Cause or Effect?

Article: Climate Scientists Are Dealing With Psychological Problems

One psychologist who works with climate scientists told Richardson they suffer from “pre-traumatic stress,” the overwhelming sense of anger, panic, and “obsessive-intrusive thoughts” that results when your work every day is to chart a planetary future that looks increasingly apocalyptic. 

"Cause or effect" is a very rude way of putting this problem. However, serious depression is often a psychological problem having deep roots in genetic hard-wiring and in upbringing. Do people with mental illness, or even specific personality traits, get into certain professions instead of others? Yes.

Does environmental activism attract people with a particular set of personality traits, including a tendency towards a particular set of "psychological problems?" Why not?

I want to make a difference. 

A number of years ago, the "media" transitioned from reporting to journalism. Reporting is "just the facts." Journalism emphasizes "the narrative" where facts are used (or not used) to support a prefferred narrative. Surveys showed that people who went into journalism went into the field because they wanted to "make a difference" or "change the world" (as did many people heading into law school). Watergate (bringing down the EVIL Nixon administration) was the Morning Star that guided the quest to change the world.

This attracts a certain kind of personality. Sticking to the facts requires integrity and an analytical ability to sift truth from lies. A narrative requires only a fact or two, then a skill at creative writing. It favors a personality dependent one's emotional state. Winning the fight to change the world rewards one emotionally. Failing to do so damages one's self-esteem.

Recently, some of the blogs I read have been posting a "100-word" short story "contest" headed by a photograph for inspiration. From the facts shown on the photograph an amazing number of different scenarios can be spun. So it is with facts that support the journalists' narratives.

Pollution.

The real pollution issues that surfaced in the 1960's and 1970's, with the attendent environmentalist hysteria, helped produce a generation of scientists who wanted to make a difference. This was good. The real crises drove the free market economies to deal with the problem, vastly reducing pollution in the West.

Politically, however, pollution in free-market economies was seen as the proof that they were evil. Free-market economies therefore had to be overthrown and replaced by command economies (run by experts, ie., scientists) like in the communist East. This was despite the fact that the communist economies of China, the Soviet Union, and its satellites in Eastern Europe produced some of the most toxically polluted places on Earth.

Western, free-market economies adapted and reduced pollution. The communist economies of the East did not.

However, the real crisis of environmental pollution has been abated and its effects ameliorated. Culture and law keep vigiliant watch on the environment.

This is not to say that pollution is no longer a problem. It does mean that most of the easy fixes have been made. Remaining issues, such as non-point source pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, are going to require very expensive, very intrusive regulations to fix. The political will to pay for these, both in money and vastly reduced freedom, does not exist.

What does this have to do with global warming?

Of course scientists advocating the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [CAGW] hypothesis are depressed:

1) Scientificallly: There has been no warming for almost 20 years, their hypothesis has been falsified, and they know it. How depressing is that?

2) Politically: The CAGW hypothesis has always been a means to end: political power. The "right" people (that is, the scientists) need to be in power in order to tell people how to live. A free market economy that has millions of ordinary people making billions of decisions on how to run their own lives is anathema. Ordinary people do not believe them and will not give them all the political power they feel they deserve in order to make a difference. How depressing is that?

3) The political class likes CAGW because the fear of catastrophe helps to put more power into their hands, as well as vast opporunities for graft. Of course, the political class sees the scientists merely as willing tools, who will be disposed of when they do not matter any more. And the scientists know it on some level. How depressing is that?

Hat tip: Instapundit 

Law, Honor, and Fear Cultures

Cultures have three major ways of maintaining social order: law, shame, and fear. All cultures use all three, but most tend to emphasize one over the other.

Honor Culture

In cultural anthropology, a shame society, also called shame culture or honour-shame culture, is a society in which the primary device for gaining control over children and maintaining social order is the inculcation of shame and the complementary threat of ostracism. A shame society is contrasted with a guilt society [also called a law culture], in which control is maintained by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt (and the expectation of punishment now or in the afterlife) for certain condemned behaviors, and with a fear society, in which control is kept by the fear of retribution. 

Paul G. Hiebert characterizes the shame society as follows:
Shame is a reaction to other people's criticism, an acute personal chagrin at our failure to live up to our obligations and the expectations others have of us. In true shame oriented cultures, every person has a place and a duty in the society. One maintains self-respect, not by choosing what is good rather than what is evil, but by choosing what is expected of one. 

Law Culture

Paul Hiebert characterizes the guilt society [or law culture] as follows:
Guilt is a feeling that arises when we violate the absolute standards of morality within us, when we violate our conscience. A person may suffer from guilt although no one else knows of his or her misdeed; this feeling of guilt is relieved by confessing the misdeed and making restitution. True guilt cultures rely on an internalized conviction of sin as the enforcer of good behavior, not, as shame cultures do, on external sanctions. Guilt cultures emphasize punishment and forgiveness as ways of restoring the moral order; shame cultures stress self-denial and humility as ways of restoring the social order. 

Note the emphasis on conscience.

