It Will Take More than Willpower to Reverse a Rising Tide of Stupidity

Is the ancient virtue of willpower still relevant in the modern age?

We eat, drink, smoke and gamble too much, max out our credit cards, fall into dangerous liaisons and become addicted to heroin, cocaine and e-mail.

...In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money. _NYT

A more scientific term for willpower is executive function (EF), coordinated in the prefrontal lobes of the brain. Together with intelligence (IQ), levels of EF powerfully determine life success over the years. EF can be improved by training in children, but such training should occur between the ages of 4 and 7 for maximum benefit.

The interaction of willpower and stupidity is more complex than most people understand. First, what do we mean by "stupidity?"

"A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses."

"Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation."

"Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake."

"Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid." _Science20

Stupidity arises from multiple causes. Low intelligence, spite, ignorance, laziness (lack of willpower), miscalculation, and unavoidable constraint propagation (bad luck) are just a few of the many causes of stupidity and stupid people.

In the United States, stupidity has become concentrated near seats of power such as Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Government is one obvious host and purveyor of mass stupidity, along with all other institutions which are closely involved with government -- such as labour unions, news media, education, financial and economic institutions, law enforcement, the courts etc. Even the military -- which believe it or not is the most competent branch of government -- has been infiltrated by politically correct stupidity via social promotion of PC-favoured officers and the enforcement of politically correct policies.

Labour unions have become the seat of stupidity in a particular way recently, thanks to the union-friendly Obama regime. A violent storming, vandalism, and assault of a port in Washington state goes unpunished by government officials. While warming up a crowd for President Obama, Jimmy Hoffa Jr. tells Obama to "take out the son of a bitches," referring to Tea Party members and Republicans, and neither Hoffa nor the Obama White House will apologise for this rather blatant lapse of civility in the midst of an official Obama event. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka dictates to Obama what he needs to say in his jobs speech before a joint session of congress -- encouraging the president to "go to the mat" -- and is rewarded for his presumption by being seated next to Michelle Obama for the president's speech.

These are all examples of stupidity by labour union officials and thugs. But many more similar examples occur on a regular basis. If the general public were to become widely aware of this stupidity, the political fortunes of Mr. Obama and those close to him would deteriorate even more quickly than at present. But for now, the news media continues to overlook and cover up the mistakes of Obama and his friends.

Mr. Obama's stupidity is not only in his friends and hangers on, but is engrained in every policy that he has pursued since being inaugurated. His war against the private sector, his war against energy, his promotion of a bankrupting "green jobs agenda," his vilifying of national allies and his cozying up with national antagonists, his diverting of scarce national assets into the purses of political cronies, his irreversible expansion of government mandate and government debt, his unprecedentedly divisive effect on society -- all of these evidences of stupidity and more should be enough to portray Obama's administration as "the stupid regime."

It should be obvious that willpower is not a simple antidote to stupidity. In fact, stupid people often pursue their stupid agendas with the utmost will.

It is true that if the masses had exerted more willpower in their oversight of government and government officials, that this massive clusterfuck could have never grown so bad so quickly. But that was then, and this is now. What do we do now?

Can the example problem -- the rise of stupidity in US government and society -- be solved within the existing political and societal structure, or will entirely new structures and forms of organisation have to be constructed de novo?

This question will be explored in future articles.

Cross-posted to abu al-fin

A Nuclear Power Plant for Nigeria? What a Wonderful World . . .

Nigeria's Federal Government is set to sign an agreement with the Russian Federation for the building of Nigeria's first nuclear power plant. Nigeria is an oil-rich African nation which is looking to diversify its sources of energy and electrical power. Nigeria has been seeking help from Russia for some time in this regard, and Nigeria's leaders are somewhat unhappy with Russia's slow response to their requests.

Modern nuclear power plants are quite safe when properly designed, built, and operated. In Japan's recent deadly natural disaster, well over 20,000 Japanese people lost their lives from a massive earthquake and tsunami, but none died as a result of a serious nuclear power plant shutdown and partial core meltdown. When such rare and unexpected events occur, the right people to cope with the situation must be on hand.

