Chadstroma
Footballguy
Oh, I already know you don't take anything I write seriously. Jerk.Yeah, but we have read your crap. Especially for about 18 month there where you went off the deep end. If the same standard applied...
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Founder of Family Research Council, caught vacationing (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter badmojo1006
- Start date
bakes
I am the Beer God!
Explains the combover.
bakes
I am the Beer God!
"See how bad that was? Now, let's try that again and let me know if it's better, worse, or abouut the same."
.
Mr. Retukes
Footballguy
Thank you, Mark Russell.
cosjobs
Footballguy
I think you mean Saturday, if you want literal obedience to the scripture.Do you ever work on Sunday? If so, you need to be put to death.
Hipple Long Ware & Peete
Footballguy
Hipple Long Ware & Peete
Footballguy
Steve Tasker
Footballguy
oof
I don't work Saturday or Sunday. You can never be too careful.I think you mean Saturday, if you want literal obedience to the scripture.Do you ever work on Sunday? If so, you need to be put to death.
It's almost a cliche that anti-gay activists so often turn out to be homosexuals.
Why is that? I read an interesting theory recently that is probably wrong, but fun to think about nonetheless.
I'll start by saying that when I was in college, I had no idea that I had poor eyesight. I couldn't read the chalk board at the front of the classroom, I found the menus posted on the walls of fast food restaurants a bit blurry, and I couldn't make out street names on distant signs -- but I just figured that it was like that for everyone. I thought it was a little funny that professors would bother writing so much stuff on chalk boards that nobody could read, but whatever.
It turns out that this kind of projection -- thinking that everyone experiences things pretty much the same way you do -- is fairly common. Many people who are color-blind don't realize that they are color-blind, and they are pretty shocked to find it out when they are finally tested for it. They just figured that nobody could really tell the difference between red and green, but kept using different words for similar colors just because that's how the English language worked.
There are people who go through life without having a sense of smell -- and not realizing that when other people say that bacon smells good, they're not just employing a metaphor, but that smell is actually a physical thing that exists. People without a sense of smell go around saying that this smells good or that smells bad and thinking nothing of it, because they learned quite naturally, by hearing others say it, that peaches smell good and poop smells bad even though they thought "smell" was only a semantically vague metaphor. It's sort of weird to think that somebody without a sense of smell wouldn't realize that they're different from other people in that regard -- that other people aren't also faking it, or reciting it by rote, or talking in metaphors -- but this really happens.
A significant portion of the population -- without looking it up, I think it's something like 5% -- is unable to form mental images. These people do think, obviously, but they don't think in pictures. They think in words or something else, not images. These people pretty much never realize that they are different from others in this regard. They assume that when others speak of a mental image, they are talking in metaphors. (There are also people at the other end of the spectrum that can form mental images so clearly that when they picture a tiger, they can visually count its stripes. Most of us are somewhere in the middle -- we can picture a tiger in our heads, but we can't maintain the full image when we start focusing on individual stripes.) Even when it is clearly explained to such people that the rest of us can form mental images, they just assume that there's a breakdown in communication somewhere and the disagreement must be over how people are using certain words, rather than reflecting a genuine difference in thought processes.
The general tendency I'm describing is to figure that other people pretty much experience things inside their heads the same way that we do. If our subjective experiences are atypical in some way, there's a decent chance that we won't realize it -- sometimes even after it's pointed out to us.
Some gay people are like this. It's perhaps less common now that homosexuality is discussed more openly as a specific preference, and is therefore less often mistaken for a universal human experience. But in at least some cases, gay people succumb to this same type of projection, and figure that everyone must secretly be gay. They don't realize that there's such a thing as straight people, just as people without the sense of smell may not realize that there's such a thing as people who can smell.
If you look at the kind of arguments that anti-gay activists commonly make, it kind of seems like this phenomenon may be at least partially responsible for them. The arguments seem pretty dumb to straight people -- but if you believe that straight people don't actually exist, the arguments suddenly start to make sense.
From the essay I linked to:
Allowing gay marriage would destroy straight marriage? Yes! If everyone's secretly gay, then as soon as gay marriage is allowed, they will breath a sigh of relief and stop marrying opposite-sex partners whom they were never very attracted to anyway.
Gay people are depraved and licentious? Yes! Everyone else is virtuously resisting all of these unbearable homosexual impulses, and gay people are the ones who give in, who can't resist grabbing the marshmallow as soon as it is presented to them.
(I'm referring to this experiment, not some sort of creepy sexual euphemism. Get your heads out of the gutter.)
Teaching children about homosexuality will turn them gay? Yes! The only thing preventing them all from being gay already is the social stigma against it. Teaching them in school that homosexuality is okay and shouldn't be stigmatized cuts the last thin thread connecting them to straightness.
