Interesting Posts

Please share your thoughts on this interesting post by Arnold Kling.

I found it particularly interesting in light of the following.

And in a nod to JP's generational dynamics reference, score one for the observers who see even more complexity in this story.

... I guess this alleviates some of the problems then. ;-)

Be well

The Problem With Science is Scientists

This is a brilliant post I read from a guy who blogs as the Last Psychiatrist. I sent it to EVERY bio-psychiatrist I know who loves to talk of brain studies. I love science. I also am skeptical of every such study as it relates to psychiatry. I have been reading them for 20 yrs and they have never told me shit. As I always say: If I beat my dog every day and he gets depressed and I put him in a fMRI and his brain looks different than other dogs do I really understand his problem by looking at the fMRI. This really deserves to be read in whole. I wish I had written this and toyed with lying and said I had. ahahha hha

In a recent fMRI study, a salmon was shown a series of pictures of human faces showing various emotions: can a salmon distinguish them? and what brain regions are involved. 15 pictures, ten seconds each.

I won't bore you with the anatomy. Because of the small size of the brain, exact brain structures could not be distinguished, but something in the brain did light up. A statistically significant number of voxels, comprising an area of 81mm3 in the midline of the brain, were active (p<.0001). So can fish interpret human emotions from a picture? I have no idea. I do know, however, that that fish can't do it: it was dead.

II.

Others have discussed the hows/whys of such false positives and what can be done about them. But there are two other problems not discussed:

These researchers chose a dead fish specifically so they could discuss the issue of false positives and why multiple comparisons correction in MRI studies is important. Thus, we know these results are false positives because we know that the fish is dead. Note carefully, however, that both of the things you know are told to you by the researcher; yet you are valuing one as "truth" and the other as "artifact" based on nothing but his word.

The researchers might have been mistaken about the deadness of the fish-- thus nullifying a potentially interesting finding. Or, they could have lied.

There is no wayno way to check. You're rolling your eyes, "why would they lie about that?" or "how would they possibly make a mistake about it being dead?" and you're right, about this they wouldn't.

But what about the old studies?

If they do a study in which an anxious person shows weak activity in the amygdala-- how do you know he was anxious? How wrong about the anxiety do you have to be to invalidate the weakness of the MRI findings? Not much.

III.

The danger of the "false positive" discussion is that it is forward looking: from now on, why should tighten our significance thresholds, change the confidence intervals, controls, etc. But what about all the prior data that finds only "moderate positive correlations" using more liberal significance thresholds, that may be infected by invalid behavioral assessments--

--that because of the passage of time alone-- not better data, but time-- are now knowledge?

IV.

The biggest problem with MRI studies is that they're hard for the layman to understand. Complexity in science protects prejudice.

Understanding the Anxious Mind, in the NYT Magazine, discusses the science of temperament. Jerome Kagan studied babies, then followed them over the years. Predictably (i.e. what you'd expect the NYT to say), temperament as a baby predicted temperament as an adult, especially in the extreme cases.

They explore the case of the highly anxious "Baby 19" (defined as being distressed by novelty) who, when she was 15, was a plain looking teenager who liked writing, playing the violin, worrying and fidgeting. See? Genetics.

...[Scientists] have put the assumptions about innate temperament on firmer footing, and they have also demonstrated that some of us, like Baby 19, are... born predisposed to be anxious...

...[other scientists] all have reached similar conclusions: that babies differ according to inborn temperament...

You'll observe that those two quotes are about babies-- babies are born a certain way. No argument from me. What they do not say is that the inborn temperament is the reason they are also anxious as adults, but that's the conclusion they make every single time.

"Temperament, it turned out, tended to be stable over those five years, at least in children who started out at the extremes." Its stability is the evidence that the temperament is biological. If his haircuts are stable over the years, is that biological?

But more importantly, the kids were raised by parents. Parents don't parent in an ideal dispassionate manner, they parent in reaction to the kid in front of them. In other words, kids' temperaments alter the manner in which they are parented, and it's a good bet that the parenting fosters that same temperament. Not a word on that; it's as if it that couldn't possibly be relevant.

And why is testing a four month old's behavior evidence of an innate quality? The first four months of parenting don't count? "Kagan restricted his sample to children who were white, middle class and healthy." Oh. So now all white people are the same?

V.

But that's not real science, real science uses MRIs. If they studied it in an MRI, it must be true.

Teenagers who were in the group at low risk for anxiety showed no increase in activity in the amygdala when they looked at the face, even if they had been told to focus on their own fear. ...In the high-risk kids, even those who were apparently calm in most settings, their amygdalas lighted up more than the others' did.

