Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 20:08
Quote Posted by DDL
If they also did it with tigers, and with....eh, naked mole rats, and...giant deep sea isopods, and all gave the same results, you might have an argument, but "being an animal" is not a terribly deterministic criterion. I'll read more later when I have time, but take it from me: mice are behaviourally WORLDS apart from humans, and even from rats. Mice are absolutely a prey species, rats are opportunistic scavengers, and we're effectively a ballsy apex predator. It makes a difference.
Read further into one of those articles and found a quote that's relevant.
Quote:
Finally, a related study found a possible key difference in human reactions to population density
compared to animals. In animal studies, pathology appears to increase in a linear way as a direct result of
increased density: as one increases the other increases. However, a study by Regoeczi (2002) found that for
humans, the effect of household population density on social withdrawal and aggression actuallydecreased
as thenumber of people in a single household increased. However, this effect was only observed until the number of
people exceeded the total number of rooms; very much beyond that, the antisocial effects begin to appear with
increasing density. In other words when living conditions are such that, say, 5 people occupy a 3-
room apartmentor 7 people are squeezed into a 4-room house, the tendency for people to withdraw and/or di
splay moreaggression increases. Two possible causes may be at work here. Either density is causing the pathology, or
people who are more withdrawn or more aggressive end up in less crowded living situations, by choice or by
ostracism, respectively.
Also keep in mind that "humans are a predator" is a common misconception. Humans are behavioral predators, not biological ones. In addition to the information in this article note that most of the species genetically related to humans rely on a diet that is mostly plant based with a small amount of animal protein in the form of scavenging and/or catching non-vertebrates.
(
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/shattering-the-meat-myth_b_214390.html) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/shattering-the-meat-myth_b_214390.html
DDL on 15/8/2014 at 20:35
I think I'm falling in love with you, sulph.
Tony, all those behaviours are normal for rats & mice in captivity. They're usually minimised by housing them in small numbers (but not alone -that's also bad), but they still occur. Cannibalism in rodents isn't just normal, it's a perfectly rational survival behaviour. Hell, getting hamsters to NOT eat all their babies is actually a challenge (hamsters are terrible mothers). Cage three or four male rats or mice together and one of them will often start humping the others: it's basic dominance behaviour. Cage them in larger numbers and they'll fight, THEN start humping the losers. So....you don't cage them in large numbers.
None of this has any real relevance to people, it's simply "if you stuff a bucketload of rodents into a small space, it will be bad", something we already know. It's a totally horrible experiment designed to facilitate suffering, and it's of very, very limited scientific use, and you'd never get this shit past the home office in this country at least.
People are evolutionarily tribal animals, and we're still basically tribal animals. Most studies of people have found that the numbers of close friends/family, wider circle of friends, and known associates tends to the same rough breakdown of numbers, capping out at around 150. No matter how many facebook friends you have, or twitter followers, or whatever the fuck the younglings are doing this days (snapchat cockshots?), the amount of people you actually KNOW is still small, and the amount of people you REALLY know (close friends) is smaller still. And seems to conform to the sort of approximate sizes early human tribal groups would've taken. Even if half of your close friends are in different countries and you only know them through a forum or whatever, it doesn't change this basic structure.
Society hasn't really changed our instincts, fundamentally, and packing a bucketload of people together in close proximity simply means we...ignore all those that aren't relevant to us. Walk around london or new york or tokyo (dear jesus, tokyo) and see how much eye contact is going on. We don't jump to stabbing and raping each other when we're packed together, we just tune out people we don't know, maybe with a friendly nod just to confirm that all is well and that mutual tuning out is fine.
AAAAANYWAY, before we get ahead of ourselves, how sure are we that mental illness is
A) on the rise, and
B) on the rise faster, specifically in america?
Which kind of mental illnesses are we talking about? And identified how? Are we simply getting better at spotting them? Are people simply no longer feeling the need to hide them? I'm genuinely interested, by the way, because a lot of the sort of "well everybody knows X and Y are on the increase" statements turn out to be entirely untrue, because they're based on media perception rather than statistics. Most papers over here would happily have you believe that you can't walk more than 20 feet before you're stabbed by a hoodie-wearing asbo-teen who'll then make a vine of it, but in fact violent crime is both very rare, and also slowly but steadily decreasing.
We need some reliable numbers before we can start making hypotheses, and dear jesus we don't need any more "throw 80 rats in a bucket and film the results" experiments.
