I recently rather surprised myself by realising how easy it is to come up with beliefs that are basically hunches but that I’m fairly confident about. To wit:
- Interest in pro sports correlates with religiosity
- Preferences in programming languages predict intelligence
- Physical strength in males correlates with self-confidence
- The previous correlation is stronger than the correlation between attractiveness and self-confidence in women
Actually, now that I start listing them they seem so obvious that they’re hardly worth mentioning. Maybe my true calling is making up correlations for social scientists to verify.
Noticing this stuff is also an insidious kind of self-suggestion. Lots of people seem to hate Java (the programming language) because they hope they’ll become more intelligent that way (I may be in this group). Same for despising pro sports. In those two cases there probably isn’t much causation, just correlation – but I am making an effort to become stronger on the hopes that the relationship between strength and confidence is partly causal. Not working yet, but at least I can now confidently deadlift my bodyweight.
Your thought for the day: is ejaculation ever really premature?
Do you listen to the original Led Zeppelin recordings or the remastered ones?
Incestuous Jihad
@Incestuous Jihad – Er, not sure. I don’t have the “Led Zeppelin Remasters” box, just cd versions of the albums. I don’t know whether they’re remasters, doesn’t say so on the cases. Why?
sam
I think I had a hunch that preference for original recordings predicts how smart people are, but now I just think it predicts how smart they think they are. Of course, anyone who listens to Led Zeppelin is strongly correlated with suck in any case.
Incestuous Jihad