Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on August 16, 2010, 05:11:06 am
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Has wi-fi ever been proven to actually cause any harm to people? I can't think of a single study, but maybe I missed one. (http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/10/08/15/207236/Wi-Fi-Illness-Spreads-To-Ontario-Public-Schools)
"Readers of slashdot might be familiar with Lakehead University's ban on WiFi routers a few years ago in Thunder Bay, Ontario because of 'health concerns,' a policy apparently still in effect. Now it seems a group of concerned parents in a number of communities in Ontario have petitioned the local school boards over similar concerns at public schools, where their kids are apparently experiencing 'headaches to dizziness and nausea and even racing heart rates' — symptoms that appear only when they are in school on weekdays, not on weekends at home. 'The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless ...' Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer
That end statement sums it up, it sounds like this is a ploy to get time off from school.
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Well I sit right next to my wireless router whenever I'm on my computer and I don't think I've had any of those symptoms...
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Got wi-fi at home. Apart from another fully functional arm growing from my right shoulder, I'm fine. And the third arm is very useful for opening beer cans while my two regular hands are busy on hotas.
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And he's a great conversational partner :yes:
Gonna record my physical change after I moved to my new apartment. Using wi-fi there too. Looking forward to some helping hands :nod:
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A lot of those symptoms sound like they could be caused by something along the lines of Anxiety. :doubt:
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Shenanigans
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If I had a 3rd arm I'd want it right around my navel.
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If I had a 3rd arm I'd want it right around my navel.
so you could pick belly button fluff at ease?
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Guys... God damn it...
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like wifi is the first thing to use the 2.4 ghz part of the spectrum.
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Reminds me of the end cutscene from Simpsons: Hit & Run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTznmu-AwD4
(skip to 3:18)
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so you could pick belly button fluff at ease?
That's not the first thought that came to mind.
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I've always thought having a third arm would be fantastic for parties. One hand to hold your plate, one hand to hold your beverage, and the third to actually eat. As it is, you're forced to either stand next to a table or perform some sort of ungainly balancing act.
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There have been dozens of studies including the double blind type... somewhere they should have exposed some sort of link or related connection or even something mildly correlated. Nothing that I've read suggests anything of the sort.
Someone said that all of those symptoms relate to anxiety... yep and stress and a dozen other types of emotions that kids can have in a school.
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Someone said that all of those symptoms relate to anxiety... yep and stress and a dozen other types of emotions that kids can have in a school.
Yes and don't forget the added flavor of gullible, scientifically illiterate parents.
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I thought these are symptoms of spending way too much time on computer games. :p
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In my day you stuck a penny under your tongue, kids these days are getting way too hi-tech about playing hooky. :P
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In my day you stuck a penny under your tongue, kids these days are getting way too hi-tech about playing hooky. :P
What would sticking a penny under your tongue do?
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In my day you stuck a penny under your tongue, kids these days are getting way too hi-tech about playing hooky. :P
What would sticking a penny under your tongue do?
Metal poisoning.
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Sounds more dangerous than going to school. :P
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Sounds more dangerous than going to school. :P
Depends. You can get lead poisoning of the 9mm variety in some schools these days :)
Anyway sticking a penny under your tongue was apparently a method of faking illness - getting a temperature so you don't have to go to school. Whether or not it actually works I couldn't say - but since money isn't exactly clean and there could be all sorts of bacteria on the thing, I'd say it's possible to get genuinely ill from the practice. Wouldn't try it.
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If I had a 3rd arm I'd want it right around my navel.
so you could pick belly button fluff at ease?
No doubt to impress some girl with how he magically unzips his fly without his two main hands.
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/me contemplates merging this thread wityh hlp threatdown
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Sounds more dangerous than going to school. :P
Depends. You can get lead poisoning of the 9mm variety in some schools these days :)
Anyway sticking a penny under your tongue was apparently a method of faking illness - getting a temperature so you don't have to go to school. Whether or not it actually works I couldn't say - but since money isn't exactly clean and there could be all sorts of bacteria on the thing, I'd say it's possible to get genuinely ill from the practice. Wouldn't try it.