"Overreactivity in the amygdala" = anxiety. But we don't really know what the amygdala does, nor how it does it, all we know is where it is. Saying something occurred in the amygdala is like saying something occurred in Ohio. "Yes, but we have some sense of what the amygdala does." And I have a sense of what Ohio does, too, it causes trouble in elections and gets its teens to kill themselves.

But at least whether or anxiety is mediated by the amygdala is worth discussing. What you can't do is take a structure that may be involved and therefore conclude that anxiety is an innate trait that is generally stable. Every time I punch someone my shoulder is overactive. Is my genetically mediated shoulder the cause of my alcoholic rages?

And overactive as compared to what? What could possible serve as a control? Seriously, think about this. Point to a guy you believe could be a control in a study measuring what are here defined as subclinical levels of anxiety.

Not every brain state sparks the same subjective experience; one person might describe a hyperaroused brain in a negative way, as feeling anxious or tense, while another might enjoy the sensation and instead uses a positive word like "alert."

None of those words mean anything. Brain state? Hyperaroused? Alert? How can anyone know that the "brain state" that two people are describing differently is the same? These words concepts are so vague that the researcher has to resort to Jungian terms in his descriptions:

The persona can be controlled, but the anima often cannot... Nathan FoxNathan Fox of the University of Maryland says that when the anima erupts in high-risk children, it often takes the form of excessive vigilance and misdirected attention. In the first of his two longitudinal studies...

If you don't even have precise words to describe what you're seeing, how in God's name can you measure it, let alone blame it on the amygdala?

VI.

But research has to start somewhere, and my problem isn't with the researchers or their study, nor do I doubt the relevance of genetics. My problem is that when theory is written up in the NYT, it becomes FACT, it becomes the default understanding. This understanding becomes part of our cultural filter. In the same way porn and Cougar TownCougar Town has assured us that women over 40 can have satisfying extra marital sex with 20 year old bicycle messengers, we know that behavior is, in large part, genetically determined.

This is how the article ends:

The predictive power of an anxiety-prone temperament, such as it is, essentially works in just one direction: not by predicting what these children will become but by predicting what they will not. In the longitudinal studies of anxiety, all you can say with confidence is that the high-reactive infants will not grow up to be exuberant, outgoing, bubbly or bold.

Think about this. Think about what the average person now understands to be true.

Still, while a Sylvia Plath almost certainly won't grow up to be a Bill Clinton, she can either grow up to be anxious and suicidal, or simply a poet.

VII.

Back to the salmon. The results were statistically significant, but the fish was dead. So we laugh. In 1620, that would have been evidence for the soul, and no one would have laughed.

The problem is the same in both cases. They are questioning the nature of the data. They should be questioning the nature of the fish.

2012

In line with my last fluff post and at this time having no motivation to post anything of intellectual value(Thai, Dink and Debra are doing great) my post is about a deliciously bad movie I watched last night. In the past I looked for movies to challenge me emotionally and intellectually but entertain me less. Now I have no desire to see suffering on film or think much. As much as I was moved by Debra's post on the movie she saw it was not the kind of film I would likely want to watch. I sit with suffering people all day. I read books or things like this blog to make me think. I want to watch the Soprano's when I sit down to a TV or Lord of The Rings for the 31st time.. Despite knowing better I rented 2012' on Netflix. It is hard for me to even come up with meaningful words to describe how bad this movie is. There are films that are in fact so bad that at some point you begin to enjoy them because they are so bad and you find yourself laughing and unable to turn them off because of this. You sit there slack jaw wondering if the makers knew all along what they were releasing and laughing the entire time. Also because you have invested so much time you feel you have to see it through. Please give me any of your all time worst movies so that I may enjoy them as well.

Some fractals are a little more interesting than others...

Jerk Scientists!

And their stupid, stupid data!

Structural Linguistics 101 bis

On the suggestion/provocation of Edwardo, I am forging ahead in structural linguistics.

I want to do a brief recap on what we've already seen, to emphasize the fundamental points.

We saw last time that language is a complex system which is made up of overlapping subsystems. The organizing principle is distinctive opposition of individual elements. Meaning emerges because we oppose the PRESENT occurrence of an individual element to the ABSENT elements that are possible IN THAT CONTEXT. Seeing/hearing differences is the name of the game.

What is LESS evident is that seeing/hearing difference takes place against the PERCEPTION of similarity. In other words, in order to identify the DIFFERENCE between elements (i.e. phonemes, see previous post..) we must FIRST ascertain that we are dealing with two phonemes, THE ELEMENTS ARE OF THE SAME NATURE.

