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Copyright © 2009, Paul Lutus — Message Page
Updated 08/18/2009
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This continues an earlier exchange. My prior remarks appear in italics.
One reason for my position on Asperger's is that it is consistent with evolution, and evolution is a very powerful and well-supported theory. If you have time and are interested, read my evolution article.Yes, and I love your Population Paradox. I'm in a slightly different place than you are due to two studies released last month that may indicate we're closer to 30% up the S curve of natural population than 100% and that the real solution lies in a more egalitarian method of dispensing permaculture research If the basis of discussion is sustainable existence, we're at the 100% point, because even if we were to miraculously stop population increase entirely today, we would still collide with resource limitations and be forced to a lower population in the long term (because we are already beyond sustainable limits of resource usage). But if the point is to see how many people we can squeeze onto the planet before mass death begins, then we're not at 100% yet. It all depends on how we define our terms. (I discuss it more in a slashdot journal entry here: http://slashdot.org/~Marxist+Hacker+42/journal/233211) coupled with a certain political problem that makes it appear that we're closer to the 100% than what we really are. The "certain political problem" is that people have different ways to state the issue. To some, the point is to have a sustainable existence. To others, it's all a game to see how many people can exist simultaneously, and nature imposes limitations externally by way of war and disease, rather than internally by way of common sense.
Hmm. I hope you realize that a big problem for psychological diagnosis in general, and specifically WRT Asperger's, is the inconsistency between therapists — they don't agree very well at all when confronted by the same clients with the same symptoms. I would like to see a wider study, with some realistic controls (something other than someone saying, "I think I am an Aspie, so scan me"), otherwise it's like astrology (everything seems to correspond with what people already believe).My initial diagnosis was by a neurologist, not a therapist, What? A neurologist delivered an Asperger's diagnosis? But Asperger's is defined by the DSM — by symptoms, not causes — and not by a particular pattern of organic brain function. There's no present scientific basis for a neurologist making this determination.
... if people can add to the symptom list based on personal preferences, this process could become very meaningless very quickly.It's already quite meaningless. But what will the therapists do when EVERYBODY fits into the list? That's an issue I addressed with respect to the DSM in my article "Is Psychology a Science?" — once the DSM achieves its apparent goal (every imaginable behavior listed and identified as a mental disturbance), then everything is a mental illness, which means nothing is. Psychology has about as much scientific standing as economics in my book- far more doctrine and dogma than theory. Unlike economists, psychologists (at least the opinion leaders) tend to reluctantly agree that it isn't scientific.
It will be interesting to see how Asperger's is treated by history — I mean, once a certain amount of basic work is done to characterize it much better than it is right now.I see physical symptoms in Asperger's that are able to be treated- No! Not "treated," but ameliorated or suppressed. If you counsel a young person not to flap his arms on the ground that it will get him ostracized in his peer group, or if you explain logically how social relations work (thus enlisting the frontal cortex in processing social cues normally dealt with at a lower level), all you are doing is ameliorating symptoms. This isn't a "treatment" any more than an iron lung is a treatment for polio.
... pushing everyone toward the middle of the population curve can hardly be called eugenics (at least as it is historically defined). The entire thrust of modern mental health seems to be to make everybody "normal", socially well-adjusted, comfortably in the middle of behavioral statistics, predictable, bland, obedient, dull.In other words, the ideal breed to be controlled. The stated "super race" of the Nazis was never really about creating a more independent human being, it was about creating a nationalistic identity of Sheeple who could be controlled. Put more succinctly, the point was to shift focus away from individuals to the state. It's a theme of modern times, and Nazism was only an extreme example. Though, I'd point out that is more the Conspiracy Theory side of neurodiversity, and should be taken as belief, not science. Well, we can't scientifically study political issues and movements, we can only observe them. So it's all belief and opinion. I absolutely hate hearing news reports that say, "such-and-such political party got into office, and the economy promptly improved/tanked, therefore ..." Therefore nothing.
I hadn't heard a connection with migraines before. It doesn't seem to be recognized as associated with Asperger's AFAICS. Some people in the field see Aspies with migraines but most appear to consider the association a coincidence.Once again, that's the therapist/Cure side of the field. There's an entire other body of research, mainly anecdotal evidence though, done by Aspies themselves out there; Come on. You're using terms like "research" to describe something that isn't remotely research. But in the field of psychology, this sort of talk seems less out of place. among those of us who pay attention, overstimulation resulting in migraines or other forms of withdrawl is so extremely common among all the autistic disorders that it may be close to a cause. Not THE cause by any means, but a cause. But again, this is not the result of organized study or of science. It's just anecdotal. People who believe they are Aspies have headaches, a discussion ensues, and presto — it's a symptom, or even a "cause". This is groupthink, not science.