Your mouth isn't exactly a clean place either, in fact it's one of the, if not the dirtiest part of your whole body.
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That still doesn't make putting filthy germ and/or bacteria infested objects in your mouth a good idea :P
(And yes, I know how this sounds)
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A lot of those symptoms sound like they could be caused by something along the lines of Anxiety. :doubt:
Yeah, they just sound like the classic symptoms of too much stress.
That they only appeared after WiFi is either
1) Just a coincidence.
2) They were always there, and nobody bothered to report them or notice them untill now.
3) Students use the WiFi connection on school for other things then just doeing their homework, adding stress because homework has to be finished eventually (Because they now can play browser games instead of doeing their homework, they do, giving themselves less time to actually finish their homework, adding stress).
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My router once chopped my arm off :(
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Wi-Fi Illness needs to be in the "Threat Down" listing.
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Got to get those kids hooked on licking 9 volt batteries.
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my tongue is the ultimate voltmeter, i can taste the voltage! :D
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When I don't know if an audio cable is working, I turn up the volume and lick the jack.
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Your mouth isn't exactly a clean place either, in fact it's one of the, if not the dirtiest part of your whole body.
Depends on how dirty is dirty. The mouth is a pretty well self contained environment, and it does best when you keep up with it. The dirtiest part of the body is your hands.
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It's back........ The same phenomenon that caused the Everquest addiction furor of 2002 is back. Now general ignorance is blaming WiFi.
Pictures and video of computer use situations in those schools reveal the problem is Subliminal Distraction exposure. Visit the EMR and Everquest Connection pages at VisionAndPsychosis.Net
(http://VisionAndPsychosis.Net)
Students are shown crowded together using their laptops while sitting in each other's peripheral vision without Cubicle Level Protection.
The entire cubicle would not be necessary but there should be a peripheral vision blocking shield on both sides of any student using a computer in a busy location with detectable movement in peripheral vision.
The problem happens when your brain repeatedly attempts but fails to subliminally trigger the vision startle reflex.
Subliminal Distraction, a normal feature in our physiology of sight, was discovered to be a problem when it caused mental breaks for knowledge workers using the first prototypes of modern close-spaced workstations. The cubicle was designed to deal with the vision startle reflex to stop the problem there by 1968.
These students don't have enough exposure to have the full mental break but if one of them created the same situation and exposure at home where they played video games for instance, they might have it.
This mental event usually would happen to one person in an incorrectly designed office. An outbreak like this one in Ontario schools is very rare.
Most that have this mental event recover quickly with no treatment once exposure is discovered and stopped. But a risk is that someone will act out the delusions of the temporary episode causing harm to themselves or others.
Certainly confused wandering in a Canadian winter would allow hypothermia before anyone realized the student was missing.
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At best, I think you need to explain that in a more coherent fashion before we take you seriously.
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Make a movie :yes:
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Coherent explanation?
That's why the site exists. It is not possible to condense a seven year psychology project to a posting window on a forum site. VisionAndPsychosis.Net (http://VisionAndPsychosis.Net) Start with the links at the top of the home page.
This phenomenon is so bizarre that no one believes it the first time they hear it.
If you have a specific question after reading the site I can answer it for you but there is no way to change the story of how the problem was discovered to make it easier to understand.
Video game players spend long hours at their computers engaging deep mental investment to play the game. Those are the elements that would allow this problem if they pick a place for the computer so that there is detectable movement in peripheral vision.
On the Redlake shooting and Everquest Connection pages there are pictures of computer workstations that are so situated.
The problem is believed to cause only a harmless temporary episode of confusion by designers aware of it. But the problem lies in what someone might do while having the confused episode.
Since this situation in Ontario there has been a disappearance of a Cadet from Virginia Tech. He vanished during the middle of the night and was found walking on a road two miles away seven hours later. They haven't said much but the wording of the replies from the Corps of Cadets and police suggest he was in an altered mental state.
Schools cite privacy concerns when one of these disappearances or suicides happen. Without police power to investigate it is just a matter of finding enough news stories to piece together what happened.
Virginia Tech has previous problems with Subliminal Distraction and has replied to two letters promising to investigate.
