May 19th, 2012 by Wil
I recently stumbled onto an interesting New York Times article describing the onset of a seemingly contagious disease that spread Tourett’s-like symptoms among teenage girls in a small town. The catch to the story is that many neurologists and doctors observing the case think the “disease” is psychogenic – essentially mass hysteria with no environmental or biological cause.
This is, of course, startling. After all, how can a psychological condition cause such bizarre symptoms? And how can it be contagious? Apparently, it’s not that uncommon.
Half of mass psychogenic illnesses occur in schools, and they are far more common in young women than any other category. Simon Wessely, an epidemiologist at King’s College in London and chairman of the department of psychological medicine, estimates that hundreds of outbreaks occur every year in the United States — just this past November, 22 students fell ill with stomach complaints at a football game in Houston, and no one so much as noticed outside the local news. Motor mass hysterias — twitching, fainting, stuttering — are more rare and draw more attention. In the past 10 years there have been three such outbreaks in the United States, which Robert Bartholomew, a sociologist specializing in the subject at Botany Downs Secondary College in Auckland, New Zealand, says is a surprising number for so short a period of time.
How could one person’s illness be reflected in another person’s neural pathways, playing a trick on consciousness, convincing the host that it originated in her own body? In the last decade, scientists have begun to explore the concept that regions in our brain once thought to activate only our own activity or sensations are also firing what are known as mirror neurons when we witness someone else perform an action or feel a sensation. Mass psychogenic illness could be thought of as the maladaptive version of the kind of empathy that finds expression in actual physical sensation: the contagious yawn or sympathetic nausea or the sibling who grabs his own finger when he sees his brother’s bleed.
Any two people, as they try to delicately disagree or flirt or compare notes on the best route to Boston, might unwittingly match vocal tones or even frequency of eye blinks. In one study, researchers found that subjects trying to form an alliance with someone else subconsciously tap their feet to match the tapping of that person’s foot, or touch their faces with the same frequency. “It’s happening unconsciously, but it is serving the goals you need it to serve,” says Jessica Lakin, the chairwoman of the psychology department at Drew University in New Jersey, who studies what’s known as the chameleon effect. … Mass psychogenic illness, whatever its mysterious mechanism, seems deeply connected to empathy and to a longing for what social psychologists call affiliation: belonging.
Weird and interesting. It seems clear we do not really control our bodies. We dance through life as twisted puppets under the control of the puppet master’s iron grip. We think we have autonomy but we are merely slaves to the black humors that fill the caverns of our subconscious. We are doomed as fools an idiots.
Happy Saturday!
May 19th, 2012 by Wil
I just got an e-mail from some company that was offering to renew one of my web domains. The thing was, it wasn’t the company I actually use to take care of such matters. So I guess these guys just go through lists of websites and send e-mails to whoever owns a domain that is set to expire.
I started thinking about the people behind a company such as this. They probably think of themselves as basically good people. They don’t really ruminate on the fact that they’re making their living by essentially tricking money out of admittedly not-too-intelligent fools. I imagine they sleep okay at night.
They remind me a bit of telemarketers, or people who call you up and pester you for money for charities or politicians. They probably also think that, at the end of the day, they’re good people.
They are, in fact, utter scum. And it should be clear to any thinking person that these kinds of people should be wiped from the face of the earth, as brutally and painfully as possible. I’ve been doing a bit of thinking on this, and I think we can conclude that about 85% of humanity is fundamentally worthless and should be destroyed. Thus I’ve developed a plan by which a virus will be released into the air supply. This virus will infect heterosexual males and induce homosexual behavior on their part. Then I will release my army of Deathbots. Since the vast majority of mankind will at that point be nelly dandies, there will be very few men of the appropriate stature and stamina to be able to defend humanity. Thus my Deathbots will easily be able to wipe out about 85% of all mankind.
