# Octopus here's your own thread to shit all over **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 6, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/octopus-heres-your-own-thread-to-shit-all-over/815550 "2018-06-06T15:40:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1212
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2021, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/octopus-heres-your-own-thread-to-shit-all-over/815550/1212 "2021-03-04T17:30:00Z")
I haven’t read any of this thread, but I think I’m finally getting a sense of Octopus. While it’s my sincere belief that he/she is genuinely quite bright, I think the thing that gets him/her into conflict around here is a profound cognitive rigidity and an outsized reliance on a pretty specific ideology. He/she seems to work backward from his/her deeply-held belief about the world As It Should Be _to_ whatever issue is at hand. The frame almost never fits, and he/she stresses it shockingly beyond its original engineering design parameters in a valiant, if pathetic, effort to _make it_ fit. But anything other than getting the frame of simplicity around such complex issues would cause him/her relatively much more cognitive dissonance and intellectual angst than the judo match with the antiquated frame. There’s also a bit of an academic’s take on everything. He/she seems well educated, but like a PhD who’s never worked in the real world, he/she becomes an impediment to getting important work done. Those who’ve worked on teams in large organizations usually remember at least one like we’re talking about here: you know what their answer will be _regardless_ of what the issue at hand is, or what problem you’re trying to solve. You learn to work around them if you can’t get rid of them. They add no value and become caricatures of themselves. I’m also reminded of this keyboard study tied to conservative/liberal brains: “A study by scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found differences in how self-described liberal and conservative research participants responded to changes in patterns. Participants were asked to tap a keyboard when the letter “M” appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a “W.” The letter “M” appeared four times more frequently than “W,” conditioning participants to press the keyboard on almost every trial. Liberal participants made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw the rare “W,” indicating to the researchers that these participants were better able to accept changes or conflicts in established patterns. The participants were also wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency and a more appropriate response. Liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts during the experiment, and this correlated with their greater accuracy in the test.” Source ([**PDF**](http://www.uky.edu/AS/PoliSci/Peffley/pdf/Study%20finds%20left-wing%20brain_%20right-wing%20brain.pdf)) Octopus is simply constitutionally incapable of **not** typing ‘M.’ --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/octopus-heres-your-own-thread-to-shit-all-over/815550)._