Nurturing Of Adaptive & Fluid Minds

It’s always easier to marshall one’s forces when there is an external threat. The problem with America is the threat is now within itself. The threat is because many refuse to acknowledge the need for change. Exponential technology change is inevitable. Unfortunately, the needed change must be from within our inner mental models.

During WW2, women who had previously been marginalized in the workforce become the manufacturing engine that lead to the country to victory in WW2. As Rommel had warned, prior to the Normandy invasion, “In a man on man fight between comparable opponents, the winner is he who has put one more bullet through the barrel.” He was alluding to the importance on logistics and hence manufacturing to win wars.

This is hard to do for the adult mind. So we must depend on our children. Our investments for our future must be spent on our children and not on preparing for the kinds of war that doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s stop investing in horse-drawn artillery and instead invest more in more adaptive, resourceful and innovative citizenry. This is what happened in WW2, we discarded the past, placed our faith in our people and constructed a new future. We need to do the same again with the emergence of an AI driven economy.

That is, given that our minds are formed through a constructive process and that we need to transcend our static mental models of the “natural order of things”, we must prioritize the nurturing of adaptive and fluid minds in our children. Adaptive and fluid minds are not confused when they discover something new. They are on the contrary, inquisitive and willing to break their existing models so as to achieve an enlightened understanding. Civilization can only make progress if we have these kinds of minds that are comfortable with exponential change.

- More here from Carlos E. Perez

Le Botaniste - CO2 Neutral & Zero Waste Food

In my 25 years in this country, except two (yes, I counted) everyone I know waste food every meal. Every damn meal. 

In restaurants leaving food on the plate unfinished has become a fashion. Even the waiter makes fun of me when they see my clean plate. We live in a crazy trend of being civilized... 

Good to Go app was founded to help reduce restaurant food waste. Their "mission" is nothing fancy - it is how we used to live for centuries but we lost gratitude. 

Interview with CEO, Laurent Francois of Le Botaniste (a restaurant in NYC) to discuss what it means to run a truly sustainable business and get some zero-waste tips from their creative kitchen: 

Tell us about how Le Botaniste’s sustainability aspirations helped shape your menu. Can you share examples of menu items that were born out of sustainable innovation?

Our founder, Alain has a love for innovating and trying to use every little piece of a veggie in the process.

One example: Pulp from our juices are used as bases for our hummus for example, making use of 100% of the beautiful beets or carrots we receive every day!

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Are there any tips to reduce food waste in your kitchens that our readers could implement at home?

Reuse, reuse, reuse: transform something you tend to throw away in something else! Soup, hummus or oven-dried crackers can be great ways to make it happen (we use all parts of the broccoli for example: steaming the florets and transforming the stem into a soup).

I want to add, if any leftover food (say it was spoilt) cannot be reused, please don't throw in the garbage but place it next to a plant or a tree outdoors. 

Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. 

- Pleasures of Eating by Wendell Berry

A Death Of An Entire Species - Sapiens Murdered Dodo's

Dodo's never encountered, humans. So once human entered their territory, they didn't fear humans. Big Mistake!

What I've Been Reading

A long historical view not only helps us to keep calm to a "time of trouble" but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead, an historical interest as to what will happen is a help in carrying on. For a thinking man, it can be the strongest check on a suicidal feeling. 

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What can the individual learn from history as a guide to living? Not what to do but what to strive for. And what to avoid in striving. The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly; not least seeing himself clearly. 

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He may realize that the world is a jungle. But if he has seen that it could be better for anyone if the simple principles of decency and kindliness were generally applied, then he must in honesty try to practice these consistently and to live, personally, as if they were general. In other words, he must follow the right he has seen. 

Why Don't We Learn from History? by B.H Liddell Hart (1944). 

Time for a small rant: How stupid of me for not having read this book for over 3 decades, end rant. And I don't think, I have to say anything more. 

Cost of quantifying history (and not understanding history is both science & art): 

It was the school of German historians, headed by Ranke, who in the last century started the fashion of trying to be purely scientific. Any conclusions and generalizations were shunned, and any well-written books become suspect. What was the result? History became too dull to read and devoid of meaning. It became merely a subject for study by specialists. 

So the void was filled by new myths, of exciting power but appalling consequences. The world has suffered, and Germany worst of all, for the sterilization of history that started in Germany. 

The hardest lesson to learn (caused by societal delusion): 

The most dangerous of all delusions are those that arise from the adulteration of history in the imagined interests of national and military morale. Although this lesson of experience has been the hardest earned, it remains the hardest to learn. Those who have suffered most show their eagerness to suffer more. 

This camouflaged history not only conceals faults and deficiencies that could otherwise be remedied, but engenders false confidence, and false confidence underlies most of the failures that military history records. 

On human nature: 

It was saddening to discover how many apparently honorable men would stoop to almost anything to help their own advancement. 

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency. 

Faith vs. Truth: 

A realization of the cycle of familiar errors, endlessly recurring, which largely makes up the course of military history may lead one to think that the only hope of escape lies in more candid scrutiny of past experience and new honest in facing the facts. 

But one should still be able to appreciate the point of view of those who fear the consequences. Faith matters so much in times of crisis. One must have gone deep into history before reaching the conviction that truth matters more. 

We are blind to our own blindness: 

All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is the failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority. 

Understanding the restraints of democracy: 

We learn from history that democracy has commonly put a premium on conventionality. By its nature, it prefers those who keep step with the slowest march of thought and frowns on those who may disturb the "conspiracy for mutual inefficiency". Thereby, this system of government tends to result in the triumph of mediocrity and entails the exclusion of first-rate ability if it is combined with honesty. But the alternative to it, despotism, almost inevitably means the triumph of stupidity. And of the two evils, the former is less. 

Anyone who urges a different system, for efficiency's sake, is betraying the vital tradition. 

(Note: A lot of "intelligent" people voted for a narcissist Trump deluding themselves with imagined efficiency and unfortunately, it is still happening in India with no end in sight. Now, please go back and read the title of this book.) 

