Comments for idiolect

Comment on Talking to journalists by Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Thu, 23 May 2013 10:23:23 +0000

This is exactly it. I’m going to add a link to it from the post.

Comment on Cognitive Science Cinema by Ben Motz

Ben Motz — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:56:29 +0000

Did you check out the Cognitive Science Movie Index. It includes some important CogSci documentaries: - Transcendent Man - Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control - The Thin Blue Line

Comment on Cognitive Science Cinema by Joel Mackey

Joel Mackey — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:50:02 +0000

Revolver was a pretty interesting take on the stranger inside your head.

Comment on in spite of the tennis by Gaf Kerg

Gaf Kerg — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:02:20 +0000

“Wastes and pines” is a great combination of double entendre and silly metaphor that summarizes the whole speech. God as endless is a metaphor of endless (pines, evergreens) repetition (waiting for someone who shows up and then waiting again) but unreal, for which humanity pines, and the time we spend trying to build ourselves up to (strides, labors left unfinished) the fantasized perfect, we waste away, waste time, release waste and obsess over it (alimentation and defecation, acacacademy of anthropopopometry, fartov and belcher), trying endlessly to convince ourselves that we’re moving toward a perfection, which in itself is intangible (divine apathia, divine athambia, divine aphasia, or in other words, the inability to sense, understand, or express), while the only meaningful discovery, although meaningless, is the truth of mortality (the skull in Connemara, abode of stones).

Comment on Cognitive Science Cinema by @tomstafford

@tomstafford — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:13:36 +0000

JMW suggests this: The Tenth Level http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN2V2kx_vKY

Comment on Mea culpa musings (angry cyclist edition) by Alston Misquitta

Alston Misquitta — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:31:30 +0000

I must say that I agree with Jake and Andrew above. If we do have a vehicular divide between those who only drive and those who (also) cycle then we have a problem with empathy; and it is a uni-directional problem since many of those who cycle will also drive. Now imagine Andrew’s nomad cyclist zipping past you as you sit in your car in a jam. “Bloody free-loading cyclist.” It’s easy to get into that frame of mind, isn’t it? On the other hand, if I also cycled but just chose to drive on that day it would have been more like a “if only I had cycled today” frame of mind. One creates antagonism, the other, empathy.

Comment on Delocator UK by Harry Watson

Harry Watson — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:42:18 +0000

Its probably just me being dumb , but when I try to visit Delcator UK I just get offered the chance to buy the domain name ?

Comment on Surely the hoo-har about replication could only concern a non-cumulative science? by Åsehelene

Åsehelene — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:34:03 +0000

But, if your replication just didn’t work? You do it, the results show nothing, or nothing that is interpretable. Maybe do it again (just in case). Or a variant thereof. Then nothing.
Shrug and move on? Or undertake some work on showing that the effect isn’t there so you can publish? (I’ve seen two of those).
Then, someone else, who don’t know your failed attempt at replicating (because the scientific community is too large for everybody to be up on the gossip), undertakes the work only to, well, not replicate. Into the filedrawer it goes.
Wasted time, and no way of finding out that this is a wobbly effect that perhaps is a type I. Meanwhile, the reported results figures in arguments for something else, that (perhaps) works.

(I’m just going through an advanced book on Social Cognition, in a teaching capacity, and finding Stapel articles that are now known fakes. They are not the only ones cited as evidence for some phenomenon, but they are there).

I have a modest filedrawer on cognition and emotion things. Some of it is hard to interpret, hence in the file-drawer. My first set of five experiments basically suggests that emotional states do not facilitate perception of emotion congruent clear facial expressions, but that is nothing that can be published. (Subsequent work suggests it works on ambiguous faces).

From what I understand, there are file-drawers around who look at attention to threatening stuff that doesn’t really find anyting. (I have those, although it shows something, but I can’t for my life put it together into a manuscript, and by now it is pushing 10 years old). Meanwhile, my intro psych book thought that attention to threat was so sexy my undergrads think this is how it works.

Just, to give examples from my meager experience.

Comment on Why Sherry Turkle is so wrong by DinBomani

DinBomani — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 17:36:30 +0000

I found the book to be alittle mundane myself. Her stories were drawn out. To make the book from the outside seem as it would be a good read. There were a lot of repetitive notions and one sided arguments. As for the names of various technologies, a lot of the names I’ve never heard of. Growing up in the inner city we weren’t afforded the opportunity to have a vast variety of toys, gidgets, and gadgets. However, we knew a toy from a real person, but I could see where Turkle was trying to go with it. This book could’ve been have as many pages and still the message would’ve been clearer as to what she wanted to point out. Yes we are becoming more dependant on technology. However, I don’t believe that technology decreases an individuals desire for face to face communication…try i.e. skype..facebook video…tango…and my new favorite google hangout

Comment on Surely the hoo-har about replication could only concern a non-cumulative science? by Neuroskeptic

Neuroskeptic — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:10:57 +0000

You’re right, but I suppose in defence of psychology, the problem is not so much that nothing in psychology builds cumulatively on other stuff (you cite one example & there are others) – the problem is just that today a great many psychologists are more interested in doing ‘novel’ experiments, than ones that build on others – perhaps because they get more cited…