Is this (ability to draw) related to fine-motor control?Yes. I probably would have gone into video game programming if it hadn't been for the fact that I can't draw at all, and am horrible at translating the visions in my brain into pictures on paper (though, oddly enough, I do think visually, not verbally- even the words in my mind are text, not sound). My personal opinion is that a sufficiently dedicated nerdy personality with some mathematical skill can create beautiful visual representations with no fine-motor control and no drafting aptitude. An example of my own nerdy output:
I have also recently begun to wonder about the relationship between Asperger's and religiosity. I doubt there are any reliable statistics, but it would be interesting to see an indifference to religion.I'd suspect either an indifference to religion, or actively attracted to the more rational religions such as Buddhism or Catholicism, Let's agree to differ about the notion that either of these represents rationality. My personal view is that all religions represent rational compromises (because all of them have notions that cannot be doubted, sometimes on pain of death). what you would call (yes, I read your essay on believing as well) *spiritual* religions, not *religious* religions. In addition, most of those rational religions have developed strong traditions and rituals which control neurotypical behavior- and it's always easier for an Aspie to tolerate a crowd if he knows what that crowd is going to do. That's related to the famous aspie love of pattern and order above chaos. Hmm, if that's true it argues for an attachment to religion (religions represent a focus on patterns), whereas an attachment to reason and logic would necessarily move an individual away from religion. In my case, I'm also a believer, but for reasons unrelated to the religion (more a religion of my own in which I reject the Hisenberg Principle as doctrine rather than theory- I believe in a deterministic universe, and a deterministic universe requires a diestic [deistic?] being to have set up the rules ahead of time, despite our species being such a low order that we're having trouble figuring out what those rules are). There it is. You have just shown how a person can rationalize religious belief on the ground that it creates an orderly system in a disorderly world. But long-term disorder is the essence of reality, although local violations (like us) are permitted as long as entropy continues to increase globally. I reject the Hiesenberg Principle as doctrine because it artificially limits evidence as being irrelevant; and ignores the possibility of a species that can measure the position of an electron without changing it's velocity. The Heisenberg (note spelling) Uncertainty Principle is crystal clear in its expression and is very well supported by evidence — indeed, much of quantum theory relies on it. It shouldn't be rejected on emotional grounds, and it denies the reality of a deterministic universe of the classical (pre-Einstein) kind.
I just don't see the overwhelming social need to "cure" people who prefer computers/mathematics/analytical activities to people. But I also understand this is not the majority opinion, especially among parents, who for well-understood reasons want their children to be "normal" above all else.Mainly due though to a fear that the autistic child will never be independent- the goal of all parenthood is to see your child become independent. To believe this you can't be a mainstream parent. One of the central dramas of parenting is the issue of letting go and allowing your child to go his own way. An extreme form of parenting tries to prevent the child from growing up at all. I think if more parents on the cure side could meet successful autistics in all disorders; you'd see more type 3 [proactively helpful and supportive] parents in the cure side and less of type 1 [focused only on avoiding responsibility]. Hmm...does that imply a duty for those of us in the neurodiversity side to interact more with the cure side? That's diplomatically put, since there's nothing remotely like a cure on the horizon, and there is some evidence that it's a genetic condition, e.g. no "cure" as that term is commonly understood.
This presumes a connection with mercury, a very controversial view and one with no real evidence. As of 1999, thimerosal has been removed from childhood vaccines but the Asperger's diagnosis rates haven't changed. There is a lot of doubt about this connection, and it's not just a PR campaign by the drug companies (granted that factor exists).There is a lot of doubt among researchers, true. However, in my nephew's case, and also in mine, we both have an inability to sublimate mercury properly. Say what? No one processes mercury "properly" and sublimation is a myth. You speak as though individuals differ in their tolerance for mercury and their ability to process it out of the body. Believe me when I tell you, this has no basis in reality — mercury is not a dietary component like dairy products that some people are better able to process than others. Mercury has very toxic and very uniform effects on people.
This was before being normal ranked higher then being fulfilled, and before individuality began to be frowned upon. There was a time when ostracism was reserved for mass murderers and classical music fans — now it seems to be creeping over to encompass those who exhibit any non-bland traits.It was always there- I suspect many classical music fans are fans because they see patterns in the music that other people don't. Or perhaps they see music as something other than rhythmic foreplay for nature's basic agenda (more little foot-tappers in the future). I won't go into it now- this message is long enough and has taken up more time that I wanted to give it- but I suspect the principles of evolution *also* affect sociology in a way the anthropologists "experts" have yet to notice. You might be wise to lend a few thought cycles to the concept that religion is, to use an old pre-reformation Catholic phrase "The protector and builder of civilization", and that civilizations and cultures are also affected by the process of natural selection. Again, it depends on some prior assumptions about what the terms "civilization" and "building" mean, and these are matters of opinion. The history of religion shows its agenda to be the furtherance of religion itself, not the human community of which it is a part — unless avoiding reason, skepticism and doubt, and killing unbelievers, is the central purpose of human existence, in which case you are absolutely right. To that end, it's in a civilization's best interest to exclude those "who exhibit any non-bland traits"; because they threaten the status quo. And thus, in neurotypical bland individuals, this behavior of ostracism is as much instinct as it is thought. It is just possible that, in the long term, an organism skilled at reason and logic will prevail, in a natural competition between biological forms, such that the idea of "science" as a distinct discipline will seem like a temporary crutch, replaced by everyday thought processes indistinguishable from what we now would call science at its best.
