Monday, July 30, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Is Consciousness the Process of Creating a Shared Illusion of Reality?
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-ghost-in-the-machine-unraveling-the-mystery-of-consciousness?page=all
Glia More Important than Presumed...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marijuana-reveals-memory-mechanism
Friday, July 13, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
"Read My Lips, (Corners of the Mouth, Eyes, Face, Head-Tilt, etc.) to Measure My Gullibility?"
Will Marketing Engineers Co-Opt Another Teaching Aid?
Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses - tech - 28 May 2012 - New Scientist
Face-reading software to judge the mood of the masses - tech - 28 May 2012 - New Scientist
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Significant Study in Autism Research
Oxytocin improves brain function in children with autism
A Yale Child Study Center research team that includes postdoctoral fellow Ilanit Gordon and Kevin Pelphrey, the Harris Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, will present the results on Saturday, May 19 at 3 p.m. at the International Meeting for Autism Research.
“Our findings provide the first, critical steps toward devising more effective treatments for the core social deficits in autism, which may involve a combination of clinical interventions with an administration of oxytocin,” said Gordon. “Such a treatment approach will fundamentally improve our understanding of autism and its treatment.”
Social-communicative dysfunctions are a core characteristic of autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder that can have an enormous emotional and financial burden on the affected individual, their families, and society.
Gordon said that while a great deal of progress has been made in the field of autism research, there remain few effective treatments and none that directly target the core social dysfunction. Oxytocin has recently received attention for its involvement in regulating social abilities because of its role in many aspects of social behavior and social cognition in humans and other species.
To assess the impact of oxytocin on the brain function, Gordon and her team conducted a first-of-its-kind, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on children and adolescents aged 7 to 18 with ASD. The team members gave the children a single dose of oxytocin in a nasal spray and used functional magnetic resonance brain imaging to observe its effect.
The team found that oxytocin increased activations in brain regions known to process social information. Gordon said these brain activations were linked to tasks involving multiple social information processing routes, such as seeing, hearing, and processing information relevant to understanding other people.
Other authors on the study include Randi H. Bennett, Brent C. vander Wyk, James F. Leckman, and Ruth Feldman.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Breakthrough in quantum communication
Einstein's "Spooky action at a distance:" teleportation of quantum information over great distances equals a quantum internet containing information composed of zeros and ones plus a third state, combined zero-ones. Not only increased size and speed of information transmission back and forth, but the possibility of phenomena heretofore only possible in the imagination. What can you imagine?
Breakthrough in quantum communication
Breakthrough in quantum communication
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Does Excessive Impulse Control Lead to Rebound Risky Behavior?
Too dog tired to avoid danger: Like humans, dogs engage in riskier behaviors when their self-control is depleted
Too dog tired to avoid danger: Like humans, dogs engage in riskier behaviors when their self-control is depleted
Too dog tired to avoid danger: Like humans, dogs engage in riskier behaviors when their self-control is depleted
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Do You Believe the Murdochian Shot Fired by the Financial Times in Defense of of Goldman Sachs?
FINANCIAL TIMES
News Alert
March 18, 6:08pm
THE PERILS OF PARTING SHOTS
Greg Smith's diatribe in The New York Times made for one of the most savage public exit interviews of all time.
But the oddest thing about it is that if you strip out the rage, the noise and the baggage, what he actually said about Goldman Sachs was perfectly ordinary. Not only were his accusations ones that all vaguely disaffected workers could make of their former employers, they are charges that most of us, happily employed, could equally level against our current ones.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1616d708-6eb6-11e1-b1b2-00144feab49a.html
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Unable to quit smoking? Are you more likely to have schizophrenia?
Why Schizophrenics Cannot Kick Nicotine
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n5/abs/npp2011299a.html?WT.ec_id=NPP-201204
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n5/abs/npp2011299a.html?WT.ec_id=NPP-201204
First Study to Demonstrate How Marijuana Interferes with Memory & Thinking
A bowl a day may keep the memories away...
