Terrible analogy.
Video games have a lot of diversity to them and different genres engage very different skills. Small talk all seems to encompass the same stuff, namely social ranking.
Some of us know how to do it but just don’t -care-, and that doesn’t mean we’re in fact bad at it. I think that is the point this comment thread is going for.
I’m several days late answering, but FWIW, I scored a 30 but only checked off one of the five diagnostic questions. I’ve never had my IQ tested as an adult.
I do obsessively pursue my chosen interests but given that one of those is language, I don’t have the social / verbal awkwardness. I don’t -like- social situations but I can function just fine in them.
Not to mention viewer base fragmentation. There is less need to appeal to the so-called lowest common denominator when there are hundreds or thousands of avenues for transmission. Those without patience for long story arcs can watch a different program more easily today than they could before cable, satelite, and the internet.
Seconded, but with a request for contrast, if possible, with human-caused mass-death such as invasion by conquering hordes. What effect do such phenomena have at the genetic level wrt cognition, as opposed to cultural or lingustic transmission?
Somehow I found the tl;dr impenetrable, but the actual article eminently readable. Is this deliberate?
I haven’t noticed a vast increase, but I have noticed waves, so to speak, of link-farm prevalence. The very effect in action?
Well put!
We might want to come up with another name for (2). Humans are closer to each other in mindspace than they are to any alien mind, but it does not follow that, close up, all humans have the exact same psychology.
There may be more than zoom-degree involved in the difference.
Does “autism bloggers” mean “people who blog specifically about autism”?
If so, it might be instructive to check how many bloggers in other subjects also happen to have autism. It might be dificult to verify but the blogosphere is large enough to dig up a usefully-sized sample and disentangle to some degree the autism-blogging link.
Wow! I haven’t got any questions (yet) but I am very eager to dive into this Q&A. Thanks to everyone involved in organizing this.
By the way, you spelled Steve SailEr’s name wrong.
Probably the close similarity to this site’s oft-quoted “Shut up and multiply.”
What -are- you talking about?
We have massively literate societies and a culture in which all the knowledge is shared massively. After a crisis, the remaining few would have to pick up a lot of skills they lack before crisis, but they would have the means to do so in said stores of knowledge, plus the immense advantage of knowing that the things destroyed are possible. The general public -is- capable of learning.
Hunter-gatherers had no knowledge of chemistry, electronics, and mechanics, nor any concept that the things we do with them were possible.
Is this not true true of most modern cars, not only Japanese ones?
Decades ago, drivers could and did repair engines themselves, but today’s cars require more knowledge, training, and tools than the hobbyist is likely to have.
The expense of repair says little about reliability. Mean time to failure would be better.
All liquids, not just drinks? …I wonder when Coca-Cola will start making liquid soaps, fuel, and lubricants.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
If they had it, yes. Not otherwise. This evidence would have to cover both the immediate claim (that they were working at NASA at that time) and the larger one (that the moon landing was faked). Evidence explaining why no one else ever came forward would be appreciated but not required if the other two things are present.
I wonder, could the effect be reduced by using a darker shade of red? This red is certainly more vivid than the blue to my eye.
RE: The Grieving Student
You don’t even need to go as far as society. The school, or school board, will almost certainly have an exception in place for this sort of thing. This is true at all levels for death of an immediate family member. (I speak from experience, having been exempted from final exams one year. My final grade was instead based on coursework, as if there had been no final for the class. )
In fact, odds are the school or department will have a clear policy that says concerts, sports events, and the like are not an acceptable excuse for missed work, but funerals, severe illness, and the like, are. So, to make the story more plausible, the precommitter should be the department head or principal or something like that, rather than the teacher. < / nitpick>
While it might indeed be useful to have a disgust reaction to candy or video games, the “ugh fields” seem not to be visceral disgust, but visceral, conditioned-pain-induced tendencies to cut off thought.
In my experience, this only ever happens with a specific candy or game. For example, If I lose repeatedly and humiliatedly in an online game, I might develop an ugh field that ultimately prevents me from even thinking about popping on to play it, but the corresponding comfort activity is far more likely to be “play a different game” than “go study some math instead”.
Can we agree on this or am I falling for bad logic?
We can certainly agree on this point. Though I hasten to add that if you had indeed presented some sort of research, I would not have made the comment. Without objective fact behind it, it smacked of condescencion.
the way you stated it in the original post was judgmental.
I made no original post. I urge you to read the actual original post my comment was made to respond to, and the threads the prompted it. I will not be recapping the gender kerfluffle for you.
Or is that not the way things run around here? Is it better to insult everyone that doesn’t think the way you do?
Consider your bait safely ignored.
Your comment begins “It might be considerate to realize that females do have a legitimate reason for why they are more salient to their own sex and issues regarding gender”.
In saying this, you are telling me (a female) that I need to realize something about females. This is questionable, at best, and is so regardless of your own gender.
Then you conclude ”… a stronger identification with their own gender. ” to which I reply “Balderdash”.
Gender is a part of one’s identity, obviously, but to say that women can’t help but feel theirs is more salient is a broad-strokes over-generalizing statement that is ultimately as patroniaing as anything else that can or has been taken to be biased against women. It effectively says “Oh, women can’t help but feel they are treated differently,” and in doing so, treats them differently.
Do you understand the objection, now?
More to the point, my original comment was expressing that rationality is NOT a gender issue. I very strongly believe that to let gender issues interfere in one’s goals, be they rationality goals or not, is a bad move. That is all.
No, pub talk is not exactly the same as a black tie dinner. The -small talk- aspect, though, very much is. It all comes down to social ranking of the participants. In the former, it skews to word assortative mating and in the latter presumably toward power and resources in the buisness world.
If you have a need or desire to win at social interaction, good for you. Please consider that for other people, it -really- isn’t that important. There is more to life than attracting mates and business partners. Those things are often a means to an end, and it is preferable to some of us to pursue the ends directly when possible.
The video game analogy is just plain bad.