Tilting At Windmills: Why Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Are Bad Scientists (Neuroscience edition, round 2)

[neededalj]

[addendum added just before posting].....fuck, ya'll, what can I say. I was an inspired insomniac. I hope this makes sense.

In reply to the response my first essay received, I have decided to attempt a further deconstruction of the Fail Neuroscience of Drs. Ogas and Gaddam. In a different approach from my first post, I am going to take this one

Comments

[suaine]

You are so beautiful to me right now. ♥

[sabrina_il]

Holy shit the rage began to overwhelm me toward the middle of your post but I kept reading because apparently I don't hate these guys enough at this point

[annlarimer]

An active brain is one where the neurons are continuously changing in response to each other. If they aren't, you're dead.

Uh-oh...

...

x_x

[jonquil]

b)data to program the system; ie, women find THIS sexy which will cause the amygdala to respond'.

Oh, my God. I bet you've got it. It makes SO MUCH SENSE when they say that they're not doing social science now.

[mecurtin]

It makes SO MUCH SENSE when they say that they're not doing social science now.

My own brain is in conflict. On the one hand, you're right, this *might* actually explain what they thought they were doing.

On the other hand, it's such a *stupid* idea that my brain keeps tossing it back out like a slug in a vending machine.

[jonquil]

The Stupid is powerful in these men.

[neededalj]

Seriously, my brain kept rejecting these ideas *as I was typing them*. It was a struggle, I tell you.

However I have also met Guys Like Ogi in real life and seen them wandering around the interwebs. These are dudes who really think the reason they can't get dates is because they haven't figured out the right modeling approach yet. So it's not *that* big a leap to this clusterfuck.

[jonquil]

Oh, read this. Read this now. http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=568 It's a description of Dr. Ogas on a game show, and here's the key quote:

The more exposure you get to Ogi, the more you see that he’s just like that. He’s not putting on a little show to mess with your mind-he’s just got a very specific, determined way of doing things. Sure, he’s a bit of an oddball, but in the world of game show uber-contestants, that’s hardly a capital crime. The congenial, funny on-line Ogi is the real Ogi too, but unfortunately for him, you can’t close the barn door once the ass is gone. And Ogi explained to me that the greenroom comas had nothing to do with mind games and everything to do with circadian rhythms (or downloading new data from the mothership, or something).

Me:Basically, he has an area of expertise, and he thinks it explains everything. Everything everywhere.

[outlawpoet]

I think you're right, but it's important to point out that he's not using cognitive neuroscience in an orthodox, extensional way, he also apparently doesn't have any problem *intuiting* what he thinks of as a cog sci *approach* to wildly diverse areas

[rivenwanderer]

IAWTC--Occam's Razor seems (to me) to point to them wanting something credible-sounding to back up "girls like to think about Kirk and Spock doing it because of THEIR LIZARD BRAINS!" I don't think they intend to program some kind of simulation at all, just write a pop sci book and laugh all the way to the bank. While saying "look, this is SCIENCE, ok?" and probably believing it too. Grr.

[neededalj]

I would actually disagree with you about Ogi's motives, although not strongly enough to lay money on it. I have met enough guys like him in real life (people with specialized knowledge in one particular subfield who think they can EXPLAIN THE WORLD) to believe that his motives were (reasonably) genuine. He knows a lot about one thing and figured he could make money off it (and hey, his One Thing explains all of life, so he's contributing to society as well!).

It's a horrific attitude and dangerous in science but it's still pretty common.