Now, I know what you’re saying. “Wil, why don’t you just stop after you release the virus that converts most men into homosexuals? This would doubtless result in massively lower breeding rates, and the human population would probably drop to somewhere around 15% of what it is within a generation.”
Hmmm… that’s not a bad point, actually. But… it’s just that I’ve already created the Deathbots. They’re basically hanging out in my bedroom raring to go. So I think I’m going to stick with plan A.
But, good thinking on your part.
May 17th, 2012 by Wil
The New York Times says: Doubt Cast on the ‘Good’ in ‘Good Cholesterol’
The name alone sounds so encouraging: HDL, the “good cholesterol.” The more of it in your blood, the lower your risk of heart disease. So bringing up HDL levels has got to be good for health.
Or so the theory went.
Now, a new study that makes use of powerful databases of genetic information has found that raising HDL levels may not make any difference to heart disease risk. People who inherit genes that give them naturally higher HDL levels throughout life have no less heart disease than those who inherit genes that give them slightly lower levels. If HDL were protective, those with genes causing higher levels should have had less heart disease.
I’ve long had my suspicions about how good HDL is. I recall once going into a bar and seeing some HDL there talking to a known prostitute. I was like, “What are you doing?” and the HDL was like, “Beat it! You’re not my dad!” Then it gave the prostitute a big sloppy french kiss. On another occasion I went into my friend’s garage to get some cold beers and there were a couple HDLs hanging out. I smelled pot and said, “Have you guys been smoking something?” and they were like, “What… cough… cough… no man. I think that’s just the barbeque… or something. We’re just hanging… cough!”
So I think you can see why I remain suspicious about “good” cholesterol.
May 17th, 2012 by Wil
Here’s an interesting study making the case, yet again, that coffee is actually good for you.
Men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 10 per cent chance of outliving those who drank no coffee, while women had a 13 per cent advantage, according to research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Specifically…
The study found that men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 14 per cent lower risk of dying from heart disease, 17 per cent lower risk of dying from respiratory disease, 16 per cent decreased chance of dying from stroke and a 25 per cent lower risk of dying from diabetes than those who drank no coffee.
But will this be enough to silence the cofee-haters out there? I doubt it. Nothing will silence them… unless we go into their homes, drag them into the streets and force hot coffee down their gullet.
LONG LIVE COFFEE!!
May 15th, 2012 by Wil
A while back, I read an interesting anecdote over at Andrew Sullivan’s site. Some historian had made the comment that in the Middle Ages people didn’t sleep through the night. Often, they would go to sleep around sundown, then wake up for an hour or two, then go back to sleep and wake up in the morning. What did they do in that middle period? Well, often they had sex. But sometimes they would just stroll over and visit the neighbors.
I was thinking about this sleep arrangement today. Would it work in the modern era? I had to concede that I have absolutely zero interest in talking to my neighbors at any point during the day. I’ve never really talked to them, but I have to conclude that they, like most people, would be incapable of meeting my standards for intellect and personal hygiene. I have to admit that I felt a tinge of sadness at the thought. I would like to like my neighbors. I would like to have someone I could go chew the fat with.
Nonetheless, I’m stuck with the conclusion that we of the modern era really don’t have a lot of interest in interacting with each other purely for the sake of interaction. I think most conversations and human interactions are fundamentally an act of bargaining favors. You play golf with your neighbor so you can feel out whether there might be any openings at his company that you would be a fit for. You chat with an old college friend because he’s on the board of a school you’d like to get your daughter into. We interact to engage in the act of climbing the social hierarchy.
So were people of the Middle Ages not doing this? I imagine some of them were. But I also presume the following: everyone was so shit eating poor back then that it was possible to converse as equals. There were very few favors your neighbor could bestow upon you — after all, he was living the same impoverished existence as you — so, you might as well just chat.
