Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 March 13

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 13

Psychiatrists doing hypnotism

How is that different from magician's hypnotism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adonis77xx (talk • contribs) 03:43, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I thought about 95% of hypnotism was nonsense anyway. I think stage hypnotism only works on the drunk and subnomal iq anyway? If it does anything at all. Depending on mental constitution? 146.200.129.62 (talk) 04:47, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Where did you hear that? On the internet? It's a real thing and is used for hypnotherapy. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:23, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mean that hypnosis wasn't real. Was talking specifically about stage hypnosis. I once read that it works more by people going along with it because they don't want to be bad sports once they volunteered than any actual hypnotic state induced. That most of them aren't really hypnotized at all. 146.200.129.62 (talk) 13:54, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

I haven't actually been to such a performance - that I can recall, anyway - but I doubt that most people would be willing to humiliate themselves just to avoid being perceived as "bad sports". Clarityfiend (talk) 00:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I have been to such a performance and I have been hypnotized myself. The magician started by doing some simple relaxation stuff (calm music, focus on a light ball in your stomach etc.) then moved on to a simple hypnosis trick on the whole audience ("your hands are now stuck"), asking people for whom it worked to stand up and go on stage (maybe 5-10% of the audience rose up?). Then he did some simple stuff (I recall "you feel very hot / very cold", trying and failing to raise hands, etc.), and sent some people including myself back to their seats. Then the "chosen ones" were put to the "humiliating" stuff (I recall "you forgot the number seven, now count to ten", and men being asked to deliver a baby onstage).

The instructions were to neither actively resist the commands nor to follow them consciously; I did that and still feel I was made to do mildly impressive stuff. I felt my body move without any conscious action of my part. I never "snapped out of it", the feeling just dissipated over time (I assume that is why I was dismissed). It was certainly a real hypnotic state for my part, not "for the show" or "to be a good sport". I was a bit sleepy maybe, but not unconscious either; I would not call it a "trance". I think a close analogy is when a very good salesperson is convincing you to buy some shiny stuff - if you do not want it, you will make the effort to say no, but if you are lukewarm, you go through the conversation on autopilot and the salesperson hacks it so that you say yes. (There were no whispered commands that I could hear.)

I am less sure about the "chosen ones". I do not think any of them was a stooge (it was a private setting, where it would have been difficult to introduce foreign members). Not only did they do much more extreme stuff, but also all the 5-6 chosen ones were men (when about half of the audience and those who went on stage were women); that lends credit to the theory of "keeping only the showmen who want to do weird stuff in public". A magician told me that they usually pick young women as volunteers for tricks, not as eye candy as I thought, but because that is the demographic most likely to be "docile" (in a follow-the-script way). At least in the 2010s in Western countries. "Wants to steal the show" is a bad trait for a card trick assistant, but possibly a good trait for a hypnosis subject. One of them told me they just followed the flow, so I assume they were willing to do weird stuff but not acting out (of course they could be lying). Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 15:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Psychiatrists charge more. They're constrained by ethical/professional restrictions, so no clucking like a chicken. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:23, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

We also have a very good article on Stage hypnosis.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:21, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

octopus question one

A few ywars ago, I saw a video of an octopus on land, walking on two legs above the water level with a food object held above its head in the other six legs. What species of octopus can do this? 146.200.129.62 (talk) 04:57, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

If any octopus can, Abdopus aculeatus seems the most likely candidate. Amphioctopus marginatus says that these are the only two octopus species that walk on two legs, and A. aculeatus is called "the land octopus". I would be surprised, however, if it walked on two legs on land. I wonder whether the video was in fact underwater. This octopus is also likely to change shape while bipedal, as a disguise, because it will typically be running away. Perhaps this made it look like it was carrying something. Alternatively, perhaps your octopus was using more than two legs, strictly speaking.  Card Zero  (talk) 05:23, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

In this video one specimen of the species Abdopus aculeatus, is seen making haste on two legs, under water, seeming to be carrying a load, but presumably just the rest of itself rolled up in a ball. (In videos featuring the species on land, it slithers.) The source is: Christine L. Huffard, Farnis Boneka, Robert J. Full (2005), "Underwater Bipedal Locomotion by Octopuses in Disguise", doi:10.1126/science.1109616.  --Lambiam 07:02, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

For the same video on YouTube, the accompanying text states the animal is carrying a coconut. The paper has this sentence: By walking, O. marginatus and O. aculeatus are able to move quickly while using six of their arms to remain disguised: O. marginatus perhaps as a rolling coconut and O. aculeatus as a clump of algae tiptoeing away. So the species in the video is then Amphioctopus marginatus, also known as the "coconut octopus".  --Lambiam 07:17, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Does the video show how the octopus manages to open the coconut? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:28, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

They don't open the coconuts. As the article says, they collect "coconut half-shells discarded by humans from the sea floor".--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:01, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

So they use them to hide under? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:08, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

When the octopuses come across these [half-coconut shells] on the seabed, they drape their bodies over and around the shells, hollow-side up, leaving their eight arms dangling over the edges. The octopuses then lift the shells by making their arms rigid, before tiptoeing away in a manoeuvre Finn calls stilt-walking. When the octopuses feel threatened, they flip the half shells over themselves and hide. Some even use two shells to create a more spacious shelter with an opening through which they can keep a lookout. [1]

The original research is here. Alansplodge (talk) 22:32, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

This is how the canny coconut migrates to England, using the services of the African (not European) octopus. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

They had to switch carriers because the swallows kept being intercepted by all those daffy English kuh-nigg-ets. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:15, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

How else are Arthur's men to get their horses. They don't grow on trees, you know. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:36, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious about Octopus Question Two. Was it going to be "where can I buy such an octopus"?  Card Zero  (talk) 21:08, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Paper production

Suppose a nation needed to produce any amount of paper in the short term, over an unknown period of time. It would be the best way to do this? Which trees should be planted? Bamboo?--2A02:908:426:D280:7100:3AFC:91AC:329B (talk) 12:55, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

While you're waiting for the plants to grow, how about hitting up the recycling plants and also ask the public to donate their old paper? They did this all the time in the old days. It was called a "paper drive". --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:11, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Discarded cloth was/is also used in paper making, hence newspapers being known as "rags", although these days the term usually denotes the quality of the journalism rather than the quality of the paper. nagualdesign 22:21, 13 March 2022 (UTC)