On Napolean & Hitler: 

To the unromantic historian, Napolean is more of a knave than a hero. But to the philosopher, he is even more of a fool than a knave. His folly was shown in the ambition he conceived and the goal he pursued, while this frustration was ensured by his capacity to fool himself. Yet the reflection remains that such a fool and his devasting folly was largely the creation of smaller, if better, fools. So great is the fascination of romantic folly!

Almost exactly 129 years after Napolean launched his invasion is Russia, Hitler began his attack on Russia, on June 22, 1941. Despite the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the interval he was to provide a tragic demonstration of the truth that mankind, and least of all its "great men," do not learn from history. 

The secret of lasting reforms: 

Reforms that last are those that come naturally, and with less friction, when men's minds have become ripe of them. A life spent in sowing a few grains of fruitful thought is a life spent more effectively than in hasty action that produces a crop of weeds. That leads us to see the difference, truly a vital difference, between influence and power. 

On the myth of "great man" (god delusion): 

History shows that the main hindrance to real progress is the ever-popular myth of the 'great man'. While 'greatness' may perhaps be used in a comparative sense, if even then referring more to particular qualities than to the embodied sum, the 'great man' is a clay idol whose pedestal has been built up by the natural human desire to look up to someone, but whose form has been carved by men who have not yet outgrown the desire to be regarded or to picture themselves, as great men. Many of those who gain power under power present systems have much that is good in them. Few are without some good in them. But to keep the lowest common denominator of the people, to instinct rather than to reason, to interest rather than to right, to expediency rather than to principle. It sounds practical and may thus command respect where to speak of ideals might only arouse distrust. But in practice, there is nothing more difficult than to discover where expediency lies, it is apt to lead from one expedient to another, in a vicious circle through endless knots. 

The ultimate dream (and mine too): 

How differently the affairs of the world would go, with a little more decency, a little more honesty, a little more thought! Thought-attempting, above all, to see a few moves ahead and realize the dangers of condoning evil. We try to play the old diplomatic game, yet cannot hope to play it successfully, because we have acquired scruples from which the old-style exponent of realpolitik is free, not yet having grown up as far. 

(Note: "decent" men who never use foul language in public nor private, mindlessly voted for the dangerous man Trump who used the word "pussy" in public gatherings. Now, please go back and read the title of this book.)

The germs of war: 

Sympathies and antipathies, interests and loyalties, cloud the vision. And this kind of short-sight is apt to produce short temper. 

As a light on the processes by which wars are manufactured and detonated, there is nothing more illuminating than a study of the fifty years of history preceding 1914. The vital influences are to detected not in the formal documents compiled by rulers, ministers, and generals but in their marginal notes and verbal asides. Here are revealed their instinctive prejudices, lack of interest in truth for its own sake, and indifference to the exactness of the statement and reception which is a safeguard against dangerous misunderstanding. 

I have come to think that accuracy, in the deepest sense is the basic virtue, the foundation of understanding, supporting the promise of progress. 

Sweeping judgments, malicious gossip, inaccurate statements which spread a misleading impression; these are symptoms of the moral and mental recklessness that gives rise to war. Studying their effect, one is lead to see that the germs of war lie within ourselves, not in economics, politics, or religion as such. How can we hope to rid the world of war until we have cured ourselves of the originating causes?

(Note: once again, men of "character" without a hint of irony nor awareness of their dissonance voted for a narcissist Trump. Now, please go back and read the title of this book.)

How the germs work: 

While economic factors formed a predisposing cause, the deeper and more decisive factors lay in human nature, its possessiveness, competitiveness vanity, and pugnacity, all of which were fomented by the dishonestly which breeds inaccuracy. 

Both of those governments, and their foreign ministers, in particular, were all ready to bring misery upon millions rather than swallow their injured pride. 

Plan for peace: 

Any plan for peace is apt to be not only futile but dangerous. Like most planning, unless of a mainly material kind, it breaks down through disregard of human nature. Worse still, the higher the hopes that are built on such a plan, the more likely that their collapse may precipitate war. 

There is no panacea for peace that can be written out in a formula like a doctor's prescription. But one can set down a series of practical points; elementary principles drawn from the sum of human experience in all times. Study war and learn from its history. Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil; nothing is so self-blinding. Cure yourself of two commonly fatal delusions: the idea of victory and the idea that war cannot be limited. 

How did our civilization has survived so far?: 

An important influence was the growth of more formal and courteous manners in social life. This code of manners spread into the field of international relations. These two factors, reason and manners, saved civilization when it was on the verge of collapse. Men came to feel that behavior mattered more than belief, and customs more than creeds, in making earthly life tolerable and human relations workable. 

(Note: Belief in an imaginary economy mattered for 70 plus million US citizens than behavior and customs and ended up voting for a narcissist Trump).

War is a means to an end (Difference between Napolean and Wellington): 

It was because he really understood war that he became so good at securing peace. He was the least militaristic of soldiers and free from the lust of glory. It was because he saw the value of peace that he became so unbeatable in war. For he kept the end in view, instead of falling in love with the means. Unlike Napolean, he was not infected by the romance of war, which generates illusions and self-deception. That was how Napolean had failed and Wellington prevailed. 

If you wish for peace, understand war. If there is one lesson that should be clear from history it is that bad means deform the end, or deflect its course thither. I would suggest the corollary that, if we take care of the means, the end will take care of itself. 

History and Christianity (how to limit and eliminate idealogy): 

The oldest gospel manuscripts belong to the fourth century A.D. They are copies of copies so that there was an immensely long interval during which copyists might alter the original text to fit the religious ideas of their own generation. Biblical scholars have to base themselves on nothing more definite than a tradition in ascribing the origin of the earliest written gospels to the second half of the first century A.D. If they are correct in their deduction, which is really speculation, there is still no means of telling how much they were altered by editing in the course of three hundred years; a period that abounded in controversy and schisms in the Chruch. 

We are given minds to use, and there can be no better use for them than religious thinking. But we should humbly recognize there may be different paths and feel in sympathy with all other travelers. The difficulties that arise in religious doctrine and history too often drive thoughtful people into a state of no belief. But for my own part, I have found that the difficulties tend to disappear if one remembers that such doctrine and history was complied by human interpreters, humanly liable to mistakes. 