EDIT: re "vegetarianism is great, says vegan polemicist"...really? That's your balanced scientific article? "Meat eaters have higher incidences of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other problems". They're also usually stronger, healthier and less anaemic (also, usually less fucking evangelical) than vegans, in the years when it really counts (fighting, fucking and raisin' babby). Back when we were more primitive, meat was rare, certainly, but also AWESOME. This is why we still think it's awesome, even though it's no longer rare.
I'm also not sure about the relevance of "predisposition to long-term health conditions" in any evolutionary comparisons when we all live just fucktons longer than our ancestors. Cancer may be exacerbated by meat, but it's basically caused by still not being dead from something else.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/8/2014 at 20:51
For Robin William's age group, the answer is yes:
Inline Image:
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/images/suicidestats/both_sexes_figure_4a.gifFor the larger population I'm having a hard time finding rates for clinical depression. Any chance you could look? I won't have time until later tonight or Sunday. I DID find one that demonstrates that beginning in teenage years, rates of depression are sharply divergent with higher rates in males. As far as by region:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_mental_disorders)
Quote:
The United States, Colombia, the Netherlands and Ukraine tended to have higher prevalence estimates across most classes of disorder, while Nigeria, Shanghai and Italy were consistently low, and prevalence was lower in Asian countries in general. Cases of disorder were rated as mild (prevalence of 1.8%-9.7%), moderate (prevalence of 0.5%-9.4%) and serious (prevalence of 0.4%-7.7%)
Here's some additional information: (
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1653802/)
Quote:
People are evolutionarily tribal animals, and we're still basically tribal animals. Most studies of people have found that the numbers of close friends/family, wider circle of friends, and known associates tends to the same rough breakdown of numbers, capping out at around 150. No matter how many facebook friends you have, or twitter followers, or whatever the fuck the younglings are doing this days (snapchat cockshots?), the amount of people you actually KNOW is still small, and the amount of people you REALLY know (close friends) is smaller still. And seems to conform to the sort of approximate sizes early human tribal groups would've taken. Even if half of your close friends are in different countries and you only know them through a forum or whatever, it doesn't change this basic structure.
The new thing is "sex selfies" actually, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Understood. On a tangent, look up something called the "monkeysphere". It's a collequial hypothesis that explains how people can do terrible things that impact thousands of people, but feel no significant remorse. Those other people were outside that group of 150 and thus the person who harmed them feels no emotional connection.
Quote:
We don't jump to stabbing and raping each other when we're packed together, we just tune out people we don't know, maybe with a friendly nod just to confirm that all is well and that mutual tuning out is fine.
I'm not entirely sure about the first part.....although without a doubt societal conditioning plays a huge role in whether that behavior actually emerges. What I saw in Louisiana circa 2005(I was working in federal environmental compliance there at the time) would incline me to say that your statement is incorrect but then I remember hearing that similar disasters in Japan were handled in a very orderly fasion.
As far as tuning out unwanted social interactions, the answer is a "maybe". My own bout with depression was triggered in no small part by a toxic office culture, caused by leadership that was equally toxic. Simply "tuning out" those social interactions wasn't an option. It's frequently not a viable option in toxic work, living, or personal situations for a variety of reasons.
Either way, we've got a working hypothesis. Let's see if we can establish anything to support or disprove it.
Yakoob on 15/8/2014 at 22:30
Quote Posted by icemann
I'm genuinely interested, by the way, because a lot of the sort of "well everybody knows X and Y are on the increase" statements turn out to be entirely untrue, because they're based on media perception rather than statistics.
Exactly, that's how I feel. I don't think the world is getting any "shittier" or "more doomed," we just have more media and outlets to bring the horrible to our attention. The inreased population also gives more chances for the horrible incidents to occur, but I don't think the over % is necessarily higher.
That being said, I think Tony DOES have a point - overcrowding definitely does not feel comfortable. No it might not make us jump on and cannibalize our friends (some of mine do have some delicious looking chops tho I must say), but it definitely can add to overall stress and anxiety. It's just one of the many compounding factors IMHO.
faetal on 15/8/2014 at 22:35
I think I'm beginning to understand TOny's thought process:
Make assumption
Type keywords for assumption into google
Post supporting results in TTLG
You do realise that the primary reason that (I assume) DDL and I get so exasperated isn't because we're assholes that are out to get you because we're funded by Marxist Science Pinkos International or whatever, it's because we have both undergone almost a decade of training in how to determine information from reliable sources while eliminating bias. You haven't had this training and while some people can be good at this without it by, oh I don't know, logical deduction or just reading about what constitutes good research, it really shows that you haven't. It seems like if you can find some text somewhere which agrees with your assumptions, that means the assumptions are true (which you knew all along anyway hey?), whereas as anyone who understands how research works can tell you, you can always find articles to support pretty much any notion, so you have to look at more than the sources which back you up, or you're being intellectually dishonest.
