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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The likelihood that you're accurately judging the origins of your driving behavior from your keyboard while a cat is on your lap after reading an article like this is 0.0%. I have a dog in the room with me. Let me help you out. You are not a toxo zombie, 'ComputerGuru.

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how do we know that the Toxo parasite isn't making you say that? ;)

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-ZOITE.

I suggest we all go to the Brain Slug planet -- just walk around, not wearing a helmet.

Funny, but you guys are making a classic logical mistake: mocking a potentially serious problem because it seems to have a completely mundane and boring source (housecats).

If the article was about how taking a medicine for high blood pressure increased the risk of death by car accident by 5x, or if flying in a plane the past week increased the risk of death by car accident 5x, or anything more obscure and unusual, you'd be all over it.

I think the mocking is not the mundane and boring source, rather the logic of "I drive fast, and I have a cat so it must be toxo."

That's unsound logic, no matter how mundane or extraordinary the housecat is, because habitual fast driving happens for any number of reasons of which toxoplasma gondii is possibly one.

It's also unsound logic that is clearly a result of watching and reading an especially vivid piece on the fascinating mechanations of toxo. If I read a piece on the symptoms of spleen cancer, I'm going to think I have that ailment too; it's just how my brain works.

I think you're making a classic mistake. Mistaking humor for some sort of serious position or criticism. :)

Hehe. I feel much better already ;)

Unless you live in France, where 88% of the population are carriers... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#In_humans

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