I followed through the entire essay in complete agreement, but I wished the following paragraph had at least a reference pointing to its claim:
The human body’s physical “fight or flight” response evolved to help it evade a dangerous situation, which historically involved extreme physical exertion. The rush of steroids into the bloodstream essentially turns off unnecessary systems, including some higher thinking processes, to aid in escape.
When we make statements like this proclaiming we understand the complex workings of things like human physiology I always have to shake my head. We may be smart, us programmers and designers, but let's not pretend to understand the order and meaning of everything. And if you do understand and you have the means, provide some kind of reference to where the claim originates from so we can all learn more.
* edited because I sounded like a jerk and wanted to make my point clearer
It has in fact been shown in countless studies that corticosteroids (stress hormones that are released in situations like the ones I described in the article) cause cognitive deficits in humans and other animals. Here is one slightly strange example:
The present study investigated the acute effects of cortisol administration in normal healthy male volunteers on immediate free recall and recognition of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral nouns using a between-subjects double-blind design. Two hours after cortisol (10 mg) or placebo administration, impaired recall and recognition of neutral and pleasant words was found in the treatment group, whereas recall and recognition of unpleasant words was similar in both groups.
Your essay is well written, I agree with the premise of it and you clearly know a bit about biology. But I still think it's important that when we make these general claims of scientific fact we point to the giants whose shoulders we're standing on. Maybe it's just the ex-scientist in me, and if so, apologies. I appreciate you found a cortisol related article to prove your point, and I agree it's an odd choice as the abstract, which I'm assuming is what you read as well, seems to state little other than pleasantries are forgotten when under a chemically induced stress response.
The flight or fight response has been investigated for a long time. It's complex enough that you need to read a lot of relevant studies most of which are old before you can understand it. Which makes finding a single source hard.
If you want basic research start with Walter Bradford around 1915 Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: An Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bradford_Cannon
How can the study be double blind when it involves drugs which have such noticeable effects? People can notice things like impaired recall and figure out which group they are in, so it's not really double blind.
This is a fairly straightforward matter of whether his statement is right or wrong, I don't think it's fair or helpful to describe it as "particularly arrogant".
I agree that in general, people's understanding of human physiology tends to be simplistic and wrong.
But Dustin's description here aligns with what is generally known and accepted, and he doesn't venture details beyond what anyone with with a sound understanding of physiology could reasonably claim to know.
If he's wrong, that would be easy to prove, in which cas you should do so, so he can amend his post.
The human body’s physical “fight or flight” response evolved to help it evade a dangerous situation, which historically involved extreme physical exertion. The rush of steroids into the bloodstream essentially turns off unnecessary systems, including some higher thinking processes, to aid in escape.
When we make statements like this proclaiming we understand the complex workings of things like human physiology I always have to shake my head. We may be smart, us programmers and designers, but let's not pretend to understand the order and meaning of everything. And if you do understand and you have the means, provide some kind of reference to where the claim originates from so we can all learn more.
* edited because I sounded like a jerk and wanted to make my point clearer