On Confucianism (and Buddism): 

Confucianism was humanly wiser. It recognized, and applied, better than Christianity the truth of experience that was epitomized in Aristotle's observation that "Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way."  At the same time, the Chinese themselves seem to have found that Confucianism "was not enough." Hence the appeal of Buddhism and Taoism there, often in combination with Confucianism. They provided a more spiritual element that mankind wanted. 

Towards the middle of the book, Liddell Hart wrote these beautiful lines to given a simple heuristic on what might work. It felt as though he was talking about how Max and I lived for 13 years (I continue to do so with him inside me). It made me smile and think at least we were and are on the right path... 

The race of power and personal positions seems to destroy all men's characters. I believe that the only creature who can keep his honour is a man living on his own estate; he has no need to intrigue and struggle, for it is no good intriguing for fine weather. 

This is an amazing book and should be treasured for life. Please read and re-read it for the rest of your life. 

Our deeper hope from experience is that it should make us, not shrewder (for next time), but wiser (forever). History teaches us personal philosophy. 

- Jacob Burckhardt

Once we get a meta-level understanding of history, we should turn to the present and salute the people who make this civilization tick. One of them is Alexey Navalny. Let's cheer and support his audacity. 

Same Bullshit, Packaged Differently - From Ayn Rand To Rene Girard And Silicon Valley's Cognitive Dissonance

A couple of years ago I bought Rene Girard's now-famous book (thanks to Peter Thiel's dissonance) Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (please don't buy this crap). 

I couldn't even get through the first few pages... at least Rand's books are good reads. My head started aching and spinning... these are books that are better off used for recycling. That reminds me I have a handful of books that fall under that category of "not donate but recycle the paper". 

But yet, the morons in Silicon Valley read and follow his preachings religiously! 

It's none of our business what they read but unfortunately, these morons control so much of our lives and naturally it becomes our business what values and belief's these morons follow. Adrian Daub's has a great synopsis of this cognitive dissonance: 

Tech leaders have long been infatuated with thinkers who reverse the commonsense picture of how power in our society is distributed and how it operates. And we have largely gone along for the ride. Examples of self-styled victimhood are dime-a-dozen in Silicon Valley. 

The optic of a multibillion-dollar corporation spending millions of dollars arguing it’s been treated unfairly by being forced to play by the same rules as other companies already reveals the enormous distortion of scale involved in arguments of this type. The idea that your company is being victimized by nefarious professors and union organizers goes further, however: The kind of thinking that allows this to happen first involves a wholesale reconceptualization of power.

Thiel and Uber have to convince themselves that, if looked at the right way, power in society doesn’t flow as common sense would suggest it does. In this way of thinking, people who — to ordinary understanding — seem as though they have little or no actual power secretly have loads of it; the person who has somehow made billions and has a speaking slot at the ruling party’s national convention in truth has none of it. Tech loves its philosophical references and its profound-seeming ideas. So when it comes to this curious, but deeply useful, distortion of scale and power relations, tech unsurprisingly has expended extensive intellectual resources to convince itself of its victimhood.

Who made the powerless so powerful? While tech magnates almost never invoke him directly, the idea that in society the strong are the real victims goes back to 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his On the Genealogy of Morality. Christianity, Nietzsche argued, had managed the trick of telling the strong and powerful to aspire to the meekness and powerlessness of the people they had power over — to adopt, as he put it, a “slave morality.” Once Christianity had pulled this off, the weak and powerless were the true oppressors. The powerful were forced to understand their strength as sinful. Suddenly unsure of themselves and terrified of damnation, they had become the victims of a world-historic con.

Nietzsche proposed that exercising power wasn’t bad and that a moral system that said it was, well, that was unnatural and unhealthy. He wasn’t interested in economics; it was a question of morality for him. Ayn Rand applied this idea to places where it mattered to tech: to board rooms, to industries, to entire societies. Rand’s fiction works portray a world in which the strong are being hemmed in by “second-handers” who weaponize their own weakness, their own dependence on others, while the “makers” are forced to submit to regulation in penance for their own autonomy.

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Let’s say you like this idea of the powerful being the true victims, but you’d prefer it to be even more counterintuitive. The thought of René Girard might be for you. A philosopher who taught in Stanford’s French department for decades, he’s not as widely read as Rand. But Thiel was one of his students, and Thiel has made spreading Girard’s gospel one of his missions. Girard is most famous for his theory of the scapegoat: All desire, Girard taught, is mimetic — meaning we desire things because others desire the same things. Culture displaces the inevitable conflict that arises as a result by redirecting reciprocal violence toward one single, shared target. In this way, the tension that exists within any social group is refocused onto a single individual.

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In a way, it’s not surprising that an industry used to getting its way would locate philosophies that buttress its attempts to evade regulation and generate positive PR. But two things stand out about tech’s adoption of this philosophical preoccupation with the victimization of the powerful. First, there’s the fact that we listen to tech leaders as thinkers in ways that are fairly unprecedented. My yoga instructor recently chose to “close out our practice” with some sage words from Steve Jobs — it’s hard to imagine Lee Iacocca being invoked in that way after a vinyasa flow. We live in a culture that defers to these ideas with exceptional credulity. That’s what makes this preoccupation so troubling: If rich people want to adjust their categories to deal with their inevitable cognitive dissonance, then that’s one thing. But what if they adjust ours in the bargain?

In other words, to summarize the cognitive dissonance: A troubling number of silicon valley folks truly believe themselves as our saviours! Thanks to a deadly combination of Rene Girard's bullshit and unfulfilled childhood fanaties inherited from Marvel comics. 

Breakthrough Starshot, CIA's UFO Papers & The "Lonely" Sapiens

 Look up into the sky some clear, starlit night and allow yourself the freedom to wonder.

- In Search of Ancient Astronauts with Rod Serling

Stephan Hawking, Yuri Milner & Marc Zuckerberg founded the Breakthrough Starshot project in 2015 looking for answers to questions such as: 

Where is everybody?

