Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:23, 5 February 2007

Welcome!

Hello, Coricus, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Misplaced Pages:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  Melchoir 11:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

No problem! I actually know nothing about Aurelia, but if you want to request assistance, say in confirming Robert Haberle and Manoj Joshi, you can always discuss at Talk:Aurelia (planet) and hope someone reads it. As for PreHistorian, you can find the article they're talking about here. Melchoir 12:32, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the compliment. I got the image from a news story about the program. I did not see the special myself but I have read up on it. I would like to see Blue Moon (Moon) be created too. --Phil 07:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

NLP

To Coricus, Thank you for your input in the NLP talk page. It is going to take some time to improve the article up to Misplaced Pages standards, so please be patient. In NLP, proprioception, thermoception, etc are usually lumped together as a single kinaesthetic sensory modality for the sake of simplicity. Please feel free to contribute in the talk page if you have any other suggestions on how to improve the page. Thank you. --Dejakitty 22:42, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

NLP

Flavius --> I must agree with BrianH123 -- you seem to have put in an enormous amount of research and effort to your work!

Thank you very much for your comments on senses and NLP -- I can see that academically speaking this is a very flawed (possibly fatally so) area. I have no vested interest in the debate on either side but was wondering if the area has been deemed by scientists to have dubious value to what should we attribute the apparent anecdotal success of people such as mentalist Derren Brown? Surely the susceptability of people (those who are gullible or otherwise) to fraudulent activities such as ouija boards, clairvoyants, con artists etc. would tend to indicate that on some level there are systems where by people can be influenced? (Even if NLP is not an accurate or successful method to describe or reproduce such systems -- which is what it appears to wish that it was...)

Coricus 09:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Mentalism has nothing to do with NLP. Derren Brown's effects are produced using conjuring, mentalism, reading micro expressions, showmanship and in a few cases, deception. Many of Browns' most impressive tricks are variations of old mentalist acts. Mentalists such as Max Maven and Banacheck show you how to create many effect like Browns' on their instructional videos. In his book Pure Effect Brown states that

NLP is a communication tool that blends aspects of Behaviourism and Chomskian Linguistics into a highly evangelical package. It has built around itself a rather creepy scene and in a rather dubious and unchecked way has become a massive industry in the worlds of trendy management-training and alternative therapies. Having trained with the highly likeable founder of NLP, I find it a mixture of sensible and appealing methods for dealing with low-level pathologies such as phobias and fears on the one hand, and sheer daft nonsense and massive rhetoric on the other. (p. 107)

There is really no substantial support for the specific claims that NLP makes and much of it can be dismissed as vacuous nonsense. (p. 110)

(from Brown, D. (2000) Pure Effect:Direct Midreading and Magical Artistry, H&R Magic Books)

Regarding NLPs positive anecdotal evidence Tye (1994) offers the following hypothesis:

One must reconcile the null results reported by Sharpley and the NRC with the remarkable successes reported in the case study literature. An alternative explanation is suggested here to explain the discrepancy between the positive case study outcomes achieved by NLP paractitioners and the frequently lackluster results of experimental researchers. The alternative will be termed the "psycho shaman effect." Like NLP techniques, the psycho shaman effect is a collection of already existing, well understood and accepted ideas. Specifically it has three components: cognitive dissonance, placebo effect and therapist charisma. (from Tye, M.J.C (1994). Neurolinguistic programming: Magic or myth? Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 19, 309-342.)

Certainly people can be persuaded and influenced, this is the province of social psychology (see ). An accessible and interesting social psychology based book on the topic of influence and persuasion is Cialdini, R. B. (1998) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Collins (see ). Susceptibility to bunkum is also due to certain well-known weaknesses of human cognition and memory. You can read about these in

Gilovich, T. (1993) How We Know What Isn't So, Free Press

Piatelli-Palmarini, M. (1996) Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds, Wiley

Schacter, D. L. (2002) The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, Houghton Mifflin

Many psychics and clairvoyants use "cold reading" (some use "warm reading" also) and mentalist effects.

I hope this has been useful for you. flavius 13:07, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

    That's fascinating. Thank you for the useful sources to check out. Coricus 03:57, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Ball/child logical fallacy

Thanks for your message, as for your question, the logic you apply is analogous to saying because the first swan you come across is not black, there are no black swans. I think you can see why that's not a good assertion to make. - Samsara _contrib 15:37, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm with you -- you're asserting that the ball/ child model is a form of Popper's swan fallacy. Yes, I can see that if you clumsily assert that because ball catching is not passed on in a Lamarckian sense THEREFORE nothing is, is clearly a false premise. I hadn't realised that my piece was worded in that manner but I can see from the concern you raise that I worded myself badly.

Still, I think that perhaps the ball/ child example may have a role to play because someone without specialist knowledge might benefit from an example or two that show instances where Lamarckian evolution is demonstrated not to occur, such as ball catching or guitar playing or knowing how to drive a car from birth -- particularly since such examples then nicely set up the question in a non-specialist's mind of "well, how do you explain animal instinct, then?", which can lead into ontogenic evolution. (Speaking of which, you may want to look at that page because it could do with a specialist's touch).

Coricus 16:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Notability

Thanks for your explanation. I respect your words that reporters, external peer reviewed journals and other academics just aren't talking about this gentleman and hence the subject is not notable. You should also understand that I never disagreed with people who gave such decent explanations. On the other hand, you should also understand that it may be insulting when some one invents criteria like exam books/ junior doctor etc It was against those words that I choose to argue.

But I disagree with your words that I ask some of his more detached supporters to outline positive reasons for its inclusion That, I feel is a wrong way to do this. The case should be argued on the basis of merits and not based on the number of people supporting it (as it has been done now). Again this sentence make me doubt that you have misunderstood my intentions. I was arguing not to "keep" the article, but to protest against the hasty decisions and invention of new criteria in justifying facts.

And your words a particular set of people chosing to take a particular set of exams within a particular field in a particular country is again a misinterpretation. It is about EVERY ONE in a particular field in a particular country taking the COMMON Exam after Undergraduation. The exam is taken by some 60,000 doctors every year. Hence I feel that you have not understood the reality correctly and is of the wrong opinion regarding the limited scope. The scope is of course limited, but not as limited as you could think of.

And you have not given any reason as to why an author of 6 books is non-notableDoctor Bruno 07:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Reply

I didn't see the talk page. Your edits constitute original research which isn't appropriate for Misplaced Pages. John Reaves (talk) 06:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Your "research" just proves my point. Fan theories aren't encyclopedic, especially with only 81 "sources". John Reaves (talk) 07:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-notable fan theories aren't encyclopedic, is that clear? The only thing that the quickness of my reversion proves is my lack of patience for the addition of crap to this encyclopedia. John Reaves (talk) 08:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The full conversation was as follows:

I'm unhappy with your revision (within one minute!) of a change I made to the Mr Ollivander page. You'll note that on the discussion page I put this up as a topic for people to discuss 5 days ago. No one has seen fit to say it shouldn't be added. Five days, compares to one minute for your reversion and without contributing to the discussion. Coricus 06:26, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't see the talk page. Your edits constitute original research which isn't appropriate for Misplaced Pages. John Reaves (talk) 06:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I think not. The fact that your revision took place within a minute is an indication to me you did not research the matter before your reversion (in addition to not reading the talk page and engaging in reasonable debate). Google lists 69 web sites carrying this information, while Ask has 81. Many are fan websites.

I refer you to:

http://swordofgryffindor.com/2006/08/17/what-happened-to-ollivander/

http://forums.nightly.net/lofiversion/index.php/t39798.html

http://www.hpana.com/forums/topic_view.cfm?tid=72540&p=33

indicating it is a genuine topic of discussion in keeping with my observation "fans have noted". Coricus 06:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Your "research" just proves my point. Fan theories aren't encyclopedic, especially with only 81 "sources". John Reaves (talk) 07:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, your use of quotation marks around "research" and "sources" is both pompous and offensive. It is a further indication to me that you are acting in bad faith (in conjunction with the speed of your reversion, lack of corresponding research and lack of debate).

WP:OR is difficult to know how to apply to fan web sites and theories (see note 1: it's explicitly set up to stop crank physics theories that are hard to disprove). In this particular case though, I tried to seek a balance by showing that anagrams are a method used by Rowling on multiple occasions to show a character's true personality. Particularly given that my posting referenced the fact that it was a TOPIC DISCUSSED BY FANS not that it was per se factual.

Your sneering description of 81 sources ignores the fact that many of these sites are chat forums set up to explicitly discuss the issue - and my search was deliberately conservative as I chose: "ollivander "an evil lord"". If raw numbers are how you choose to judge notability (and personally, they weren't my choice) a broader search reveals from http://www.askpeeves.org/results/?news=1&shop=1&info=1&pics=1&vids=1&cast=1&forum=1&quote=1&scrib=1&q=ollivander that Ollivander Disappearence Theory at http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?showtopic=14024 has 62986 total posts. Many discuss whether he's evil and that debate largely stems from the anagram. (Seperate page "Why Ollivander dissapeared" has according to Peeves 38680 total posts)

Finally, the addition of the comments to the Ollivander page (as note in the discussion forum) was not originally by me. I merely sought to reintroduce them while trying to bring them further into line with Misplaced Pages standards. Coricus 07:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-notable fan theories aren't encyclopedic, is that clear? The only thing that the quickness of my reversion proves is my lack of patience for the addition of crap to this encyclopedia. John Reaves (talk) 08:09, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, you resort to profanity and pomposity.

Your initial objection was WP:OR - which explicitly states "Material that counts as "original research" within the meaning of this policy is material for which no reliable source can be found and which is therefore believed to be the original thought of the Wikipedian who added it." I have clearly demonstrated that is not so.

I think the fact that a debate is clearly happening over this one (http://s8.invisionfree.com/Ultimate_Discussion/ar/t84.htm is another forum discussing the issue) justifies the comment "fans have noted". The fact that Rowling uses anagrams is similarly not original research, she notes it herself in the books and multiple interviews.

Your notability argument is a new one.

I agree that non-notable fan theories aren't encyclopedic. I think this one is borderline, you don't. Technically we should put it forward for arbitration. Frankly, for two sentences on a minor character in a series of books I don't care about it's too much effort. Book 7 is out in six months. The comments can be readded then if shown to be correct. Coricus 08:53, 5 February 2007 (UTC)