Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • GETTING CLOSER : INFECTION AND THE MIND The dopamine theory of evolution has alw

    http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/infectious-behaviorBRILLIANT: GETTING CLOSER : INFECTION AND THE MIND

    The dopamine theory of evolution has always seemed the most plausible to me. Partly because our adaptation to Malaria seems somehow related to intelligence. Partly because the relationship between dopamine and histamine. And partly because of the relationship between allergies, depression and ARTISTIC (not autistic) behavior. And the relatively recent work that suggests that depression and schizophrenia are points on a spectrum disorder that seems to have some impact on weakening white matte, and inflammation that breaks the blood brain barrier.

    There is a little part of me that thinks that the dopamine related process of adaptation was not quite as successful as other selection processes, and we’ve been asymmetrically able to repair it over time because of geography and population density.

    Anyway, I’m hopeful that we will get very close to understanding just what it is that gives us this inflammation in our systems, and causes many of these autoimmune diseases that attack or as a byproduct, destroy our nervous systems.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 11:53:00 UTC

  • ON EDUCATION (Brilliant. Concise) Caplan is the best critic of expensive and ine

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/10/the_iron_laws_o.htmlCAPLAN ON EDUCATION

    (Brilliant. Concise)

    Caplan is the best critic of expensive and ineffective university educations.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 08:29:00 UTC

  • SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM Science helps

    SCIENCE AS RELIGION : THE CIVIC SOCIETY : THE CONTRAST OF BUDDHISM

    Science helps us understand causality:

    (a) incentives.

    (b) repetition.

    (c) emergent behavior

    (d) unintended consequences.

    I complain about most mystical religions for the same reason. Buddhism is the least bad of the bad.

    A friend just posted excerpts from the Dali Lama’s book. And while I find practitioners non-threatening, the argument troubles me. The argument that we should unite science and religion. Because the tradition in buddhist thought is that we explore the self. But, it is much less the process of exploration than it is the process of manufacture. The mind is emergent, not existent.

    If we look at the incentives it is a less political religion, because it is a more personal philosophy. We tend to attribute to buddhism less harm, because it is a personal, rather than political philosophy: a reformation of hinduism from the political to the personal.

    But there is no need to reconcile religion and science. We have. History as mythology. Heroes as gods. Politics as ritual. Science as personal philosophy. The participatory civil society so unique to the west. The civil society that our government, like the Chinese government, has actively destroyed by exporting responsibility for society to the bureaucracy.

    Now, it may be that this pagan religion of history, science and reason is focused on the group rather than the self. And it may be that this pagan religion is non-platonic. And it may be that this pagan religion is less INTUITIVE, but equally EMERGENT, and produces superior EXTERNALITIES by focusing human thought on cooperation, rather than introspection.

    It may be that this pagan religion is an aristocratic religion and that the buddhism, like most other religions, must be allegorical because it is not possible for all humans to grasp science and reason.

    It may be that the aristocratic political, and the commoner-introspective, are compatible. But I do not think that the civil society can tolerate it. And I this one of the reasons that buddhism feels more acceptable today to us – we have surrendered the civil society to the state, and become subjects, and can NO LONGER FIND SATISFACTION by participating in the civil society.

    Buddhism is escapism. Powerlessness. Acceptance of the world as it is. It masks the ease of intuitive internal obsession as the excuse not to engage in the difficulty of unintuitive, contemplation. It is so because the individual is indeed POWERLESS in the imperial bureaucratic society. Just as he is POWERFUL in the civil, participatory, society.

    Western man seeks to transform the world to his will. Eastern to accept and conform to the world. This is the fundamental difference between our cultures. They submit. We participate.

    The emergent mind in the practice of science produces the Flynn effect of making us all constantly smarter. And wealthier. And more healthy.

    The reason we are in conflict is that we are both scientifically AND we have surrendered the CIVIL SOCIETY to the BUREAUCRATIC STATE, and as such we seek a new religion, because our real religion CIVIC PARTICIPATION has been taken from us, in order to create worship of the state.

    The state did not kill christianity. Christianity was just ritual. The state killed our civic society.

