One of the issues in gun ownership is gun type. In many states quite a few hunt deer, ducks, geese, pheasants, turkeys, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, etc. with rifles. While a rifle certainly is an effective weapons against their fellow humans, they aren't convenient to tuck into one's pants and whip out if somebody threatens one with a discordant opinion, or something similarly intolerable.

The larger problem is handguns, which are very portable and pretty much concealable. You can even buy plastic guns over the internet which are not picked up on metal scanners.

My view is that there are far too many guns of all kinds in the USA. However, they are here now -- at least 1 per person, averaging out the total supply, and there isn't any acceptable way to round them up. While I loathe the slogan, it is true that guns don't kill people ON THEIR OWN--people do. Most people who own guns do not shoot other people. They could, but they don't. That fact doesn't make me feel better, but it a good idea to keep it in mind.

55% of households in Mississippi own guns, 28% of California households own guns. The state I live in, Minnesota, has a gun rate of 42% and a low rates of gun violence.

Most of the shooters and victims of gun violence are decidedly NOT middle class.

Also, is the murder rate uniform over the US? It's a humongous country. — RolandTyme

The homicide rate is not at all uniform in 2017, varying from Louisiana, with 653 homicides--a rate of 12.4 per 100,000, to New Hampshire, with 17 homicides for a rate of 1 per 100,000. Very crudely, the SE quarter of the US has much higher homicide rates than the NW quarter of the US.

Most, but not all, murders are committed with guns, but knives and blunt objects are also effective methods.

It may surprise some, but a majority of Americans do not own guns.

About 40% of Americans say they or someone in their household owns a gun, and 22% of individuals (about 72 million people) report owning a gun, according to surveys from Pew and Harvard and Northeastern. This figure has declined over time, down from 51% of gun-owning households in 1978. Gun purchases, however, have hit historic highs in recent years and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fewer people own more guns, and far fewer use them to kill people. In 2020 there were 20,480 homicides in the US--a solid effort, one has to say, but in decades past the the rate of murder was higher--another sign of declining US productivity. People in Chicago, though, know how to get things done. In 2021 there were 849 homicides (any method). Chicago has a great web site for tracking murder and assault -- HEY JACKASS!. Sadly, other cities lack this one service.

And what exactly is the argument? Have Palestinians left off teaching their children that Jews murder Arab babies and drink their blood? Or have Palestinians left off their desire to drive the Israelis into the sea? Has Hezbollah or whatever the terror organization of the moment is left off their violence? Have Israel's neighbors decided they can welcome and live with them, instead of trying to annihilate them?

If I'm Israel and they insist on rocketing me and murdering mine - can you say Yassar Arafat, or Munich? I evict them all and give them sixty days to be gone! Maybe ninety, but gone. But maybe I'm behind the times. Have the Palestinians made any substantive efforts to live peacefully with the Israelis?

I do not question that Palestinians have a tough go at the hands of Israelis, but have they not earned it many times over? Or even can the Israelis afford to be less vigilant? It seems to me that the Palestinians have worked hard to ruin a generation of their own, and more, and it is hard to see it becoming truly peaceful until they and there Arab allies change their ways - and when will that happen! — tim wood

One can be pro-Israel and still acknowledge that the Palestinians have gotten, are getting, and will probably continue to get a raw deal. They are in Israel's way. Israel is strong enough to push them around. Ugly, buy that's how it works. We Americans happily don't experience the effects of America throwing throwing its weight around elsewhere in the world. That's one of the nice parts of being on top.

How does one establish a new nation (even if it is claimed to have existed--and then vanished--a couple of thousand years previously) on already-occupied property? You displace the previous occupants, or you just sort of run over them, give them a good deal or a bad deal, but to a large extent engulf and subordinate them. People generally don't like this approach when they are on the receiving end, and they quite often resent and resist it.

Ideally, the Palestinians would just all disappear like morning fog. They won't / can't. Where would they go? North Dakota or New Mexico (somebody else's stolen land)? There aren't any great places in the world which aren't already occupied.