Now, you might be saying, “Wil, that’s horseshit. In the Middle Ages there were indeed different classes, and they were separated by even greater distance than today.” And that’s of course true. But a peasant in the Middle Ages had little interaction with the king on the hill. Additionally, he or she knew they had about zero chance of ever ascending their social station. But nowadays, we are aware how the “betters” live. It’s broadcast on television, in movies and romanticized about in music. (See “bling.”) On top of that, we can move through the class system (I recall reading a while back that most people will go through about three different classes during their life.) So how do we ascend our station? Well, partly, by engaging in social commerce — trading favors with our neighbors. Which isn’t a bad way to do things, but it does kind of corrupt human interaction. You can’t talk to someone without wondering what you can get out of them, and what they might be trying to get out of you.
It’s too bad we can’t all be shit eating peasants.
May 14th, 2012 by Wil
In various sections in Damasio’s book he discusses people with a particular ailment – they feel limited or no emotion. Often these people start off as conscientious, upstanding members of society – people who can be counted on to provide emotional support to their fellows – but after brain damage they become withdrawn and disinterested in the agonies of their fellow man. I can’t help read these anecdotes and feel that it describes changes that have occurred to me in recent years. I used to be intrigued with the activities of my fellows and at least somewhat responsive to their emotional needs; now I often find myself stifling laughter when I hear someone describe the tragedies that have befallen them.
One might presume I have become cold and callous in my years; I offer another theory. I am actually the first in a new kind of advanced human – a human who has stripped away human weaknesses such as emotion. Within time, the most attractive of the less evolved human females, led by Scarlett Johansson, will recognize my superiority and mate with me. Our progeny will be a new race of meta-cyborg-humans who will declare war on the old weak human race. Emotional humans will fall, mewing and screaming, one by one, under the metal fists of their new masters – my children.
May 13th, 2012 by Wil
I’ve been paying more attention to the background music in movies and television as of late, partly because I would like to write similar materials. It struck me the other day that a lot of quintessential movies scores are really just accompaniments. By this I mean they are the type of orchestrations a Tchaikovsky or Grieg would have used to support the lead instrument in a concerto or the lead voice in a opera. Of course, in movie scores there is no lead instrument or voice. That role is taken by the movie itself – the dialogue, the actors emoting, the scenes of hideous violence and wanton sexuality. Those components are the violins, the flutes, the sopranos etc of the film score.
With this realization in place, I become a god.
May 13th, 2012 by Wil
I continue my reading of the Damasio book; currently I’m on a chapter discussing the need for the evolution of emotions. It’s an explanation I’ve read in the past (in Damsio’s other books, in Jonah Leher’s “How We Decide”) but it’s still interesting to ruminate on.
Before I get into it, let’s be clear what the term “emotion” is describing. By Damasio’s argument, an emotion is a series of measurable body changes – fear is an increased heart rate and sweating, sadness is the dull ache of muscles and viscera, joy is perhaps a light warmth, a sense that the body is moving smoothly. These are not the complete list of body changes for each emotion and it can also be argued that many of the changes we experience in an emotional state are barely on the tip of our consciousness (e.g. Freud’s classic subconscious emotions.)
Damasio’s argument is that emotions evolved as a kind of short cut to reason. We employ emotions to make quick decisions that would take longer if we employed only logic. Let’s say a friend says to you, Hey [your name here], I’ll give you ten bucks if you dangle you penis into this swimming pool filled with flesh eating sharks.” Do you contemplate this offer by musing, “Well, if I do that there’s a likelihood that the sharks will sense my penis and bite it off in a mad feeding frenzy. Since this would deprive me of the many pleasures of owning a penis as well as the possibility of creating children I should decline this offer.”? No, you do not. Instead you instantly recoil at the thought of your proud phallus becoming shark chum. Emotions do all the logic processing for you and deliver a sharp sensations (physically felt) indicating that the idea is bad.
I described a similar example of this kind of emotional processing, complete with physical sensations, in my groundbreaking article, “What is Emotion?”
