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Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

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Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the book The Quick Fix goes over exactly this point. For example, did you know that the Superman pose had no scientific evidence whatsoever? The researcher simply pushed for it because it made her feel good. The grit study by Angela Duckworth is similarly faulty, the cadet training camp she went to had a pass rate of over 90% so the ones who didn't pass weren't in a statistically significant group to show whe…

Here's some incontrovertible evidence of the effectiveness of the Superman position. https://youtu.be/99K4gpJZWdw

So... I do think the superman position is effective, but I don't think a single video without any auditing is considered "incontrovertible evidence"

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as somebody who has experimented with fasting, I think it's a huge mistake to think that Ramadan fasters would respond like hungry non-fasters. Fasting is a common religious practice because it is both a challenge and a discipline. To get good at fasting, you have to work to unlearn habits of instant gratification and learn to consciously lean against the urgings of the body. A fasting practice develops real sk…

Don't Ramadan fasters only fast for a few hours a day (e.g. during daylight?) Do they ever reach the point where they've skipped enough meals to no longer be hungry? TBQH skipping meals during the day and eating one big meal after dark doesn't seem terribly unlike the lifestyle of many nerdy bachelors. I'm sure I've done that many times myself without even thinking about it.

Per this, Ramadan fasting is 13-15 hours per day: https://www.brandeis.edu/spiritual-life/resources/guide-to-o...

Since the non-fasting hours include a night of sleep, that schedule sounds pretty rigorous to me. Americans typically have an eating window of 12-15 hours, eating 5 times per day: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8705992/

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#153
post #91
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Ramadan could cause judges to hold people to a higher standard of behavior.

That’s not the spirit of Ramadan.

Really? https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/rama...

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/06/tuni...

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0de064b1-c214...

It seems in a lot of Muslim countries you can go to jail for just eating normally during Ramadan.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#154
post #22

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> instead of being irritable when hungry, you mind feels clear and focused. From my experience, it's a delusion. The focus is there for some while, but the actual abilities decline very fast without you even realizing it because of this supposed clearness. It might be even that the clearness comes exactly because of your mind limiting itself to a shorter attention and horizon, removing all the complex and complicated…

I believe that pushing the body to limits such as fasting, hot/cold baths, intense workout can help us in the longterm. But for when we need our brains to work at its highest potential in the immediate such as software engineering all those things, how is having a hindrance such as hunger anything but a distraction?

With intermittent (as in "eat one meal a day") fasting you can set your intake to align for when you need most brain work done.

Also, at least from my own experience, after some time you just get used to that and are hungry later and not as hard. When I eat around noon I only start getting hungry in the evening

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#155
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as somebody who has experimented with fasting, I think it's a huge mistake to think that Ramadan fasters would respond like hungry non-fasters. Fasting is a common religious practice because it is both a challenge and a discipline. To get good at fasting, you have to work to unlearn habits of instant gratification and learn to consciously lean against the urgings of the body. A fasting practice develops real sk…

> It's perfectly plausible to me that Ramadan-observing judges would better at judging while hungry while non-fasters would get worse. I don't know for judges, but I live in a dominantly religious society and I haven't noticed the virtues promised by observing strict religious fasting. In fact, people have been jailed by (probably fasting) judges for eating out of sight [1]. [1] https://www-lepoint-fr.translate.goog/…

If the laws says you should fast, it wouldn't be a virtue (edit, to be more precise: it would even be wrong) for a judge to not punish someone for breaking the law, unless the law gives the judges this liberty.

Now I am not saying I agree with this law, I am Christian and according to how I and those I live with practice it, fasting is strictly individual, something I personally would even try to hide according to Jesus words in Matthew 6. 16, 17 and particularly 18:

> «that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.» ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭18‬ ‭KJV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/1/mat.6.18.KJV

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#156
post #67
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gone on multiple 3-5 day fasts and disagree (or at least haven’t gotten to this point). My hunger seems to stabilize at very hungry after about two days.

You mean no food for two days? Agree you grow very hungry. But 1 meal a day, after a week or two it becomes a habit and you don't feel hunger, even though you are losing weight. However make one exception, and hunger comes back immediately. Hard to get on those diets (hunger only goes away after a week) and stay on those diets (one exception, a loving mum who thinks it's not healthy, christmas, etc, and the diet is d…

Maybe I am lucky, but for me it works like this:

If I skip food after (early) dinner and don't think about it more I can easily skip breakfast the next day and then I can easily skip lunch, dinner and supper the following day.

If I start to think about or expect food however I think I can easily get in trouble.

Disclaimer: I have only done this for 4 or so days.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#157

I always wondered about the original study whether they controlled for the fact that courts control their case calendars. I can't count the number of times I've had a client's case shuffled to the back of the line because the judge didn't want to deal with it (or wanted to make me or the client wait longer). Also, Muslim countries commonly offer amnesty or executive clemency at the Eid to people who have been convict…

Ramadan should be excluded entirely from the data, it's way too big of a confounding variable

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#158
post #83
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve gone on multiple 3-5 day fasts and disagree (or at least haven’t gotten to this point). My hunger seems to stabilize at very hungry after about two days.

What is mentioned in article (ramadan fasting) is essentially half day of fasting, not multiple day endeavour.

The longer north you come however, the longer the fast can become I understand as many (most?) Muslims looks at the local sunrise and sunset.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#159
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

best option is to just assume every psychology/social sciences article is bullshit, pretty much all of the most famous studies have failed to replicate. And many of those studies were used to justify trillions of dollars in federal spending over the past few decades

I think the best thing is to do more research to understand more rather than rejecting the scientific method entirely. It has and will continue to get better and better over time, with occasional regressions that may seem meaningful in the short term but are tiny blips when you zoom out. The history of science is one false theory being replaced by another that’s (usually) marginally closer to the truth.

peer review only really took off in the last few decades and it has been a disaster. Nothing about my post says anything about the scientific method, it's about sham fields that lack rigor and use cartels of influence to push each others pet theories to support their own ideologies.

Re: Do judges give out tougher sentences when hungry? A study too good to be true

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is anecdotal before it can become science.

all anecdotes are equal but some anecdotes are more equal /s

I don't even know what point you're trying to make, but regardless, I think the point the poster you're responding to is making is that there are two places in the scientific method where anecdotes comes into the play: observation and hypothesis. These are the seeds for follow-up inquiry and the basis for the scientific method.

Moreover, it's completely reasonable to be skeptical of the methodology of a study, especially when one of the subject groups is as specific as a religious group doing a fast as part of a religious observance.

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