Michael McMahon

“Overdetermination occurs when a single-observed effect is determined by multiple causes, any one of which alone would be sufficient to account for ("determine") the effect. That is, there are more causes present than are necessary to cause the effect.” - Wikipedia We never consciously choose to get physically weaker with old age. There are many theories on ageing. Might some aspects of muscle ageing be unconsciously or even neurologically initiated? To be pessimistic, everyone’s heart could be termed a ticking time bomb since when it eventually stops beating we may die of a heart attack. Maybe the body compensates by deliberately slowing itself down to conserve energy. Though there might also be other factors for the decline in strength. Exercise is indeed always good but we don’t want to overexert ourselves too much when we get older. “Technically, there is really no reason that the human body should "wear out," as long as it can repair and renew itself. Therefore, something other than time must be at play to cause the inevitable effects of aging. The programmed theory of aging asserts that aging and death are necessary parts of evolution, not of biology.” https://www.verywellhealth.com/programmed-theories-of-aging-2224226

“A devil’s advocate is a person who takes the contrary view only for the purpose of debate, one who tests the strength of an argument through lively opposition. A person who plays the devil’s advocatedoes so in order to expose weak points in a philosophy and therefore examine a matter more thoroughly. A devil’s advocate is not trying to “win” an argument, he is attempting to examine a problem from all sides.” - grammarist web page The psychological intensity of pain can sometimes have a greater deterrence effect than the motivating reward of happiness. So maybe the subconscious mind could play the role of devil’s advocate in certain mental illnesses. Involuntary pain can cause uncertainty in the sense that it’s subjectively unclear how long it will last for. There isn’t a definitive timeline as to when it will end. Being able to withstand an irrational fear of the pain being permanent may indirectly give you the resilience to overcome pain of intermediate duration. The feeling of pain isn’t always connected to the actual source of the pain: “Referred pain, also called reflective pain, is pain perceived at a location other than the site of the painful stimulus. An example is the case of angina pectoris brought on by a myocardial infarction (heart attack), where pain is often felt in the neck, shoulders, and back rather than in the thorax (chest), the site of the injury.” - Wikipedia So maybe the nihilistic despair in an illness like depression could be the subconscious mind’s way of emotionally stress testing your conscious mind’s beliefs and values. “Catastrophic thinking can be defined as ruminating about irrational, worst-case outcomes. Needless to say, it can increase anxiety and prevent people from taking action in a situation where action is required. This can be especially true in a crisis situation... Catastrophic thinking needs to be managed, not discounted. There is often much to be learned from these persistent negative thoughts that may relate to old beliefs and core values that may drive emotional reactions and generate fear. These "icebergs," as Seligman refers to them, need to be examined to determine how meaningful, accurate, and useful they are to the individual in the present situation they are confronting. Flexibility in being able to question and change these beliefs and values is often the key to managing catastrophic thinking.” - Psychology Today

“It's not that complicated. We hate them because they're threatening and ugly.” - drumbo But then why don’t people find sharp objects creepy? Jagged rocks could trip you over and blades can be used as weapons. They’d be far more threatening in an evolutionary sense. Yet spiders can somehow have a slightly frightening effect. We don’t find smaller insects like flies creepy as they can be easily dismissed as automata. But the larger the spider, the scarier it can be for a few people. I don’t think anyone would be afraid of a lifelike robot spider. So I imagine the fear of spiders comes from misplaced sense of empathy with animals and pets. It goes awry when we apply it to more peculiar species. https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/tech-support/201501/3-things-being-cat-person-or-dog-person-reveals-about-you%3famp “The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent.” “Some scientists believe that the belief in creator gods is an evolutionary by-product of agent detection. A spandral is a non-adaptive trait formed as a side effect of an adaptive trait. The psychological trait in question is "if you hear a twig snap in the forest, some sentient force is probably behind it". This trait helps to prevent the primate from being murdered or eaten as food. However this hypothetical trait could remain in modern humans: thus some evolutionary psychologists theorize that "even if the snapping was caused by the wind, modern humans are still inclined to attribute the sound to a sentient agent; they call this person a god". - Wikipedia “All of their answers had one underlying theme, one unifying factor that made the person or situation creepy: the presence of an ambiguous threat. Not something frightening or strange, mind you. A killer on the loose is frightening -- there's no ambiguity in the potential danger there. And your nerdy, socially awkward cousin may be strange, but he's harmless, and therefore not creepy. Creepiness is a function of uncertainty. In a paper he wrote with undergraduate psychology student Sara Koehnke, McAndrews explains, "It is our belief that creepiness is anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether there is something to fear or not, and/or by the ambiguity of the precise nature of the threat (e.g., sexual, physical violence, contamination, etc)." - KQED