This means that meaning emerges for us from the dialectic tension between observing differences, and observing similarities. We are CONSTANTLY observing and comparing our world.

We are doing this without even realizing that we are doing it.

Look at how many words (elements..) I used to talk about something so elemental that you don't even THINK about what you're doing.

This should ring... alarm bells in your head. To make you realize how incredibly complex your thinking is UNBEKNOWNST to you. You are NOT doing this consciously. Not at all.

You learned how to do this... WITHOUT a book (for your mother language). Without a teacher sitting down and telling you HOW to do it. No formal education to learn this.

Once we start... directing our consciousness on the nature of language.. THE MEDIUM which we are employing to talk about.. the OBJECT, language (comment, Thai ?), it becomes miraculous (in my book..). (We did not ALWAYS direct our consciousness on the nature of LANGUAGE. The ancient Greeks were not CONSCIOUS of language AS OBJECT.)

Cut to an incident involving my 2 1/2 year old son, many years ago now.

One night around midnight, my husband was rocking our insomniac toddler in front of the TV, to try to get him sleepy.

All at once, Mark got really excited, and insisted on being put down.

He ran to the TV, pointed his finger at the screen where a horse race was going on, and said "o-a". He then ran to his room, found one of his favorite cardboard books, "Petit Poney", and brought it out to the living room. He pointed at the cover drawing of petit poney, and once again said "o-a".

The whole incident lasted maybe... 5 minutes ?

Whew.... what an INTELLIGENT 2 1/2 year old ! (No more intelligent than.. YOU, or your wife, or your children, or me, or your cleaning lady too, while we're at it... in this domain, at least...)

Let's decrypt what's going on...

Marc saw... a fleeting image on the screen. He... compared it to the image on the cover of his cardboard book. And he said... "o-a". I maintain that "o-a" is a word. I'll tell you why in a minute.

Now... what do... a two dimensional fleeting image on a screen, a stylized drawing in a book, and a three dimensional animal standing in a field to whom he fed carrots from his stroller, an animal he was afraid to get bitten by..., have in common ? In the absolute all that looks pretty DIFFERENT, doesn't it ? (I should specify that Mark was hearing the word "cheval" all the time, he was hearing the word spoken while reading his story, on the TV, etc.)

What Mark grasped in that instant in front of the TV is that the WORD (element) "o-a" brings together all those different "objects". The word "o-a" represents, takes the place of those objects IN ORDER FOR US TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THEM TOGETHER.

The word "o-a" is an ENORMOUS generalization. Lots of.. detail disappears in that generalization. And when we string together all those representations OF, we are NOT EVEN THINKING OF what they represent (in many, many cases). We are firmly entrenched IN THE SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE ITSELF.

The last part is the best.

I love playing Sherlock. Where did "o-a" come from ?

There is a comptine in French, a little game called "mon petit cheval". (Cheval means horse, you must know by now...) Like "itsy bitsy spider".

It goes.. "mon petit cheval va AU PAS AU PAS, au trot au trot, au galop, au galop."

When you do it with a child, he is sitting on your knees, and you bounce him very gently for" au pas", then faster for "au trot", then you let it all hang out for "au galop", and everybody, (you too...) gets all excited at going fast.

"O-a" comes from "au pas". It is hard for a littl'un to do the initial consonants at first.

So... Mark was connecting.... the image on the screen, the drawing in his book AND... the comptine itself where THE ONLY COMPARABLE ELEMENT is the word "cheval" itself. The comptine is ONLY LANGUAGE (with the body too, of course. It is incarnated language.)

He was connecting all of this to the word "cheval".

Amazing, huh ?

If you want to see this, find William Gibson's "The Miracle Worker" with Patty Duke and Anne Bankroft. You will see this scene, in the life of Helen Keller. It is an unmistakable, and very moving scene.

One last thing : this corresponds to what Lacanian psychoanalysis calls "le stade du miroir", the mirror stage. The moment when we realize that... OUR NAME represents US in the language system, like all the other words do.

And... of course, there is JUBILATION in this scene. Of course.

Because, in our minds.. language represents power. It gives us POWER over our world.

The power to name is one that we are VERY VERY attached to.

We will get back to this. It is very very important.

Please tell me if there is stuff you don't understand.