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n5/abs/npp2011262a.html?WT.ec_id=NPP-201204
http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v37/n5/abs/npp2011262a.html?WT.ec_id=NPP-201204
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Feel your feelings, choose your behavior. The brain is an instantaneous probability statement generator! A theory of mind should include the function of generating instantaneous probability statements. A definition of mental health should include the capacity to tolerate the tension of holding the reality of complexity in mind without blind submission to appealing false, simplistic, non-evidence-based, low-probability choices. This does not rule out fantasy and wishful thinking, it SIMPLY permits one to recognize the degree of risk BEFORE choosing behavior. In other words, feel your feelings, choose your behavior! Knowing your moment-to-moment feelings while thinking and talking should be as easy as walking and chewing gum. Listening and feeling without DOING should be easier. Honor your feelings, control your (re)actions. - Ange Lobue, MD, MPH, BSPharm
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 13, 150-151 (March 2012)
Reward: High expectations for GABA
Abstract
Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are crucial in regulating reward and motivation. A popular theory holds that dopamine neurons compute reward prediction errors, that is, the difference between an expected outcome and the actual outcome.
Reward: High expectations for GABA
Abstract
Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are crucial in regulating reward and motivation. A popular theory holds that dopamine neurons compute reward prediction errors, that is, the difference between an expected outcome and the actual outcome.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Religion and Government in America: An Act of Violence?
The Roman Catholic Bishops: Are They Killing Their Church?
I never thought I would live long enough to see birth control become a major political issue. Nor did I think I would ever hear the desire to provide women with safe and effective contraception be referred to as “a war on religion on the part of the Obama administration.” Granted that presidential election years frequently reveal the politically bizarre, it still seems that this year’s rhetoric has reached a new low on the scale of the absurd. It also reveals some frightening realities in the body politic of this nation that I find all but inconceivable. In this column let me try to cut through the polarizing propaganda and locate, if possible, the facts.
First, if the national polls are to be believed, about 98% of the American population uses contraception at some point in the course of their lives. That statistic appears to be true whether the users are Protestants, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, non-believers or atheists! There is no correlation between one’s religious tradition and one’s use of contraception. The “pill” has been determined to be not only safe, but of great benefit in the emancipation of women from being chained to their biological destiny. Family planning is no longer regarded by significant majorities the world over as a sinful thing to do, but has become an absolute virtue in our overpopulated world. In some nations, contraceptive help is actually forced on their people as a tactic of national survival. Contraception has also been demonstrated to be a strong bulwark against abortions since it dramatically lowers the unwanted pregnancies that fuel the number of abortion seekers. The Roman Catholic Church’s leadership, however, still acts as if it has the power to dictate what public policy is or what it should be on this issue. Unable to gain the loyalty of those they call “the faithful” they have now apparently decided that they will seek to impose their practices on the entirety of the nation’s citizenry. It is not working. The birth rate in an overwhelmingly Catholic Italy, for example, is about 1.5 children per family. Italian parents are not even reproducing themselves and the Italian population is actually declining. Does anyone think that is achieved through abstinence? Because of successful family planning women have been freed to make major contributions in such fields as politics, business and the professions. The idea that once emancipated from biological necessity women can now be coerced to return to the practices of yesterday is not just unrealistic, it is an act of violence!
A Vatican study commission on which sat some of Rome’s most respected moral theologians recommended to Pope Paul VI in 1968 that Rome’s ban on birth control be moderated significantly, but Paul VI, elected to bring the Roman Church back in the paths of the past after the dynamic pontificate of John XXIII, vetoed his own commission’s recommendation and, in an encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, reasserted the anti-feminist position of that Church’s most oppressive past. The only problem was that Catholic women in significant majorities simply refused to be obedient and the authority of the Church was visibly weakened in all areas by their refusal to comply with their Church’s teaching in this area. Ecclesiastical influence always declines when church leaders overstep the limits of their power and seek to impose upon their people an authority they no longer possess.