Western cultures tend to be law cultures. One example is the US. The US is a law culture because of the heavy Christian component in its founding: Puritans (and Congretationalists), Quakers, Catholics, and Methodists. Later groups such as the German Anabaptists, Moravians, Baptists, and others merely solidified the tendency in the US.

This is referred to as "America's Judeo-Christian" tradition. Often people think that this means that the Founding Fathers were Christian believers. It does not. It means that the Founding Fathers were part of an over-arching culture that accepted and internalized a Christian moral structure. Additionally, they saw, accepted and routinely spoke out in favor of that culture even if they were not traditional Christians. (Yes, even, and most especially, Thomas Jefferson.)

Eastern cultures tend to be honor cultures. Examples include Japan and China.

Mediterranean cultures, even when "Judeo-Christian," and therefore law cultures, have a heavy honor/guilt culture aspect.

Tribal cultures tend to be honor cultures. The tribe may be rooted in blood kinship like the Romani, most Islamic cultures, or the traditional Native American cultures. Or they may be rooted in some sort of intense, shared experience (hazing in college fraternities or boot camp in the military).

While Western cultures tend to be law cultures, specific subcultures in the West can be honor cultures, for example the police, the military, criminal organizations, sports teams, and college sororities and fraternities.

Overall, human beings are tribal. That is, each of us relate to 100-200 people on a regular basis. Family, of course, is the basic tribal unit. However, all of us belong to other "tribes:" a political subculture, fans of a particular sports team, a clique of co-workers at an office, or members of a church or social organization. Once one is aware of our tribal nature, it becomes obvious everywhere: the regulars at a coffee shop or diner, the pundits on TV, or the regular commentors on a blog. There is an obvious camaraderie.

Fear cultures occur in totalitarian societies, ranging from the "petty tyrants" of the workplace to the totalitarian dictatorships of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

However, to make it clear, no cultures or subcultures are only honor, law or fear cultures. All cultures are a mix. One or the other dominates, but does not exclude the others.

Tribal signaling in the US.

Because the US has a large and diverse set of subcultures, it is typical to "signal" which particular subculture a person belongs to. Signals may include symbols such as a rainbow flag, a cross or star of David, a hammer and sickle, or a national flag. Or it may be what is and is not posted or commented on. Signalling may be posting of one side or another of a controversary: confederate flags, gun rights, gay marriage, global warming, or "gamer-gate." This is common, and once noticed becomes obvious on social media sites.

For example, I know people on Facebook who I know are born-again Christians, from families of born-again Christians, all of whom attend "conservative" churches (conservative theologically, that is). However, They may post items, sometimes links and sometimes comments, that counter practices and beliefs of some or most Christian subcultures. The posts are from a "left" political or theological viewpoint. Additionally, none of them post links or comments that openly state any affiliation with a conservative political or theological viewpoint.

This puzzled me until I realized that all of them were also members of very intellectual, very technological "tribes." Since these tribes, unless physically located in "Bible Belt" type regions, are uniformly non- to anti-Christian, it became obvious that they were signalling their leftist tribe members that they were also members of that tribe and not of "those" type of Christians. An odd form of "bearing witness."

There are other forms of signalling. Sports and military metaphors are very common in our culture. They might signal being a sports fan. However, they may also signal that the user is affirming being in a clique with another person.

For example, one office worker might use the phrase, "I've got your back," in an office setting. The person is using a military metaphor that he/she will stand by his/her coworker during a bout of office politics.

Law/honor cultures in the Bible.

Joshua 1:8 (NASB)8 This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

Jeremiah 31:33 (NASB)33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Philippians 3:4b-6 (NASB)4 If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I [Paul] far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

Acts 23:1 (NASB)
23 Paul, looking intently at the Council, said, “Brethren, I have lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day.”

Paul was an embodiment of law culture.

It would appear from the quotes above, that the culture of the ancient Israelites was a law culture, but it was clearly also an honor culture.

Numbers 15:32-36.  So all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

The forty years in the wilderness welded a slave peoples into the nation of God. Twelve tribes, often in conflict, but still a unified nation.

How then should the Church function? 

Church should function as a law culture. We are given the mind of Christ; we have His laws written on our hearts; and we can have direct and personal access to God via the Holy Spirit.

We do not have a spirit of fear [2 Timothy 1:7] and we no longer come under, and thus fear, condemnation, sin, and death [Romans 8:1-2]. Therefore, the Church should not use fear or shame as a means of maintaining order in the Church. Yes, we are to fear God, but that is whole different thing than being cowed into obedience by Church leadership.

Church Discipline

Matthew 18:15-17 (NASB)
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 

"Tell it to the church." This appears to be shaming behavior. The Law is written on our hearts, but we have a choice whether or not to obey that law. When the disobedience becomes obvious, it means that there has been a breakdown in a person's willingness to operate in the law culture established by God. The person is violating his or her own conscience, and that violation has become public knowledge.

