h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7587780.stm

And yet they want to change the law so that psychological abuse doesn't count as provocation in homicide cases, only physical abuse.

hmm, so something every child knows, and has probably known since we learnt to talk in something other than grunts is now news?

What next?

People found to be walking on two legs?

I think we all need to remember we have a very dangerous weapon located between our nose and chin... or chins in my case.

Slow news day? Or maybe the people who did the research are so thick-skinned they really didn't know that already.

Do you think they just come up with this stuff to use up any leftover money from their research budgets so they can get even more next year?

I think it could be important research if it affects social policy.

For instance if it is generally acknowledged that verbal abuse does more harm than physical abuse then how would that affect policy around teachers currently not being allowed to smack pupils in England & Wales (not sure about Scotland) being told that to verbally abuse a child is worse. What should happen to a teacher that does it?
What should the sanctions be for children that verbally abuse adults? If the damage is worse should the punishment be worse?
And the biggest one of all - parenting. Parents are smacking their children less and less in public but I have heard many a parent screaming at their child in frustration. (I'll put my hand up to that in years gone by). Should there be a sanction? Who should apply it and what should it be?

Or should we be building up more mutual respect? This happened a while back and then someone subverted it with the label "political correctness" and it was derailed.

This research will not be at all popular in the masses. We want to carry on calling people names like neds or chavs or other, worse, verbal abuse, don't we?

"Writing in the journal Psychological Science, they said evolutionary brain changes which allow us to work better in groups or societies could be key."

I wish they'd stop this thinking that every part of our psychology has some survival use. This plays into the idea of "intelligent design" to some extent in that it assumes we've evolved perfectly. We haven't, the flawed design of the eye (it sees upside down with our brains having had to adapt to deal with it) demonsrates that. It's likely that a lot of damaging and unhelpful psychological things aren't related to any "survival" purpose so much as just accidental baggage that comes with the (genuinely helpful) higher intelligence and capacity for imagination. I remember reading something where someone tried to argue (rather desperately) that depression had an evolutionary advantage: it clearly doesn't, it's an entirely useless and damaging emotion which is probably just a more sophisticated form of more base emotions.

Ha, using the depression argument I'd say it devolves your brain power more than anything. Of course we're constantly evolving - not fast enough apparently though - but there is a hell of a lot of junk science disguised in the form of 'serious' researech

::thread drift warning:::


"...the flawed design of the eye (it sees upside down with our brains having had to adapt to deal with it) demonsrates that."

Not flawed at all in that aspect. That's just simple physics. The eye must gather light in an inverse manner, that's just how the light "rays" go through the iris. Our brains do an amazing job of "adapting to deal with it". In a classic experiment, subjects were given prismatic glasses to "flip" the images in their eyes. The subjects stumbled about for a week or so as expected, but then their brains re-adapted to reconvert these flipped images and they were able to see "normally" again... then after another week or so, the glasses were removed. The subjects spent another week stumbling about until their brains re-reconverted the images. Our brains don't need to wait for evolution on that point. They're very adaptive.

::end thread drift:::

Hmmm. Depression. What if it's our minds telling us that we're doing the wrong things? Not eating the right foods, not doing exciting things, not getting enough exercise, not doing things that bring us satisfaction and so on.

I think we sometimes ignore what our bodies are telling us and we end up with other problems... Now pass me that cream cake and stop looking so slim in my presence! Mmmm... presents!

I agree wtih that actually Vestie. For example, if insomnia is left untreated it can develop into depression as your body goes into overdrive to simply keep you functioning. If you aren't eating properly your body will start to compromise by eating into the fat reserves your body actually needs, making your body store extra fat from when you do actually eat something, etc etc

Death: natures way of telling you to slow down.

>Hmmm. Depression. What if it's our minds telling us that we're doing the wrong things? Not eating the right foods, not doing exciting things, not getting enough exercise, not doing things that bring us satisfaction and so on.

Depression doesn't give people the get-up-and-go to change things, though, it fills the mind with negative, defeatist thoughts which have the opposite effect. As I said, I think it's our complicated brains processing much more primative emotions and having them come out all funny.

A lot of doctors, counsellors, etc believe that the modern 'condition' of stress is simply that - primitive emotions coming out all funny. Basically when you encounter a stressful situation - someone trying to mug you, a deadline at work, whatever - the body enters 'fight or flight' mode, aka survival mode. The body starts pumping more blood to the vital organs, adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol is released, etc, ready for the confrontation or retreat. However, we tend not to react in the way our body is primed for so all these extra hormones flushing around our system have nowhere to go. If they're not burned off somehow they effectively turn into a mild toxin - that's not good!

I just drink plenty of and flush those mild toxins out of my system.

I know when I get stressed I get this intense desire to hurt someone. I tend do it to myself as the police get funny about you beating people senseless for "lookin' at me, Pal".

An ex police colleague pointed out something to me that I'd not really thought of before. When there is a fight and someone gets injured the person who wins is generally the person who is prosecuted, whether they started the fight or not. So remember that if you do get into a fight with someone else for looking at you funny, let them win. Then you get to win in the end!

I wonder why that is?