Dak

When the problem is pathological.

tautology?

can anyone tell me why 'sayonara' + 'llama' is illiciting such strong feelings of deja vu?

I can't help but feel that this is entirely semantic. If we define 'disease' as 'something transmittable with a microbiological basis', then obviously no, your examples were not diseases, but i feel that's not really how people use the word.

otoh:

Classic example : alcoholism. There is nothing in science to make this a disease. It has no clear causative agent.

alcohol

No pathogen.

alcohol

There is no remedy.

weening off, alcohol-replacement drugs, anti-seziure-sedatives etc in the case of dellirium tremens, etc, followed by councelling iirc.

The decision to call it a disease appears to be purely a moral, not scientific, decision. It has proved to be a very good decision, helping millions of people - but is not science.

I think 'purely moral' and 'not science' is a tad unfair.

once established, alcoholism causes phisical changes in your body, which can result in death, psychosis, seizures, etc, upon sudden withdrawl, thus there is a lot of science to back up the claim that alcoholism is a genuine condition with it's own causes, symptoms and repercussions (same with homosexuality and depression).

true, it seems to be mainly politics/ethics/pragmatism/etc that determines something being a disease/disorder rather than just a syndrome/condition, but meh. if you treat 'disease' as 'bad condition', then the 'bad' part is obviously going to be, at most, semi-scientific, but there's no reason why the 'condition' part can't be completely scientific, hence why i think 'unscientific' is a tad unfair.

e.g., take heterosexuality, homosexuality, and paedophillia -- a condition, a condition, and a bad condition (aka disease).

there's science there inasmuch as there's empirical evidence to support the claim that those three conditions exist, and there's at least some explanations as to their causes and effects, along with their secondary effects (e.g., that paedophillia is a greater causative agent of child-trauma than hetero- or homo-sexuality). it takes a non-scientific moral/political/practical call to tie all this together and plonk 'bad' in front of 'condition' for paedophillia (the jump from 'empirically determined to hurt childeren' to 'so shouldn't be done' is non-scientific) but not homo- or hetero- sexuality (similarly, 'sod it who cares' is non-scientific), but still it's entirely possible for the statement 'paedophillia (and not hetero- or homo-sexuality) is a disorder' to be dripping with enough science to make the statement 'its entirely non-scientific' so over-simplistic as to be misleading. try calling a condition that has no science to back up it's existance a disease to see what i mean.

Not entierly scientific would have been better.

Depression is widely regarded as a disease, though it lacks scientific criteria for that classification.

it's a mental condition (ask psychology) that is bad (ask depressed people), ergo it's a disease/disorder/whatever.

or a 'bad condition'...

What, exactly, do you mean by 'emotional science'?

Your next post had better make sense, by the way.

mayhaps you could do something romantic along the lines of what the element's names mean (NOTE: it is totally your responsability to make sure these aren't contact-poisons )

from wiki:

Cerium -- roman god of fertility (if you want babbies)

dyspropium -- from the Greek "dysprositos" meaning hard to get. (have to work hard to get her?)

Lutetium -- just sounds nice imo

good luck btw

Does statistics and probability induce emotional logic? This approach to science is not fully rational since rational is based on cause and affect with a probability of 1.0.

umm... no it's not.

Eating X increases the risk of Y by 10%. Purely logical would say those 10 out of a 100 should worry while the other 90 should go about their business. But it doesn't work that way, with maybe 90% feeling fear even though this is illogical. This science approach depends on emotional logic to create an illogical reaction.

umm, no. That'd depend on the original risk of Y (e.g,. if it was 30%, then a 10% increase would lead to the risk of Y being 33% for people who eat X).

10 out of a 100 should worry whilst the other 90 go about their buisness would presume that the 10% could be identified, which probably isn't the case.

if Y is bad enough, then given a 1/10 chance of Y happening if X, then i'd not call it irrational for everyone who does X to worry.