For Dr John

Have Fun ;-)

Mike Schmid. "The High Cost of Living"

Since Debra posted how she was moved by the movie she saw on the mutilation of African women, I decided to do something similar. I am most often moved emotionally by music. Every once in a while I hear an artist that makes me feel that it is criminal that their music is not widely heard. There is so much crap on the radio. Even XM which I have a subscription too. I heard this guy on Pandora. The entire album this comes off of is in my opinion magical as far as the genre. It comes off the album "The High Cost of Living". I know this post carries no intellectual wt. and does not deal with mirror symmetry or complex social issues but damn his music makes me happy. I hope it does that to one of you like it does to me! John

Ever

Cherchez La Femme

This translates as "follow the woman". Its a phrase Dumas used for when one is trying to understand a man's inexplicable behavior. There is a method to his madness, but if you didn't realize the madness was caused by his secret pursuit of la femme you wouldn't see the method he is using. Once you know of la femme, everything falls into place.

When we use the term "linear" it means we know the line ("la femme"). When we use the term "non-linear" we don't know the line, but it it out there.

When we see the results of an iterated equation it may look nothing like a line. But if we were lying along the right x-axis and staring "up" the line would be revealed. So perhaps when were trying to sort through complexity we should take comfort that there is an answer out there, somewhere. We just must continue to Cherchez La Femme.

Desert Flower

Last night my husband and I saw Desert Flower, a film made from the autobiography of Waris Dire, a Somalian woman who was a top model and is a renowned activist against the ancestral practice of excision in some African cultures. I don't know if this film is visible in the U.S., if it has already come out or not. I encourage you and your other halves to go see it. It is not a Walt Disney film at all, and will wrench your gut sometimes.

You will leave some feathers in it, as we say in French. You COULD emerge from this film a changed person. Who knows ?

Reducing Waris's story to a petition against excision would be regretful.

Because Waris is an extraordinary flesh and blood person. She WILL NOT let herself be reduced.

Here is a woman who as a child fled across the Somalian desert, alone, on foot, traveling countless miles without food, without shoes to reach Mogadischiu (spelling ??) in order to escape an arranged marriage with a sixty year old toothless neighbor.

Who, through good fortune (...) becomes a slave in the Somalian embassy in London, and manages to avoid being sent home when the embassy closes.

Waris has exceptional intelligence and exceptional will. She knows how to be a reed AND an oak. Both.

She knows how to reach out to the people around her. To ASK for help.

And the people she meets cannot help but be affected by her grace.

Her beautiful smile. Her... innocence.

Chance (or God ?) is looking out for Waris.

The people she rubs up against can SEE how beautiful, how graceful, how exceptional she is.

And they want to help her. Even if she is dirty, uneducated, can barely speak a word of English. Even if she is black.

A miracle, Waris. She transforms (almost) everyone she touches. (That's what GRACE does. It transforms (almost)everyone you touch. And you too.)

I wept all the way through the film.

I... weep when beautiful things happen. I cannot help it.

Seeing how beautiful human beings can be makes me weep with wonder.

I did not weep so much at the "sad", "sordid" events in Waris's life. They were trying, and they made ME sad FOR Waris, but they did not manage to touch me the same way.

It was evident to me that Waris, as someone SO extraordinary would not remain content with the life of a top model, and that she would need to find a larger sense for her life.

It looks like she has found it.

She is the first person to have spoken publicly about excision in Africa.

The excerpts from her U.N. speech on the problem reveal how tactful, how compassionate how... resistant to reduction her view on the question is.

And how personally implicated she is.

Some ramblings...

What does it MEAN to be a woman ?

Am I a woman because I have ? between my legs ?

Is Waris a woman because she DOESN'T have ? between her legs ?

Why do WE mutilate our nature ? given bodies ?

Why.. DON'T we mutilate them ?

I wept in the film for myself. For feeling that being human, since the frontal cortex started mushrooming, means proving that we are DIFFERENT from the dumb animals.

Why do we do this ?

Why do we NEED to do this ?

I think I will NEVER be resigned to this...

Call it.. my PERSONAL revolt...

LJ Washington

Embedded?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GTEZFhjx4E

Magic

A short while ago, over there in the jungle, Hell quoted from one of my comments : "it seems that man is an animal that has to have his "fix" of gambling and counting angels on the head of a pin".

I corrected that statement to read that man is an animal that has to integrate risk into his daily living in order to feel fully alive. I don't think that this question can be reduced to the idea, necessarily pejorative in most people's minds, of a fix.

I did NOT say what form that that risk HAD to take. And I did not, I think, make any prescriptive statement about it. But I definitely believe that being vibrantly alive is a positive value.

By being vibrantly alive, I mean the capacity to feel pleasure, and pain INTENSELY, as each presents itself, and without seeking to dull down our senses, or our emotions. Without feeling that the intensity of our emotions is something bad, something that is not normal (pathological) and needs to be controlled at all times. Something that we need to get rid of with drugs, or therapy, for example.

Today I want to talk about another fundamental need that I see in human beings.

