Did That Really Happen?

[jancivil]

the taste

when cooked right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTD_ts1Q_-M

[harryupbabble]

There is no such thing as an ambidextrous person? One brain hemisphere is always dominant? There is a test that supposedly proves it and it's inside the article below.

I wanted to refresh my memory about the old and supposedly debunked science about brain hemisphere specialization. Here is a "science for dummies" article at the top of Google's page one results that I found by using these search words: left brain specialization

https://www.learning-mind.com/left-vs-r ... nates-you/

The creation date of the article is November 26, 2017 and its title is "Left vs Right Hemisphere of the Brain: Which Dominates You?"

Yup, it's just the way I remembered it:

Left brain hemisphere specializes in, among other things, language skills (and that includes writing lyrics). Bernie Taupin is right-handed and therefore his left brain hemisphere is dominant. Bernie Taupin is a lyrics man.

Right brain hemisphere specializes in, among other things, musicality. Elton John is left-handed and therefore his right brain hemisphere is dominant. Elton John is the music man in the Taupin-John songwriting team.

It seems to me that the debunkers of the old science are not really disproving that brain hemisphere specialization is a "myth". They seem to me to be only saying that brain scans indicates that both brain hemispheres are active no matter what task is being performed and that the brain hemispheres work together.

But if I misunderstood the debunkers' points, will someone make a "science for dummies" summary of their points.

Okay, my offline computer is done finding all the text files in my VSTPlugins folder and I'm off to sort and save to CD-RW the ones that are crucial. As it is, they are just taking hard disk space and are probably slowing down file searches. How crucial are text files to VST plugins anyways? I guess I'll find out. Okay, bye y'all.

[stonestreet]

One thing to be aware of is that science does not prove anything we can at best make correlations.

It seems to me that the debunkers of the old science are not really disproving that brain hemisphere specialization is a "myth". They seem to me to be only saying that brain scans indicates that both brain hemispheres are active no matter what task is being performed and that the brain hemispheres work together.

[Jace-BeOS]

Science isn't an entity, and therefore does not prove or disprove anything. It is a tool we use to observe and describe the universe we live in.

Scientific knowledge is a body of observations that allow us to sometimes come to very solid conclusions, especially when the results of countless scientifically valid observations agree with each other.

[jancivil]

But if I misunderstood the debunkers' points, will someone make a "science for dummies" summary of their points.

You want to waste more of people's time, yeah? You're just going to stick with your bias about words vs music, in any case, that's already been demonstrated in the thread. You remembered your bias confirmed quite well, isn't it.

Greg Hooper ("woggle") made statements out of his experience in the field, you ignore it.

"I'm not seeing the distinction between brain hemisphere specialization and left-brain right-brain label"
You want to make a broad generalization out of a specific phenomenon which solves it all for you to continue to confirm your bias. It's actually there in your sentence, 'specialization' vs. 'label'. Do not confuse the specific for the general, a good guideline logically. In general.
Oh, snap:

The idea that language is a left hemisphere specialisation is also a generalisation that does not apply to everyone.

I said I throw right and bat both. It would seem to be a matter of violation of dominant orientation to bat left handed while I absolutely write right-handed. There are people who can throw both, my father had a choice when we shot hoops when I was a child, I remember well realizing early if not at once I could bat either way. (Not very well, mind.)

No study you may produce is going to change the reality. I mean for some people it's clearly not as simple as you need it to be here.

It seems to me that the debunkers of the old science are not really disproving...

So believe what you believe. You're doing the opposite of science there. We would tend to conclude from your analysis that we need to be left-handed to be good at music. Music btw is a language; so a high aptitude for language may turn out to be a high aptitude for music. It did for me, and I'm no "freak". The intellectually honest thing to do is examine your cherished premise and listen to what people tell you here, but you are doing neither.
It's a nice illustration of begging the question fallacy. Also see: dog chases tail.

[harryupbabble]

de·bunk
verb
expose the falseness or hollowness of (a myth, idea, or belief).


dis·prove
verb
prove that (something) is false.


To debunk the left-brain, right-brain "myth" don't the debunkers have to disprove the old science or "myth" which basically states that the brain hemispheres specializes in certain tasks like musicality and language skills? Don't the debunkers have to dismiss research done by other scientists about the crippling effect of brain hemisphere damage? Crippling effect like losing the ability to talk but retaining the ability to sing? It's called "aphasia".

Here is a link explaining what aphasia is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia

Of the "debunker" articles I've read, the debunkers don't seem to be disproving the "myth" of brain hemisphere specialization. Don't they have to "disprove to debunk"? If the glove don't fit, you must acquit.

Excuse me for being a skeptic and not just automatically accepting the "new" science.
I'm still trying to find out exactly what the "new" science is stating but I don't have the attention span to deal with 94 pages of so-very-sciency explanation.

For those who want to read a 94-page article explaining why the old science about brain hemisphere specialization is a "myth"... well go ahead. Or don't.

