Dr. X's Free Associations

Vintage Photos: 1910

Sailors shooting craps, New York 1910

Color Me Dubious

Cheryl Fuller is skeptical about online mental health screening.  I am too.

Chemical 'Mind Expansion' vs Wisdom

A Dish reader writes:

I love acid. If I had some, I'd take some and hole up this weekend, watching old movies on TV. But the idea that it gives you some deep insight into the world is bogus. It *feels* like it gives you deep insights into the world, but it's very hard to bring anything back to your day to day life. It's sort of like after you've had a vivid dream, as you are waking up you can feel the events of the dream slip away. People who do real work -- who pray or meditate over extended periods of time -- have an aura about them. They seem calm, centered. You don't really get that same feeling from acid heads.

And the idea that you can take drugs and grab ahold of some easy wisdom is really misleading. Maybe I sound like a Puritan, offended by someone finding a shortcut. That's not where I'm coming from, though. I really wish it were true. But wisdom is hard to come by. it takes effort, and time. People wrestle with their faith their entire lives, in good times and bad. It's hard, but it makes them deep. The idea that some molecule is going to give that to you over a weekend is similar to the idea that the right penny stock will make you rich, or that some pill will let you lose 50 lbs without exercising or dieting.

Who Do You Admire Most?

Gretchen Koch takes a stab at the question.  Her answers are interesting, but what I appreciated most was her initial reaction to the question itself:

The [Gallup] poll asks "What man/woman have you heard or read about, living today in any part of the world, do you admire most? And who is your second choice?" I admit that if you called me on the phone and asked me this question impromptu, I would have some trouble coming up with my "best" answers. I don't keep a list of heroes in my head, because usually it's not something important to consider unless you are asked for a Gallup poll, or, say, a job interview (why having a good answer to this question is an important quality in a receptionist, I'm not sure). I couldn't tell you my top five movies or bands, either. It's not because I'm apathetic or without preferences, just that ranking such things never really seemed that important.

Without giving them a great deal of thought, I would also be hard pressed for responses to these questions.  I admire many people for different reasons.  Ranking them would be comparing apples and orange, but maybe I overthink admiration.  Perhaps admiration rankings are something people with more common sense are better at than I am.

The Evolution of Intelligence & Individual Differences in Preferences & Values

Here are some excerpts from two very provocative articles by Satoshi Kanazawa.  (Psychology Today Blogs):

I believe evolutionary psychology is key to uncovering the origin of individual preferences and values.

Snowflakes Under an Electron Microscope

New Grit or Old Grit?

Worth checking out, Stanley Fish on True Grit:

[In] the original “True Grit” — we are told something about the nature of heroism and virtue and the relationship between the two.

In the movie we have just been giIn the movie we have just been gifted with, there is no relationship between the two; heroism, of a physical kind, is displayed by almost everyone, “good” and “bad” alike, and the universe seems at best indifferent, and at worst hostile, to its exercise.

Covering most of the bases

From the Urban Dictionary:

Merry Christmahannukwanzadan

Customized Cheating Services

Comments have been unusually quiet for the past few days, except for an onslaught of comment spam from custom-essay companies.  While it's obvious the author linked in this post can write well, the comments from custom-essay spammers read like they should be customers rather than vendors.

Happy New Year! I like the author write more this.

Will do, Mr. Hemingway.

Religion In America

Shankar Vedantam:

Two in five Americans say they regularly attend religious services. Upward of 90 percent of all Americans believe in God, pollsters report, and more than 70 percent have absolutely no doubt that God exists. The patron saint of Christmas, Americans insist, is the emaciated hero on the Cross, not the obese fellow in the overstuffed costume. There is only one conclusion to draw from these numbers: Americans are significantly more religious than the citizens of other industrialized nations.

Except they are not.

Beyond the polls, social scientists have conducted more rigorous analyses of religious behavior. Rather than ask people how often they attend church, the better studies measure what people actually do. The results are surprising. Americans are hardly more religious than people living in other industrialized countries. Yet they consistently—and more or less uniquely—want others to believe they are more religious than they really are.