2/10/10

The trouble with psychiatry and most of psychology is that it does not have a root metaphor, a way of understanding the mental activity of human beings, except by reference to behavior, which is a little like describing an automobile by the amount of dirt on the windshield or how fast it might be going at any given moment in time. The science of cognition, begun with the ancient Greeks, is actually in its infancy today with fMRI equipment able to show where brain activity is taking place at a crude level, certainly not at the granularity of the synapse. Even if it did, behavior is a very complex thing, certainly not the result of any specific neuron's failure or hyperactivity.

Part of the reason for the failure of psychological studies to produce much of value diagnostically is just this: we do not really know how the brain functions as a whole. Yes, we do understand certain biochemical processes, but what we want to know is not that "reductive." We want to know something ... anything ... about mass action and interaction, and we want to know how to relate that information to our vocabulary that includes notions of emotion separate from cognition, a vocabulary which is surely a mistake we have been making since the dawn of civilization.

On a very snowy day in Washington, D.C., the Post trots out an article designed to make people think twice before succumbing to "cabin fever." The APA's manual on psycholical disorders is about to be revised, but without regard for the consequences to a society that knows they really do not know what they are talking about. You have to read this article to get the gist of their nomenclature mongering, most of which is sponsored by Big Pharma, whose economic interests in keeping the full spectrum of human behavior available for chance encounters with drugs that seem to "fix" these behaviors cannot be underestimated.

I am told that the successor to PMS ... one of the so-called "disphorias" is real. Well, I contest that! What is the line between a "disphoria" (which literally means a condition outside of the container/box/norm) and a conscious decision to rebel or to act up or to commit a random act of kindness? See! Disphoria is pure unadulterated bullcrap. Restless leg syndrome? Well, there may be some who have uncontrollable pedaling in bed or while lounging in front of their TV, but I will be you $50 that if these people got some exercise their "affliction" would go away.

The real message, of course, is that the labels now and soon to be entered into the DSM will be used. Shrinks and regular medical personnel will use them and more or less innocent people will be stigmatized, their lives altered by labels that are concocted crap.

The fact is that psychiatry is fundamentally a scam, and its parent body modern clinical psychology not much advanced over the kind of stuff you would get from clergy and wise men (and women). Yes, of course, psychologist understand that some symptoms are frequently associated with other symptoms, but they don't really know why, and they don't really know what to do about these associations, short of explaining them to the afflicted individual and hoping they can somehow deal with it internally.

Conditions like schizophrenia are not really tractible by psychiatry or psychology. Some are moderated by drugs, but we are not complete sure why, because we don't know why the same drug does not work with every schizophrenic.

The condition of apathy or lethargy or sexual arousal or uncontrollable laughter are just as arcane to psychologists. They are keen on recognizing the behavior, but then what? Their understanding is effectively shamanistic and associative, not scientific and predictive in the sense of control. Doping a brain, especially that of a child or young adult whose brain is not yet finished is to my mind a last resort.

The DSM is, in fact, a very real concern to a free society, for very quickly people can do sidewalk diagnoses of enemies and change their lives through innuendo or, in the case of children, through legal means. I am glad that the Post got this article out ... now they need to republish it when their subscribers actually get their newspapers.

JB

2/2/10

We are not going to the moon in my lifetime. By "we" I mean the U.S., and by "lifetime" I mean that I am old and the prospects are therefore dim for mounting and executing an effort to establish a permanent base on our moon that I will see. It is a sad thing, I think, despite the many reasons that have contributed to the decision.

The science and technology parts of a lunar base are daunting. The 239,000 miles between us and the moon are full of dangers. Cosmic rays, micrometeorites, solar flares, and zillions of opportunties for human errors of construction and commission. From a PR stand-point space and the moon are opportunities for harrowing disaster more than expansion of the world's peoples' imaginations and understanding. This is the fault of the press, the imaginations of which and whom are impoverished and ill-suited to narration of humanity's really big moments. I hate this part of the decision-making process, but it is real enough. NASA wants to do it, but cannot convince enough of the electorate and its representatives that it is a good idea. The press sits on its hands on its duff.

And so, the politics of space and "colonizing" the moon are impossible. Even the pols who represent Houston and Canaveral cannot muster the gumption to scream out the dire necessity for getting on with this. The U.S. will soon find itself without any means for getting into orbit, foreclosing all American efforts to be consequent in space travel and exploration, foreclosing even the obvious military advantage of the experience of civilian space programs. What utter myopia!!

