Ringer

Shouldn't this be in the ethics section? Anyway, are you talking about only first cousins or distant cousins as well. The only problem I see with marrying a close cousin, or any close relative, is that it increases the chances of any genetic defect within a families gene pool to have a chance to become phenotypic. The aversion towards marriage, or sexual relations, within a family do seem to come to us quite naturally. It has been hypothesized that we become averse to relations with who we tend to be brought up with (some people believe that Freud's ideas stemmed from an attraction to his mother, since she wasn't his primary care giver he developed some sexual feelings toward her). This is thought to be natures way of diversifying, because why have sexual reproduction if not for diversification?

All of this just shows a profound ignorance of evolutionary theory. Come back when you know what you are arguing

Abiogenesis is not evolutionary theory, as such it should not be in any conversation regarding your faith in evolution. In what ways do you think that early earth was hostile to early life? If it has to do with oxidation in our current atmosphere, the level of Oxygen was dramatically lower before photosynthesis started processing it. There have been quite a few experiments to show that organic molecules could have easily been created on early Earth. Although the probability of them combining to an organism is low it is still possible, and indeed obviously happened. As to your belief that reproduction and sex couldn't happen without a god, read some theories on that because my explaining it would be useless if you have no prior understanding of how these things work. Why would mollusks need better eyes? Evolution doesn't work just because it might make an improvement. It is not a conscious being that thinks, "hey I know how I could improve this!" Actually your mollusk example refutes a creator/designer more than it disproves evolution. Why would a designer make an animal with crappy eyes? Evolution embodies the good enough way of doing things. If the animal survives and reproduces than its job is done. Even though this is logical fallacy at its best I'll try to walk you through a thought process. Blood is a way to get oxygen to a system that need aerobic processes to make different products like ATP. The heart is a pump the moves the blood through a large body so that the oxygen gets to where it is needed. Since blood is just water with different chemicals, for this example I will just use hemoglobin, that carry oxygen, an animal with a small enough body would not need a heart to get the oxygen were it needs to be. Or an animal could use a different why to get oxygen to parts of the body, some animals have pores in their skin/exoskeleton used to receive oxygen. So some sort of 'blood' would have probably been used first. All that with just logic, not even needing an example of an animal without a heart. For the digestion system, even single celled organism have simple digestive systems so you don't need a mouth. For every one of your 'countless examples' there is a counter example. ALL animals are related. Let me say that again so you remember, ALL animals are related. Nothing in evolutionary theory says one animal killed the other, it outproduced its competitors. You say that current evolution disproves previous evolution, neither of which you believe in? Putting aside that craziness, how does convergent evolution disprove that the same trait may have been selected for in another animal at another time? Another case of irreducible complexity? What in evolutionary theory says two species cannot evolve in a similar fashion, utilizing similar traits? This is irreducible complexity as well, why try to make the same point twice? Do you really believe that part of a shell wouldn't be helpful? In that case a bullet proof vest would be pointless since it doesn't cover all of the vital areas. Your argument of a blind person making things is idiotic. You are assuming your belief that a consciousness must be to blame, and if that consciousness couldn't see it couldn't work. Why exactly is a snakes venom irreducibly complex and/or useless unless it has evolved to its present form. Are you saying that a poison or venom that only slows or sickens another wouldn't help a species get food or avoid becoming food? You realize that this is the way all science works right? Newtonian physics didn't work to explain subatomic particles so, by your logic, everything Newton ever did is now worthless and we should no longer use anything he discovered. Goodbye calculus. I think you would regain faith in evolution as long as you always remember Orgel's second rule "Evolution is cleverer than you are."

I usually just put podcasts or audiobooks on an Ipod or Mp3 player and listen to them while I run. So long as you're on a treadmill you could probably use a kindle or Ipad to read if you really don't want to listen to audiobooks.

Steevey I think they want something more like this or this.

You didn't provide any sources that help your arbitrary categories. I, and others, have asked for reputable sources. Not a free dictionary on the web, it means nothing. I think most would agree that none of us believe what you say, indeed any of us could explain anything and perhaps make it sound somewhat believable. That's why we ask for sources and you still fail to provide anything but an opinion. Source? I think it's funny I gave you a definition of sexual orientation from a text book of human sexuality. I think I'll go with that definition over the one in a free dictionary and your interpretation of it. Finding sources attempt 1 = fail. Would you like to play again?