An old case is on the Joe Morse page. He vanished from Georgia Tech the last day of school in 2003. Persistence by the Tech police four years later found he had committed suicide the day after he vanished. He had flown to Miami Florida, broke into a construction site, climbed a crane, and jumped.
Subliminal Distraction can have a variety of outcomes.
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College students are in perfect health and don't take mood/mind altering drugs? It's all caused by vidjagames and Internetzes?
That just, wow man, that just blows my mind.
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Also:
No names are currently on the site. This prevents an adversarial party locating the site before final publication.
I'm not going to take anything seriously (see: read it) unless it establishes a modicum of evidence, and an author. Even then, I'm not going to consider it as having validity without a well written (not necessarily reasoned) argument.
Until you have those, I'm going to assume that you're wearing a tin-foil hat.
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Something tells me you did not take basic psychology in college. That's where Subliminal Distraction is explained under the physiology of sight and hearing.
Did you bother to perform my psychology demonstration of subliminal sight and habituation in peripheral vision?
You will witness something disappear while you observe it in peripheral vision.
Difficult to believe but stationary objects in that area of your vision are invisible.
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Researcher, I am very sorry, but that page you linked? It's complete crap. Lots of unfounded, unsourced, uncredited text does not a factual argument make.
Please, if you wish to be taken seriously, cite the damn studies. Provide some links to them. Do not expect us to take what you (at least, I assume it's you) wrote there seriously without some corroborating evidence.
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More importantly, why is your post count 0?
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Cos posts in GD don't count towards your postcount, and he has only posted here.
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iamzack used to start off like this as well. She did eventually squeezed in a few posts into the other boards, though.
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The E,
What part of "unknown by anyone in medicine or psychiatry" did you not understand? There are no studies because no one in those fields is aware that the discovery in Design was ever made.
I have personally searched the APA database and volunteers have searched it for me. Although this problem is mentioned in first semester psychology no one has realized it is a problem of physiology not office workspace.
My instructor said, "Subliminal sight caused a problem in the early days of modern office design."
There is no magic about being in an office. Those early failed designs serve as a model to tell us what to look for when searching for this phenomenon. The believed-to-be harmless mental break will happen when you create the same situation and maintain it long enough.
Furthermore any study about human behavior that did not control for Subliminal Distraction is invalid. It has always been present in any human population. Citing "studies" in this matter is pointless.
I began by searching for activities that have mental events occur with their use. Then I examined the activity for the elements of Subliminal Distraction exposure. Two activities stand out. For 2500 and 3000 years respectively QiGong and Kundalini Yoga have caused mental breaks. When the two exercises are correctly performed with eyes open meditation while preforming group unison movements they are engines for Subliminal Distraction exposure.
I defy you to find any study with that information.
The basic phenomenon falls in the explanation of how your brain works to detect movement and initiate a startle reflex. It is part of the instruction set in first semester psychology. No study is needed to verify that.
I give instructions on how to verify the problem is real and believed to be a harmless nuisance in the design of crowded offices. While not secret the information is closely held. Only a designer working for a major office furniture manufacturer or one their dealers will have that information. That's why it is unknown any where else.
When I posted questions on-line I was accused of being an attorney trying to get information for a lawsuit. That page is linked near the top of my home page.
The site is my Internet scratch pad to store information so I would not have to carry papers and notes everywhere I traveled working on the project. It was never intended to be a professional presentation.
You are either intelligent enough to personally evaluate the information on your own or you are not. (No slight intended.)
My original plan was that a major university would take over the project if I could gather a preponderance of evidence. But there is a problem with that. None of them want to investigate something that reveals they missed something that was discovered and solved forty years ago and is probably responsible for student disappearances and suicides. The Virginia Tech shooter created exposure according to interviews of two roommates. They didn't understand what they saw but reported he sat in the suite common using his laptop ignoring all of them as they walked past him. I have two reply letters from Tech promising to investigate but the disappearance and recovery of a cadet last week shows they did nothing to warn students there.
Original work in psychology does not always have previous studies available.
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The E,
What part of "unknown by anyone in medicine or psychiatry" did you not understand? There are no studies because no one in those fields is aware that the discovery in Design was ever made.