The chart on top shows the IQ distribution curves for four fuzzily defined racial groups: Asian, White, Hispanic, and Black. These curves are approximations based upon the best scientific evidence available. The second chart above shows a global IQ map by nation, again using the best available scientific evidence to produce the chart. In both charts it is clear that blacks and Africans lag behind all other "races" and nations tested. Why is this important in regard to a nuclear power plant in Nigeria? Look at the chart below:

This chart describes the IQ requirements for different types of professions, occupations, and vocations. If a population's IQ mean and IQ distribution curve provides an inadequate number of persons bright enough to become qualified engineers, technicians, scientists, etc, that population on its own will find it very difficult to maintain a high technology infrastructure. In terms of nuclear power plants, the personnel requirements are particularly critical in the cases where things go wrong.

It has been argued that Africans score poorly on IQ test for reasons having nothing to do with underlying intelligence. It is very important to test this hypothesis using the very best scientific tools available. If black and African populations have been judged unfairly in this regard, it is of utmost importance that this injustice be corrected.

Unfortunately, modern politically correct culture only wants to sweep the issue under the rug, and deny its importance entirely -- without performing the proper scientific experiments. That would be most unwise in this age of rapid scientific and technological progress -- when the mishandling of modern technologies could lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and other lingering problems.

This series of blog postings from "Race, Genes, and Disparity," discusses a way in which this uncertainty could be settled fairly and scientifically. Objective criteria for testing should be devised and implemented, so that modern societies can face important issues with the information that they need.

The enhancing of human intelligence is becoming a critically important issue for all societies. Nigeria has recently made the cognitive enhancer Vinpocetine available to Nigerians in an effort to bring the "national IQ" up to global standards. Other, more effective methods of increasing IQ are likely to come along in the near future. Even if western nations do not approve such therapies for use by normal persons, it is likely that nations of the third world and emerging world (BRICS etc) will have no such qualms about their use.

Whether the Russians build a nuclear power plant for Nigeria, is up to the Russians and the Nigerians. One might ask whether the Nigerian government will be willing to pay Russian engineers, technicians, electricians, welders, turbine specialists, etc to maintain the power plant indefinitely? If not, who will be minding the nuclear power plant?

The same issue is likely to emerge in other African nations, attempting agreements with Russia, China, India, etc. for the building of advanced technologies which require elite scientific and technological oversight. If the African nation is willing and able to pay for the technology, what business is it to outsiders -- as long as the technology being sold is not nuclear technology or other technology of mass death?

Africa is littered with crumbling and rusting technological projects built by colonial powers and outside interests. They are rusting and crumbling because they were not maintained. The neglect of proper maintenance is typical of the third world environment, and besides suggesting a low cognitive complement, the phenomena of widespread neglect also suggests a low executive function (EF) complement. Low IQ and Low EF: Not a promising combination for the wise development of potentially deadly technologies. Think about it.

Motivation

World Travel Photos
Most of what you see, read, and hear about "motivation" is pure horseshite. From Tony Robbins to Dan Pink to your motivational consultant, speaker, or psychologist of choice, most of the motivational industry is 99% scam and 1% truism with propagandist overtones.

What is motivation?

Using the online etymological dictionary, let's start with "move:"
late 13c., from Anglo-Fr. movir (O.Fr. moveir), from L. movere "move, set in motion" (pp. motus, frequentative motare), from PIE base *meue- (cf., Skt. kama-muta "moved by love" and probably mivati "pushes, moves;" Lith. mauti "push on;" Gk. ameusasthai "to surpass," amyno "push away"). Meaning "to affect with emotion" is from c.1300; that of "to prompt or impel toward some action" is from late 14c. Sense of "to change one's place of residence" is from 1707. Meaning "to propose (something) in an assembly, etc.," is first attested mid-15c. Related: Moved; moving. The noun in the gaming sense is from 1650s. Phrase on the move "in the process of going from one place to another" is from 1796; get a move on "hurry up" is Amer.Eng. colloquial from 1888.

Now, look at the root "motive:"
mid-14c., "something brought forward," from O.Fr. motif (n.), from motif (fem. motive), adj., "moving," from M.L. motivus "moving, impelling," from L. motus, pp. of movere "to move" (see move). Meaning "that which inwardly moves a person to behave a certain way" is from early 15c.

Now, "motivate:"
1885, "to stimulate toward action," from motive + -ate (2); perhaps modeled on Fr. motiver or Ger. motivieren. Related: Motivated; motivating.

