Deader than Dead

[PSPookie]

People are strange, especially when you're a stranger. I don't think anyone would argue against that (though I'm sure someone on TB will take issue with that statement ).

Here's some more proof: Even Non-Religious People Think Dead People Are Sort of Alive | Motherboard

Average New Yorkers and New Englanders rated dead people as having more brain activity/ability to influence events than those in persistent vegetative states.

Weird.

[Relic]

Yeah, 'tis weird.
It says a lot about public perception of events and situations. Makes you think about how people process the popular media juggernaut these days.

[Gaius46]

Ugh. Maybe I should stop saying I come from New York.

Weird and sad.

[PSPookie]

Originally Posted by Relic

Yeah, 'tis weird.
It says a lot about public perception of events and situations. Makes you think about how people process the popular media juggernaut these days.

Just goes to show what a gap there is between perception and reality and how few people take the time to think about the way they think (meta-cognition).

Originally Posted by Gaius46

Ugh. Maybe I should stop saying I come from New York.

Weird and sad.

The article goes on to say that results are similar regardless of region but does vary somewhat with the participant's religiosity.


I blame Twilight.

[Kwesi]

LOL, that's kinda funny actually.

[Webtroll]

Originally Posted by PSPookie

I blame Twilight.

I blame the movie Ghost and the TV show Supernatural

[Boot Soul]

This seems to me to be essentially about those who's religious belief includes belief in the afterlife, (that is, a discreet afterlife, as in "well Dad is now looking down upon us from Heaven"), vs those who do not believe this to be true.

I am an atheist, and an 'only' child. My Mom died about ten years ago, and since then it has been a maddeningly difficult time for me to deal with my aged Dad and oversee his care, due to long-standing differences in our core philosophies. By contrast, my Mom and I got along very well, and even in matters where we could not agree, there was always mutual respect and love.

I do not believe that my Mom exists on any plane in the universe at this time. Memories of her, and how she thought, and lived her life, remain vibrantly alive within me, and guide my way every day. My Dad's thoughts and outlook mean almost nothing to me by comparison, and have little effect on me other than creating angst. In this context, my Mom is today more alive to me than my Dad ever has been.

If I were a believer in the whole "heaven and hell" thing, I would likely think that my Mom was actively looking down from above and guiding my thoughts and decisions. It is the memories of the departed that remain alive, regardless of how and where our spirituality leads us to file those memories.

[R. Laevinus]

Originally Posted by Gaius46

Ugh. Maybe I should stop saying I come from New York.

Weird and sad.

Indeed. All I'm getting from this story is that an unfortunately large percentage of New Yorkers are dumb.

Either that, or their reading comprehension skills aren't up to par.

Or maybe they just have a highly developed collective sense of humour?

[PSPookie]

Originally Posted by R. Laevinus

Indeed. All I'm getting from this story is that an unfortunately large percentage of New Yorkers are dumb.

Either that, or their reading comprehension skills aren't up to par.

Or maybe they just have a highly developed collective sense of humour?

If it makes you feel any better, 47% of adults living in Detroit are functionally illiterate.

[MatticusMania]

Couldnt read the article, and now Im sorta interested... can someone post it, please?

[Bloodhammer]

WARNING: this link is NSFW! Strong language and content!

George Carlin on dead parents

[PSPookie]

What’s dead to you?

The researchers Kurt Gray of the University of Maryland’s Mind Perception and Morality Lab, together with Annie Knickman and Dan Wegner of Harvard University would like to know. They’ve recently designed an experiment to try and uncover how we perceive those in persistent vegetative states, or PVS. And what they’ve found so far is astonishing, even perhaps a complete uprooting of zombie studies.

The researchers stopped 201 random subjects in public spaces throughout New York and New England. Participants read one of three random, hypothetical short stories. In all three, a man, David, smashes up his car and suffers “serious injuries.” Fates vary – in one, David fully recovers; in another, David dies; and in the third, David’s entire brain goes dark, save the one chunk that keeps him breathing. He’s alive, by legal standards, but won’t ever really come to. David’s a vegetable.

Subjects were then asked to size up his mental abilities. Could David “influence the outcome of events, know right from wrong, remember incidents from his life, be aware of his environment, possess a personality” or otherwise be emotional? They rated his capacities on a seven-point scale:

3 – David can do these things.

0 – You don’t agree or disagree that he can do these things.

-3 – You “strongly disagree” that he can do these things.

Gray and his colleagues averaged the results. Recovered David scored 1.77 – no surprise there – while dead David scored -0.29, a surprising rating as it ascribes a “considerable amount” of brainpower to a dead guy. But it gets better. Vegetable David ranked -1.73. It’d be fascinating to see if this phenomenon holds regionally, or even how it shakes out by country. But for the time being, science shows, your average New Yorker or New Englander considers someone on life-support deader than dead.

The researchers’ first guess was that participants were fixating on the cold, inert shell of the individual in PVS, and by doing so “were seeing less mind” in him than the dead. A follow-up study tested this by offering two contrasting endings to the tragedy of dead David. In one, he simply expires. The other points the subject’s attention to his reposed corpse, saying: “After being embalmed at the morgue, he was buried in the local cemetery. David now lies in a coffin underground.” This follow up used the same seven-point spectrum, though it also asked subjects to rate their religiosity.

Regardless of religious intensity, participants again saw vegetable David as somehow having less mind than “passed away” David. (To be sure, scores for dead David’s mind in the embalmed-and-buried version varied with subject religiosity.) Non-religious participants ranked the buried corpse similarly to the mental acuity of the vegetative patient – -1.51 and -1.64, respectively. But religious participants “continued to ascribe less mind” (-1.57) to the “irretrievably unconscious” David than to his interred corpse (0.59).

Incidentally, research reported last year shows more traces of thought in those in a vegetative state than previously, um, thought. But Gray and Knickman and Wegner have unearthed a deep irony behind the efforts to keep those still-living people “alive.”

I can't even begin to touch on the logical fallacies that must be going on with the survey participants without getting pretty deep into religious territory.

Chewbacca is a 7' Wookie living on Endor. It does not make sense;therefore, you must acquit.

[R. Laevinus]

Originally Posted by PSPookie

If it makes you feel any better, 47% of adults living in Detroit are functionally illiterate.

It really, really doesn't.



But hey, thanks for trying!

[MatticusMania]

Originally Posted by PSPookie

Chewbacca is a 7' Wookie living on Endor. It does not make sense;therefore, you must acquit.

This. I mean, why would a 7 foot wookie live on a planet with 2 foot ewoks. IT. JUST. DOESNT. MAKE. ANY. SENSE!



Lookatthemonkey.