In American politics, the Roman Catholic bishops have become increasingly aggressive on public issues over the last fifty years. When John F. Kennedy was seeking to become America’s first Catholic president in 1960, he assured a gathering of clergy in Houston that he would not seek to impose his religious rules upon this religiously pluralistic nation. That answer seemed quite satisfactory to Catholic bishops at that time. By 1984, however, when a Catholic woman, Geraldine Ferraro, was a candidate for the vice presidency, her position of separating her personal code from what was legally possible in the public arena was ruled by the Catholic bishops as no longer a satisfactory position for a Catholic to hold. John Kerry, as a practicing Roman Catholic, was told in his bid for the presidency in 2004 that he was forbidden to receive Communion because of his position of not repudiating the law that gave women the legal right to make their own abortion decisions. Now this Church’s bishops have taken that battle to what seems to be both a political and a religious absurdity. Though already given a “conscience” exemption of not being required to provide contraceptive coverage in the health care offered to employees of Catholic churches, they are now demanding the right to impose that teaching on employees of their Catholic universities, hospitals and charitable institutions. Those institutions, while Catholic sponsored, serve a diverse population and receive public state and federal money to carry out their work. They have many non-Catholic employees and many Catholic employees who do not want Catholic teaching imposed upon their own health care decisions. The bishops have gone on to argue that any business run by a Roman Catholic CEO should also have the right to opt out of the requirement to provide contraceptive care to their employees. If this principle of exemption for Catholics is allowed, where will it stop? Some religions practiced in America object to blood transfusions, others do not believe that any medical intervention should be allowed since sickness is thought of as punishment for sin and still others have in the past sought to be exempted from the law that requires only one partner in marriage. Must the laws of America respect their consciences also? When the public good and religious values have come into conflict in the past, the state has always protected its understanding of public good and the various religious bodies have had to accommodate that policy. That is what it means to live in a multi-cultural state, where people enjoy freedom to worship as they wish, but where no religious system can impose any religious principle or practice on the entire nation. Are the Catholic Bishops and those politicians who want to dictate the details of health care that will be offered to employees of religiously affiliated institutions now find that this basic American premise is no longer acceptable? That is a frightening change.
The Roman Catholic Church’s recent history with the laws of this nation in regard to the criminal behavior of both abusing children and of protecting abusive priests had them asking for and receiving great leniency. Subpoenas of church records relating to the transfer of known child molesters have not been aggressively pursued. Cardinal Bernard Law, perhaps the guiltiest prelate in America of protecting abusers was allowed to move to the Vatican rather than have to answer his accusers or their attorneys under oath. Cardinal Law probably should be in jail today not in a respected post in the Vatican. This Church has a history of putting its own well being ahead of its victims. Now they want to dictate the kind of health care available to women who are in their employ. I shake with rage at that suggestion and at that kind of self-serving duplicity.
This Church has also carried out a destructive public campaign against justice and equality for gay and lesbian people over the last fifty years. They have used their money to defeat initiatives that would have provided equality before the law and end all forms of discrimination against homosexual people. They have done this based on Church teaching that defines homosexuality as deviant, a point of view regularly articulated by Pope Benedict XVI, despite the fact that this definition is almost universally dismissed as little more than dated ignorance in scientific and medical circles. How long do we tolerate religious ignorance that diminishes American citizens? I do not understand religious imperialism in any of its forms. Religious imperialism is what gave us the rampant anti-Semitism that finally erupted in the Holocaust which Pope Pius XII watched without lifting a finger. It has given us the Vatican led Crusades against the people of Islam that marked the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries and that still today feeds the hostility of radical Islamic fundamentalism costing countless lives on 9-11 and in the continuing wars in Islamic countries. It has given us the Inquisition in Europe in the 14th century that burned at the stake, quite legally, those who dared to question that Church’s teaching. Now this institution, which has never allowed equality for women, wants to be permitted to determine the limits of health care for women who work for Catholic institutions. When President Obama worked out a compromise acceptable to the health care industry that allowed women to receive contraception care without cost, but from the insurance industry not from the church affiliated organizations, the result satisfied most Roman Catholic women, including many nuns who run health care institutions. It did not, however, go far enough to satisfy the all male bishops who want to require that no public money go for a medical procedure that the bishops oppose for women, whether Catholic or not.
I never want to go back to the time when participation by Roman Catholics in public life was opposed because of their religion. I recall when one seat on the Supreme Court was designated “the Catholic seat.” Today a literal majority of five of our Supreme Court justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito) are Roman Catholics. If, however, the leaders of that church are going to use the political process to impose Catholic teaching on this entire nation then that attitude will surely compromise their ability to fulfill their oath of office. I had hoped that such a day had long gone from American life. The behavior of the Catholic bishops is surely reviving it. I am not willing to sacrifice the health of women or the constitutional rights of homosexual people to accommodate the dated attitudes of present Catholic leaders. The vast majority of American Roman Catholics also seem to recognize that the leadership of their Church is simply badly out of date. I grieve that the present all-male leadership of the Catholic Church is bringing that Church into disrepute in a way that hurts the witness of the Christian faith, a faith that I too represent and treasure.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
George, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I’m a gay man and family physician who has often quoted you and said, “Jack Spong is exactly where I am as a Christian.” My husband and I have met you personally and attend every opportunity we have to listen to your scholarly lectures.