Since it is designed to generate emotional thinking, once the emotion of fear is generated, this emotion will generate further thinking. Even though logically only 10 are at risk, we need to create a law to reduce the fear in the 90 who are now thinking emotionally so we can appease the extra fear we created so they can return to reason. I am not sure is this counts as real science.

I am not a scientist, however i'm absolutely sure that it does not count as real science.

I have no idea why people seem to like to be angry really. I suspect it's not being angry that people like, it's being right, and papers howling outrage from their headlines that echoes the feelings of the reader is a kind of validation. The anger is just an overt demonstration of their 'rightness', a kind of "Look! I'm right! The papers agree with me! I'm perfectly right to be outraged and (with the implicit support of the media) I can now more freely act upon it! Let's go attack somebody!"

hmm... does anyone happen to know wether countries with a proper democracy (e.g., germany), or espescially switzerland where they sort of have a direct democracy, have a more mature media than the UK/US, what with them being able to shoot themselves in the foot if they form oppinions without thinking?

[...]and their campaign created a mob mentality that resulted in a paediatrician having their house burned down (which clearly indicates the mentality of the people who read the Star).

would if it were true

Nope. I was just taking the micky there

Umm... I knew that

It is the norm to speak in general terms in Psychology

I meant 'is it the norm to speak in absolutes when you actually are speaking in generalities'. 'cos i missed your joke

Responsible reporting is important (cf the Daily Star and that poor bloody paediatrician), but there are limits. Imagine, for example, the likely public response to a newspaper that, on September 12th, reported something like "But the scale of the tragedy has to be considered in the face of the number of deaths caused on the roads by Americans themselves".

 

People will have their own response to any particular event and, I would suggest, no amount of calm reporting will prevent that (it's more likely to cause people to stop buying the paper, and editors are quite aware of that). However, remaining objective in subsequent reporting would help. You will always have rags like the Star though, screaming outrage from WAR sized headlines, pandering to the immediate public shock in a cynical attempt to boost sales and so whipping up mob mentality (which is always dangerous).

 

There is a fine line in reporting huge events between congruence with the public response (which is what responsible editors aim for), and leading the public response, e.g. being far more outraged, and leading the public to think they should be too (e.g. the Star and other crappy red-tops). However, most editors will try to avoid reporting that is too incongruous with public mood as that has a negative impact on sales. People generally don't want to pay to read that with which they disagree, or that they consider insulting or in other ways fall short of what they consider 'right'.

 

It's a bit like TV. We can bitch and moan about the programming schedules and damn the producers for vomiting out yet another 'Big Brother' or endless cycles of 'When Sheep Go Mental' as cheap, tawdry ways of filling airtime whilst pandering to the lowest common denominator, but the truth is that TV is ratings driven (as is all media). They produce and regurgitate this crap because people watch it; many, many people. Is it the fault of the media, or the veiwers?

hmm...

why do people like being angry?

I've never understood that, but you're completely right: people wouldn't be so prepared to buy a newspaper that calmed them down, they'd much prefer a newspaper that rowled them up and told them something wrong was happening that makes them angry/offended/disparing/etc, even tho these emotions are unpleasant as far as i can tell?

I thought the whole point was that those emotions were punishments that were designed to make us avoid whatever situation causes them.

Or am i slightly off... anger/offence/etc doesn't actually fit entirely with that... are they more 'go do something' emotions? even so, most people don't act on them, so i'm still not sure why they'd like feeling them...? they certainly feel unpleasant to me.

hmm...

hmm... what way is the blade aligned with reguards to the grain?

Yes, but they edged them with chips of sharpened obsidian.

didn't they have some pure wood swords?

What about Oak? Or maybe Ebony?

 

 

PS - after a bit of reading, what about Iron Wood? Some Japanease swords (probably ornimental though) have been made from white oak.

