Josh McNeill

Tag: psychology

Looks like I’m heading toward stupid.

January 7, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Word is that living in cities makes you stupid. Take that city dwellers! Actually it just wears out your brain according to some new studies. On the other hand, living in a city also causes innovative thinking because of the constant stream of unpredictable social interactions. It’s pretty fitting that I came across this article just as I was finally deciding to get out of a small town and head to a big city. Here it is, by the way:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/

Fortunately, there are various ways to counteract the stupefying effects of city life. Essentially, just stare at some trees. That’s right, nature puts your mind back into focus, for real. This whole thing is starting to sound like some sort of hippy propaganda. Maybe it is. You never know when those sneaky little devils are trying to inject the idea of love of nature subliminally into your head. I blame Al Gore. He’s not really a hippy, but.. whatever.

Honestly, I’ll buy this argument. Hell, I’ve already decided to leave at least one of my two blinds open. Previously, they remained closed at all times. I’m paranoid, and hiding things. Not really, I think I just don’t like having to pay attention to whether I need to watch the window or not. But yeah, why not keep a tree in your periphery at all times? It’s not hard to do. Even taking a walk through a natural area once in a while isn’t a big chore, especially when it has real results for your well-being.

Botox? Why not just get a new face?

December 17, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In all seriousness, this story has strong ethical implications.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=1f3c75d5-4ef6-4cb0-9f33-4d3edf16d47e

A woman, who is being kept anonymous, has received a face transplant in Cleveland. This procedure has been done three other times but not in the United States and not to such a great extent (80% of her face is from a cadaver). The operation took twenty two hours and the team of experts that were involved in the procedure sound confident that it was a success. They still have to wait for swelling to go down to really know, but there’s a great deal of optimism about it.

The patient was chosen from a body of candidates who were put through all sorts of tests both psychological and physical. The drugs she has to take, for the rest of her life, will weaken her immune system so that her body doesn’t reject the face but the side effect is losing up to ten years off her life.

Mostly, I’m interested in the psychological and ethical implications of such a procedure. For one, when this person looks into the mirror they’re going to look like a human being that has died. There have been experiments recently where people are taken out of their body, psychologically, using virtual reality devices, and placed into the body of someone else and the impact is drastic. For instance, racists were placed into the body of someone from the race they hated and it was very convincing for those people. For a bit, they actually believe that they are that other person. Think of what this means for this woman when she looks into the mirror and someone else stares back at her.

The ethical questions are also numerous. What about the family of the donor? Their dead relative is practically walking around in a different life and I don’t mean heaven. What if these people met? What happens if people start entering into this procedure just because they want to look different? Is there anything wrong with that? After all, plastic surgery is an accepted reality anymore. This could be a new extension of that idea. Along with genetic engineering, we’re getting closer and closer to being able to literally make ourselves into whatever we want. For my part, I’m going to try and remain optimistic. Maybe looks will be unimportant once everyone is beautiful.

Magnets on the brain.

October 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

The FDA just gave the go ahead for doctors to use magnets to tickle your brain cells when you’re depressed. Apparently someone out there has been messing with something they call transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). The idea is to take magnets and use them to stimulate parts of the brain responsible for things like mood regulation. There have been studies that showed that this was effective for a lot of people suffering from clinical depression and, of course, there are no side effects. The downside to these studies is that the placebo groups didn’t get a very convincing dose of fake therapy. Obviously, if you’re comparing two groups and neither of them can be used a control then your results aren’t going to be all that acceptable. It’s interesting anyway. It makes you wonder how long it will be until we no longer have to be sad, ever. It also makes you wonder if that’s really a good thing. Check it out:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn14998-magnetic-brain-therapy-gets-us-green-light.html

This is why I’m smarter than you.

October 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I don’t think that I could say that with a straight face in real life. I know I’m not stupid, but I’ll often argue against the things I think I know if I can’t find someone to do it for me. I’m pretty much in a constant state of questioning whether I’m right or not on any number of points so I couldn’t possibly be arrogant enough to tell anyone that I’m smarter than them…. unless someone out there thinks that’s a completely inaccurate portrait of me.

Anyway, I found this article today:

http://www.physorg.com/news142185056.html

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

I think this study is pretty much a load of crap personally. First of all, I know you don’t need millions of people to make a psychological study statistically significant but forty people? Also, the musicians had higher IQ as a whole? Doesn’t that mean that they picked people who had higher IQs for the musicians side of the experiment? These people failed the chicken vs the egg test. And the last thing I’ll point out, although not the last thing that could be pointed out, is that I’ve met a hell of a lot of really stupid musicians. Maybe classical musicians from this one particular school tend to be smart, but that’s certainly not the whole from my experience.

<Insert closing paragraph that creatively wraps things up here.>

One of those questions about trees falling.

June 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I got into a discussion, an internet argument even, which is never a good idea, recently about whether it makes sense to label all Muslims your enemy (assuming that you’re not a Muslim) based on the fact that the Qur’an contains passages that can be read as, “Kill non-believers.” My stance was, obviously, that this was stupid. My opponent’s stance was that he labels all Muslims enemies because of these passages but probably wouldn’t have a problem with a Muslim if they were standing in front of him. His reason? He suggests that people can believe things that they don’t follow. If this were true then it would be possible for a Muslim to believe that their holy text is telling them to kill the guy in front of them and yet they don’t.

Regardless of the rampant contradictions in such a stance, the whole conversation made me really wonder how someone can believe something and yet do the opposite. For instance, in the example of the Muslim in front of my short-sighted online debating partner, does that Muslim, who we’ll assume does believe he’s being commanded to kill the guy in front of him, not follow through with his God’s command out of sheer willpower to go against his beliefs or is it that at the time he believes that it’s not a good idea to kill this person. Basically, if you believe something and then act in a way that goes against that belief, did you really just have a couple beliefs overlap each other?

Upon trying to think of some examples where someone is acting against their beliefs, I came up with a couple that were questionable. Lets take priests who molest children. These people most likely don’t interpret the Bible to be saying that it’s honky dory to ruin children’s lives in this way yet they still do it. When those particular priests are in that situation where they decide to go through with these actions, is it just some blind moment like blacking out after drinking too much or do they justify the action in the moment? If they do justify the action, does that justification enact a new belief? For example, the priest normally believes that it’s not okay to touch small children but at the time that they are doing so they also believe that it is okay to do so for such and such a reason. You can do the same thing for recovering alcoholics. They believe that they should stop drinking but they still end up drinking because they believe at the time when they fail in their endeavor that it’s okay for them to drink.

So yeah, is it safe to say that no one ever acts against their beliefs, or no?

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