Let me see now.

We have an analogy, the Cargo Cult concept, we wish to apply to one of
two circumstances.

Here is the analogy:

"I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are
examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the
South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's
the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but
they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

(from Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feyman.
Adapted from the CalTech commencement address given in 1974)"

One circumstance, let's call it "Number One," has decades of scientific
research that shows a very high rate of correlation between an action
with bad outcomes and sans those actions consistently better results
for wanted outcomes. Most important, no harm from not using this action
has ever been shown, or even correlations found.

The other circumstance, we'll call "Number Two," has NO scientific
research on it at all, reams and reams of babbling superstition that
"it works" and "I have the right to do it," and "we've been doing it
forever and most victims of it turn out okay." Plus dangerous fanatics
that recommend in print advising the use of the harmful method even on
toddlers and INFANTS, WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT.

Many books and commentary ... but NO scientific contribution other than
attacking the research of the opponent.

Now tell me, as a reasonably intelligent human being, which would you
say fits the Cargo Cult analogy, and which doesn't?

If you picked number one, as fitting the Cargo Cult analogy over number
two, welcome to the screaching hysterical monkeyboy club.

0:-

On 20 Jul 2005 wrote:

One circumstance, let's call it "Number One," has decades of scientific
research that shows a very high rate of correlation between an action
with bad outcomes and sans those actions consistently better results
for wanted outcomes. Most important, no harm from not using this action
has ever been shown, or even correlations found.

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic, Kane0. The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the higher the ASB.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998 "Impulsive Corporal Punishment by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have posted "numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS? ;-)

Doan

doan writes:

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic, Kane0. The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the higher the ASB.

Hi, doan!

Thank you very much for the information and citation. The study draws
interesting conclusions -- something parents themselves have known for
centuries, of course.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998 "Impulsive Corporal Punishment
by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

The trouble with Straus and some of the others that hang out at that
university, is that they have the uncanny ability to discover truths which
are contradictory. This is inconvenient for zealots, who are looking for
flagship advocacy "research." Gelles also tends to **** off those who bang
the drums for him. But such is the nature of truth -- it is often
paradoxial.

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have posted "numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS? ;-)

LaVonne has a tendency to advance ideas not supported by the research. It
is in the nature of zealot to avoid that you do not want to hear. That's
probably why, in the midst of these heated discussions of the best interests
of children, they don't listen to children.

Parents do.

AS I READ THESE PAGES I WONDER IF WE ALL ARE FROM THE
PLANET EARTH
ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE GUYS THAT SIT AT THIER COMPUTER
WANKING FOR
IDEAS.This is a Foster Parent Support newsgroup. Give
it back to the === This is a Foster Parent Support
newsgroup. Give it back to the foster parents and stop
with the childish, inane crap. Do not go away mad,
just go away; AS I READ THESE PAGES I WONDER IF WE ALL
ARE FROM THE PLANET EARTH
ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE GUYS THAT SIT AT THIER COMPUTER
WANKING FOR
IDEAS.
wrote in message
ups.com...
We have an analogy, the Cargo Cult concept, we wish
to apply to one of
two circumstances.

Here is the analogy:

"I think the educational and psychological studies I
mentioned are
examples of what I would like to call cargo cult
science. In the
South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During
the war they saw
airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they
want the same
thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate
things like
runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways,
to make a
wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden
pieces on his head
like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like
antennas--he's
the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to
land. They're
doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks
exactly the
way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No
airplanes land. So
I call these things cargo cult science, because they
follow all the
apparent precepts and forms of scientific
investigation, but
they're missing something essential, because the
planes don't land.

(from Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feyman.
Adapted from the CalTech commencement address given
in 1974)"

One circumstance, let's call it "Number One," has
decades of scientific
research that shows a very high rate of correlation
between an action
with bad outcomes and sans those actions consistently
better results
for wanted outcomes. Most important, no harm from not
using this action
has ever been shown, or even correlations found.

