As I get older my liking for shouting at the Tv has dramatically increased. More and more often I find myself shouting at the blatant lies on TV advertising. Only this morning wifey caught me at it and this started a discussion on whether or not this is indicative of our (English) society becoming more and more brain dead. Sadly I'm starting to believe it is. Or perhaps it is indicative of my growing curmudgeoningness (which I understand is indicative of getting older?) or perhaps both!
On Thursday, 20 September 2012 16:52:17 UTC+1, archytas wrote: > > http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0045457 > > These Swedish researchers used a magic trick to show that people's > answers to survey questions are unreliable. I noticed many years ago > that most people haven't much clue what they are on about and can't > tell chalk from cheese. We are, in the main, moral wuckfits. > > The trick used was to get people to answer a few questions but change > a couple of the answers through a magic dodge. People argued in > support of the changed answers. even though they were the opposite of > the views they'd only just expressed. We have known 8 out of 10 cats > prefer Whiskas to powdered glass for many years (one of our pampered > pouch-devourers has just turn his nose up at Sheba as though I was > trying to poison him). Why do we have so much trouble taking in the > notion that companies pay for advertising because most people are > gulled by it and basically so stupid most of them operate with the > brain on switch off? > > This paper isn't all that interesting in-itself. What is interesting > is that much more material like this is appearing on PLos through open > access. One hopes the move away from vanity publishing and restricted > access. Over the years I found less than one in a hundred academic > papers worthwhile (one reads thousands in a research project and at > least half are likely to be outside the university's subscription and > cost $10 or so through inter-library loans - or $40 to the private > punter). > > Science doesn't have much comforting to tell us on human nature - this > is probably why most people don't want to know. It's probably time to > a new treatise on human nature. Economists are just discovering the > 'triune brain' (I was taught brain stem, reptilian, mammalian and the > cerebellum 45 years ago - I note that adds up to 4 and quadrune). In > fact there's plenty of reasonable science that demonstrates we are > lying, cheating, rationalising, broadly stupid bastards and some do > this in spades (we call them leaders or psychopaths) and most on a > less daring scale. > > Rather than describing human nature, great literature hides it from us. > --
