Jump to content

Madelaine McMasters

Resident
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    22,941

  • Joined

  • Days Won

    19

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Madelaine McMasters

  1. Madelaine McMasters
    Well, the car isn't.
  2. Madelaine McMasters
    It's raining here!
  3. Madelaine McMasters
    Reading is easy, it's the writing that's gonna kill me. The Miata is stick.
  4. Madelaine McMasters
    If you trace the provenance of famous quotes (and you have), you'll find lots of appropriation and misattribution. Rolig has evidenced this over the years, too. Having heard a witty thing, it's only natural to make use of it. Doing so well does require some wit.
  5. Madelaine McMasters
    I believe this says much more about your knowledge of the world than that of other people outside the US. My BFF is Iranian. Her critiques of Iranian society feel very familiar to me, with politicians in power saying stupid things with real consequences and beauty contestants saying stupid things because "gotcha" gets good ratings. It would be very difficult to explain the significant difference in the world's opinion of US citizens and the US Government if everybody had as much expressed difficulty distinguishing context as you.
  6. Madelaine McMasters
    There are speech writers, to be sure. But, politicians gotta start somewhere, usually without 'em. Then they rise in popularity and power until they get some. There are also unscripted exchanges that give a glimpse into the wit, or lack of it, of politicians. Churchill has been credited with history's funniest insult, which seems unscripted... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/my-dear-you-are-ugly-but-tomorrow-i-shall-be-sober-and-you-will-still-be-ugly-winston-churchill-tops-poll-of-history-s-funniest-insults-8878622.html Still, having known Rolig for over a decade, I can believe she really might...
  7. Madelaine McMasters
    ...raises her hand into the roof of her Miata, and curses you.
  8. Madelaine McMasters
    I love slapstick, particularly in cartoons (and SL!) which have their own laws of physics. What must be clear though, is that no actual harm comes to the person who fell down. Slapstick is a safe way to experience schadenfreude. As a child, I favored the Roadrunner. I have grown to think of him as vapid and smug. I now aspire to be Wilhelmina E. Coyote. “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
  9. Madelaine McMasters
    ...puts you on her Xmas list, too.
  10. Madelaine McMasters
    ...puts you on her Xmas list. Most root beer recipes contain wintergreen oil or it's most active ingredient, methyl salicylate. It can be overdone. When underdone, you get cream soda, where the vanilla dominates.
  11. Madelaine McMasters
    This is not a criticism of your comment, Kiera, but a deeper dive into my thinking on it. I absolutely agree that ignoring context produces invalid comparisons. Context is sometimes fairly obvious, sometimes fairly impenetrable. What determines our "ability" to comprehend it? It's too easy to jump to the "intelligence" conclusion, which is what those "stupid person on the street" ambush interviews depend on for laughter and derision. "Ha, ha! I'm glad I'm not as dumb as that person!" But, more often than not (probably much more), it's a lack of knowledge, not intelligence. I'm pretty sure that, if I were to ambush late night talk show street interviewers, and ask them questions about science, they'd look as dumb as I would if they ambushed me with questions about pop culture. If knowledge is the most important factor in the ability to comprehend context, we can wonder why knowledge is so unevenly spread across the world's population. This is where the conversations get interesting, and often contentious.
  12. Madelaine McMasters
    I look forward to your book report. It needn't be 500 words, but if it is, I'll read them all. I don't believe I'll ever be a free thinker, in the sense I understand "free". I have detected many internal biases over my lifetime, and I don't mean in the social/political/ideological sense (though I detect those, too). I routinely catch myself attaching cause to things that, on reflection, are not causal. This is a bias we all share. I haven't time to reflect on all the errors in thinking I catch, and I can't reflect on those I don't. I don't try to be a "free thinker" in the sense Arielle describes, simply because I don't see conspired manipulation on every horizon, from which to free myself. I see piles of people being people. If a hint of something interesting emerges from a pile, I start digging. I know I'm unlikely to get down to the actual facts, but if I gather enough indirect evidence, I can obtain some degree of confidence in my understanding. Still, I am always on the lookout for eruptions from the piles that do not comport with my understanding. I am, I hope, as open to discord as accord. Absolutely, bucking the mainstream does not make one free. It simply makes one contrary, as Rolig said. Still, you will sometimes find me being contrary, simply because it's great fun. I can get pleasure from watching you watching me be absurdly wrong.
  13. Madelaine McMasters
    I won't spoil it for you, but I do recommend the book. If you read it, you may understand why I don't claim to be a "free thinker".
  14. Madelaine McMasters
    I think it's okay to go after anyone who seeks the public eye. There is a significant distinction between politicians and beauty pageant contestants, though. Politicians seek power, beauty pageant contestants are pawns of it. As one who rails against the powerful, wouldn't you cut the beauty contestant more slack? I do not like the "stupid people on the street" interviews of late night television shows. Those say more about the interviewer than the people on the street". I am similarly suspicious of news reporters eliciting opinion from bystanders.