But if you believe what the debunkers say, shouldn't you at least check out what the debunkers are saying? And after reading that, how about a summary? Please? And by you I mean anyone. I at least tried and did check it out. It's just that it's hard to find articles about that that are presented as "science for dummies". I mean would the average person know what a "corpus callosum" is without Googling it? It's a fibrous brand of tissue. And I'm like "as in Kleenex?" Okay I'm just kidding about the Kleenex part, but still.

Google has translators for so many languages... but seemingly none to translate the language of scientists? A language so sciency it might as well be Latin? Corpus callosum.

I think I've run out of things to "research" about this topic and I am going to try to let it rest. I'm off to get back to utilizing my offline computer and I'm going to avoid doing CPU-hogging tasks that prevents multitasking (geez us, for one example, why can't REAPER be faster in terms of saving 20,000 mid files?).

I'm going to proceed as if the old science or "myth" was not debunked and/or that the debunking did not really happen. What's the worst that can happen? Robert Fripp switching to the other hand to play guitar hasn't seem to have hurt his music? Maybe it even made his music better? But isn't "better" still subjective when it comes to music, in the end?

Off-topic: Oh my dog! My online computer is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo slow that composing long replies in one go becomes nearly intolerable. Lots of scripts to block. This computer is even worse that the one I had before. This one has 320 MB RAM and 764 Mhz CPU. But since it's a donated computer, just like the other, I just have to be grateful. Okay thanks. Bye.

[farlukar]

Excuse me for being a skeptic and not just automatically accepting the "new" science.

Why do you just automatically accept the "old" science?

It's how science works. You come up with a hypothesis, work it into a theory, you do tests to gather evidence that either supports or falsifies your theory. You then fine-tune your theory, run more tests against it to see if things work out like you think it does. If things really don't work the way you thought, your theory goes the way of phlogiston.

Science, essentially, is a continuous work-in-progress. On very rare occasions (say, laws of thermodynamics) theories get to be considered Universal Truths, but very rare occasions are very rare.
Situations where scientific consensus shifts from something to another and then back again are also very very rare.

So, once again, why do you just automatically accept the "old" science?

[vurt]

Crippling effect like losing the ability to talk but retaining the ability to sing? It's called "aphasia"..

but isn't singing more a function of memory than trying to construct a sentence in real time?

[woggle]

I'm going to proceed as if the old science or "myth" was not debunked and/or that the debunking did not really happen.

what you don't know only makes you stronger

[jancivil]

To debunk the left-brain, right-brain "myth" don't the debunkers have to disprove the old science or "myth" which basically states that the brain hemispheres specializes in certain tasks like musicality and language skills?

Excuse me for being a skeptic and not just automatically accepting the "new" science.

You're not a skeptic. You're just someone confirming a bias with searches. And now posturing vehemently, projecting "don't you have to..."
All _you_ have to do is stick with your story, evidently.

For those who want to read... go ahead.

You're actually stating your refusal to read what's presented you as a point in your favor.

Your _own_ analysis is just reiterating clueless <dominant hand means this> suppositions over and over.

THIS: "the old science or "myth" which basically states that the brain hemispheres specializes in certain tasks like musicality and language skills" is a misconstruction of the *basic* problem. You actual want a dichotomy of musicality vs. language skills as an essential premise. And it's as though you simply cannot examine even that.

You're bullshitting us.

[harryupbabble]

Why do you just automatically accept the "old" science?

Okay, although I told myself to "let this thread be", I need to answer your question. After this reply, I'm sticking to my "let this thread be" commitment, and as Ali G. says in those YouTube videos, "Yo, for real, yo".

It wasn't automatic. For example, a while ago, I noticed "specialization" in my siblings. one sibling is a lefty and is is an artist and makes a living out of it. Another one is a righty. That one is better at chess than anyone in the family, and is also educated as an engineer and worked as that for a while. And another one is also a lefty and was educated as a computer programmer and worked as that for a while. I'm not sure about that sibling. I'm thinking that right-handers dominate the computer programming industry but I don't know. More stuff to Google later.


Also, Bobby Fischer was right-handed. Albert Einstein too? Men of logic. Recently, I noticed that the songwriting team of Elton John And Bernie Taupin fit the old science too.

Also, great artists tend to be left-handed? Leonardo Da Vinci,Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso. Creative types.

Brain damage research and experiments tend to support the idea that the brain hemispheres do specialize in certain tasks like language skills and musicality? Are the debunkers debunking that? It doesn't seem like they are.

At the moment, to me the old science seems stronger than the debunkers. But if the debunkers are actually making a better case for debunking the old science and I'm just not fully understanding their case then I guess I'll accept that. What's the debunkers' case again?