Finally, "motivation:"
1873, from motivate + -tion. Psychological use, "inner or social stimulus for an action," is from 1904.

And ever since the invention of "social science", psychologists, consultants, public speakers, coaches, and other "motivators" have been milking and modifying the connotations and meanings of the word -- for profit, control, and personal power.

Let's take a step backward, and look at the word "motion:"
late 14c., from O.Fr. motion (13c.), from L. motionem (nom. motio) "a moving, an emotion," from motus, pp. of movere "to move" (see move). The verb sense in parliamentary procedure first recorded 1747; with meaning "to guide or direct by a sign, gesture, movement" it is attested from 1787. Related: Motioned; motioning.

Now let's go the extra mile and add an "e" to get "emotion:"
1570s, "a (social) moving, stirring, agitation," from M.Fr. émotion (16c.), from O.Fr. emouvoir "stir up" (12c.), from L. emovere "move out, remove, agitate," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + movere "to move" (see move). Sense of "strong feeling" is first recorded 1650s; extended to any feeling by 1808.

Psychology 101 Motivation
A person's motivations begin with basic needs and drives, which take firmer shape as the brain develops in early childhood. Social motivations come into the picture quite early, as well, with the need to convince others to take care of your young infant self. These motivations and their associated behaviours naturally grow more sophisticated with time and experience. According to Abraham Maslow (see chart above) a person's needs (and motivations) will climb a pyramid of sophistication (and enlightenment?) as he learns to satisfy each successive level of the pyramid.

Throughout our lives, we work toward achieving the top of the pyramid, self actualization, or the realization of all of our potential. As we move up the pyramid, however, things get in the way which slow us down and often knock us backward. Imagine working toward the respect and recognition of your colleagues and suddenly finding yourself out of work and homeless. Suddenly, you are forced backward and can no longer focus your attention on your work due to the need for finding food and shelter for you and your family.

According to Maslow, nobody has ever reached the peak of his pyramid. We all may strive for it and some may even get close, but no one has achieved full self-actualization. Self-actualization means a complete understanding of who you are, a sense of completeness, of being the best person you could possibly be. _Psychology101

Motivation is not a simple phenomenon. It is a fractal combination of the genetic, the social, the phsyiological, the psychological, and the experiential over a person's lifetime. Motivation is mixed up in in everything we do.

Let's pause a moment to take a look at a fascinating study done recently by psychologists at U. Penn. which makes an intriguing connection between IQ scores and the motivation of the IQ test taker.

They looked at 46 previous studies of more than 2,000 children to see if monetary incentives had any bearing on the result.

They found that on average a financial reward improved the score by 10 points but that higher values – above $10 (about £7) – could be rewarded with a 20 point increase. The size of the increase seemed to be proportional to the amount of reward offered.

A second study of 500 boys found that those who showed signs of boredom and lack of motivation – for example yawning or looking around during the test – scored lower test marks. Angela Lee Duckworth, a psychologist who led the study, said: "IQ scores may predict various outcomes in life, but in part for reasons that intelligence tests weren't designed for.

"I hope that social scientists, educators, and policy-makers turn a more critical eye to any kind of measure, intelligence or otherwise as how hard people try could be as important to success in life as intellectual ability itself."

The findings were reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. _Telegraph

It makes sense that someone who is more motivated during the taking of a test, will be more focused, and might perhaps score higher than he would otherwise have done. But it is also true that motivation is at least partially genetically determined -- just like IQ. Motivation is related to executive function (EF) of the frontal lobes of the brain -- which is claimed by researchers to be between 50% and 90%+ heritable. IQ itself is probably between 50% and 80% heritable, in modern affluent societies. So motivation is not separable from the genetics and brain function which underlie both IQ and EF.

But motivation, executive function, and (to a limited extent) IQ can all be improved with timely training. Here is a popular occupational overview of motivation:

1. Consequences – Never use threats. They’ll turn people against you. But making people aware of the negative consequences of not getting results (for everyone involved) can have a big impact. This one is also big for self motivation. If you don’t get your act together, will you ever get what you want?
2. Pleasure – This is the old carrot on a stick technique. Providing pleasurable rewards creates eager and productive people.
3. Performance incentives – Appeal to people’s selfish nature. Give them the opportunity to earn more for themselves by earning more for you.
4. Detailed instructions – If you want a specific result, give specific instructions. People work better when they know exactly what’s expected.