Actually, our outlooks couldn't be farther apart. But human history very clearly supports your outlook, not mine.That depends on how dogmatic you are about randomness- I think you've misconstrued some of my words below. But we'll see. You need to understand that the randomness of evolution isn't a matter of opinion, of which words one chooses, or one's personal motivations for taking a particular position (not that those factors don't exist). It is a matter of science, of experiment. Regardless of how strongly public opinion polls prefer one outcome over another, the science stays the same.
If the basis of discussion is sustainable existence, we're at the 100% point, because even if we were to miraculously stop population increase entirely today, we would still collide with resource limitations and be forced to a lower population in the long term (because we are already beyond sustainable limits of resource usage). But if the point is to see how many people we can squeeze onto the planet before mass death begins, then we're not at 100% yet. It all depends on how we define our terms.I define my terms in keeping with adding the increase in technology curve to the population curve. If you expect to match population's curve with a technological one, you can't understand the difference between arithmetical and exponential rates of growth. Expressed technically, pursuing the derivatives of an arithmetical growth function leads quickly to a constant, then a zero. Pursuing the derivatives of an exponential growth function lead to the shocking result that, as often as not, it never becomes zero (in fact, the most common growth function — based on e, the base of natural logarithms — is its own derivative).
The "certain political problem" is that people have different ways to state the issue. To some, the point is to have a sustainable existence. To others, it's all a game to see how many people can exist simultaneously, and nature imposes limitations externally by way of war and disease, rather than internally by way of common sense.I've got a more definite political problem for you- that certain people on this planet think they need more to live than they do, and are currently skewing the resource distribution away from sustainable, wide-area permaculture into centralized agriculture, leaving 1.6 billion hectares entirely wild. You aren't kidding, you really are a Marxist. I didn't believe it until just now. Marxism makes assumptions about people and society that are both unrealistic and contradicted by experience. Marxism is to politics what religion is to philosophy — both deny the persuasiveness of evidence and experience. If politics can be called the art of the possible, Marxism should be called the art of the impossible.
Looked on correctly, war and epidemics are just varieties of late-term abortion, imposed by nature after we humans fail to accept responsibility for our numbers.Actually, I look at war and epidemics as a part of evolution. A necessary part. No, that's one of many misconceptions about evolution. Evolution is a very simple idea, and it doesn't mandate what you think it does. Wars and epidemics might serve as instruments of evolution, but it's quite another thing to argue that they're necessary. Coöperation between organisms is as likely as war, maybe more likely.
Fairly translated, the smart people should have the children and the others should get what is euphemistically called genetic counseling. But that's eugenics, a proactive human engineering project in which someone has to decide who is who. But history teaches us that no one can be trusted with those decisions. We must leave it up to nature to sort out who should survive — we aren't qualified.True enough. But intelligent women- who know and understand their cycle- would go a long way. How about the revolutionary notion that women "understand their cycle" in order to bring it under intelligent control and prevent it from ruining their own lives and that of the people around them? How about a role for free will and individual evolution?
[about fertiliy control being only 3% effective overall] This isn't true. My probability is 0% (I have a vasectomy), and there are many other very reliable ways to control fertility. Then there's abortion, which I suspect you didn't include for ideological reasons. Your estimate of 3% reliability is based on an ideological premise, not a logical one.Thanks for making me look this up, turns out we were both wrong. Or both right. Depends on how you look at it. My 3% was based on condom failure rate- vasectomies are somewhat better, having anywhere between a .02% failure rate to a 9% failure rate, depending on method used, with 18 pregnancies per 1000 couples per year after 3 years.
I felt an impulse to argue with you about these very conventional views, but (1) I have had the same argument any number of times to no measurable effect, and (2) human history represents the grand fulfillment of your outlook, not mine. So I decided to let this one pass.Historical data is important. What gets me is the fact that modern sex ed- either the abstinence only type, or the birth control only type- both use lies to try to reduce teenage pregnancy, when it's obvious that telling the truth would be FAR more effective. But which truth? You have taken the position that the "truth" is we're trying to thwart nature and we shouldn't — we should accept that sex is for making babies, and there's room for plenty more babies. Your position leaves out any role for intelligence or choice. Or some purpose to our lives other than as biological copying machines.