So wondered the great physicist Enrico Fermi. The Universe is ancient and immense. Life, he reasoned, has had plenty of time to get started – and get smart. But we see no evidence of anything alive or intelligent in space. In the last five years, we have discovered that planets in the habitable zone of stars are common. Based on the numbers discovered so far, there are estimated to be billions more in our galaxy alone. Yet we are still in the dark about life. Are we really alone? Or are there others out there

Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million program of astronomical observations and analysis, the most comprehensive ever undertaken in search of evidence of technological civilizations in the Universe. The partners with some of the world’s largest and most advanced telescopes, across five continents, to survey targets including one million nearby stars, the entire galactic plane and 100 nearby galaxies at a wide range of radio and optical frequency bands.

Where can life flourish?

In August 2016, a potentially habitable Earth-like planet was discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri – the Sun’s nearest neighbor. Based on the most recent astronomical data, it is likely that there are other such planets in our cosmic neighborhood. With technology now or soon available, it will be possible not only to find them, but to analyze whether they have atmospheres – and whether those atmospheres contain oxygen and other potential signatures of primitive life.

Breakthrough Watch is multi-million dollar Breakthrough Watch is an Earth- and space-based astronomical program aiming to identify and characterize Earth-sized, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri and other stars within 20 light years of Earth, in search of oxygen and other potential signatures of primitive life. The program is run by an international team of experts in exoplanet detection and imaging.

Can we reach the stars?

Life in the Universe does not only mean extraterrestrials. It also means us. No other beings have yet visited us – but neither have we stepped out to the galactic stage. Are we destined to belong to Earth for as long as we survive? Or can we reach the stars?

If we can, the natural first step is our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri – four light years away.

Breakthrough Starshot is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for a new technology, enabling ultra-light uncrewed space flight at 20% of the speed of light; and to lay the foundations for a flyby mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.

Thanks to COVID-19 (yes, really!), the CIA declassified 2,700 pages of UFO-related documents starting from 1976. How convenient! it seems like the "world" didn't exist prior to 1976 for them. 

I don't believe they released everything. Although I haven't started reading/analyzing the documents, I believe it is probably full of fluff that would raise more questions than giving us any answers. You can download the non-user-unfriendly documents via the Black Vault website. 

I love this little blue planet. I love Max. I love Fluffy, Garph, and Neo. In my little world and in my little time, I was able to interact with only 2 other species. I learned and still learning so much from them every day. Given my shelve life, I will die without learning anything from most species on this planet. That will be my greatest regret. 

If given a chance, I would love to learn from other beings outside of earth. I am all for the search for other life forms. My only disagreement is packing Sapiens and shipping them to inhabit other planets and stars without understanding and then mending human nature. As a counter-argument to my own disagreement, what if the tools for understanding and mending human nature lies outside of earth? 

In the meantime, we should spend an equal amount of time and money in understanding non-human animals on this planet. It goes without saying that eliminating the sufferings we cause our non-human friends doesn't cost anything. So let's do that first and we will never feel lonely. 

 

Honeybees Coat Hive Entrance In Animal Dung To Repel Predators

As a kid, while visiting my grandmother's town, I have seen many poor people (in Tamilnadu) coat the floor of their small house using cow dung. Once the cow dung is dried out, it formed a thin-solid layer, and surprisingly, the house would smell fresh. 

For 46 years, I didn't know the answer to that question except for a good hypothesis that cow dung is rich in 'good' microbiome and in turn, helps keep harmful viruses and bacteria at bay (you can read about it here and video here). 

It looks like that hypothesis is true and even honeybee's use the same trick: 

This “fecal spotting” not only repels giant hornets—it’s the first clear example of tool use in honeybees, says Heather Mattila, an entomologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and co-author of the study, published December 9 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Before this study, researchers had not investigated what caused the black marks often seen covering beehive entrances in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Mattila and colleagues verified that the dark material is actually feces of various animals, such as chickens and cows. The researchers also documented that the feces repel a species known as Vespa soror, commonly called giant hornets.

To finally figure out what the bees had been doing “was pretty stunning,” says Mattila, whose research was partially funded by the National Geographic Society. It’s “one of the coolest things our [research] group has ever explored.”

The study takes on even more significance because Vespa soror is the closest relative to Vespa mandarinia, also known as Asian giant hornets, or “murder hornets,” whose recent discovery in the Pacific Northwest has fueled worldwide intrigue.

Understanding how the Vietnamese bee behavior repels hornet attacks could have applications for protecting honeybees in other countries, including the United States, Mattila says.

And I have seen people step on elephant poop for the same reason. Ancients had good wisdom passed on for generations. Science slowly proves it right but you don't have to wait until science proves it. 

Biodiversity and protecting all our fellow creatures is the only important task we have. Economy and money are man-made bullshit will never stand the test of time. 

Anesthesia Works on Plants Too, and We Don’t Know Why

This not only falls under the bucket of "so much we don't know" but once again shows us the richness and diversity of plant lives.  

Plants and animals are separated by 1.5 billion years of evolution, but still have many similarities. Cell structures are broadly the same, though plants add chloroplasts and cell walls to the mix. Animals evolved muscles and discrete internal organs for processing nutrients from the environment, while plant cells are more homogenous. A plant cell from one part of the organism is more similar to one from another part than two randomly selected animal cells. Other than these details and new tissue types, cells haven’t changed much in the last 1.5 billion years. That’s what, in theory, makes plants good candidates for this research. Though they may be similar in cell structure, plants are still they’re missing the major element that anesthesia shuts down in animals, neurons.

Neurons are the essential element of the nervous system and found only in animals, not plants. They transfer information about sensation and motion from peripheral parts of the body to the brain and back. By sending electro-chemical signals in the form of atomic ions, neurons can communicate great distances through the body. In someone as tall as Shaquille O’Neal, those signals travel over 8 feet, from the top of his brain to the tips of his toes. Most of this information is passed as sodium ions — atom-sized charged particles that pass through channels to zap from one neuron to the other. Lidocaine, a local anesthetic commonly used by dentists, blocks these sodium channels, stopping neurons from sending information to each other. That’s why they make your mouth numb, the neurons there can’t send pain sensations to your brain. They’re stopped.

Plants don’t have neurons, but lidocaine still deadens their movements and sensations.