Ideally, the person's fellow Christians then attempt to lovingly point out where the person needs to submit to the rule of the kingdom of God that is in the person's own heart. If the person refuses to submit to the law written by God on that person's own heart, they are unruly (that is, un-rule-y). They need to be told that it is they who have stepped out of bounds. "Telling it to the church" and disfellowshipping the person is merely a public acknowledgment of where the person is already.

It is an ostricizing or shaming action that is required, in good conscience, by law culture.

What about the honor aspects of the Church? 

"One maintains self-respect, not by choosing what is good rather than what is evil, but by choosing what is expected of one."

The church should not be about doing "what is expected of one," unless it is what is expected of one by God, by the voice in of the in-dwelling Holy Spirit.

Humans are tribal, and humans in the church are tribal and act tribally. That is, we try to turn the church into a tribe and operate inside an honor culture. The results is cliques.

Cliques are a natural side-effect of talking to our friends and meeting in small groups (Sunday school classes, Sunday or Wednesday night meetings, house churches, prayer meetings, or whatever). It means that new members or visitors feel unwelcome, not because they are unwelcome, but because they are not yet part of a tribe. New member classes can be a "rite of passage" signalling acceptence by the church (tribe).

However, we are not bound by our hard-wiring to act tribally.

One way is adjust our viewpoint. CS Lewis said of the church that it is "Spread out through time and space, and terrible as an army with banners." We can take a "God's eye view" and see the church as a unified whole ranging from the 1st century church with Peter and Paul through all the believers in any and all locales and times. A person who has made a profession of faith in one church, is a Christian, a brother/sister, a believer, a fellow disciple and traveller on the same road as any other.

However, it does not end there. Any future Christian is also part of that the body of Christ, as well. And we do not know today who will be a member tomorrow, or next year, or on their death bed 50 years from now.

The tribe of all Christians is the body of Christ, with Jesus Christ as its head, and its mind.

Note: I am cross-posting this on my other blog, as well.

Article: How your brain reacts to emotional information is influenced by your genes

One long standing cultural conflict is between the idea that humans are a blank slate and the idea that humans have a recognizable "human nature."

The "blank slate" idea is the idea, more common on the political left, that humans have no single basic nature and that any evil they do is because they have been corrupted by (usually Western) culture. 

The "human nature" idea is the idea, more common on the political right, that humans have a "hard-wired" nature that can only be modified by upbringing and that has both good and evil aspects. 

Orthodox Christianity holds that all humans have a "fallen" nature that is less than perfect and is corrupt by nature, even if all humans are capable of good. 

Marism explicitly accepts the blank slate idea. One of the outworkings of this idea is that there are no inherent differences between classes, sexes, races, or ethnic groups. Therefore, any apparent differences are due to oppression by the dominant group. For example, a lack of female scientists is soley due to the dominant group, men, keeping women out, rather than a lack of women trying to get in. 

Your genes may influence how sensitive you are to emotional information, according to new research by a neuroscientist. The study found that carriers of a certain genetic variation perceived positive and negative images more vividly, and had heightened activity in certain brain regions.

Or, paraphrased, your genes influence how much empathy you show. People who have a specific gene react more strongly to emotions and that this reaction is hard-wired into your brain. 

"People really do see the world differently," says lead author Rebecca Todd, a professor in UBC's Department of Psychology. "For people with this gene variation, the emotionally relevant things in the world stand out much more." 

[snip] 

Todd believes this may help explain why some people are more susceptible to PTSD and intrusive memories following trauma. 

[snip] 

The ADRA2b deletion variant appears in varying degrees across different ethnicities. Although roughly 50 per cent of the Caucasian population studied by these researchers in Canada carry the genetic variation, it has been found to be prevalent in other ethnicities. For example, one study found that just 10 per cent of Rwandans carried the ADRA2b gene variant.

In other words, Caucasians are much more likely to be attuned to the emotional states of others than Rwandans. This raises the question how common is this gene variant in other populations? 

Other implications: 

ADRA2b insertion variant appears to be correlated with hypertention, but inversersely correlated with type 2 diabetes in ethnic Han Chinese men. 

Article: Focusing on lasting legacy prompts environmental action

Alternate title: Using "legacy" as a way of manipulating people to do what you want them to.

"Legacy motives may represent a powerful, yet previously understudied tool [to manipulated people] for promoting engagement, such that simple prompts may effectively promote environmental behavior by framing decisions as 'win-win' for both present and future generations," says Zaval.

"Framing" in left-speak is a way of structuring conversations to reduce or eliminate opposition to what the left-speaker wants to occur.

Indeed, these findings could have broad applications, says Markowitz, shedding light on a potential tool for "improving communication, outreach, and engagement efforts across a wide range of environmental and social issues."

In others words, you are a "tool" if this appeals to you.

I need a shower.

Fundamentalist Christians are also big on "legacy." First, a focus on the "End Times" to manipulate people into being saved, or at least be good. And second, to encourage people to evangelize others (their "legacy").

The researchers conducted a preliminary online study with 245 US participants, which provided initial support for the hypothesis, showing that participants who had a strong desire to leave a positive legacy tended to have strong proenvironmental beliefs, even after demographic factors such as political affiliation were accounted for.

