THE ILLUSION OF MORAL DECLINE by Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert (Nature, 2023).
"In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline."
Another reason to fear reform, the wrong reform might win and set us back further.
See, the leading candidate for election reform is currently Ranked Choice. RCV can lead to worse election outcomes than First Past the Post, and has lead to worse results in several US based elections already.
It's a deeply flawed system that, on the surface, looks like an upgrade. And when people experience the flaws first hand, it makes them not want to try actual better systems.
Want a super simple system that easily outperforms RCV and FPtP? Try Approval, It's been tried in a few US elections to good result.
If you want to be able to rank your candidate choices against each other and have it matter, try STAR, a voting system designed to be easily used and easily understood. Designed to take advantage of basic human psychology to get the best result.
The choice for the star rating to be 0-5 was very specific. Humans tend to group ratings at the edges and the middle in ranking systems. For instance, a rating system of 0-100 would see lots of 0, 1, 50, 99, 100. And that would be about all the points of the scale used. You might have one person out of a hundred who will use more, but mostly it's going to be ratings at either end of the scale, and then smack dab in the middle. So the best rating system is actually the scale of 0-5.
Anyway. STAR takes that rating, then adds them all up for each candidate, the top two move on to the second round, where each ballot is examined to see who placed higher on that ballot. You count those ballots as their vote total. You also count the ballots where they were scored evenly and release that info as a "no preference" so that the winner knows what sort of mandate they actually have.
If you want to change things up, you could also do the average in the first round. It slightly changes how the votes are counted, with ratings of 0 actively hurting a candidate, but in testing it doesn't seem to actually change the result.
Anyway, this whole tangent was about how RCV is bad, and saps political will from being able to implement actually good systems, which makes RCV even worse.
Oh, a final thought, with Approval and STAR, you can also ditch the primary elections. They can both handle more candidates natively, and perform better the more you have. RCV actually performs worse the more candidates you have, which has led to several of its failures.
I guess it makes sense that the psychology community would push back against the claim that pornography fits a scientific definition of addiction. The same deal goes for sugar: many people talk about sugar being addictive, but it’s pretty absurd to classify sugar as addictive substance, and the article raises this point very explicitly:
That isn’t to say that people can’t use pornography compulsively, as you may compulsively eat donuts or bacon every day against the best interests of your heart
And that’s what most people usually mean when they’re addicted to it. So I wouldn’t say that it’s indoctrination or “hive mind”, it’s just how people use the word “addiction” in day-to-day, non-scientifically-precise ways. You’re absolutely right to point that out because people should not seek addiction treatment for porn consumption, but it’s also understandable to seek treatment for compulsive consumption of whatever. Just like sugar and junk food, while the science doesn’t say it’s addiction, it also presents endless evidence on the negative effects of common patterns of consumption.
Addiction has a very specific clinical meaning as is stated in the article. Porn usage doesn't fit that meaning. That isn't to say that someone cannot compulsively masturbate or watch porn. But, again as stated in the article and a lot of other literature, it doesn't have the same physiological or psychological effects as an addiction. And most of the people doing something compulsively like that are doing it as a symptom of an underlying problem (likely depression in many cases), not as the cause of the problem itself.
In other words, crack and Xanax create a problem. Porn can be used in response to certain psychological problems.
I like Terry Crews. Wholesome guy. But he isn't a doctor or scientist.
Buddhism. I first learned about it when someone was discussing whether it’s a religion or a way of life. They specifically mentioned that it doesn’t necessarily prevent you from being Christian (which I was) at the same time.
3 years later and I disagree with that statement, to a certain extent. You could choose to ignore the “supernatural” parts of Buddhism and just learn from the lessons. But I think the more you learn, the more it just kinda makes sense.
For instance, buddhist believe in “re-incarnation” but there’s a lot of debate about what that is. I prefer death and rebirth. Which I interpret as: I’m a different person than I was 10 years ago. The old me died and was reborn as what I am now.