Next best for Israel would be for the Palestinians to "Shut up, go to your room, and stay there. Be quiet. Don't bother us. Don't call us--we'll call you if we need anything from you." I can understand the Israeli desire for the Palestinians to become obsequious peasants. Were I a Palestinian I would find that to be altogether impossible and outrageous to boot.

I don't know what the future holds. I'm pro-Israel, and the establishment of the State of Israel was "business as usual"--carried out by force against unwilling recipients of imperial policy. That's how these sorts of things get done, pretty much everywhere. Yes, the Jews were were in a dire situation, and one of the countries that could have taken in many Jews, had we not been kind of anti-semitic ourselves, was the United States. We did take in some Jews, but not nearly as many as we could have. The US was never going to be a Jewish homeland, but we could have helped more of them to survive than we did.

We can be pro-Israel without having to make a virtue out of stuffing one group down another group's throat. It will happen again, and it won't be nice. Nobody is going to like it. As global warming displaces more people, more "other people" will be unhappy that strangers are suddenly camped on their doorsteps. Imagine how enthusiastic India and Burma will be when millions of Moslem Bangladeshis are driven from their nation by rising sea water? They will end up somewhere, and nobody will be happy about it.

They use science to do their work. — L'éléphant

Of course. I respect scientists, science, and research. The fact remains that they could not examine the subjects because they had been dead for thousands of years.

Genetic changes may well have occurred. As far as I know (that's not too far) the means by which any given gene or set of genes determines intelligence isn't a road map.

Here:

A practical question comes to mind when examining this research: is everyone born with a certain intelligence level that can’t be changed? Not exactly. This is where the magnitude of the effect becomes relevant. A gene being statistically associated with intelligence does not mean it is solely responsible for how well you’ll do on an IQ test. A lot of other factors come into play, and a gene is only one.

Which leads to a key statistic: together, these 22 genes accounted for about 5% of the differences in intelligence scores.

So there is still a lot other stuff (to use a scientific term) contributing to intelligence aside from genes, including upbringing, lifestyle, and even technology—after all, even if a gene 100% destines you to be born with blonde hair, you can still use the amazing human invention of hair dye to turn it purple.

On top of that, intelligence isn’t everything, and it may not even be that meaningful of a thing. Individual cognitive domains like reasoning, short-term memory, and verbal ability are more specific than an overall intelligence score, and likely have their own genetic and environmental determinants. Getting higher scores in measures of those domains (like the ones we provide) requires measurement, optimization, and healthcare, not just hoping for good DNA. — Cambridge Brain Science

I'm biased towards genetics determining a lot of what we are--now--but even that is hard to prove.

when are we going to reject idiotic titles such as — universeness

Not until people stop quoting idiotic statements by Bruce Lee?

one of the main attractions is bushwalking — Wayfarer

We hope that you don't get bushwhacked while you bushwalk.

You've reserved your comment for motor skills. — Agent Smith

Just following your lead. The brain that births bright ideas also guides the batter's swing.

Per St. Augustine about time and Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart about hard core pornography, "I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it." There is a long list about which the same thing can be said: Justice, Art, Beauty, Grief, Truth, Fragrance, and so on. If I said, "this was a perfect pear" (referencing its fragrance, texture, color, taste, juicines) you would know what I meant, but neither of us (just guessing) could describe what the fragrance of a pear is.

Conversations may crash, as you said, when definitions are demanded--"What is your definition of art?" for example. It happens in this forum quite often. It may be that we can not unpack the word we use. Or in the case of the Holy Trinity, about which rivers of ink have been spilt, I think it is a crash-causing bug and not a feature at all.

Activities that are habitual, routinized, directed by "muscle memory" and so on can certainly be disrupted by the interference of thought. Mindfulness might be a bad idea a good share of the time.

Conversely, some activities benefit by mindfulness. Walking in the winter (snow, ice) can be treacherous and one must pay attention to the ever changing treacherous surfaces. Let your mind wander, and that is when you are likely to slip and fall.

Skating on ice, on the other hand, should not be thought about, unless one is preparing for a figure skating contest where the sequence of moves is complex. Once learned though, I'm guessing that professional skaters let the performance roll along without thinking about it slide by slide.

