Geoffrey Miller (evolutionary psychologist) - Wikipedia

Geoffrey Miller (evolutionary psychologist) - Wikipedia

Geoffrey F. Miller (born 1965, Cincinnati, Ohio), Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico, is an American evolutionary psychologist.

Miller is a 1987 graduate of Columbia University, where he earned a B.A. in biology and psychology. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from Stanford University in 1993 under the guidance of Roger N. Shepard. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the evolutionary and adaptive systems group in the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex, UK (1992–94); Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham (1995); Research Scientist at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition, Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, Germany (1995–96); Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution, University College London (1996–2000); he has worked at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, since 2001, where he is now Associate Professor. In 2009, he was Visiting Scientist, Genetic Epidemiology Group, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia.

Contents 1 Human mental evolution 2 Evolutionary psychology of consumerism 3 Clinical research 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

Human mental evolution

The starting point for Miller's work was Darwin's theoretical observation that evolution is driven not just by natural selection, but by the process called sexual selection.^[1] In support of his views on sexual selection, he has written The Mating Mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. This revives and extends Darwin's suggestion that sexual selection through mate choice has been critical in human mental evolution—especially the more "self-expressive" aspects of human behavior, such as art, morality, language, and creativity. Identifying the survival value of these traits has proved elusive, but their adaptive design features do suggest that they evolved through mutual mate-choice by both sexes to advertise intelligence, creativity, moral character and heritable fitness. The supporting evidence includes human mate preferences, courtship behavior, behavior genetics, psychometrics, and life history patterns. The theory makes many testable predictions, and sheds new light on human cognition, motivation, communication, sexuality, and culture.^[2]
Miller believes that our minds evolved not as survival machines, but as courtship machines, and proposes that the human mind's most impressive abilities are courtship tools that evolved to attract and entertain sexual partners. By switching from a survival-centred to a courtship-centred view of evolution, he attempts to show how we can understand the mysteries of mind. The main competing theories of human mental evolution are (1) selection for generalist foraging ability (i.e., hunting and gathering), as embodied in the work of researchers such as Hillard Kaplan and Kim Hill at the University of New Mexico, and (2) selection for social intelligence, as argued by Andrew Whiten, Robin Dunbar, and Simon Baron-Cohen.^{[citation needed]}
He has published on visual perception, cognition, learning, robotics, neural networks, genetic algorithms, human mate-choice, evolutionary game theory, and the origins of language, music, culture, intelligence, ideology and consciousness. He studies human mental adaptations for judgment, decision-making, strategic behavior and communication in social and sexual domains. Apart from mutual mate-choice and sexual selection theory, this includes work on:

• human mental traits as fitness indicators (reliable cues of underlying phenotypic traits and genetic quality);
• social attribution heuristics, as adapted to the statistical structure of individual differences (including genetic and phenotypic covariances);
• animate motion perception mechanisms, as adapted to typical patterns of intentional movement; and
• consumer behavior (applications of evolutionary psychology in product design and aesthetics, marketing, advertising, branding, and the use of genetic algorithims for interactive online product design).

Evolutionary psychology of consumerism

Miller's most recent work has used Darwinism to gain an understanding of how marketing has exploited our inherited instincts to display social status for reproductive advantage.^[3] Miller argues that in the modern marketing-dominated culture, "coolness" at the conscious level, and the consumption choices it drives, is an aberration of the genetic legacy of two million years of living in small groups, where social status has been a critical force in reproduction. Miller's thesis is that marketing persuades people—particularly the young—that the most effective way to display that status is through consumption choices, rather than conveying such traits as intelligence and personality through more natural means of communication, such as simple conversation.^[4]
Miller argues that marketers still tend to use simplistic models of human nature that are uninformed by advances in evolutionary psychology and behavioural ecology. As a result, marketers "still believe that premium products are bought to display wealth, status, and taste, and they miss the deeper mental traits that people are actually wired to display—traits such as kindness, intelligence, and creativity". This, he claims, limits the success of marketing.^[5]