There is a meme on the Right that environmentalism functions like a religion or in place of a religion. And it is a personal belief of mine that US Progressivism is actually a socialist heresy of US Evangelical Protestantism (like Marxism is a Jewish heresy and Fascism is a Catholic heresy).

This is a confirmation of that belief.

Marijuana Use During Pregnancy Affects Baby's Brain

Previous studies have found that exposure to marijuana during pregnancy can increase a child's risk of having cognitive deficits or psychiatric disorders.
[snip]
[I[t seems the brain may be particularly sensitive to THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) during early development, when neurons are forming critical connections. Any drug that interferes with this development could be detrimental to the child...
[snip]
In the study, Harkany and his colleagues tested marijuana's effects in three ways: They grew brain cells from mice in the presence of THC, they injected pregnant mice with THC, and they studied the brains of electively aborted human fetuses whose mothers had used marijuana during pregnancy.
[snip]
"Prenatal cannabis disrupts synapses [nerve connections] critical for higher order executive and cognitive function," study researcher Yasmin Hurd, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, told LiveScience in an email.

There is a reason they call it dope.

Article: Climate depression is for real. Just ask a scientist

Two years ago, Camille Parmesan, a professor at Plymouth University and the University of Texas at Austin, became so “professionally depressed” that she questioned abandoning her research in climate change entirely. 

Parmesan has a pretty serious stake in the field. In 2007, she shared a Nobel Peace Prize [note: no, she did not. the IPCC won the prize, not her.] with Al Gore for her work as a lead author of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2009, The Atlantic named her one of 27 “Brave Thinkers” for her work on the impacts of climate change on species around the globe. 

Did she get into science to do science? Or to change the world?

She is not depressed because she can't do science. Parmesan does not claim she could not pursue her chosen field. She is apparently an honored member of her field and a sought after speaker. It is her poltical agenda that is not winning. This is not science. This is politics.

Lise Van Susteren, a forensic psychiatrist based in Washington, D.C. — and co-author of the National Wildlife Federation’s report — calls this emotional reaction “pre-traumatic stress disorder,” a term she coined to describe the mental anguish that results from preparing for the worst, before it actually happens.

This used to be called "being a worry-wart." It was recognized as a character defect, to stress about the future, to worry about 100 things when only one can possibly happen. It used to be considered neurotic, now it is a badge of honor, to be hounded by worries and fears.

Article: The Surprising Problem of Too Much Talent

Why is too much talent a bad thing? Think teamwork. In many endeavors, success requires collaborative, cooperative work towards a goal that is beyond the capability of any one individual. Even Emmitt Smith needed effective blocking from the Cowboy offensive line to gain yardage. When a team roster is flooded with individual talent, pursuit of personal star status may prevent the attainment of team goals. 

An old friend has served as a coach for several local teams (mostly high school). He once remarked that one of his hardest jobs involved convincing highly talented, very competitive young women to work as a team. (As well as "releasing" the occasional player for not being able to "play well with others.")

I would assume that this would have some application in the business world where highly-talented, but arrogant, employees would make it difficult for the rest of a team to function well.

The biological transmission of memory.

Article: Phobias may be memories passed down in genes from ancestors

In the study, which is published in the journal of Nature Neuroscience, the researchers trained mice to fear the smell of cherry blossom using electric shocks before allowing them to breed. 

The offspring produced showed fearful responses to the odour of cherry blossom compared to a neutral odour, despite never having encountered them before. 

The following generation also showed the same behaviour. This effect continued even if the mice had been fathered through artificial insemination.The researchers found the brains of the trained mice and their offspring showed structural changes in areas used to detect the odour.

Up until recently, this would have been considered nonsense. Classical evolution and genetics stated that the experiences of the parent could not be transmitted to offspring. At its most extreme, evolution was seen as favoring only those genes that were most successful in passing themselves onto offspring. Genes could affect behavior, but not the other way around.

The DNA of the animals also carried chemical changes, known as epigenetic methylation, on the gene responsible for detecting the odour. 

This suggests that experiences are somehow transferred from the brain into the genome, allowing them to be passed on to later generations. 

The researchers now hope to carry out further work to understand how the information comes to be stored on the DNA in the first place. 

They also want to explore whether similar effects can be seen in the genes of humans.

We now know that this mechanism exists, though not how it works. How does changes in the brain change the DNA in cells of the ovary and testes that become eggs and sperm?

He added: "It addresses constitutional fearfulness that is highly relevant to [human] phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders, plus the controversial subject of transmission of the ‘memory’ of ancestral experience down the generations.

Article: Multitasking Damages Your Brain And Career, New Studies Suggest

Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

Humans are not meant to multitask, because our brain can only do one thing at a time. Rapidly switching back and forth from task to task is inefficient.

The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another. Ouch.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. 

Research also shows that, in addition to slowing you down, multitasking lowers your IQ. A study at the University of London found that participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to what they’d expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. IQ drops of 15 points for multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.

