@Thomas,
Thomas wrote:Today it occurred to me that my previous perception may have been no more than observation bias. Maybe there are just as many introverts as extroverts. Maybe we introverts just don't see each other because, instead of hanging out at the party to be seen, we're home on our couches reading a good book, driving our cars through the night thinking our own thoughts, and just generally doing our own thing without craving external validation all the time? [. . .]
Introvert power!
It's always nice to be vindicated in ones useless theories. Here's this Sunday's New York Times on introvert power:
Quote:But shyness and introversion share an undervalued status in a world that prizes extroversion. Children’s classroom desks are now often arranged in pods, because group participation supposedly leads to better learning; in one school I visited, a sign announcing “Rules for Group Work” included, “You can’t ask a teacher for help unless everyone in your group has the same question.” Many adults work for organizations that now assign work in teams, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value “people skills” above all. As a society, we prefer action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. Studies show that we rank fast and frequent talkers as more competent, likable and even smarter than slow ones. As the psychologists William Hart and Dolores Albarracin point out, phrases like “get active,” “get moving,” “do something” and similar calls to action surface repeatedly in recent books.
Yet shy and introverted people have been part of our species for a very long time, often in leadership positions. We find them in the Bible (“Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh?" asked Moses, whom the Book of Numbers describes as “very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.”) We find them in recent history, in figures like Charles Darwin, Marcel Proust and Albert Einstein, and, in contemporary times: think of Google’s Larry Page, or Harry Potter’s creator, J. K. Rowling.
In the science journalist Winifred Gallagher’s words: “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc2 nor ‘Paradise Lost’ was dashed off by a party animal.”
Source: New York Times: Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?
@DrewDad,
Rereading this thread and remember that Pius XII had hiccups for weeks.
(I'm just bad...)
@Thomas,
That was a classic post and I've remembered it but not where to find it in the time since you, er, typed it. I often do the phonetic typo at the same time I well know the correct choices. I posit that there is some brain network (nerve net reticulum was a term back in my school days) that makes the choice when my brain says the word to itself, and tells my fingers before the cognitive part of my brain. The reason I wanted to find the post was that I forgot the word phonetic, a stupid move in itself, since of course it's a matter of phonetics.
@Thomas,
I think that one isn't useless as a theory.
@Thomas,
Interesting. I'm not arguing with it, yet anyway, but I think existing land contours decree the roads somewhat, or at least used to, or should - and the planning modes of the romans way back when influence some road builders. Then there's washington, d.c., clearly a bizarre product of the french.
all theories, are useful to a point. and then they are useless.
@Thomas,
You see yourself as an introvert?
@Thomas,
Quote:we prefer action to contemplation,
Despite Genesis teaching that we should contemplate our work about 14% of the time. If Thomas is vindicated Genesis is also. Which shows how confused he is due to comprehension difficulties.
Genesis created contemplation in the west.
And Milton got himself a 16 year old bride when in his mid-thirties so he must have known a bit about partying.
Thomas is very introverted . . . except at meal times.
@Setanta,
I found him most unintroverted, I thought.
Well, i was just taking a little dig at Thomas, although i do think your impression is not corect. You found him among his friends, his acquaintance. It has been my experience that in public, among strangers, he is rather quiet. Of course, i've never seen him drunk.
@dlowan,
Of course it was a mistake, but it's fun to use it against him.
@dlowan,
Generally, yes. Meeting out-of-town A2K people seems to be exceptional in several respects, including my degree of introversion vs. extroversion. If you lived in The City, like Roberta and Joe Nation do, you and I would be seeing each other maybe once a month. And you would do most of the talking.
@ossobuco,
Quote:He steals enchiladas..
He won't share his poutine, either . . .
Talk about food: I have a useless theory about the epidemic spread of gluten-free products in supermarkets. It postulates that this is a scheme through which grocery-store chains try to hide the worldwide rise in grain prices from their customers.
Think about two competing retailers, TarMart and Walget. TarMart simply raises the price of its bread to keep up with the rising price of wheat. Walget, by contrast, switches products in ways that let them sell the same wheat grain twice: On one aisle, it sells gluten-free bread, at a surcharge reflecting the alleged health benefits of such bread. On another aisle, it sells seitan, a mock-meat made of cooked wheat gluten, to vegetarian and vegan customers.
Which retailer will have the competitive advantage?
(EDIT: Writing this post gave me a deja-vu moment. I think I read a similar theory from Setanta. Mea Culpa!
@Thomas,
Farmerman points out that wholesalers compete for shelf space by paying for the privilege to display their products, and that that (or so he alleges) drives the marketing of products in your local store.
By the way, i don't think i advanced that particular theory.