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/michael-johnson-says-slavery-descendants-run-faster-because-155858303--oly.html I think one slight limitation of this idea is that white people have also been enslaved in history: “The Mongol invasions and conquests in the 13th century added a new force in the slave trade. The Mongols enslaved skilled individuals, women and children and marched them to Karakorum or Sarai, whence they were sold throughout Eurasia.” - Wikipedia Yet this doesn’t seem to have conferred any sizeable athletic advantage in Eurasia. I’m not trying to be flippant but a lot of slave labour doesn’t seem to have been directly related to steady-state cardio exercise. So while the awful work would have been severely demanding and painful, I’m not sure if its interval or agricultural nature could be comparable in form to a race such as a marathon. The slaves would have been malnourished and sadly lived in very poor conditions. Perhaps having an awareness of past historic crimes might give individuals within the black community an extra psychological resilience that may indirectly contribute to athletic perseverance. “Dark-colored materials both absorb and emit energy more readily than light-colored materials.” - exploratorium page Putting on a white or black T-shirt mightn’t make a huge difference in body temperature on a warm day. But skin colour is permanent. So over many years can the heat radiation differences between white and black skin have a gradual effect? So if black skin were marginally better at emitting metabolic heat during an exercise, could this have an incremental beneficial impact on athletic performance over many years? “The nighttime temperatures in the Sahara Desert range from 60 F to 70 F during the height of the summer down to sub-freezing temperatures from December into February. The temperature difference in the Sahara Desert from the high point during the day to the low point at night is as great as 70 F during certain times of the year.” - “reference” website Maybe black skin would be more resistant to the large temperature range between night and day in certain parts of Africa.

I don’t think openly allowing suicide would increase the current suicide rate. It would just have a palliative affect on those who have unfortunately lost hope and have decided that they can’t live any longer. Heavily relying on involuntary admissions could deter other people from trying to get help in case they too become confined to the hospital. The detainment can be well-intentioned, particularly when a patient might have low self-awareness. But we must be mindful not to excessively depend on it as the loss of freedom may adversely affect self-stigmatisation among patients. The toleration of suicide may counter-intuitively reduce the materialising of that event. This is because we often procrastinate. This is bad when it comes to homework. But in the context of suicidal ideation it would obviously be very good. It might give the patient peace of mind that they can end their life if the pain exceeds the threshold that they can tolerate. This may possibly prevent them from getting overwhelmed to the point that they actually try to die. So it could paradoxically give the patient more time and energy to battle their mental illness.

“Their meanings were slightly different at the time Austen was writing. Pride or being proud was usually not a positive trait. Whereas today people tend to speak of being proud of hard work or some sort of accomplishment, in Austen’s time, being proud usually meant someone thought he or she was better than other people or was not open to interacting with different kinds of people. Prejudice tended to mean having a set idea about someone that was based on assumptions or preconceptions, rather than a person’s actual actions and characters. Today, prejudice may mean making judgments about someone based on, for example, their race or religion. But in Austen’s time, prejudice was usually more about basing judgments on reputation, gossip, or misunderstood actions.” -sparknotes Yes I agree that occasionally people can read too much into it. Pride and humility are very blunt and imprecise adjectives. An individual can be very proud about one accomplishment and extremely humble about another area in their life. So we shouldn’t divide the world’s population in terms of these traits.