A lot of what we do (physical actions) is under the control of non-conscious motor systems, which are quite competent. Over ride them with incompetent conscious thought and one might fall flat on one's face.

You mean you're not convinced. — L'éléphant

There are two questions here:

One is: Were hunters / gatherers smarter than us, or not?
Two is: Can we determine the answer to question One?

Answer One: I don't know; nobody else does either.
Answer Two: We can not.

At a distance, I don't have a reliable, valid way of measuring your intelligence. I would need to be present with you, administer tests, and observe your performance. I would need to interview you, take a personal and family history, etc. For a much less robust measurement, I could have someone administer a paper and pencil test to you.

Let's try going back in time to... 1900. Let's measure the intelligence of your ancestor. You choose. I will assume the person is dead. How would we measure his or her intelligence?

Let's go way back to 15,000 B.C.E. The time machine is broken so we will have to measure the intelligence of someone ??? far away in time and space. How would we measure his or her intelligence?

to continue saying "we don't know..." and "we have no way of knowing.." are killers of rational dialectic. — L'éléphant

Not so! There is nothing wrong or irrational about saying "We don't know" when, in fact we do not know, and in fact there is no way to know.

What we can and do know about our hunter / gatherer forebears is that

a) they survived the difficulties they faced (we know, because we descended from them)
b) they were very good tool makers (we know because many of their stone tools survived)
c) they had a culture for which they left very few traces, except cave paintings and many stone tools. (We know that fabric and wood tend to not survive in the environment for long. We have seen the caves, and have collected the stone tools.)
d) they were successful in their lives (their skeletons show that they were generally healthy and strong

When you reach the end of what you can currently know, it is appropriate to claim no more knowledge. Future research may reveal more about our distant forebears. I will quote Wittgenstein here: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Topics like "The nature of God" are examples about which we should remain silent.

We certainly can and will speculate about what we MIGHT know in the future. That's fine as long as we don't claim our speculation as fact, until it IS fact, which it might never be.

Meanwhile, I have work to do: — L'éléphant

We don't care.

So, at least Crabtree based his guess on something in particular, though it isn't at all convincing. Look, we don't know whether people are smarter now, or dumber, than they were 1, 2, 5, 10, or 50 thousand years ago. We have no way of knowing that--none. We don't have highly valid and reliable ways for measuring the intelligence of people who are here today. (Which is not to say that existing instruments have zero validity and reliability.)

It is better to operate with the understanding that human intelligence has not changed on average. It might have changed--might be better, might be worse--there is just no way to prove either one.

What difference does it make in the end? Whoever is alive at any given moment in history has a unique set of problems to deal with, a set of resources to work with, and a certain amount of intelligence and experience. They may do well, the may do badly, or some result in between. There are far too many factors in play for anyone to derive meaning estimates about intelligence.

It really fills up the space — TiredThinker

What does "space" even mean in digital terms?

You are tired, thinker. you are having bad ideas. Go to bed.

He must have been right about the benefits of the graham cracker. In 1850 the world population was 1.2 billion. After he introduced his famous cracker, guys stopped masturbating and now the population is just about 8 billion.

Forget Sam Harris -- call General Mills to set up a company to sell intelligence-restoring omelettes in convenient heat-and-eat packages (recyclable, of course).

The comparison is between us and the primitive hunter-gatherers, the Paleolithic early humans — L'éléphant

And just how did they test the intelligence of Paleolithic humans?

I have heard rumors that IQ scores have been rising throughout the 20th century. Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen any evidence that people are getting smarter.

We shouldn't see any real change in intelligence or brain size over a short period of time -- like 2 or 3 centuries. In time, it might change, but with 8 billion people breeding without any eugenic supervision, it's hard to see how the AVERAGE intelligence would change. Very stupid and very bright outliers have always been produced.

You've hit the nail on the head as far as I'n concerned. — Agent Smith

The sentence "You" can live without self-actualization; "for me" it's essential." was not to be taken as specifically applicable to you. I was just observing that other people's actualization tends to be less interesting than our own.

Yes, generally speaking, one can self-actualize when one's basic needs have been satisfied enough. People who are starving think first, second, and third about finding food.

