> [Hammond]
> Ron... first of all any veteran of mental health studies knows
> that this amputation thing is related to sado-masochistic
> threat.. the same reason aboriginals or street punks put
> studs in their noses or belly buttons.. to threaten YOU.
A woman has a stroke and can no longer control her arm, a sort of
non-amputee wanabee who insist that she can in fact control her arm and she
does not understand what all the fuss is all about. From your discription
she wants to threaten me and perhaps feel superior. By applying your idea a
Cartesian model of interaction forces relative to the body, the critical
neuro pathways to inform her that she has been damaged or blocked. When
cold water is poured in her ear this effects the organization of the
information in the brain resulting in her now being aware that her arm is
paralized. Again this makes sense from a Cartesian model, and I do not have
to infer that she is sado-masochistic or has feeling of inferiority.
> I was living in a flop house where one of the residents
> (mentally ill) walked by a construction site and picked up a
> Skill-saw and severed his left arm above the elbow, in front of
> 25 horrified construction workers.
A mentally ill person cuts his arm off, not to horrify construction workers,
but to restore the organization of his brain to what he believes will be
good adjustment to his problems. For example, a speaker put on one leg, and
other put on the other leg and vibrated at the correct frequency will create
a strong illusion that the vibration is occurring on a third leg in the
middle of the two. Relative to our culture, if this sensation continued,
wouldn't the individual desire to remove the third leg? The third leg must
be a cross correlation in a Cartesian model of the body.
> But to relate this thing to Cartesian body geometry is
> ridiculous... unless you are going to argue that Republicans
> will cut off their Left limbs and Democrats will cut off
> their Right limbs. There might be a correlation there.. but
> I'll bet it wouldn't exceed r=0.3 at the most.
Being a Democrat myself I have difficulty understanding why senior citizens
would want to vote Republican and reduce the financial aid they desparately
need in order to reduce government and give the rich a tax break. Being one
of the "rich" I will keep my tax break and invest it, but I voted for the
common good, not for my tax break which I do not need.
> However, there probably is a correlation, since they found
> in frontal lobotomy studies a Right-Left brain hemisphere
> correlation with Manic (Right wing) and Neurotic (Left wing)
> patients.
Neurotic personalities in a Cartesian model, must include sado-masochistic
personalities, otherwise we would have to look for other phenomenon that
your model does not apply to. Remember a model must be pushed to extreme
conditions to discover the value of the approach.
Ron Blue
http://turn.to/ai
