Jump to content
Science Forums

Recommended Posts

Posted
The number of differences is irrelevant. The issue is that in ascribing a particular characteristic to old people simply on the basis that they are old is not qualitatively different from ascribing a characteristic based on race. To indulge in such practices is stereotyping. Look it up.

I have not seen many old brains so I'll take your word for the shrivelling. I agree that there is mental and physical degradation. Please demonstrate that this degradation leads to an inability to engage in rational thought.

If I may borrow one of your own terms, that sounds very much like a bullshit argument. You would claim, would you that Betrand Russell was unable to engage in rational thought simply because he was ninety five years old? I mean really, such a claim could be said to be lacking in evidence of rational thought.You should try to get out more.

 

Stereotyping is not racism nor is there anything wrong with it. That is why that term isn't heard much any more: The argument behind criticizing it is bogus.

 

If my hand would burn from touching a red stove 100% of the time, then I would reason that touching the stove would burn my hand. It's called inductive reasoning, and all human thought depends on it.

 

Your claim is similar to saying that it is stereotyping to say that women are likely to have female reproductive organs.

 

If older people on average have 3/4 the brain volume, then there is quite a bit of difference between comparing blacks and whites and old and young.

 

I personally was not arguing regarding the brain shriveling effects on rational thought and instead was arguing that the external physical differences indirectly causes a shift in social behavior with respect to moral reasoning.

 

However there have been studies connecting volume of the brain to reasoning ability and things of that nature. It is not exactly far fetched. Personally, I retain the belief that if an older person proves rational then I will treat him as such rather than refuse to recognize it because of what category he belongs to (this is the type of thing I would relate to racism) But in my experience older people are stubborn more often than not, and stubborn = irrational.

 

As I said, categories provide probabilities based on past experience. If I don't have time to gather more information on a random 95 year old, then yes I would reason that he/she is probably not rational. However it isn't that frequent that I would have so little time that I wouldn't listen to what a 95 year old had to say just because they probably can't respond rationally to any counter arguments. I would rather just try it and see how they respond, maybe even bringing up the stubbornness as a way to challenge them to be more rational.

Posted
I said that old people were being stubborn NOT because they disagree, but because when they are wrong they never admit it.

That is a nonsensical generalisation.

Please provide some proof.

 

The quality of the bullshit you come up with at this point is very clearly poor as you are just trying to buy some time to think of something better to say. The point though, is that you feel you never have to concede or give up even if you demonstrate that you know you are wrong.

 

It is called projection.

Posted
Stereotyping is not racism nor is there anything wrong with it. That is why that term isn't heard much any more:
at best it is wolly thinking at worst it is racism The argument behind you defending it is bogus.
social consequences of stereotypes:

  • over estimation of differences between groups, making groups appear vastly different from what they actually are
     
  • underestimation of variations within the group
     
  • distortions of reality
     
  • stereotype used to justify hostility, discrimination, oppression

Also used as a reason for political inaction as the stereotyped minority can be blamed for their own shortcomings.

Stereotypes and Stereotyping

 

 

However there have been studies connecting volume of the brain to reasoning ability and things of that nature.

Really, what studies? when and where?

I have the largest hat size possible. Does that mean I am among the most intelligent?

It is entirely far fetched. Personally, I retain the belief that if an younger person proves rational then I will treat him as such rather than refuse to recognize it because of what category he belongs to (this is the type of thing I would relate to racism) But in my experience younger people are stubborn more often than not, and stubborn = irrational.

 

As I said, categories provide probabilities based on past experience. If I don't have time to gather more information on a random 15 year old, then yes I would reason that he/she is probably not rational. However it isn't that frequent that I would have so little time that I wouldn't listen to what a 15 year old had to say just because they probably can't respond rationally to any counter arguments. I would rather just try it and see how they respond, maybe even bringing up the stubbornness as a way to challenge them to be more rational.

Posted
That is a nonsensical generalisation.

Please provide some proof.

 

The rest of your post is fallacious, but this part is wrong because it was not a science structured argument.

 

This type of argument takes the form "I experienced X and therefore reasoned Y" and the reader then reasons "If I also experience X then I can follow this to Y being true using the provided path"

 

You are being utterly ridiculous. Old people decay visibly while still alive. That is simple reality. It simple denial to refuse to accept that there are differences between older and younger people and that those differences are mostly negative for the older people. Perhaps you would like to race or something and see what happens?

Posted
The rest of your post is fallacious, but this part is wrong because it was not a science structured argument.
So's yours, because of your continued denial of evidence that the brain is remarkably robust in spite of cell death, and the clear increase in connections and knowledge over time.