I have personally searched the APA database and volunteers have searched it for me. Although this problem is mentioned in first semester psychology no one has realized it is a problem of physiology not office workspace.
If it is mentioned in 1st Semester courses, there should be studies, no? Unless psychology is even more of a joke science than I remember...
My instructor said, "Subliminal sight caused a problem in the early days of modern office design."
There is no magic about being in an office. Those early failed designs serve as a model to tell us what to look for when searching for this phenomenon. The believed-to-be harmless mental break will happen when you create the same situation and maintain it long enough.
Furthermore any study about human behavior that did not control for Subliminal Distraction is invalid. It has always been present in any human population. Citing "studies" in this matter is pointless.
Errr.....So.....You are saying prior studies are invalid because they didn't take this new magic discovery of yours into account?
I began by searching for activities that have mental events occur with their use. Then I examined the activity for the elements of Subliminal Distraction exposure. Two activities stand out. For 2500 and 3000 years respectively QiGong and Kundalini Yoga have caused mental breaks. When the two exercises are correctly performed with eyes open meditation while preforming group unison movements they are engines for Subliminal Distraction exposure.
I defy you to find any study with that information.
It is not my job to find them. You are the one who wants to be taken seriously; and serious science has certain prerequisites. Such as the hallowed principle of peer review, which you don't seem to understand. Until you can point out peer-reviewed pieces to support your hypothesis, you can not make claims like "all prior results are invalid".
The basic phenomenon falls in the explanation of how your brain works to detect movement and initiate a startle reflex. It is part of the instruction set in first semester psychology. No study is needed to verify that.
I give instructions on how to verify the problem is real and believed to be a harmless nuisance in the design of crowded offices. While not secret the information is closely held. Only a designer working for a major office furniture manufacturer or one their dealers will have that information. That's why it is unknown any where else.
Ah, yes, and those guys are known for their trade secrets and highly efficient confidentiality protocols, not to mention the squads of ninjas deployed to keep this a secret.
When I posted questions on-line I was accused of being an attorney trying to get information for a lawsuit. That page is linked near the top of my home page.
The site is my Internet scratch pad to store information so I would not have to carry papers and notes everywhere I traveled working on the project. It was never intended to be a professional presentation.
You are either intelligent enough to personally evaluate the information on your own or you are not. (No slight intended.)
I can honestly say that I probably wouldn't be qualified to make a statement about this. A properly conducted study, reviewed by acknowledged experts in the field, that's something I might take serious.
A badly designed website, with no sources cited, no proper attribution, and a bunch of typographic mistakes that push it squarely into TL;DR territory? Not so much.
My original plan was that a major university would take over the project if I could gather a preponderance of evidence. But there is a problem with that. None of them want to investigate something that reveals they missed something that was discovered and solved forty years ago and is probably responsible for student disappearances and suicides. The Virginia Tech shooter created exposure according to interviews of two roommates. They didn't understand what they saw but reported he sat in the suite common using his laptop ignoring all of them as they walked past him. I have two reply letters from Tech promising to investigate but the disappearance and recovery of a cadet last week shows they did nothing to warn students there.
You do not understand the scientific process, do you?
Original work in psychology does not always have previous studies available.
Neither does original work in Math, chemistry, biology or any other field you care to name. What most original scientific work does have, however, is credentials. It has an author, it has people associated with it other than the guy with the original idea, it has all the proper paperwork that turns a random hypothesis into a scientific theory. Where is your experimental data? Where are your studies? Where are the double-blind tests? Where are the statistics showing your position to be plausible? How do you expect anyone to believe this, if all you have is all the evidentiary basis of the common UFO conspiracy theorist?
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I don't think this is going to be a productive discussion. Let's move on.
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Of course it's spreading - stupidity is contagious.
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What's with HLP and wierdoes?
First judgefloro and now this guy?
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Researcher seems a little awkward. Subliminal messaging does exist. It exists in many forms. Being able to cause psychosis, i'm not really thinking so. Subliminal messages are exact messages whether it be visual or audio. Subliminal messaging is about getting people to do what you want; you hear eat "eat cheezy poofs", and you don't go psycho and off yourself.
