Autism Theories

Sometimes I try too hard to give you one-stop shopping on an idea...

 Autism Is Bad by Sebastian Jensen, recommended by Aporia. I dislike the title, but it is clearly in reference to mythbusting the idea that autism is an intellectual advantage that makes geniuses.

Both of these mythical views of autism are wrong: autistic people are not more likely to be right wing and the link between genius and autism is overblown.

I had not heard of "dimensionality" but the concept is discussed in a internal link and took only a little pondering to pick up.  I will not fully define it here in order to encourage you to go on the essay "Autism as a Disorder of Dimensionality," but it has to do with neuronal branching and complexity of brain architecture. And Johnson thinks the intelligence link is quite possible.

Neuronal density is a plausible candidate for the strongest factor underlying both genius and madness: it both drastically reduces canalization (normalcy), allowing the brain to be wired in strange ways and pointed in odd directions, and offers many more parameters — the raw stuff of achievement. This can lead to madness, genius, or both.

Also included is a chart of where various diagnoses are associated along the political spectrum. Spoiler alert: Most cluster around the center on both the social and economic axes. Both essays go into controversial territory, particularly the one at Opentheory.net. Some of it rather took my breath away. "Are you sure you want to go there?" Sometimes I get the feeling that they just don't like autists, and are trying to get back at someone. OTOH, sometimes they seem to defend them too much. All of this in a package of neurological research and solid grounding. 

This links in turn to  'Just Emil Kirkegaard Things ' A theory of Ashkenazi genius: intelligence and mental illness.

Perhaps I should have started with something more reliable: Autism And Intelligence: Much More Than You Wanted To Know by Scott Alexander at ACX (then Star Slate Codex).  I am surprised I have not linked this before.  At least, I can't find it at present. Plenty of theories there as well.

These numbers should be taken with very many grains of salt. First, IQ tests don’t do a great job of measuring autistic people. Their intelligence tends to be more imbalanced than neurotypicals’, so IQ tests (which rely on an assumption that most forms of intelligence are correlated) are less applicable. Second, even if the test itself is good, autistic people may be bad at test-taking for other reasons – for example, they don’t understand the directions, or they’re anxious about the social interaction required to answer an examiner’s quetsions. Third, and most important, there is a strong selection bias in the samples of autistic people. Many definitions of autism center around forms of poor functioning which are correlated with low intelligence. Even if the definition is good, people who function poorly are more likely to seek out (or be coerced into) psychiatric treatment, and so are more likely to be identified.

Fanfare For the Common Man

A half-dozen titles were suggested before Copland settled on this one.  Vice President Henry Wallace wanted the piece to debut just before income tax time in 1943.  Copland replied "I am all for honoring the common man at income tax time."

 

Non-Opioid Painkiller

The FDA approved a non-opioid painkiller. Journavx, developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, targets a protein called the NaV1.8 voltage-gated sodium channel, which transmits pain signals from sensory neurons to the brain. No other drugs on the market target this protein; existing painkillers instead bind to several other different NaV channels at once. In a phase 3 trial with 2,000 patients undergoing surgery, Journavx reduced pain as effectively as hydrocodone plus paracetamol and had fewer side effects. It also does not appear to be addictive. But the drug will cost about $233 per week; opioids cost about $12 per week.  (From Works in Progress)

Ruxandra Teslo and Lyman Stone

I like them both.  They are batting the ball back and forth on substack about fertility, quite respectfully, from what I have seen. Some of the cross-purposes seems to be that Lyman is focused on overall societal fertility and finding interventions that encourage women to have more children, while Ruxandra is focused on women not being punished in the marketplace for having children. She introduced the idea of "greedy" careers: Not that women are greedy for wanting to go into them, but that there are careers such as law and entrepreneurship that are greedy for your time if you want to succeed.

One can see how there would be overlap but disagreement.

My own view is that finding ways for ambitious women to also have children may be a good thing in itself - they are our wives and sisters, after all - but it is not going to change the overall fertility much. I don't see that there has been a cultural shift of women suddenly wanting to imitate Amy Coney Barrett. Therefore, the question becomes how much should a society try to accommodate or compensate each other for differences in biology. The inequality inherent in childbearing, and possibly even -raising, was not set forth in the Constitution or any institutions of humankind. They just is.