Other things that I like about it: it is encouraged that you have skeptisicm about what you learn. I’m fact, you shouldn’t just accept it because without questioning what your being told, you can not come to a true understanding and belief. The lessons all revolve around how to be a better person. How to achieve nirvana through your thoughts, actions, views, etc. Many of the principles were first introduced when buddha was alive 2500 years ago. Today, psychology studies have shown that many of them really do have long lasting, extremely beneficial effects. Think meditation and mindfulness (not necessarily invented by Buddhism, but popularized by it)
For me it really resonates. A lot of the things I care about are discussed. From mental health to treating life with respect to the environment to forgiveness. I also don’t find much hipocracy.
The price of uranium has risen slightly since last week’s military coup in Niger as mining operations have continued in the world’s seventh-largest producer of the radioactive metal, but a consultancy says prices may rise in the coming weeks....
Filipa Almeida was 17 when she was sexually abused by a priest. She stayed silent for years but eventually found the strength to speak out and hopes a visit by Pope Francis to her native Portugal this week will remind the world of thousands of similar crimes....
That’s entirely fair. I unfortunately have less time for personal reading than I used to, so I end up either being much choosier than I was when I was younger, or more often I go back to re-read ones I know I loved. It’s easier to fall asleep to those sometimes.
I will take a look at your suggestions. The last sf books I really enjoyed were the Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. There’s not a lot of hard sf that centers on biology (as opposed to physics), but the author absolutely nailed it. I’m incredibly impressed with the premise and the story, but the science was correct while still being brilliant and innovative. Imagine a civilization of human-level intelligence giant spiders, but whose psychology and society are done as spiders, not humans in spider costumes. On the other hand, I tried Project Hail Mary by Martian author Andrew Weir, and the science was so bad that I made it only about a quarter of the way through before giving up. I don’t need all of my sf to be hard sf, but if you’re going to be writing hard sf you have to get the science at least plausible.
Anyway, I really liked Garak in the show and thought his arc was among the most interesting. This book, however canon-y it’s considered, answered a lot of questions that were raised or hinted at in the show with enough depth and resonance that I wonder how much he was able to draw on character notes and how much was coming out of his head-canon as a follow-on from just grokking the character so well.
The big tech companies advocated during 2020 that they were not biased and should not be held responsible for policing the Internet.
Since then, FB swapped to Meta to cover up the documents showing FB is intentionally causing psychological damage our children because it gives them more clicks/view time.
OpenAI scraped the Internet, legally and illegally to power ChatGPT.
Twitter, a social media company known for free speech, was bought by Musk, a former Trump associate. Trump was reinstated during this period and dissent was banned.
Google decided to push web DRM to force us to use their software or else we can’t access the Internet.
Sounds like they very much want to police the Internet. We just aren’t putting the pieces together in a collective way.
It’s difficult for me to make a prediction like that. I figure the next generation of artists- which we’ll see mature in some 20 years- is going to be nothing like what we’ve seen so far. I believe having actual skills in art will become irrelevant and outdated. It will survive, the same way we still have people enjoying horse riding and archery but it won’t be a determining factor on art as a final product.
Humans will surely be directing the way art evolves but AI will do the heavy lifting. Considering we have technology capable of putting thought (and I mean brain activity, not words, but actually thoughts) into images and words, it’s just matter of time before art becomes something anyone can produce just by thinking about it.
The problem for me isn’t so much copyright or how it will evolve, but this sudden transition phase which will drive to extinction the process of art as we know it. Well established artists today are probably going to stay the same, and the new ones as I mentioned will grow up with these new technologies so that won’t be a problem, long term.
My concern goes for artists who just got started and who can’t embrace AI as part of the process. It’s gonna be rough. It’s like asking someone to stop listening to their favorite music and switch to some new genre they have no love for. Considering artists are usually more sensitive (psychologically) than people without artistic inclinations, I’m worried for their mental health, not just the financial. AI is damaging the sense of self worth of many talented people and that’s going to have consequences.
Horizontally with a sledgehammer - it would have been more accurate to do it with the poor man lying down, less chance of a missed swing, but the animals probably wanted him upright for the maximum psychological damage to anyone who sees it.
Scientific fraud is a weird phenomenon that many do not intuitively see coming. That it happens at all is worth keeping in mind, as well as the manner in which it is done. When a new finding seems to good to be true, it helps to remember that it may just be so.