I wonder how many of these sorts of arguments originate with closeted gay homophobes (and then are picked up by more mainstream homophobes because they like the conclusions even if the arguments themselves are stupid). And I also wonder whether so many fervent anti-gay activists come from the class of closeted gays because that is exactly the class those arguments would most strongly resonate with; it is exactly the class that would take them seriously.
(I have actually long suspected that people who say that sexual preference is a choice are probably bi themselves, and may not realize that not everybody is bi.)
Why is that? I read an interesting theory recently that is probably wrong, but fun to think about nonetheless.
I'll start by saying that when I was in college, I had no idea that I had poor eyesight. I couldn't read the chalk board at the front of the classroom, I found the menus posted on the walls of fast food restaurants a bit blurry, and I couldn't make out street names on distant signs -- but I just figured that it was like that for everyone. I thought it was a little funny that professors would bother writing so much stuff on chalk boards that nobody could read, but whatever.
It turns out that this kind of projection -- thinking that everyone experiences things pretty much the same way you do -- is fairly common. Many people who are color-blind don't realize that they are color-blind, and they are pretty shocked to find it out when they are finally tested for it. They just figured that nobody could really tell the difference between red and green, but kept using different words for similar colors just because that's how the English language worked.
There are people who go through life without having a sense of smell -- and not realizing that when other people say that bacon smells good, they're not just employing a metaphor, but that smell is actually a physical thing that exists. People without a sense of smell go around saying that this smells good or that smells bad and thinking nothing of it, because they learned quite naturally, by hearing others say it, that peaches smell good and poop smells bad even though they thought "smell" was only a semantically vague metaphor. It's sort of weird to think that somebody without a sense of smell wouldn't realize that they're different from other people in that regard -- that other people aren't also faking it, or reciting it by rote, or talking in metaphors -- but this really happens.
A significant portion of the population -- without looking it up, I think it's something like 5% -- is unable to form mental images. These people do think, obviously, but they don't think in pictures. They think in words or something else, not images. These people pretty much never realize that they are different from others in this regard. They assume that when others speak of a mental image, they are talking in metaphors. (There are also people at the other end of the spectrum that can form mental images so clearly that when they picture a tiger, they can visually count its stripes. Most of us are somewhere in the middle -- we can picture a tiger in our heads, but we can't maintain the full image when we start focusing on individual stripes.) Even when it is clearly explained to such people that the rest of us can form mental images, they just assume that there's a breakdown in communication somewhere and the disagreement must be over how people are using certain words, rather than reflecting a genuine difference in thought processes.
The general tendency I'm describing is to figure that other people pretty much experience things inside their heads the same way that we do. If our subjective experiences are atypical in some way, there's a decent chance that we won't realize it -- sometimes even after it's pointed out to us.
Some gay people are like this. It's perhaps less common now that homosexuality is discussed more openly as a specific preference, and is therefore less often mistaken for a universal human experience. But in at least some cases, gay people succumb to this same type of projection, and figure that everyone must secretly be gay. They don't realize that there's such a thing as straight people, just as people without the sense of smell may not realize that there's such a thing as people who can smell.
If you look at the kind of arguments that anti-gay activists commonly make, it kind of seems like this phenomenon may be at least partially responsible for them. The arguments seem pretty dumb to straight people -- but if you believe that straight people don't actually exist, the arguments suddenly start to make sense.
From the essay I linked to:
Allowing gay marriage would destroy straight marriage? Yes! If everyone's secretly gay, then as soon as gay marriage is allowed, they will breath a sigh of relief and stop marrying opposite-sex partners whom they were never very attracted to anyway.
Gay people are depraved and licentious? Yes! Everyone else is virtuously resisting all of these unbearable homosexual impulses, and gay people are the ones who give in, who can't resist grabbing the marshmallow as soon as it is presented to them.
(I'm referring to this experiment, not some sort of creepy sexual euphemism. Get your heads out of the gutter.)
Teaching children about homosexuality will turn them gay? Yes! The only thing preventing them all from being gay already is the social stigma against it. Teaching them in school that homosexuality is okay and shouldn't be stigmatized cuts the last thin thread connecting them to straightness.
I wonder how many of these sorts of arguments originate with closeted gay homophobes (and then are picked up by more mainstream homophobes because they like the conclusions even if the arguments themselves are stupid). And I also wonder whether so many fervent anti-gay activists come from the class of closeted gays because that is exactly the class those arguments would most strongly resonate with; it is exactly the class that would take them seriously.
(I have actually long suspected that people who say that sexual preference is a choice are probably bi themselves, and may not realize that not everybody is bi.)
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Mr. Retukes
Footballguy
*sigh* I miss the days when this board allowed sub-titles on threads.
Todd Andrews
Footballguy
Studies have shown that the homophobic have higher latent repressed homosexuality rates than the non-homo-phobic. That is why the GOP is the latent repressed homosexual political party.
