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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | In 1988 the boffins discovered it can get out of kilter and stimulating it with electrical implants under the skin led to measurable improvements in mental and physical health. |
This might be the same technique used to help stutterers. I remember a thing where if you somehow interrupted the stutterers' "normal" brain patterns/flow, they were snapped out of the stuttering loops that they can get on.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is a common delusion about stuttering. I thought it had by now been established beyond reasonable doubt that stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever. As is routine with things for which there is no known (or practical) cure, stutterers are assumed to be psychologically-damaged in some way.
However it is true there are a number of ways to ameliorate the condition. Singing, for example, is rarely affected. 'Interrupting the brain patterns/flow' is another technique taught to stutterers. Or 'Relax and start again' as we speech therapists put it.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever. |
I'd never heard this, but ok, I can buy it.
| As is routine with things for which there is no known (or practical) cure, stutterers are assumed to be psychologically-damaged in some way. |
The use of the word "psychologically" begs the question that we're discussing in the thread. Do you mean psychological damage or brain malfunction? I meant brain malfunction, which I take to be just as much a physical malfunction in the brain meat as a malfunction of the esophagus/sound box.
Stuttering is a hiccup in the brain (or the esophagus), not the mind/psyche (at least in the orthodox way of discussing those thing). But it gets quickly murky: any problem of regulation even in the esophagus might be laid at the doorstep of the brain, ultimately. If a stutter is a muscular problem of the voice box (or whatever), what governs the muscles? I would think it is the part of the brain that governs involuntary internal physiology/actions.
Whatever the case, I agree with your denigration of the idea that we should equate it to psychological damage. But the definition of terms might still be a disconnect between us! For instance, I don't think "mental illness" is a thing
[scrambles to search AEL for mentions of Thomas Szasz]
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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stuttering is caused by a physically malfunctioning part of the oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever.
I'd never heard this, but ok, I can buy it. |
It's pretty weird, if you think about it, that a physical cause was not assumed from the off. But it's like lunatics being thought to be lunatics because of stress or a broken home or whatever, rather than a physical malfunction of the brain.
| The use of the word "psychologically" begs the question that we're discussing in the thread. |
No, we're not. 'Psychological' factors (in the psychiatric sense) haven't come into it, as far as I know.
| Do you mean psychological damage or brain malfunction? I meant brain malfunction, which I take to be just as much a physical malfunction in the brain meat as a malfunction of the esophagus/ sound box. |
Of course it is. When I referred to 'oesophagus/ sound box/ whatever' the whatever would cover physical impairment of the brain.
| Stuttering is a hiccup in the brain (or the esophagus), not the mind/psyche (at least in the orthodox way of discussing those thing). |
Absolutely. Though I don't think for one moment it is anything to do with impairment of brain circuitry. Stuttering is so commonplace and so uniform in its characteristics, it would be unlikely in the extreme to be a matter of impairment of the circuitry in the tiny part of the brain given over to speech. (And I mean the physical delivery of speech, not what is being said--there is no evidence that stutterers are intellectually different from non-stutterers.)
| But it gets quickly murky: any problem of regulation even in the esophagus might be laid at the doorstep of the brain, ultimately. |
That breaks an important rule of AE: one input, one output. If the oesophagus is faulty there is no call to rope the brain into it. The stutterer's brain knows what it is trying to say, the oesophagus is unable to carry out its instructions.
| If a stutter is a muscular problem of the voice box (or whatever), what governs the muscles? I would think it is the part of the brain that governs involuntary internal physiology/actions. |
I'm going for muscular problem. You'll be telling me next it isn't my sprained ankle that's making me walk with stuttering steps, it's the brain's fault.
| Whatever the case, I agree with your denigration of the idea that we should equate it to psychological damage. |
Doesn't sound like it to me.
| But the definition of terms might still be a disconnect between us! |
No, you're getting it wrong.
| For instance, I don't think "mental illness" is a thing |
A for instance of what? Sounds like a whole new 'thing' to me.
