Psychology Today Controversy

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Parapsychology always pisses me off the most.

you and me both

I'm going to strangle the next person who brings up the "10% of our brain" thing

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
I'm aware that they're a pop science magazine and of the horrors of "science" journalism. I just thought they'd have the the foresight not just post blogs without looking to see what was written.

it gets hits on their blog though, and since they don't have "editorial control" of the blog, complete plausible deniability.

this guy writes "prepare to be offended" on his website, I have to believe psychology today knew what they were getting into.

I'm curious, how does he define what is "objectively" good looking?

I did read we only use 2% of our brain, can you imagine what we could do if we used all of it? Then we'd also knew what objective attractiveness is, I'm sure.

Originally posted by King Kandy
I'm curious, how does he define what is "objectively" good looking?

ratings on a 5 point scale among interviewers that we have no demographic details of

Originally posted by Bardock42
I did read we only use 2% of our brain, can you imagine what we could do if we used all of it? Then we'd also knew what objective attractiveness is, I'm sure.

amazingly, I just found a PT article that endorses the 10% myth

"conventional wisdom holds"

holds my dick

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200604/how-train-your-brain

Originally posted by inimalist
ratings on a 5 point scale among interviewers that we have no demographic details of

Originally posted by King Kandy
So he asked people's opinions? Isn't that basically as subjective as you can get?

No, he read about people having asked people opinions.

But if you were to do it, I think that's probably how you had to do it, since attraction is obviously the opinion of a person. Making it more "objective" would be having a big representative sample. It wouldn't be for absolute reasons though.

Originally posted by King Kandy
So he asked people's opinions? Isn't that basically as subjective as you can get?

not entirely

as part of a humongous dataset, people who interviewed participants also gave them a rating of attractiveness.

at least if he ran a study where he asked people's opinions, he might have been able to control for some of the, literally, dozens of confounds with that. In this, he just took someone else's data and found patterns in it. imho, worse than asking people to make subjective ratings.

Originally posted by Bardock42
But if you were to do it, I think that's probably how you had to do it, since attraction is obviously the opinion of a person.

there are better things you could do, but ultimately, unless you define objective criteria about what is "attractive" a priori, it is really just an opinion question.

not to mention, physical attractiveness is based on things like, how much you like or respect the person, etc, which is going to influence the interviewers

Originally posted by Bardock42
Making it more "objective" would be having a big representative sample. It wouldn't be for absolute reasons though.

yes and no. There is a problem with large sample sizes. Just because of the way stats work, the more people who are in a study, the greater the chance that you can find significant differences between the groups. this set is already over 6500 people, measured 3 times. Type 1 error refers to claiming something is true because of statistical probability (there is a chance you will find significant results based on random chance alone). The probability of Type 1 error increases hugely as set size increases. I can't say that is what is going on in this dataset, but simply just taking a huge sample isn't the best strategy.

You would need to try and identify a manipulation where people of equivalent physical features are "racialized" in different ways to see if ratings change based on racial category alone, and it would need to be cross cultural. honestly, I have no idea what such a manipulation would look like.

Originally posted by Bardock42
No, he read about people having asked people opinions.

But if you were to do it, I think that's probably how you had to do it, since attraction is obviously the opinion of a person. Making it more "objective" would be having a big representative sample. It wouldn't be for absolute reasons though.

Originally posted by Bardock42
I did read we only use 2% of our brain, can you imagine what we could do if we used all of it?

Suffer a grand mal seizure?

I know some super duper hot "black chicks." However, I probably find less black women attractive than other "racial demographics."

Oddly, I find the most attractive females to be mulattos. This is just my personal experience and not some sort of perfect population assessment of mulattos.

Originally posted by King Kandy
That's why I think trying to determine what is "objectively" attractive is an exercise in futility...

Not necessarily. There are certain "things" our genes tell us to look for on the "physical" side of attractiveness. Fortunately and unfortunately, that can come at odds with what our complex social brains assess about the person.

When we unlock many more secrets of our genes AND how the brain works, we can objectively determine human sexuality more perfectly. This is not to imply that we are close to perfect, already, though. There are definitely things we know, in general, for sure which are very obvious things: symmetry and health. In other words, we find un-deformed healthy people almost universally attractive or at least not ugly. 😐 That much should be obvious, however.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Not necessarily. There are certain "things" our genes tell us to look for on the "physical" side of attractiveness. Fortunately and unfortunately, that can come at odds with what our complex social brains assess about the person.