DOGE and Chesterton's Fence

Having worked for a government that was nowhere near as wasteful as the Federal Government and seen the problems even there, I have leaned toward approving of DOGE activities even when scare stories are circulated.  I expect that those stories may even be true, and the justification for getting rid of agency A or department B pretty shaky. Yet I also know that we are only hearing one side of the incident, highly dependent on the source. Now more than ever. And the horrified do not seem willing to come to grips with how far the family is already in debt. Yes, a Mercedes is a great investment but...

Yet I also know the wisdom of Chesterton's Fence, not to remove something until we understand why it was put there to begin with. Am I abandoning some of my principles for others, and have I chosen correctly? The first defense for DOGE would be that the field is full of fences, and when we try to evaluate each one cautiously, two more spring up before we are done. 

But still, Chesterton's Fence...

In that spirit, I give you In Defense of Weird Research.

Lord, Show Us A Sign

 

I get what sermon a pastor might draw from a YIELD sign, or a STOP sign.  The addition of the CROSS TRAFFIC part seems a bit more obscure.  Challenge your pastor to derive a sermon from BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE PAVEMENT, or BREAKDOWN LANE TRAVEL ALLOWED 6AM-10AM WEEKDAYS. That's when you know you've got yourself a real first-class preacher.

Vegetables of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

I have heard people make a big deal about this being the fruit of the spirit, not the fruits of the spirit.  This strikes me as a rather fussy distinction without a difference. "No, because the fruit grows out of obedience to the spirit and takes some time, while you can just buy fruits at the market." Hmm, yes. 

Vegetables, now, those are actually different. Isn't it important to have your Vegetables of the Spirit?  Or be a vegetable of the spirit, or something? Inquiring minds want to know.

Mornington Crescent

Well now that you know the rules, here's a really fine multiplayer match.

 

Postmodernist Essays

 You get a different essay generated each time you go.

Mornington Crescent

I believe this was a popular radio game in Britain from the 90s - 10s. The "moves" in this game are stations on the Underground. Most competitions are over in a few minutes. There are a few others on YouTube.

PUA's

From 14 years ago, a longer post on a topic that was new to me then, which resonated with my audience well enough to generate 30 comments. Lots of people I miss there. I don't hear much about the topic anymore.  Maybe I don't hang out at the right joints.  The topic is still interesting, but what I noticed was the quality of the disagreement.  Everyone seemed to partly agree and partly disagree with everyone else, which made for a good discussion.  It is not only that people were polite, but that everyone seemed interested in getting to a good general understanding.  Each believed they had good points to make but were curious about what others had to say. 

I kept trying to expand it to discuss tyrants and political manipulation, but no one nibbled.

Remember that if you comment, none of the comments before mine about the technical minutiae will be read by their original authors. We are starting fresh after that.

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Dr. Helen has a link commenting on PUA's - that is "pick up artists." Get used to the acronyms if you choose to read up on this. Either some few with a strong founder effect on the phenomenon of game likes thinking in abbreviations, or this male type in general likes it. The longer article is here is you want to skip directly to that.

The concept is that women's sexual responses can be hacked, using their evolutionary hardwiring against them to seduce them. An idea rather frightening even if only partly true. There is apparently a lot of interest by proponents of what they call game in more academic discussions of what it all means in understanding male-female relationships in general, the future of the human race if knowledge of game becomes more widespread, whether the techniques discussed have wider application for leadership and politics, and, I imagine, a dozen other related items. One reads all this with a sort of horrified fascination.

I don't know the history of this - I recall reading in college that Balzac had claimed that any man could seduce any woman if he would only listen long enough - though I have little doubt that there is much discussion of natural game versus game as an intentional manipulation if one wanted to search for it. And certainly some of the more basic points have been long observed. For example, that women say they want sensitive caring men but go to bed with bad boys has been noted by most high school males. The traditional counters to this, that this only applies to a subset of women and is most prominent in younger women, are acknowledged by some proponents and emphatically denied by others. Questions of what the PUA's ultimately decide they really want in a relationship also take up much discussion space.

I should note that while this sounds like mere braggadocio and hopeful wishing on the part of some men, the proponents have actually amassed evidence that what they claim is in fact true and observable, whether anyone wants it to be true or not. They would claim that it is the disbelief that is mere braggadocio and hopeful wishing on the part of women.

It's hardly surprising that this concept of manipulating others via the use of artificial techniques would emerge from discussions of seduction. But similar things have been claimed about the behavior of tyrannical political groups, cult religions, and sales techniques. Something of these more general applications did show up in Lewis's That Hideous Strength, sounding quite plausible in that context. It may be that we all can be hacked in many ways, and this is simply one aspect, attracting much energy and attention for obvious reasons.