[About doubting the randomness of evolution] But randomness is the point, it's not a side effect (and it is definitely random). Because of the random nature of the process, all possible biological forms get an equal chance. Without randomness, evolution wouldn't create what we see around us.I see no difference between using the word random and claiming "goddunit"- both are an expression that you really don't know if a pattern exists or not. That's false — maybe you should spend some time learning about randomness. Randomness certainly doesn't mean an absence of pattern. Quite the contrary, most random processes are very highly predictable — all one need do is learn the mathematics of randomness, the kind of mathematics that lies at the heart of both evolution and quantum theory.
This assumes a number of things. One, that believing in God is more logical than not believing in God.Not quite, more like "God is logically equal to random and completely indistinguishable from random", therefore making Heisenberg more of a dogmatist than a scientist. I don't think there is anything to be gained by trying to refute the conclusions you have come to, based on flawed ideas about randomness, or for that matter, religion and Marxism. The house is crumbling because the foundation is unsound. But dogmas and doctrines, IF well supported by other evidence, work just as well as theories, as long as you're willing to keep them in the box they were designed for. You've just given me another example. There are no two conceptions more different than dogma and theory. Dogma is absolute and unchanging, unaffected by reason and experience, while theory is perpetually open to revision, falsification and abandonment. This is why theory has very high value while dogma can only impede human progress (a notion dramatically proven by human history).
Two, events on the human stage only make sense if there is a God out there pulling puppet strings.No, not on a human stage, but within the first few seconds of the Big Bang. Humans didn't show up for another 18 billion years after God stopped messing with the universe. 1. Present evidence suggests that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. This means that, according to your estimate, either (1) we must wait 4.3 billion years to even have this conversation, or (2) God was around 4.3 billion years before the Big Bang and squeezed through the singularity represented by the Big Bang (a collapse of both space and time).
Three, that the point of life is to push against resource limits, even when the limits we're pushing against are other people just like ourselves.Well, that's just evolution as we know it and life on this planet; we don't know about other planets. And you can't quite say "other people just like ourselves"- each individual is a unique expression of whatever it is that forces mutations. Yes, just so, and for that reason we should respect the idea of individual choice and free will, and not assume we can realistically direct nature.
An important point here — as the human population grows, non-typical behavior becomes less useful and more fractious, until finally, at a sufficiently high population density, any deviation from a bland norm becomes a crime. In short, high population densities require more obedience and less individuality — at the limit, we experience moral pressure to become drones. This is a pretty good argument for limiting our numbers (and it's not the only one).It's an interesting argument, but it's a culture based one. One could just as easily design a culture where the moral pressure was to resist being a drone to the point of large variety & diversity. Yes, but variety and diversity stand in opposition to large populations that collide with (1) other populations and (2) resource limitations. Each increase in population becomes an argument justifying totalitarianism. As population density increases, what might be considered harmless expressions of free will gradually become unforgivable moral crimes.
It is interesting to think that, as population grows beyond all reason (already true), the beneficial mutation is one that accepts reasonable limits. Unfortunately, that mutation can't stand against the Population Paradox and ends up lost in the noise.Actually, I'd think the reverse- that as the population grows, the person who feels perfectly fine locked in a closet with a video screen would be the winning mutation. Bonus if they can do that *and* find a way to reproduce. That was my point. A reasonable person would not join the herd, and in the dense future you're imagining, the herd is the only reality. Consequently in that highly competitive future, a reasonable choice necessarily prevents propagation of the genotype that led to it.
What? A neurologist delivered an Asperger's diagnosis? But Asperger's is defined by the DSM — by symptoms, not causes — and not by a particular pattern of organic brain function. There's no present scientific basis for a neurologist making this determination.That hasn't been true since *before* my diagnosis: http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/booksReports/vasec_effective.htm You provided the wrong link, unless you are arguing that the effectiveness of vasectomies has some relation to a neurologist's choice to deliver an Asperger's diagnosis. There has been a great deal of MRI research done in the last few years on Asperger's, enough to make a diagnosis. NOT, I'd stress, enough to call this a cause. You are missing the point that none of this work is rigorously scientific. It is not scientific because we can't freely choose the subjects (we have to pick and choose among those who present themselves as patients), we take the moral hazard of not telling clients what we are actually doing (an ethical failing), and we can't meet the double-blind requirement.
Expressed formally, for this to represent anything useful, a double-blind study of a large number of randomly selected subjects would have to show a statistically valid correlation between (a) an unambiguous neurological pattern on one hand, and (b) an equally unambiguous clinical diagnosis from psychology on the other.Well, (b) is certainly missing. But a statistically significant correlation between the unambiguous neurological pattern and my diagnosis exists, and I gather in the last 3 years it has now become common to use an MRI as part of the diagnosis, especially due to more dangerous diseases that can mimic Asperger's symptoms. Don't you realize this is onanism masquerading as science? There's no doubt that Asperger's sufferers have distinctive traits, but to begin to tell people they have Asperger's based on those traits, without first establishing a connection between the traits and the underlying cause, is on a par with shaking a gourd at a solar eclipse and discovering — miracle! — that the sun reappears. And it's perfectly repeatable!