I’m having some doubts after reading Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” At the same time I’m re-reading his 30th anniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene” Richard has almost convinced me that there is no God. I still think I see God and what is holy in many people, especially in you and in my relationship with the love of my life, Brian. I am a scientist after all, and Dawkins’ arguments make perfect sense to me. Yet we worship at our progressive UMC on Sundays and I’m constantly noting stupid stuff a scientist should reject out of hand. We enjoy the fellowship but I wonder why I am still going. Can you help me find my way? I look forward to your next several essays on “thinking differently and accepting uncertainty.”
Answer:
Dear George,
I am glad you have read Richard Dawkins’ books, “The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene.” I enjoyed both books and find Richard Dawkins to be an insightful thinker and a clear writer. He is a pleasure to read.
We are living in a time of rising consciousness and new ways of understanding reality. Richard Dawkins is one of the authors who is forcing us to recognize that the old ways of thinking are simply not working any longer. The problem is that most of our churches are so deep in the clutches of these old ways of thinking that their message is no longer able to be heard. When we examine the prayers said in church we discover that they are all generally addressed to the God above the sky who began to disappear with the work of Copernicus in the 16th century and who then died when we became space age people. We see old and dated thinking when we continue to define human life as fallen from an original perfection and thus identifying ourselves as the victims of “original sin.” These ideas died with the work of Charles Darwin, who taught us that human life was never perfect, but that we evolved from single cells into self-conscious, complex creatures. Now look for a moment at what Darwin’s insight means to the common religious language of our day. If there was not original perfection, there could have been no fall from perfection into sin. If there was no fall, there would have been no need to be saved from a fall that never happened. This means that the whole idea that “Jesus died for my sins” is absurd. I could go on and on but the fact is that many churches today appear to be caught in a time warp. Their destiny is thus either to turn into being clever propaganda institutions of fundamentalism that avoid the issues or they become quickly irrelevant and begin to manifest rigor mortis. The future of Christianity lies, I believe, in breaking out of these patterns and finding new ways to articulate the meaning of life and the God who infuses new life.
So wrestle with Dawkins, but recognize that there are people in the Christian Church who can read and even appreciate Dawkins and still be drawn into the worship of God and a Christian understanding of life.
Live well!
~John Shelby Spong
I never thought I would live long enough to see birth control become a major political issue. Nor did I think I would ever hear the desire to provide women with safe and effective contraception be referred to as “a war on religion on the part of the Obama administration.” Granted that presidential election years frequently reveal the politically bizarre, it still seems that this year’s rhetoric has reached a new low on the scale of the absurd. It also reveals some frightening realities in the body politic of this nation that I find all but inconceivable. In this column let me try to cut through the polarizing propaganda and locate, if possible, the facts.
First, if the national polls are to be believed, about 98% of the American population uses contraception at some point in the course of their lives. That statistic appears to be true whether the users are Protestants, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, non-believers or atheists! There is no correlation between one’s religious tradition and one’s use of contraception. The “pill” has been determined to be not only safe, but of great benefit in the emancipation of women from being chained to their biological destiny. Family planning is no longer regarded by significant majorities the world over as a sinful thing to do, but has become an absolute virtue in our overpopulated world. In some nations, contraceptive help is actually forced on their people as a tactic of national survival. Contraception has also been demonstrated to be a strong bulwark against abortions since it dramatically lowers the unwanted pregnancies that fuel the number of abortion seekers. The Roman Catholic Church’s leadership, however, still acts as if it has the power to dictate what public policy is or what it should be on this issue. Unable to gain the loyalty of those they call “the faithful” they have now apparently decided that they will seek to impose their practices on the entirety of the nation’s citizenry. It is not working. The birth rate in an overwhelmingly Catholic Italy, for example, is about 1.5 children per family. Italian parents are not even reproducing themselves and the Italian population is actually declining. Does anyone think that is achieved through abstinence? Because of successful family planning women have been freed to make major contributions in such fields as politics, business and the professions. The idea that once emancipated from biological necessity women can now be coerced to return to the practices of yesterday is not just unrealistic, it is an act of violence!