I see someone committing suicide due to a subliminal message that told them to commit suicide. Subliminal messages are instructions, they are exact statements telling you to do or not do something, and they are placed by somebody on purpose. Just randomly going psycho from a subliminal message doesn't really hold up if said message was "mommy says play more everquest", "eat more pie", and "virginia tech says kill yourself". None of these subliminal messages i don't think would make one go psycho. If all subliminal messages were heard, then virginia tech johnny is just going to kill himself after playing more everquest and eating more pie. Remember, you got these from your peripheral vision in Researcher's case. You got to have some nice peripheral vision for that.
Someone to go psycho from subliminal messaging? It'd have to be one amazing subliminal message that was short, to the point, and had all the details of how a psychotic person acts.
I don't think virginia tech's interest is in the business of killing students, after all, they do make a bucket of money off of every student that goes there. There are other reasons for someone having a psychotic break that are true, believable, and are common.
Anyway, that's my understanding of it :)
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This whole subliminal messaging thing is severely overrated, as far as I understand it. Basically, you might be able to put a thought into the subjects mind ("Eat more popcorn" and the like), but stuff like "go crazy" or "commit suicide"? That's waaaaayyyyy out there in the realm of paranoid delusions.
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i dont need to wear a tinfoil hat, i had depleted uranium plates installed in my skull.
Researcher seems a little awkward. Subliminal messaging does exist. It exists in many forms. Being able to cause psychosis, i'm not really thinking so. Subliminal messages are exact messages whether it be visual or audio. Subliminal messaging is about getting people to do what you want; you hear eat "eat cheezy poofs", and you don't go psycho and off yourself.
I see someone committing suicide due to a subliminal message that told them to commit suicide. Subliminal messages are instructions, they are exact statements telling you to do or not do something, and they are placed by somebody on purpose. Just randomly going psycho from a subliminal message doesn't really hold up if said message was "mommy says play more everquest", "eat more pie", and "virginia tech says kill yourself". None of these subliminal messages i don't think would make one go psycho. If all subliminal messages were heard, then virginia tech johnny is just going to kill himself after playing more everquest and eating more pie. Remember, you got these from your peripheral vision in Researcher's case. You got to have some nice peripheral vision for that.
Someone to go psycho from subliminal messaging? It'd have to be one amazing subliminal message that was short, to the point, and had all the details of how a psychotic person acts.
I don't think virginia tech's interest is in the business of killing students, after all, they do make a bucket of money off of every student that goes there. There are other reasons for someone having a psychotic break that are true, believable, and are common.
Anyway, that's my understanding of it :)
i dont think individual messages can make soemone go insane, but being bombarded with often conflicting messages has to have some psychological effect. it would need to be a lot, they would need to come from everywhere, and they should severly conflict with eachother. still i dont think the effect would be very severe. i dont know if this idea has ever been tested scientifically.
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This whole subliminal messaging thing is severely overrated, as far as I understand it. Basically, you might be able to put a thought into the subjects mind ("Eat more popcorn" and the like), but stuff like "go crazy" or "commit suicide"? That's waaaaayyyyy out there in the realm of paranoid delusions.
Sort of like me, except i think the stuff that i think is in the realm of paranoid delusions is just out of nowhere becoming psychotic from subliminal messaging. You hear the subliminal message "mom says eat more pie", you go crazy, and then you off yourself. It just doesn't sound like it'd be even close to being part of the realm of subliminal messaging, unless we had the stuff that i agree with you is also part of the realm of paranoid delusions. Somehow, receiving a subliminal message that is short, to the point, but has instructions for telling you how to behave like a psychopatch and to off yourself.
You just cant keep a message like that short, even if maybe to the point, and sounds too complicated to put into a subliminal message. I don't think the 100% subliminal paragraph or more would be successful.
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He's not even talking about subliminal messaging either; it's "Subliminal Distraction".
If this were actually true, considering the placement of my computer and the fact I see any movement in the kitchen in my peripheral vision when I'm using it at home, I should be completely bat**** insane by now.
