Everyday Junglist
Bio
Practicing mage of the natural sciences (Ph.D. micro/mol bio), Thought middle manager, Everyday Junglist, Boulderer, Cat lover, No tie shoelace user, Humorist, Argan oil aficionado. Occasional LinkedIn & Facebook user
Stories (552/0)
Sweeping Generalizations are Always Bad
Most people understand conceptually how sweeping generalizations about the behaviors, attitudes, appearances, or any other characteristics/traits of broad classes of people are a very bad thing. With apologies to all spermatophytes for appropriating your life cycle to illustrate a heinous point, sweeping generalizations function like seeds of fear and distrust. They eventually germinate to hatred and then grow to racism, and eventually, in the most extreme of cases, blossom into war and genocide. They either directly cause or actively amplify the worst tendencies in humanity. They should be ruthlessly and continuously questioned, criticized, and actively fought against, wherever they are found. Moreover, this stance should apply equally to all generalizations no matter if they are related to race, ethnicity, national identity, or socio-economic class. It seems reasonable to assume that a very large majority of persons on the planet would agree with everything I have just written. If that is the case, whey then, do people who would never, ever, tolerate a sweeping generalization about a race of people, just accept, give a pass, or laugh at such sweeping generalizations when they revolve around issues of gender? This holds true even when such generalizations verge on, or are actually clearly sexist. I would argue that in fact the majority of people on the planet (and it cuts across races, creeds, nationalities, etc.) accept sweeping generalizations about men and women without a second thought. Most cultures in one way or another actively embrace such sweeping generalizations in one form or another. After all, to give an example from our own Western culture, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, right?
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Humans
The False Dichotomy of Work/Life Balance
Those that regularly talk about work life balance are, I believe, doing so with the best of intentions and with worthy objectives in mind. However, using the term and concept in the way we do puts us in a box from which there is no possible escape. Work/life balance implies and requires that the two things be in opposition to each other. If they were not why would we need to balance them. By setting up the two things, ‘work’ and ‘life’, as opponents we immediately eliminate from consideration a huge number of potential options to improve the situation. Rather than finding solutions based on accommodation or compromise, setting up work and life as opponents, as enemies, pushes us toward confrontational and non-constructive solutions. It makes it appear as if solutions that are a net gain for the one thing must, by there very nature, be a net loss for the other, and in the end, everybody loses no matter which way the pendulum swings. It does not have to be this way, and it should not be this way. It is time to call a cease fire in the work/life war. Work and life are not disparate, separate things, or at least they should not be. The more one can integrate work into life and life into work the better it is for everyone. Eventually the word work disappears and it just becomes life. The life you live for free, and the one you get paid for. Neither is more valuable than the other, and they can and should ‘work’ together to bring each of us the things we are seeking from life, whether that be material pleasures, intellectual pursuits, families, or any and all of the above. If we want capitalism to survive and thrive, if we truly believe it is the right approach for optimizing all of our chances at economic and personal well being, we must end the war between work and life. There is no other way. Of course, this is a very easy thing to say, much harder to actually execute on a plan to accomplish.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Journal
The US Mexico Border is a Train Wreck
Author's preface: Early in the writing process for this article I realized that my friend and writing colleague, Samantha Drobac, who holds dual Mexican and US citizenship, could bring a perspective that one written only from the US point of view would lack. Initially, I thought I would publish the completed piece and then ask her to reply in a separate post, but as the story evolved it seemed more useful to ask her to respond directly to many of my points.. Fortunately, she kindly agreed to participate and her responses and her own interjections are included throughout the body of the story. Our commentary/discussion is indicated by our initials DD and SD and in italics while the main body of the text is not italicized and was solely authored by me.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Wander
Is Historical Ignorance Ever a Good Thing?