I've got a japanese white-oak and a red-oak bokken. the red-oak bokken is heavyer, but doesn't maul up (so won't chew your flesh open if you're training and hit someone with it), whereas the white one will chew-up, but is actually harder to break (so is smaller and lighter, and so better for solo-training). I dont think you can get sharp bokken tho?

didn't the aztecs have wooden swords?

I must admit, a very small but cruel part of me has thought, after 9/11, that after funding the IRA for 35 years, the moral high ground held by Americans in the 'war against terror' isn't really that high.

yeah, me too.

Yes we are capable of behaving rationally, but don't confuse that with rationality being the 'default' psychological setting. It really isn't. The continued existence of (among many other things) war, religion and religious wars should tell you that. We are capable of behaving rationally, but that is usually the result of pre-response 'editing' which occurs after primary decisions have been made. I.e. we get the immediate bahavioural urge, which is edited (morderated) by post hoc processing which results in 'Oh, I'd better not do that actually...'.

 

[...]

 

People always (generally speaking) respond to events 'naturally' rather than rationally. It's only post-perceptual processing that alters the initial behavioural response motivation from the 'natural' to the rational.

Ah, yes, but that's kinda what i meant.

I wasn't trying to say that, for most people, presenting statistics/etc would have prevented such a natural response, just that it would have encouraged people to 'edit' the knee-jerk reaction and, to put it bluntly, calm down and stop panicking.

Maybe still feel panicky, but not actually consider terrorism such a threat. the end result of how people judged the threat of terrorism would have been different (possibly significantly) if encouraged to actually stop, calm down, and think by the media?

eg:

The magnitude of the event was psychologically huge, not just because it was a physically huge event, but because it was completely novel, unexpected (by most), personal and out-of-the-blue, leaving people with a feeling that they actually could be attacked 'at home' and at any time. That's what makes the long-term impact, the undermining people's personal sense of safety/security.

I have difficulty believing that most people couldn't be persuaded by rational argument to not fear for their safety in their own homes, for example, even if they didn't 'believe' that?

People always (generally speaking)...

Glider, that's a really confusing way of speaking

for my learning, is that the norm in psychology?

It's only post-perceptual processing that alters the initial behavioural response motivation from the 'natural' to the rational.

People pick up on how others are behaving and copy(?), so wouldn't the media behaving raitonally create the impression that everyone else is, and have a massive effect on how likely people were to process their behavioural urges and actually end up being more rational?

It's shifting more tax burden to the top 1%. We've established the principle of ganging up and pushing our tax burdens to a minority. There is no reason to think class envy will not continue to pimp this bullshit under the guise of fighting for the working man. It's crap and it's wrong. We're just basically saying there's more of us than them, so we'll continue to vote for them to take our burdens. Why not? What could possibly stop that trend?

 

We obviously have no scruples. Maybe I'm just in a crap mood, but I hope we implode because of it. We deserve it.

capitalism naturally increases the divide between rich and poor, which is generally considered a bad thing; progressive tax counters that natural progression.

in principle, i might agree that the reason that people vote for this is bad, same as how it's bad to suggest upping the drinking limit just because over x year-olds outnumber under-x-year-olds (most of which are disenfranchised anyway).

If it makes you feel any better, i hope america implodes too

The trauma is not caused simply by the number of deaths (and that isn't what I meant by magnitude)

i missed that you were (quite clearly) talking about individuals that witnessed 9/11 (presumably in person?). to clarify, i was talking about the general population who only 'experienced' it remotely through the media, and their subsequent assessment of the threat (which is what i think pioneer was talking about).

The significant factors in 9/11 were that a) it was completely novel. The event was outside of the general experience of the vast majority of Americans. b) It was a directed and personal attack and was percieved as such (wereas e.g. RTAs aren't).The overall death toll was almost incidental to these two factors, so presenting comparative statistics would have made no difference. If presented with statistics on the annual death toll from vehicles or guns, I seriously doubt any individual would have felt anything like 'oh...well, that's not so bad then'.

