Hmmm. Psychology is a significant subject whose study has been prevented by the struggle (maybe for funding?) to call itself a science, when it is not one. It deals with matters outside the bailiwick of science, covering human feelings, and the like. Stuff that's difficult to quantify and impossible to study via science. Subjective stuff.
Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
I don't see how psychology can be called pseudoscience, it's like saying meteorology is also pseudoscience because it doesn't always produce accurate results.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2020, 12:48 pmHmmm. Psychology is a significant subject whose study has been prevented by the struggle (maybe for funding?) to call itself a science, when it is not one. It deals with matters outside the bailiwick of science, covering human feelings, and the like. Stuff that's difficult to quantify and impossible to study via science. Subjective stuff.
Psychology is well and truly a science, since it provides many key insights into human behavior that have real, practical effects in everyday society. For instance, psychology plays a role in how a supermarket is laid out and creating walking paths for customers. Psychology also provides insights into choosing certain kinds of music for retail store to encourage people to stay longer in the store and buy more.
There are many, many, many other such examples and not just from retail.
People however don't consider psychology a science because it doesn't have the same predictive power as physics for instance. If you drop a ball from your hand, you can be 100% certain it will reach the ground.
With psychology, it's insights are never 100% certain to be X. Instead, you have something like "10-20% will do X if this happens" and most people don't like such variability in a science.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
Neither do I. Psychology is not a science. How can it be? Nothing is repeatable. There are almost no rules. Its subjects mis-report or lie when interviewed. Psychology is a subject of huge importance, IMO, but it is not a science. It's much more difficult than science. The questions it tackles are more difficult to answer than those addressed by science. Science can test its theories by trying to falsify them. Psychology cannot.Spyrith wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 4:34 amI don't see how psychology can be called pseudosciencePattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2020, 12:48 pm Psychology is a significant subject whose study has been prevented by the struggle (maybe for funding?) to call itself a science, when it is not one. It deals with matters outside the bailiwick of science, covering human feelings, and the like. Stuff that's difficult to quantify and impossible to study via science. Subjective stuff.
What you say glorifies psychology - and why not? - but it says nothing about whether psychology is, or even could be, a science.Spyrith wrote: ↑March 28th, 2020, 4:34 am Psychology is well and truly a science, since it provides many key insights into human behavior that have real, practical effects in everyday society. For instance, psychology plays a role in how a supermarket is laid out and creating walking paths for customers. Psychology also provides insights into choosing certain kinds of music for retail store to encourage people to stay longer in the store and buy more.
This just adds to what I said above, when I outlined the differences between psychology and a science.
Doesn't that depend on whether you are within a significant gravitational field? Nothing is certain.
It isn't a question of whether we like it. Science, all science, has some basic ways of working that all sciences use. The type of variability that you describe is difficult for it to deal with. You'd need to fall back on statistics, and therefore constrained to viewing people only as crowds, in quantity, when what you really need is to focus on the individual. The study of humans in large number isn't really psychology, it's more like anthropology combined with statistics. And we all know that statistics is highly misleading - as in inapplicable - when applied to small numbers of people. Science cannot deal with real people, especially in small numbers, unless they can be forced into the role of impartial observer. For the purposes of psychology, people are participants, not observers, and they are partial, not impartial.
To say that psychology is not a science is not an insult. On the contrary, it is a compliment which ackowledges the importance of psychology, and also the inability of science to deal with the more complex of philosophical issues.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
You've never been angry and rational at the same time?Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2020, 12:18 pmOh, I think you are badly mistaken if you think we humans can rationally summon and dismiss anger. An angry human is out of (rational) control, or something close to it. In this state, they cannot think or act rationally, except by coincidence. They certainly cannot dismiss their own anger, as you suggest they can. You are writing about Vulcans, not humans, I think.
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I agree with your questioning this ability to rationally summon and dismiss anger. I think one can think one's way to anger, but in general we are not machines that can produce anger via rationality or always get rid of it. Sometimes I can slowly dismiss the trigger that makes me anger by analysis, but not so often.
But one can certainly have any emotion and be rational.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑April 2nd, 2020, 6:37 amYou've never been angry and rational at the same time?Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑January 16th, 2020, 12:18 pm
Oh, I think you are badly mistaken if you think we humans can rationally summon and dismiss anger. An angry human is out of (rational) control, or something close to it. In this state, they cannot think or act rationally, except by coincidence. They certainly cannot dismiss their own anger, as you suggest they can. You are writing about Vulcans, not humans, I think.
Live long and prosper!
I agree with your questioning this ability to rationally summon and dismiss anger. I think one can think one's way to anger, but in general we are not machines that can produce anger via rationality or always get rid of it. Sometimes I can slowly dismiss the trigger that makes me anger by analysis, but not so often.
But one can certainly have any emotion and be rational.