[scrambles to search AEL for mentions of Thomas Szasz]
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I hope you don't find any trace of that old git.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I am presently watching a bailiff negotiating with a female football agent over a debt of £200,000 she owes a Premiership footballer. He (the bailiff) has quite a severe stammer. This would appear to be a handicap in verbal negotiations but maybe not in this case. The party of the other part hasn't much choice but to wait patiently while her options are outlined on account of the stutterer just having clamped her car on the driveway.
More generally, a stutter is both bad (it severely diminishes the sense of menace that is part and parcel of the bailiff's armoury) but also good (it forces the plaintiff into a 'human' relationship with the bailiff, something not often achieved).
I did wonder, pace Pete, whether he was employing his brain to vary the stutter--that would be most advantageous--but I don't think he can. Though he might stop referring to 'two hundred and fifteen thousand pounds and seventy-nine pence' quite so often.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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Questions...
?? Mind ?? -- The ability to watch a television show or movie in any fictional genre and forget that these are actors, that there's a camera crew and various people present, and that none of it is real. All the while you are engrossed, despite the knowledge.
?? Brain ?? -- When you notice some flaw of writing or editing and are forced to remember that there are camera crews etc etc and that none of it is real.
Vice versa?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is not bad at all. I can't watch anything on stage because I cannot rid my brain of the knowledge these are British thesps who could no more win a War of the Roses than I could. Stick the same production on the telly and my brain says, 'Pay attention, sunshine, this is how it was.'
Clearly we award our brain a permanent pass to experience events on our behalf, no questions asked. But every now and again our mind cuts in to register we're witnessing a simulacrum. The average viewer says to the lady wife, "I wish they wouldn't cast black actors as Plantagenet princelings, it's most off-putting." "You mustn't upset yourself, dear, remember what the doctor said." And returns sullenly to enjoy the action.
The AE-ist reaches for his notepad and scribbles 'Discuss woke at RSC on AEL. Change wife/doctor.'
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So, we have established that the brain rejects all new, complex ideas by reflexive action but the question that now arises is what the brain does with the information. Rejecting it is not the same as not having it.
In this respect, the brain is different from a computer rejecting unfamiliar code. (Is that a fair comparison?)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Did you notice something depressing about the Newcastle/ Villa game yesterday? No, you didn't, which is depressing.
Some club colours are, of their nature, dull. Black and white stripes for example. Claret, for another. Nothing wrong with that. In itself. But when black-and-white stripes play claret, you get twenty dull (visually) people kicking a ball about. Your brain finds it difficult to register ten men going manfully at a different set of ten men despite your mind knowing they are. (Or it may be the other way round.)
So take another look and you will find out why you were so unaccountably out of sorts watching it despite it being quite an entertaining match.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A quite different example occurred on the same day. The AFL Championship game was played in Denver (who played in day-glo orange shirts). Their opponents, the New England Patriots, were in all white--usually the brightest of all combinations against an emerald green background.
Not when it started snowing and the pitch turned into a white morass. The Denver quarterback could see his guys to throw the ball to but not the Patriot ghosts who intercepted his last throw and won the game.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Did you know that multitasking is impossible? The brain just doesn't work that way. I'm sure there are all kinds of arrangements when you are doing one thing in a setting normally associated with something else. Or doing one thing interspersed with doing another thing. Or--and I think this what they mostly mean--doing something enjoyable when you are pretending to do something unenjoyable.
The way I have come to this conclusion is by watching telly. I frequently find myself woolgathering while ostensibly watching something of great interest and with seemingly rapt attention. But here's my trick. I never watch anything 'live', always on some kind of tape delay. So I press the dubry a few times, watch it again and discover I have not taken in a single thing.
The same is true of all live media--classroom lectures, the cinema, the theatre, people just talking to you. Most spend their lives missing significant stuff and with no recourse. It's not only lost forever, you don't know what it was. You don't even know you've missed anything half the time. And that's before you take 'careful ignoral' into the equation--the bits your brain deliberately turns off because it's too important.
