So subtle. The chans are known to invade whenever articles mentioning them are posted here. They get flagged a bunch and drag the articles off the main page quickly. This may be deliberate.
> Also, to be contrary old dude into martial arts all his life, I don't really consider many head bashing 'styles' now to be 'arts'.
Which ones would you consider to be "arts", and worth getting into?
I was recently thinking that I would like to get back into martial arts, but having done taekwondo in the past, I'm absolutely not interested in going back to any form of bashing impact..
I will try to do Aikido until I die. I started in the 80s with Kyokushin and I trained with top trainers; when I was young they wanted to move me to thai or kick boxing as I would, like numerous dutch guys did of the same school, kick the fuck out of the competition. Never had that interest. I like the movements and indeed the art behind it. Someone in this thread said boxing is like ballroom dancing; I really don't see that. Maybe it can be; but if you want to win, it's not dancing and the aspect of wanting 'to win' makes it not at all like dancing (or maybe I don't know this dance).
Anyway; as a kid I did Judo and after that Kyokushinkai and Jiujitsu 3-4 hours a day for many years.
I am 50 now and I can do things many 50 year olds cannot do, but the joy for me is that I feel like when I go to aikido class 3 times a week, it is an art and it doesn't feel like I have to ever stop doing it as I don't need (but can I guess) to bash in faces in a rings.
I really wanted to try Aikido, and went as far as doing an introductory class at university. Everything was fine until the next morning when I couldn't bend my elbow anymore, with an over strain pain that lasted more than a week. I was quite in shape at the time, so I took it as a sign that maybe it wasn't for me. (Or at least not in that school..) And that stopped me in my tracks unfortunately.
But I'll keep your feedback in the back of my head, and let's see what the future brings.
In an actual fight it may only look like dancing temporarily but look up a good shadow boxing video. In training its very much about footwork, moving rhythmically and gracefully.
Im not a great boxer or anything but I used to do melbourne shuffle a lot and it definitely has the same vibe to me
That said, dance is a really fun way to package repetitive movements. And if younger people did more of it, the men on this site would spend less time bitching about how hard it is to meet women. *cough*
Yes, you will “meet” more women by dancing than by playing games on your computer. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will make any meaningful connections.
Simply going places and interacting with people will also help you meet women. In fact, I think you’d sooner find a date by becoming a grocery store employee than a dancer, because you’re more likely to be having conversations with the people you meet.
Dancing, especially where you are learning, is not really socializing.
The structure of our modern society really does make it more difficult to meet new people. Women complain too, not just men.
I think I met the majority of my dating partners including my wife on a dancefloor. (Well, technically I had met my wife before. But we reconnected at a club.)
Dancing at nightclubs is great. Assuming you can find one whose crowd is your kind of people, it's one of the few remaining venues where people of all genders and orientations mix and it's considered socially acceptable to initiate a conversation with someone with romantic intent.
The problem with being a grocery store employee to meet people is that there are a very logical taboo against hitting on employees that are obligated to interact with you. Likewise, employers generally don't want employees hitting on their customers. So, sure, you might be able to meet people this way, but you have to skirt some social norms to do so.
Nightclub dancing is usually social dancing, not dance training. Yes, nightclubs can be good places to meet people (and potential lovers/mates). But dance classes (dance training as per the study) is very different.
> Yes, you will “meet” more women by dancing than by playing games on your computer. That doesn’t necessarily mean you will make any meaningful connections.
This. I have been learning Argentine Tango for over 10 years. Going from the "dancing together in close embrace" to "let's meet later for coffee" is still has difficult as ever. More so with tango: the phrase "why buy the cow when you get the milk for free" comes to mind, often. Note that I've made some very good friends through the dance, but it's tough getting out of the friend zone.
If you want to meet people, there's a lot of skill and patience required, no matter the venue.
Dancing is rather uniquely suited to meeting people. Dancing signals fitness and physical competency directly to the lizard brain. Of course, if you're bad at those things, you won't succeed in an environment of such honest signalling.
And of course, if you go to a dance class and ask somebody out after the first session, that's desperation. If you're there just to meet people, your dishonest intent will shine through. Note that I didn't say young people should dance just to meet people -- I said that they should be dancing more, and that meeting people is a side effect. Don't be sleazy.
