The fault is not in our stars, but in our bladders
November 5, 2014 3:48 PM   Subscribe



 
Hmmm, if only there was a way to tie this into voting behavior.
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:54 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Add the urgent need to take a crap to the list of free will hindrances.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 3:56 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


"Embodied cognition theory states that our thoughts and emotions are profoundly affected by our physical bodies."

This is also the conclusion of the no shit sherlock theory.
posted by haricotvert at 3:56 PM on November 5, 2014 [47 favorites]


Excuse me, I'll be right back.
posted by Curious Artificer at 3:57 PM on November 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


Not with the stadium pal.
posted by brevator at 4:06 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm glad someone put the "p" back in "philosophy."
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:09 PM on November 5, 2014 [13 favorites]


To pee, or not to pee - that is the question.
posted by fings at 4:09 PM on November 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


Maybe if the whole universe had to pee quantum physics would stop working
posted by XMLicious at 4:30 PM on November 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


There should be a Lisa Nowak urge to kill corollary to this.
posted by TheGoodBlood at 4:35 PM on November 5, 2014


I hope science will eliminate urinals someday, I hate peeing in front of other people. I guess that marks me as a libertarian. NO COMMUNIST PEE TROUGHS!
posted by Drinky Die at 4:40 PM on November 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


I find that I have to pee on the ground at least once per day or I start forgetting I'm an animal.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 4:43 PM on November 5, 2014 [8 favorites]


Man, when I really need to go, my brainpower diminishes by like 50%. I figure it gets rerouted to muscle control.
posted by mantecol at 4:46 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Technology, man, technology.
posted by sammyo at 4:54 PM on November 5, 2014


no shit sherlock

The secret to his success!
posted by oceanjesse at 4:55 PM on November 5, 2014 [25 favorites]


This is pretty interesting. I mean, that people feel happier when they smile is one thing, but belief in free will is a pretty complex thought. Just another bit of evidence that our biggest delusion is that "I" is a coherent concept.
posted by Nothing at 4:58 PM on November 5, 2014 [5 favorites]


...our biggest delusion is that "I" is a coherent concept.
posted by Nothing


Eponyhmmm?
posted by sneebler at 5:03 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


This. Explains. SO. Much.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 5:06 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Embodied cognition was the only theory that seemed to have one whit of application to real life of all the ones that I read in CogSci 101. And phenomenology the only philosophy of mind that made much sense either.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:07 PM on November 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


No free will, no problem.
Luckily for me, this thing I walk around in appears to have free will, and I generally approve of the results -- which I learn about within, oh, about a third of a second after the decisions were made.

This is the definitive answer to the great question: "What, me worry?"
posted by hank at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2014 [6 favorites]


While I think the bit about free will was pretty interesting, I'm disappointed by what gets labeled as embodied cognition, and the second article this isn't an exception.

As previous posts mentioned, it's not surprising that bodily states, clothing, etc. would have a statistically significant effect on various measured psychological outcomes. A statistically significant difference can be trivially small, but still statistically significant (highly improbable to arise by chance).

These types of findings obscure a much more interesting, and truly profound, version of embodied cognition. This tradition, found in Piaget's work, and more recently in George Lakoff's books (among others) is not focused on finding specific ways that bodily states affect measured psychological outcomes. Instead, showing a much more profound sense in which cognition is embodied, the emphasis is on how cognitive processes are constituted by the basic schemas of bodily perception-action. Piaget's work shows how a "logic of the body" that self-organizes through sensory-motor activity in infancy forms the basic framework for the logical operations and structures of abstract thought. Lakoff makes a similar point, claiming that we become acquainted with basic concepts in terms of our immediate bodily relations (front-back, top-bottom, forward-backward, through, over, under, inside-outside, etc.), and use these as the raw material to structure abstract thinking.
posted by patrickdbyers at 6:47 PM on November 5, 2014 [14 favorites]


Excuse me, I'll be right back.
I know.
posted by Poldo at 6:56 PM on November 5, 2014


Also: you're more likely to make utilitarian judgments when angry, cold, antisocial, and drunk.

I'm a utiliarian.
posted by painquale at 7:05 PM on November 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


I tend to think of my own actions as at best issuing from subroutines I would endorse in an ex post facto way. But, in general, I think agency "feels" more like a weather system than a command center, and I actually find it kind of disturbing that the norm is to pretend otherwise.
posted by batfish at 8:05 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
posted by fairmettle at 8:33 PM on November 5, 2014


You canna change the laws of physics, Jim!
posted by Coaticass at 9:06 PM on November 5, 2014


There's a sequence in Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner where he talks about trying to write a novel while having to go to the bathroom. Normally, he'll have a character finish a doctorate program in four years, but if he has to pee while he's writing, the character will finish it in three.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:18 PM on November 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


I hope science will eliminate urinals someday

I was recently in St Paul, MN and noticed the urinals there were all very low to the ground, and frequently had mountains of ice in them. Like, over flowing with ice. At knee level. What the hell Minnesota what are you guys doing over there
posted by Hoopo at 9:50 PM on November 5, 2014


To pee, or not to pee is never the question, is the thing.
posted by Namlit at 12:39 AM on November 6, 2014


I've seen ice in urinals in bars from time to time, and figured that was just a way of getting rid of excess ice from a machine (or when emptying one out for cleaning), and it sounds like it's a divey-bar / old-timey way of avoiding an "auto flush" renovation (due to costs, etc) in favor of using ice to decrease the temperature (and smell) of the urine so that even if only one in five dudes flushes (WTF) the whiz is all pooled below and cooled down so that less vapor-whiz reaches the patrons' olfactory sensors.
posted by aydeejones at 12:41 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Example search result for "ice in urinals."

Also see comment #14 providing "five reasons."
posted by aydeejones at 12:45 AM on November 6, 2014


Of course AskMe has weighed in, and apparently everyone else -- Snopes (forum), The Straight Dope, eHow, Ask, Yahoo! Answers, but they aren't worth linking to, because I'm assuming Google has over the years made it tedious to harvest links from their searches because they want you to click on them first, and the use case population of copying Google links to sprinkle into a comment is dwindling.
posted by aydeejones at 12:57 AM on November 6, 2014


I nearly did a spittake when I saw the FPP title and summary. I'm constantly ducking into the bathroom an inopportune moments during the production of Julius Caesar I'm in, because of a kidney infection. Last night the conspirators couldn't get in to wash the stage blood off their hands when they needed to, and they weren't too pleased with my excuse!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:14 AM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


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