Messages

I was definitely more interested in the psychological effects of patriarchy on men, I mean, being taught that 50% of people on the planet are inferior to you is gotta have some effect on your friendships and stuff :/

Also, this study looks like it could be pretty interesting when it's done:

http://bigboysdontcry.weebly.com/index.html

Well I can't argue with that, guess I'm just an optimist, I still think it could work either way :/

Maybe meaningless labels are the future

xx
edd

Some tools outlive their usefulness or are badly designed from the start. A bad tool might roughly serve a purpose but perform poorly or unexpectedly, damaging what it interacts with or even being prone to backlash.

Triple touche

I think the thing that has been bubbling in my brain for a while is that maybe the problem isn't with labels themselves, but with these particular labels and the way we use them.

I'm going to argue that, on account of people being pattern-seeking creatures, who are satisfied when a pattern has been established.  It's wired right into our brains.

Can't we say that labels are the descriptors that can be most immediately informative?

Or the most incompletely informative.

Double touche (imagine that's an acute e).

Or maybe not!  A lot of modern feminism/feminists that I've spoken with (just using feminism as an example cause I'm also reading the patriarchy thread) are big into trying to get media portrayal of women to be less misogynistic, and frankly, it should work because it uses the exact same processes of pattern-recognition that lead to misogyny and minority oppression in the first place.  Let's say for the sake of argument that media outlets started only writing homosexual characters.  Pretty quickly, the stereotype of homosexuality is gonna fall apart, 'cause lets face it, you can't have every character in every tv show as a overly camp caricature, it would be boring.

I think I'm gonna have trouble making this all fit together but what I'm trying to get at is that labels when used correctly could help to humanise/normalise minorities that some people try to oppress.  I think in that way I can see why it might be important for people to self-define as something, in order be like:

"Hey, I have this thing about me that's totally different to this thing about you, but look at all this other stuff that's actually kinda common ground"

Basically, yeah everyone is a human being, but when we live in an evironment where labels exist and are used negatively, one way of removing the oppressive power of the label is to use that same pattern-recognition wetware to illustrate how useless that pattern-recognition can be, or at least co-opt it.  Like in the "everyone is gay on TV" example above, in that situation it seems likely that characters would eventually have to be written in much the same way they are now, you know, as real(ish) people, which would eventually erode the previous stereotype.  Actually I'm being a bit kind to TV there.  I mean if all TV characters were gay and all TV shows were well written...  pretty unlikely huh?

Man I'm really bad at this :/  So if you allow a set of individuals to self-define under a label, it could, presumably, be used to lessen the negative stereotype of that label, by presenting facts contrary to the stereotypes prediction, which remain associated with the label, thereby making the stereotype seems less and less useful.

Maybe :/

As an aside, I'd say in many cases, something like romantic preferences can be a pretty big deal to people.  I mean, if you're a long-term monogamy kinda guy/gal, we're talking about the kind of person that you do or would like to spend a significant portion of your life with.  Obviously that isn't conveyed by orientation, but hopefully you see where I'm coming from?

xx

edd

Can't we say that labels are the descriptors that can be most immediately informative?

I mean, as far as language is concerned, labels = descriptors.  Clearly they are both sets of words that describe characteristics.  Are labels the broadest descriptors one might need to get an idea of where another person is coming from.  Are labels actually any different from descriptors as you're using it (I'd say they are exactly the same thing)?  Why have we made some descriptors more important than others and what might happen if that were changed?

xx

edd

I'd always kinda thought labels were more of a helpful prediction kinda thing.  Like, Garbo said in the OP "biped" is a pretty common label round here, and what I think might clarify that is to say something like:

If it makes sense to expect someone, labelled as a human being, to act similarly to other human beings you've met before, it might also might make sense to expect a similar correlation between other individuals with the same label.

In fact we can actually see that is true.  It is accurate to say that a heterosexual man displays romantic interest in women, this is likely true of all men who are (strictly) heterosexual.  But I think that's pretty self explanatory.  I think the obvious danger in labels has already been pointed out, which is when they are used as tribe-like identifiers instead of descriptors.  I think the thing that has been bubbling in my brain for a while is that maybe the problem isn't with labels themselves, but with these particular labels and the way we use them.