We are in a deep recession and have deep and intractible socio-economic problems. States like California are completely without the resolve to fix their problems. The nation as a whole is deeply divided politically and economically. These matters are facts of life, but a rejuvenation of the space program and especially a commitment to establishing a PERMANENT base on the moon would actually contribute to the solutions of some of our political and economic problems. I am surprised that this is not obvious to President Obama ... I am not surprised that his staff misses the point.

JB

1/31/10

Kim Komando, of Phoenix, AZ, has an interesting niche in the computer information business. Here is a very recent link to a TED video on the future of computing. You will be amazed!

JB

1/5/10

As every school child knows, it was in the year 1492 that Cristoforo Columbo took three tiny wooden ships across the Atlantic Ocean and inadvertently discovered (for southern Europeans, anyway) a new world. Few American school kids know that 1492 was also the year that the Muslim Moors were driven out of Spain and the year the Spanish Inquisition was begun to rout out Muslim infidel ... and, btw, Jews. Still, for most of us the iconic value of 1492 is the discovery of a brave new world with strange creatures in it.

A century and more passed before English and Dutch settlers came, and meanwhile the Spanish "bulemicized" the Inca and Aztec gold and sent their home economies into three hundred year tailspins. The response of Europe to the news was slow to form, but with a few key technological improvements in chronology and shipwrighting and the political and economic wherewithall assembled they came.

In your newspapers and media news programs today comes good news that our new orbiting telescope, Kepler, has already discovered nearly a dozen new planets, bizarre planets to be sure, but nevertheless planets. Back when our friend Carl Sagan was attempting the calculation of whether we might encounter extraterrestrial life, the question of whether planet formation was common was very undecided. Now with the news today and from the trickle of "sightings" begun at San Francisco State University fifteen years ago, we can be sure that planet formation is normal, even if the planets formed do not (yet) meet our specifications.

This is the point, of course. Finding planets upon which we might thrive, if it were only possible to get there ... and so far that is improbable. We learned last month that even our radio and television signals, formerly thought to be forming an ever expanding sphere of evidence of our existence, are dissipating rapidly into mindless noise (some begun that way, of course!) Our problem as a life form is that all our eggs are in one basket, one solar system, one location in the galaxy, prey to any vagary or happenstance that might come along ... including disasters of our own making.

So, we have learned a good lesson by discovering many planets and that puts the heat on those who will conceive of ways of getting there someday .... Kind of wistful, isn't it!

JB

12/29/09

This interesting experiment reveals an issue that really cries for more investigation, since the flaw in our perception has serious implications for our ability to conduct ourselves "rationally" in a democracy. Of course, the same flaw is relevant to narrower power-elite groups and individuals in other forms of government and society.

JB

12/22/09

It seems appropriate in the umbra of the hit blockbuster nothing-will-ever-be-the-same movie, Avatar, that we pay a bit more attention to another biological kingdom on our own planet, the plants (Plantae), yes, vegetation, sometimes known as vegetables. If it helps at all, we can call Plants "autotrophs" and animals (Animalia) "heterotrophs." And soon enough we reach a point where science, diet, agriculture, culinary arts, metaphysics, and ethics cross. This is a very interesting juncture.

This crossing is exploited nicely by Natalie Angier in the New York Times just as we are about to indulge ourselves in another communal holiday repast. It is, of course, a question that many children entertain somewhere in their early youth, the question of food and whether to indulge in all of it, or not. Angier with tongue (her own) in cheek, perhaps, tells us that we are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis when it comes to food. At least, she says, we ought to be more circumspect and less lofty about being vegetarians. I think you will come to agree.

JB

11/13/09

Peter Diamandis, of the X Prize Foundation, wrote today in Huffington Post about NASA's announcement that "significant" amounts of water exist on the moon and probably in all lunar craters not subject to the sun's direct rays. This is astoundingly good news!

Water is H20, of course, and as Diamandis notes both H and O are vital to propulsion systems. Water as water is vital to life. The verification of a long-suspected trove of frozen water on the moon brings back into focus the possibility of human exploration of space, colonization of other planets and moons, and ... getting our eggs out of this one basket!

Since the day that Life Magazine featured stunning artists conceptions of an manned Earth satellite and rocket ships that would ply between spaceports on our home planet and the gleaming donut and then onward to our moon I have been a fan and supporter of humankind's space programs, especially the American one, which seemed to me to be properly demilitarized. I am still a supporter, but I am less sanguine about the ability of our nation or any to maintain a demilitarized posture in space.

Still, it is good news and we should now develop a program that will eventually (say 20 years or so) create a permanent human colony on our moon.

JB