 

Its become quite clear looking at your posting history that you harbor an intense hatred of those older than yourself who have told you you you don't know anything because you have no experience.

 

Its frustrating, we all go through it. Get over it.

 

Its going to be incredibly fun to call you "old" when you hit 30, dear.

 

You will take little delight in it, I can tell you; there is such odds in the man, :)

Buffy

Posted
Stereotyping is not racism nor is there anything wrong with it.
Nowhere did I claim that stereotyping is racism. Please try to read posts more carefully and your understanding will improve.

 

Stereotyping has some useful characteristics. Foremost amongst these is timesaving. However, in a social context it is decidedly wrong.

If my hand would burn from touching a red stove 100% of the time, then I would reason that touching the stove would burn my hand. It's called inductive reasoning, and all human thought depends on it.
1. That is not stereotyping.

2. You mean humans never use deductive reasoning? I didn't know that.:)

Your claim is similar to saying that it is stereotyping to say that women are likely to have female reproductive organs.
You really don't understand stereotyping. Stereotyping would be like saying that all women nag their husbands. All women want to have children. Stereotyping involves generalising from the particular with insufficient (and often contrary) evidence. You are stereotyping old people.
If older people on average have 3/4 the brain volume, then there is quite a bit of difference between comparing blacks and whites and old and young.

Source please.
I personally was not arguing regarding the brain shriveling effects on rational thought and instead was arguing that the external physical differences indirectly causes a shift in social behavior with respect to moral reasoning.
Based entirely upon your untrained, restricted, biased perceptions. :eek_big:Move over Margaret Meade, the future of social observation is here and it is called Kriminal99.
But in my experience older people are stubborn more often than not, and stubborn = irrational.
Based upon your posts here I think a different equation applies.

 

stubborn = unwilling to concede one inch to some jumped up young punk who thinks they are the epitome of intellect.

Posted
Teen Aggressiveness in the Brain

 

By Elizabeth Quill

ScienceNOW Daily News

26 February 2008

Teens who are more likely to argue aggressively and persistently with their parents also have brain structures of different sizes, a new study finds. On average, a sassy kid has a larger amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotional responses, than a cooperative one. The findings could help scientists understand the roots of aggressive behavior in teens.

 

For teenagers, the battle begins within. When hormones surge in puberty, the amygdala grows in size and becomes more active, leading to rash and emotional behavior.

Teen Aggressiveness in the Brain -- Quill 2008 (226): 3 -- ScienceNOW

  • 7 months later...
Posted

I've just read this thread with much mirth.

 

Yes, the title/subject is bigoted. It really wasn't thought through.

 

The topic of this debate should have been neutrally phrased. It is one of the cores of the scientific method - don't ask leading questions!

 

From my experience of arguments, as a forum mod, from working in Big Aero, and from being one of two boys, the most common start of arguments, especially big and noisy ones, is that the two (or more) parties are arguing different things. As things get more frantic, it can be very funny to note how many people are arguing the same thing, from a different angle, using different language forms.

 

{Someone} doesn't get it, because he doesn't seem to understand the argument, possibly because it's not in his list of types of argument?

 

Anyway, this thread cannot be "solved" because it was a poorly phrased question, and everyone is arguing about different things.

 

If we change the debate topic to "Which group is more rational, the young or the elderly?", then we can have a debate.

 

Given the new topic, I would suggest that, in general, the young are more impulsive, and less likely to act rationally. No rational person would drink to excess, to the point of falling down, yet many people do. Binge drinking is a problem mostly of the younger generation, in the UK, where town centres are now the subject of youth curfews and drinking bans. More youths are in prison, and more are committed to prison, than older persons (though the gender gap is even more noticeable) which implies lower impulse control, since most crimes are not pre-planned.

 

As to the questions raised above by some as regards the "obvious" deterioration of the elderly, I would suggest that this is partly a self-selecting set. Many youths who were mentally confused and had issues due to it would already have been subjected to a strong selection pressure during the journey to old age. Those in homes for the last 50 years would be less visible, while those not in care would be more likely to die before reaching old age. Further, those who lost it (or never had it) at a young age 50 years ago could easily be mis-filed. (Though that could easily be argued either way - they are old now, which group do they go in? Both?)

 

That some proportions of both the young and old are bat$hit crazy is true, but we would have to investigate the comparative rates of crazy, as well as track the delta of the crazy function over a short to medium term.

 

Further, who defines crazy or even just stubborn? It is an eternal hope of mine that Terry Pratchett is perfectly fine, and it is the testing process that is wrong. "Do you see persons and characters that are not there?" "Can you hear the voices of the dead in your head?" "What colour is magic?" When you consider his corpus of work, I'm sure he would answer yes to all three of those questions. When you don't consider it, he's a nutter.