Pride and humility don’t have to contradict each other in the sense that one can also be proud of other people they meet in life. You don’t necessarily have to be proud of only yourself. There can sometimes perhaps be benefit in living vicariously. https://www.live-adventurously.com/why-live-vicariously/ There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your own country for instance. But a slight collective and general humility among its citizens could promote tolerance and appreciation for other cultures. https://medium.com/@wesodonnell/patriotism-vs-nationalism-whats-the-difference-5e23db662a3 Even if someone finds a particular person tiring they could still welcome them in small doses! There’s no limit on how many friends or acquaintances one can have.

“FAITH, hope and love: these are the cardinal human virtues. They also define a now deeply unfashionable concept: manliness. And since we can, quite rightly, no longer use the crude force of a pagan taboo as a control over people's lives, then we must extol the positive, especially the moral concept that is the most noble of them all. Not for me, or you, or us, but for others; the concept that conveys faith, hope and love, which together go by that very simple and very male word, "duty".” - Kevin Myers https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-suicide-is-self-murder-and-must-remain-taboo-26798158.html “Suicide spreads when people feel authorised to opt for it, and when they have lost the will to remain alive. The second part is less important than the first part. Most people wish they were dead at some time or other in their lives. It is the culture of authorisation that translates a possibly temporary indifference to life into a decisive and final action which can be a key factor in the spread of suicide. The more people hear of suicides, the more suicides will follow. And the emotive, non-judgmental, godless culture that has emerged in recent years rules out the use of taboo as a social influence on society generally. If anything, nowadays, a suicide will receive a larger funeral than a cancer victim. So what impact does the sight of a huge funeral have on a depressed person who feels that life is not worth living, and they are a burden to others? Will their own death not merely end all their misery? And their funeral will then serve as a paradoxical affirmation of how important they really were: yes, well, the point is that suicide is not a rational choice.” - Kevin Myers https://www.google.ie/amp/s/amp.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-as-a-society-we-seem-paralysed-by-suicide-26810287.html Stoicism: “the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.” Machismo: “strong or aggressive masculine pride.” Whether one cries and wails or is instead equanimous, the mere experience of pain itself in both instances is a sign of humility and the recognition that you’re not omnipotent. It’s easy to seem calm and relaxed when your not currently in any pain or living an idle rich lifestyle! If you’re able to withstand pain with steely perseverance; then that’s obviously great for you. But it’s still perfectly acceptable when someone needs to be more expressive about the pain they’re in order to get help. If stoicism is to be seen as a sign of humility and helpfulness, then it would be contradictory to be patronisingly proud of it. Suicide should be discouraged primarily because it’s extremely sad that the victim would miss out on the rest of their life. I understand arguments about the grief of relatives and parental suicide which, while clearly important, is nonetheless secondary to the wellbeing of the individual themselves. At the end of the day, people don’t exist in life to appease others no matter how much they like each other. Historical cases of sacrificing one’s life and martyrdom are brave precisely because they freely choose to do so and it wasn’t actually owed to anyone. Dying of terminal illness is very brave because of how much more aware they are of their mortality and impending death. But obviously everyone will eventually die and no one is immortal. Suicide doesn’t conflict with stoicism per se as it’s conceivable to kill oneself without displaying any emotion. Opting to have an anaesthetic during heart surgery shouldn’t be seen as taking the easy way out. https://www.totalhealth.co.uk/blog/can-you-have-surgery-without-anaesthetic

drumbo: “Good luck convincing people.” “Expected Loss — estimated loss frequency multiplied by estimated loss severity, summed for all exposures.” - irmi A perpetrator’s low risk of recidivism is rightfully a big mitigating factor. But there is another aspect to consider besides their risk of reoffending (failure probability); namely the severity of the crime that they might be capable of committing if they ever deteriorated and carried out another crime (damage related to the failure). So I think both variables are important in the context of rehabilitation. There is an enormous difference between a serial thief being released only to subsequently steal than there is a person who killed someone being released from jail and committing murder again. “The formulation "risk = probability (of a disruption event) x loss (connected to the event occurrence)" is a measure of the expected loss connected with something (i.e., a process, a production activity, an investment...) subject to the occurrence of the considered disruption event. It is a way to quantify risks...You may also rephrase as "risk = failure probability x damage related to the failure".” - researchgate

