Random Thoughts

[The Architect Of Fate]

I had a person once tell me they didn't accept that poverty caused crime because poverty had gone down over the centuries. I promptly reminded him that while net overall poverty has gone down. Relative poverty still exists and even during periods of economic prosperity poverty can still be high.


He also believed the link between poverty and crime started during the 1960s. I didn't know Aristotle was around in 1960.

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

Aristotle

Or Plato

"When he has nothing left, must not his [mankind's] desires, crowding in the nest like young ravens, be crying aloud for food; and he, goaded on by them, and especially by love himself, who is in a manner the captain of them, is in a frenzy, and would fain discover whom he can defraud or despoil of his property, in order that he may gratify them? "

Plato

[Angrboda]

Until recently, the prevailing psychological theory proposed that willpower resembled a kind of battery. You might start the day with full strength, but each time you have to control your thoughts, feelings or behaviour, you zap that battery’s energy. Without the chance to rest and recharge, those resources run dangerously low, making it far harder to maintain your patience and concentration, and to resist temptation.

Laboratory tests appeared to provide evidence for this process; if participants were asked to resist eating cookies left temptingly on a table, for example, they subsequently showed less persistence when solving a mathematical problem, because their reserves of willpower had been exhausted. Drawing on the Freudian term for the part of the mind that is responsible for reining in our impulses, this process was known as “ego depletion”. People who had high self-control might have bigger reserves of willpower initially, but even they would be worn down when placed under pressure.

In 2010, however, the psychologist Veronika Job published a study that questioned the foundations of this theory, with some intriguing evidence that ego depletion depended on people’s underlying beliefs. 

Job, who is a professor of motivation psychology at the University of Vienna, first designed a questionnaire, which asked participants to rate a series of statements on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree). They included: 

• When situations accumulate that challenge you with temptations, it gets more and more difficult to resist temptations
  
• Strenuous mental activity exhausts your resources, which you need to refuel afterwards
  

and

• If you have just resisted a strong temptation, you feel strengthened and you can withstand new temptations
  
• Your mental stamina fuels itself. Even after strenuous mental exertion, you can continue doing more of it
  

If you agree more with the first two statements, you are considered to have a “limited” view of willpower, and if you agree more with the second two statements, you are considered to have a “non-limited” view of willpower. 

Job next gave the participants some standard laboratory tests examining mental focus, which is considered to depend on our reserves of willpower. Job found that people with the limited mindset tended to perform exactly as ego depletion theory would predict. After performing one task that required intense concentration – such as applying fiddly corrections to a boring text – they found it much harder to pay attention to a subsequent activity than if they had been resting beforehand. The people with the non-limited view, however, did not show any signs of ego depletion, however: they showed no decline in their mental focus after performing a mentally taxing activity.

The participants’ mindsets about willpower, it seemed, were self-fulfilling prophecies. If they believed that their willpower was easily depleted, then their ability to resist temptation and distraction quickly dissolved; but if they believed that “mental stamina fuels itself”, then that is what occurred.

(BBC)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No offense, but TTA was, and AD is, filled with a bunch of circle-jerking assholes.

And now I'm here. Let the celebrations begin.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

No offense, but TTA was, and AD is, filled with a bunch of circle-jerking assholes.

And now I'm  here. Let the celebrations begin.  

I should have said so earlier, but it’s good to have you back.

Boru

[The Valkyrie]

Orgasms are one of the best forms of stress relief. So remember, if I tell you to go fuck yourself, it's because I care.

[Fake Messiah]

People in the past really made art out of everything

[arewethereyet]

About a week ago there was a thin layer of ice on the pool. Today it's 80 degrees. It's no wonder I have been sick for two weeks. My body can't adjust to this shit.

[Angrboda]

(link)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘Semi-literate’ and ‘semi-illiterate’ mean exactly the same thing.

Boru

[Angrboda]

[wrong thread]