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Ether and lidocaine are remarkably different chemicals, with vastly different structures, but they both work as anesthetics in plants and animals. In animals, we have some guesses about how ether works. Some results have pointed to it messing with cell membranes and somehow stopping them from communicating without completely breaking them. These membranes are layers of fat molecules that wrap every cell in our bodies, protecting them from the outside environment. It seems like ether perturbs the membranes and stops cells from communicating. Probably. But we’re not sure. Plant membranes are incredibly different though, and ether still works. It shouldn’t, but it does.

- More here 

Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity

Do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world. I am

a man crude as any,

gross of speech, intolerant,

stubborn, angry, full

of fits and furies. That I

may have spoken well

at times, is not natural.

A wonder is what it is.

- Wendell Berry

If you are wondering how a "Sapien Skeptic" that I am listening to an interview that has "hope" and "humanity" together in the title...  then make no mistake. 

Wendel Berry answers that question (@ ~14 mins): 

Question: I am wondering if putting faith in the people is a wise investment...?

Wendel Berry: I am not putting the faith in the people and putting my faith in some of the people. The ones who are committed. 

Another obvious insight Sapiens refuse to face: 

The aim of the industrial revolution from year one has been to replace people with technology. So it's a little contemptible to hear these people express in surprise at this late date that we have an employment problem. I don't know if there any politicians of visibility who could say that. 

We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world.

We have been wrong. 

We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary

the assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. 

And that requires that we make the

effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.

- Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

Nancy Andreasen's Insights on Creativity and Mental Disorder

Maria Popova of Brain Picking has another gem; this time illustrating life long work of Nancy Andreasen to discover the causes behind creativity which includes mental disorders such as Bipolar, Asperger's syndrome, depression, etc.

I have written many times over the years on depression and how it has helped me; especially in the past year after Max passed away. 

One of the benefits for evolution to "preserve" depression in us is to focus and reflect on "things" sans distraction to reach a solution. Perpetual busyness never helps to focus and reflect; hence people tend to outsource their questions and problems to cable news morons to positivity gurus. 

Here are some brilliant insights from Nancy Andreasen's book The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius: 

Although many writers had had periods of significant depression, mania, or hypomania, they were consistently appealing, entertaining, and interesting people. They had led interesting lives, and they enjoyed telling me about them as much as I enjoyed hearing about them. Mood disorders tend to be episodic, characterized by relatively brief periods of low or high mood lasting weeks to months, interspersed with long periods of normal mood (known as euthymia to us psychiatrists). All the writers were euthymic at the time that I interviewed them, and so they could look back on their periods of depression or mania with considerable detachment. They were also able to describe how abnormalities in mood state affected their creativity. Consistently, they indicated that they were unable to be creative when either depressed or manic.

[---]

One point of view … is that gifted people are in fact supernormal or superior in many ways. My writers certainly were. They were charming, fun, articulate, and disciplined. They typically followed very similar schedules, getting up in the morning and allocating a large chunk of time to writing during the earlier part of the day. They would rarely let a day go by without writing. In general, they had a close relationship with friends and family. They manifested the Freudian definition of health: lieben und arbeiten, “to love and to work.” On the other hand, they also manifested the alternative common point of view about the nature of genius: that it is “to madness near allied.” Many definitely had experienced periods of significant mood disorder. Importantly, though handicapping creativity when they occurred, these periods of mood disorder were not permanent or long-lived. In some instances, they may even have provided powerful material upon which the writer could later draw, as a Wordsworthian “emotion recollected in tranquility".

[---]

Many personality characteristics of creative people … make them more vulnerable, including openness to new experiences, a tolerance for ambiguity, and an approach to life and the world that is relatively free of preconceptions. This flexibility permits them to perceive things in a fresh and novel way, which is an important basis for creativity. But it also means that their inner world is complex, ambiguous, and filled with shades of gray rather than black and white. It is a world filled with many questions and few easy answers. While less creative people can quickly respond to situations based on what they have been told by people in authority — parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, or priests — the creative person lives in a more fluid and nebulous world. He or she may have to confront criticism or rejection for being too questioning, or too unconventional. Such traits can lead to feelings of depression or social alienation. A highly original person may seem odd or strange to others. Too much openness means living on the edge. Sometimes the person may drop over the edge… into depression, mania, or perhaps schizophrenia.

[---]

All human beings (and their brains) have to cope with the fact that their five senses gather more information than even the magnificent human brain is able to process. To put this another way: we need to be able to ignore a lot of what is happening around us — the smell of pizza baking, the sound of the cat meowing, or the sight of birds flying outside the window — if we are going to focus our attention and concentrate on what we are doing (in your case, for example, reading this book). Our ability to filter out unnecessary stimuli and focus our attention is mediated by brain mechanisms in regions known as the thalamus and the reticular activating system. 

 

What I've Been Reading

A man who understands the weather only terms of golf is participating in a public insanity that either he or his descendants will be bound to realize as suffering. I believe that the death of the world is breeding in such minds much more certainly and much faster than in any political capital or atomic arsenal. 

[---]

What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. 

[---]

The change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in face of mystery. The principles of ecology, if we will take them to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economy, we have been willing to change or destroy, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough. 

Think Little: Essays by Wendel Berry.

I love Wendel Berry. He is one of those rare humans who focuses only on personal responsibilities and took upon the impossible task of raising awareness that only personal responsibilities can reduce suffering on this planet. 

This little gem of a book was published in 1972. The book begins with a bigger picture of how we sapiens delude ourselves as makers of nature but he slowly exposes our delusions using his personal experience at his home town, a small town in Kentucky. The point is each one of us can rise to his level of awareness by being conscious of nature around our own home.

Within the first few months after Max came into my life, this place,  a house became home. Thankfully, I understood that this is the place Max will live and we will make memories. 

Max left me with tons and tons of memories in this place we called home. I will live here for the rest of my life and perish here in the same place as Max did. In the 1960s Wendel Berry went through a similar transformation and left the epic center of the literary world and returned back to his small Kentucky town. 

I was to realize during the next few years how false and destructive and silly those ideas are. But even then I was aware that life outside the literary world was not without honorable precedent; if there was Wolfe, there was also Faulkner; if there was James, there was also Thoreau. But I had in my mind that made the greatest difference was the knowledge of the few square miles in Kentucky that were mine by inheritance and by birth and by the intimacy the mind makes with the place it awakens in. 

