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Unconscious? Eh. The evidence looks weak. Not sure someone ever unconsciously gets in the shower, and all else being equal, it’s more parsimonious to say the p

Unconscious? Eh. The evidence looks weak. Not sure someone ever unconsciously gets in the shower, and all else being equal, it’s more parsimonious to say the person wants to shower to feel better, and isn’t inventing a rationalization (Wow, I’m just really dirty today. I should shower again. This has nothing to do with the crushing loneliness I’m feeling) for self soothing behavior. Their evidence that it’s unconscious was “people don’t assume (in a statistically significant way) other people are sad because they shower”, which could be easily read to mean “people aren’t very good at theory of mind.” Criticism aside, though, it’s interesting to think that the cognitive mechanisms might overlap. There seems to be increasing evidence that our abstract reasoning is built from the cognitive building blocks acquired by exploring the physical world as infants.

dieterrams 9y ago
> There seems to be increasing evidence that our abstract reasoning is built from the cognitive building blocks acquired by exploring the physical world as infants. If you’re not already aware, this line of research generally falls under the term ‘embodiment’. George Lakoff has written a few books on the matter.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
There's preliminary evidence suggesting that there's a persistent somatosensory difference, i.e. the "unconscious" part is that the person doesn't directly sense the underlying physiological shift that motivates the behavior. See [1] (which cites this article). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/
- roflc0ptic 9y ago
  Neat! Thanks for the link.
Ntrails 9y ago
I think that for me there is never a rationalisation, I can't think of a time that I've showered again because I'm down. However I do know that (before my shower drains got screwy, sigh) when I was having a rough weekend I might spend 30+ minutes in the shower instead of 10. Because it feels nice. Do I need anything more than that?

dieterrams 9y ago

> There seems to be increasing evidence that our abstract reasoning is built from the cognitive building blocks acquired by exploring the physical world as infants. If you’re not already aware, this line of research generally falls under the term ‘embodiment’. George Lakoff has written a few books on the matter.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

There's preliminary evidence suggesting that there's a persistent somatosensory difference, i.e. the "unconscious" part is that the person doesn't directly sense the underlying physiological shift that motivates the behavior. See [1] (which cites this article). [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/

roflc0ptic 9y ago
Neat! Thanks for the link.

Ntrails 9y ago

I think that for me there is never a rationalisation, I can't think of a time that I've showered again because I'm down. However I do know that (before my shower drains got screwy, sigh) when I was having a rough weekend I might spend 30+ minutes in the shower instead of 10. Because it feels nice. Do I need anything more than that?