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its kind of hard to focus on something when theres a voice in the back of my head telling me to burn things, little tricks of light at the corner of my monitor do nothing. beside, its huge, theres a wall behinf it, and the only thing that comes in on the sides is usually a cat, in which case i can be distracted for a whole hour and a half in some cases.
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I know of very little evidence that subliminal priming can influence long term behaviors. It is effective on very short timescales but its impact on behavior drops off rapidly after exposure.
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I know of very little evidence that subliminal priming can influence long term behaviors. It is effective on very short timescales but its impact on behavior drops off rapidly after exposure.
Ditto. Actually, as for the subliminal distraction bit, I was fully prepared to toss a bull**** flag on Researcher unless he can provide some backup - I have taken a fair number of psych courses (seeing as one of my University degrees has a psychology minor) and a lot of what he's spouting reads to me as unfounded nonsense. Then again, I seem to recall your focus of study is/was in psychology, so perhaps you know better than I do.
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He's not even talking about subliminal messaging either; it's "Subliminal Distraction".
If this were actually true, considering the placement of my computer and the fact I see any movement in the kitchen in my peripheral vision when I'm using it at home, I should be completely bat**** insane by now.
Yes, all of us would be bat**** insane in that case. Still really, subliminal peripheral distraction. I don't really see what's so subliminal about it. It's something that's happening that you can see in your peripheral vision. Subliminal periphery distraction says you should be worried for a psychotic break when you've learned to ignore distractions in your peripheral vision. It's stupid, we humans when in the same environment (such as a work environment) for a long time learn to simply not be distracted by a bunch of similar happenings because they happen all the time, and most of the time it's same stuff. Because they happen all the time doesn't mean that each and every single distraction warrants being paid attention to.
The word subliminal with distraction being attached to it isn't correct unless you were receiving some kind of subliminal messages via the distractions in your peripheral vision that you either ignore, or don't feel it warrants your attention. Distractions via your peripheral vision causing psychosis....must attach subliminal stigma to it to get attention.
That's the whole reason i mention the whole subliminal messaging thing NGTM-1R. Because as far as distractions happening in your peripheral vision being subliminal (someone could be eating cake in your peripheral vision while you're on the computer, and you choose to ignore, and later you're not eating cake), they're just things that happen in your peripheral vision which doesn't make them subliminal stimuli unless they were actual subliminal stimuli. My whole thing is about the word subliminal being attached to peripheral psychosis not being correct (unless any kind of distraction happening in your peripheral vision is universally subliminal to all humans broadcasting the message "go ape **** and off yourself").
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i dont think individual messages can make soemone go insane, but being bombarded with often conflicting messages has to have some psychological effect. it would need to be a lot, they would need to come from everywhere, and they should severly conflict with eachother.
Doesn't this happen in any place which lacks any form of command structure? Because in those cases, I do get quite cross...
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Understandable. Sort of like when i had my old job with two bosses. Both had two different ways of getting things done, and both told me that i should do it "this" way. Ideally i just opted for the more competent boss for telling me how to do things since he was more practical and had great reasons that made life easier. Then that conflicted with my other boss that had a certain way of doing things that i discovered were horrible, but a break down in the way he did things would make the place become sloppy.
There was not much reason to keep inventory on hard copy when you mainly keep it digitally that gets weekly backups. Ironically the hard copy inventory was pretty spotty, most likely due to the workers who had the same job before i did for the same reason. So, went my job for doing inventory x2 since then on. And so went on, "oh don't worry about doing hard copy, those are pointless", they are pointless, but it's worth keeping my job to do it.
The other thing of the matter is that some people really do go ape **** from constant distractions that happen around them. Constant distractions even if just in your peripheral vision for a lot of people are distracting for different people. For a lot of people it's heavily distracting, and i would expect them to go ape ****. They would be candidates for a cubicle as opposed to seeing the person 2 desks over complaining about the community copier/printer not working for the 20th time in the day because of the same problem that no ones getting through their heads despite a post it note saying out of order.
Subliminal, no. Becoming seriously annoyed to just lose it from petty **** happening around you...yes. Losing touch with reality and having a mental break resulting in withdrawal from society and becoming unsocial? I have no idea, probably depends a lot on that person's quality of life and how their mind works.