A Vatican study commission on which sat some of Rome’s most respected moral theologians recommended to Pope Paul VI in 1968 that Rome’s ban on birth control be moderated significantly, but Paul VI, elected to bring the Roman Church back in the paths of the past after the dynamic pontificate of John XXIII, vetoed his own commission’s recommendation and, in an encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae, reasserted the anti-feminist position of that Church’s most oppressive past. The only problem was that Catholic women in significant majorities simply refused to be obedient and the authority of the Church was visibly weakened in all areas by their refusal to comply with their Church’s teaching in this area. Ecclesiastical influence always declines when church leaders overstep the limits of their power and seek to impose upon their people an authority they no longer possess.
In American politics, the Roman Catholic bishops have become increasingly aggressive on public issues over the last fifty years. When John F. Kennedy was seeking to become America’s first Catholic president in 1960, he assured a gathering of clergy in Houston that he would not seek to impose his religious rules upon this religiously pluralistic nation. That answer seemed quite satisfactory to Catholic bishops at that time. By 1984, however, when a Catholic woman, Geraldine Ferraro, was a candidate for the vice presidency, her position of separating her personal code from what was legally possible in the public arena was ruled by the Catholic bishops as no longer a satisfactory position for a Catholic to hold. John Kerry, as a practicing Roman Catholic, was told in his bid for the presidency in 2004 that he was forbidden to receive Communion because of his position of not repudiating the law that gave women the legal right to make their own abortion decisions. Now this Church’s bishops have taken that battle to what seems to be both a political and a religious absurdity. Though already given a “conscience” exemption of not being required to provide contraceptive coverage in the health care offered to employees of Catholic churches, they are now demanding the right to impose that teaching on employees of their Catholic universities, hospitals and charitable institutions. Those institutions, while Catholic sponsored, serve a diverse population and receive public state and federal money to carry out their work. They have many non-Catholic employees and many Catholic employees who do not want Catholic teaching imposed upon their own health care decisions. The bishops have gone on to argue that any business run by a Roman Catholic CEO should also have the right to opt out of the requirement to provide contraceptive care to their employees. If this principle of exemption for Catholics is allowed, where will it stop? Some religions practiced in America object to blood transfusions, others do not believe that any medical intervention should be allowed since sickness is thought of as punishment for sin and still others have in the past sought to be exempted from the law that requires only one partner in marriage. Must the laws of America respect their consciences also? When the public good and religious values have come into conflict in the past, the state has always protected its understanding of public good and the various religious bodies have had to accommodate that policy. That is what it means to live in a multi-cultural state, where people enjoy freedom to worship as they wish, but where no religious system can impose any religious principle or practice on the entire nation. Are the Catholic Bishops and those politicians who want to dictate the details of health care that will be offered to employees of religiously affiliated institutions now find that this basic American premise is no longer acceptable? That is a frightening change.
The Roman Catholic Church’s recent history with the laws of this nation in regard to the criminal behavior of both abusing children and of protecting abusive priests had them asking for and receiving great leniency. Subpoenas of church records relating to the transfer of known child molesters have not been aggressively pursued. Cardinal Bernard Law, perhaps the guiltiest prelate in America of protecting abusers was allowed to move to the Vatican rather than have to answer his accusers or their attorneys under oath. Cardinal Law probably should be in jail today not in a respected post in the Vatican. This Church has a history of putting its own well being ahead of its victims. Now they want to dictate the kind of health care available to women who are in their employ. I shake with rage at that suggestion and at that kind of self-serving duplicity.