The other circumstance, we'll call "Number Two," has
NO scientific
research on it at all, reams and reams of babbling
superstition that
"it works" and "I have the right to do it," and
"we've been doing it
forever and most victims of it turn out okay." Plus
dangerous fanatics
that recommend in print advising the use of the
harmful method even on
toddlers and INFANTS, WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT.

Many books and commentary ... but NO scientific
contribution other than
attacking the research of the opponent.

Now tell me, as a reasonably intelligent human being,
which would you
say fits the Cargo Cult analogy, and which doesn't?

If you picked number one, as fitting the Cargo Cult
analogy over number
two, welcome to the screaching hysterical monkeyboy
club.

0:-

Do you have a major mental problem. What is this
obsession with bloody
urinals. You really are mentally screwed up aren't you.
This is a Foster Parent Support newsgroup. Give it
back to the foster parents and stop with the childish,
inane crap. Do not go away mad, just go away;
"Doan" wrote in message
...
On 20 Jul 2005 wrote:

One circumstance, let's call it "Number One," has
decades of scientific
research that shows a very high rate of correlation
between an action
with bad outcomes and sans those actions
consistently better results
for wanted outcomes. Most important, no harm from
not using this action
has ever been shown, or even correlations found.

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic, Kane0.
The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp
alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the higher
the ASB.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998
"Impulsive Corporal Punishment by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of
children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have posted
"numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS? ;-)

Doan

WHY?!?! Is THIS fun for you? Someone has an anal
fixation. Get your head
out of your ass. I can't even INSULT you, you are such
a genuine waste of human flesh.
"Doug" wrote in message
...
doan writes:

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic,
Kane0. The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp
alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the
higher the ASB.

Hi, doan!

Thank you very much for the information and citation.
The study draws interesting conclusions -- something
parents themselves have known for centuries, of
course.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998
"Impulsive Corporal Punishment by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of
children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

The trouble with Straus and some of the others that
hang out at that university, is that they have the
uncanny ability to discover truths which are
contradictory. This is inconvenient for zealots, who
are looking for flagship advocacy "research." Gelles
also tends to **** off those who bang the drums for
him. But such is the nature of truth -- it is often
paradoxial.

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have
posted "numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS?
;-)

LaVonne has a tendency to advance ideas not supported
by the research. It is in the nature of zealot to
avoid that you do not want to hear. That's probably
why, in the midst of these heated discussions of the
best interests of children, they don't listen to
children.

Parents do.

Doug wrote:
doan writes:

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic, Kane0. The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the higher the ASB.

Hi, doan!

Check the list. Three of those four (and the fourth could be delivered
as a punishing lecture) are punishment methods. Hardly a fair
comparison. One punishment model for another and claiming the latter
does work, but of course the former isn't put to the test, and never
has been.


Thank you very much for the information and citation. The study draws
interesting conclusions -- something parents themselves have known for
centuries, of course.

Same old crap. Slavery was a centuries long piece of accepted
knowledge, and so was women's and children's chattel status. The same
arguments and similar would put forth when and end to those conditions
were sought.

And YOU, Doug, are someone that wants forms of Corporal Punishment
investigated by the police and criminally prosecuted as assualt...so
stop with the double standard lack of moral and ethical character.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998 "Impulsive Corporal Punishment
by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness of children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

The trouble with Straus and some of the others that hang out at that
university, is that they have the uncanny ability to discover truths which
are contradictory. This is inconvenient for zealots, who are looking for
flagship advocacy "research." Gelles also tends to **** off those who bang
the drums for him. But such is the nature of truth -- it is often
paradoxial.

So Strauss is a zealot? Care to give him a buzz and tell him so?

Oh, and in this instance what paradoxical "truth" would you be
referring to?

That corporal punishment fails, when used, to show immediate negative
effects so we should just let it be and not try to end it?

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have posted "numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS? ;-)

LaVonne has a tendency to advance ideas not supported by the research.

Oh really. Which "ideas" would those be?

It
is in the nature of zealot to avoid that you do not want to hear.

Really? Has Lavonne, or myself, for that matter, failed to confront
issues? We are still here, are we not?