  15. Madelaine McMasters
    Okay? Okay?? Okay??? Hey, at least you tried it. Root beer is generally quite sweet, and therefore more attractive to naive children than sophisticated adults here in the US. There's nothing I love more than playing the naive child in the presence of sophisticated adults. Sometimes there is an accounting for taste.
  16. Madelaine McMasters
    I should have been clearer about the role of storytelling. I learned about coprophagy via a short childhood love affair with bunnies. (Replaced by an affair with snakes, I think. I still want a least weasel.) I live in farm country, where poop and pee are foods (and medicines) for everything, at varying levels of indirection. Many religious rules and practices descend from observations, by our agrarian ancestors, of the world around us. In urban industrial societies, few of us make such observations, and depend on handed down wisdom. Millennia removed from those ancient direct observations, and with the scientific method in hand, though we recognize the germs of wisdom in ancient rules and practices, we now also see the errors and the mighty hand of the placebo effect at work. The pendulum seems to swing between the new and the old I am hopeful we’ll find an interesting and prosperous amalgam of both, but the fraction of us doing the direct observing will never return to that ancient level. Your profession is safe, Krystina.
  17. Madelaine McMasters
    ...almost hands you hers. Almost.
  18. Madelaine McMasters
    I love cooing those words to the wildlife in my yard.
  19. Madelaine McMasters
    One of the most powerful folk medicines is storytelling, the placebo effect on steroids. This doesn't work in wild animals, but there's some evidence it rubs off on domestic pets.
  20. Madelaine McMasters
    You created that "Honey-do" list didn't you. You were looking at him in the mirror and just didn't recognize yourself. 🤔🤭 Peeve: There's still two items on a certain "honey-do" list that have been there for 3 years now. A closet rod and a couple of shelves. Once again, I'll have to do it all myself if I want it to get done. 🤬 I'm still working on projects that were on Dad's "honey-do" list back in 1951.
  21. Madelaine McMasters
    When I was a kid, our dog would eat grass and throw up. Dad explained that something was upsetting Rocket's tummy, and he knew how to get rid of it. I asked how he "knew". He explained that dogs probably didn't "know," evolution did. Dogs just did random stuff, as they do, and those that did useful random stuff produced more and better puppies because they lived longer and healthier lives. If dogs were smarter, they wouldn't eat the stuff that upset their tummies in the first place, like my dirty underwear. He doubted there was much thinking involved, but rather that over millions of years, sensory mechanisms had evolved to make eating grass for a tummy ache a "no brainer". Grass smells yummy on an upset tummy? The recent introduction of dirty underwear hasn't given evolution enough time to "teach" dogs not to chow down on it. Zoopharmacognosy is, of course, a lot more complex and interesting than that. Dad went on to tell me about pregnant elephants who sometimes ate the bark off of some tree to induce labor. African women, presumably having observed this behavior, made tea from that bark to do the same thing. He'd learned this sometime prior to WWII, while sailing around the South Pacific in a submarine. Imagine my amusement, decades later, (1990-ish) when I read of research by Dr. Holly Dublin, revealing that pregnant elephants sometimes eat the bark off red syringa trees to induce labor. Who knew?! https://asknature.org/strategy/eating-bark-to-induce-labor/ Somewhere along the way, human evolution traded away some lower level "sensory intelligence" for higher level thinking. As a result, we have to write down a lot of stuff other animals "know", and we seem to misplace the notes. Every few years I read an article expressing astonishment over the "discovery" that elephants and African women induce labor with herbs. They've been doing so forever and we knew it, but popular science can't seem to remember that. Keep better notes, people! Unfortunately, old ways die hard, and the under-educated use of herbal remedies is on the rise... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5291424/
  22. Madelaine McMasters
    You gave Paul Ralkens, or at least his pitch, as an example of "free thinking". I looked into it and found significant evidence to the contrary. I admit to being skeptical of "free thinking" as I've often heard it defined. I don't consider myself a free thinker by any definition you've provided. I hope I'm curious and critical. I also hope that'll do. Rulkens tosses out lots of percentages, with nothing to back them up. That's not uncommon within the time constraints of a short talk, but he's got a website on which he could open his kimono to show the research. There is none. This is not uncommon... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/motivate/201704/three-reasons-why-most-motivational-speakers-are-dead-wrong I take that with less salt than Rulken, if only because it claims "most", not "always". Both you and Rulkens seem to misunderstand the brain's parallel processing. We are not on autopilot 95% of the time, nor do we consciously switch into and out of fast thinking. We are on various autopilots 100% of the time, fast thinking at every moment. We'd be dead without that ability. Anyone thinking "my cognitive bias must be right" would have to be conscious of their cognitive bias, refuting the auto-pilot argument and acknowledging the presence of bias. Slow thinking gives us opportunity to avoid such self contradictions. The first anecdote of Rulken's talk is of Einstein giving the same physics test two years in a row, defending the practice by noting that though the questions are the same, the answers (evidence) changed. You have (and you are not alone) criticized "flip flopping" that resulted from changing evidence. I understand the frustration that arises from change. Change doesn't care. I did not claim you alluded to triune brain theory. I simply used Rulken's lizard brain reference to point out that your example of a free (by your definitions) thinker, or of someone positing methods to achieve free thinking, hasn't seemed to achieve it himself. Do as I say...? In my own defense, I have not claimed to be a free thinker, nor to value your definition of it. I do not think "Bad Maddy" means what you think it means. "Not following the herd" focuses on the wrong thing. The herd is not always wrong, and to go in their direction is not necessarily following. I am something of a contrarian, not because I think the "herd" is wrong, but because I like to look at things from many angles. I do this because, as it turns out, almost everything of importance has... many angles. Leveraging the knowledge and wisdom of others needn't bind one to it. Shunning the knowledge and wisdom of others guarantees ignorance. As for being unique, that seems to argue against objective truth. A topic for another day. I'd classify that as "open thinking". "Free thinking" seems to presuppose a sort of conspiracy of control that I simply don't see as clearly as you. As important is "critical thinking", which hopefully allows us to sort the things we let into our open minds. Sure they do. What choice do they have? If "free thinkers" only work from direct evidence, they are necessarily ignorant. The moment their evidence is secondhand, they are no longer free of external influence. Humankind has come a hell of a long way on secondhand evidence and will continue to do so. As I see it, ain't nobody "free". That's fine for listening, but I recommend exercising judgement and criticism before acting on what one hears. It was not until I'd watched both of Rulken's TED talks that I started analysis. The more I do, the worse it gets. To be fair, this is true of most things I analyze. This happens, I've done it, it's been done to me. I don't see that as evidence of "group think" or "hive mind", but as evidence of me being more invested in certain things than others. That explains a lot, doesn't it?
  23. Madelaine McMasters
    Last December, I posted a recount of that day's experience with an Apple watch I bought at the start of the pandemic. Today, I'm reporting that, though I still abhor exercise, I am quite enjoying the encouragement provided by my watch. Several times over the past few months, while zooming down curvy country roads in my Miata, I've felt a gentle tap on my wrist and turned it slightly to reveal the following message... If I go missing from the forums, you'll know why.
  24. Madelaine McMasters
    Freedom from choice is actually why our brains evolved fast mechanisms to handle the bulk of day-to-day decision making. Conscious choice requires effort. To the extent we can make decisions subconsciously, our consciousness is freed to do other things, like write songs.
  25. Madelaine McMasters
    I became a fan of Nobelist behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman after reading his book "Thinking Fast and Slow". Nothing has shaken my confidence in "free thinking" more than that book, except my own lifetime of self observation and being my father's daughter. I had a bit of a scare while hunting up those "lizard brain" links. Kahneman's name unexpectedly popped up in my search results. Here's one example... https://synergist.aiha.org/201911-battling-the-reptilian-brain I could hardly criticize @Arielle Popstar's free thinker Paul Rulkens if Kahneman was making the same mistake. It's been years since I read the book, but I didn't recall Kahneman mentioning the debunked triune brain alluded to in the link above, just his System 1(Fast) and System 2(Slow) ways of thinking. It's odd that people quote Kahneman as describing three thinking systems in a book claiming only two in the title. Fortunately, I have "Thinking Fast and Slow" in my e-book library and was quickly able to search it for reptile reptilian lizard mammalian I found none of those terms in the book. Kahneman has made mistakes and he's owned up to them. He did not make the mistake of basing his theories of human cognition on long debunked neuroscience. Rulkens might be, like the rest of us, the victim of his own energy conserving and error prone fast System 1 thinking. I had this suspicion even before watching the TED talk, based on the unwarranted certainty in the title "The Majority is Always Wrong". One should almost never say "always", or at least couch it as Ibsen did in his original aphorism. Realizing that our fast System 1 thinking likes quick, simple answers, it's also easy to see how such ideas, even if wrong, are compelling. Paul Rulkens, like any good speaker is able to use slow thinking to take advantage of our fast thinking. I'm not immune to this. Kahneman readily admits he isn't either. Still, we can hope that our awareness is helpful, can't we? Since I question whether I'm a free thinker, I'm gonna scrutinize anyone else who makes that claim. ETA: I forgot to bring this back to the title of this thread, in which @Scylla Rhiadra riffs off the very nature of this derail. Though the majority isn't always wrong, to err is human.
×
×
  • Create New...