This Church has also carried out a destructive public campaign against justice and equality for gay and lesbian people over the last fifty years. They have used their money to defeat initiatives that would have provided equality before the law and end all forms of discrimination against homosexual people. They have done this based on Church teaching that defines homosexuality as deviant, a point of view regularly articulated by Pope Benedict XVI, despite the fact that this definition is almost universally dismissed as little more than dated ignorance in scientific and medical circles. How long do we tolerate religious ignorance that diminishes American citizens? I do not understand religious imperialism in any of its forms. Religious imperialism is what gave us the rampant anti-Semitism that finally erupted in the Holocaust which Pope Pius XII watched without lifting a finger. It has given us the Vatican led Crusades against the people of Islam that marked the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries and that still today feeds the hostility of radical Islamic fundamentalism costing countless lives on 9-11 and in the continuing wars in Islamic countries. It has given us the Inquisition in Europe in the 14th century that burned at the stake, quite legally, those who dared to question that Church’s teaching. Now this institution, which has never allowed equality for women, wants to be permitted to determine the limits of health care for women who work for Catholic institutions. When President Obama worked out a compromise acceptable to the health care industry that allowed women to receive contraception care without cost, but from the insurance industry not from the church affiliated organizations, the result satisfied most Roman Catholic women, including many nuns who run health care institutions. It did not, however, go far enough to satisfy the all male bishops who want to require that no public money go for a medical procedure that the bishops oppose for women, whether Catholic or not.
I never want to go back to the time when participation by Roman Catholics in public life was opposed because of their religion. I recall when one seat on the Supreme Court was designated “the Catholic seat.” Today a literal majority of five of our Supreme Court justices (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito) are Roman Catholics. If, however, the leaders of that church are going to use the political process to impose Catholic teaching on this entire nation then that attitude will surely compromise their ability to fulfill their oath of office. I had hoped that such a day had long gone from American life. The behavior of the Catholic bishops is surely reviving it. I am not willing to sacrifice the health of women or the constitutional rights of homosexual people to accommodate the dated attitudes of present Catholic leaders. The vast majority of American Roman Catholics also seem to recognize that the leadership of their Church is simply badly out of date. I grieve that the present all-male leadership of the Catholic Church is bringing that Church into disrepute in a way that hurts the witness of the Christian faith, a faith that I too represent and treasure.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
George, via the Internet, writes:
Question:
I’m a gay man and family physician who has often quoted you and said, “Jack Spong is exactly where I am as a Christian.” My husband and I have met you personally and attend every opportunity we have to listen to your scholarly lectures.
I’m having some doubts after reading Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” At the same time I’m re-reading his 30th anniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene” Richard has almost convinced me that there is no God. I still think I see God and what is holy in many people, especially in you and in my relationship with the love of my life, Brian. I am a scientist after all, and Dawkins’ arguments make perfect sense to me. Yet we worship at our progressive UMC on Sundays and I’m constantly noting stupid stuff a scientist should reject out of hand. We enjoy the fellowship but I wonder why I am still going. Can you help me find my way? I look forward to your next several essays on “thinking differently and accepting uncertainty.”
Answer:
Dear George,
I am glad you have read Richard Dawkins’ books, “The God Delusion” and “The Selfish Gene.” I enjoyed both books and find Richard Dawkins to be an insightful thinker and a clear writer. He is a pleasure to read.
We are living in a time of rising consciousness and new ways of understanding reality. Richard Dawkins is one of the authors who is forcing us to recognize that the old ways of thinking are simply not working any longer. The problem is that most of our churches are so deep in the clutches of these old ways of thinking that their message is no longer able to be heard. When we examine the prayers said in church we discover that they are all generally addressed to the God above the sky who began to disappear with the work of Copernicus in the 16th century and who then died when we became space age people. We see old and dated thinking when we continue to define human life as fallen from an original perfection and thus identifying ourselves as the victims of “original sin.” These ideas died with the work of Charles Darwin, who taught us that human life was never perfect, but that we evolved from single cells into self-conscious, complex creatures. Now look for a moment at what Darwin’s insight means to the common religious language of our day. If there was not original perfection, there could have been no fall from perfection into sin. If there was no fall, there would have been no need to be saved from a fall that never happened. This means that the whole idea that “Jesus died for my sins” is absurd. I could go on and on but the fact is that many churches today appear to be caught in a time warp. Their destiny is thus either to turn into being clever propaganda institutions of fundamentalism that avoid the issues or they become quickly irrelevant and begin to manifest rigor mortis. The future of Christianity lies, I believe, in breaking out of these patterns and finding new ways to articulate the meaning of life and the God who infuses new life.
So wrestle with Dawkins, but recognize that there are people in the Christian Church who can read and even appreciate Dawkins and still be drawn into the worship of God and a Christian understanding of life.
Live well!
~John Shelby Spong
Friday, February 24, 2012
More on Depression-Inflammation Link...