Clinical research

Miller's clinical interests are the application of fitness indicator theory to understand the symptoms, demographics, and behavior genetics of schizophrenia and mood disorders. His other interests include the origins of human preferences, aesthetics, utility functions, human strategic behavior, game theory, experiment-based economics, the ovulatory effects on female mate preferences, and the intellectual legacies of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Veblen.
In 2007, Miller (with Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan) published an article in Evolution and Human Behavior, demonstrating that lap dancers made more money during ovulation.^[6] For this paper, Miller won the 2008 Ig Nobel Award.^[7]

Notes

1. ^ Darwin C, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, London, John Murray, 1869 (online version accessed 24 October 2008)
2. ^ Miller G (2000) The mating mind: how sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, London, Heineman, ISBN 0-434-00741-2 (also Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-49516-1)
3. ^ Miller G, Spent: sex, evolution and the secrets of consumerism, Random House, London, to be released 14 May 2009 (ISBN 978-0-670-02062-1)
4. ^ Transcript of interview with Geoffrey Miller, All in the mind, ABC Radio National, 14 February 2009
5. ^ Dylan Evans, book review, The Guardian, 8 August 2009, accessed 23 August 2009
6. ^ Miller, G., Tubur, J. M., & Jordan, B. D. (2007). Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: Economic evidence for human estrus? Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 375-381.
7. ^ "Winners of the Ig Nobel Prize".

References

• Geher G, Miller G (eds) Mating intelligence: sex, relationships, and the mind's reproductive system, New York, Erbaum, 2008

External links

• Geoffrey Miller's homepage at the University of New Mexico; this includes downloadable versions of several of his journal articles.
• Precis of The mating mind
• Human Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences at the University of New Mexico webpage
• Dutton D (2000) Review of The Mating Mind
• Consumerism and evolutionary fitness – Geoffrey Miller interviewed on ABC Radio National, YouTube video

[hide] v t e Evolutionary psychology Psychology portal Evolutionary biology portal Processes Altruism Group selection Kin selection Sexual selection Sociobiology Coevolution Evolutionarily stable strategy Areas Psychological development Morality Religion Depression Developmental psychopathology Educational psychology Evolutionary aesthetics Music Darwinian literary studies Evolution of emotion Seminal writers Pascal Boyer Leda Cosmides Charles Darwin Richard Dawkins Daniel Dennett Jared Diamond Robin Dunbar David Geary Peter Kropotkin Geoffrey Miller Steven Mithen Steven Pinker John Tooby Robert Trivers E. O. Wilson D. S. Wilson Related subjects Memetics Sociobiology Evolutionary neuroscience Human evolution Sociocultural evolution Evolutionary anthropology Evolutionary medicine Evolutionary linguistics Biosocial criminology Lists Evolutionary psychologists Evolutionary psychology research groups and centers Bibliography of evolution and human behavior

Authority control	VIAF: 197953971

Greedy reductionism - Daniel Dennett (Wikipedia)

Greedy reductionism - Daniel Dennett (Wikipedia)

mp to: navigation, search
Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to refer to a kind of erroneous reductionism. Whereas "good" reductionism means explaining a thing in terms of what it reduces to (for example, its parts and their interactions), greedy reductionism is when "in their eagerness for a bargain, in their zeal to explain too much too fast, scientists and philosophers ... underestimate the complexities, trying to skip whole layers or levels of theory in their rush to fasten everything securely and neatly to the foundation."^[1] Using the terminology of "cranes" (legitimate, mechanistic explanations) and "skyhooks" (essentially, fake—e.g. supernaturalistic—explanations) built up earlier in the chapter, Dennett recapitulates his initial definition of the term in the chapter summary on p. 83: "Good reductionists suppose that all Design can be explained without skyhooks; greedy reductionists suppose it can all be explained without cranes."