Science Links: 10/2/14 [Updated and bumped]

Article: 'Strikingly Geometric' Shapes Hidden on Moon's Surface

A new lunar probe has detected filled-in rift valleys on the moon.

Rifting was first discovered on Earth. Once it was studied and explained, examples on Mars and Venus became obvious.

The Moon, however, was heavily bombarded during its early history. This covered up the more "rectangular" shape of the rifting. The bombardment make the area appear more circular, as if a large asteroid had caused it.

The conclusion would be that some of plate tectonics happened all four of these.

Article: Walrus mass on Alaska beach - in pictures

Pacific walrus unable to find sea ice on which to rest in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in north-west Alaska. Females give birth on sea ice and the animals use it as a diving platform to reach snails, clams and worms on the shallow continental shelf, but climate change means there is ever less available.

Cool photos; stupid comment.

Arctic sea ice is up, overall. Any lack of it in the Alaskan area is a local phenomenon due to the way sea ice shifts around the Arctic Ocean.

Update: Walrus Beach Party 

Confirmation of my assumption above. These mass haul-outs are common, and have occurred whether or not there is sea ice in the vicinity or not. Another hysterical over-reaction by ignorant people to a normal event.

Article: Your nose knows death is imminent: Losing the sense of smell predicts death within five years, according to new research

The title is wrong. In elderly people, about 40% of the people who had a measurable loss of the sense of smell died within 5 years. So, no, "your nose does [not] know" anything.

This compares to about 10% of those with a healthy sense of smell.

Senescence: "the gradual deterioration that occurs with age." The sense of smell is probably a proxy for that general deterioration.

And definitely warrants further study.

Article: What causes paranoia, hallucinations and grandiose ideas?

Led by Dr Angelica Ronald at Birkbeck, University of London, the team analysed data on almost 5,000 pairs of 16-year-old twins. This is the classical twin design, a standard method for gauging the relative influence of genes and environment.
Heritability for paranoia was 50%; for grandiosity it was 44%; while for hallucinations it was 15% for males and 32% for females. This doesn’t mean, incidentally, that 50% of an individual’s paranoia is the result of their genes. The concept of “heritability” tells us that 50% of the differences in levels of paranoia across the population may be genetic in origin. 

That would mean that 50% of that difference is environmental (or "nurture") in origin.

The individual symptoms do not necessarily co-occur with one another.

However, these are generally symptoms of schizophrenia, and "twin studies of those diagnosed with schizophrenia typically report much higher rates of heritability for the disorder…."

Despite the authors's conclusions about the non-inheritability of schizophrenia, it would appear that having all the symptoms, at once, may be the result of having all the genes for the symptoms and therefore, increase the likelihood for full-blown schizophrenia.

They are definitely on the side of redefining schizophrenia, so there may be a bias here against finding for a genetic cause of it.

Science Links 8/30/14

Article: Yellowstone Supervolcano Eruption would be Large, but not as Catastrophic as previously thought

Researchers have revealed after creating a new computer simulation called Ash3D at the US Geological Survey (USGS) that the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would spew ash several feet thick in some areas. However, it is also true that the eruption will not be as catastrophic as being claimed by some previous reports.
"It's a crazy thing to think about because none of us have ever seen an eruption like Yellowstone. It would be two or three orders of magnitude more ash than we've been able to observe", said study lead author Larry Mastin, a USGS hydrologist, in a statement reported by Inquisitr.

The blast would be big and ash will engulf the states surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

Article: New Study Offers Clues to Swift Arctic Extinction

Seven hundred years ago, the Dorset people disappeared from the Arctic. The last of the Paleo-Eskimos, the Dorset had dominated eastern Canada and Greenland for centuries, hunting seal and walrus through holes in the ice and practicing shamanistic rituals with ornate carvings and masks.

They lived there for more than 4,000 years, then disappeared in a matter of decades.

The Dorset people were a genetically distinct group, and they were different from the modern Inuit people.

Usually, when one group displaces another, one group assimilates the other. The first group leaves genetic evidence in the other group.

It is possible that the Inuit themselves wiped out the Dorset people. The article does not talk about any overlap between the two peoples.

Article: Forum: Against Empathy

A long article about empathy focused on emotional empathy. The author is writing a book against empathy, especially as a guide to policy.

It refers to the process of experiencing the world as others do, or at least as you think they do. To empathize with someone is to put yourself in her shoes, to feel her pain. 

Empathy is a one-on-one connection.

Most people see the benefits of empathy as akin to the evils of racism: too obvious to require justification. I think this is a mistake. I have argued elsewhere that certain features of empathy make it a poor guide to social policy. Empathy is biased; we are more prone to feel empathy for attractive people and for those who look like us or share our ethnic or national background. And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data. 

Empathy is too narrow, focusing on one person at a time.

In light of these features, our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside. Our policies are improved when we appreciate that a hundred deaths are worse than one, even if we know the name of the one, and when we acknowledge that the life of someone in a faraway country is worth as much as the life a neighbor, even if our emotions pull us in a different direction. Without empathy, we are better able to grasp the importance of vaccinating children and responding to climate change. These acts impose costs on real people in the here and now for the sake of abstract future benefits, so tackling them may require overriding empathetic responses that favor the comfort and well being of individuals today. 