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-pain/201001/matter-over-mind-inflammation-and-depression
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Dog Protests Another Prejudicial Chimp Study
Pointing to this study, my dog, Ali, asked me, "Isn't this yet another study to make Chimps look bad?"
PLoS ONE: Dogs (Canis familiaris), but Not Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Understand Imperative Pointing
PLoS ONE: Dogs (Canis familiaris), but Not Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Understand Imperative Pointing
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Role of "Cowboy Genes" in the Wall Street Fiasco of 2008
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0030844
Discussion
Our primary finding is that two genetic alleles that affect DA are associated with success at trading stocks on Wall Street. We showed that alleles of COMT and DRD4P were predominant in traders compared to controls, and we also demonstrated that a combination of these alleles were associated with being a trader. Both COMT and DRD4P affect the brain's synaptic levels of dopamine. Several neuroeconomics studies of financial decisions have shown that activity in the dopaminergic nucleus accumbens predicts risk-taking [18]. It is possible that the successful traders in our sample who had genes associated with moderate synaptic dopamine may be predisposed to take an appropriate level of risk, but not too much, thereby contributing to their success. This was evidenced by their reduced reports of trading in volatile markets.
Using years on Wall Street as a measure of success, we found a positive correlation between success as a trader and a combination of alleles that are associated with intermediate levels of synaptic DA. We did not find that traders were more likely to carry the 7R variant of the DRD4e3 VNTR, an allele associated with risk-taking in two laboratory studies. Our results suggest that successful traders in our sample weigh risk and reward, rather than taking excessive risks. This was born out in the personalities of our sample of traders. We found that they were good at integrating disparate pieces of information, eschewed trading in volatile markets, and did not view the world as threatening their survival. These findings align with previous evidence suggesting that more experienced traders may respond in a less emotional way than those with less experience [10]. Nevertheless, other studies of professional traders have found that they are susceptible to trading biases [70]–[72].
We also examined two other genetic targets that affect DA levels and personality traits: MAO-A and SERT. We found no significant difference in the frequency of MAO-A or SERT alleles in traders compared to controls. This is potentially problematic, given that other studies have linked SERT and MAO-A to financial risk-taking tendencies; however, these results have been inconsistent [51], [56], [57].
It is important to note that our observations come from a relatively small sample. High income individuals recruited at work, such as the Wall Street traders, are difficult to access for data collection, which is the reason for the small sample at hand. It is therefore important that the results reported here are replicated. Additionally, our sample of traders may not include some of the most successful professionals who have the opportunity to leave the types of major companies from which we drew our data for early retirement or to begin their own company. We opted to define successful trading by longevity because this information could be reliably collected and because this is a measure also used in previous research [12]; however, other definitions of success may be considered more informative and should be examined in the future.
Our findings can contribute to discussions of changes in the regulation of finance professionals and asset markets in the wake of the 2008 recession. Our results suggest that using a history of risk-taking and competitive behaviors when hiring traders could be a mistake, though this is often done [73]. Having too little or too much risk-aversion is not associated with success by those in our sample; rather taking a balanced level of risk appears to be optimal. Further, our findings indicate the importance of training the dopamine system to accurately assess risk and reward in the context of trading. The balancing of risk and reward is essential to successful trading, but trading on another's behalf may skew the way risk is assessed [74]. Recent research from our lab has shown that without training the dopamine system, losses are accentuated even when trading for one's own account [75]. Lastly, our findings indicate that hiring more female traders may improve investment company returns. Nonprofessional female investors tend to be more risk-averse, trade less, and earn higher returns [76]–[78].
So, what makes a professional trader successful? Combining the personality analyses and genetic findings from the present study, reveals that our sample of traders are analytical, integrative, and can delay gratification. They have a genetic profile associated with balanced levels of dopamine, and also linked to moderate but not high risk-taking behavior. Thus, successful traders do not appear to take extraordinary risks and also appear to take a longer-term perspective. Our analyses indicate that these traits may have a genetic predisposition.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Does emotional self-deception deplete mental energy?
The Two Systems of Cognitive Processes
Delanceyplace on January 16, 2012, 10:00 AM
inShare
16
In today's excerpt – thanks to the work of Daniel Kahneman and others, we now increasingly view our cognitive processes as being divided into two systems. System 1 produces the fast, intuitive reactions and instantaneous decisions that govern most of our lives. System 2 is the deliberate type of thinking involved in focus, deliberation, reasoning or analysis – such as calculating a complex math problem, exercising self-control, or performing a demanding physical task.