5. Short and long term goals – Use both short and long term goals to guide the action process and create an overall philosophy.
6. Kindness – Get people on your side and they’ll want to help you. Piss them off and they’ll do everything they can to screw you over.
7. Deadlines – Many people are most productive right before a big deadline. They also have a hard time focusing until that deadline is looming overhead. Use this to your advantage by setting up a series of mini-deadlines building up to an end result.

8. Team Spirit – Create an environment of camaraderie. People work more effectively when they feel like part of team — they don’t want to let others down.
10. Recognize achievement – Make a point to recognize achievements one-on-one and also in group settings. People like to see that their work isn’t being ignored.
11. Personal stake – Think about the personal stake of others. What do they need? By understanding this you’ll be able to keep people happy and productive.
12. Concentrate on outcomes – No one likes to work with someone standing over their shoulder. Focus on outcomes — make it clear what you want and cut people loose to get it done on their own.
13. Trust and Respect – Give people the trust and respect they deserve and they’ll respond to requests much more favorably.
14. Create challenges – People are happy when they’re progressing towards a goal. Give them the opportunity to face new and difficult problems and they’ll be more enthusiastic.
15. Let people be creative – Don’t expect everyone to do things your way. Allowing people to be creative creates a more optimistic environment and can lead to awesome new ideas.

16. Constructive criticism – Often people don’t realize what they’re doing wrong. Let them know. Most people want to improve and will make an effort once they know how to do it.
17. Demand improvement – Don’t let people stagnate. Each time someone advances raise the bar a little higher (especially for yourself).
18. Make it fun – Work is most enjoyable when it doesn’t feel like work at all. Let people have fun and the positive environment will lead to better results.
19. Create opportunities – Give people the opportunity to advance. Let them know that hard work will pay off.

20. Communication – Keep the communication channels open. By being aware of potential problems you can fix them before a serious dispute arises.
21. Make it stimulating – Mix it up. Don’t ask people to do the same boring tasks all the time. A stimulating environment creates enthusiasm and the opportunity for “big picture” thinking.
Master these key points and you’ll increase motivation with a bit of hard work. _PicktheBrain

Certainly some good ideas there, and more enlightened than the typical employer (or teacher or parent or government) to be sure.

Psychology Today articles on motivation

Dopamine, Learning, and Motivation (abstract)

Individual differences in extraversion and dopamine genetics predict neural reward responses (abstract)

Motivation is one of the prime pillars of life success. Along with self-discipline, executive function, cognitive strengths, and particular personality traits, motivation can make the difference between poverty and affluence, a full life or an impoverished one. Out of all the pillars of life success, motivation is probably among the most amenable to outside influence and reinforcement.

Motivation can be a strength -- or it can be a weakness if it is directed toward dysfunctional activities. Motivation can also be a "backdoor to the brain" for sophisticated persons who wish to control the individual's actions. Anyone who understands a person's deep motivations, will be able to control him to some extent.

The effect of motivational speakers is too often like the effect of Chinese food -- immediately filling, but all too quickly losing its effect. But when motivational sessions are combined with clever propaganda -- as in "consciousness raising," labour union action, classroom indoctrination, faux environmental brainwashing, strict religious training, or other political and quasi-political activity -- it is often the propaganda message which gets through and "takes," subliminally. Deep motivations penetrate below the level of conscious rationality, into the level of basic and mid-pyramid needs.

It is crucial for parents to give their children the keys to their own motivations as soon as it is practical, so that others will not be able to control them. If the parents are too immature to understand the why and how of doing that, the grandparents or uncles and aunts would be the next line of defense. If no one in the family or close circle of friends has risen high enough on the pyramid to be able to help the child -- if the child is at the mercy of popular culture, government schools, and society at large -- the Idiocracy is likely to have gotten yet another recruit.

What Compelled 20+ Black Men to Rape One 11 year old Girl?

Gang Rape Suspects
The gang rape allegedly occurred months ago, but is just now hitting the news more widely, due to attempts by NY Times reporters and black activists to make the accused into victims, and the 11 yo victim into the perpetrator.

Steve Sailer takes the NYTimes to task for its one-sided coverage of the story. And for good reason. More from Jezebel.com, which does a better job of covering the story than the NYTimes!