Typically it is supposed that a solid working knowledge of history is a very good thing. It seems obvious to say that those who do not know/understand/appreciate history are doomed to repeat it. I absolutely agree, after all, it is much easier (though still not always easy) to avoid a mistake one has already made, than to avoid one you do not even see coming and, with which, you have no previous experience. Almost everyone I believe would agree that historical knowledge is a very good thing to have. However, is this obvious, and much agreed upon statement, always true? Are there situations where ignorance of historical events would be advantageous versus having such knowledge? The transgenerational trauma hypothesis posits that for historically traumatic events it is not only the generation that lives through them that suffers, but also subsequent generations. The trauma is "passed down" to future generations and the suffering associated with that event continues to traumatize those that were never directly impacted by the originally triggering traumatic event. Slavery and the holocaust are two oft cited examples. I do not dispute that transgenerational trauma is real, and continues to effect those that are descendants of the original peoples involved in those historical tragedies. But, what about, less well remembered events? Events that were very much traumatic and historically impactful, but about which much less is known or remembered today.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in The Swamp
Depravation as Justification
It is still very common to read or hear arguments attempting to justify criminal behavior by appealing to poverty on the part of the criminals. These often takes the form of statements like "they were just trying to feed their family" or "they had no other choice", etc. While I have some sympathy for this view, and in some cases it may even be accurate, it is a very poor justification for criminal behavior and a major turn off to readers/listeners, especially if they are Americans. The reason is quite simple, Many of these readers and listeners are very poor themselves and/or they have friends or relatives that are. They do not commit crimes and neither do their poor friends and family, so why is author/media person X saying that the reason these people are criminals is because they are poor. The argument is so weak, and so offensive to many, that it virtually guarantees a loss of 90% plus of your audience, including many of whom probably agree with everything else you are trying to say.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Criminal
The "Trap" Escape Problem
If we are fortunate and introspective we can often identify intellectual/character flaws in our ways of thinking/moving about in the world that repeatedly lead us astray. Not too surprisingly for a research scientist like myself, in my case, one of these flaws is the tendency toward over analysis. I don't believe in black and white and I have never seen a binary choice I can't make trinary. On top of that I am extremely skeptical of just about everything and anything. Not only does this make me a a good researcher, it also makes me a very annoying person to be around at times. Moreover, it can lead to a sort of intellectual blockage where action grinds to a halt because the number/variety of choices available are just too high and making a selection among them becomes well nigh impossible. The dreaded and cliched 'paralysis by (over)analysis.'
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Psyche
7 Signs That Showed Me I’m On The Path To Douchebaggery
Author's preface: Given the title and content I give this piece only about a 10% chance of making it through the Vocal censor mill. It is almost certain to be rejected for publication for failing to meet Vocal's "community standards" or to be more precise, Vocal's censorship rules. If I had to hazard a guess I would say they will probably cite their ban on works that "slander" or "defame" as the justification for rejection. In my defense I would argue, as I have previously, that slander and/or defamation requires a specific individual or specific group of human target(s) to meet the definitions of the terms. It also must be an attack on an other not on oneself. It is not possible to slander or defame an idea, and one cannot slander or defame oneself. This piece does attack the idea of douchebaggery, not the individual douchebag or even the entire, large and growing population of douchebags living on this planet. It also posits the author (my fictional self) as the main target. As such it should be published without modification. If you do choose to publish this work Vocal please do not delete this author's preface first and then publish it as you have done on one other occasion with one of my works. Your rules may allow this, but it stinks even worse than your censorship rules. It either stands or falls in total as written. Incidentally this post is a satirical take on an article published on another platform entitled '7 Signs That Showed Me I'm on the Path to Success.' by author Tim Denning. Unlike myself, Tim happens to be a very, very successful writer and blogger. Moreover, he kindly did not raise any sort of stink when I parodied his original post. To the best of my knowledge he is not a douchebag.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Confessions
Could Life Be Sustainable (On a Planet) Without Evolution?
I was thinking a bit about this for some reason (way back in 2017) and started wondering what other people had to say on the topic so I did a quick google search of the question. As often happens when you google a question one of the results was a Quora entry. Scanning through the various responses I came across one that caught my attention and I want to address it here. First I repost the answer from Quora in its entirety (italics mine).
