Sad news: baby elephant has died.

[Skimmerking]

I see another thread makes it way off the topic again ..

Mike

[Quinn]

A "risqué" claim, certainly. Luckily I have evidence, and a nice sound theory to go with it. Google Scholar yields numerous results on this topic. If you'd like, I can request any of the full texts and get you the specific details. Last year I wrote a paper on institutionalized police abuse, and in the course of my literature search, came up with a lot of research on police abuse of kin. Unfortunately I do not still have those specific articles. I am not suggesting all or even a significant number of police officers are abusive, but that they are predisposed to this type of behaviour. We all would be if we spent our days engaging in almost exclusively negative interactions with no way to release the pressure. "Community policing" has sought to counteract this feeling of negativity within and towards police services, but unfortunately has been bastardized by many departments and rendered just a cliché. Anyways, I (and the criminologists who's views I subscribe to) would not consider the police a useful information source.

I have a final exam in 30 minutes or so, I'll respond to your comments regarding legalization when I get home.

[Fish]

Quinn,
Thank you for the information and I appreciate you spending the time looking that up when you could have been studying - I hope your exam went well. I looked through the links you provided and found some great info on the effects of job-related stress on police officers and their families. Alcoholism, divorce, abuse, ptsd, suicidal ideations...
What I could not find though was the "proof" that you said supported your claim that police are more likely to abuse their spouses and children than any other occupation. It may just be that I've lost my knack for research . I feel that a person could write a paper on the negative affects of being a long-haul trucker or a stock trader and I'm sure they would also find a lot of relevant articles. If you could please direct me to a study that says that police officers and prison guards are "more likely to engage in child and spousal abuse than the general population" I would really like to read it. Thanks in advance.

- good point about community policing, I always suspected that much of it was just posturing.

- Chad

[Quinn]

Right, should have added "but I'll keep looking." I don't think you've lost your knack, more likely that it's Google we're talking about, and a beta at that. I'll check the same engines I would have used last year and try to find something specifically related to this topic.

Going back to evolution and greed - here's what my prof had to say (Dr. Hugh Notman, normally of the U of C anthropology dept., specifically, primatology, he studies chimps, but teaches a few animal behaviour courses here and there):

Evolutionary psychology [in short, looks] at how much of our behaviour (all the way from grubby capitalism as a whole to how individuals choose which seat in a movie theatre to sit in!) has been shaped by our evolutionary past, and how selection has favoured certain behavioural tendencies that were beneficial to our ancestors (which could include early humans but also go all the way back to our early mammalian forbearers). Certainly the quest for material wealth and gain could, in theory, be rooted in our animal heritage in which "Contest competition" for resources meant get as much as you can now before someone else gets it all, and I for one have no problem believing that our short-sighted consumerism (at the expense of impending environmental doom!) is linked to this very primitive behavioural trait. There are, however, nay-sayers who make a good arguement for the fact that not all traditional human societies are/were as individualistic as modern industrial western ones. however, there is also evidence to show that these societies imposed strict social conformity - in other words, "greed" needed to be socialized out of people and they were "trained" to be more egalitarian than human nature would otherwise be! Also, small bands of people could be "non-environmental" in their practices (ie., hunt as much as they want/ slash and burn, etc) without too much global impact, whereas we, onbviously [sic], cannot. Saying that, it is believed that much of the megafauna that lived in America and Eurasia (like big cats, wooly mammoths and wooly rhinoceros) went extinct becasue of early human hunters. As for greed and territoriality, well, the latter is really just "defensive" behaviour - ie, keep others away from your turf. Maybe picket fences and security systems are more akin to good old territoriality than "greed"!

[albert_dao]

I was eagerly awaiting that.

But in the end, and I do say this with a lot of personal conviction, I don't think of psychology as a science. That's just a personal thing. I know a lot of you will dissagree with me and that's okay. I have my reasons.

[Murminator]

*YAWN*

This thread is getting longer than "War and Peace"

[Quinn]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

But in the end, and I do say this with a lot of personal conviction, I don't think of psychology as a science. That's just a personal thing. I know a lot of you will dissagree with me and that's okay. I have my reasons.

Can we discuss your reasons? Many people have a very dated view of psychology, ie. Alderian, Freudian. If you define science the same way the scientific community (physics, biology, genetics, chemistry, physiology, etc.) does, then psychology is a science. It's just that simple. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but it does bother me. I will tell you right now though that my area of interest is about as far removed from traditional psychology as you can get. You might be surprised how many branches there are to psychology now. An extremely diverse field of study.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Fish

A person could set up a 500 plant grow in a new community and in one year's time get three harvests and make a profit of one million dollars (after expenses).
- Chad

Sounds like you know a bit more on this subject than the average Joe there Chad

things that make ya go hmmmm

[Quinn]

I was going to suggest... extra metal halides... there must be one or two among us.

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by teevee

Can we discuss your reasons? Many people have a very dated view of psychology, ie. Alderian, Freudian. If you define science the same way the scientific community (physics, biology, genetics, chemistry, physiology, etc.) does, then psychology is a science. It's just that simple. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but it does bother me. I will tell you right now though that my area of interest is about as far removed from traditional psychology as you can get. You might be surprised how many branches there are to psychology now. An extremely diverse field of study.

Sorry, I was in a bit of a rush to play SC, so I gave a half assed comment.

To me, psychology's endless failure to produce definitive predictions for behavior clearly outdates it as a science, making it more ideological observation and theorem. That's a nice step in the right direction, but that's about it. I don't know how else to explain it without using movie clips and sound bits that I no longer have access to.

I'll be open minded about this though, maybe there's something big that I'm missing here.