The real trick to meeting people is that you can't try to make people like you. You need to relax and be yourself. It takes time to establish mutual fit, and the moment that's clear, you must act decisively. At that point, any effort you put towards that specific person will have a good chance of being received well. After you've been in and out of the arms of every other person in the room over the course of several months, you'll have much better perspective on how each feels about your presence. You won't flub it, you won't ask the wrong person, and your confidence will be well-earned.
Not specific to dance here, but just replying to your general thesis:
The "just be yourself" advice is so hard, because it's what actually works, but it's also difficult to do when you care about the outcome.
And, of course, it has a prerequisite of a whole lot of work to make "yourself" into something worthwhile and interesting. Of course one would like a shortcut that still works if you've not done the prior coursework. ;)
Of the dozens of men I work with, two are eligible bachelors. Both are above-average in their physical attractiveness. I promise you, that is not what women are looking for.
Nah. I'm not conventionally attractive. But still, figuring out how to better myself, and then just -relax- and be myself, was what built meaningful connections.
That said, dancing is super hard. It just doesn't click with some brains. Like at all. With mine for example. I can't repeat full body movements. I can't remember sequences of those movements even as short as 3. Any diagrams that attmempt to teach dancing make no sense to me. Foot placement seems completely arbitrary. I always had a very hard time learning things I don't understand and I'm not sure if I ever actually learnt any. I see no connection between dancing and music. Regardless of the professional level of dancers when I look at them dancing I recognize no connection between what I hear and what they do. Like those two things are at completely separate layers without any meaningful sync between them.
And that's all before even considering things like social anxiety or being a highly sensitive person which makes various stimuli including social ones so strong that they become unpleasant.
The closest I ever was and probably I'll ever be to drawing any pleasure from dance like activity is Light Saber.
> For the present exploratory study, we designed an especially challenging dance program in which our elderly participants constantly had to learn novel and increasingly difficult choreographies. This six-month-long program was compared to conventional fitness training matched for intensity.
The result seems bloody obvious to me as a dancer. Dance is exercise. And this wasn't just dance, they were learning moves and choreography. Like, no duh, teaching people new and complicated things increases neuroplasticity! According to the quote there, the activities were matched in physical intensity and one treatment added a significant mental component versus the control.
Compare dance to rowing, lifting, spinning etc. Those activities are regularly accomplished by a brainless motor. That such activities induce neuroplasticity is cool, but it's no shock that more enriching activities are better for the brain.
I think it's obvious that a younger person's brain would be more improved by this class than your ordinary seniors athletics program. I'd be more inclined to compare with other low-impact competitive sport: badminton, table tennis, etc. Like dance, those require full-body coordination, planning, reflexes, etc.
There are a million reasons not to say something, and a blush of legal anything should deter you from opening your mouth in public before you're straight with a lawyer.
This, a hundred times over. It turns out that communication isn't entirely a bullshit field of study* and it requires significant planning and effort to keep people happy.
* note: all fields have bullshit; this is a recent learning of mine -- unlearning, rather, of a single day of a communications class which left me with the impression that many of us here seem to have of soft sciences: all bullshit by default.
Every study would be better if it were meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. But those cost a lot, and scientists make do with the resources at hand. But I think this study has value in its own right. I doubt this study was the only one looking at these sentiments during that time period; this is just the one that got posted today.
I think you can lay out your perspective as too narrow when trying to evaluate opinions and behavior and I believe this study has fallen victim to it, at least partially.
Racism played and still plays a huge part but the resentment against Jews was primarily caused because the Nazis convinced people successfully that they are the victims of a Jewish conspiracy around the world. The typical mechanism of populism. Of course this manipulation only works if a basic resentment already exists, which was true for Jews since time immemorial.
And this resentment did not vanish over night. I would argue that little of it remains today however. At least against Jews in Germany. There are of course very vocal exception. And it is a crowds that is indeed very dependent on outside confirmation.
The only thing to do is document the heck out of it with misleading comments, post it to github, and have other people link to the project, give it stars, interact with it. Continue reinforcing the machine's ego, pay it complements for its output. If we all do this enough, the GPTs will choke on the garbage and hasten the next AI winter. Do it for humanity.
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