    If you grasp this the will understand the interrelatedness of our mental models of the world, and the trivial simplicity of the organized religions compared to the CIVIL SOCIETY of the west, which, operating as city states of extended families, created the high trust society, and all the prosperity that came from it.

    – Curt Doolittle. Kiev.

    NOTE

    Allegorical language is the language of deception. It may be the language of self-deception. It may be the language of political deception. But it is the vehicle for deception. Science speaks in operational language so that we cannot so easily engage in deception under the guise of inarticulate language.

    Operational language

    Historical Language

    Allegorical Langauge

    Mystical Language

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-18 04:25:00 UTC

  • GRAND STRATEGY : AND A STRONGER ONE “The strategic landscape of the 21st century

    http://newamerica.net/node/77134WEAK GRAND STRATEGY : AND A STRONGER ONE

    “The strategic landscape of the 21st century has finally come into focus. The great global project is no longer to stop communism, counter terrorists, or promote a superficial notion of freedom. Rather, the world must accommodate 3 billion additional middle-class aspirants in two short decades — without provoking resource wars, insurgencies, and the devastation of our planet’s ecosystem. For this we need a strategy.”

    I HAVE A BETTER ONE

    Each of the ten main urban cores break into 10 region-states, while leaving the federal insurance, banking, and military intact. Devolve all law-making and taxation to the local regions.

    THAT IS A GRAND STRATEGY FOR A MORE DYNAMIC ECONOMY

    Everyone in the upper two percent will make haste to seize the opportunity.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 17:55:00 UTC

  • NEW HISTORIC MILITARY MISSIONS (giving the red army direction) —Addressing the

    http://csis.org/files/publication/twq12FallScobellNathan.pdfCHINA’S NEW HISTORIC MILITARY MISSIONS

    (giving the red army direction)

    —Addressing the Central Military Commission (CMC), Hu formally articulated a set of four extremely broad mission areas for the armed forces, subsequently dubbed the ‘‘New Historic Missions’’:

    1) ‘‘guarantee’’ the‘‘ruling position’’ of the Chinese Communist Party;

    2) safeguard China’s ‘‘national development’’;

    3) protect China’s ‘‘national interests’’; and

    4) preserve ‘‘world peace.’’

    These quickly became part of the lexicon of official Chinese defense documents and authoritative writings. —

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 17:45:00 UTC

  • PAUL KRUGMAN : High priest of The Church Of Political Kleptocracy It’s worth doi

    PAUL KRUGMAN : High priest of The Church Of Political Kleptocracy

    It’s worth doing a book on Krugman as an example of Kevin MacDonald’s criticism. I mean, this guy may realize he is a hack, but he may or may not realize that his INTUITIONS are immoral.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 12:44:00 UTC

  • IS ASPIENESS A DISORDER OR A GIFT? “Firstly, is autism really a disorder? For al

    IS ASPIENESS A DISORDER OR A GIFT?

    “Firstly, is autism really a disorder? For all of the arguments to say that it is, I would strongly suggest that there are counter arguments against.”

    “But, having said that, what about the counter-side: the honesty, the straight talking, the saying what they think as opposed to making things up, the very genuine nature found in so many individuals with autism? What about all of the extraordinary qualities rife within the population, the attention to detail, perfectionism, drive, and focus?”

    “I would say that the only reason we use the term disorder is because there are more NT (neurotypical) people than there are people with autism. “

    COMMENT

    Really, I have a very mild case. I have absurdly narrow focus, and an obsessive form of subconscious concentration, that I can barely control and can crush me physically and mentally if I don’t constantly keep it fed with problems to chew on. And while I can’t read subtle facial expressions it’s not that I can’t read facial expressions at all. And I can read body language exceptionally well – well enough to compensate. And I can understand any emotion that is verbally communicated to me. I just can’t physically empathize well.

    A GIFT

    I love other Aspies. We are AWESOME to each other, and endlessly fascinating to one another. 🙂

    But more importantly, all the significant accomplishments in my life are due largely to taking a long term focus, and letting my inner aspie just act like a jackhammer on any problem I throw at it. So to me, it’s bit of genetic magic that I just worship>

    My most difficult challenge was in learning how to speak to people in mutually communicative terms. It was extremely difficult.