What finally freed me from these doubts and suspicions was the insistence in what was happening to me that, far frin being bored and diminished and obscured to myself by my life here. I had grown more alive and more conscious than I had ever been.  

What a beautiful sentence! 

"And by the intimacy, the mind makes with the place it awakens in."

I am no Wendel Berry. My small body and mind awakened in whatever little ways by Max in this little place called home. Max showed me the beautify and wonder of this universe within the confines of our home. I will continue to experience this intimacy until my last breath. 

Wendel Berry received national humanities award in 2010 from President Obama.

Complexity & Blind Spots

The covid-19 global pandemic has revealed the fragility and brittleness of any number of the engineered systems that we rely on, as individuals and as a society. Be it transportation or health care, education, or the food supply chain, it can all fall apart quickly when shocked.

Most importantly, although the virus is where our attention is being drawn, the pandemic is not the cause (in part it is more likely a result) of societal fragilities. The pervasive system failures result from a willingness to ignore the damages we do not see. In almost every one of the sectors above, we are where we are because we engineered systems ignoring the complexity of the problems they were designed to solve.

Much of 20th and 21st-century science is dominated by reductionist thinking rather than complex systems science thinking. These two robustly different traditions influence the way questions are framed, solutions pursued, and investments made in the infrastructure for pursuing research. The pressing problems pertinent to the quality of human life in terms of climate, health and wellbeing, social structures and inequities, economic stability, and educational effectiveness are complex and require approaches that honor complexity. Sadly, acting as though the complex is simple will not make it so.

Unseen Costs of “Efficiency”

By prioritizing “efficiency,” built systems have eliminated the traits, such as redundancy, that natural complex systems have evolved to remain robust and adaptive. Centralized hub-and-spoke configurations are “efficient” only because of the damages and fragilities we do not see.

• Networked but nonadaptive transportation systems often fail to move people from where they are to where they want to be on a good day. Introduce natural or man-made disruptions and movement can grind to a halt.
• Sophisticated instructional technologies claim to solve the need to efficiently advance educational goals but, when tested, their effectiveness is stymied by an inability to ensure equal access and determine meaningful outcomes.
• Industrialized food provides a plentiful calorie-dense diet, but its nutrient-poor nature is adding to the health issues faced by many of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.
• Funders have spent billions of dollars pursuing medical interventions using highly artificial and over-constrained laboratory models that efficiently produce data but fail to deliver effective therapies because the reductionist science ignores the reality that diseases occur in the context of a complete adaptive organism.

[---]

New values need to be adopted, rewarding and incentivizing the difficult task of meeting global needs rather than fulfilling parochial goals. Doing so means educating a generation of scientists and engineers in the theories, concepts, tools, and mathematics of complex systems science.

The massive shock that covid-19 dealt the global community is already creating an opportunity for novelty and creativity. Airlines and other transportation sectors are reconsidering the distributed point-to-point model over the centralized hub and spoke. Clinical trial specialists are exploring opportunities for carrying out their work in “messy” community healthcare settings. Urban vertical farms are looking to grow healthy, nutritious food locally, reliably, sustainably, and affordably. Schools are seeking effective teaching strategies that serve all children and will meet the needs of mid-21st century learners.

Perturbations allow novelty to be introduced into stable systems. The pressures of war allowed the military to consider an unintuitive solution and lives were saved. The time is now for the scientific and engineering communities to likewise identify the damage we are not seeing, advance progress by fulfilling the demands for new knowledge and engineer solutions that better serve all of us.

- More Here

George F. Kennan's 1944 Memo From Moscow & Similarities With Current US Epidemic Of Lies

Fed by the traditional Russian mistrust of the stranger, and reinforced by the continual reverses suffered in the early attempts to increase Russian power through communization, this feeling of fear and insecurity lived and flourished and came to underlie almost all Soviet thought about the outside world.

[---]

With Hitler’s rise to power, the Kremlin—having cried “wolf” largely out of ulterior motives for a number of years—suddenly found a real wolf at the door. What had once been declamation now became grim reality. During the years from 1933 to 1938, it was well understood in Moscow that the Soviet Union did not have the strength to sustain alone, without aid from outside, a German attack. It seemed to Russian minds, therefore, that the best chance of safety lay in inducing somebody else to fight Hitler before his plans for aggression in the east could develop. 

[---]

The men I have mentioned40 are all men prominently connected with Russia’s formal diplomatic relations with the western world. They are men who have contact with foreigners in their work and presumably access to the foreign press and foreign literature. Possibly this has indeed widened their horizons to some extent. But what about those other leading figures in the regime whose voice in the inner councils of state is obviously greater than the voice of any of these four, except possibly Molotov? What about such men as Beriya, Zhdanov, Shcherbakov, Andreyev, Kaganovich, etc? What advice do these men give to Stalin about foreign policy?

These prominent Soviet leaders know little of the outside world. They have no personal knowledge of foreign statesmen. To them, the vast pattern of international life, political and economic, can provide no associations, can hold no significance, except in what they conceive to be its bearing on the problems of Russian security and Russian internal life. It is possible that the conceptions of these men might occasionally achieve a rough approximation to reality, and their judgments [Page 910]a similar approximation to fairness; but it is not likely. Independence of judgment has never been a strong quality of leading Communist figures. There is evidence that they are as often as not the victims of their own slogans, the slaves of their own propaganda. To keep a level head in the welter of propaganda and autosuggestion with which Russia has faced the world for the past twenty years would tax the best efforts of a cosmopolitan scholar and philosopher. These men are anything but that. God knows what strange images and impressions are created in their minds by what they hear of life beyond Russia’s borders. God knows what conclusions they draw from all this, and what recommendations they make on the basis of those conclusions.

There is serious evidence for the hypothesis that there are influences in the Kremlin which place the preservation of a rigid police regime in Russia far ahead of the happy development of Russia’s foreign relations, and which are therefore strongly opposed to any association of Russia with foreign powers except on Russia’s own terms. These terms would include the rigid preservation of the conspiratorial nature of the Communist Party, of the secrecy of the working of the Soviet state, of the isolation of the population from external influences, of feelings of mistrust of the outside world and dependence on the Soviet regime among the population, of the extreme restriction of all activities of foreigners in the Soviet Union, and the use of every means to conceal Soviet reality from world opinion.

