behavior – TheCommonAtheist

What is Common Sense?

Where is all the common sense? We are looking at it

Def; “good sense and sound judgment in practical matters.”—a common-sense approach

One definition extrapolates that to develop common sense, we should “Stay aware of our surroundings at all times and pay attention to how people react around you to specific actions”

Sounds like a recipe for neuroticism…

I would say common sense is the action and common interpretation of current behaviors. Our common senses today are not very practical. They are based on academic learning, vs practical experience.

If they were practical we wouldn’t wonder why nobody has any. “So you don’t believe in god?That’s just common sense!” —Not any more.

So what is common sense and why do so few possess it? Is common sense an ideal, and not a real thing? Just remember, when you are mad and people around you are irritating, that these are your people.

I think common sense is the ability to adapt to any situation based on a collection of experiences. I trust a farmer over a politician. One has experience, while the other has read about it. The farmer can foresee the outcome of a decision. The politician can only see as far as the opinions he’s read, which are based on other opinions. This is where we reside today.

Common sense makes decisions based on utility —while the politicals make decisions based on feelings, which are devolved hunches to improve popularity but rarely produce the desired outcome—like religion.

Universe 25—The Utopia of Collapse

If you think you’re in control think again

“Universe 25″—An experiment. “Population peaked at 2,200 mice and thereafter exhibited a variety of abnormal, often destructive, behaviors including refusal to engage in courtship, females abandoning their young. By the 600th day, the population was on its way to extinction. Though physically able to reproduce, the mice had lost the social skills required to mate.

“Despite (or perhaps because) their every need was being catered for, mothers would abandon their young or merely just forget about them entirely, leaving them to fend for themselves. The mother mice also became aggressive towards trespassers to their nests, with males that would normally fill this role banished to other parts of the utopia. This aggression spilled over, and the mothers would regularly kill their young. Infant mortality in some territories of the utopia reached 90 percent”.

“The population peaked at 2,200 – short of the actual 3,000-mouse capacity of the “universe” – and from there came the decline. Many of the mice weren’t interested in breeding and retired to the upper decks of the enclosure, while the others formed into violent gangs below, which would regularly attack and cannibalize other groups as well as their own. The low birth rate and high infant mortality combined with the violence, and soon the entire colony was extinct. During the mousepocalypse, food remained ample, and their every need completely met”.

No social program or religion can thwart the collapse—it can only enhance it. The best thing is to do nothing, create hardships, or go to war. Anything short of that we are doomed.

Source Articles HERE

Wiki Link HERE

Trichoglyphs, Behavioral Traits, and a Russian Fox

Who would think the common hair whorl could spawn such genetic and behavioral implications?Trichoglyphs, or hair whorls in horses and cows and the direction of the whorl can predict certain behaviors such as left and right handedness and temperament. The higher the hair whorl in a horse, the more flighty and unpredictable the horses behavior. Dressage and jumping horses tend to be highly athletic and ambidextrous and double hair whorls are common in the sport. The clockwise or counterclockwise rotation of the whorl can also determine handedness in horses, and in K9’s making dog selection for guide and service dogs an important predictor in success. Right eye dominant dogs are less distractible when being led, and choosing the correct dog for such purposes can save time and training costs. “Dogs are both left- and right-handed, he explained, and this has an influence on their selection as guide dogs for the blind because the dogs are trained to work on a person’s left side. He cited a 2012 study in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research that showed that success was higher for right-preferent and ambidextrous dogs, and that the presence of a whorl on the dog’s left side of the head and thorax was associated with a right visual bias.

Abnormal and multiple trichoglyphs are common in birth defects in humans. Most notable in correlation with brain function abnormality. Hair follicle develops at the same time and from the same material as brain development in embryos.

Russian Fox Experiment

Dmitri K. Belyaev, a Russian scientist, may be the man most responsible for our understanding of the process by which wolves were domesticated into our canine companions. Article Here

Belyaev domesticated 40 generations of silver fox, retaining only foxes with mild temeperment towards human interaction. Not only did the foxes eventually behave like domestic dogs, but their physical characteristics changed as well. Drooping ears, changes in fur and odors were significant as well as cranial and jaw structures.

“Even Darwin noted, in On the Origin of Species, that “not a single domestic animal can be named which has not, in some country, drooping ears.” Drooping ears is a feature that does not ever occur in the wild, except for in elephants. And domesticated animals possess characteristic changes in behavior compared with their wild brethren, such as a willingness or even an eagerness to hang out with humans. If you don’t think evolution is possible, look at how one simple seemingly harmless invisible trait can virtually change the whole animal in a relatively short time frame.

What about us?

As we began our own “domestication” process 12,500 years ago, what were we like? Who were we? What changes in physical features and thought have happened to us? What caused us to collaborate our superstitions into groups defending and promoting a god? Has “civilizing” turned us superstitious and neurotic, or were we always that way?