So, "self-actualization" isn't going to look the same for everyone, and for an individual won't be the same throughout life. I have had periods of really good self-actualization, and periods which were barren. This seems to be true for most people. A couple of big peaks were in work settings, a few minor peaks were in interpersonal relationships. The present time, particularly the last 10 years (after age 65, basically) has been an extended period of self-actualization.

Most of the time we are not experiencing peaks of self-actualization. Most of the time we are on a plateau, and while there are peaks, there also deep ditches of despair.

How about you: what are your best self-actualizing experiences?

Right.

I suppose one could say that "self-actualization" isn't a need in the same sense as oxygen or food is a need. One may be very unhappy without self-actualization, but one won't drop dead from its absence.

"You" can live without self-actualization; "for me" it's essential.

Is your life any better now? — baker

Yes, it is slightly better now -- about 1% better. Short piece, small results.

Have your existential fears disappeared? — baker

I don't have any existential fears just right now, thanks to 2 hours of Mozart.

Are you now beyond sorrow? — baker

Probably not. Only the grave offers that solace.

All good insightful observations.

Esteem, especially "self-esteem" has carried a heavy workload lately.

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I haven't read any Maslow since I was a psych major 50 years ago. — T Clark

Full disclosure: I didn't read any Maslow 50 years ago. I read a little of him more recently. I don't really like reading any of the major psychologists. Maybe I never did. I've liked some sociologists better. And people like Oliver Sacks.

There have been unsightly squabbles by religious conservatives and school districts over schools promoting "self-esteem" in students, as if that were tantamount to teaching students to be transgendered communists or unusually perverted homosexual atheists.

The trouble is that "esteem" isn't something that can be taught as part of the curriculum. On this matter, the schools are well intentioned and the conservatives are hung up.

People do not (and should not) need to be bubbling over with high self esteem all the time. Once in a while, after some actual achievement, is often enough. Real opportunities to feel good about one's self normally happen in real life. They don't need to be engineered. (Well, maybe in therapeutic settings; something that 99.9% of schools are not.

It's much easier to construct environments (home, community, school) that offer few if any opportunities to feel good about one's self. People don't (usually) set out to create these negative environments. They develop because some people can be hard-hearted sons of bitches, hateful bastards, and depraved, dysfunctional people. Most people aren't, but some are. Some of them are religious conservatives, and some of them run schools, governments, churches (!), and other institutions.

In opposition to the theories of motivation, there was the view of Behaviorism, of the Pavlovion sort, that focused upon producing experiences through control of conditions rather than finding the structure of an individual's desire. — Paine

Pavlov, Skinner, et al.

B. F. Skinner put the best possible face on behaviorism in his novel, Walden Two.

"Psychology" can be very annoying. Students thereof fail to integrate multiple theories. People learn, and learning can be studied. Classical conditioning and operant conditioning are the two main schools of thought. Then there are personality theories, like Maslow, and a two dozen others. Clinical psychology studies abnormal states, like OCD.

Bits and pieces of these various theories contain "truth". Even some of Freud's laborious flights of fancy. All sorts of mechanisms are operating at the same time -- motivation, operant learning, striving for self-actualization, egos and unconscious urges, and (usually at least some) just plain craziness.

I left this out - It's a method for use managing personnel, employees, human resources, human capital. It's for HR managers. It's not psychology. — T Clark

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs does all that? Maslow's aim was to demonstrate that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others.

Just guessing, but I'm sure Maslow wasn't the first person to think that we had needs that needed to be met, and that intellectual fulfillment was a bit more complicated than sexual satisfaction. But, as you say, psychologists can be some sort of industrial engineer.

I generally loathe personnel, human resources, human capital, or HR managers and their corporate function. The acquisition and enjoyment of love, esteem, belonging, and self-actualization has nothing to do with Human Resources Departments. They are there to feed the machine.

Of course, these loathsome lizards (apologies to actual lizards) would be trained as psychologists. Their utilization of this or that piece of psychology doesn't "retroactively contaminate" the field.

As you move higher it gets a bit new agey for me — T Clark

Maslow published his book on motivation in 1943, so he, at least, wasn't being too new agey.

Shirley, you don't deny that there are higher needs for love, esteem, and self-actualization?

