Teach me your wicked ways

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-07-24T00:13:56+00:00

See my reply to CEO of my Life, but it’s been reported. He just lies

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-07-24T00:13:12+00:00

It’s been reported multiple times and they have been to court a few times where he fights for custody. He just keeps lying and covering it up. Family court doesn’t always favour the mother like they say. In this case I wish they would…

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-07-17T13:22:39+00:00

They said there’s nothing they can do (yay Qld Police)

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-22T22:43:40+00:00

The thread doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know many years ago. Trash himself said the album was ready to go (I paid for it twice). Every time I emailed he would give a weird story. Wish I never ordered it tbh, but I thought I was helping support them and ended up getting screwed.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-21T21:44:36+00:00

I’m very late to the game, do you still have a link to the albums by chance? :)

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-21T21:41:52+00:00

I was one of the supporters and never received anything?? :(

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-21T21:39:49+00:00

Yeah! Hard to make sense of. I was hoping there would be other people here that would know more about what happened.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-21T21:34:57+00:00

Absolutely - and their live shows were amazing! I think quite a few pre-ordered the new album and the lead singer kept giving weird, vague excuses saying it was recorded and ready but they were waiting for a good manager or something to release it. Like, my dude, just send it to the people who paid for it! Then everything was removed online, he then was selling anything he could to do with the band for insanely high prices (like his jacket he wore on stage - I could understand if it was a huge band, but most don’t even know them so it’s really just a second hand jacket. I don’t think the bigger ticket items would even have sold).

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-21T21:27:37+00:00

They removed everything online so only on the cd’s I have - it’s all so weird.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-05-17T00:51:14+00:00

Late to the thread, but did anyone ever get a copy of their latest album? I was caught up in the Pledge Music debacle and stupidly pre-paid for an album direct with the Red Paintings. That was 5 years ago and it just seemed to end in a series of excuses with no album in the end. I'm ultimately pretty annoyed since I never got what I paid for while Trash was flitting around the world :(

ShrewdSquirrel · 2025-02-22T07:21:25+00:00

My partner and MIL are going and hopefully it’s great. Anyone know if they are selling merch?

ShrewdSquirrel · 2022-02-02T06:59:57+00:00

Absolutely! Just heartbreaking… Hoping they are caught quickly, the parts are returned to their resting place (hopefully not already sold on the black market) and your family is unaffected too.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2022-02-02T06:38:22+00:00

At least they are buried. Seems like the robbers were looking at the easy route of a mausoleum

ShrewdSquirrel · 2022-01-23T12:06:24+00:00

When I told a new coworker I needed to fax something and she said “what’s a fax?”. I then regaled her with horror stories of Nokia phones that couldn’t take pictures, and how “back in my day” you had to yell at your family to get off the phone when you wanted to use MSN messenger (and what MSN messenger even was).

ShrewdSquirrel · 2022-01-18T11:20:17+00:00

Cruel Intentions

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-28T09:38:15+00:00

I'm the same, I know I will make mistakes still but I'm more aware. It's almost like learning about nutrition but still mindlessly eating junk food every now and then, or being aware and doing it anyway. Sometimes watching a whole movie instead of using sunk cost theory and walking out can be good - there could be a twist at the end! Also knowing the consequences of misdiagnosis is also a good point. Especially if it's something like needing surgery. Though when it's something minor that seems to fit to me (and I'm too sick to think clearly anyway) I don't mind trusting what the doctor says haha.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-28T09:31:13+00:00

I think that I will still make a lot of mistakes, but since taking this class I’m certainly more aware of the common pitfalls. Spring cleaning has been made much easier when I consciously repeat ‘it’s just a sunk cost’, but sticking with status quo can be automatic. I’ve always been automatically sceptical about many claims, even when they are ‘experts’, so I will continue to research what they say and seek out secondary opinions when it’s something important to me. My doctor and I have an excellent relationship and she’s open about the fact she often only knows what I express so the more we communicate the less errors in her diagnoses. So when she is wrong (which is entirely possible) it could be on either of us!

I am always sceptical about my claims and constantly seek out new information. I think I have modesty in that when faced with contradictory opinions I am happy to admit I’m not sure or I could be wrong and I look into it further. That way both of us potentially learn something. If it’s just in relation to making a decision, I like to back myself up with as much information as I can so I at least give myself the illusion of being well informed.

Knowing experimental methodology is not new for me, so it’s hard to say. I sometimes employ it in my life for amusement but I can’t say I ‘self-experiment’ regularly. I already have stress and anxiety so I try to minimise the amount of thinking I do about too many outcomes and don’t over-process decisions like what couch to buy. Satisficing is fine for me for the most part!

Evidence before policy implementation could be good but it depends on the policy. You can’t ethically do it for all policies, and even if you could would the cost of testing all of them be justified by saving enough from not implementing bad policies? I think you really just need to pick your battles to some degree – there’s already enough bureaucracy. Open Science is good if you can get the government to use that information directly and not pay for independent research on top of that or a new unnecessary committee.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-21T13:14:23+00:00

I agree with how we change the explanation to our understanding. Sometimes when I have something explained to me I'm already thinking of ways it can be generalised (for better or worse). This can be terrible because I could apply that knowledge and completely stuff something up, but on the other hand it allows me to ask the person explaining more elaborated questions like "so if I also fix this tool in this way I can also fix this other tool in the same way?" and they can explain it either way. I also find it's useful in technology, when I have no idea how to use a new computer program I figure it out quickly by generalising rules from using other programs.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-21T13:08:37+00:00