Effective social policy requires doing things that can be painful to others. The actual administration of a vaccine is painful, and side effects can be annoying to painful. If one operates only on emotional empathy, it would be hard to vaccinate one's child. Or have a life-saving operation done on the same child.

The cause of autism?

Article: Scientists discover people with autism have too many brain 'connections'

As a baby develops, the brain undergoes a burst of synapse formation, the connections between different nerves. Then, over time, these synapses are "pruned" back, retaining the necessary ones.

My guess is that this may be related to why it is easier for someone who hears, and learns to speak, a language when they are young rather than when they are older. The connections are all there, but as someone ages they are lost.

The Columbia University scientists examined the brains of 26 autistic children and young people aged two to 20 who had died from a variety of causes 

By late childhood, the researchers found that spine density had dropped by about half in the healthy brains, but by only 16 per cent in the brains of autistic individuals. 

Lead researcher Professor David Sulzer said: ‘It's the first time that anyone has looked for, and seen, a lack of pruning during development of children with autism, although lower numbers of synapses in some brain areas have been detected in brains from older patients and in mice with autistic-like behaviours.' 

He added: ‘While people usually think of learning as requiring formation of new synapses, the removal of inappropriate synapses may be just as important.

The link between incomes and criminal behavior

Article: A disturbing study of the link between incomes and criminal behaviour

Using the rich troves of personal data which Scandinavian governments collect about their citizens....

Before I get into the article, doesn't this sound a bit creepy?

“POVERTY”, wrote Aristotle, “is the parent of crime.” But was he right? Certainly, poverty and crime are associated. And the idea that a lack of income might drive someone to misdeeds sounds plausible. 

One of the things that I frequently note is that "correlation does mean causation." That is, just because two events occur in tandem does not mean that one causes the other.

First, coincident do happen. And, second, both may be caused by something else entirely.

Using the rich troves of personal data which Scandinavian governments collect about their citizens, Mr Sariaslan and his team were able to study more than half a million children born in Sweden between 1989 and 1993. The records they consulted contained information about these people’s educational attainments, annual family incomes and criminal convictions. They also enabled the researchers to identify everybody’s siblings.

Children, now between 21 and 25 years old. And looking at the behavior of older and younger siblings.

He found, to no one’s surprise, that teenagers who had grown up in families whose earnings were among the bottom fifth were seven times more likely to be convicted of violent crimes, and twice as likely to be convicted of drug offences, as those whose family incomes were in the top fifth.

He showed evidence of the correlation that Aristotle noted 2300 years ago.

What did surprise him was that when he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, the younger children—those born into relative affluence—were just as likely to misbehave when they were teenagers as their elder siblings had been. Family income was not, per se, the determining factor.

So, simply increasing the family's income did not reduce the tendency of criminal behavior in the younger siblings. Why not?

That suggests two, not mutually exclusive, possibilities. One is that a family’s culture, once established, is “sticky”—that you can, to put it crudely, take the kid out of the neighbourhood, but not the neighbourhood out of the kid. Given, for example, children’s propensity to emulate elder siblings whom they admire, that sounds perfectly plausible. 

This is the "nurture" part of the "nature versus nurture" question. Research shows that there seems to be a 50:50 split. That is, about 50% of human behavior seems to be driving by environmental factors, including upbringing.

The other possibility is that genes which predispose to criminal behaviour (several studies suggest such genes exist) are more common at the bottom of society than at the top, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control they engender also tends to reduce someone’s earning capacity.

And the other 50% is due to genetic hardwiring.

Neither of these conclusions is likely to be welcome to social reformers. The first suggests that merely topping up people’s incomes, though it may well be a good idea for other reasons, will not by itself address questions of bad behaviour. 

Throwing money at the problem will not solve the problem.

The second raises the possibility that the problem of intergenerational poverty may be self-reinforcing, particularly in rich countries like Sweden where the winnowing effects of education and the need for high levels of skill in many jobs will favour those who can control their behaviour, and not those who rely on too many chemical crutches to get them through the day. 

Faces: pretty and intelligent

Article: You really CAN tell how intelligent a man is just by looking at him, scientists say (and the key is a long face and bigger distance between the eyes)

'The ability to accurately assess the intelligence of other persons finds its place in everyday social interaction and should have important evolutionary consequences,' the team wrote in the journal PLoS One.

If so, why be able to assess the intelligence of men, but not women? Over evolutionary time, have women been assessed on other values, instead? [See below]

The team used static facial photographs of 40 men and 40 women to test the relationship between measured IQ, perceived intelligence, and facial shape.

Both men and women were able to accurately evaluate the intelligence of men by viewing facial photographs, they discovered.

'These results suggest that a perceiver can accurately gauge the real intelligence of men, but not women, by viewing their faces in photographs; however, this estimation is possibly not based on facial shape,' they claim.

'Our study revealed no relation between intelligence and either attractiveness or face shape.