That's
probably why, in the midst of these heated discussions of the best interests
of children, they don't listen to children.

Oh? Funny, the only time I've heard children say they felt it was
alright their parents spanked them was when the parent was present.
Give them a little time away from parents with people they can trust
and the truth comes out. They act and sould like any victim of assualt.


Parents do.

Listen to them? All parents?

Spanked children are held in the same chattel bondage they always have
been.

And until free of the assaultive parent of course what they say would
have to taken with that in mind. Slaves behaved much the same way,
while still slaves.

Probably less than 10% or so of children in the world, past or present,
have enjoyed parents that truly listened and supported their children's
development and who do not engage in power struggles with the child.

You have no more honesty in this debate than any other issue.

And your ignorances is profound.

And sound scientific, and sound decision making, has often been based
on correlations, so this argument as never been anything but a bull****
session by the spanking compulsives lost in their rationalizing assualt
against children.

It is rare that a beaten child was not first "spanked" and over time
the spankings escalated, and the parent is still saying they are just
disciplining and it's their right to do so.

And you cannot say where the line is between a damaging assualt and non
injurious corporal punishment lies for any given child or even the
general population of children. In fact even the law is unable to
handle it with the same exactness as other laws about other issues.

In fact if there ever was an issue running its rationale on
"correlation" your
conclusion that "parents have known for centuries" would be a prime
example.

And comparing their "correlation" and "science" by "knowing" is stupid.


When you can come up with a scientific study that defeats the
correlations of current studies that show harm from spanking, and
failure to teach let us know.

It will have to show spanking works.

Do you honestly believe it does, without side effects and risk? Dummy!

0:-

wrote in message
oups.com...


Doug wrote:
doan writes:

Correlation is not cause! This is very basic,
Kane0. The same
correlation has also been seen with non-cp
alternatives. Straus &
Mouradian (1998) looked at non-cp alternatives
like:

1) Talking to the child calmly
2) Sent the child to the room
3) Time-out
4) Removal of privileges

They found that the more non-cp discipline the
higher the ASB.

Hi, doan!

Check the list. Three of those four (and the fourth
could be delivered
as a punishing lecture) are punishment methods.
Hardly a fair
comparison. One punishment model for another and
claiming the latter
does work, but of course the former isn't put to the
test, and never
has been.


Thank you very much for the information and
citation. The study draws
interesting conclusions -- something parents
themselves have known for
centuries, of course.

Same old crap. Slavery was a centuries long piece of
accepted
knowledge, and so was women's and children's chattel
status. The same
arguments and similar would put forth when and end to
those conditions
were sought.

And YOU, Doug, are someone that wants forms of
Corporal Punishment
investigated by the police and criminally prosecuted
as assualt...so
stop with the double standard lack of moral and
ethical character.

Straus, Murray A. & Vera E. Mouradian. 1998
"Impulsive Corporal Punishment
by
Mothers and Antisocial Behavior and Impulsiveness
of children." Behavioral
Sciences and the Law. 16: 353-374.

The trouble with Straus and some of the others that
hang out at that
university, is that they have the uncanny ability to
discover truths which
are contradictory. This is inconvenient for
zealots, who are looking for
flagship advocacy "research." Gelles also tends to
**** off those who bang
the drums for him. But such is the nature of
truth -- it is often
paradoxial.

So Strauss is a zealot? Care to give him a buzz and
tell him so?

Oh, and in this instance what paradoxical "truth"
would you be
referring to?

That corporal punishment fails, when used, to show
immediate negative
effects so we should just let it be and not try to
end it?

Where are studies that LaVonne claimed to have
posted "numerous times" and
which you've have you found. Are you both LIARS?
;-)

LaVonne has a tendency to advance ideas not
supported by the research.

Oh really. Which "ideas" would those be?

It
is in the nature of zealot to avoid that you do not
want to hear.

Really? Has Lavonne, or myself, for that matter,
failed to confront
issues? We are still here, are we not?

That's
probably why, in the midst of these heated
discussions of the best interests
of children, they don't listen to children.