[---]

Fortunately, however, there is as yet no reason to conclude that this issue is finally decided and that the isolationists have entirely won the day. The overwhelming sentiment of the country is against them, so much so that this may become a serious internal issue in the aftermath of the war. So is the pressure of events in international life. They are undoubtedly balanced off by many men who have a healthier, a saner, and a more worthy conception of Russia’s mission in the world. But that this xenophobian group exists and that it speaks with a powerful voice in the secret councils of the Kremlin is evident. And that it is in no way accessible to the pleas or arguments of responsible people in the outside world is no less clear.

As long as this situation endures, the great nations of the west will unavoidably be in a precarious position in their relations with Russia. They will never be able to be sure when, unbeknownst to them, people of whom they have no knowledge, acting on motives utterly obscure, will go to Stalin with misleading information and with arguments to be used to their disadvantage—information which they cannot correct and arguments which they have no opportunity to rebut. As long as this possibility exists, as long as it is not corrected by a freer atmosphere for the forming of acquaintances and the exchange of views, it is questionable whether even the friendliest of relations could be considered sound and dependable.

[---]

We are incapable, in the first place, of understanding the role of contradiction in Russian life. The Anglo-Saxon instinct is to attempt to smooth away contradictions, to reconcile opposing elements, to achieve something in the nature of an acceptable middle-ground as a basis for life. The Russian tends to deal only in extremes, and he is not particularly concerned to reconcile them. To him, contradiction is a familiar thing. It is the essence of Russia. West and east, Pacific and Atlantic, arctic and tropics, extreme cold and extreme heat, prolonged sloth and sudden feats of energy, exaggerated cruelty and exaggerated kindness, ostentatious wealth and dismal squalor, violent [Page 912]xenophobia and uncontrollable yearning for contact with the foreign world, vast power and the most abject slavery, simultaneous love and hate for the same objects: these are only some of the contradictions which dominate the life of the Russian people. The Russian does not reject these contradictions. He has learned to live with them, and in them. To him, they are the spice of life. He likes to dangle them before him, to play with them philosophically. He feels competent to handle them, to profit from them. Perhaps he even expects, at some time in the dim future, to lead them out into a synthesis more tremendous than anything the world has yet seen. But for the moment, he is content to move in them with that same sense of adventure and experience which supports a young person in the first contradictions of love.

The American mind will not apprehend Russia until it is prepared philosophically to accept the validity of contradiction. It must accept the possibility that just because a proposition is true, the opposite of that proposition is not false. It must agree never to entertain a proposition about the Russian world without seeking, and placing in apposition to it, its inevitable and indispensable opposite. Then it must agree to regard both as legitimate, valid conceptions. It must learn to understand that Russian life at any given moment is not the common expression of harmonious, integrated elements, but a precarious and ever shifting equilibrium between numbers of conflicting forces.

But there is a second, and even more daring, tour de force which the American mind must make if it is to try to find Russian life comprehensible. It will have to understand that for Russia, at any rate, there are no objective criteria of right and wrong. There are not even any objective criteria of reality and unreality.

What do we mean by this? We mean that right and wrong, reality and unreality, are determined in Russia not by any God, not by any innate nature of things, but simply by men themselves. Here men determine what is true and what is false.

The reader should not smile. This is a serious fact. It is the gateway to the comprehension of much that is mysterious in Russia. Bolshevism has proved some strange and disturbing things about human nature. It has proved that what is important for people is not what is there but what they conceive to be there. It has shown that with unlimited control over people’s minds—and that implies not only the ability to feed them your own propaganda but also to see that no other fellow feeds them any of his—it is possible to make them feel and believe practically anything. And it makes no difference whether that “anything” is true, in our conception of the word. For the people who believe it, it becomes true. It attains validity, and all the powers [Page 913]of truth. Men can enthuse over it, fight for it, die for it—if they are led to believe that it is something worthy. They can abhor it, oppose it, combat it with unspeakable cruelty—if they are led to believe that it is something reprehensible. Moreover, it becomes true (and this is one of the most vital apprehensions) not only for those to whom it is addressed, but for those who invent it as well. The power of autosuggestion plays a tremendous part in Soviet life. 

[---]

There will be much talk about the necessity for “understanding Russia”; but there will be no place for the American who is really willing to undertake this disturbing task. The apprehension of what is valid in the Russian world is unsettling and displeasing to the American mind. He who would undertake this apprehension will not find his satisfaction in the achievement of anything practical for his people, still less in any official or public appreciation for his efforts. The best he can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountain top where few have been before, where few can follow, and where few will consent to believe that he has been. 

- George F. Kennan - 1944

With a lifetime of hard work of really good and noble humans on both Russian and the USA sides (plus with a lot of luck), we have avoided a global disaster for 70 plus years. 

But the tables are turned now. The US is now facing an issue where reality doesn't matter for 74 million citizens. Will we be lucky again? 

Stoicism Is Not A Philosophy But It Is A Personal Practice

On no occasion call yourself a philosopher … Show not your theorems.

- Epictetus, Enchiridion

This misuse of Stoicism comes from a miscategorization of Stoic’s and their writings. They are often grouped in with other Greek Philosophers, but their writings aren’t the same. Most philosophers package ideas and arguments into books to spread their way of thinking. Reading and understanding philosophical writings is all you need to do to claim, with authority, your understating of that philosophy. Reading and understanding the texts of Stoic writers is merely the first step. Stoic writings aren’t arguments to support a world view, they are instructions, practices, and mantras. To truly understand Stoicism you have to practice it every day. Stoicism is not a philosophy that you believe or disbelieve, it is an action that you take or do not take.

[---]

One cannot prescribe Stoicism onto others. It is a deeply individual and inward looking practice of meditation that requires you to renounce judgement of external things, including the actions of others. Unlike almost all other things called philosophies, it is explicitly not a world view. Meditating on Stoic mantras helps you accept our inability to control the world, and therefore the pointlessness of taking a world view in the first place. Instead, Stoicism encourages you to focus on maximizing the good within yourself, as that is all that is within your control.