 

Much to debate, once the question is properly phrased.

Posted
I've just read this thread with much mirth.

 

Yes, the title/subject is bigoted. It really wasn't thought through.

 

The topic of this.

A rational human being!!

How did you sneak in here!?

 

Great butterfly/sponge/creative/insightful/satirical minds like Terry Pratchett's are awesome.

Posted

Yes, it makes perfect sense when you think about it. A young person whose brain has not matured, which has only 1/4 of the data input, which has had only 1/4 of life's experiences, never run a business or had much social education MUST be far more rational than one who has.

Posted
A rational human being!!

How did you sneak in here!?

 

Great butterfly/sponge/creative/insightful/satirical minds like Terry Pratchett's are awesome.

 

It was easy. I used my middle-aged super-mind-powers. ;-)

Posted

Both old and young can be rational yet deduce different conclusions based on the data set they use. The older person has gone through more life experience and therefore has more data to reason with. The younger person can still be very reasonable, but may draw different conclusions based on less data. It will look like each is irrational to the other.

 

Let me give an example using math. If you had two data points, the best rational curve is a line connecting the points. Of you have three data points it can be a line or a curve based on the most logical way to connect the points. The person with two data points will think it is irrational to draw a circle through two points, while the person with three points will think it is weak reason to assume it has to be a line, since a curve works better with these three points.

 

Let me give a more real life example. The child wants to go to a concert with their friends. Since they never have gone before, they reason; I like to have fun. Concerts are fun, therefore If I go to the concert I will have fun. This is reasonable. The parents has done this already in their past. Some of their data involved drinking, drugs, the fight that broke out, intoxicated girls and sex, the police, etc. It is not a straight line of harmless fun. There is another twist or curve to the concert reasoning that involves danger. They may then tell their child "you can't go to this concert", which seems irrational to the child. In the final analysis, both are rational, but with the difference being the data of experience. The result is two curves, with both seeming irrational or naive to the other.

 

There is another angle to reasoning. One starts at the conclusion desired and builds up a line of reasoning to this conclusion. The other does not have a conclusion in mind but begins to reason letting the reasoning draw its own natural conclusion. These are not the same, although both involve reasoning.

 

The first can begin with an irrational impulse toward an end, which is the conclusion. I want that cake. Now I need to come up with logical reasons to justify this irrational/impulse conclusion to make it look like it was rational. The other approach does not yet have a conclusion, sort of like Sherlock Holmes, but begins with clues and logic concerning calories, health, cost, etc., with the path of logic leading to one inevitable conclusion.

 

An analogy is hiking in the mountains. The first sees the summit, which is the goal or impulse. There are many paths you can take to reach this goal, which are all the different logic trains one can use to reach this goal in advance. This type of logic promotes variety. The second type doesn't care about the summit, since the conclusion suppose to come last not first. It simply takes a path of clues and walks through the logic steps, then climbs, resulting in the summit (conclusion is last). Once both of these are complete it is hard to tell the difference. The way you tell the first is data is left out in the reasoning to divert the logic directly the starting goal.

 

Personal politics uses this process. One has their pet candidate and will use reason to make them look good, since that is the goal. The goal will not allow conflicting reasoning or data since this could delay the conclusion. The other type of reasoning does not already goal in mind or else you would not be able to use reasons that could divert from your goal and lead you in a direction you don't want to go. It is not clear whether young and old use one of the other, more or less. I would assume young is more of a visionary following dreams and impulses and then going back to create the logic support. Older people use a bit of both not allowing the wishful conclusions of their children unless sherlock agrees.

Posted

The real question should be: At what point does a person have the experience and wisdom to realize he knew and understood very little in his younger years? When does he have enough experience with all the complexities of life, death, love, social issues, finances, business, and whatever else needed for wisdom, that he can finally say-- Now I understand the way the world works. I doubt there is anyone under 50 that even understands himself, much less the world.

Posted
The real question should be: At what point does a person have the experience and wisdom to realize he knew and understood very little in his younger years?

 

That would be subjective. It would be different for everyone.

 

When does he have enough experience with all the complexities of life, death, love, social issues, finances, business, and whatever else needed for wisdom, that he can finally say-- Now I understand the way the world works.

 

Never. Well, he could say that he knows how the world works, but that is not the same as actually knowing.

 

I doubt there is anyone under 50 that even understands himself, much less the world.

 

Is that not the same ignorant (lump 'em all together) discrimination displayed in the thread title, just reversed?

 

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

-Confucius

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...