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Futurism
Brain imaging, Consciousness, Jaynes and Wittgenstein
Your brain represents only 2% of your body weight. However, it is estimated that it consumes 20% of more of your body’s energy, even at rest. Modern Brain imaging techniques like fMRI or PET scans purport to associate particular states of consciousness with increased activity in specific areas of the brain. In the most basic of terms increased “activity” as measured by fMRI or PET or other techniques correlates with increased “activity” in a particular state of consciousness. So so far so good. It certainly makes cognitive sense to connect the two. It turns out that one of the founders of modern brain imaging techniques, Robert G. Shulman has begun to question this supposed link. In a fascinating new (not so new anymore but very much underappreciated still) work he suggests and describes in detail the weaknesses of this approach to cognitive neuroscience and modern neurophilosophy. It turns out that many imaging studies actually show a decrease in brain activity related to rest as measured by modern technologies in response to a given cognitive task. Modern interpretations of this data suggest that the decrease is attributable to increases in activity in areas related to self reflection and social reasoning. In other words it’s not really a decrease at all but simply an increase in other non-related areas of the brain. Shulman argues that every area of the brain is active at rest not just the specific areas attributed by modern researchers. So far I have relied (and cribbed) extensively from Colin Klein’s excellent review of Shulman’s book. I highly recommend you read it if you are at all interested in this area of research/philosophy/neuroscience.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Psyche
Head Transplantation and the Mereological Fallacy
I recently (if you consider 2016 recent. lol!) posted a comment discussing my views on the current state of cognitive neuroscience and neurophilosophy. In it I attacked the position of many modern practitioners in these fields by citing the so called “mereological” fallacy. This logical position grows naturally out of the philosophical tradition of Wittgenstein and has been adopted by a few brave neurophilosophers. In The Philosophical Foundations of Modern Neuroscience B&H systematically deconstruct the arguments of cognitive neuroscience and expose the logical contradictions at the heart of many of their mainstream systems of beliefs. Simply put the mereological fallacy shows the logical contradictions inherent in assigning states of consciousness to a part of a being rather than to its whole. Specifically they demonstrate that attempting to locate consciousness in parts of the brain is doomed to failure. Logic dictates that a brain, while necessary to the condition of consciousness, is not alone sufficient to be IN a state of consciousness.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Futurism
Julian Jaynes is the Bizarro Descartes
With the opening of Batman v. Superman this weekend (not exactly, it was a summer weekend way back in 2016) it seemed an appropriate time comment on an all-star clash of two superstars of psychology and philosophy, Julian Jaynes and Rene Descartes. At the moment I happen to be brain-deep in a first, and much belated read, of Jaynes’ seminal work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind. There is a fascinating section in chapter three, The Causes of Consciousness, in which Jaynes appears to stake a decidedly un-descartian position. He suggests that the breakdown of authority and the gods resulted in a state of panic and hesitation in man. He reminds us that, according to his hypothesis, early man was not truly conscious, at least not in the subjective way we judge conscious man to be today. Instead the bicameral man turned to the Gods (who revealed themselves in auditory and visual hallucinations originating in the brain’s right temporal-parietal region) when navigating any particular difficult choice in action that might be required at any point in these early human’s lifetimes. In any forced violent intermingling of these early people they would seem to each other as coming from totally different nations, as having different Gods. Thus the observation “that strangers, even though looking like oneself, spoke differently, had opposite opinions, and behaved differently might lead to the supposition that something inside of them was different.” Jaynes points out, correctly in my view, that this exact opinion “has come down to us in the traditions of philosophy, namely that thoughts, opinions, and delusions are subjective phenomena inside a person because there is no room for them in the ‘real,’ ‘objective’ world.” Connecting the dots Jaynes then argues that before any individual man had objective thoughts he first “posited it in others, particularly contradictory strangers, as the thing that caused their different and bewildering behavior. In other words, the tradition in philosophy that phrases the problem as the logic of inferring other minds from one’s own self has it the wrong way around. We may first unconsciously suppose other consciousnesses, and then infer our own by generalization.” Descarte’s cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am, becomes he thinks, therefore I do (am).
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Psyche
Becoming Italian
Author's preface. There are a number of websites selling services to assist in the process of obtaining Italian citizenship by Jure Sanguinus. As I researched this article I noted that many had serious errors with respect to the requirements that must be met in order to qualify. Buyer beware, as with many things, the quality of information and help available online varies widely. Best option for things like this is to go directly to the source. In this case that is the government of Italy, and the best access point for that resource is your local Consulate General of Italy.
By Everyday Junglist2 years ago in Wander