provided to shareholders, which equate with profits. The corporation does not care about profits, it's shareholders care about profits, which they receive through dividends and increased share price. The corporation is simply a mechanism to allow the shareholders to profit without feeling personally responsible for the actions which generate the profit.
You've made the classic mistake of assuming corporations have any motivation to do the right thing, as opposed to the profitable thing. They don't give a rat's ass who is using this hack. All they care about is the price of their shares. If keeping a dangerous vulnerability semi-secret for a few more months will help their share price, they don't really care how many people get screwed over. Think of it this way: if their ATMs were electrocuting people at random, they would do a cost benefit analysis to figure out the likely damages awarded at trials, and compare that to the cost of fixing the problem. If fixing the problem were more expensive, the company would happily go on killing people. You think they care about your freaking finances?
Quoted from the wiki page on Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
The first chapter of part II, "Darwinian Thinking in Biology", asserts that life originated without any skyhooks, and the orderly world we know is the result of a blind and undirected shuffle through chaos.
That's all I'm saying. Adaptation is a continual process. As creatures adapt, they change their environment, which changes the selection criteria. Are wings 'progress?' Not to a worm. Are eyes? Not to a cave fish. Any thing in evolution that you can point to as 'progress,' I can point to a counter example where the exact same thing would be a liability.
No, it doesn't. Sure, today's genetic parasite might be tomorrow's genetic savior, which is why I said 'tends to muck things up.' We're talking about transposons, sections of DNA that (apparently) don't do anything except jump around and mess up other sections of the genome.
To put it another way, throwing this stuff away has been advantageous. Whether it will be in the future remains to be seen. We could be walking down a dead end street here, and the other critters, who haven't been cleaning house, could be the ones who have gotten it right.
Wrong. There is no better or worse in evolution. What is good one day sucks when the environment changes. Evolution is not directed towards anything, it can not progress or retreat. There is no 'should have died young.' There is no natural and unnatural. By helping people procreate who might not have, all we are doing is changing the selection criteria, which are changing all the time anyhow.
However, you got the first part wrong too (assuming you are the same AC) The mammalian genome is not losing information that is valuable, it is losing genetic parasites. The genome has been throwing out the trash that tends to muck things up.
I like the buffalo sentence because it is actually grammatical and meaningful:
Wild cattle from Buffalo, NY confuse wild cattle from Buffalo, NY that wild cattle from Buffalo, NY confuse.
Are you seriously suggesting that freelegoporn.com was NOT intended to be a money-making venture?
Eh? Who cares? Was Lego planning on getting into the porn business? No? Then I could market my 'Lego' brand of porn without infringing. Just like Apple Records and Apple Computers can coexist.
Ah, but trademark rights do not protect against parody in the first place. You wouldn't even need to use a fair use defense, if you aren't using the trademark as a trademark on similar products then you aren't infringing the trademark rights.
I failed to address your scenario? You failed to even read my reply. What part of 'there are situations where the free market works much better than government currently does' do you not understand? Are you really this dense, or are you playing at being dumb for some kind of rhetorical purpose?
Let me be clear: not everyone in government is working on your behalf. But government as a whole is supposed to, and in our style of governance, if it isn't, then the citizens are to blame, because only they have the power to change things.
In private enterprise on the other hand, everyone is working to take as much of your money as possible while giving you as little as possible. The system is designed that way. In fact, if a company does not try it's hardest to screw you over, its shareholders can sue. This is democracy of a different style: one dollar, one vote. Those with the most money get to decide who works at what, and who gets screwed. If you have no money, you have very few ways of pulling yourself out of poverty, and you are powerless.
There are places where there is no government. Perhaps you should move to Somalia and experience the joys of a government-free existence.
Until someone we talk about it, everyone's rights have been violated, and not violated, at the same time.
Just remember, Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.