The need to believe in magic.

For me, our THWARTED AND DISQUALIFIED need for magic is one of the major forces at work in the... debt bubble.

There is something... miraculous about magic.

In shrink talk in France we talk about pensée magique. Magic thought.

Magic thought is part of our childhood development.

In this shrink context, magic thought means... having things appear out of nowhere.

It means... having lily bulbs spring up automatically the second after planting them, instead of HAVING TO WAIT for them to spend time in the earth over the winter. Being the king of the castle. CREATING the world out of nothing, just for us.

And as adults, we carry around with us at all times the memories of who we were as children, what we thought and believed.

Magic thought, since it is linked with our childhood, is a vital need for us. We NEED to SEE areas of our life where magic is at work. To feel empowered. To counter the feeling of helplessness that the passage of time engenders in us. To resist the despair that accompanies that helplessness.

Magic is at work in... sticking that credit card into the ATM machine and having the bills pop out instantaneously too.

I always say that things hang together.

That means that you can take a look at the smallest part of a human structure, and see in it the structure of the whole. (Right, Thai ?)

That means that if you look at what is going on at the ATM machines on a DAILY basis, ALL OVER THE WORLD, you can ALSO have an idea of what is going on... in sovereign default. At least, in the ATTITUDES that we have towards money, and where it comes from.

What does our daily experience with money tell us AT ONE LEVEL ?

That money comes from.. ATM machines (a little bit like spaghetti growing on trees, right ?).

Now... we may know SOMEWHERE that money does NOT come from ATM machines, but that does not mean that we know EVERYWHERE that money does not come from ATM machines.

(Remember the saying "out of sight, out of mind" ?)

Indeed.... I maintain that we have set up the ATM machines PRECISELY in order to maintain intact an infantile belief that money is magic. Or rather that... GETTING MONEY is magic.

Work is a process that implies duration. Investment too.

Work for money is like sticking the lilies into the ground, in a certain way.

But... sticking the card into the machine is NOTHING LIKE the lilies gig.

It is NOTHING LIKE work.

Now, one of my major premises is that in order of us to be able to think we HAVE to be able to perceive differences BETWEEN. (This premise is founded on the structure of our language.)

And this means that...

Money comes from work "means" something IN OPPOSITION TO... money does NOT come from work.

And working for money "means" something IN OPPOSITION TO ... working NOT for money.

No differences... no money.

No differences... no work.

This "means" that our social body is constantly creating new areas, new terrains where this NEED FOR DIFFERENCE is going to play out.

If you look at this closely you will see that... one of the functions of the financial markets is to materialize that area where "money does not come from work" plays out.

And... "money does not come from work" is a manifestation of our... infantile and oh so human desire for magic in our lives.

This little development is intended to show you, among other things that..

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BEING OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM WHEN IT IS SOCIETY.

There is NO outside society, for the reason that society is simultaneously defining what it is IN RELATION TO what it is NOT. A paradox, admittedly...

Now of course, this demonstration has NOT taken into account WHO does WHAT, and that is very important.

It is important to US, as individuals.

But think about it.

Is it important to the social body itself, WHO DOES WHAT, and where it comes from, as long as the DIFFERENCE is maintained ?

Perhaps not.

The social body does NOT feel, eat, sleep, get pregnant, die.

Na. It is not human, the social body.

It is us, and not us, at the same time.

Magic, right ?

Environment... Or when boundaries can put the squeeze on

... Today's post takes a line from every emergency physician's handbook: "life in a fishbowl".






Now imagine you are a fish swimming in that same fish bowl when the boundaries of your system suddenly implode (see below). What would happen?







... Or in a nod to JP, perhaps your fish tank manifold or boundary or "world" is a Calabi-Yau fractal (image below)?




Anyway, keep this (or these) images in your head as we shift aspect or viewpoint or frame of reference to New Age "holistic" thinking momentarily and see how our little fish- itself the sum of all its individual little fractal building blocks nested within further fractal building blocks- rests within a larger environment or world or manifold or boundary (chose your term).

PS- I can't but add how pleased I was to find an image of a fish in a matryoshka doll fish bowl. This is truly how my own mind tends to see this issue. For our little fish rests within a near infinite number of boundaries or manifolds, etc... many it simply cannot "see". Yet the boundaries of these larger systems or manifolds which the fish resides within are very real to our fish. And they are absolutely necessary for the formation of the fish's B-E condensate we call consciousness.

That's all before work today

Be well

Externalitites... A wonderful example of how the conservation of energy plays out in a shrinking system

I highly recommend the following NYT article.

We are seeing this same effect in medicine as well