Contents 1 Examples 2 References 2.1 Footnotes 3 See also

Examples

A canonical example of greedy reductionism, labelled as such by Dennett himself,^[2] is the (radical) behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. It is often said of this school of thought (which dominated the field of psychology, at least in the Anglo-American world, for part of the twentieth century) that it denied the existence of mental states such as beliefs, although at least in Skinner's original version it merely denied the theoretical utility (or necessity) of postulating such states in order to explain behavior. Notably, Skinner himself characterized his views as anti-reductionist: in Beyond Freedom and Dignity and other works (e.g. About Behaviorism and chapter 19 of Verbal Behavior),^[3] he wrote that while mental and neurological states did exist, behavior could be explained without recourse to either. As Dennett says, "Skinner proclaimed that one simple iteration of the fundamental Darwinian process—operant conditioning—could account for all mentality, all learning, not just in pigeons but in human beings. [...] Skinner was a greedy reductionist, trying to explain all the design (and design power) in a single stroke".^[4]

In his earlier book Consciousness Explained, Dennett argued that, without denying that human consciousness exists, we can understand it as coming about from the coordinated activity of many components in the brain that are themselves unconscious. In response, critics accused him of "explaining away" consciousness because he disputes the existence of certain conceptions of consciousness that he considers overblown and incompatible with what is physically possible. This is perhaps what motivated Dennett to make the greedy/good distinction in his follow-up book, to freely admit that reductionism can go overboard while pointing out that not all reductionism goes this far.^{[citation needed]}

A departure from strict reductionism in the opposite direction from greedy reductionism is called nonreductive physicalism. Nonreductive physicalists deny that a reductionistic analysis of a complex system like the human mind is sufficient to explain all of the phenomena which are characteristic of that system. This idea is expressed in some theories that say consciousness is an emergent epiphenomenon that cannot be reduced to physiological properties of neurons. Nonreductive physicalists, such as McGinn, who claim the true relationship between the physical and the mental may be beyond scientific understanding - and therefore a 'mystery' - have been dubbed Mysterians by Owen Flanagan.^[5]

References

• Dennett, Daniel (1991), Consciousness Explained, The Penguin Press, ISBN 0-316-18066-1

• Dennett, Daniel (1995), Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-82471-X

Footnotes

1. ^ Dennett 1995; Chapter 3, Universal Acid (p. 82)
2. ^ Dennett 1995; Chapter 13, Losing our Minds to Darwin (p. 395)
3. ^ Skinner, Burrhus Frederick (1957), Verbal Behavior, Acton, Massachusetts: Copley Publishing Group, ISBN 1-58390-021-7 pp. 432-452
4. ^ Dennett 1995; Chapter 13, Losing our Minds to Darwin (p. 395)
5. ^ Flanagan, Owen (1991). The Science of the Mind. MIT Press. pp. 313. ISBN 0-262-56056-9.

See also

• Fallacy of division
• Holism
• Golden hammer
• Monism
• Reductionism
• Contextualism
• Mereological nihilism

The Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Love by Dr. Robert Firestone | Psychalive

The Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Love by Dr. Robert Firestone | Psychalive

By Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D.


Emotional hunger is not love. It is a strong emotional need caused by deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be fully satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet people refuse to bear their pain and to face the futility of gratifying these primitive needs and dependency. They deny the fact of their own ultimate death and do everything in their power to create an illusion that they are connected to other persons. This fantasy of belonging to another person allays the anxiety about death and gives people a sense of immortality. Hunger is a powerful emotion, which is both exploitive and destructive to others when it is acted out. People identify this feeling with love and mistakenly associate these longings with genuine affection. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Feelings of emotional hunger are deep and are like a dull but powerful aching in your insides. You may often find yourself reaching out and touching others or expressing affection and loving movements in order to attempt to kill off this aching sensation.

Because of the confusion between emotional hunger and love, both on the part of parents and outside observers, much innocent damage is perpetrated on children in the name of love. In my book, Compassionate Child Rearing, we noted that if parents are genuinely loving, and attuned they will have a nurturing effect on the child, which has a positive effect on his or her ongoing development. That child will tend to be securely attached, harmonious in his /her relationships, and tolerant of intimacy as an adult.