In December, police learned of the assault when an elementary school student told a teacher about a cellphone video featuring one of her classmates. Authorities say that on November 28, the girl was offered a ride by a 19-year-old who took her to his house, then ordered her to take her clothes off, saying she's be beaten if she didn't. She was raped by several men and boys, then moved to the trailer where more assaults occurred as the attackers took cellphone videos and photographs.

The New York Times published a story today about how the case has torn apart the town, and the paper chooses to focus on the plight of the accused men. The author says the town is wondering "how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?" as if they were tricked into gang raping a child. Then there's this quote:

"It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."

Though, of course, the accused are innocent until proven guilty, it's hard to believe that anyone's first concern would be about how the men will live with what they did. It's even more incredible that the Times decided to include the quote in the story, but it doesn't end there. _Jezebel

Black men commit far more violent crime than men of other races, although the reasons for this difference are not entirely clear. Some attribute the differences to hormonal levels, other focus on low intelligence levels. Al Fin sociologists feel that "a culture of resentment" running rampant inside black communities and cultures is at least partially responsible for high crime rates among black men.

One additional factor which must be discussed is the issue of "impulse control", one part of pre-frontal lobe "executive function." Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi published a detailed look at the relationship between impulse control and crime. It should be noted that executive function -- like IQ -- is highly heritable. It should also be noted that the developmental window for optimising executive function through training, is open between the ages of roughly 4 to 8 years of age. In communities where the illegitimacy rate is roughly 70%, early childhood training is likely to be poor to non-existent.

Here's a quick look at one particular hormone, testosterone:

Take testosterone in a prison. Dabbs' team found that criminal violence and aggressive dominance among women in prison is linked to higher levels of testosterone. An earlier study of male inmates found testosterone levels to be highest among male inmates convicted of violent crimes such as rape, murder and assault. Variables such as age, social factors and other hormones were seen as important in these studies.

Take testosterone and 'delinquency'. Comparing college students with men and women of similar age in a "delinquent urban subculture" (identified as skinheads, bouncers, bartenders, strippers), "delinquents" had higher testosterone levels than college students. (Personally, boxing the range of research subjects into a "delinquent urban subculture" sounds questionable, but anyway...)

Take testosterone in the workplace. Dabbs' team examined the salivary testosterone in seven vocation groups of men, as well as an unemployed group. They found that actors and footy players had higher levels than religious ministers. Dabbs related testosterone to dominance and antisocial tendencies, which in turn, he suggests, effect vocational preferences in subtle ways. Other studies reveal traditional 'white collar' workers possess lower testosterone than traditional 'blue collar' workers. _abc.net

Many more factors are involved, and free testosterone is not the only androgenic hormone in circulation. In addition, androgenic receptors come in different types, and different receptor types may influence behavioural reaction to any given testosterone level differently.

We know from examples such as the Wichita Massacre and the Knoxville Horror, that there is almost certainly an element of racial hatred involved when such gang rapes are combined with murder. Young women students who are raped and murdered on and near college campuses in American cities are often the victim of whatever combination of racial hatred, hormonal imbalance, low impulse control, and low intelligence which may drive young black male crime.

In the case of the young Texas girl, at least she was not murdered. I am personally more concerned about her future welfare than that of the rapists. It is true, however that society is going to have to live with these bad boys for many years. So it would be best for society to stop covering up this type of crime, stop making excuses for the perpetrators, and get to the bottom of what is driving this all-too-common type of interracial crime.

More: Here is the NYTimes story about the gang rape, published about 3 months after the assault, written more like a PC cover-up than a belated news report. Contrast this excuse-making "coverage" with the unrelenting attacks by the NYT against the Duke lacrosse team players who were later found innocent of all charges against them.

Update -- 14March2011 -- Meanwhile in Sweden: 20 Muslim Immigrants Gang Rape 11 yo Swedish Girl and Gang Rape and Genocide in Cote d'Ivoire and on it goes in ghetto after township after shanty town

Do Junk Food Be Makin Kids Stupid?

ImageSource
A study recently published in the BMJ's Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found a small but significant IQ difference between 8 year olds who had been raised largely on "junk food" diets, and those who had been fed a "health conscious" diet most of their lives.

The conclusion, published on Monday, comes from a long-term investigation into 14,000 people born in western England in 1991 and 1992 whose health and well-being were monitored at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half.