So you can imagine a scientist being able to tell someone that they are wrong about who is attractive? Because that's what having an objective standard of beauty would imply to me.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Not necessarily. There are certain "things" our genes tell us to look for on the "physical" side of attractiveness. Fortunately and unfortunately, that can come at odds with what our complex social brains assess about the person.

When we unlock many more secrets of our genes AND how the brain works, we can objectively determine human sexuality more perfectly. This is not to imply that we are close to perfect, already, though. There are definitely things we know, in general, for sure which are very obvious things: symmetry and health. In other words, we find un-deformed healthy people almost universally attractive or at least not ugly. 😐 That much should be obvious, however.

at some point we may understand statistically significant qualities that lead to higher evaluations of beauty that are shared cross culturally and may have roots in biology and evolution

we certainly will never have the ability to say, for certain, who is attractive to whom.

Like, the best we would ever be able to do is assign a statistical probability to how likely you might be, in a situation by situation basis, to claim one person is more attractive than another.

this is a huge stretch from any sort of "objective beauty" and certainly not universal.

Originally posted by dadudemon
Not necessarily. There are certain "things" our genes tell us to look for on the "physical" side of attractiveness. Fortunately and unfortunately, that can come at odds with what our complex social brains assess about the person.

When we unlock many more secrets of our genes AND how the brain works, we can objectively determine human sexuality more perfectly. This is not to imply that we are close to perfect, already, though. There are definitely things we know, in general, for sure which are very obvious things: symmetry and health. In other words, we find un-deformed healthy people almost universally attractive or at least not ugly. 😐 That much should be obvious, however.

Originally posted by inimalist
at some point we may understand statistically significant qualities that lead to higher evaluations of beauty that are shared cross culturally and may have roots in biology and evolution

Yes, so what I said and have said in other threads. 😄

Well, what I've said is more along the lines of, "statistically significant traits whose roots are in functional biology and their role in evolutionary adaptation and coincidental (vestigial) behaviors that stem from those evolutionary adaptations."

Originally posted by inimalist
we certainly will never have the ability to say, for certain, who is attractive to whom.

I disagree. Imagine a computer that could analyze both our genes and every single memory we have. Imagine that this computer can "calculate" to such a degree that the "print" of our genes are "print" of our brain can create a very clear map on how a person would act and behave. Such a computer or system is so far advanced over what we have now and understand that it is almost inconceivable. However, when we do reach the point to where we understand the brain completely, this would not be impossible, at all.

I cannot rule out the possibility that we will never be able to invent a machine that can tell us or at least measure what one is thinking. Doing so would be so difficult because of the different "flavors" of how one thinks. Sure, there are similarities but I think the way our mind thinks would be slightly different from person to person making it difficult to decipher and reconstruct those thoughts into interpretable information. I don't know how to put this into words, but I don't think telepathy would be as "awesome" as people think it is. When people think, they cut many corners that they would not normally have to because they "know" what they are "thinking" in relation to other thoughts. Wow, this is such a huge tangent.

Well, for instance, when I think of how I am going to plan my workout, if someone could "hear" the thoughts I thought, they would have no clue what the actual plan was. It would be a very empty set of plans, to them, because they have no idea how the "data" fits together in my mind because of all the shortcuts my mind takes to piece that information together in a relational sense. The same with you on a different sense. I actually think that some of our thoughts are not "words" but more concepts. For instance, some may think of the concept of breakfast rather than "saying" breakfast with their "inner-voice." This flavor (the best way I can describe how they describe this abstraction of concepts) of what constitutes "breakfast" for that person may almost be entirely unique to that person.

Indeed, we do get to see how some create these concepts into tangible forms in a more direct fashion: synesthesia. These concepts are almost "different" for people with the same kind of synesthesia symptoms (for instance, colors to numbers.)

Do you understand what I'm trying to say or am I failing horribly to convey my thoughts on this? It is a tangent but one I was thinking about a few years ago that makes the whole "telepathy" thing a bit difficult to be reasonable with the current way we think.

How many people do you know think in a very clear, well-spoken, and "loud" "inner-voice"? That's basically my point.

Originally posted by inimalist
Like, the best we would ever be able to do is assign a statistical probability to how likely you might be, in a situation by situation basis, to claim one person is more attractive than another.

