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| QUOTE (batmanchester @ Oct 4 2006, 12:02 AM) |
i've noticed a pattern over the last week that seems to be intensifing. someone will post a topic, and someone else will try to tear that person down through scorn and ridicule, which in turn will lead to a retaliatory put down by the original poster. for God's sake people! if you haven't figured out the stakes by now, then you never will. the government of the united states is taking away your constitutional rights. the government of the united states murdered 3,000 of your fellow citizen's in order to further their political agenda. the government of the united states is eroding your standard of living to the point that you will all be serfs of the corporations. if this is not enough to bring us all together in one common cause, with one common goal, then nothing will. as for myself, when i post news stories from around the world, it is to show the censorship being perpetrated upon you by the american corporate media. these stories are pertinent to what we are supposed to be trying to do. get the truth out. sometimes you can find these stories buried in the american media sites and newspapers. other times, i actually am sifting through sites from all over the world to find out things they don't want you to know. so to those of you who send me emails about how i'm hurting "the cause", i submit to you that you don't know what the cause actually is. this whole thing is bigger than just 9/11. by rooting around, you'll find lie after lie after lie. spin and more spin. and it's amazing that only the american people are blind to what's going on right in front of their faces. the rest of the world knows, and is watching us with a wary eye. that said, can we as a group come together and stop the bickering? can we find common ground, and discuss the issues as mature adults? figure out what our next step is? because if we don't, then they have already won, and we may as well board their trains when the time comes. thanks for listening..............................godspeed to all and good luck |
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| The Somebody Else's Problem field (SEP field) is a fictional technology from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. It is a cheaper and more practical alternative to an invisibility field. [...] When somebody, or something, is surrounded by a SEP field, the human brain perceives it as "somebody else's problem", and therefore will be incapable of paying attention to the object (or even seeing it, or recognizing its existence) unless it is being specifically looked for. A primary example of this was given in the third book Life, the Universe and Everything, when a UFO (a spaceship powered by the Bistromathic drive owned by the character Slartibartfast) lands in the middle of a cricket ground during a match, and the assembled crowd completely ignores it. Another prime example occurs when the aforementioned ship's field is extended so that the characters fail to notice the fact that they cannot breathe or the fact that the asteroid that they are standing on does not have enough gravitational force to hold them down. It should be noted that an SEP field won't render an object invisible if it is expected to be there, and a SEP-cloaked object may be noticed out of the corner of the eye. Real life example: The idea of the SEP field has some grounding in the real life idea known as static filtering, in which people immediately disregard information contrary to what is expected. An example of malicious use of static filtering is the theory of subliminal messages in visual media. This theory is also put to practice in the film Fight Club; viewers are shown brief glimpses of a specific character as he suddenly appears and disappears, yet first-time viewers will generally disregard the flash unless they are told about its significance. |
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| Cognitive dissonance is the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior; in laymen's terms, it is the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. The theory of cognitive dissonance states that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to reduce the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions. Experiments have attempted to quantify this hypothetical drive. The theory of cognitive dissonance was first proposed by the psychologist Leon Festinger in 1956 after observing the counterintuitive belief persistence of members of a UFO doomsday cult and their increased proselytization after the leader's prophecy failed. The failed message of earth's destruction, sent by aliens to a suburban housewife in 1956, became a disconfirmed expectancy that increased dissonance between cognitions, thereby causing most members of the impromptu cult to lessen the dissonance by accepting a new prophecy; that the aliens had instead spared the planet for their sake. |
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| The bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy) is a psychological phenomenon where persons are less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when others are present than when they are alone. A 1968 study by John Darley and Bibb Latane first demonstrated the bystander effect in the laboratory. They ran some simple studies such as the following: A subject is placed alone in a room and is told he can communicate with other subjects through an intercom. In reality, he is just listening to an audio recording and is told his microphone will be off until it is his turn to speak. During the recording, one subject suddenly pretends he is having a seizure. The study found that how long the subject waits before alerting the experimenter varies inversely with the number of other subjects. In some cases, the subject never told the experimenter. |
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| Diffusion of responsibility is a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. Diffusion of responsibility can manifest itself through the following: * in a group of peers who act or, through inaction, allow events to occur which they would never allow if alone (see bystander apathy for an example) or * in hierarchical organizations as when, for example, underlings claim that they were following orders and supervisors claim that they were just issuing directives and not doing anything per se. This mindset can be seen in the phrase "No one raindrop thinks it caused the flood." * Kitty Genovese, a New York woman, was stabbed to death near her house. More than 30 of Genovese's neighbors heard her screaming for help, yet no one helped her, each thinking that somebody else definitely would. * In a firing squad, one shooter is traditionally given a blank bullet, allowing all members of the firing squad to believe that they only fired a blank. * In some electric chairs there may be many switches, one of which is not connected. The executioners may then choose to believe that they were the one who only pulled a non-functional switch. * In military terms, it may be easier to deal with the death of an enemy when the soldier receives a direct order to do some action. See below for a discussion on the "I was only following orders" defense during the war-crimes trials of Nazi Germany. The Milgram experiment also demonstrates this principle. Legal uses The latter definition was used as a legal defense (unsuccessfully) by many of the Nazis being tried at Nuremberg. It has been used with varying degrees of success in other situations. |
| QUOTE (Daniels @ Oct 4 2006, 12:46 AM) | ||
This post by batmanchester deserves to be perused by a wider audience.
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