Millennium3

There does seem to be a surprising range of opinions as to how UKIP will fare in 2009.

What do you think and would you bet £100 on your prediction?

Bob FM

Not a gambling man.

mrabody

I can't say as there are too many variables.

Will Nigel succeed in finding some large donors to finance a strong euro election campaign?
Will our candidates, particularly those near the top of the respective lists prove to be hard working and effective campaigners?
Will Declan Ganley stand Libertas candidates here in the UK?
Will UKIP activists stand a lot of candidates in next years County Council and Unitary Authority elections and run strong campaigns?
Will Nigel be able to attract a star candidate of the stature of RKS?
Will some scandal engulf UKIP between now and the election?
Will some scandal engulf one or more of the three establishment parties?
Will public dissatisfaction with New Labour cause them to stampede to the Tories?


These are all factors that can, and will have a bearing on UKIPs results in next year's Euro elections. To try and forecast now is difficult. We can but guess.

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Drew Belobaba,
UKIP PPC for Lewes
Almost as unelectable as Raymond Finch!

Geoffrey Collier

BobFM: 'Not a gambling man'

You offered to gamble with me on UKP's chances of fighting Swindon in the next GE.
Just a bit more hot air from the BobFM.

Bob FM

That was not a gamble that was a certainty, I hold all the Aces. 'wagering money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome'.

SponPlague

I took the same view in Southwark, Bob - How can I ask people to have faith in me, when I don't have faith in myself - and wagered 10 quid. I lost.

Bob FM

Spon the difference is huge, I am not waging on me, the comments from GC which as usual he hasn't retracted, was that UKIP wouldn't be standing in Swindon at the GE. Swindon will whether it is me is another matter. However at this time I am hopeful of adoption.

SponPlague

Oops. I misread, sorry...

Millennium3

Your instinct is valuable apparently:

Why you should trust your instincts
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 5:01pm BST 27/08/2008


The old adage that you should always trust your instincts is supported for the first time by a scientific study.

Subliminal messages make us work harder
Why we use our fingers and toes to count
Scientists unlock the secrets of selective amnesia
For a century, there has been no convincing evidence that subliminal messages can influence people's decisions.

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But there has been a more subtle phenomenon, billed as the foundation of intuition, where a seasoned poker player may play more successfully because they can pick up subtle signals in the body language of their opponents - without consciously realising it - to work out if they are bluffing..

Now, a new study published in the journal Neuron uses a blend of techniques, including brain scanning, to provide the first hard evidence that this so called "instrumental learning" can occur, showing we should trust our instincts.

In popular books such as Blink, it has been claimed that this form of intuition can result in a better decision than conscious reasoning, says lead author Dr Mathias Pessiglione from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London.

To investigate this phenomenon, Dr Pessiglione and colleagues masked visual cues with scrambled drawings such that they were hard to tell apart.

In the next set of experiments, the subliminals cues were now paired with rewards, so that one cue would pay better than another in a consistent way defined by a computer program.

The volunteers were still not able to discern a difference, but their guesses were better than chance when it came to spotting the highest reward.

Brain scans revealed a structure called the ventral striatum responded to subliminal cues "in a manner that closely approximates our computational algorithm, expressing reward expected values," says Dr Pessiglione.

"We conclude that, even without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making."

Instrumental learning involves linking a cue, an action and the outcome (in terms of reward or punishment).

The law of effect says that if an action (like pressing a lever) performed in a given context (like a cage) is rewarded (for instance with food pellets) then it will be more likely to be executed in future occurrence of the same context (that is the next time you put the rat in the same cage with the same lever).

"This kind of learning had been suggested to be subconscious a century ago, on the grounds that it was observed in some species like rats that were supposed to be deprived of conscious awareness," says Dr Pessiglione.

"We just proved this in humans, and identified the underlying neuronal circuit."

Why you should trust your instincts - Telegraph

Anthony Butcher

I see not too many people share Farage's optimism that UKIP will double its number of MEPs.

__________________
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