For (a), professional judgments would have to be set aside entirely, and a computer would determine the outcome based on clear measurements. This is technically feasible at present, not to say that it would identify Asperger's.It has now. No ... it ... hasn't. The procedure you experienced can only show that you exhibit some physiological traits in common with some people thought to be suffering from Asperger's. Until we have a cause as a goal post, this is a modern version of phrenology.
For (b), we would have to deal with the well-established problem that two therapists can't agree on a diagnosis, a problem that has only gotten worse as the DSM has grown in size.And getting still worse, which is why I urge parents to get the MRI. The MRI doesn't reveal what you think it does. What it reveals is the level of desperation and credulousness, and a sad lack of healthy skepticism, about Asperger's and about general clinical practice.
I emphasize that no one has even proposed such a studyIncorrect- linked to it above. Actually, no, you didn't link to it, and until there is a known cause for Asperger's, such studies can only collect potentially coincidental traits shared by Asperger's subjects, and possibly many other people for unrelated causes. This is already true in clinical practice, and the rate of misdiagnosis is already reaching the level of scandal.
If "each case near-unique" were true, there would be no condition deserving the label Asperger's. If any number of root causes could produce the same outcome, that would invalidate any idea of an identifiable condition (because at that point we are discussing symptoms with no specific root cause).That's why it's a syndrome, not a disease. That's why it is not based in science. "Syndrome" is often a hand-waving way to avoid the difficult question of evidence.
As to cure, since Asperger's appears to run in families and therefore appears to have genetic roots, there isn't likely to be any cure, at least in an individual sense.Autism Speaks is looking for a cure based on that- they want pre-natal screening of autism and Asperger's so that abortion becomes a cure, like it has with Turner's Syndrome. That is the most twisted use of the term "cure" I have ever heard. It reminds me of a cynical expression from the Vietnam War, "we had to burn the village to save it."
... That's an issue I addressed with respect to the DSM in my article "Is Psychology a Science?" — once the DSM achieves its apparent goal (every imaginable behavior listed and identified as a mental disturbance), then everything is a mental illness, which means nothing is.I don't believe anything is to begin with. Psychology is a religion, not a science. You're really all over the map here. If there are no real mental conditions, then Asperger's may represent something else, possibly something beneficial, and getting an MRI might be a waste of time. And in the present circumstances (without a known cause), trusting the MRI result is certainly not a reasonable choice. Many researchers agree.
Unlike economics, psychologists (at least the opinion leaders) tend to reluctantly agree that it isn't scientific.Few things are, when you put them to the tests you described here:
... No! Not "treated," but ameliorated or suppressed. If you counsel a young person not to flap his arms on the ground that it will get him ostracized in his peer group, or if you explain logically how social relations work (thus enlisting the frontal cortex in processing social cues normally dealt with at a lower level), all you are doing is ameliorating symptoms. This isn't a "treatment" any more than an iron lung is a treatment for polio.I agree, that's an example of amelioration. But that's not a physical symptom, that's a behavioral symptom. Maybe you should re-read your messages before clicking "Send." To the degree that Asperger's is defined behaviorally and not physically, to an equal degree it won't be possible to identify it using an MRI, or any other method based on physical measurement.
The above assumes something not proven — that Asperger's represents an identifiable condition that unambiguously separates some members of society from others, as opposed to being an extreme position on a continuum including normal behavior.Well, it's identifiable, but it's causes are different. You are way, way ahead of the evidence here. To assert that its causes are different, we would first have to know what its causes are. We aren't there yet. We aren't even close. It's unproductive to go on about what Asperger's is from the standpoint of outward signs and anecdotes. This is the wrong approach to anything constructive. And therapists can only deal with behavioral symptoms, not physical ones such as overstimulus. Would that be why psychologists are petitioning for the right to prescribe drugs? The fact is that psychologists want to move away from talk therapy into something more lucrative, and the pressure to let them prescribe drugs is substantial. Coping skills are not treatment. Treatment is removal of potential problems, where we can. Treatment requires a defined target, and we don't know what the target is.
[About suppressing drives] Possibly, but if true, it's a non sequitur. I can hold my breath until I pass out, but what have I proven? Also, the artificial womb (the topic of an upcoming article) will separate sexual preferences from sexual outcomes, so homosexuality won't be self-selected against to the degree that it is at present.Are we finally getting to that point? If so, what usefulness for the slave trade! No problem cloning a new human being, who would then be the property of the person who paid for it. As if we don't already have labor in surplus without diversity. At first I didn't see the connection you were making, but I eventually got it — you're arguing that an artificial womb would separate reproduction from any connection with family, and lead to exploitation. But the (at the moment imaginary) artificial womb would contain real biological material (it would have to) and would therefore remain attached to the providers of the material, just as a surrogate mother is only a stand-in for real parents, and just as deposits in a sperm bank remain legally and morally connected to their originators. All that changes is the method, not the laws and policies.
