I've just posted mine

Thanks Mr.Samsa for the feedback!

Excellent stuff, Katja. As a cunning linguist, this interests me very much. Very interesting indeed!

Incidentally, I know a few English scholars in RL, and they pretty much concur that the purest English currently in use is in... Germany!

katja z wrote:I've just posted mine

Thanks Mr.Samsa for the feedback!

No problem, it's great work!

hackenslash wrote:Incidentally, I know a few English scholars in RL, and they pretty much concur that the purest English currently in use is in... Germany!

Well those people obviously haven't never heard me talk! I speak real proper like, with all me T's dotted and I's crossed.

hackenslash wrote:Excellent stuff, Katja. As a cunning linguist, this interests me very much. Very interesting indeed!

Thanks Hackenslash.

Incidentally, I know a few English scholars in RL, and they pretty much concur that the purest English currently in use is in... Germany!

This is a new one on me. I've heard about everything from the Appalachians to India, but not this. I suppose it could be understood as a nod towards the fact that English as a global vehicular language has pretty much become the common property of everyone, not just its native speakers. Then again, it could be taken simply as an ironic swipe at the way linguistic practices are changing in Britain. It's difficult to tell, sometimes.

Actually, it's more that the vernacular English is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Saxon. All our vulgar words, the expletives, etc, are pretty much from Anglo-Saxon, while our more sophisticated language is Latinate.

BTW, can't believe nobody spotted the cunning linguist gag...

I had a roommate at the University of Pennsylvania's Modern Language dorm explain that was what his girlfriend liked best about him a long time ago. Might be the first I've heard it since.

hackenslash wrote:... cunning linguist gag...

I don't think we're allowed to talk so explicitly about sexual acts...

Mr.Samsa wrote:

hackenslash wrote:... cunning linguist gag...

I don't think we're allowed to talk so explicitly about sexual acts...

My understanding is that you can talk about licking pussy, but not in the first person[s]. The idea of licking, or having perosnally licked people [or cats, presumably] It just leads to furball anyway! Well, we are not banned from talking about Catlicks, so.......
This is rationalia? Right? Checks url window......

Darwinsbulldog wrote:Well, we are not banned from talking about Catlicks, so.......

*reaches for report button*

katja z wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:Well, we are not banned from talking about Catlicks, so.......

*reaches for report button*

*ban everyone*

Is this the "ban the person above you" thread ?

Consider yerself banned!

Who died and made you mod?

I am the mod of hellfire, and I bring you...

hackenslash wrote:I am the mod of hellfire, and I bring you...

...warmth. Thank you for the nice fire, it is cold outside!

This reminds of an old joke:

Here is Mark, who is always feeling cold. No matter what, he is always cold. He is a very nice person though. He dies, and goes to heaven. However, heaven's temperature is too cold for him. No matter where the angels place him, he is cold. So, they ship him to hell. Satan puts him in the pits, but still cold for Mark. He takes him to the furnaces, still the guy is cold. Satan, thinks and thinks and finally he remembers the remotest part of hell, from where all the heat in hell comes from. So, he takes the guy there, and forgets about him. About 100 years later, he remembers Mark, and goes down to the heart of hell to see what's happened. As soon as he opens the door, he hears:

"Close the fucking door, there is a cold draft coming in!"

In case anyone's wondering why Federico's article changed it's place in the thread: He re-submitted an updated version and I binned the old one.
Just informing you people.

Excellent stuff, Federico. Really interesting.

hackenslash wrote:Excellent stuff, Federico. Really interesting.

If you were interested, most of the nonsense in Frederico's post have been debunked here: You Only Use 10% of Your Brain Myth.

What are the mechanisms responsible for the development of Intelligence? In other words, why a person gets to be normal (IQ 100), while another is a genius (IQ 150). Is it Nature or Nurture?
Several studies have indicated that Intelligence is mainly inherited 2, as reported in an article published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
."...since the integrity of the brain's wiring is influenced by genes, the genes we inherit play a far greater role in intelligence than was previously thought. .....Genes appear to influence intelligence by determining how well nerve axons are encased in myelin — the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in our brains. The thicker the myelin, the faster the nerve impulses".

Over the course of a lifetime the effects of inherited material on intelligence varies from around .2 to .8, and so approximately across an individual's lifetime intelligence is determined equally by "nature" and "nurture" - according to the American Psychological Association which reviewed all the major studies on this topic. So to say that intelligence is "mainly inherited" is at best disingenuous, and at worst, wrong.