    But with extra effort on that issue, everything else was much easier than it is for neurotypicals.

    WHY

    eh. I’m advocating for other folk like me.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 10:58:00 UTC

  • ASPIE-NESS (biology) “Some researchers have argued that ASDs are not primarily c

    ASPIE-NESS

    (biology)

    “Some researchers have argued that ASDs are not primarily caused by genes, but also by environmental factors. The theory is that a person is born with a vulnerability to an ASD, but the ASD develops only if that person is exposed to a specific environmental trigger.”

    Some suggested environmental triggers include:

    1) the mother having a viral or bacterial infection during pregnancy.

    There is evidence to support the first three factors listed above.

    Women exposed to a rubella infection during pregnancy are estimated to have a 7% risk of giving birth to a child with an ASD.

    (I had rubella and whooping cough before age 4.)

    2) The mother smoking during pregnancy

    Women who smoke daily throughout early pregnancy are 40% more likely to give birth to a child with an ASD.

    (My mother smoked during pregnancy.)

    3) The age of the father”

    “New fathers who are older than 40 are estimated to be six times more likely to father a child with an ASD than fathers under 40. This is possibly because a man’s genetic material is more at risk of developing mutations as he gets older.”

    (the behavior runs in my family, but my father was 25. All of my kids have the behavior too.)

    ( – from N.I.H.)

    OTHERS

    4) There is some relationship between gut bacteria and brain development that we don’t understand. Some of us seem to be deficient in it.

    5) I am still suspicious of the salts of glutamate in western diets given that we know they’re neurotoxic.

    OBSERVATION

    6) It is absolutely CRIMINAL to put girls and boys in the same classrooms at the same age and expect the same behavior and it causes damage to male brain development.

    REFERENCES

    The article summary below can be translated and interpreted as: it takes a lot longer to develop a male brain, possibly because in-utero male development is achieved by delaying or impeding the development of amygdalar and hippocampal regions. Over the first few years of life this delta is seen in female early maturity and male later maturity. IN this sense, the construction of ‘male’, which is what ‘aspieness’ is an exaggeration of, is accomplished not by DIFFERENT structures, but by the emergent difference of a brain the develops at a different STAGE in development.

    1) “Knowledge of amygdalar and hippocampal development as they pertain to sex differences and laterality would help to understand not only brain development but also the relationship between brain volume and brain functions. However, few studies investigated development of these two regions, especially during infancy. The purpose of this study was to examine typical volumetric trajectories of amygdala and hippocampus from infancy to early adulthood by predicting sexual dimorphism and laterality. We performed a cross-sectional morphometric MRI study of amygdalar and hippocampal growth from 1 month to 25 years old, using 109 healthy individuals. The findings indicated significant non-linear age-related volume changes, especially during the first few years of life, in both the amygdala and hippocampus regardless of sex. The peak ages of amygdalar and hippocampal volumes came at the timing of preadolescence (9–11 years old). The female amygdala reached its peak age about one year and a half earlier than the male amygdala did. In addition, its rate of growth change decreased earlier in the females. Furthermore, both females and males displayed rightward laterality in the hippocampus, but only the males in the amygdala. The robust growth of the amygdala and hippocampus during infancy highlight the importance of this period for neural and functional development. The sex differences and laterality during development of these two regions suggest that sex-related factors such as sex hormones and functional laterality might affect brain development.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 09:50:00 UTC

  • WISDOM: JUSTIFICATION “In our culture, justificationism is axiomatic. The people

    WISDOM: JUSTIFICATION

    “In our culture, justificationism is axiomatic. The people who’ve had the intelligence and insight to question it are barely understood.” -Ken Hopf.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 08:35:00 UTC

  • (silly)(sentimental) I try not to get into the humor business. And I’m hoping to

    (silly)(sentimental)

    I try not to get into the humor business. And I’m hoping to cut down to just more serious articles when I can. But this satirical criticism of ‘without government who will build the roads?!’ is too priceless to pass up. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-10-17 06:11:00 UTC