Oh? Funny, the only time I've heard children say they
felt it was
alright their parents spanked them was when the
parent was present.
Give them a little time away from parents with people
they can trust
and the truth comes out. They act and sould like any
victim of assualt.


Parents do.

Listen to them? All parents?

Spanked children are held in the same chattel bondage
they always have
been.

And until free of the assaultive parent of course
what they say would
have to taken with that in mind. Slaves behaved much
the same way,
while still slaves.

Probably less than 10% or so of children in the
world, past or present,
have enjoyed parents that truly listened and
supported their children's
development and who do not engage in power struggles
with the child.

You have no more honesty in this debate than any
other issue.

And your ignorances is profound.

And sound scientific, and sound decision making, has
often been based
on correlations, so this argument as never been
anything but a bull****
session by the spanking compulsives lost in their
rationalizing assualt
against children.

It is rare that a beaten child was not first
"spanked" and over time
the spankings escalated, and the parent is still
saying they are just
disciplining and it's their right to do so.

And you cannot say where the line is between a
damaging assualt and non
injurious corporal punishment lies for any given
child or even the
general population of children. In fact even the law
is unable to
handle it with the same exactness as other laws about
other issues.

In fact if there ever was an issue running its
rationale on
"correlation" your
conclusion that "parents have known for centuries"
would be a prime
example.

And comparing their "correlation" and "science" by
"knowing" is stupid.


When you can come up with a scientific study that
defeats the
correlations of current studies that show harm from
spanking, and
failure to teach let us know.

It will have to show spanking works.

Do you honestly believe it does, without side effects
and risk? Dummy!

0:-

The Biology of Promiscuity
Why do human beings screw around when it complicates
our lives so much? Why do we preach fidelity at each
other and then, so often, practice adultery? The cheap
and obvious answer, "because it feels too good to stop"
isn't a good one, as it turns out.

Evolutionary biology teaches us that humans being, like
other animals, are adaptive machines; "feels good" is
simply instinct's way to steer us towards behaviors
that were on average successful for our ancestors. So
that answer simply sets up another question: why has
our species history favored behavior that is (as the
agony columns, bitter ballads, tragic plays and
veneral-disease statistics inform us) often destructive
to all parties involved?

This question has extra point for humans because human
sex and childbirth are risky business compared to that
of most of our near relatives. Human infants have huge
heads, enough to make giving birth a chancy matter --
and even so, the period during which they remain
dependent on nurturing is astonishingly long and
requires a lot of parental investment.

If we were redesigning humans to cope with the high
investment requirement, one obvious way would be to
rewire our instincts such that we pair-bond exclusively
for life. It's certainly possible to imagine an evolved
variant of humanity in which "infidelity" is never an
issue because mated pairs imprint on each other so
specifically that nobody else is sexually interesting.
Some birds are like this. So why aren't we like this?
Why haven't promiscuity and adultery been selected out?
What adaptive function do they serve that balances out
the risk to offspring from unstable matings?

The route to an answer lies in remembering that
evolutionary selection is not a benign planner that
tries to maximize group survival but rather a blind
competition between individual genetic lines. We need
to look more closely at the conflicting strategies used
by competing players in the reproduction game.

Male promiscuity has always been relatively easy to
understand. While total parental investment needs to be
pretty intense, men have a dramatically lower minimum
energy and risk investment in children than women do;
one index of the difference is that women not
infrequently died in childbirth under pre-modern
conditions. This means genetic lines propagating
through us hairy male types have an optimum strategy
that tilts us a little more towards "have lots of
offspring and don't nurture much", while women tilt
towards "have few offspring, work hard at making sure
they survive to breed".

This also explains why cultures that have not developed
an explicit ideology of sexual equality invariably take
female adultery much more seriously than male adultery.
A man who fails to take a grave view of his mate's
"unfaithfulness" is risking a much larger fraction of
his reproductive potential than a woman who ignores her
husband's philandering.

Indeed, there is a sense in which a man who is always
"faithful" is under-serving his genes -- and the
behavioral tendency to do that will be selected
against. His optimal strategy is to be promiscuous
enough to pick up opportunities to have his
reproductive freight partly paid by other men, while
not being so "faithless" that potential mates will
consider him a bad risk (e.g. for running off with
another woman and abandoning the kids).