I recently hiked up a mountain near my house. As I stood atop a boulder overlooking the view, I observed some power lines that ran down the mountain and crossed just below me. As a kind of mental joke, I considered the possibility of leaping off the boulder and wrapping my sweater over the powerline so that I could literally slide down it as a kind of human ski lift. I had no serious intention of doing this, but even so, I could feel my body revolt. My viscera churned slightly and my chest got tight. What surprised me was the sensation in my knees. They tingled and weakened, almost as if my body was saying, “if you are considering this insane action, then I’m going to take away your ability to jump!”
So the idea here, again, is that emotion is a shortcut for logic. Problems that a computer, or Mr. Spock, might solve by “pure reason” (a questionable concept) are instead solved by emotion. In many ways one can see advantages to this – emotions are faster than logical processing and speed can be important in many situations. But there’s a downside – emotions can get “confused” and find joy or fear where there is really none to be had. The classic horror film, “Silent Night, Deadly Night” explores this. As a boy, the lead character sees his parents murdered by a man dressed as Santa Claus. As a result, he grows up associating every Santa with fear (and eventually, ironically, himself becomes a killer wearing a Santa uniform.) This is unfortunate since most Santas are harmless. But the movie’s lead is not processing the sight of Santas logically; he is processing them emotionally.
Thus you get to the cruxt of all problems in society. Take an issue – gay marriage, national defense, taxation, animal rights, etc. People argue and debate these issues, but they “feel” their viewpoints more than they “think” them. They process these issues emotionally more than logically. Frankly, I’m not sure there is a “logical” resolution to many of these issues. But you can no more convince someone to “feel” they way you do about something than you can convince them to like a food they do not like. They have their emotional sensations, you have yours, and never the twain shall meet.
May 12th, 2012 by Wil
Interesting argument: it was the availability in the early 1900s of cheap, plentiful guitars – purchasable from catalogs – that fueled the rise of blues music.
There was no Delta blues before there were cheap, readily available steel-string guitars. And those guitars, which transformed American culture, were brought to the boondocks by Sears, Roebuck & Co. … Guitars first appeared in the catalog in 1894 for $4.50 (around $112 in today’s money). By 1908 Sears was offering a guitar, outfitted for steel strings, for $1.89 ($45 today), making it the cheapest harmony-generating instrument available.
May 11th, 2012 by Wil
In the past, I’ve mentioned my idea — drawn from various texts — that you can break the experience of pain into multiple components. I define these components as 1) the actual feeling of the pain, the firing of nerve endings etc. 2) your attention to the pain (in the same sense that you can be looking at someone and not be consciously aware of the color of their eyes, I believe you can feel pain but not attend to it*) and 3) your emotional response to the pain (“Oh shit — this really hurts! Is this going to destroy my life? I’m fucked.”)
* I’m not saying this is easy.
As I’m reading through Antonio Damasio’s “Looking for Spinoza” I stumble across the description of a scientific study that gets into this very concept. In the study, a group of people were “subjected to hand pain (their hands were immersed in ice cold water.)” Another group was exposed to a vibratory stimulus on their hand (the book doesn’t say, but I’m guessing it’s a French tickler.) While this was going on, the subjects’ brains were being scanned. Now, our brain has several regions that activate when we experience the sense of touch. For the people exposed to pain (the cold water) to regions — the insula and was called the SII — lit up. Both those areas are known to be related to the processing of emotion. In the case of the people holding vibrators, another area, called SI, activated.
Then the experiment was repeated but in this case, the subjects were given painkillers. The people whose hands were being doused in water reported less pain, and there was less activity observed in their insula and SII. For the people with vibrators, there was no change.
This seems to make a couple points. One, pain can be broken down into different components. And we can directly correlate this emotional component of pain — the “agony” of pain — to the insula and SII. I’d be curious as to whether those mystics who walk on hot coals or sleep on a bed of nails have figured out some way to quiet these particular parts of the brain.