In contrast, contact with an emotionally hungry parent leaves a child impoverished, anxiously attached, and hurting. The more contact between this type of parent and the child, the more the parent is damaging to the child’s security and comfort. This style of relating–excessive touching, over-concern for the child or over-involvement in the child’s life–not only violates the child’s boundaries but also promotes withholding responses in the youngster. This can result in serious limitations in both the child’s later career and personal life, can threaten his or her sense of self and autonomy, and can be more destructive than more obvious abuses.

Parents who are emotionally hungry act compulsively in relation to their children in much the same manner as an addict. Their exaggerated attention and involvement have an ongoing negative impact on the child’s development. These parents often find it difficult to reduce the intensity of their contact even when they recognize that the contact is damaging.

Emotionally hungry parents are often overly protective of their children. They limit a child’s experience and ability to cope with life and instill an abnormal form of dependency. In being overly concerned with his or her physical health, they induce excessive fear reactions and tendencies toward hypochondria. Some overly protective parents may attempt to isolate their children from peers or other extra-familial influences that might have a negative impact. However, when carried to an extreme, such exclusion limits the child in his or her exposure to a variety of different attitudes and approaches to life, and is detrimental to a child’s trust in other people and ability to function in the world.

Many parents overstep the personal boundaries of their children in various ways: by inappropriately touching them, going through their belongings, reading their mail, and requiring them to perform for friends and relatives. This type of parental intrusiveness seriously limits children’s personal freedom and autonomy. Many mothers and fathers speak for their children, take over their productions as their own, brag excessively about their accomplishments, and attempt to live vicariously through them.
The difference between loving responses and those determined by emotional hunger can be distinguished by an objective observer, but it is difficult for parents themselves to make the distinction. Three factors are valuable in ascertaining the difference: (1) the internal feeling state of the parent, (2) the actual behavior of the parent in relating to the child, and (3) the observable effect of the parent’s emotional state and behavior on the child’s demeanor and behavior.

A parent who is capable of giving love typically has a positive self-image and maintains a sense of compassion for the child and for himself, yet remains separate and aware of the boundaries between them. Such a parent acts respectfully toward the child, and is not abusive or overprotective. The tone and style of communication is natural and easy and indicates a real understanding of the individuality of the child. The loved child actually looks loved. He or she is lively and displays independence appropriate to his or her age level. He or she is genuinely centered in himself or herself. The child subjected to emotional hunger is desperate, dependent, and either emotionally volatile or deadened. An onlooker can observe these important differential effects on children and can often trace them to the specific feeling states of the parent.

Although there are some exceptions, the concept of emotional hunger has not been sufficiently investigated in the psychological literature. Yet it is one of the principal factors negatively affecting child-rearing practices. The immaturity of many parents manifested as a powerful need to fulfill themselves through their children has serious negative consequences on a child’s development and subsequent adjustment. By recognizing important manifestations of this core conflict within themselves, many parents in the Compassionate Child-Rearing Parent Education Program have changed responses to their offspring that were based on incorrect assumptions, and have significantly improved the quality of their family relationships. Finally, from our studies of family interactions, we have begun to question the quality of the maternal-infant bond or attachment formed in the early hours and days of an infant’s life. As students of human behavior, we feel it is incumbent on us and on developmental psychologists to clarify the extent to which this bond or attachment may be based on emotional hunger and the needs of immature parents for an imagined connection to the child rather than on genuine concern and love for the child.

It is painful but bearable for people to experience these feelings of hunger and face their own emotional needs. Unfortunately, most individuals choose to deny or avoid this pain as they did when they were young. They seek outlets or choose courses of action that help them deny their pain or kill off the sensations of aloneness. They create fantasies of connecting themselves to others and imagine that they belong to each other. When these fantasy bonds are formed, real love goes down the drain. [see my earlier blog: December 5, 2008 ]. The emotions of love and respect for others disappear as we become possessive and controlling and as we make use of one another as a narcotic to kill off sensations of hunger and pain.

