The Psychology Thread

Scientifically, that isn't a thing. A crow probably has more intelligence than a mouse, for example.

Pretty sure crows have more intelligence than me, to be honest.

Edited by dRoy on Apr 22nd 2024 at 12:16:05 AM

That's actually what I'm getting at, I think there's a bias to assume mammals are more intelligent than other animals.

Heh, the book I previously mentioned does say something along the line of, the whole triune brain theory is at least partially human beings petting themselves on the back for being the creature with the most sophisticated brain.

Of course, human brains ARE the most powerful brain in the world - at least, in terms of what human beings can do with it - but not for that reason.

Almost done with the book I mentioned above.

There are many interesting bits in the book, but oddly enough, one of the most shocking bit for me was a single line about the Pavlov's dog.

...So wait, Pavlov used a metronome to condition the dog, not a bell? My God, for some reason that's really shaking me to the core.

EDIT:

Oh, and what do you know, the author actually had a TED lesson about how we form and express emotions in terms of neuroscience.

Edited by dRoy on Apr 23rd 2024 at 10:40:20 PM

It's a broader form of anthropocentrism, but I don't know if there's a more specific term for it. Another place where it's come up is neurobiology of language - from what I understand (though I don't remember where I read this), the current consensus is that parrots have more developed linguistic processing ability than chimpanzees do, but it took a disproportionate amount of evidence to establish that consensus, because it had to work against the bias towards treating primates as uniquely intelligent.

"...So wait, Pavlov used a metronome to condition the dog, not a bell? My God, for some reason that's really shaking me to the core."

...You could almost say that you have been conditioned to associate Pavlov and dogs with bells.

I guess instead of bell and food, the psychology books I read used this kind of picture:

Maybe bells are easier to draw and more familiar to general populace XP

Metronomes are boring.

Come to think of it, bell is more often used to signal someone compared to metronomes.

Oh, and to go back to Seven and a Half Lectures about the Brain, I finished the book. There are many great, great bits in this book and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in emotions and neuroscience.

Also, I was...unreasonably happy and felt validated upon reading the author's condemnation of MBTI personality test as being completely ungrounded and pointless.

Edited by dRoy on Apr 28th 2024 at 10:19:30 PM

This comes from a place of genuine concern about how to avoid instilling or enabling this kind of behaviour in others, if I ever imply this is representative of a certain gender I want to make it clear is just an example and that I think anybody in general can do this regardless of their gender: why do people use gaining other people's approval as a proof of their own worth?

Say, all of that dating advice that tells women they have to act hard to get because "men love challengue"; ignoring how that kinda thing has plenty of rapey undertones, the logic behind it is that "you pay for what you get" if someone's love is "easy" to obtain, then "there must be something wrong with them", and that those who are "hard to get" must have "higher value" thus gaining their attention means you must have "high value", too.

So far, none of that is anything I haven't heard before, but just now I saw a youtube video about broke men who date rich women as a mean to develop themselves and, once they do, leve them to look for someone that actually poses a challengue, their current partner does not longer seem appropiate to their new self because "if they were so easy to get then there must be something wrong with them".

I would be really easy to blame this on the way men were raised to see women as prizes; but then I remember there's something called the pygmalion effect that can also happen if the genders are reversed.

Why does this happen? is this human nature? why? is there any positive side to this or is it some deformation of an actually useful survival drive? on the other hand, if it has something to do with their upbringing, what were these people thaught that makes them see other people as just objects whose sole function is assuaging their own insecurities? how can I avoid raising a kid like that? or enabling that kind of behaviour in my social circle?

Edited by Gabo352 on May 1st 2024 at 6:32:10 AM

For what is worth, I would hate if a woman was acting like this. Should be noted thought that I'm an autistic guy with the associated bad social skills. So it is perhaps no surprise. I want clear communication, not playing games.

Sounds like old fashioned selfishness to me.

Sometimes social media can be so draining, especially whenever bad news pops up. How do you guys handle with the stress of social media?

Well, me personally, I just dumped twitter when Elon took over. My Facebook feed is mercifully full of stuff that ranges from cool at best to just ignorable at worst.

Right now I'm primarily on Cohost, since it feels like a much nicer space and one that doesn't have a godawful algorithm that forces content you don't want to see in your face.

I rarely use Twitter in the first place, so I just tend to avoid any toxic spaces on the internet. Whenever you go into conversations that quickly turn toxic, then it just makes things worse for you.