The way this is overcome is best exemplified by Cochrane meta-analysis and systematic reviews - they look at all of the studies which fit the inclusion criteria and weight them, based on sample size, quality of experimental design and strength of results. At the end, you get a balance of what's out there weighted by rigour and a conclusion which is probably the smartest one to support. Case in point - homoeopathy: there are countless published papers in support of homoeopathy, but they are by and large of poor design, not properly blinded etc.. there are even graphs showing a direct inverse correlation between the quality of the studies and the amount they support homoeopathy. Thus there are no systematic reviews which support homoeopathy. This brings us back to you - you quite obviously are not reviewing the balance of what's out there and treading carefully around these issues, you are just making a bee-line for the first publication you find which supports the Tony Manifesto. This is best exhibited when you do things like ignore the more descriptive results someone else posts from peer reviewed literature which contradicts your views - you just flat out pretend it wasn't mentioned and you reach straight for the next thing which can support your views. So rather than taking the point of large comparative study which showed that NFP was a shit method of contraception (apologies mods for thread bleed), you posted your own which focussed solely on NFP in a very controlled situation. A bullshit response (which is kind of your M.O.).
TL;DR - learn to research or stop acting like you already can.
Yakoob on 15/8/2014 at 22:57
Quote Posted by faetal
whereas as anyone who understands how research works can tell you, you can always find articles to support pretty much any notion, so you have to look at more than the sources which back you up, or you're being intellectually dishonest.
Which is, frankly, why I've been growing to completely distrust any kind of science-based findings or research about psychology or human health. Each time I dig deeper I just arrive at the conclusion that no one really knows what the fak, and waiting a few years is enough to completely undo many "proven" claims.
faetal on 15/8/2014 at 23:06
That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As I said, reviews and systematic reviews address this. If science as a whole is not working, why do we have such great advances in the technology it uncovers? All research isn't equal and meta-analysis takes this into account. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother having a career in it.
Yakoob on 15/8/2014 at 23:48
Oh I'm not disagreeing it works, and not dismissing your work - our species has definitely developed phenomenally thanks to it. But I think the science you do (if my memory serves right) is more intricate and structured than, say, psychological surveys or clinical food trials. Again I'm referring more to the countless mental health and nutrition research extrapolating that XYZ is bad for us because it killed a few rats, or that insufficient cake causes depression because a bunch of people in a poorly structured study in Iowa said so.
I'm not dismissing the real knowledge there, but it just seems you have to plow through the ever-increasing mounds of confusion, political/economic bias and media sensationalism to really get the truth. And while it makes sense for you to pursue your career in the studies that interest you and yield tangible products/improvements, I don't really want to dedicate half my career just to figure out which part of my burger will give me cancer in ten years.
(I also had some grumbling experience with the world of political academia, but I think we're already going off-tangent at this point. So just call me jaded :p )
Tony_Tarantula on 16/8/2014 at 00:21
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Oh I'm not disagreeing it works, and not dismissing your work - our species has definitely developed phenomenally thanks to it. But I think the science you do (if my memory serves right) is more intricate and structured than, say, psychological surveys or clinical food trials. Again I'm referring more to the countless mental health and nutrition research extrapolating that XYZ is bad for us because it killed a few rats, or that insufficient cake causes depression because a bunch of people in a poorly structured study in Iowa said so.
That's an inherent difficult when we're dealing with subjective, mostly psychological issues. Without the ability to monitor the brainwaves of everyone involved it's extremely difficult to establish a direct, linear causation in regards to psychological issues. There is also an issue in that a lot of these issues play out over the course of decades....and there isn't any reasonable way to keep people under controlled conditions for that long so it can be extremely difficult to isolate something as a definitive cause.
My background is one that's more socio-economic. When we're dealing with events on a meta-level it is for all intents and purposes impossible to isolate and control for specific variables the way can in "laboratory" sciences. As a result the approach is somewhat different: gather as much data as is reasonably possible and mine the data for any patterns that can be discerned.
Kolya on 16/8/2014 at 05:17
But you started with a hypothesis instead of looking for patterns.