Not me, bub. I don't go in for any of the above.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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I asked AI why Professor Kehinde Andrews told the Telegraph that Arday's PhD dissertation was "proved not to be plagiarism." I thought, "Proof? Okay, I want to see it. I like going against the grain. Maybe it was not plagiarism."
This is what Google AI told me:
| Professor Kehinde Andrews argues that Jason Arday’s dissertation was not plagiarized because he views the errors as a case of poor academic scholarship, learning differences, and structural failures rather than intentional academic fraud. |
Ok, so this clearly isn't the proof. It's just how Andrews "views the errors."
| Andrews, a close friend of Arday and a fellow academic, has vocally defended him. |
He's allowed.
His defense centers on several key points:
1. Poor Scholarship vs. Intentional Theft
Andrews characterizes the flaws in the 2015 PhD thesis as poor scholarship and a failure of university supervision rather than deliberate plagiarism. While acknowledging the text was derivative and poorly executed, he maintains that Arday was trying to act ethically but lacked the rigorous oversight needed to fix the structural and referencing mistakes. |
The proof of Arday's innocence is looking more like "proof of someone else's guilt"
2. Official Institutional Clearance
Andrews points out that Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), the institution that awarded Arday his PhD, formally investigated the thesis and cleared him of plagiarism. The university ruled that the overlapping passages and technical flaws were the result of "honest and reasonable error" rather than misconduct. |
Being cleared by the people who were supposed to catch it in the first place is pretty low on the scale of acceptable proofs. If you look at the actual amount of text used verbatim and not in quotation marks or attributed, the phrase "reasonable error" has you wanting to ask LJMU what dictionary they are using.
3. Neurodivergence and Mimicry
The defense aligns with Arday's own explanations regarding his neurodivergence. Arday, who had autism and severe learning disabilities, explained that he relied on mimicry and imitation to learn and process information. Andrews and other supporters argue that copying patterns arose from this cognitive coping mechanism rather than a malicious intent to steal work. |
"Copying patterns"? We've definitely seen proof that he copied, but not proof that copying does not equal plagiarism.
4. Racially Motivated Media Campaign
Andrews strongly asserts that the plagiarism allegations were weaponized as part of a "racist playbook" designed to target high-profile Black academics. He highlights that the initial public accusations were brought forward by a self-described "race realist," Nathan Cofnas, who actively opposed diversity initiatives. Andrews co-signed a statement through the Good Law Project calling the allegations entirely false and condemning the intense media scrutiny as a "lynching" that ultimately led to Arday's tragic death. |
I will accept all of that. Maybe AI doesn't know what "proof" means either.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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You're being unfair to AI. It doesn't understand the way academia works, which is excusable because, it seems, academia doesn't know either, viz
| acknowledging the text was derivative and poorly executed |
means the PhD should not have been awarded. It is irrelevant whether Arday was behaving ethically or he was let down by his supervisors. And we can believe the verdict because it comes from an academic who is a close friend of Ardey. Goodness knows how bad it really was. Now look at the bits I have underlined.
| Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), the institution that awarded Arday his PhD, formally investigated the thesis and cleared him of plagiarism. The university ruled that the overlapping passages and technical flaws were the result of "honest and reasonable error" rather than misconduct. |
Again, this is all irrelevant. They are saying he shouldn't have been awarded a PhD.
| Arday, who had autism and severe learning disabilities |
Sorry for the poor chap, and it is routine to cut various slacks for public exams at lower levels for such people, but it's not relevant to the worth of a PhD thesis.
| he relied on mimicry and imitation to learn and process information |
So he knew he was... er... prone to plagiarism. Blimey.
| Andrews and other supporters argue that copying patterns arose from this cognitive coping mechanism rather than a malicious intent to steal work. |
Strewth, others knew too! Why is everyone screaming 'racism' when everyone knew he was a pathological plagiarist?
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