System 2 activities - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Studies consistently show that when the brain is occupied with one type of System 2 thinking, it interferes with any other type of System 2 thinking you need to perform at the same time. And performing one type of System 2 thinking makes us less able to perform a subsequent System 2 activity in the period immediately afterward – even if one is physical and the other is cognitive or emotional. Furthermore, when the mind is actively focused on a System 2 activity, it results in System 1 having greater influence over our behavior:
"It is now a well-established proposition that both self-control and cognitive effort are forms of mental work. Several psychological studies have shown that people who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation are more likely to yield to the temptation. Imagine that you are asked to retain a list of seven digits for a minute or two. You are told that remembering the digits is your top priority. While your attention is focused on the digits, you are offered a choice between two desserts: a sinful chocolate cake and a virtuous fruit salad. The evidence suggests that you would be more likely to select the tempting chocolate cake when your mind is loaded with digits. System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.
"People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people. Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts. The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort. Another way of saying this is that controlling thoughts and behaviors is one of the tasks that System 2 performs.
"A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Their experiments involve successive rather than simultaneous tasks.
"Baumeister's group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In a typical demonstration, participants who are instructed to stifle their emotional reaction to an emotionally charged film will later perform poorly on a test of physical stamina - how long they can maintain a strong grip on a dynamometer in spite of increasing discomfort. The emotional effort in the first phase of the experiment reduces the ability to withstand the pain of sustained muscle contraction, and ego-depleted people therefore succumb more quickly to the urge to quit. In another experiment, people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task."
Author: Daniel Kahneman Title: Thinking Fast and Slow Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and GirouxDate: Copyright 2011 by Daniel Kahneman Pages: 41-42
Tags: Cognitive Processes, Temptation
Delanceyplace on January 16, 2012, 10:00 AM
inShare
16
In today's excerpt – thanks to the work of Daniel Kahneman and others, we now increasingly view our cognitive processes as being divided into two systems. System 1 produces the fast, intuitive reactions and instantaneous decisions that govern most of our lives. System 2 is the deliberate type of thinking involved in focus, deliberation, reasoning or analysis – such as calculating a complex math problem, exercising self-control, or performing a demanding physical task.
System 2 activities - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Studies consistently show that when the brain is occupied with one type of System 2 thinking, it interferes with any other type of System 2 thinking you need to perform at the same time. And performing one type of System 2 thinking makes us less able to perform a subsequent System 2 activity in the period immediately afterward – even if one is physical and the other is cognitive or emotional. Furthermore, when the mind is actively focused on a System 2 activity, it results in System 1 having greater influence over our behavior:
"It is now a well-established proposition that both self-control and cognitive effort are forms of mental work. Several psychological studies have shown that people who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation are more likely to yield to the temptation. Imagine that you are asked to retain a list of seven digits for a minute or two. You are told that remembering the digits is your top priority. While your attention is focused on the digits, you are offered a choice between two desserts: a sinful chocolate cake and a virtuous fruit salad. The evidence suggests that you would be more likely to select the tempting chocolate cake when your mind is loaded with digits. System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth.
"People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people. Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts. The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort. Another way of saying this is that controlling thoughts and behaviors is one of the tasks that System 2 performs.
"A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort - cognitive, emotional, or physical - draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Their experiments involve successive rather than simultaneous tasks.
"Baumeister's group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In a typical demonstration, participants who are instructed to stifle their emotional reaction to an emotionally charged film will later perform poorly on a test of physical stamina - how long they can maintain a strong grip on a dynamometer in spite of increasing discomfort. The emotional effort in the first phase of the experiment reduces the ability to withstand the pain of sustained muscle contraction, and ego-depleted people therefore succumb more quickly to the urge to quit. In another experiment, people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task."
Author: Daniel Kahneman Title: Thinking Fast and Slow Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and GirouxDate: Copyright 2011 by Daniel Kahneman Pages: 41-42
Tags: Cognitive Processes, Temptation
Oxytocin
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 13, 72 (February 2012)
Oxytocin boosts social awareness
Abstract
Sensitivity to the experiences of others contributes to many social behaviours including empathy and cooperation. Here, the authors show that oxytocin influences social behaviour in rhesus macaques in a context-dependent manner.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)