Put more succinctly, the point was to shift focus away from individuals to the state. It's a theme of modern times, and Nazism was only an extreme example.Yep, can see the same thing happening even in "enlightened democracies". Yes, and the degree to which it's true is strongly correlated with population density. Both Germany and Japan had very serious population problems before World War II, problems unfortunately alleviated by mass death. The least overpopulated country in the Axis was Italy, who lost interest and dropped out well before the other partners. ... I do have a tendency to judge that way. There's a rather extreme correlation over the last 125 years between "trickle down" politicians and business downturns, for example. Just remember that correlations don't either prove or imply causation. There's an incredible level of junk science out there, particularly in advertising and journalism, in which any kind of correlation is trumpeted as scientific proof. Well, all evidence is anecdotal in the end result. Even double blind studies end up filtered through somebody's human mind, and all human minds contain bias. The premise that we all have biases is certainly true, but the conclusion is false. I cannot overemphasize how false it is. A properly designed double-blind study is immune to the biases of the researchers. To take the position that all research results are tainted by human passions is simply to misunderstand scientific research.
... this is not the result of organized study or of science. It's just anecdotal. People who believe they are Aspies have headaches, a discussion ensues, and presto — it's a symptom, or even a "cause". This is groupthink, not science.All science is groupthink, eventually. That's what the peer-reviewed process is for, to insure against wild biases getting through. Please! If your position had merit, Albert Einstein the patent clerk would never had been published. If your position had merit, Alfred Wegener the German meteorologist (plate tectonics) would not have been either heard or taken seriously. If your position had merit, Semmelweiss' silly demand that doctors wash their hands between patient visits would have gone unheard.
My personal opinion is that a sufficiently dedicated nerdy personality with some mathematical skill can create beautiful visual representations with no fine-motor control and no drafting aptitude. An example of my own nerdy output:Interesting. Especially since my brain doesn't process the 3-D version properly, apparently (or is it using that older filter version?) I've done that sort of thing. My problem is more physical. To digress for a moment — do you have a pair of anaglyphic glasses, with red and blue lenses? If not, you couldn't have decoded the 3-D version of the image (the special glasses are required to see the 3-D effect).
http://arachnoid.com/raytracing/intro_blowup.html
So Asperger's shouldn't be thought of as preventing fruitful activity in the arts - it's a matter of choosing the right medium of expression.
... My personal view is that all religions represent rational compromises (because all of them have notions that cannot be doubted, sometimes on pain of death).Hmm, maybe you have a different definition of rationality as well, but just try questioning a scientific assumption sometime and see where that gets you. It happens all the time among scientists, where the right to question anything, to be brutally skeptical, is always respected, and has borne much fruit over the years.
You have just shown how a person can rationalize religious belief on the ground that it creates an orderly system in a disorderly world. But long-term disorder is the essence of reality, although local violations (like us) are permitted as long as entropy continues to increase globally.Yes, but that's still within cause and effect, and thus entropy is still ordered. Heisenberg (must have skipped the e there) takes a step beyond that, and insists that the causes cannot be known, ever. No, that's false. Heisenberg doesn't deny the relation between cause and effect, he simply specifies a limit to the accuracy with which we can measure that relationship. If you try to measure the behavior of a single particle, you won't get very far. If you measure more particles, or change the scale of the measurement, you will get a result more consistent with classical physics. In the final analysis, it's all statistics and probability.
The Heisenberg (note spelling) Uncertainty Principle is crystal clear in its expression and is very well supported by evidence — indeed, much of quantum theory relies on it. It shouldn't be rejected on emotional grounds, and it denies the reality of a deterministic universe of the classical (pre-Einstein) kind.Actually, I'm rejecting it on PHILOSOPHICAL grounds, and saying there's another perfectly good explanation that equally fits the evidence. And that the only difference between the two explanations, is humility. It's fascinating to hear a religious attachment being described as humility, when history shows that religion is the antithesis of humility. The essence of humility is doubt, and the essence of religion is the avoidance of doubt — and its replacement with moral certainty.
