Listen to the lizard brain
Click to enlarge.You should know who won the debate tonight. Suppose you don't, though. If not, don't listen to your cerebral cortex. Listen to your lizard brain. Watch the video without the sound. Get in touch with your ancestors. Think way back. Don't even think. Thousands of years of evolution have prepared you for this decision. You are ready for justified true belief. If you must, consult the following reference, Nonhuman Primate Models to Study Anxiety, Emotion Regulation, and Psychopathology.
The grimacing, the lip-smacking, the rapid-fire blinking... How many glasses of water did George W. Bush have under the lip of the podium? He was downing them like Mescal shots towards the end. You all know how the sympathetic nervous system shuts down the salivary glands during extreme stress, right? (cf. Relationships Between Various Measures of Stress and Salivary Flow Rates)
As a vertebrate, a primate, and as a citizen you know it was crushing victory.
The hindbrain may tell us which of them is experiencing a testosterone spike and which is tasting metallic adrenalin comedown, but the collective media-brain is fully capable of overriding those impressions.
Posted by: Nick Simmonds | October 01, 2004 at 12:53 AM
Ha, wise.
Check out my Lakoffian analysis of the debate here:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com
Posted by: coturnix | October 01, 2004 at 02:39 AM