In this particular case, my feeling is that an unhealthy lab dynamic led to a small group of people get carried away with their excitement. I’m betting fraud hasn’t happened here, but rather scientific negligence in the pursuit of glory. All my relatively uninformed speculation of course …
From what I’ve gathered the group of 3 comprise one elder and former supervisor and two former graduate students. Don’t underestimate the weird sway a scientific elder can have on younger researchers, nor the strange psychology that can develop around the pursuit of one’s legacy. Competing with Einstein and Nobel prize winners can be a helluva drug, and the elder/senior research can influence all sorts of decisions and aspects of the research through the amount of deference the receive from the younger researchers.
As for the two younger researchers, without knowing where their careers are up to, they’re probably fairly desperate to get more papers and grants, as all researchers are. Once you’ve started a project, you want something out of the time you’ve spent on it. If you’ve dived in on a long shot project that might go no where, you start to really want to find something in there the longer it goes all while sunk-cost fallacies haunt you everyday and pull you along longer and deeper than you really wanted to go. Combined with respect and deference to an elder pushing them along, the young researchers may very well have found themselves in a weirdly confusing space with not entirely healthy mindsets. I’m talking about losing perspective on what matters in terms of research/scientific integrity as well as managing resources for the sake of their life and career and how much trust they have for their research group on the whole, where a good deal of weird suppression followed by dramatic outbursts in an unhealthy mental health sense can happen.
Now that is all speculation, of course, but I write it just to illustrate that these kind of situations can occur, especially in science/research, and it’s helpful to be aware when dramatic confusing things like this situation arise.
that seems rather unlikely, even if it should prove something humans are fatally unsuited to (which Im not really convinced of yet, because a lot of the problems of the information age are not really new, there is plenty of precedent for leaders that make foolish decisions to nevertheless inspire large followings and use that to break political norms in the system they exist in for example, or for harmful rumors and movements to spread false medical advice or hate towards particular groups of people, before the information age). In order for something to be the great filter, it implies that that thing has to be the death of (or at least permanently halt the advancement of) close to every species that reaches it. In other words, it isnt enough for humans to struggle with it, it has to be something for which a species evolving that can survive it is essentially inconceivable. Given how different the psychology among even different animals on earth can appear to be, and that the problems caused by the information age will be greatly impacted by the psychological quirks of the civilization experiencing it, that strikes me as unlikely. It also has to actually drive the species that reaches it to extinction, or at least completely stop their advancement. Given that new technology continues to be developed, some of it surprisingly quickly and a lot of it helped by the fruits of the information age, the latter seems unlikely, so for it to be the great filter, it would need to actually cause extinction basically 100% of the time, and even for humans, Im not sure how it would do that (while enabling things like climate change denial and anti-vaccine movements to spread causes us problems, that probably isnt enough per se, even a disaster that made three quarters of the planet literally deadly to exist in and a plague that wiped out half the population would be insufficient to make something a great filter, for example, if that species survives in what marginally livable area remains to rebuild their numbers and continue to advance their civilization. It has to kill everyone with no chance for any group to find any means to survive it)
The New York Times certainly isn’t a conservative newspaper. If even they are saying Portland has become horrible, it must be worse than anybody can imagine.
So, a non-exhaustive list of things that seem very odd to me in this comment:
“The Left” is an incredibly vague term that groups together a lot of different groups that have hugely different ideologies and perspectives
Decriminalization has proven to work extremely well in some contexts. Not all decriminalization is created equal. Portugal’s system has proven amazingly successful at dropping rates of illegal drug use. Mandatory rehab and access to psychological help instead of prison time has proven to work very well. Not got a great idea about the specific attempt in Oregon, but it’s not some deep conspiracy: it’s attempts (some better, some worse) at finding ways to address drug abuse problems in society.
If homelessness is at 50%, that basically means the entire housing market has completely failed. That’s not “a homelessness problem”, that’s a housing market that has failed in such fundamental ways that I don’t see how that could even happen in a country that isn’t trying intentionally to increase the homeless population. California, the state with the highest homeless population (and it is a real problem!) has a homeless population of 0.44% of the total population. 50% feels like such an arbitrary ass-pull number. Even 5% would be considered a complete collapse of the housing market.
