MonDie

Here's another reason not to obey the OP. The Hidden Potential of Autistic Kids by Rose Eveleth http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hidden-potential-of-autistic-kids/

I was only explaining mediating variables. I'm a liberal atheist, so...

Acme, unless we're talking longitudinal studies, to say that one variable predicts another is merely to say that they're correlated. Looking at the quotes, there is no mention of "mediating" variables, or variables being "controlled for." Edited because I derailed.

When a woman dresses skimpily, I see that she has a lot of guts... and at least a small dose of (healthy) narcissism, although I can understand the concern when it's a young person. Maybe you're more conservative than you think. I will partake if I find the time to read the PDF. Some issues already: - How did they establish causation? Do they even know which are the mediating variables? - Do their scales remain valid in a wide range of samples?

"How do you know what God looks like?" They're more likely to claim to have witnessed divine intervention rather than God himself.

edit: Maybe that song was just a little psychopathic. I'll be back the 31st, and I'll pick an electronica song for s1eep.

I think having trust in the majority is a type of heuristic (a mental shortcut). Let's call it grouptrust (as opposed to groupthink). Such shortcuts can be great since we all have limited cognitive capacity. Whether one should rely on such shortcuts, however, depends on whether they have a special duty to inquire into that particular matter. If you have a duty to inquire, then you need to avoid groupthink by consciously seeking out alternative viewpoints—hence you should not surround yourself with like-minded people; you should be versatile. However, if it's a matter where groupthink is rampant (e.g. politics or religion), then perhaps you automatically have a duty to avoid unknowingly infecting others with it through naive grouptrust, sort of like washing your hands.

That cat raises some philosophical questions.

Poisonous how so? Dawkins' documentaries, though too basic for my taste, do not seem poisonous. He doesn't vilify religious people or promote intolerance.

Maybe a better term than identification would be vicarious stimulation. I think it says it better. mriver8, the point is that, although they were turned off by naked men, they were less turned-off by naked men engaged in intercourse. However, they determined preference on the sole basis of a self-report, so perhaps some gay men infiltrated the experiment as heterosexuals, which would also explain the pattern. It looks like we have a mystery on our hands!

Regarding Dawkins, it's pertinent that non-believers score lower on the Agreeableness personality dimension. I don't know the exact figures. Wow! Wikipedia gives a scathing description of low Agreeableness! Is there nothing positive to say? I've tried to provoke Christians in online debates since I myself like being provoked. Alas, it usually ends rather than perpetuates the debate.

And some psychologists think there should be a distinction between sociopathy and psychopathy. Scott Bonn - How to Tell a Sociopath from a Psychopath http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath?tr=MostEmailedTh Not to mention that other disorders could contribute. The 30-item psychopathy scale has about a 0.5 correlation with the No Meaning scale*, which could partially explain their reduced aversion killing. As a contributing factors, however, a general callous indifference and thrill-seeking behavior (both psychopathic traits) would be distinct from the dehumanization of an outgroup or anger inspired by persecutory delusions. *The mismeasure of morals: Antisocial personality traits predict utilitarian responses to moral dilemmas (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011) (note: I think their title overstates their finding)

Because Chivers 2007 replicated the finding that heterosexual women report quite a bit more arousal to female-on-female intercourse than to male-on-male intercourse, and this was even corroborated by vasocongestion measured as vaginal pulse amplitude. The authors note that, at least for heteroseuxal women, their findings are consistent with Symon's idenfication hypothesis, wherein women become aroused by identifying themselves with the actors in the films. Again consistent, researchers have found that both men and women spend more time looking at the female actors in erotic films. I was surprised that this wasn't mentioned in the Discussion of Chivers 2007, but I saw support for men becoming aroused through identification too. Subjective or penile, the gay men were roughly equally turned-off (or not turned-on, depending on the graph) by all female stimuli, but the heterosexual mens' scores were higher for a masturbating man versus a naked man exercising, and even higher for man-man intercourse. This could be because gay men cannot identify themselves with the non-preferred sex, whereas heterosexual men can, despite that the heterosexuals (compared to gays) seemed slightly more turned off by seeing the non-preferred sex in the nude. I would be interested to see whether the relative strength of arousal cues depends on hormone levels. For example, men tend to have more testosterone, so maybe they would be less responsive to gender cues (and exhibit a more female-like response pattern) if they had lower testosterone levels. But they're not turned on by man-on-man porn (on average).

This thread is HOT apparently, but I'll be absent until August 29th. A small quip about terminology. I wouldn't call it "homosexual" or lesbian porn unless it was directed toward those groups. A lot of female-on-female porn is actually directed toward guys, and the participants aren't necessarily lesbians.