I've sided with debunkers before. For example, the "Out Of Africa" human origin hypothesis was debunked by the "Multiregional" human origin hypothesis? But recently, DNA tracing science has debunked the "Multiregional" human origin hypothesis and currently the "Out Of Africa" human origin hypothesis back and stronger than it ever was? DNA tracing is harder to disprove/debunk and the "Out Of Africa" human origin hypothesis has DNA tracing for support.
So, in that case, I sided with the debunkers that used DNA tracing science.

Also, didn't Thomas "DC" Edison tried to debunk Nicola "AC" Tesla? But in the end, alternating current triumphed over direct current? Also, Nicola Tesla was experimenting with "transporting electricity through the air". I'm probably badly paraphrasing or badly paraquoting there but today the technology to charge cell phones wirelessly does exist. Sure it could only be done short distance but still. The debunkers turned out to be wrong in many cases involving Mister Tesla? And how about in the case of Mister Einstein? I could Google it.

But aaarrggh my computer of the moment is too slow for Googling anything, probably because the Firefox in this computer won't update beyond version 48.0.2, something about this computer not being compatible with SSE. This computer must be at least 20 years old! Nobody wanted to use it, including me, even though it was donated to me. It was just sitting there in the basement. So yeah Googling is too slow but still doable but really really really frustrating. Some pages are not even loading. Some of the same web pages that loaded before on my other online computer won't load now.

The other stronger (but not by significantly much) and SSE compatible online-capable but temporarily offline computer is not yet fully configured on the Linux side. Well it is already dual bootable but Jack Audio doesn't seem to work and installing 3rd pary software is a pain for people like me who has been spoiled by the user-friendliness of Windows XP and Windows 7 (lucky me I know someone that knows Linux very well and I will ask him how to install REAPER today) but mostly I need Lubuntu because there will be no more updates for Firefox extended version 52.x.x on Windows XP come August. And I expect that after August, that XP computer will start behaving like the SSE incompatible one. Web pages not loading and such.

But it looks like Firefox will be updated forever if the OS is Linux. So hello Linux Firefox and goodbye XP Firefox.

I guess I went off topic there again, as per usual. It's hard not to, if you are me. Sorry?

[farlukar]

[ *snip* anecdotal evidence ]

I guess I went off topic there again, as per usual. It's hard not to, if you are me. Sorry?

You're excused. But you can hardly blame Mozilla for not supporting a nearly 20-year-old OS anymore, hm?

[chk071]

But it looks like Firefox will be updated forever if the OS is Linux.

Not if you're on a fixed release distribution like Ubuntu or Linux Mint (which are the most popular Linux distros).

[jancivil]

Why do you just automatically accept the "old" science?

Okay, although I told myself to "let this thread be", I need to answer your question. After this reply, I'm sticking to my "let this thread be" commitment, and as Ali G. says in those YouTube videos, "Yo, for real, yo".

It wasn't automatic. For example, a while ago, I noticed "specialization" in my siblings. one sibling is a lefty and is is an artist and makes a living out of it. Another one is a righty. That one is better at chess than anyone in the family, and is also educated as an engineer and worked as that for a while. And another one is also a lefty and was educated as a computer programmer and worked as that for a while. I'm not sure about that sibling. I'm thinking that right-handers dominate the computer programming industry but I don't know. More stuff to Google later.


Also, Bobby Fischer was right-handed. Albert Einstein too? Men of logic. Recently, I noticed that the songwriting team of Elton John And Bernie Taupin fit the old science too.

Also, great artists tend to be left-handed? Leonardo Da Vinci,Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Picasso. Creative types.

It would appear that Fischer and Einstein, and every creative righthander in the history of the known world defy 'the old science'. So guess again. You could question your own viability as an arbiter of science, but it kind of looks like you won't.

[jancivil]

Also, didn't Thomas "DC" Edison tried to debunk Nicola "AC" Tesla? But in the end, alternating current triumphed over direct current?

Some "debunking" can be mistaken? What is your point, that this means the debunking you won't want to read anything about is wrong because some "debunking" is wrong? Well, some people that use words like 'debunking' and 'skeptic' are using words trickily. Climate change denialists love to characterize what they're doing as 'skeptical'. The word actually means a doubt of held belief. The skeptical position here might look more like a doubt of a certain popular and glib belief which needs a second look. 'Skeptical of these debunkers' might look like sticking to a belief; it does here.


debunk
transitive verb
to expose the sham* or falseness of
- to expose or excoriate (a claim, assertion, sentiment, etc.) as being pretentious, false, or exaggerated:


(*: Definition of sham
1 : a trick that deludes)

Origin ca 1923, from de- + bunk (n.2); first used by U.S. novelist William Woodward (1874-1950), the notion being "to take the bunk out of things."

"bunk": short for 'bunkum'.
noun Informal.
humbug; nonsense.

Origin of bunkum:
Americanism; after speech in 16th Congress, 1819–21, by F. Walker, who said he was bound to speak for Buncombe (N.C. county in district he represented)
(insincere speech)

Confer 'hokum'.