Automatically assuming that those trying to restart their lives are brainless alcoholics is so reductive I don’t even know where to start. The most effective and proven way to reduce the number of homeless people is to focus on a housing first approach. You house them, you provide them professionals to help sort out their issues, get them into a job and have them start paying off the house. This is an internationally proven approach.
The rest just goes into full dystopian future fan fiction, so I’ll stop there.
All valid points (especially about the idle games, I probably need psychological help, lmao), except that I can now do all of those things with a single device that fits in my pocket. Of course I’d prefer to play games on a monitor or TV, but I don’t have those on the go. Except maybe a laptop, but that’s much less portable than a phone.
It’s not for everybody, that’s definitely true. But it works for me, much to my surprise.
That’s a good point. I guess I have an issue with labeling psychological addictions to specific things then as I dont think it’s so much the “this thing” that’s addicting as it’s something that you’ve psychologically latched onto.
Treating a generalized psychological addiction seems like it would be pretty straightforward in terms of treating vs a chemical or physiological addiction. But I’m not a therapist, and I’m sure there is a great reason as to why these things are labeled the way they are. Apologies for my stubbornness on this subject.
After about 8 years of daily smoking (and slowly smoking more and more because of tolerance building up) I decided to quit for various reasons.
I’m at about 10 days off cold turkey and I’m still struggling a lot. At the beginning was a big loss of appetite, trouble going to sleep and obviously the psychological desire to smoke. The worst part for me though is the intense anxiety, irritability and the lack of motivation to do anything. It feels like falling back into depression and slowly try crawling out of it.
Really disappointing to see so many people in here denying what I’m going through. Yes there’s always been propaganda against using, but there’s still some truth to it. I’m still glad that it’s legal here in Canada because it did help me at one point, but like every drug, you have to be careful.
I vape daily, but I don’t really get withdrawal. If I go away on holiday or whatever having several weeks off is a breeze. However if it’s there at home and I have nothing else on, I will get high, so I accept I’m probably psychologically addicted, but I’ve made peace with that since I still work full time and pay my way so who’s it hurting.
All of these things you describe are very real but they’re not physical withdrawal symptoms, but indeed psychological. The mind is a very powerful thing, so these effects can be very powerful, I’m not trying to dismiss your experience. However they are not the same as for example withdrawal from heroin or heavy alcoholism, both of which create actual physical pain and potentially death.
Every individual is different too, so people sharing how they can be heavy smokers and stop while on vacation for a few weeks without issues aren’t trying to dismiss your experience, just like how you shouldn’t dismiss theirs.
I’ve known physical withdrawal in the past and am a daily smoker now, I’m also one of those that can just stop on vacation no big deal, but I seldom skip a day at home.
Addiction is addiction. Whether you’re addicted because you took a drug that your brain now depends on, or you’ve gotten used to doing something that makes you happy and your brain depends on the stimulus to make the happy juice, addiction is a physiological response. The effects on your brain are chemical. Your addiction is marked by the changes in thinking to seek and obtain your particular “high” in whatever form your brain needs, and you will experience withdrawal if you stop.
Some substances and activities are highly addictive, because they are designed to be. Marijuana is more potent than ever, and the experience of shopping for different strains and trying all the “flavors” is itself a little reward system.
People want to make distinctions between chemical addiction and psychological addiction, and there are differences, but addiction is addiction.
In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions....
So first off, climate science is data driven. Social politics should play no part in how to interpret the result that shit is getting hotter and people are dying… That’s pure statistics baby
But in terms of communication, sure, understanding psychology helps. But look where a poor understanding of social psychology got us…
And social science is not the same as psychology. Social science means integrating diverse perspectives into environmental decision making. Which many in this thread are failing to do
WHY YSK- Many people practice mindfulness and meditation as part of their lives, and some would like to but feel like they don’t have time to sit down and meditate properly. Once you’ve gotten used to doing it as a part of your daily activities, it becomes easy to simply take a few breaths and gain some peace from your...
Surely it will paint a picture to people who enjoys psychology and how it effects mindfulness so here goes my life story i guess, tldr is at the end.
