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Madelaine McMasters

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Everything posted by Madelaine McMasters

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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/
  5. 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?
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. In Content search, tick “Search by author“ and enter your own name. Then search for a word you think is unique to the post you want to find. You can also just hover over your name and click “Find Content” for a list of your posts, most recent first.
  10. Ignorance of the facts doesn't just stifle your ability to innovate, it hampers your ability to detect errors in the leaps that others make. Paul Rulkens references the "lizard brain" in his "Strategic Failure" talk. Seth Godin does as well in "The Dip". The lizard brain theory of human brain evolution was debunked when I was a child, yet Rulkens and Godin still reference it. That might be a minor quibble, but it argues for taking care in crediting thinkers with being "free". https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/a-theory-abandoned-but-still-compelling/ https://cos.northeastern.edu/news/its-time-to-correct-neuroscience-myths/
  11. You are also large, and contain multitudes. https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-51
  12. Years ago, our local amateur astronomy club built a scale model of the Solar System using household objects. The Sun was a bowling ball and Earth was a spherical blue cake sprinkle, 76 feet away. We installed the model in local public parks and invited children to be photons. Starting from the Sun, and heading to Earth, we routinely had to yell "slow down, you're breaking the speed limit!". I don't think we ever found a kid who was willing to take one minute, let alone eight, to reach that sprinkle.
  13. Rulken is engaging and funny in "The Majority is always wrong". He said nothing I haven't heard before elsewhere, but he did it well. I also watched his "Strategic Quitting" talk, in which he delivers a synopsis of Seth Godin's "The Dip". Following is fine, but it's not proof of free thinking. Given the nature of his work, I wondered what he had to say about brainstorming, a topic of interest to me. Google took me right to his website... https://www.paulrulkens.com/brainstorming-done-right/ Rulken's brainstorming criticisms have been mainstream for decades, but miss the most important idea, that brainstorming should be an adjunct to individual creativity, not the primary source. This was known by the creator of brainstorming, Alex Osborn, but somehow forgotten. https://www.inc.com/the-build-network/the-real-don-draper-invented-brainstorming-but-he-did-it-wrong.html Osborn was not as wrong as claimed in that article, but he was more wrong than Rulken's advice can fix. Rulken would do well to read Paul Paulus' research. Circling back, Rulken's TED talk title was an incomplete quote from Henrik Ibsen... "The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." Ibsen's wry observation recognizes the complexities of life that I mentioned previously. Rulken seems both too confident in the minority and too sure he's in it.
  14. Stop that right this minute, young lady! I have a reputation to protect!* *Yes, I thanked you and now I'm scolding you. That's all part of the reputation.
  15. If, by "free thinkers", you mean free of the constraints of evidence and logic... sure. Though I do seem to get significant "upvotes" on my posts in real time, I continue to think I'm fairly alone in my viewpoints, largely because I'm often weighing several, shift them frequently, and harbor some suspicion about them. The complexity of the truth of many things means that I am not "free" to do my own research, buy must rely on the wisdom and expertise of others. I haven't the time, resources, skills, expertise, knowledge, or intelligence to tackle the massive complexities of life on my own. If new evidence contradicts my understanding, I attempt to improve my understanding. If new evidence contradicts experts I follow, they must improve their understanding or lose me. I've underlined the part of your claim that I highlighted that admits to the parochial validity of "free thinking" truth. I can only hope that any actions based on such truths are equally parochial.
  16. Absolutely. The existence of the report button is an allowance, if not an invitation, to police. To your point, we should do so judiciously or we will end up with an echo chamber. Yep. The "echo chamber" claim seems to me to arise most from people who can't hear theirs. If you've ever stood in an anechoic chamber, you know how disorienting that can be.
  17. Anyone I perceive as a lunatic griefer is probably so obvious that I don't need reminding. For the rest, I prefer to allow myself to forget past transgressions and hope I'm offered the same grace by others.
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