Parents of the children were asked to fill out questionnaires that, among other things, detailed the kind of food and drink their children consumed.

Three dietary patterns emerged: one was high in processed fats and sugar; then there was a "traditional" diet high in meat and vegetables; and finally a "health-conscious" diet with lots of salad, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice.

When the children were eight and a half, their IQ was measured using a standard tool called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale.

Of the 4,000 children for which there were complete data, there was a significant difference in IQ among those who had had the "processed" as opposed to the "health-conscious" diets in early childhood.

The 20 percent of children who ate the most processed food had an average IQ of 101 points, compared with 106 for the 20 percent of children who ate the most "health-conscious" food.

"It's a very small difference, it's not a vast difference," said one of the authors, Pauline Emmett of the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol.

"But it does make them less able to cope with education, less able to cope with some of the things in life." _France24_via_DiversityIsChaos

In this type of population study, it is important that as many potential "confounders" be identified and corrected for, as possible. Ethnicity and socioeconomic status are particular confounders for IQ. Without adequate adjustments and corrections for confounding at all stages of the study, the results will not be particularly reliable -- even with such a large number of subjects included.

The current study, based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, uses data on children's diet reported by parents in food-frequency questionnaires at 3, 4, 7 and 8.5 years of age. Dietary patterns were identified using principal-components analysis and scores computed at each age. IQ was assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children at 8.5 years. Data on a number of confounders were collected, and complete data were available for 3966 children. _PaperAbstract

Are the results of this study meaningful? Correlation is not causation, particularly when so many factors come together to form a child's IQ score on any given testing day. Multiple IQ scores would be more helpful than a single score, and naturally every little detail of the study's methodology would need to be dissected. Still, 4,000 subjects can provide a study with a lot of "power." If the scores were adjusted and corrected for SES and ethnicity, the findings may be important.

As always, it should be noted that childhood IQ is likely to change as a person grows to adulthood. And in terms of life success, sound executive function (EF) of the frontal lobes is more important overall, than high IQ -- although both sound EF and high IQ together work better than either one singly. A pity that there is no single easy way to test for the many parameters of a sound EF.

Human or Zombie? The Answer May Surprise You

SD

Can you focus your mind on the things that need doing, or does your mind seem to focus itself on whatever pops up? Humans spend most of their lives immersed in everyday trance states -- almost indistinguishable from the mental states of zombies. It happens when the mind goes on auto-pilot, and may occur on the road, at work, in a lecture, or almost anywhere the mind feels safe enough to "zone."

Mindfulness is the opposite of a trance zone. Mindfulness is on the human end of the spectrum, with trance zones being on the zombie end. If a child is raised well, she will be the master of her attentional apparatus rather than the zombie slave. But if she is like most children, she will grow up to join the zombie horde of like-minded consumers of the trite and stylish fads of the mainstream.

In fact, most people fall into a number of destructive thought patterns and habits. Once the instigating thought or event occurs, it can be almost impossible to turn the mind away from the compelling grip of the habitual pattern. Mental exhaustion can easily set in after just a few seconds of such struggle, leaving the person defeated, falling once again into the same pattern.

It is possible to learn self-control, even as an adult who was not carefully trained as a child. But it generally takes more work than most people are willing to put in. The challenge for therapists and counselors is to make such late training of attention and executive functions fun. The alternative is a life of zombie trance zoning, leading to self-defeating habits.

Interestingly, the brain wave patterns of persons in hypnotic trance are different from the wave patterns of someone in a deep meditative state (PDF). I suspect that the wave pattern would be even more complex for persons specifically trained in mindfulness meditation.

We all have brains, but they do not all work the same. Very rarely do they work at optimal levels, regardless of the genetic and environmental advantages we may have been given.

Are you human or zombie, in the way you spend most of your time? What about your children? Would you spend $200,000 to send a zombie child to university, to concentrate on queer ethnic studies and semiotic basket weaving -- between binge drinking, fornicating, and academic lobotomising? If you did, what sort of person would he turn out to be?

The Brain: Wired and Introspective

ImageSource

The brain contains tens of billions of neurons, and trillions of synaptic connections (plus unknown numbers of other types of connections). Scientists from several universities are collaborating in an attempt to improve our understanding of the brain's "wiring diagram." At its best, it will still be crude compared to the real thing, but it's a start.