An overpowering emotion such as anger over-rides and (temporarily, one hopes) submerges rationality. I don't believe the two can usefully coexist. If you arre rational and controlled, you are not angry. If you are angry and out of control, you are not rational.Seneca wrote:Surely no one would choose to hit a foe so hard as to have his hand get stuck in the wound and be unable to withdraw from the blow. But anger is a weapon of just this type.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
To me this quote has so many unsupported assumptions it is almost meaningless to me. Anger is not a weapon, though one can use expressing anger as a weapon. So we have a specific use being conflated with the entire range of what happens when one is angry. Expressing or feeling anger is not always or even often like hitting a foe soe hard one's hand gets stuck in the wound. I have held a grudge and it has been like this, I suppose, but grudges are a fixed long term pattern which includes anger but also certain cognitive ideas and also certain types of denial. So again a possibility is being turned into a rule.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 2nd, 2020, 1:39 pmSeneca wrote:Surely no one would choose to hit a foe so hard as to have his hand get stuck in the wound and be unable to withdraw from the blow. But anger is a weapon of just this type.
I do not usually experience anger as overpowering. Just as I do not experience the other emotions as always overpowering. Someoen would have to be being violent against me or someone I love for me to be overpowered by anger. I have had arguments where both I and the other person were angry- which could be heard in our tones of voice and this was commented on by others - and yet both or one of us, in these arguments, were rational. Emotions do not exclude reason. They can. Certainly if I am extremely angry I will be both less likely to form a reasoned argument and less likely to make a good one. But it has to be extreme anger, and again that likely involves some kind of physical attack or a long term dealing out unpleasance at me or someone I care about.An overpowering emotion such as anger over-rides and (temporarily, one hopes) submerges rationality.
But anger unless in some extreme form need not eliminate reason. I have seen many debates where someone made perfect sense but was clearly angry. Just as one can make sense when afraid, happy, sad, feeling disgust or desire and so on.
As an example amongst many I had a very heated discussion with a landlord who was not willing to make a woodstove more safe . At times he was very aggressive, made threats. I raised my voice, and one point I yelled at him to shut up and listen to me. I was extremely angry throughout the discussion, but I knew the topic well, I knew the set up was dangerous and i knew the law: he was responsible to see to it the heating in the house was safe. He actually came around once he could see I knew what I was talking about, even though I was almost snarling at times.I don't believe the two can usefully coexist. If you arre rational and controlled, you are not angry. If you are angry and out of control, you are not rational.
It's not a binary thing: presence of anger, no rationality. Rationality present, no anger. Sorry, that's not what reality is like. Yes, extreme anger will likely undermine the ability to reason well, in that time one is peaking. But it ain't binary. As long as one is comfortable with one's own emotions, they can be present and even quite strong and yet one can be rational and make a reasoned argument.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
This is my point, I think.Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑April 4th, 2020, 7:29 am Certainly if I am extremely angry I will be both less likely to form a reasoned argument and less likely to make a good one.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
Emotional behaviour has been suggested to be tied to how certain word concepts are formed and used within a given societal group. To be macho was once viewed as a kind of ‘positive’ thing, yet now I imagine most people would reframe as ‘weakness’.
Emotional concepts are funny things. I’ve actually been ‘angered’ before and managed to apparently ‘switch’ my emotion to ‘excited’ ... which leads me to believe emotions are more about what we believe they are. The trick works for me because I’m aware of the physiological similarities between ‘anger’ and ‘excitement’. By simply shifting attention to the physiologically felt experience I can effectively redefine what emotion it is I’m ‘feeling’.
Of course this could just be due to my actively attending to my feelings from moment to moment. I don’t always remember this trick, but when I do it pays dividends!
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
Namelesss wrote: ↑May 13th, 2018, 7:05 pmernestm wrote: ↑March 11th, 2018, 10:26 pmThe difference between innocence and ignorance is the capacity to understand. Innocents, such as children for example, don't have the capacity to understand many things. So one could say 'children are weak,' but not 'Joe is weak' because he is a child. Joe is not responsible for his weakness, it is a consequence of his innocent condition.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
The person who angers you, controls you. They make you feel things and do things you don't want to do.
On two occasions I have seen lads punch through windows and rip their arms open. The person who angered them, made them do it.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
Very true. Though there are downsides to not expressing your emotions and keeping them contained.
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Re: Are anger, discompassion and hatred symptoms of weakness?
True justice very rarely happens, and we can be left with feelings of anger. Does this anger help us to heal; or can it cause us more harm?LuckyR wrote: ↑January 20th, 2022, 3:00 amVery true. Though there are downsides to not expressing your emotions and keeping them contained.
I listened to Glen Fielder tell his story in Manchester Cathedral. He had grown up with David Beckham, and they had both been signed up to play football with Leighton Orient. He had a life of fame and fortune ahead of him. Shortly after he went to a night club and was stabbed in the back and beaten up. He spent a year in hospital and has been paralysed from the waist down; he has been in a wheelchair for the last 27 years. They caught the man who did this, he served four years in prison, he was then able to walk out of prison on his own two feet, and justice had been served.
By this time, Glen had learned to drive a disabled taxi, he tracked down his assailant, and then stalked him with the intention of running him over. Glen saw an opportunity to run his attacker down, but something stopped him. He said he came to understand that true justice could not happen. Justice is not that two people should be crippled, rather, it is that neither of them should be crippled. He knew he could never turn back time. He came to understand that he had to let go of his hatred; if not, he would become worse than his assailant.
He said he has to live with two diseases, being crippled, and the greater disease was the hate burning away inside him. Forgiveness and letting go of the hatred was a gradual process for his own benefit, his wheelchair has been a daily reminder of the past injustice.
Glen goes round the country talking about the need to let go of anger, and striving to be the kind and caring person that you want to be
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