In 2003 trial psychologist Jeremy Gray 6, then at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues scanned the brains of 48 individuals using functional MRI, which detects neural activity by tracking the flow of oxygenated blood in brain tissue, while the subjects completed hard tasks that taxed working memory. The researchers saw higher levels of activity in prefrontal and parietal brain regions in the participants who had received high scores on an intelligence test, as compared with low scorers.

These researchers also consistently stress the fact that increased blood flow is not the cause of increased intelligence.

Ironically, many geniuses actually score poorly on standardised intelligence tests or perform very poorly at school – despite the fact that they have very high intellectual ability.......Aside from high intellectual ability, all geniuses also exhibit great creative intelligence.

Reference please? It appears you've just pulled this out of your ass. Your comment on "creative intelligence" also appears to be an implicit acceptance of the idea of "multiple intelligences", which currently has no real support in academia.

I believe there is now enough evidence to bury once and for all the belief, held by some, we only utilize about 10% of our brain capacity while performing our usual tasks while leaving untapped the remaining 90%.
A corollary of this would be that, if we only knew how to put to work the idle part of the brain, we could increase dramatically our cognitive power. Indeed, Neuroscientists using imaging techniques such as fMRI, PET, and SPECT, have clearly shown the absence of any period of "quiescence" in brain activity, and that even during sleep, either REM or non-REM, there can be seen areas of activation such as the hippocampus, which suggests a role of sleep in memory consolidation.

What?

You've just said that you've buried the 10% myth, and then in the following paragraph suggested that we can increase our cognitive power by using the idle parts of the brain - which is the main part of the myth that is ridiculous! Again, to use the computer analogy, you are saying that if we want to speed up our computers then we need to turn on all the idle programs. So if we turn on every single program installed on our computer then it would run faster!

Like the computer, if we tried turning on the idle parts of our brain then three possible things would happen:

1) Our increased activity would cause our performance and reaction times to suffer significantly (i.e. it would be like trying to rub your tummy and pat your head multiplied by a million)
2) The excessive brain usage would cause you to have a seizure and/or blackout, or
3) You would remain conscious as the heat generated by using all the parts of your brain simultaneously literally melts your brain.

Interestingly, neuroimaging studies of "Idiots Savants" have also revealed the presence of discrepancies between different areas of the brain. In particular, while the cortex was found to be thinner in the superior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and left middle temporal gyrus, a thicker cortex was present in bilateral portions of the superior parietal region.

These studies of "idiot savants" aren't the same studies you presented in the other thread are they? The ones where you pretended that all autistic people are idiot savants, and so you used brain scans of autistics to make claims about idiot savants? Not all idiot savants are autistic and not all autistics are idiot savants, so those studies are meaningless.

Since intelligence is mainly inherited and congenital, people born to have an average (100) IQ won't certainly become geniuses in adulthood.

Since intelligence isn't mainly inherited, there's no such thing as people "born to have an average IQ" and given the significant influence of environment on intelligence, it's certainly possible that "bad intelligence genes" can be mostly or wholly outweighed by an optimal environment.

It has been shown furthermore, that physical as well as mental exercises, can improve cognitive performances of young adults and older people.

I'd really like to see your references for this. There is some minimal/weak evidence which suggests that physical exercise decreases intelligence, and there is currently no evidence that "mental exercises" (like those Brain School games or Sudoku) have any effect on intelligence.

Although still much remains unknown about the inner workings of the human brain, progress made within the last half century bodes well for future discoveries and therapies.
Actually, one of the most promising fields of medical research being medical genetics and epigenetics, it comes easily to mind the possibility that one day these techniques will be in common use not only to treat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, Dementia, ADHD, and Autism, but also to enhance permanently the intelligence of normal people.

Except you haven't presented any evidence or logical arguments to suggest that we can increase the intelligence of "normal" people. Instead you keep making the same mistake by assuming that techniques that improve/fix deficiencies in abnormal brains will work extra well in normal people - in other words, you look at the finding "giving water to a dehydrated person will improve their physical performance" and you assume that over-hydrating healthy people will make them run like the Flash.

Two questions for Mazille: What happens if an essay is too long (is there any leeway)? And are references included in the word count?

Perhaps I need to re-read that.

I admit that cognitive science is not physics. SO shoot me!