I agree but that probability could be so high that it's almost impossible to defy the predicted action or the outcome of the individual's assessment on a stimulus. Unless, of course, you are implying some sort of "quantum unpredictability" in the way we think (meaning, despite everything pointing towards decision A, sometimes, person 1 will choose decisions B...assuming that "perfect understand" of human genes and the human brain)? In which case...I could have sworn you criticized that concept when Mindship brought it up?

Originally posted by inimalist
this is a huge stretch from any sort of "objective beauty" and certainly not universal.

I disagree as, again, there is a fairly obvious but low-level of sexual attraction that we can determine: symmetry and lack of deformation.

Sure, it's not universal, but it is almost universal. You'll always have those people that are attracted to people missing limbs, "midget porn", and stuff like that. But, almost universally, we don't find those that are "whole" and symmetric to be "ugly." That's about as close as we can get at the moment.

i dont know about everyone else but i get alot of my therapy. Of course it could have something to do with the fact that my therapist is one of the finest ladies i've ever seen and i would pretty much do anything she suggested.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Suffer a grand mal seizure?

I don't know what that is, but I'll trust the parapsychology blog I read over your opinion, thank you!

Originally posted by dadudemon
Yes, so what I said and have said in other threads. 😄

Well, what I've said is more along the lines of, "statistically significant traits whose roots are in functional biology and their role in evolutionary adaptation and coincidental (vestigial) behaviors that stem from those evolutionary adaptations."

I disagree. Imagine a computer that could analyze both our genes and every single memory we have. Imagine that this computer can "calculate" to such a degree that the "print" of our genes are "print" of our brain can create a very clear map on how a person would act and behave. Such a computer or system is so far advanced over what we have now and understand that it is almost inconceivable. However, when we do reach the point to where we understand the brain completely, this would not be impossible, at all.

I cannot rule out the possibility that we will never be able to invent a machine that can tell us or at least measure what one is thinking. Doing so would be so difficult because of the different "flavors" of how one thinks. Sure, there are similarities but I think the way our mind thinks would be slightly different from person to person making it difficult to decipher and reconstruct those thoughts into interpretable information. I don't know how to put this into words, but I don't think telepathy would be as "awesome" as people think it is. When people think, they cut many corners that they would not normally have to because they "know" what they are "thinking" in relation to other thoughts. Wow, this is such a huge tangent.

Well, for instance, when I think of how I am going to plan my workout, if someone could "hear" the thoughts I thought, they would have no clue what the actual plan was. It would be a very empty set of plans, to them, because they have no idea how the "data" fits together in my mind because of all the shortcuts my mind takes to piece that information together in a relational sense. The same with you on a different sense. I actually think that some of our thoughts are not "words" but more concepts. For instance, some may think of the concept of breakfast rather than "saying" breakfast with their "inner-voice." This flavor (the best way I can describe how they describe this abstraction of concepts) of what constitutes "breakfast" for that person may almost be entirely unique to that person.

Indeed, we do get to see how some create these concepts into tangible forms in a more direct fashion: synesthesia. These concepts are almost "different" for people with the same kind of synesthesia symptoms (for instance, colors to numbers.)

Do you understand what I'm trying to say or am I failing horribly to convey my thoughts on this? It is a tangent but one I was thinking about a few years ago that makes the whole "telepathy" thing a bit difficult to be reasonable with the current way we think.

How many people do you know think in a very clear, well-spoken, and "loud" "inner-voice"? That's basically my point.

I agree but that probability could be so high that it's almost impossible to defy the predicted action or the outcome of the individual's assessment on a stimulus. Unless, of course, you are implying some sort of "quantum unpredictability" in the way we think (meaning, despite everything pointing towards decision A, sometimes, person 1 will choose decisions B...assuming that "perfect understand" of human genes and the human brain)? In which case...I could have sworn you criticized that concept when Mindship brought it up?

I disagree as, again, there is a fairly obvious but low-level of sexual attraction that we can determine: symmetry and lack of deformation.

Sure, it's not universal, but it is almost universal. You'll always have those people that are attracted to people missing limbs, "midget porn", and stuff like that. But, almost universally, we don't find those that are "whole" and symmetric to be "ugly." That's about as close as we can get at the moment.

it isn't a matter of anything you are speaking of, but merely the fact that our statistical analysis can only say things with specific probabilities

it is impossible for science to ever say anything with 100% certainty or claim universality, just based on the tools of science. Even if these things were universal qualities, our statistical analysis doesn't let us say anything is universal.

though, I disagree with a lot of that anyways

I know what type of woman I find attractive (see my avatar). I really don't care what anybody else thinks about the subject.