It is not too much to say that, either (1) quantum is right and there is no determinism or long-term predictability to the universe, or (2) quantum is wrong and transistors and integrated circuits cannot work as they do. Indeed, looked at that way, our having this conversation with computers can only confirm the validity of quantum theory and the Uncertainty Principle.Ok, snipping out the rest, for two reasons. One, it's incorrect- if the universe were truly random at a quantum level, transistors and integrated circuits, that now exist at a quantum level, would be unpredictable in the extreme. You are still missing the role of statistics and probability. For the radiation example given earlier, measuring an individual atom tells us nothing about the true behavior of the system. Measuring 10,000 atoms gives a very different, and more useful, result. There would be no way to switch a transistor reliably. If you make a transistor small enough, that becomes true, indeed that is called the "quantum limit" in semiconductor physics, and we have ways to avoid the limit (primarily by making charge wells large enough). Present-day transistors possess sufficiently large charge wells that quantum effects produce only occasional and acceptable error rates. That is, of course, overcome in a random quantum universe using probability. You just undermined your own argument above: "transistors and integrated circuits, that now exist at a quantum level, would be unpredictable in the extreme". The argument is obviously wrong, and you have gone so far as to undermine it. But an equally good explanation is that there is a principle and pattern we have yet to discover, that erases the probability such that when you put x number of electrons in the base, this bridges the gap and allows y current from the collector to the emitter. That isn't an equally good argument, because it becomes false for a sufficiently small charge pool. We know this because we have performed experiments. The experiments agree with quantum theory to a ridiculous degree. But that second is not material to my argument. I suggest, instead, we base our judgement of Heisenberg not on the evidence, but on YOUR six philosophical rules:
"First and very important, properly conducted scientific research cannot ever prove a theory true, it can only prove a theory false. Philosopher David Hume has said, 'No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.'"I'm willing to accept Heisenberg on this one- we've yet to detect a pattern in the randomness, and it may well be beyond the capability of our species to ever detect such a pattern; but that is NOT the same as saying such a pattern does not exist. You have somehow used my quotation about falsifiability to justify an argument that the absence of disproof constitutes evidence in favor of something, e.g. "We can't disprove UFOs, this stands as an argument for their existence". Read up on the null hypothesis — in science and in the absence of evidence, a proposition is assumed to be false, not true.
"Second, following from the first point above, in science there are only theories, no theory ever collapses into a fact. Some theories are very well-supported, some less so, but even the very best theories, theories about which there is little doubt, do not become fact. Fact is not science's domain."This is where you're beginning to disappoint me. At the beginning, you claimed not to be dogmatic in your beliefs, but above, you removed Buddhism AND Catholicism from the realm of rationality without proof. I never denied the truth of those beliefs, I only said that without evidence they are formally assumed to be false. It is in this sense that all religions are irrational. That's not dogma, because the possibility for evidence always remains, and intelligent people respect evidence. Dogma doesn't await evidence, it denies sometimes overwhelming evidence (as in the example of the trial of Galileo). You are misusing the word "dogma." But once again, I can accept Heisenberg at this level, barely. Far too many atheists are using this theory as fact today, without any way to scientifically label it as such. What? People are using Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as an argument against religion? That's utterly brainless. Heisenberg's Principle simply doesn't have that meaning or that potential. This can only arise from ignorance.
"Third, because science is composed entirely of theories, every part of science is open to further investigation, and no topics are shut off from reëvaluation and new study. If a scientific theory were to become assumed as fact, and if no one cared to investigate it any more, in that moment the theory would leave the domain of science."This is where the application of quantum mechanics that insists on everything being fundamentally random fails. If your misstatement of quantum theory had any merit, yes, your point would make sense. But you are mistaken about quantum — quantum theory is the most precise, and the most well-tested, physical theory we have. Its predictions are frequently borne out in experiments to ten decimal places. It's ironic, isn't it, that a theory often and wrongly thought to deny the existence of certainty, can lead to that degree of certainty? For if something is random, there's no need to investigate further; But very few phenomena are truly random, and we cannot know that without a full investigation. Even concluding that a process is truly random requires substantial effort. Here's an example — look at Graphs 3 and 4 in my article Signal Processing Workshop — Graph 3 strongly suggests "Random". But a special mathematical treatment produces Graph 4 out of Graph 3 — not at all random. you can have effect without labeling cause, you need not label the cause because "it's just random". At this point, you've stopped being an atheist- for you have defined a God. This is the most twisted and wrongheaded argument for religion I have ever heard, and I have heard plenty. It in essence says that anything one cannot decode represents an argument for God. Granted, religion is about certainty and immunity to evidence, but this goes too far. Luckily, Heisenberg is not irredeemable- for:
"Fourth, if a theory does not (or cannot) propose a test of its claims that might falsify the theory, that theory is not scientific. For a theory to be called 'scientific,' it must be potentially falsifiable through practical tests of its claims."There's a way to falsify randomness- but it requires application of the third principle, and thus one can't dogmatically insist upon randomness. You are the only one who is dogmatically and inaccurately insisting on randomness. No one who understands quantum theory believes physical events to be random in the way you seem to believe.