A fantasy bond can become a death pact in which the individuals narcotize each other to kill off pain and genuine feeling. Often it serves as a license to act out destructive behavior because the individuals belong to each other and have implicitly agreed that their relationship will last forever. The myth of the family love and regard for the individuals that comprise it is a shared conspiracy to deny the aloneness and pain of its members. It is a concerted refusal to acknowledge the facts of life, death and separateness and live with integrity.

For More Articles and Contributions From Dr. Robert Firestone Visit His Bio Page

Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, theorist and artist. He is the Consulting Theorist for the non-profit, The Glendon Association. He is author of many books including Voice Therapy, The Fantasy Bond, Compassionate Child-Rearing, Fear of Intimacy and Beyond Death Anxiety among others. He has published more than 30 professional articles and chapters for edited volumes, and produced 35 video documentaries. His art can be viewed on www.theartofrwfirestone.com.

• Post to Facebook
  42

  42

  42

  42

  42

  42

  42

  42

  42
• Post to Twitter
  20

  20

  20

  20

  20

  20

  20

  20

  20
• Post to Digg
• Send via Gmail
• Post to Google+
• Add to LinkedIn
  7

  7

  7

  7

  7

  7

  7

  7

  7
• Send via E-mail program
• Add to Reddit
• Post to Pinterest
  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

  -

Dan Gilbert: Why we make bad decisions | Video on TED.com

Dan Gilbert: Why we make bad decisions | Video on TED.com

1,212,300 Views

 

Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness -- sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces.

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness. Full bio »
 

Forgive me, for those of you who play the lottery — but economists, at least among themselves, refer to the lottery as a stupidity tax, because the odds of getting any payoff by investing your money in a lottery ticket are approximately equivalent to flushing the money directly down the toilet.” (Dan Gilbert)

Poe's Law - RationalWiki

Poe's Law - RationalWiki

Poe's Law states:[1] “”Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing. Poe's Law is an axiom suggesting that it's difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between parodies of religious or other fundamentalism and its genuine proponents, since they both seem equally insane. For example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they argue he's a "deep cover liberal" trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes. Contents  [hide]  1 History 1.1 Earlier Sightings 2 Expansion of the concept 2.1 A Poe 2.2 Poe's Corollary 2.3 Poe Paradox 3 "Real life" demonstrations 3.1 Experimental 3.2 The Onion 4 Reception and usage 5 See also 6 External links 7 Footnotes [edit] History

[edit] History

Poe's Law was originally formulated by Nathan Poe in August 2005.^[2] The law emerged at the Creation & Evolution forum on the website Christianforums.com.^[3] Like most such places, it had seen a large number of creationist parody postings. These were usually followed by at least one user starting a flame war (a series of angry and offensive personal attacks) thinking it was a serious post and taking it at face value. Nathan Poe summarized this pattern in his original formulation of the law:

“”Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won't mistake it for the genuine article.

The law caught on and has since slowly leaked out as an Internet meme. Over time it has been extended to include not just creationist parody but any parody of extreme ideology, whether religious, secular, or totally bonkers.

[edit] Earlier Sightings

Although Nathan Poe's version is the one that has become canon, there are two earlier sightings of the same idea floating around Usenet from "back in the day".

• Jerry Schwarz in 1983 stated If you submit a satiric item without this (smiley) symbol, no matter how obvious the satire is to you, do not be surprised if people take it seriously.^[4]
• Alan Morgan in 2001 stated Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook.^[5] (Note Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law.)

[edit] Expansion of the concept

Originally the law only made the claim that someone will mistake a parody of fundamentalism for the real thing — that if someone made a sarcastic comment stating that evolution was a hoax because "birds don't give birth to monkeys," then there was a high probability that at least one person would miss the joke and explain (in all seriousness) how the poster was an idiot. (The equally ridiculous Crocoduck was originally intended seriously.) However, the usage of the law has grown, and now the term "Poe" is applied to almost any parody on the internet. Essentially, Poe's Law has developed to include three similar but distinct concepts:

1. The original idea that at least one person will mistake parody postings for sincere beliefs.
2. That nobody will be able to distinguish many instances of parody posts from the real thing.
3. That anyone not already in the grip of fundamentalist ideas will mistake sincere expressions of fundamentalism for parody.