A consideration with chronic pain is that relatively speaking, humans evolved to be physically weak. The endurance running hypothesis attests to how slow humans are compared to animals. We’re not optimised for sprints or gallops but more for longevity and stamina. It’s not a 100 meter race we compete in but possibly a slow 80 or 90 year race against the ageing process. People like Usain Bolts are immensely inspiring precisely because they are the exception that proves the rule; we can’t beat a cheetah! ”Humans, other great apes and bears are among the few animals that step first on the heel when walking, and then roll onto the ball of the foot and toes. Now, a new study shows the advantage: Compared with heel-first walking, it takes 53 percent more energy to walk on the balls of your feet, and 83 percent more energy to walk on your toes.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100212092304.htm No matter how much we try to forefoot strike while sprinting, we’ll never be as efficient as digitigrade wolves and canines! “Broadly stated the problem of bipedal locomotion is centered on the need to rotate the pelvis in the horizontal plane. To do so would require a muscular system laid out in the horizontal plane. But the layout in the human anatomy is such that the majority of the muscles run parallel to the spine, like the erectores, or hip extensors and hamstrings. Direct action of these muscles does not result in efficient pelvic rotation in the horizontal plane. The mechanism by which such rotations are achieved is one of the core concepts of the spinal engine theory.” https://wdced.com/2015/12/body-physics-the-spinal-engine/ The gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the body. But, along with the hip flexors, this muscle is very close to the hip joint and so they don’t have good leverage. The calf muscles on the lower legs are far away from hip joint and consequently have great leverage. Yet they are very small muscles in comparison to the hamstrings or glutes for instance. So human bipedal morphology isn’t great for generating and sustaining massive speeds like a quadruped. These creatures can capitalise on increased stride length and frequency with reduced ground contact time due to their forelegs. The human body instead seemingly relies on indirect postural movements of the upper body and arm swing to exploit gluteal power at slower speeds.

“Be cruel to be kind” - From Shakespeare 's Hamlet: act towards someone in a way which seems harsh but will ultimately be of benefit. Rehabilitation is of critical importance. But rehabilitation and punishment are not contradictory or mutually exclusive. The concept of rehabilitation most certainly forbids any disproportionate vengeance. But the justice system must impress upon people who commit evil actions the wrongness of their crimes. The following link is a logical extreme which doesn’t in any way disprove rehabilitation. But it does show that rehabilitation is not synonymous with undue leniency. Where multiple lives are lost, long term use of restraints such as leg cuffs and handcuffs are necessary to further confine them. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0420/Anders-Breivik-Can-Norway-be-too-humane-to-a-terrorist

Yes. I very much agree with the concept of rehabilitation. We have to be forgiving. I just think if the crime is particularly extreme or if the perpetrator is still remorseless, then confinement in jail may be necessary to ensure and validate that they have changed their ways and have become peaceful. As a last resort, time in jail can instill in some criminals the immorality of their crime by a process of backward reasoning: they have lost their freedom so they may eventually conclude that they have done something wrong. As soon as they reach that conclusion we can let them re-enter society. It goes without saying that criminals should always be treated humanely by society irrespective of the severity of the crime they committed. They should all be free to avail of psychological help and counselling so that they can recover. I agree that society should foster a merciful attitude in the court system while also acknowledging the pain of the victims and the need for public safety. I was just making the point that any discrepancy and large variation in jail time for similar crimes owing to provocation would be unfair. The provocation defence has been used not only by criminals but also in unethical cases of excessive self defence and vigilantism which is equally as bad. Taken to its logical conclusion, spur of the moment excuses would condone duelling and blood feuds.

I suppose it’s the empathetic tone of an apology; that they’re able to say what actions they were responsible for, why what they did was wrong and that they’re sorry.