I dunno. surely the way that the media present something -- and the way that the media present people reacting -- has an effect at least comparable to the initial/emotional/instinctual responce to novel malace?

fwiw, i kinda shrugged off 7/7 as 'not that bad in the grand scheme of things', tho i'll admit that london terrorism isn't exactly novel any more.

Not really. As I said, the limbic brain is responsible for contunually calculating the potential for harm in the environment, but it is not rational and does not base its evaluations on statistics.

 

There is a huge difference between knowing a thing intellectually, and believing that thing on an emotional level. For example, if you ask somebody with a arachnophobia to describe the actual threat froma common garden spider, they will tell you there really is none. Intellectually, they know there is no actual threat. However, if you present that person with a common garden spider, their response will be very different. That response is emotional.

yes, but we aren't our limbic brain, and are capable of reacting rationally. granted, not everyone with arachnophobia can overcome it and not be scared of spiders, but people with some kind of lame half-assed arachnophobia (like me) can usually overcome it and handle spiders, unless they're feeling particularly wussy when they meet a spider, based on the knowledge that the belief is dumb (dunno wether, psychologically, fear of x == phobia of x).

Basically, most people must have made a mixed 'instinctive'/reasoned responce, andthe media must have influenced people towards percieving terrorism as a threat to a much greater extent than if they'd reported more calmer and, say, tried to present reasonable arguments to not really fear it based on it killing less people than so-and-so-commonplace-thing, etc?

It's your absolutes i'm having most trouble with btw. if you want to change to saying most people would have reacted 'naturally' rather than rationally, i'd have less trouble accepting it (tho i'd still suspect that the media framing the event in a more reasonable way would result in a more reasoned responce, at least to some degree).

Total rubbish. People who saw 9/11 drew their own conclusions concerning the magnitude of the event. They didn't need the media for that. Imagine what would have happened if the media had subsequently reported "...but the death toll is not so bad compared to annual road deaths"

Actually, as far as gauging the magnitude of the threat, i think he's probably right: if it had been pointed out that the casualties were less than the annual deaths cased by smoking/guns/frtas/etc, then i think that'd've resulted in people percieving terrorism as less of a threat than they did.

I can't wrap it up in psychology, but surely if you point out to people that the threat (measured in deaths) of terrorism < the threat of several other things that our countries survive on a regular basis, then that would have promoted an 'otoh, its not the end of the world' responce?

^ talking of wonky logic, fatal rtas, 9/11 and lightning are apples, oranges and plumbs.

whilst 9/11 killed less people in that year than lightning strikes have (presumably in, like, ever), i'm sure 9/11 killed more than the 1600 'extra' frtas, possibly more than all rtas that year.

Hence, if there is any suspicion that 9/11 might imminently re-occour, it's kinda a good idea to drive rather than fly, even if that causes 1600 extra deaths.

what would we do with the salt?

it looks like a very old manual washing machine... it's not an archaic centrifuge, is it?

hmm... as IA said, it has a handle that looks like it powers some kind of drum. it also has a dial for measuring... temperature? pressure? rotary speed? is the round black thing a vent of some kind?

hang on, is the US printing money to pay it's debts?

as bascule said/touched upon, it's everyone's burdon (including financially) to cure kids of STDs and to pay for their child-support if they're still going through schooling and thus unenployed. so, everyone has a right to teach kids about sex, even if only to lessen their own costs

The parents could allways suppliment the school-kids teachings with whatever they want, including 'just dont do it'.

lol, if it's a boy you gonna call it mark?

congrats

i'm pretty sure if you had never used windows before you would have to put in just as much effort to get used to it.

no not really. windows is much more pick up and play than ubuntu. stuff Just Works much more often in windows. otoh, stuff Just Doesn't Work in windows more often, but, in either case, it's usually a matter of a couple of minutes to either do it or figure out that it Just Can't Be Done So Stop Trying; in ubuntu, more stuff can be done, but less stuff can just be done in a few minutes, espescially for a newbie, which results in a harder OS.

otoh, windows takes a kinda 'wouldnt turning the security off by default make it easyer' approach, hence why you either have to learn how to re-engage the security and get stuff to still work (runas /user:admin /env blah.exe etc, which is actually easyer in ubuntu) and so on, or learn what the significance of different registry entries are, what 'so-and-so wishes to run as a server: allow/deny?' means, or try not to do either and get an infection, or learn to use ubuntu, witch i think is a relatively kneck-and-kneck call as far as easyness goes.