Harry Harlow, UW-Madison, was Maslow's PhD advisor. Harlow experimented with rhesus monkeys to show that maternal warmth (or even a crude substitute) was critical for primate development. Without it, the infant monkeys failed to thrive. Human infants have similar (but more complex, extensive) requirements. A tragic demonstration of this principle were neglected infants in Romanian orphanages who had received the minimum necessary care but were otherwise untouched, uncared for. Their development was very poor, if they survived at all.



Point is, the higher needs are developmental requirements too, not just features of adult human motivation.

Love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are highly motivating.

Maslow's pyramid represents what I call human engineering. It uses rational methods to label and characterize human feelings and behavior. — T Clark

It's "engineering" because humans are more alike than we are different. We can generalize about people, expect certain behaviors and reactions, see patterns, etc. because we are members of the same species and have the same machinery. We are not all fundamentally different and unique. (We are not fragile "snowflakes".)

Does that answer your question? — Agent Smith

They are quite important — DA671

The physiological needs (food, water, oxygen, clothing, shelter, sleep) are non-negotiable demands. Yes, they can be put off (in the case of oxygen, maybe a minute or two), but not for too long. Starvation, dehydration, exposure (to either high or low temps) will kill you. Physiological satisfaction is the sine qua non for the "higher" needs.

Anyway, I just don't get why they are "negative". Fulfilling the physiological needs tends to be highly satisfying. Eating, drinking, breathing...

It isn't clear to me why you think the "deficiency needs" at the bottom of the pyramid are "negative". DB (Darth Barracuda) said the same thing.

↪Bitter Crank Well said BC. What's the conversion rate between pesos and pfennigs? — _db

I have no idea. I was surprised to see "pfennig" in my post -- its a word I don't think I've used more than twice or thrice. That was 6 years ago. I am quite sure I haven't used the word since.

the laws of God — Cornwell1

They are above my pay grade.

I would agree that, if the spelled-out methodology was incompatible or in conflict with someone's innate method, it would constrain the accumulation of knowledge. An extreme example of this is psychoanalysis: The methods of classical psychoanalysis (Freud), as well as its peculiar concepts, constrained knowledge gathering a lot. I'm not sure the analyst was able to generate real knowledge at all, never mind the person being 'analyzed'.

"THEY" at least thought they were. But then, their income depended on believing it.

It doesn't need to be spelled out. Your innate methodology was put together way before you started thinking about not wanting to deal with systems of knowledge.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

But not according to any method — Cornwell1

by which, just guessing, you mean "somebody else's system". You, your brain, your mind have a unique system of knowing things -- we all do -- and it works for you. If it didn't work for you you would either have changed, or you would have major problems. You don't seem to have major problems.

"Of course you will use your knowledge." If I don't wanna use it I don't use it. — Cornwell1

Your knowledge includes things like an intuitive grasp of gravity. Infants exhibit this grasp. It's a piece of knowledge. You use it all the time. You know that ice is slippery, You can slide on it, sled on it, slip on it, skate on it, or chill a gin & tonic. You know that a hot stove burns. Therefore, you do no touch it. All very basic.

You have more complex information too. If you don't fill your car's gas tank, you will run out of fuel on the freeway somewhere inconvenient and will be attacked by a vicious gang of flashy lycra-wearing cannibal cyclists. You don't want that, so you fill your tank.

Of course you will use and manage your knowledge, all the stuff you have accumulated over the years. You could avoid it by falling into a deep coma.

I will yield some territory here. It is clear that we make decisions (think) using emotions. Consumer behavior has been studied in this context, and billions and billions of dollars are staked on people buying on the basis of cognition + emotion. I see it in my own consumer decisions: Why buy a shoe at an upscale shoe store (Allen Edmunds) instead of Target or god forbid Payless (no longer in business). I like (emotional content) the looks and build of Allen Edmunds much better than the look and build of a shoe or boot costing 1/3 of what the upscale store is charging. Also, I didn't like the feeling I experience in the lowest price outlet. Payless was a just plain shabby experience.

The quality of the build and materials mattered once upon a time when I was doing a lot of walking. I don't walk much anymore. A Target shoe would do, as far as adequately covering the foot.