Enforcing precedence might lead to more consistent, fair and proportionate sentencing. We must avoid harsh sentences without being too unduly lenient. We cannot be vengeful. I think provocation and spur of the moment defences undermine precedence as it’s no longer about the objective facts of the case. It instead emphasises subjective whims and enraged emotions which are unverifiable. We don’t have thoughtcrimes! Repentance must obviously be taken into account and is certainly a mitigating factor. We must clearly be sympathetic to perpetrators who were suffering from mental illness at the time of the crime. Although I don’t reckon it’s fully exculpatory as they could have tried to alert people before they acted on any violent thoughts. “A precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.” - Wikipedia

It’s interesting to note that some of the most intimidating specimens are in fact not too harmful: “Compared to common pets such as dogs, tarantulas are not dangerous at all.“ - https://www.burkemuseum.org/collections-and-research/biology/arachnology-and-entomology/spider-myths/myth-tarantulas-are Mind you, I don’t think I’ll be queuing up to buy one of these pets any day soon!

https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-are-we-afraid-of-spiders-26405 I’ve been wondering a small bit about the irrational fear evoked by spiders and snakes. Some people say there may be an evolutionary component to it as a few of these creatures can potentially be deadly. But our visceral response to them seems to be far more excessive than the actual threat they would have posed throughout human evolution. Humans obviously have a limited capacity to empathise with animals. We can anthropomorphise our pets and we might admire animals in the zoo. But as the philosopher Thomas Nagal pointed out, “What is it Like to be a Bat?”. In other words what is the sentience of these creatures like? They can’t just be inanimate robots as they display complex behaviour. Perhaps they live in a barely self-aware oneiric sort of existence that will be forever unknown to us. Some exotic creatures may possess a mind so “alien” to ours that it becomes repulsive when we try to project a degree of consciousness onto it. So might the creepiness of spiders and snakes be more of our instinctive reaction to their unfathomable psychology rather than the actual biology of them?

guidoLamoto: “Chronic pain involves the ongoing stimulation of nerves-- chronic arthritis or a broken bone, for example.“ There are indeed physical correlations to certain painful sensations. But sometimes unfortunately chronic pain can be invisible; it can only be observed through a person’s behaviour. Consciousness isn’t entirely reductionistic. Chronic pain is of course a very real illness as it would be incredibly difficult to consistently feign anxiety.

Maybe aspects of chronic pain might be a subconscious response to try to counteract death anxiety: https://www.psychology.org.au/for-members/publications/inpsych/2018/December-Issue-6/Death-anxiety-The-worm-at-the-core-of-mental-heal

If one accidentally falls off a ladder, they're not guilty of negligence and endangerment because they are the only victim. So it makes no sense to imply that suicide victims committed anything.

Solipsism would lead to loneliness and isolation. I don't think it's selfish.

Solipsism Syndrome is "a psychological state in which a person feels that reality is not external to his or her mind". But is derealization/depersonalization related to this source of anxiety? Do they exist on a spectrum? People who suffer from derealization say that they feel like they are in a dream. But what does that mean? Dreams obviously happen inside your own head. Therefore if you are in a dream, no one else exists. In a sense we can never know what another person is thinking. We can only infer they are conscious from their behaviour. So is derealization, with symptoms like perceptual and emotional abnormalities, a result of anxiety-induced solipsism?

Even if there are copycat suicides, they'd be in a small minority compared to those who die of mental illness. It does not justify ostracising victims.

But there's a lot we don't understand about the mind. We can't control a lot of our subconscious such as the sensation of colour. Similarly we're not in complete control of our emotions. Mental illness seems to be deceptive. Depression, for instance, may delude the person into thinking everything is meaningless. They can't remember being happy. I think it's important not to be harsh when their beliefs, memory and thoughts might be impaired.

Well how does one person dying by suicide encourage others to do the same? What's the mechanism? Everyone knows what suicide is, so why would not reporting it result in less suicides? As I've said before suicide must be very painful so only those with severe pain would attempt it.

"But a healthy dose of social pressure, judgment, and yes, honest vocal expressions of genuine moral disgust and anger at those who actually commit suicide, is also necessary. Without it, we send a clear signal, no matter how well meant: “It’s OK. In the end, we’ll understand. Maybe we will even think you were more complex than the rest of us.” " - Boris Zelkin What exactly do you mean by contagion? It's important not to let any concept get hijacked by those intent on stigmatising suicide like the one above.