I mean, it would seem absurd to consider a hammer as inherently a bad thing that should always be rejected, just because it can be used to crush someones skull.  It's important to realise that stereotyping is going to keep happening, even unconsciously (anyone taken an Implicit Association Test recently?), maybe part of the answer to affecting positive social change isn't to deny that a process that happens anyway isn't happening, but to be more responsible in usages of stereotypes?  Group stereotypes have the power to aid oppression by creating an in-group and out-group, but, I think it's something I read here years ago:

"If you want to change a system you can't just tear it down, you have to build a better one."  (probably not completely accurate quote, but close)

xx

edd

the make-up was a one off thing, 'cause the EP art is all Day of the Dead themed, and that pic is from the launch.  Most folks seemed to enjoy it tho

Never heard Catherine Wheel, but thanks?  and yeah, we are pretty 90s I guess, for better or worse

xx

edd

I'm just gonna leave this here, along with some lame excuse about being busy recently...

www.soundcloud.com/themachiavellia

themachiavellia.co.uk

xx

edd

p.s.  and before you say it, yes, I know, there are tonnes of things that I'd have done differently with the mixing if I hadn't been rushed and tired.  But maybe say them anyway, to remind for next time

p.p.s.  physical EPs look like this (my face as an optional extra):

What Dreams May Come

Being John Malkovich...

re LMNO:

equal tempered tuning is where someone realised that your example was really impractical because when you derive your intervals using 3/2 ratio the second octave doesn't match up to the first?  So today the interval between semi-tones is 2^1/12 (or the twelth root of 2), which is mathematically perfect, but doesn't subscribe to the same logic that Western music had been using previously, which was largely built off greek traditions (where the 3/2 ratio came from), which only used one octave, so never had that problem.

There was another "fixed" tuning that basically applied a correction every octave, can't remember what it was called though, quite popular in the 15th century I believe

xx

If it's any help, the IQ test "intelligence" increasing if still cited by my lecturers (I can find a reference tomorrow).  Think it's about 6 points every decade (maybe less).

Re:  defining intelligence, dictionary works just fine I guess.  IQ tests though are specifically related to "academic" intelligence, they were originally developed to test the effectiveness of teaching I believe.  I think its a very vague term personally, I mean, the defining factor in someones intelligence could be something like the speed of synapse firing/ratios of neurotransmitter, which then allows faster cognitive function, and then it comes down to whether you measure intelligence as the thing causing those increased cognitive functions or the functions themselves.

That's not totally out of the blue either, some study on the correlation (positive) between running speed and intelligence, possibly to do with synaptic fire rate (could also be to do with loads of other factors mind), something else for me to dig up tomorrow

xx

edd

p.s.  now stop distracting me from my essay on blindsight

I do pretty much agree, though there has been some pretty awesome progress in the last 70-100 years, but not usually by people who get much celebrity status (read as:  Freud is the best and worst thing to happen to psychology).  In cognitive psychology there is quite a lot of more "concrete" science (if that makes sense) going on.

I think the main hurdle is the absurd level of complexity of brains.  Although it is sometimes easier to model psychological phenomena than say physical or chemical, they must necessarily be more complex.  I think there are hell of a lot more variables that you have to consider with a psychological experiment, not only that but a huge part of human behaviour is socially based, which makes it even easier to fall into kind of woolly science, as it is basically impossible to test that kind of thing in a lab.

Basically, yeah it's still fledgling, but I think a lot is because the phenomena it is attempting to study are (in my opinion) even more complex than the other sciences it is built on.

Just had a thought while I was writing this also, culture are environment affect cognition, so it could be that even the most basic foundations can/will change over time.  Which is really incredibly unhelpful   There was an article I skimmed recently about Facebook use and Dunbar's number (which is the upper limit on the size of a primate social group, correlated with neocortex size, and 150 in humans at the time it was written (70's I believe)).  Basically what I gleaned from it (and I admit, I wasn't looking at it as critically as I should have) was that well, you know those people who have 1000+ "friends" on Facebook, and you just think, there is no way they can possibly be actually friends with 1000+ people?  Well, you can't, but there was a positive correlation between No. Facebook "friends", the size of an area of the brain (hopefully) related to keeping track of social groups (unsurprising), and the size of their actual social group (somewhat surprising), and that those individuals with extremely high numbers of Facebook "friends" also had social groups larger than predicted by Dunbar (more surprising).

Anyway, I'm sure most of you can see the flaws in that experiment straight off, just think it's interesting, the idea that brain function is modulated by technology and culture, and the implications that has for people trying to study the brain (how much can we rely on past evidence, what kinds of things are modulated by culture that we need to watch out for, what kind of time frame can those changes occur within, what constants are there if any?  There probably are constants, btw)

Yup, think that's all I've got for now,

xx

edd

is this better or worse than...  Quantum LEAPING!

xx

did you tie the string to your finger everyday?

I did something similar when I was cutting back on Things that Will Make Me Dead Faster intake a few months back, but I'd just write "Get Well Soon" on the back of my hand every morning.

I actually found this was really effective in getting me to think about what I was eating/drinking/smoking, and the other thing is that with something like that it's not just you that has to notice.  You're reminded every time you meet someone new, it's bound to come up in conversation, even with people who know what you're doing, they seem to remind you every time they notice as well.  The icing on the cake, is that (probably cause it's quite a novel behavior) friends and co-workers also notice when you forget to write it on!

As soon as read what you'd posted I thought I could start writing "Watch Yourself" on my hand, but maybe you should try it

Mommy...

My little friends say that Hide and Seek isn't a real Christmas present.

Why haven't you found me yet?