But emotions are, I maintain, also a catalyst for thinking as well. The desire (emotion) to understand is the motivation to stick with the problem (of adding 2 and 2 together) until it is solved. Thinking is a pleasure. "Pleasure" per se does figure into the task of cooking (which must involve thought if disaster is to be avoided) because pleasure is one of the goals, aside from surviving for one more day of posting on TPF.

Pleasure in thinking about emotions and thinking is evaporating, fast.

Just the act of using my mind is a pleasure — T Clark

And, judging from your posts, not a novel experience.

People who have had the portions of their brain strongly involved emotion damaged sometimes have trouble making decisions, even very simple ones. My point is, emotion is not an adjunct to thinking, it is a fundamental part of it. — T Clark

The brain has lots of different parts but thinking and emoting both seem unitary. The physical basis of thinking and emotion is one of the critical things that computers can't have, without also having a wet body.

2+2=4 regardless of how one feels about it. Whether one cares that 2+2=4 is a function of emotion. I have been aware of eugenics for many years. I just finished Richard Overy's book on Britain during the inter-war period. The chapter on the eugenics and birth control movement in Britain was very exciting because the names of eugenics promoters and supporters were given, and the details of what they were proposing were shocking. Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, lamented that Britain was not emulating Nazi Germany in its approach to eliminating "defective" people. Some Anglican bishops were on board. Numerous Tory politicians were too. "Death chambers" were one of the methods proposed for disposing of the defectives (which wasn't, by the way, a very precise term).

All this was exciting because something very appalling was revealed. I finished the eugenics chapter with much more disgust than when I started it. I have the same experience in reading about Nazi Germany: fascination and intense interest because the working out of Nazi policy was so granular and awful.

By contrast, contemporary economic leaves me cold. It is not emotionally stimulating (well, a lot o it is vaguely repellant). A lot of political news is the same--more stultifying that stimulating.

If I don't reject the idea that emotion is an integral part of thinking, I can't parse out how they are integrated.

intensity/extremity of the emotional state — universeness

It seems reasonable to suppose that the intensity of emotion would play a role.

Psychedelic drugs for example? can they alter knowledge 'flow' and aid creativity — universeness

I don't know--no personal experience with psychedelics. I'm not a neurologist or psychologist. It is possible, I suppose. There is some current interest in using psilocybin in treating people with PTSD. Harvey Cox, a theologian, tried psilocybin; as I recollect, he thought the experience was interesting, but not an epiphany. The standard treatment for depression is an Rx for mood altering drugs that boost neurotransmitters. I've taken them for many years. They have helped. What helped even more, along with the anti-depressant, was a major change in circumstances.

I experience depression typically -- loss of focus, concentration, and memory. Mental function is "depressed". Reduced depression means better focus, concentration, and memory. So mood definitely affects thinking.

other than to make ourselves feel good — TiredThinker

If "making ourselves feel good" is the cause for doing good, then have a ball.

Also...

a) many are taught to do good for righteousness' sake -- do good because it is good
b) mirror neurons facilitate empathy

Mirror neurons are one of the most important discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience. These are a variety of visuospatial neurons which indicate fundamentally about human social interaction. ... Apart from imitation, they are responsible for myriad of other sophisticated human behavior and thought processes. — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles ›

c) we want to do good things

We don't select using reason, for instance, unless our emotions have made us privilege a rational approach — Tom Storm

As Schopenhauer said, "'A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants'? I take to mean "we can not choose to desire something". We desire it, or not, but not by choice.

Is that what you mean?

A lot of amateur philosophers, at least, seem to avoid the emotions in their thinking. They have as many emotions as everybody else, maybe more, but they don't want to include them in their system of thinking.

this thread is not about behavior, it's about knowledge. How we know things. — T Clark

As if we could know anything at all without information-acquiring behavior first. I don't want to suggest that "emotion" is either a way of knowing, or knowledge in itself. The relationship of emotion to knowledge is not causative. It is an adjunct, or maybe a catalyst--it participates in the formation of knowledge without becoming part of it. But that is not 100% true: the pleasure we experience in figuring out how the gadget works, or how the squirrel builds its nest, or how a chemical reaction takes place, is colored by pleasure--positive experience is attached to the fact.