I like to think I would not have used this in high school and college even if I had known. Yet I can't say that with any assurance.

I don't think it is wise to dismiss this as impossible simply because we can invent arguments why it shouldn't be true. That the wilder claims are unlikely doesn't mean that there's not something to it.

Airport

From February 2011.  Chris is still above the Arctic Circle in Norway, now with a fiancee, Maria Reithe. So more than a decade longer than he originally thought, and no indication he will return to America for more than a visit.  He keeps both passports.  We see him every couple of years, plus Facetime.

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When you drop off a son at the international departures terminal, and he's been talking about being based in Norway and Romania for 3-4 years - even though you know this is the son whose plans tend to change more rapidly - you can't help but watch as he goes through the last screening in view and think "Is this the last time I shall ever look at him?"

Perhaps it gets more difficult as it repeats, or maybe I'm just more easily moved to tears as I grow older, but this was harder than sending him off to the Marines, even though statistically, that was far more dangerous.

Trace Bundy

Still My Favorite Guitarist

 

Being Appreciated

The distinction between being appreciated and having status can be smudgy. We can nonetheless imagine low-status people being appreciated by coworkers or neighbors, and high status people who are not appreciated.Yet in general, the two things share a lot of space.

I am retired, and talk to retired people. I know some who have been retired a decade or more but quickly gravitate to telling you how unappreciated they were "by the school," or "in corporate America," or by managers who couldn't tell good workers from bad. The incentives - the promotions and bonuses - encouraged mediocre work instead of great. They are still bitter, and overgeneralise about all of society because of it. I can sense that these beliefs are never going to change now.  There is no pressing need anymore.  They can sink in as deeply as they like.

I did not think myself lucky when I was in jobs where everyone got paid the same, good or bad, or on account of largely irrelevant factors like longevity, degrees earned decades ago with little improvement since, or metrics designed to measure competence in situations unlike the ones they were in. Yet now I see that I was lucky in more important ways.  At least, I see it and partly apprehend it.  When the external was diminished, I had to ask myself "Why am I doing this? What is my motivation to do this well instead of poorly?" Those are more important questions, that those who receive their reward in this world may not get around to answering.

Martin Luther when discouraged would remind himself "I have been baptised, and that is enough." I got that low a few times as well, and now see that this became part of who I am. I do this because that is who I am. Lord make me better.  

Few people are appreciated as much as they deserve, and all of us are eventually forgotten, except a few by accident, like Ötzi. The day comes when we turn toward Aslan or away.

Privilege

The division is America is not between the rich and the poor, or the black and the white and all the others. Nor is it a matter of who is educated and who is not, who is beautiful and who not, nor even who is old and who is young except indirectly.

The greatest division in life is between the sick and the well. Even friends gradually drift away from the sick, who sometimes even embrace the rejection, turtling into their shells. We see this in animals as well, and do this in spite of ourselves. 

Outdoor Boys!

 Luke is back in  Nome again, and we see more of John-Adrian every time. He's on a lot in this one.

A family note is that only my wife and I and our friends in our generation call him John-Adrian.  His brothers call him JA and everyone else just calls him John.  He was Adrian Ionut in Romania, where people are addressed much more often by their middle name. We already had a Jonathan, so we pressured J-A to not just be "John" (as he was already using once he heard he was being adopted), but to hyphenate it.  It ended up making no difference.  So I have two sons named John/Jon. 

Apparently Luke broke JA's augur sometime in this video.  I haven't gotten there yet. I'm still watching the parts where my son is doing heavy labor with his bad back, and I am wincing every time he bends over and lifts.  Some parts of parenting never go away.  I guess he thinks it's worth it.  He turns 40 in a few weeks.  

The rest of the Nichols family shows up at around the 31 minute mark and they go over to the Wyman's for King Crab and other Filipino food by Jocie.  FB is the smallest of her accounts, but it seems to pay well. The middle granddaughter makes an appearance as well. The Nichols are Latter-Day Saints and go to church Sunday.  I hadn't known there was a Mormon church in Nome.  It might be a home church.  Nome has less than 4K people.

Near the end they go looking for Musk Ox. Rough, dangerous creatures.  Jocie gave my wife a winter headband made out of musk ox underfur for Christmas, supposedly the warmest in the world, and Tracy has loved it.

Impressionism

There is a Facebook group "I Love Impressionism," which includes 19th-21st C works.  Lots of Van Gogh and Monet, but also modern artists putting up their own work hoping to catch the eye of people who might like their approach.