^the above assumes you want to actually install stuff, tweak configuration, etc. if you just want a PC someone else has set up that you'll never change, i'd agree with what you said.

Hmm, well I've got Spybot, and it's always running I guess because it's always in my system tray. Sometimes I get a little box giving me the option of denying or allowing a registry change, which I always deny, obviously, unless it is a spybot command trying to get rid of a registry entry. But this never happened with Virtumonde. Suddenly, I was infected.

 

Oh, and I've got Symantic anti-virus also - niether of these programs stopped Virtumonde.

 

I don't remember using Java for anything though. Wouldn't I have that little coffee cup icon in my system tray when running Java? I can't think of what I've done recently that involved Java, unless I was running it and didn't know it.

 

I guess I need to try this ubuntu. I try not to load additional programs on my computer so I always avoid internet browsers, p2p gui interfaces and etc.

can't remember about the tray icon. mayhaps. if you go to add/remove and check, you should see.

iirc, java's stupid, and e.g. installing version 1.6 will still leave the 1.5 version installed, and ready to use by any sites that can trick your browser into calling the old (and insecure) version. you have to manually go to add/remove to remove the old versions.

according to wiki, it infects through java.

keep everythiing up-to-date (windows, browser, java, etc)

use anti-virus and anti-spyware, make sure on-access scanning is enabled or manually call a scan on d/l'd stuff

use firewall

etc.

alternatively, as you're re-installing, you might check ubuntu out as an alternative to windows. one's annoying because you have to put a lot of effort into learning to use it safely, the other's annoying because you have to put a lot of effort into learning how to use it, but at least there's little chance of malware.

bear in mind that, if the police are a-cruisin for violent thugs, druggies, etc, then they're most likely to focus on young male adults, and disreguard most OAPs. because, y'know, a higher percentage of young male adults are likely to be carrying a knife and/or crack than little old ladies.

if it's true that muslims are x times more likely than non-muslims to be terrorists, and/or it's true that the majority of key terrorists in the organisation are muslim, then you'd be silly to focus your investigations on non-muslims

I think the problem here is the above now serves as enough to base an investigation on... this is just racial/ethnic profiling

which is ok?

Sure, that's a concern, but remember, we're not talking about instant execution here. We're talking about investigation.

 

What would YOU do if a person of the same ethnicity, nationality and religion as Osama bin Laden, whom you did not know and, so far as you could tell, was being serious, walked up to you and said "America should burn for its transgressions against Islam"? Would you (a) shoot them, (b) walk away, or © ask someone in a position of authority to look into it further?

 

Surely we agree that A is wrong, but isn't B wrong as well?

sorry, I kinda meant that allowing racial (etc) profiling probably falls under 'common sense' as opposed to 'a concern'.

So, yeah, I agree that B is bad, and if this allows C then it might actually be a good thing.

but how would you see your book at the speed of light?

Most of the first paragraph of your OP is the texan sharpshooter fallicy, i think. plus, you're ignoring the fact that many things don't come in pairs, that many of the things you mentioned don't come in pairs (black and white. or, y'know, blue; what goes up comes down, unless it's boyancy is such that it hovers, etc). other things you're just choosing to make up to reinfose your point (body and soul, BUT, for all that it makes sence to pair these, you may as well have said 'body, soul and mind', or 'fish and chips' for that matter).

iow, most things don't come in pairs, and there's probably no significance to the fact that several things do, unless you want to say that there are quite a few things that are binary (this thing either has, or has not, this quality).