First of all, I am not diagnosed with anything other than anxiety and depression so i can’t say that i have ADHD nor i am autistic, at least to some degree. But i felt clearly distressed whenever I tried to meditate to practice mindfulness instead of “having worries over small possibilities” and hereby said feck all this. Almost a year ago I am informed that If I feel uncomfortable I repeatedly t-t-t-t with my mouth. Apparently it is weird to my colleagues. So I imagined that has to be my answer to stress at my job and left at that. (My job is secure as it gets that I wish I could branch out but can not lol) Then today I saw this article and all that parts in my life clicked perfectly. Thanks me for being my own life coach today. If you read to this part thank you too!
Tldr: I just remembered that i am actually more stressed when trying to do nothing. I stim when I am stressed. I think this can be classified as active meditation. I can be wrong.
Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it....
I genuinely believe that stealing is stealing and anyone justifying it is doing so to not feel guilty about it.
I download things I haven’t paid for. It’s wrong. I can rationalize this because the stuff I’m stealing has already made their money and me enjoying it on my own time likely has zero impact on the content creators. Also, fuck the non-skippable intros and commercials on blurays.
The one exception to this, what I would argue is unquestionably “ethical piracy”, is content that’s actually important to the progress of humanity. Things like well researched scientific papers, studies about the humanities, psychology, the affects of technology, mechanization, artificial intelligence, etc. This should never be held behind lock and key. You whining about not having access to How I Met Your Mother is not a valid reason to steal content.
Also, people need to spend more time at their public libraries. If you want free shit, a lot of it is there explicitly for the purpose you all espouse.
Trump tied with Biden despite most voters thinking he committed serious crimes (www.axios.com)
We Know “NoFap” Is Misleading Men About Masturbation. It Might Be More Dangerous Than That. (slate.com)
What is your religion and what led you to identifying with / believing in it?
Uranium price hike projected after Niger coup spurs slight rise (www.aljazeera.com)
The price of uranium has risen slightly since last week’s military coup in Niger as mining operations have continued in the world’s seventh-largest producer of the radioactive metal, but a consultancy says prices may rise in the coming weeks....
‘Silenced hearts’: victims hope pope’s Portugal visit will highlight abuse (www.scmp.com)
Filipa Almeida was 17 when she was sexually abused by a priest. She stayed silent for years but eventually found the strength to speak out and hopes a visit by Pope Francis to her native Portugal this week will remind the world of thousands of similar crimes....
'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time' Audiobook, Narrated by Andrew J. Robinson, Now Available (startrek.com)
This article features a message from Andrew J. Robinson, along with an excerpt from the audiobook.
"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate (www.salon.com)
How much did photography "steal" painter jobs ?
With all the fuzz about IA image “stealing” illustrator job, I am curious about how much photography changed the art world in the 19th century....
18+ NSFL. If you know, you know. A reminder that for all of Prigozhin's funny names and silly disguises, he is, above all, a piece of fucking shit who runs an outfit of vile excuses for human beings
Failed replication of claimed superconductor reported on arxiv (arxiv.org)
Trump dominates DeSantis in 2024 poll with third place way behind (www.axios.com)
This stood out to me:...
Scenes From a City That Only Hands Out Tickets for Using Fentanyl (web.archive.org)
The New York Times certainly isn’t a conservative newspaper. If even they are saying Portland has become horrible, it must be worse than anybody can imagine.
How does everyone here feel about foldable phones?
Previously on Lemmy:...
Marijuana addiction is real. Those struggling often face skepticism. (web.archive.org)
Don't overstate 1.5 degrees C threat, new IPCC head says (www.dw.com)
In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions....
YSK you can meditate without sitting quietly (psychcentral.com)
WHY YSK- Many people practice mindfulness and meditation as part of their lives, and some would like to but feel like they don’t have time to sit down and meditate properly. Once you’ve gotten used to doing it as a part of your daily activities, it becomes easy to simply take a few breaths and gain some peace from your...
What would you considered "Ethical Piracy"
Hi guys, first of all, I fully support Piracy. But Im writing a piece on my blog about what I might considere as “Ethical Piracy” and I would like to hear your concepts of it....