 Article:  In Harsh Conditions, Men Don't Want a Pretty Face

Big eyes and full lips may turn male heads in Japan, but in Nepal, men aren't as interested in pretty, girly faces.

Those are the findings of a new study of men's preferences for female faces in 28 nations. The results reveal that guys are drawn to feminine looks – large eyes, pillow lips and a soft jaw — to a greater extent in countries that are the healthiest.

The reason for this difference isn't clear, but scientists suspect that evolution may drive these attractions, at least subconsciously. Men in harsh conditions may have a better chance of fathering children who survive if they mate with a woman who can hold on to resources, said study researcher Urszula Marcinkowska

Genes, the hippocampus, and depression

Article: Genes determine traces that stress leaves behind on brains

Our individual genetic make-up determines the effect that stress has on our emotional centers, researchers have found. Not every individual reacts in the same way to life events that produce the same degree of stress. Some grow as a result of the crisis, whereas others break down and fall ill, for example with depression. The outcome is determined by a complex interaction between depression gene versions and environmental factors.

The hippocampus is a switching station in the processing of emotions and acts like a central interface when dealing with stress. It is known to react very sensitively to stress. In situations of stress that are interpreted as a physical danger ('distress'), it shrinks in size, which is a phenomenon observed commonly in patients with depression and one which is responsible for some of their clinical symptoms. By contrast, positive stress ('eustress'), of the kind that can occur in emotionally exciting social situations can actually cause the hippocampus to increase in size.

"People with the three gene versions believed to encourage depression had a smaller hippocampus than those with fewer or none of these gene versions, even though they had the same number of stressful life events," says study leader Lukas Pezawas, describing the results. People with only one or even none of the risk genes, on the other hand, had an enlarged hippocampus with similar life events.

In a previous article posted below, it was noted that 30-40% of a person's risk for depression is genetic. That means that 60-70% of that risk is environmental, also known as "nurture." While some people seem to be "hard-wired" for depression, the 60-70% factor allows for personal choice.

Major factors "protective" against suicide are strong familial and religious relationships. These are free will choices that anyone can make to help protective themselves from suicide, if not from suicidal thoughts.


The depressive thoughts can fight these choices, but they do not have to dominate. There have been articles published recently about how psychiatrists can re-train peoples' thought patterns to overcome some of this thinking.

Genetic testing and suicide

Article: Could a Genetic Test Predict the Risk for Suicide?

A gene test would be invaluable to reducing suicide.

While claims for a suicide test remain preliminary, and controversial, a “suicide gene” is not as fanciful as it sounds. The chance that a person takes his or her own life is in fact heritable, and many scientific teams are now involved in broad expeditions across the human genome to locate suicide’s biological causes.

Based on such gene research, one startup company, Sundance Diagnostics, based in Boulder, Colorado, says it will begin offering a suicide risk test to doctors next month, but only in connection with patients taking antidepressant drugs like Prozac and Zoloft.

The Sundance test rests on research findings reported by the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in 2012. The German researchers, based in Munich, scanned the genes of 898 people taking antidepressants and identified 79 genetic markers they claimed together had a 91 percent probability of correctly predicting “suicidal ideation,” or imagining the act of suicide.

So, the first gene test is based on genetic markers. These would be the genes that can be passed on from parents to children. These genes would be part of the basis of the well-known familial risk factor (see below).

Given how many people take antidepressants, the market for a suicide test could be big. In the U.S., about 11 percent of Americans 12 years and older take antidepressants, according to a 2011 estimate by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

People taking antidepressants have a higher risk of suicidal ideation and suicide. A test would help reduce the risk by identifying those prone to that and getting them counseling in advance of taking the drugs.

Altogether, epidemiologists believe that 30 percent to 55 percent of the risk that someone takes their own life is inherited, and the risk isn’t linked to any specific mental illness, like depression or schizophrenia.

That means suicide probably has its own unique genetic causes....

Oddly enough, a range 30-40% is the same for a lot of conditions that have a genetic linkage: mental illness and heart disease. Even the tendency towards homosexuality.

A person’s life history still has more to do with whether it ends in suicide than genes do. Virginia Willour, a geneticist at the University of Iowa who studies suicidal thinking among bipolar patients, says environmental factors are especially important in preventing suicide. Getting medical treatment, an involved family, and religious beliefs all cut the chance of suicide dramatically.

If 30-40% of the risk for suicide is genetic, then 60-70% of the risk is environmental factors.

The latest report of a possible suicide test came in July from Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, where geneticists published a report saying that the presence of alterations to a single gene could predict who will attempt suicide with 80 percent accuracy.

Instead of looking just at DNA, they studied patterns of methylation, a type of chemical block on genes that can lower their activity. They found that one gene, SKA2, seemed to be blocked often in the suicide brains. They later found the same gene block was common when they tested the blood of a larger number of people having suicidal thoughts.

“We seem to be able to predict suicidal behavior and attempts, based on seeing these epigenetic changes in the blood,” says Kaminsky.