Does this include marshmallows that have been cooked. I can eat a ton of them, not so much if they are just out of the bag. But reeses and the marshmallow paste stuff, nom nom nom

That only took me about 30 seconds, I'm sure I can find more after you provide sources for these.

Although it is debatable, Xq28 is a gene that has been thought to be linked to homosexuality.

Humans are animals, we are not 'above' them. People tend to be attracted to people that are at a similar attractive level. There are also other factors, exposure effect and the like, but relative attractiveness is a fair indicator. To add to what Skeptic said attractiveness can not only have a correlation with intelligence, but it also correlates with health, success, etc.

The studies in chess, and other sorts of games like chess that are played in other countries, are more related to pattern recognition than mathematical proficiency. there are quite a few papers in Science studying this link if I remember correctly.

There was a large body of belief that the cortex was involved in the regulation of emotions and the like. I don't think that this had much to do with experimental evidence as much as with people wanting to believe that people are special in the way we feel, i.e. we are morally superior and our cortex is large vi-sa-vi cortex regulates emotions. A book others have recommended to me, I haven't got around to reading it so I can't say how good it is, on the subject is at amazon if you want more information.

It's virtually impossible right now to say what gives us 'moral values'. Especially considering things like moral values have fuzzy meanings at best. But most recent experimentation has pointed toward the cortex having virtually nothing to do with emotion. Your statement of emotional behavior could be misleading, do you mean behavior regulated by emotion such as intercourse and the like, or do you mean behavior pushed forward by emotion, such as revenge. Either way there is virtually nothing I know of that can show the neocortex, or isocortex or cortex(all virtually the same thing depending what book you read), has anything to do with emotion in so far that we have some sort of emotion other animals don't because we have a large segment of cortex.

As defined in Biological Psychology; Sixth Edition(Breedlove, 2010), "Plasticity refers to the ability of the nervous system to change in response to experience or the environment." In a very simple sense it is the way a brain can change. Mainly plasticity refers 2 things, depending on what you're reading about when it is discussed, 1.) how the brain recovers from damage or 2.) Connections in the brain increasing/decreasing from use/disuse

When we just say 'evolution' we are usually using it in the form of evolution of life, not any other type. The term evolution can be applied to most anything that changes, but the OP is probably talking about evolution of organisms here. In an even stricter sense evolution doesn't just need life, it needs populations. Assuming the definition of biological evolution as the change in allele frequency in a population of similar species, evolution doesn't need only life, but populations of life.

IMO the main principles that must be involved in a democratic state are equality and knowledge. Obviously that's a simplification of all the things needing to be involved in a democratic society, but without those 2 things a democracy can turn into a self perpetuating POS

Richard Dawkins once said, "Science is interesting; if you don't agree you can f*ck off." he was apparently quoting an editor of Science, but I have no idea who it is. It always makes me laugh.

Well if your writing notes, formulas, or even a journal you want to be able to write comfortably for an extended period. If you can't do that you wont be able to write as clear or as well. If you're hurrying throughout your writing it wont come out as well. That's why it's so important to me to have something comfortable and smooth to write with.

Do you have any sources to back up any of the claims you made? Do you think IQ, negative/positive reinforcement, change blindness, learning stages, conformation bias, etc etc are all BS and hypothetical?