"Fifth, science is a process of shaping theories to fit evidence, not the other way around."What is random on it's face, may be intensely ordered, just as heat or the process of thermonuclear fission in the sun is. You didn't address the meaning of my point, which was that shaping evidence to fit theories is fraught with risk, like making the claim that an MRI scan can reliably identify Asperger's without first establishing a cause. It's a playground for confirmation bias. Finally, it's important to remember when you are feeling dogmatic about randomness or atheism that: "p < .001" You have constructed a straw man. I'm not dogmatic about religion, I simply make a reasonable request for evidence, and assume that, without evidence, there is nothing there. This view can always be contradicted by evidence, in perpetuity. Or in as the Catechism of the Catholic Church Teaches on a variety of subjects from grace, to salvation, to the very existence of God: "We can have moral certainty, but not absolute certainty". The moral certainty of religion has been the fuel for the majority of history's wars, up to and including the present day. We know little about the Islamic True Believers who brought down the WTC, but one thing is certain — their moral certainty overcame whatever degree of common sense they may have possessed. Absolute certainty is not for human beings to have. The same straw man reappears, since I have been arguing against absolute certainly all along.
To believe this you can't be a mainstream parent. One of the central dramas of parenting is the issue of letting go and allowing your child to go his own way. An extreme form of parenting tries to prevent the child from growing up at all.Well, I do have Asperger's, don't I? I think under present circumstances, that's an open question:
"Clearly, the work on Asperger syndrome, in regard to scientific research as well as in regard to service provision, is only beginning. Parents are urged to use a great deal of caution and to adopt a critical approach toward information given to them." — Yale Child Development Center
...No one processes mercury "properly" and sublimation is a myth.News to me- is my family (where 8/10 people have normal levels of mercury, and two of us have 3x that amount in our hair samples) a black swan? I'll have to do more research on this clearly. You need to look into this more critically — sublimation of mercury is a false belief. The differences you quote most likely arose from differences in exposure.
The experts in this subfield of toxicology agree that people differ only in their exposure to mercury, not in how their bodies react to it — with respect to the latter, we are all equals.Hmm.....makes me wonder where two people born 25 years apart stumbled onto a significantly larger exposure. Same source? In a well-known story, old and young people in Japan were exposed to mercury in the same way, and over many years, from the fish they caught in front of their houses, but with different outcomes. Different fish, different behaviors, different mercury levels.
... you need to realize the position you have just taken is irrational. There is no identifiable distinction between people with respect to their tolerance for mercury. If this were true, it would represent a first step toward a treatment. But it's false, it doesn't exist. Mercury is an equal-opportunity killerI've got to look into this more. I'll take your word for it for now, but then my family seems to be a statistical outlier. Science never relies on one data point — ever. Even a dozen data points may be more misleading than instructive.
Chelation therapy cannot by itself improve someone's performance, it can only halt further degradation of functioning, because the damage done by mercury is permanent. A young person might adapt and overcome the damage done by mercury after it has been removed from the body, giving the illusion that prior damage has been repaired, when in fact this is an example of a young brain adapting to injury by shifting processing to an undamaged area (a well-established process).I said "and a GFCF diet"- one of the symptoms of mercury poisoning is an inability to process gluten and casein, which when improperly processed lead to neurotransmitter imbalances. My only point is that people don't "improve" after mercury poisoning except by shifting processing to undamaged parts of the brain, something more likely in young people.
... that distinction arises from setting different goals, not a real disagreement. The logistical equation shows what happens when a rising population collides with a declining resource base, and the two interact.I agree. I have the goal of increasing the resource base by switching to permaculture and other sustainable/renewable resources. But I'm unsure as to your goal. That's because I am unsure of my goal. I would like to see more attention paid to the life of the mind, and overpopulation stands in opposition to that. In the extreme it erases any distinction between us and animals. And maybe that distinction has no right to exist. But what if, as permaculture research that I linked to in my slashdot article suggests, our income (natural resources) is indeed much larger than we think it is, and with proper application of such technologies as vertical farming, and less political resource allocation, is as common as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen? I think you can anticipate my response — the theory has too little evidence to base public policy on it. Also, it advocates (as all such arguments do) crowding the planet just to see if we can get away with it. It's a kind of out-of-control biological consumerism.
What you're discussing are not scientific theories, they are mystical extrapolations loosely based on quantum ideas, a tendency that is universally derided by scientists who actually understand quantum.And yet, you fell into that trap yourself above, in insisting on a non-deterministic universe. I never insisted on such a universe. That's the conclusion a reasonable person draws from the present evidence. Future evidence may lead to a different conclusion. More of the straw man.
... nature and evolution have to decide this, we don't get to do it.And yet we try- competition over resources. But when we compete over resources without any effort to think about what we're doing, we become nature's blunt instruments, and no meaningful distinction can be drawn between ourselves and cockroaches. Not to disparage upstanding, self-respecting cockroaches. Thus we should attempt to build a world where resource competition isn't an issue. By rationalizing an increase in population? That lies at the heart of your position, but there is copious experimental evidence that, as population density increases, so does competition. And brutality.
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