This fall I observed two squirrel nests that had fallen out of trees. I always assumed that a squirrel nest was just a flimsy cluster of leaves intended to hide the squirrel. Not so. It is a tightly packed roll of leaves, at least 12" in diameter, with a small hole in the middle. It would hide a squirrel, but more, it would also keep it dry and warmish (if it's -25ºF as it will be tonight, the squirrel will not freeze -- but it won't be "warm". It is clear that IF a squirrel loses its nest in the winter, it might not survive because it would be hard pressed to rebuild the nest without an abundance of green leaves.

Learning this was a pleasure. After noticing distant squirrel nests in trees all my life, I finally know new information about local squirrels.

I think strong emotion is more likely to lead you to making the wrong decision about what to do than clear thinking. — T Clark

Strong emotions are intended to produce quick decisions, like "get the hell out of town before the 350 pounder buries the knife in your gut". (As you already know) that's the function of the limbic system -- to save us from immediate danger (the knife, the snake, the spider, the snarling dog...) The limbic / emotion system, as you say, can disrupt clear thinking. This has been proved to me over and over again in my life.

But still, strong emotions arise for a reason. If you have anxiety attacks when thinking about selling your house, you should probably rethink the reasons for the sale. Same for buying a house. Or for quitting a job, taking a job, going on a second date, or getting married.

Our particular emotions are one of the elements we do well to know about, understand, and manage. Sometimes emotions have nothing to do with thought: Leaping away from the snake in the grass has nothing to do with our thoughts on snakes. But for less primitive responses (like feeling nauseated when thinking about taking the questionable job offer) one's emotional response is a piece of data that should be taken account of.

Maybe not, but my guess is that you agree with my take on emotion. We want to direct our lives by relying on reliable knowledge, clear perception, logical thinking, and settled emotions. In order to achieve this happy result, we have to take the volatile aspects of our brains into account.

The situation is quite dire and could escalate into something very, very dangerous. — Manuel

I agree, and I don't know what the Nato group should do next, or what the Russians will do.

What proof are you looking for? Please explain this. — L'éléphant

If some one says, "Men are usually taller than women", numerous citations can be provided. If someone says, "More women than men are attending college now", numerous citations can be provided.

If some one says, "Women are more ethical than men" I would want to now how that had been determined. Just off hand, I am not sure anyone has determined that one sex is more ethical than the other. Men and women often occupy quite different roles in life, and the ethical decisions they make may not be comparable.

A group of men working in a business have one field of ethical decisions making, a group of women working in an elementary school have a different field of ethical decision making. A business might disappoint a customer. A school may discourage a child from thinking he can succeed. Disappointing a customer is less significant than discouraging a child's success. The school teacher may have exhibited a serious ethical lapse.

Giving to others should feel good because it IS good. Give what feels good to you to organizations doing work that makes you feel good (assuming that isn't the local Nazis) and that you can observe (if you want to).

Does PayPal let you designate the charity? (If not, forget it.). Amazon has a program where they donate a small percentage of your purchases to a charity of your choice. I designated "Resist!"-- a very small social/political action group in Cambridge, MA. Some others have selected that group as well, and they receive something like a $1000 a year from our various purchases at Amazon. There is a long list of organizations you can choose from. [I think the name of the Amazon program is "Smile").

If PayPal is interested in charity, they can start by donating 1 - 10 % of their ample profits to charity. Target, for instance, donates 5% of operating profits -- millions - to charities.

As to how much you should give to any and all charities, from the beggar on the corner to the Red Cross, that's up to you. If and when I donate a significant sum to charity (say, $50) I prefer to give it an organization that is local and whose efforts I can observe, like particular food shelves, shelters, or subversive organizations (of which there are damned few).

If I give a beggar a dollar, I don't worry about whether or not they are going to buy alcohol or drugs with it. Begging seems like a hard way to earn a living. There has to be something wrong with a person who is willing to stand by a freeway exit for hours on end in heat and cold, being ignored much of the time (or jeered at), to collect money. They probably need the help.