tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post111960625491117163..comments2023-06-08T07:55:06.778-04:00Comments on PHREADOM: things I'm ponderingJStressmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119757291469241012005-06-25T23:41:00.000-04:002005-06-25T23:41:00.000-04:00oddly enough, I'm watching an episode of "Penn & T...oddly enough, I'm watching an episode of "Penn & Tellers 'Bullshit!'" about Alien Abductions... and right now they're talking about the "hypnotic regression therapy" and how what the "hypnotherapist" is actually implanting all these visuals into the patients mind through suggestion... "do you see a light?" "is it blue?" "is it above the car?" and while the therapist is saying these things, the patient is visualizing them... which can lead to false memories through the methods mentioned earlier in my post etc.<BR/><BR/>this is the greatest show I've ever seen. (the entire series)JStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119754294316971832005-06-25T22:51:00.000-04:002005-06-25T22:51:00.000-04:00I started reading the Federalist Papers, but never...I started reading the Federalist Papers, but never got around to finishing. I'll have to make a point to see if I can track down the opposing ones and the Machiavellian discourses.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the pointers Markavellie. :)<BR/><BR/>*adds to text file on desktop title "books to read.txt"*<BR/><BR/>odd.... the only other thing I have in that file is "Anthropologist on Mars"... and I don't remember at all what that's about or why I put it in there...<BR/><BR/>*looks it up*<BR/><BR/>ahh... here we go. <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679756973/102-0318809-7086529?v=glance" REL="nofollow">"An Anthropologist On Mars : Seven Paradoxical Tales" (Vintage) by Oliver Sacks</A><BR/><BR/>from the Amazon.com Editorial Review:<BR/><I><BR/>The works of neurologist Oliver Sacks have a special place in the swarm of mind-brain studies. He has done as much as anyone to make nonspecialists aware of how much diversity gets lumped under the heading of "the human mind."<BR/><BR/>The stories in <B>An Anthropologist on Mars</B> are medical case reports not unlike the classic tales of Berton Roueché in <B>The Medical Detectives</B>. Sacks's stories are of "differently brained" people, and they have the intrinsic human interest that spurred his book <B>Awakenings</B> to be re-created as a Robin Williams movie.<BR/><BR/>The title story in Anthropologist is that of autistic Temple Grandin, whose own book <B>Thinking in Pictures</B> gives her version of how she feels--as unlike other humans as a cow or a Martian. The other minds Sacks describes are equally remarkable: a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome, a painter who loses color vision, a blind man given the ambiguous gift of sight, artists with memories that overwhelm "real life," the autistic artist Stephen Wiltshire, and a man with memory damage for whom it is always 1968.<BR/><BR/>Oliver Sacks is the Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould of his field; his books are true classics of medical writing, of the breadth of human mentality, and of the inner lives of the disabled. <B>--Mary Ellen Curtin</B><BR/></I><BR/><BR/>anyway... thanks again for the pointers. I always forget to get back to reading those papers. *sigh*<BR/><BR/>as my ex said... "it's not that you have bad memory... you have a swiss cheese brain. sometimes things just fall in the holes."<BR/><BR/>(hell, I just pasted your whole comment into the file. context helps.)JStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119734425028761522005-06-25T17:20:00.000-04:002005-06-25T17:20:00.000-04:00taramonster: I have a bad habit of taking things v...taramonster: I have a bad habit of taking things very literally. I wouldn't be too hasty in ascribing it to any lack of humor in your joke. ;)<BR/><BR/>I'm not sure about the memory. I think the best you could do would be to call a few respected psychologists and get some opinions. :) good luck.JStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119665632075175932005-06-24T22:13:00.000-04:002005-06-24T22:13:00.000-04:00<yath> "things i've been pondering" ?<yat...<B><yath></B> "things i've been pondering" ?<BR/><B><yath></B> Ok you use the fact of poorly-remembered events to discount the story of Jesus?<BR/><B><largo></B> whatever works. :)<BR/><B><largo></B> really, it's just one of a ton of other things.<BR/><B><yath></B> It's all good and well to ponder these things but you need to hit the books more<BR/><B><largo></B> howso?<BR/><B><yath></B> Well the issue of Jesus and his prophecies doesn't apply very well here<BR/><B><largo></B> you don't think that a traumatic event, witnessed by people with motivation to believe otherwise, and then having that story passed on for decades, through people with different beliefs, motivations etc... <BR/><B><largo></B> that that wouldn't alter the details in the end?<BR/><B><largo></B> and land you with questionable veracity?<BR/><B><yath></B> The consensus on the prophecies is that most of them were added to the four apostles well after their original authorship, to bring them into line with the old testament<BR/><B><largo></B> that's what I said.<BR/><B><largo></B> :F !!!<BR/><B><yath></B> not so much bad memory as just making shit up<BR/><B><yath></B> no you didn't :P<BR/><B><largo></B> was I not clear? :(<BR/><B><largo></B> yeah I did... making the propchecies fit him after the fact.<BR/><B><largo></B> which I guess I see your point... it doesn't really relate as directly to the memory alteration, as to actual purposeful factual distortion.<BR/><B><largo></B> if that's what you're trying to get at.