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3C's
Footballguy
3C's
Footballguy
fatguyinalittlecoat
Footballguy
Maurile's post was an interesting theory but I'm not sure. Why doesn't the phenomenon he described work in reverse? I have no difficulty believing that some people can't smell or that some people are gay or whatever. Is it just that people naturally assume they're in the majority?
NorvilleBarnes
Footballguy
I may not be able to articulate it well but I think it does work in reverse and I think your post is an example. You can imagine people not having a certain perception and have difficulty believing that not everyone can.
I've always felt this way - although my observations/thoughts were limited to taste (literally) and peoples preferences to pizza topping and not sexuality or sense of smell or anything interesting.
If you have a pizza with something you really dislike - say olives - and remind others you hate olives. To the olive lovers picking the olives off the pizza solves the problem. If you hate olives, you can still taste them - the bad taste stands out. The olive lovers genuinely claim that you can't taste the (delicious) olives in all honesty. But I think they only perceive that because they love olives and are unable to perceive the remaining flavor because it isn't unpleasant to them.
Officer Pete Malloy
Footballguy
Here's a non-smeller describing his experience.
I have anosmia, which means I lack smell the way a blind person lacks sight. What's surprising about this is that I didn't even know it for the first half of my life.
Each night I would tell my mom, "Dinner smells great!" I teased my sister about her stinky feet. I held my nose when I ate Brussels sprouts. In gardens, I bent down and took a whiff of the roses. I yelled "gross" when someone farted. I never thought twice about any of it for fourteen years.
Then, in freshman English class, I had an assignment to write about the Garden of Eden using details from all five senses. Working on this one night, I sat in my room imagining a peach. I watched the juice ooze out as I squeezed at the soft fuzz. I felt the wet, sappy liquid drip from my fingers down onto my palm. As the mushy heart of the fruit compressed, I could hear it squishing, and when I took that first bite I could taste the little bit of tartness that followed the incredible sweet sensation flooding my mouth.
But I had to write about smell, too, and I was stopped dead by the question of what a peach smelled like. Good. That was all I could come up with. I tried to think of other things. Garbage smelled bad. Perfume smelled good. Popcorn good. Poop bad. But how so? What was the difference? What were the nuances? In just a few minutes' reflection I realized that, despite years of believing the contrary, I never had and never would smell a peach.
All my behavior to that point indicated that I had smell. No one suspected I didn't. For years I simply hadn't known what it was that was supposed to be there. I just thought the way it was for me was how it was for everyone. It took the right stimulus before I finally discovered the gap.
I have anosmia, which means I lack smell the way a blind person lacks sight. What's surprising about this is that I didn't even know it for the first half of my life.
Each night I would tell my mom, "Dinner smells great!" I teased my sister about her stinky feet. I held my nose when I ate Brussels sprouts. In gardens, I bent down and took a whiff of the roses. I yelled "gross" when someone farted. I never thought twice about any of it for fourteen years.
Then, in freshman English class, I had an assignment to write about the Garden of Eden using details from all five senses. Working on this one night, I sat in my room imagining a peach. I watched the juice ooze out as I squeezed at the soft fuzz. I felt the wet, sappy liquid drip from my fingers down onto my palm. As the mushy heart of the fruit compressed, I could hear it squishing, and when I took that first bite I could taste the little bit of tartness that followed the incredible sweet sensation flooding my mouth.
But I had to write about smell, too, and I was stopped dead by the question of what a peach smelled like. Good. That was all I could come up with. I tried to think of other things. Garbage smelled bad. Perfume smelled good. Popcorn good. Poop bad. But how so? What was the difference? What were the nuances? In just a few minutes' reflection I realized that, despite years of believing the contrary, I never had and never would smell a peach.
All my behavior to that point indicated that I had smell. No one suspected I didn't. For years I simply hadn't known what it was that was supposed to be there. I just thought the way it was for me was how it was for everyone. It took the right stimulus before I finally discovered the gap.
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Here's a post about the mental imagery thing.
There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?
Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.
The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images.
There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?
Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.
The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images.
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And this seems like a pretty good example of same phenomenon with respect to homosexuality.
Dr. Paul Cameron, self-avowed heterosexual and founder of the Family Research Institute, explains why homosexuality may become the dominant form of sexual behavior within a few generations if we're not careful:
If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get -- and that is what homosexuality seems to be -- then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm. ... It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. ... And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything. ... Marital sex tends toward the boring end. Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does.
Dr. Paul Cameron, self-avowed heterosexual and founder of the Family Research Institute, explains why homosexuality may become the dominant form of sexual behavior within a few generations if we're not careful:
If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get -- and that is what homosexuality seems to be -- then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm. ... It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. ... And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything. ... Marital sex tends toward the boring end. Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does.
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Mr. Retukes
Footballguy
Wow. His vivid enthusiasm is almost enough to make me want to try it...
McGarnicle
Footballguy
AAABatteries
Footballguy
Dragons
Delusions of Grandeur
kutta
Footballguy
That actually makes a ton of sense.