What!? If it's homophobic at all, I would say it's because they're so aversive to naked men that they don't even like male-on-female erotica. What's your reasoning? Gender and Sexual Orientation Differences in Sexual Response to Sexual Activities Versus Gender of Actors in Sexual Films (Chivers, Seto & Blanchard) http://www.indiana.edu/~sexlab/files/pubs/Chivers_Seto_Blanchard_2007.pdf On page 1114 are the penile plethysmograh scores of hetero- and homosexual men. On page 1115 are the subjective reports of arousal for men and women of each orientation. Ignore the first graph on page 1113. These researchers confirm what's been said (if you ignore the vaginal photoplethysmograph scores, which don't correlate with subjective reports of arousal). They pose the hypothesis that women are aroused by sexual activity cues, and men by gender cues. These cues are concordant for homosexuals, but discordant for heterosexuals. As expected, gay men and women were very aroused by man-man and female-female intercourse (Male / Female, I), respectively, but didn't have a strong response to the female-male (FM) intercourse. The heterosexual men were strongly aroused by female masturbation (Female, M), female-female intercourse, and FM intercourse. The heterosexual women reported their strongest response to the FM intercourse. This was followed by female-female intercourse, followed by masturbating men or women (Male / Female, M), followed by man-man intercourse. Heterosexual women didn't seem to exhibit a "category specific" response pattern that relies on gender cues. I'm still reading the (unusually long) discussion section. "Participants were classified as heterosexual or homosexual on the basis of their self-assessment on the Kinsey Sexual Attraction Scale (Kinsey, et al., 1948; Kinsey et al., 1953). Individuals who rated their sexual attractions as predominantly toward opposite-gender persons were classified as heterosexual (score equal to or lower than 2 on a scale from 0 to 6), and those rating their sexual attractions as predominantly toward same-gender persons (score equal to or greater than 4 on the same scale) were classified as homosexual. (Chivers et al)"

As far as I know you haven't killed anyone, but neither have most religious people. Edit: I'll look for some research relating to intergroup dehumanization.

Could you run through some examples? I find their methods suspicious. "Table 3 presents the results comparing frequent and infrequent attenders on improvements in health practices, body mass index, and social connections between 1965 and 1994. (Strawbridge et al)" "Health practices and social connections could either confound the relationship between attendance and mortality (persons with good health practices and stronger social connections are frequent attenders of religious services) or act as intervening variables on a causal pathway between attendance and mortality. (Strawbridge et al)" Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't they have investigated the reverse relationships? If they wanted to show that A causes B, they should have shown not only that A predicted increases in B, but also that B did not predict increases in A. They compared high-attenders to low-attenders on changes in smoking and drinking habits, but as far as I can tell, they did not compare high-smokers to low-smokers on changes in attendance. If not smoking predicted rises in attendance and high attendance predicted reductions in smoking (B and A predict eachother), that would suggest that either they share a common cause or they cause eachother, both of which would still explain the correlations at baseline. Am I not understanding something about their methods?

I think Iota just wants them secularized and thinks Westernization would be the most immediate transition to secularism.

I've never made animated gifs. If you can move it with the arrow keys, then yes, definitely. The orientation of the mouse won't change with each iteration, so for example, leaving the mouse leftward at the end of the recording won't cause the mouse to left-shift with each iteration. Doing what you want with the mouse might require that scroll or move the window with each iteration.

Mr. Zurich, I agree that sexual preference can't be that simple. If it were that simple, we would find that children raised by same-sex couples are more likely to turn out gay. AFAIK they aren't, which is consistent with the extremely low contributions from "common environment" influences. I want to explain to you how a twin study works. If anyone knows more than I, they're free to correct me. Basically, the researchers are measuring the frequency and degree of differences between twins, while distinguishing between identical (monozygotic) twins and non-identical (dizygotic) twins. I only learned what I know from the Methods section of this Wikipedia article, but it's very informative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study Most studies only calculate the relative contributions of three categories of factors, denoted as A, C, and E. A = "additive genetic" C = "common environment" E = "unique environment" However, these terms are deceptively simplistic, so I'm going to invent my own terms. A-factors are common among monozygotic twins, but variant among dizygotic twins (for example, genetics). C-factors are shared by twins regardless (they're shared or "common" factors). E-factors vary among twins regardless. This can get confusing. If something is purely determined by family environment, for example, it will obviously be a C-factor. However, what if it's family environment interacting with genetic factors such as a genetic susceptibility? Such a factor would vary between dizygotic twins, who have different genetics, so it would involve A- and C-factors. We can rule out some possibilities given the small or non-existent contributions from C-factors. It isn't significantly influenced by any shared environmental factors, whether in the womb, from parental suggestion, from stressors, from diet, etc. (unless the shared influence is shared by all people and not just the twin pairs). However, any such influences that aren't shared are still possible. If these influences interact with genetics, they will be A-factors. If they're randomized effects that are determined independently for each twin, they will be E-factors. The large contributions from "unique environment" (E) could indicate that sexual orientation is determined by randomized variables, whether in the womb, during imaginative role play, or whatever. All I would infer is that parents have almost no control over it—the Swedish twin study, albeit its limited methodology, says 39% for heritability and 61% for unique environment. Do the math!

Or rather than enter a WAIT command, I could have it stop after only 1 iteration, right before the numbers are entered. Then I'll just enter the numbers and hit ctrl + shift + F8 to start it again. Thanks!

I want robotux to adjust the keys pressed with each iteration. For example, the Macro Editor might have something like PRESS 1 @ 3789 if I told it to press the 1-key. I might want it to adjust with each iteration as follows... PRESS 2 @ 3789 PRESS 3 @ 3789 PRESS 4 @ 3789 and so on. I could do something like that with OnBoard (the on-screen keyboard) by having it drag to the left with each iteration, but functionality would be extremely limited. What if I want it to do 00-99? I would have to stop it before the 0-key, edit the macro, drag OnBoard back exactly, then start it again.

I just understood this post. That's interesting, but why then is it taboo for us to eat our pets, the animals whom we're the most altruistic toward?

Among children, violent media is correlated with violent behavior, but the only supported mechanism AFAIK comes from evidence that videogames may temporarily inhibit altruism. According to Kyle Smith of Berkeley, however, they can also do the opposite. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/gaming_for_good/ ... but that's got to be the crudest hypothesis I've ever heard...

But I already like to learn math. I always have.