This is just clinical psych since that seems to be all you are familiar with. We could very well get full proof that you may accept, the problem is to get this proof would require highly unethical methodology. We could create lesions in areas of the brain thought to exacerbate schizophrenia, but that would be unethical. Same thing with attempting to recreate severe depression, PTSD, etc. The reason we are held back is not because psychology isn't a science, but that the ethical guidelines are very strict when working with human subjects. And any good psychologist would tell you that A doesn't necessarily cause B, but there is a relationship between the two. First if you are going to quote studies please cite sources, not just things the media spouts. Every study I have read on the subject doesn't say that TV causes violence, even the correlation of the TV and violence are marginal at best, but children around violence tend to become more violent. The media tends to portray this as violent TV which turns into just TV. I have yet to see anyone say that it is just the television. There are also follow up studies that have shown that it is probably more a tendency to seek out violence, even in virtual form, that shows a correlation between people watching/playing violent things and committing violent acts. Same thing with the fatherless kids. It's more about the likely hood of lower Socio-economic status households tend to have a higher rate of fathers leaving as well as kids that commit crimes. You could very well use a brain scan to determine that people are hearing voices and the like, but again it is too expensive and impractical. You should really stop acting like deviance is the only requirement to having a mental illness. Then please teach us what these methods could be. So you believe the globalization theory of mind? You really don't think, say, the occipital lobe is the main functioning area of the brain for visual input. Or that the olfactory bulb isn't used in the sense of smell? psychiatry isn't psychology and illness and disorder isn't the scope of psychology; it isn't psychologists fault you are ignorant of the science. I'll just act like you had real evidence supporting your second statement and say that has nothing to do with psychology being a science. You don't get to decide where the lines are of sciences. Not to mention that sciences almost always overlap. Saying something is neurology doesn't mean it doesn't fall into the field of psychology. There's an entire field of overlap between neuroscience and psychology, cognitive neuroscience/biological psychology/behavioral neuroscience. Again, and please repeat this as many times as you like, mental illness isn't the entirety of psychology. Yes because stimulation causing reactions over and over, as well as changing behavior doesn't mean anything. Please explain how this isn't relating to the mind, or do you believe that the mind and brain are separate? Ya, like that long statement of psychologically proven statements you made earlier in this thread? Then please, o god of the sciences, teach me the way. . . Mental illness is not the entirety of psychology. Not to mention this whole thing holds up the same more any medical field, so are they unscientific as well?

I don't see why so many people seem to think that deviance of cultural norms is the only criteria for psychological assessment. The assessment of deviance of behavior is not the end all be all, or even the start, of mental health diagnoses. Yes people that deviate from social norms may have a mental illness, but deviation does not mean that one must have a mental illness. Any intro psych class will tell you to tread carefully on the deviance portion, mainly because some level of deviance from norms is normal. The thought that psychologists say, "he doesn't fit in, he must be sick", is absolutely idiotic. I wouldn't exactly consider a writer an expert on mental illness. His son had schizophrenia, it's not a fake disease. Ask anyone who has dealt with someone with such a disorder.

Uni ball Vision Rollerball, fine point, .7mm is a god among pens. At least it's my favorite. I've never had a lot of experience writing in pencil, I like the feel of writing in pen more, so I couldn't really say I have a preference on those.

The problem with finding the the underlying causes of certain mental diseases (insofar as that we can't tell if damage to the brain is caused by certain issues or if issues cause the damage) is we can't ethically put, say, brain lesions in people to find what that causes. Nor can we ethically increase or decrease levels of neurotransmitters to find if it would cause a clinical case of depression. What we can do is use studies in animals, which don't necessarily correlate to 'higher' brain function. We can also see what happens after the fact. These problems do hold back progress in psychiatry and clinical psych quite a bit, but would anyone rather have the alternative? Purposefully causing structural damage or inflicting the abnormalities on test subjects just to find the exact underlying cause? It's not that psychological experiments can't be done to find these things, it's that they aren't allowed to. If you have a problem with the lack of knowledge of underlying causes and that we don't have perfect experimental controls complain to the ethics boards.

What I like to do to memorize any type of anatomy is act as if I'm walking through the area. Make it to where you have some sort of action to relate to each individual muscle; start at the deltoid, slide down to the bicep, you then trip and roll to the tricep, etc etc.

Of course there are doctors in the pockets of companies, it's part of funding, but that is a problem for all areas of science, not just psychiatry. Drugs that are used to cure or treat illnesses must go through the FDA or they cannot claim to treat any ailment. Yes there are problems with doctors prescribing medicines without knowing fully the consequences these medicines may have, that's not just drugs used for psychological reasons. Heroine was used in the early 1900 as a cure for cocaine addiction as well as a 'less addictive' form of morphine. We all know how well those statements held up. Commercials are a way to get uneducated individuals to ask and push for certain prescriptions, if your doctor uses commercials to decide what product should be used in treatment he/she is an idiot. There are well documented connections between mental illness and serotonin, but serotonin is used so frequently and with so many other neurotransmitters it is hard to pinpoint the exact part it plays. Though the use of SSRIs have helped many people with clinical levels of depression