For example, not only can Poe's Law apply to extreme fundamentalism, but it can also apply to extreme liberalism, extreme charitableness, extreme fanboyism, extreme environmentalism, or even extreme love. The most likely reason for this expansion is the tendency for people to "call Poe's Law" (see below under "Reception and usage") on any fundamentalist rant even before someone has responded negatively. After a while, when many sincere posts were called "Poe's Law", or when every parody got labeled "Poe's Law", the concept naturally expanded.
The actual canonical definition has not changed to encompass the expanded usage, and a true Poe's Law fundamentalist could object to its usage beyond the original concept. On the other hand, the objection itself could be parody.

[edit] A Poe

"Poe" as a noun has become almost as ubiquitous as Poe's Law itself. In this context, a Poe refers to either a person, post or news story that could cause Poe's Law to be invoked. In most cases, this is specifically in the sense of posts and people who are taken as legitimate, but are probably parody. Hence a typical phrase would be "it's a Poe, guys, don't be so stupid" when a link to Landover Baptist Church or ChristWire is posted. A similar use is "I hope this is a Poe" to refer to the desperate hope that humanity isn't quite as stupid as what someone has just read.

[edit] Poe's Corollary

“”It is impossible for an act of Fundamentalism to be made that someone won't mistake for a parody.

The main corollary of Poe's Law refers to the opposite phenomenon, where a fundamentalist sounds so unbelievable that rational people will honestly think the fundamentalist is presenting a parody of his beliefs. Such a thing isn't entirely unprecedented — Ray Comfort now uses his "banana argument" as a comedy routine that pokes fun at intelligent design (claiming that it had always been satirical). Poe's Corollary was first submitted to the Urban Dictionary in July 2008.^[6] This corollary comes into play especially when the rational person has already learned and experienced Poe's Law, predisposing them to think that any extreme view is probably parody.

[edit] Poe Paradox

The Poe Paradox is a further corollary to Poe's Law that results from an unhealthy level of paranoia. It states that:

“”In any fundamentalist group, a paradox exists where any new person (or idea) sufficiently fundamentalist to be accepted by the group is likely to be so ridiculous that they risk being rejected as a parodist (or parody).

The term was first used by RationalWiki editor and now respected blogger The Lay Scientist to describe an apparent paradox in the management of editing rights at Conservapedia:

"Any new member of the CP project who's not as conservative as them is liable to be chucked out. However, any new member who is as conservative as them is in serious danger of being called a parodist, and chucked out. Is this the first living example of a Poe Paradox?"^[7]

[edit] "Real life" demonstrations

[edit] Experimental

LeMarre, Landreville, and Beam, investigators at The Ohio State University School of Communication, found evidence supporting Poe's Law in a study published in 2009.^[8] They measured the relative political conservatism and liberalism of 332 individuals. The study participants then viewed clips from The Colbert Report, a television show that is a parody of conservative news commentary shows such as The O'Reilly Factor and broadcast on the Comedy Central cable network. The researchers found that the relatively conservative people in their study reported that the star of the show, Stephen Colbert, was actually showing disregard for liberals and covertly expressing his true conservative attitude about the matter at hand. Liberals viewing the show tended to view the work as a sincere parody and not view Mr. Colbert as presenting his true political views. Curiously, the liberal and conservative viewers in the study found Mr. Colbert similarly humorous (no statistically significant difference). While not a direct or intentional test of Poe's Law, the results fit well with the predictions it makes.

[edit] The Onion

Although not specifically about fundamentalism or extreme views, parody and satirical articles have frequently been mistaken for real things. This perhaps proves that even with the winking smiley things can be misinterpreted. The most notable cases of this are due to America's Finest News Source, The Onion - that its production values rival CNN probably don't help, of course. The blog Literally Unbelievable documents several cases of Onion stories being taken as true on Facebook, but sometimes it goes beyond social networking.