What nobody had a good theory for until the mid-1990s
was why women cooperate in this behavior. Early
sociobiological models of human sexual strategy
predicted that women should grab the best provider they
could attract and then bend heaven and earth to keep
him faithful, because if he screwed around some of his
effort would be likely to be directed towards providing
for children by other women. In these theories, female
abstinence before marriage and fidelity during it was
modeled as a trade offered men to keep them faithful in
turn; an easy trade, because nobody had noticed any
evolutionary incentives for women to cheat on the
contract.

In retrospect, the resemblence of the female behavior
predicted by these models to conventional moral
prescriptions should have raised suspicions about the
models themselves -- because they failed to predict the
actual pervasiveness of female promiscuity and adultery
even in observable behavior, let alone concealed.

Start with a simple one: If the
trade-your-fidelity-for-his strategy were really a
selective optimum, singles bars wouldn't exist, because
genotypes producing women with singles-bar behavior
would have been selected out long ago. But there's an
even bigger whammy...

Actual paternity/maternity-marker studies in urban
populations done under guarantees that one's spouse and
others won't see the results have found that the
percentage of adulterous children born to married women
with ready access to other men can be startlingly high,
often in the 25% to 45% range. In most cases, the
father has no idea and the mother, in the nature of
things, was unsure before the assay.

These statistics cry out for explanation -- and it
turns out women do have an evolutionary incentive to
screw around. The light began to dawn during studies of
chimpanzee populations. Female chimps who spurn
low-status bachelor males from their own band are much
more willing to have sex with low-status bachelor males
from other bands.

That turned out to be the critical clue. There may be
other incentives we don't understand, but it turns out
that women genetically "want" both to keep an alpha
male faithful and to capture maximum genetic variation
in their offspring. Maximum genetic variation increases
the chance that some offspring will survive the
vicissitudes of rapidly-changing environmental
stresses, of which a notably important one is
co-evolving parasites and pathogens.

Assume Jane can keep Tarzan around and raise four
children. Her best strategy isn't to have all four by
Tarzan -- it's to have three by Tarzan and one by some
romantic stranger, a bachelor male from another pack.
As long as Tarzan doesn't catch them at it, the genes
conditioning Jane's sexual strategy get 50% of the
reproductive payoff regardless of who the biological
father is. If the stranger is a fitter male than the
best mate she could keep faithful, so much the better.
Her kids will win.

And this isn't just a human strategy either. Similar
behavior has been observed in other species with high
parental investment, notably among birds.

So. The variation effect predicts that mated women
should have a fairly strong genetic incentive to sneak
off into the bushes with romantic strangers -- that is,
other men who are (a) from outside their local breeding
population, and (b) are physically attractive or
talented or intelligent, or (c) show other,
socially-mediated signs of high fitness (such as wealth
or fame).

It may also explain why polyamorism is only now
emerging as a social movement, after women's
liberation, and why its most energetic partisans tend
to be women. Our instincts don't know about
contraceptive intervention; from our genes' point of
view sexual access is equivalent to reproductive use.
As our instincts see it, polyamory (the ideology of
open marriage) enables married women to have children
with bachelor males without risking losing their
husband's providership for any children. Men gain less
from the change, because they trade away a claim on
exclusive use of their wives' scarce reproductive
capacity for what may be only a marginal increase in
access to other women (relative to the traditional
system combining closed marriage and high rates of
covert adultery).

This model may not please prudes and Victorians very
much, but at least it explains her cheatin' heart as
well as his.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Thanks to Gale Pedowitz for the email discussion that
stimulated this essay.)
In The evolution of human mating: Trade-offs and
strategic pluralism, Steven W. Gangestad and Jeffry A.
Simpson have explored some similar themes, focusing on
within-sex variation in mating strategies and the idea
that there may be tradeoffs between fitness-to-mate and
willingness-to-nurture signals.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to Eric's Home Page