<BR/><B><yath></B> yeah<BR/><B><largo></B> well, I never claimed to be good at explaining things. :(<BR/><B><largo></B> but that is what I meant. :-/<BR/><B><yath></B> okJStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119648960182022072005-06-24T17:36:00.000-04:002005-06-24T17:36:00.000-04:00tara: about the 8 years ago memory thing... this a...tara: about the 8 years ago memory thing... this article touches on different ways in which such memories can be started: here is a paragraph that should shed a little light on what you're asking hopefully:<BR/><BR/><I><BR/>In some cases, people can even have entirely fictitious memories for full-fledged, specific events. In one study, Ira Hyman and Joel Pentland of Western Washington University tried to "implant" a false memory in the minds of their participants. They started by obtaining a list of childhood events from each participant's parents, and then interviewed each participant about the memories that his or her parents had provided. They also asked each participant about one fictitious memory - a memory of spilling a punchbowl on a bride during a wedding reception - but told participants that all memories, including the punchbowl memory, had been provided by the participant's parents. If they didn't "recall" the punchbowl memory during the original interview (and most participants didn't) they were asked to think about the event or to visualize it in their minds as best they could. When tested several days later, almost 25% of the participants in the experiment claimed to have some memory of spilling the punchbowl. These people didn't just remember that the experimenter had told them about it, nor did they just claim that they knew <B>that</B> it happened. Rather, they claimed to have a detailed memory of the event itslf - and some of them even elaborated on the memory, providing details that the experimenter had never mentioned. This straightforward experimental design - which simply involves asking people to imagine an event they'd never experienced - was enough to create a false memory. Overall, somewhere between 15 to 25% of adults can be induced to create false memories in this way. A similar phenomenon may explain False Memory Syndrome, in which fictitious memories of sexual abuse are inadvertently implanted in patients' minds by therapists who use guided-visualization and other suggestive techniques.<BR/></I><BR/><BR/>there's a lot more to the article, it's several pages long, and that's just 1 paragraph. hopefully that helps though?<BR/><BR/>I tried to find a copy of the article on-line, but as this is the current issue, none of the articles in it are available on-line publicly yet.JStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11871879.post-1119645963622045532005-06-24T16:46:00.000-04:002005-06-24T16:46:00.000-04:00Jesus didn't write the bible. and it's now looking...Jesus didn't write the bible. and it's now looking like his disciples didn't either. at least nobody that actually witnessed the events in the gospels.<BR/><BR/>this stuff was written down around 70 years later by people who heard it from someone else who heard it from someone else who heard it. and even in some cases where the text says that a disciple did see something, they couldn't have... as they had just said that they all fled etc...<BR/><BR/>the entire bible is a patchwork of stories written to achieve certain goals... political, personal etc... the contrast between the authors can be seen.. the discrepancies between accounts can be seen... the obvious dichotomy with the reality in which we live, with all the scientific advances that we've achieved and our vastly greater understanding of life and the universe around us... it can all be seen today.<BR/><BR/>it truly takes people desperate to believe to set aside all these things to try to maintain a belief in something with so much evidence pointing to the contraray.<BR/><BR/>----<BR/><BR/>it's like this... if you put a mouse, and 5 lit candles in an airtight opaque box and left it sealed for 1 hour, and you had 1 guy who was saying that when you opened the box, that the mouse would be transformed into a dove that would fly away when you opened the box... but had 9 other guys who each could explain to you exactly what would happen scientifically to the mouse, and could show you many other past experiments and evidence to back up their claims... definitely proved beyond any remotely reasonable doubt... would you still believe the 1 guy making these fantastic claims that were in direct contradiction to the known laws of science and nature? if we <I>know</I> that the candle flames consume oxygen, and that as soon as we sealed the box, the candles would quite rapidly burn off the remaining oxygen in the box and that the mouse would suffocate and die in a matter of minutes, so that when we opened the box, the candles would be extinguished, as would the life of the mouse and all we would get is probably a little bit of smoke... what exactly would it take to get us to believe the story about the dove? perhaps if there were 9 people who were trying to convince you of the dove story and only 1 citing all the scientific facts. or maybe there are other motivations to believe the dove story... such as that it takes your belief for it to happen, and if it does, then your prayers are carried to god by the dove and will be granted... or that belief in the dove is key to your eternal life, and without that belief you will die etc...<BR/><BR/>it's a matter of starting to address the psychological mechanisms that convince your mind to overlook the conflict with reality to achieve that belief. of starting to understand how and why people can believe things that would otherwise seem absurd in light of contrary evidence in almost every other facet of life.<BR/><BR/>I read a lot about science, history, archaeology, psychology, anthropology etc... many different fields... because they all grant insight into the way people work and how they think... and the more we understand, the more we can cross reference that knowledge and make deeper connections.<BR/><BR/>that's what this post was trying to convey. I'm just not the best at explaining things. :)JStressmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11093511297065444266noreply@blogger.com