Working with $30 million and just half a decade, the Human Connectome Project aims to create a first-of-its-kind map of the brain’s complex circuitry, detailing every connection linking thousands of different regions of the brain.

The team consists of 33 researchers at nine different institutions, including Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota, the lead universities in the effort and the sites where much of the brain-scanning will take place. Their success will depend in part on another HCP grant to another research consortium headed up by Massachusetts General Hospital and UCLA that will develop advanced, custom brain scanners with higher spatial resolution and increased sensitivity. The funds themselves come from various bodies within the National Institutes of Health.

How big is the project? It’s at least 90 billion neurons big, but that doesn’t even convey the enormity and complexity of the human brain. There are something like 150 trillion synapses – the connections between neurons across which signals pass – that electrical signals must negotiate. These neurons and the connections between them make up the circuitry of the brain, and the HCP aims to create a better picture of that circuitry than we’ve ever had before. _PS

ImageSource

But brain researchers cannot sit around on their hands until others provide them with a more detailed map of the brain. They must continue to muddle through with what they've got, in trying to understand how the brain creates the world. One interesting aspect of brain function is the variation in accuracy between different persons' judgement of the accuracy of their own educated guesses. Scientists at University College London looked at this question of introspective accuracy recently.

A specific region of the brain appears to be larger in individuals who are good at turning their thoughts inward and reflecting upon their decisions, according to new research published in the journal Science. This act of introspection -- or "thinking about your thinking" -- is a key aspect of human consciousness, though scientists have noted plenty of variation in peoples' abilities to introspect...

...To begin, Fleming and Weil recruited 32 healthy human participants and showed them two screens, each containing six patterned patches. One of the screens, however, contained a single patch that was brighter than all the rest. The researchers asked the participants to identify which screen contained the brighter patch, and then to rate how confident they felt about their final answer. After the experiment, participants' brains were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

Fleming and the researchers designed the task to be difficult, so that participants were never completely sure if their answer was correct. They reasoned that participants who are good at introspection would be confident after making correct decisions about the patch, and less confident when they were incorrect about the patch. By adjusting the task, the researchers ensured all of the participants' decision-making abilities were on par with each others'—only the participants' knowledge of their own decision-making abilities differed.

"It's like that show, 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'" said Weil. "An introspective contestant will go with his or her final answer when they are quite sure of it, and perhaps phone a friend when they are unsure. But, a contestant who is less introspective would not be as effective at judging how likely their answer is to be correct."

So, although each participant performed equally well at the task, their introspective abilities did vary considerably, the researchers confirmed. By comparing the MRI scans of each participant's brain, they could then identify a correlation between introspective ability and the structure of a small area of the prefrontal cortex. An individual's meta-cognitive, or "higher-thinking," abilities were significantly correlated with the amount of gray matter in the right anterior prefrontal cortex and the structure of neighboring white matter, Rees and his team found.

...The new study will be published in the 17 September issue of the journal Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society. _PO

This variation of introspective accuracy and depth is likely to play a crucial role in the development of cultures and civilisations. There should be little question that both environment and genetics play a role in the ultimate complexity of the pre-frontal cortex and other cortical and sub-cortical centers which are involved. Testing the participants additionally for both IQ and executive functions (EF) would almost certainly reveal strong correlations between the three concepts.

Thinkers who develop complex cognitive structures must be able to "hold" multiple thoughts in their heads simultaneously, while weighing the "fitness" of slight variations in the cognitive models. These models must often be of a dynamic nature -- particularly for engineers and scientists of several types.

Popular culture tends to downplay the importance of the mental skills of top-level theorists and explorers of knowledge fields, but these are the people who determine the ongoing prosperity and security of a civilisation over time.

Western civilisation is going through a period of time when generations worth of capital is being skimmed and scavenged by a de facto ruling class, which values political correctness over real world validity -- as a matter of ruling class survival. That is too, too bad for the rest of us, who very much need for our institutions to be under the discipline of real world checks and balances....


Given how badly the ruling class is fucking up, I am mulling over a series of posts on the topic of "peaceful insurrection." You may want to consider what that term might mean. Hint: I am referring to something a bit more determined and forceful than the "Tea Party" type of anti-big-government political movement. Yet still peaceful. How can that be? More later.