Kaminsky says that following the report, his e-mail inbox was immediately flooded by people wanting the test. “They wanted to know, if my dad died from suicide, is my son at risk?” he says. They didn’t understand that the type of DNA change he identified probably isn’t the inherited kind, but instead may be the result of stress or some other environmental factor.

The second test used the DNA from the brains of suicide victims to see if there had been changes to their specific DNA. This would be changes due to environmental factors: chemical and hormonal exposure (including in the womb) or related to stress and life activities. This may account for some of the non-familial risk factors listed below. These changes may or may not be passed on. If they are changes in the brain, only, they will not be. To be passed on, the epigenetic changes would have to also happen in the sex cells (sperm and eggs).

Article: Suicide: Risk and Protective Factors

A combination of individual, relational, community, and societal factors contribute to the risk of suicide. Risk factors are those characteristics associated with suicide—they may or may not be direct causes.

Risk Factors

• Family history of suicide
• Family history of child maltreatment
• Previous suicide attempt(s)
• History of mental disorders, particularly clinical depression
• History of alcohol and substance abuse
• Feelings of hopelessness
• Impulsive or aggressive tendencies
• Cultural and religious beliefs (e.g., belief that suicide is noble resolution of a personal dilemma)
• Local epidemics of suicide
• Isolation, a feeling of being cut off from other people
• Barriers to accessing mental health treatment
• Loss (relational, social, work, or financial)
• Physical illness
• Easy access to lethal methods
• Unwillingness to seek help because of the stigma attached to mental health and substance abuse disorders or to suicidal thoughts

Calculating the "value" of smoking.

Article: In New Calculus on Smoking, It’s Health Gained vs. Pleasure Lost

I feel stupid writing this, but...
1) I don't smoke tobacco and haven't smoked in my life except for some roll-your-owns in college and few cigars.
2) Smoking is a great way smell bad and die young.

Buried deep in the federal government’s voluminous new tobacco regulations is a little-known cost-benefit calculation that public health experts see as potentially poisonous: the happiness quotient. It assumes that the benefits from reducing smoking — fewer early deaths and diseases of the lungs and heart — have to be discounted by 70 percent to offset the loss in pleasure that smokers suffer when they give up their habit.

Experts say that calculation wipes out most of the economic benefits from the regulations and could make them far more vulnerable to legal challenges from the tobacco industry. And it could have a perverse effect, experts said. The more successful regulators are at reducing smoking, the more it hurts them in the final economic accounting.

Why does the government need to write "voluminous new tobacco regulations" for a private habit and a private pleasure? They do not have "voluminous old tobacco regulations" enough?

On Wednesday, Professor Chaloupka and other prominent economists, including a Nobel Prize winner, publicly took issue with the analysis. In a paper submitted to the F.D.A. as the period for public comment on the regulations neared its end on Friday, the group said the happiness quotient was way too high and should be changed before the regulations take effect.

“There’s reason to believe that number is much too big,” said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was an author of the paper. In his view, the agency’s analysis cited his past work erroneously.

Over the years, a hundred million people have made billions of personal decisions to extract pleasure from smoking tobacco in all of its myriad forms. We call these people "smokers." They know why they are smoking.

A handful of experts come along, with brilliant minds and the most advanced computers known to man, apply their theories and algorithms to the smokers. We call these people social scientists. They try to figure out how much value smoking is to the smokers so they can put it into their calculations. 

This is an version of what is called "the knowledge problem." The hundred million smokers know why and how much they value smoking. The handful of scientists can only guess.

Article: Natural-terrain schoolyards reduce children's stress, says study

I am not surprised by this. I read years ago that humans are hardwired to like a certain terrain. It might be called a savannah, or an open forest, terrain. Think of a favorite park. It is usually a grassy area interspersed with mature trees. Clear sight lines (think hard-wiring for hunting and for keeping an eye on the nasty sabre-toothed tigers of pre-history).

The posting, below, about how native Americans maintained the forests of California. Same idea.

Playing in schoolyards that feature natural habitats and trees and not just asphalt and recreation equipment reduces children's stress and inattention, according to a study.

An environment that simulates what our hard-wiring likes will be less stressful.

K-12 students were studied, including special needs children and children in the regular classroom.

'Quack' child psychology practices identified

Article: 'Quack' child psychology practices identified by study

Summary:

A recent poll of 139 experts has been conducted to discredit “quack” treatments and assessments for children. The study identifies and rates pseudoscientific and potentially harmful practices. “Building consensus about what does not work for youth is an important counterpart to evidence-based research on what does work,” said the lead researcher and co-author.

I  hope that other publications pick up this as well.

Experts rated 67 psychological treatments and 35 assessments for children and adolescents on a continuum from “not at all discredited” to “certainly discredited.”

The poll asked those experts to weigh in on the merits of both assessments and treatments. Enneagrams, the Szondi Test, Brain Balance, biorhythms, handwriting analysis and the Fairy Tale Test were strongly discredited for assessment among children and adolescents.

Treatments that were strongly discredited include past life regression therapy, crystal healing, or withholding food or water.

I am not familiar with most of the "assessments."