• In 2012, Iran's Fars News Agency took the Onion's "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama" story and reported it almost as a word-for-word copy. The Onion highlighted this by editing their own version to include the line "For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars."

• Fox Nation, a subsidiary of Fox News^[9], posted a story stating that Barack Obama had written a 75,000 word email ranting about America, originally sourced to The Onion. Just to highlight how stupid this is, 75,000 words is about the length of a mid-sized novel and would have taken months of full-time work to craft.

• The 2011 article "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex" took in many people in the blogosphere, whose paranoia over the evils of abortion lead them to believe it was genuine. Republican Congressman John Fleming was suckered in by it.

[edit] Reception and usage

The use of the term is most common in the skeptical and science-based communities on Web 2.0. Many blogs, forums and wikis will often refer to the law when dealing with cranks of any stripe. It is most commonly used after a fundamentalist rant has been posted on a topic and people will rush to be the first to respond with "I call Poe's Law." Superior bragging rights can be earned by calling it first. It is also commonly used when linking to highly questionable rants by prefacing them with "Poe's Law strikes again" or just simply "Poe's Law."
Outside of Web 2.0 the law is far less known and probably rarely used. Wikipedia's article on Poe's Law has been deleted twice,^[10] but is listed on the list of eponymous laws following mention in an article in The Telegraph. As of January 2011, the article was recreated for a third time, this time without being deleted so far.
PZ Myers once suggested that Poe's Law be renamed to Ebert's Fallacy,^[11] but it is not known whether he was being serious.

[edit] See also

• List of Poe's Law examples
• The Onion
• Rosenhan experiment
• Shelly the Republican

[edit] External links

• Where the line between opinion and satire becomes blurred
• The Irony of Satire - Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report
• TV Tropes page about Poe's Law
• A sterling example of the art form

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ "Poe's Law" in the Urban Dictionary
2. ↑ Nathan Poe's original post is here.
3. ↑ Creation & Evolution
4. ↑ On net.announce
5. ↑ On talk.origins
6. ↑ "Poe's Corollary" in the Urban Dictionary
7. ↑ On TWIGO:CP
8. ↑ (LaMarre, Landreville & Beam, 2009)
9. ↑ Which is itself a parody of an actual news organisation.^{(Warning: Poe's Law in action!)}
10. ↑ 2nd AFD discussion for Poe's Law
11. ↑ There is such a thing as bad satire

Joshua Reynolds Quotes

View: Grid | List

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.
Joshua Reynolds

Character, Real, Found

 

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
Joshua Reynolds

Anything, Nature, Mere

 

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.
Joshua Reynolds

  Thoughts, Pictures, Room

 

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.
Joshua Reynolds

Children, Master, Dancing

 

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
Joshua Reynolds

Genius, Rules, Longer

 

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
Joshua Reynolds

Few, Purpose, Taught

 

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
Joshua Reynolds

Industry, Improve, Talents

 

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.
Joshua Reynolds

New, Nothing, Come

 

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.
Joshua Reynolds

Talk, Poor, Shows

 

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.
Joshua Reynolds

Greatest, Nation, Next

 

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.
Joshua Reynolds

Art, Value, Labor

 

Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
Joshua Reynolds

End, Words, Means

 

Joshua Reynolds

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For the Australian rugby league footballer, see Josh Reynolds.

Sir Joshua Reynolds
Self-portrait
Birth name	Joshua Reynolds
Born	16 July 1723 Plympton
Died	23 February 1792 (aged 68) London
Nationality	English

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. King George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.

Contents

• 1 Early life
• 2 Career
  • 2.1 The Club
  • 2.2 Royal Academy
  • 2.3 Lord Keppel
  • 2.4 Principal Painter in Ordinary to the King
  • 2.5 Lord Heathfield
• 3 Later life
• 4 Appearance
• 5 Gallery
• 6 See also
• 7 Notes
• 8 References
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links
  • 10.1 Paintings
  • 10.2 Writings

 

ian hunter - philosopher

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ian+hunter+philosopher&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb