Decibel #17
Some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:
- Malik Elassal Stand Up Comedy (12:44 video)
- Emotion Body Map (infographic (and essay))
- Disagreeable vs Bullying (question in tweet form)
1. Malik Elassal Stand Up
This is what I’d like to call a dark but wholesome humor. It touches dark topics but comes from a well-meaning place. I am a fan.
2. Emotional Body Maps
Here’s a cool average mapping of how people subjectively thought their emotions were felt in different parts of their body.
I thought it was very interesting how strong depression reduced activation of the limbs. Shame having such strong activation in the eyes also is eye opening.
“They asked 701 people to color in on a body silhouette the regions where they felt increasing or decreasing activity as they reacted to various stimuli.”
I would love to see some sort of brain-body neuron mapping to see if we could find if the activations are really living in the different parts of the body in some way. Maybe emotion are co-located with various motor function neurons. Maybe we imagine the locality of these feelings and that human’s just report the similar mappings for learned social reasons.
3. Disagreeable vs Bullying
what do you see as the difference between being disagreeable and bullying?
My three sentence response was this: The focus of the negativity. Disagreeable is a diffuse negativity in all/many directions. Bullying focuses it onto one aspect of one person.
I found this other response thought provoking:
appreciation of Simone Weil’s way of thinking topologically I’m thinking bullies shoot arrows to hurt others and gain status while good disagreeableness is a force field of integrity
you have to keep in mind the Aristotelian thing about how the good qualities of a person can only be seen in context like disagreeableness is a real virtue only insofar as it links up with generosity, honesty, kindness and so on
I agree that part of bullying aims to hurt others for the purpose, though I don’t think it’s always for status. Usually status is about how others perceive you, and in my experience bullying happens often enough in private. But I don’t think my nitpick is important here, the main meat is about the nature of “good disagreeableness”.
Good disagreeableness being a force field of integrity is a great line. I like the idea of standing your ground, even if it makes you seem disagreeable. Paying some social cost to stand for truth is honorable. Of course this is dependent on the on the “generosity, honesty, kindness…” of the disagreeableness. Staking disagreeableness into the ground of the tiniest of truths or petty technicalities is not a good way to make friends and convince people of said truth.