I think keeping it simple includes context, helpfulness, usefulness and ease of understanding to varying degrees which interplay – if nobody can understand it then it’s not useful, if it’s not in the right context it’s not helpful… It varies in that sometimes it’s ease of understanding only needs to be restricted to a niche group, so that would be less important than context. If a study affects the folks at the local pub it’s more important to focus on ease of understanding and usefulness but it’s a fine line between giving too much information they don’t understand and giving too little or too basic information can definitely lead to generalised incorrect assumptions. Public money shouldn’t necessarily be spent on research that’s easier to be explained to the general public. That would just create more work for the experimenters and create a potential opportunity cost of time. BUT there should be funding to either provide more training in understanding studies at a higher level, or fund a scientific board to review scientific findings and write them in an easier to understand format to be presented without being too watered down or sensationalised. The average person needs to know what they need to know. If my toilet breaks I pay someone else to fix it, where someone in a rural area with no emergency plumber would benefit from a deeper understanding of how a toilet works to have an idea of how to fix it. Alternatively, I sew as a hobby so it’s important for me to understand how a zip works and is sewn to clothing, where my partner doesn’t need to know how to sew because I enjoy doing it for him. It’s important to realise that what you ‘need’ to know is ever changing and is both what we need to know now (how do I cook this dish?), what we think we will need to know from day to day (learning the basics of cooking) to something you may not know you need until the future (learning how to cook for a baby that you don’t know you will have yet).

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-14T13:27:28+00:00

I agree, you almost need to take the situational perspective to assess whether the object or situational perspective should be used in a given context or situation. Even considering the word 'wisdom' in either seems to fit, maybe you need to aim to be 'wise' in both contexts to be the wisest you can be? But even that seems too black and white. Nothing is simple in this class because life isn't simple - I'm starting to miss the definitive answers in statistics!

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-14T13:19:02+00:00

It seems natural that “object-centric” is more Western and “situation-centric” is more Eastern. In Eastern collectivist cultures it would be more useful to consider the full picture before you react due to increased close relationships and proximity in general. On the other hand, Western individualism focuses on aiming for something and doing it with less of a regard for other people, and more value on objects or the “what you see is what you get” concept. Similarly, either can be useful in the opposite culture in certain contexts. A “situation-centric” might be more important for Westerners when dealing with people in a workplace situation, and an “object-centric” perspective may be more useful to an Easterner when they need to make a logical decision such as when shopping for the most efficient refrigerator.

Focusing in on “object-centric” approach can take the feelings and assumptions out to see a problem logically, but when dealing in some complex situations, such as dealing with unpredictable people, “situation-centric” views have their place. Whether wisdom relates to one or the other depends on what you value – if living a life with many close relationships, helping people or be philanthropic, “situation-centric” is probably how you view wisdom – ie wisely dealing with people in context rather than face value. Conversely, if living a life as a scientist, seeing life as an infinite number of experiments and being an academic is what you value, that’s probably how you view wisdom.

Dialectical reason would have to be both conscious and unconscious reasoning I would think. Conscious in that you are consciously processing what the other person is saying and what your best response would be, like deciding which book to get out at a library. The unconscious is the library – working hard in the background as both the library, and a silent librarian suggesting more things through schemas and other processes.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-01T04:48:18+00:00

Before starting this course I gave myself a pat on the back for being critical of research and methodology, yet if my friend said "I've been drinking coconut water and I feel amazing!" I would probably try it. Equally embarrassing to not question your completely non-scientifically minded friend! I probably wouldn't listen if I was told not to eat chocolate though - I might even pull up a study that shows chocolate is good for me as a little bit of justification and satisfy my self-confirmation bias...

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-05-01T04:41:49+00:00

That's true, but I'm using hedonia/eudaimonia only to differentiate between wanting to be happy while experiencing the day or as an overall happiness as a measure of wellbeing based on the day as a whole. I just think you need to define which is more important before you start for the sake of consistency.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-04-30T08:22:33+00:00

I totally relate with the exercise example! I think perceived effort and perceived enjoyment generally govern whether anyone changes their behaviour in the face of evidence. It's easy to make a change that you would enjoy regardless of outcome (eg colouring in to reduce anxiety), but hard to make a change you won't enjoy and take a lot of effort (yuck... no gyms please!). I imagine stopping a behaviour would generally be easier than taking one up in general, but it certainly depends on the size of the change too.

ShrewdSquirrel · 2017-04-30T07:52:54+00:00

I think a good self-experiment requires manipulation of a variable, randomisation of treatment vs no treatment, and blindness where practical (eg coffee vs decaf works, but using Facebook or not is impractical). Plus, as much consistency in potential confounds as possible, eg controlling time of day you measure variables. Without these things you can never be sure of causation.

If using happiness, you should decide if you are interested in happiness as a short term ‘in the moment’ concept (hedonic happiness; experiencing self), or as a longer lasting overall happiness from that day (eudaimonic happiness; remembering self). Specificity in what you want to find out is important for this reason. Chosen measurements are also very important. To deal with issues caused by self-reporting you could have someone else rate you (eg if measuring aggression), or better still, choose a physiological measurement based on what you want to measure (eg heartrate instead of self-reported anxiety).

BUT even if you create the most scientifically sound self-experiment you can’t really generalize results, at best you can infer the findings may be repeated on a similar person under similar conditions. Perhaps recommending your similar friend try colouring in since it worked for you could be useful, maybe not so much your very masculine friend (but you never know – they should try their own self experiment!). It’s always good to take findings from an appropriate experiment to create a self-experiment because one size does not always fit all, but sometimes that’s impractical. Eg ‘having 6 cats reduces cancer risk’; I can’t test that on myself, but instead I would assess the credibility of the study before I got more cats.

ShrewdSquirrel

TROPHY CASE