The brevity of Stoicism makes it a poor philosophy. Its terse, sometimes self evident statements aren’t good arguments or empathetic pieces of advice. They don’t prove hypotheses about the external world nor do they help others on their own. But this is because Stoicism is not an argument, or advice, or a philosophy. It is a personal practice, a path to ataraxia that one must work hard to follow.

- More here (via MR)

Coup @ US Capitol, Human Nature & Wisdom Of John Gray

Let me try and be more precise. I don't deny that some states of human history are better than other states. Europe in 1990 was better than Europe in 1940. I don't deny that. And I don't deny that some programmes of reform have enhanced the lot of human beings to a considerable extent. And peace is better than war, freedom is better than anarchy, prosperity is better than poverty, pleasure is better than pain, beauty is better than ugliness. But there is a another very specific belief that I would guess you subscribe to: the belief that advances in ethics or politics can in principle become like advances in science in the sense of being cumulative. This is the belief that there is nothing inherent in human life or human nature to prevent cumulative improvement. We'll get to the point where there is no poverty in the world, where there is no anarchy in the world. 

My view is that all gains in ethics and politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed very easily. For example, I know many liberal humanists myself and I know that when I said two and a half years ago that torture would come back, they were incredulous. That doesn't tell me they are stupid. That tells me they are in the grip of a belief that makes such a thing unthinkable. They have a narrative, a notion of stages. But when I look at history I don't see any kind of thread, however tenuous, however sometimes broken. What I see is cyclical change, cyclical transformation.

- John Gray tells Laurie Taylor why he believes we're all deluded

John Gray is a realist (not a pessimist). Most folks when they read him think he presents a bleak version of past, present, and future. In other words, it is real albeit bleak and dark. 

Another common complaint about John Gray is that he doesn't give us hope nor a way out of this darkness. 

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution. 

- Albert Einstein 

To state the obvious; John is spending his entire life helping us to define the problems with human nature. 

To understand the problems with human nature, please read John Gray's books Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals and The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths

Teleporting Quantum Information Within A Diamond

Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This is the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions.

- John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Please read on if you understand the above wisdom from John Gray. 

Teleporting quantum information is big deal and researchers have successfully done it now but please don't confuse this scientific progress with moral progress. We will still continue to cause pain to animals, kill each other in wars, abuse children, and die/kill nonsensical myths. 

From Good News Networks: 

Researchers have successfully teleported quantum information securely within the confines of a diamond – and the study has big implications for quantum information technology, the future of how sensitive information is shared and stored.

The researchers from the Yokohama National University published their results earlier this week in Communications Physics.

According to the American Physical Society’s physics page, quantum information is spy-proof. When an eavesdropper attempts to intercept a message encoded in a quantum state, the message is altered by the eavesdropper’s measurement. Quantum bits, or “Qubits”, also cannot be copied – any attempt to do so instead creates an entangled state.

“Quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum information into an otherwise inaccessible space,” said Hideo Kosaka, a professor of engineering at Yokohama National University and an author on the study. “It also permits the transfer of information into a quantum memory without revealing or destroying the stored quantum information.”

The “inaccessible space”, in this case, consisted of carbon atoms in diamond. Made of linked, yet individually contained, carbon atoms, a diamond holds the perfect ingredients for quantum teleportation.

[---]

“Our ultimate goal is to realize scalable quantum repeaters for long-haul quantum communications and distributed quantum computers for large-scale quantum computation and metrology,” Kosaka added.

The National Science Foundation says that quantum effects have already been used to create unbeatable codes. Previous studies have also shown that the defects in a diamond’s atomic structure could be used to store vast amounts of data similarly to how CDs and DVDs store information on their discs.

Since one of a diamond’s atomic defects measuring just billionths of a meter wide could be used to store data, researchers say that diamonds could very well be the future of computer storage – and now with the research from Yokohama National University, they could be the future of cyber security as well.

 

This Could Be The Beginning Of End (Of Factory Farm Animal Suffering)

To state the obvious; I usually do not write about politics. I am a not registered democrat nor a republican (nor a wild west libertarian). Being naturally cautious about human nature, I never trust sapiens, leave alone their groups. 

What I trust are individuals who have values, passionate about always doing the right thing, understand their cosmic insignificance, and transcend beyond their self-centered life. One such person is Senator Cory Brooker of NJ. He understands animal suffering and became a vegan. He is the only person who stands and speaks for animals in the senate (with skin in the game sans virtue signaling). 

In December 2019 he (and Elizabeth Warren) introduced The Farm System Reform Act of 2019 bill. This bill focuses on closing down all factory farms in the US by 2040. Here's a sample of how specific and detailed the bill is: 

Another Good Theory On Evolution of Western Individualism

This paper studies the impact of social learning on the formation of close-knit communities. It provides empirical support to the hypothesis, put forth by the historian Fred Shannon in 1945, that local soil heterogeneity limited the ability of American farmers to learn from the experience of their neighbors, and that this contributed to their “traditional individualism.” Consistent with this hypothesis, I establish that historically, U.S. counties with a higher degree of soil heterogeneity displayed weaker communal ties. I provide causal evidence on the formation of this pattern in a Difference-in-Differences framework, documenting a reduction in the strength of farmers’ communal ties following migration to a soil-heterogeneous county, relative to farmers that moved to a soil-homogeneous county. Using the same design, I also show that soil heterogeneity did not affect the social ties of non-farmers. The impact of soil heterogeneity is long-lasting, still affecting culture today. These findings suggest that, while understudied, social learning is an important determinant of culture.

- Full paper by Itzchak Tzachi Raz here (via MR)

Another paper from a couple of years ago was how the Catholic church obsession with incest gave rise to western individualism: 

Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of many Western populations. We propose that part of this variation can be traced back to the action and diffusion of the Western Church, the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church. Specifically, we propose that the Western Church’s transformation of European kinship, by promoting small, nuclear households, weak family ties, and residential mobility, fostered greater individualism, less conformity, and more impersonal prosociality. By combining data on 24 psychological outcomes with historical measures of both Church exposure and kinship, we find support for these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among European regions, and among individuals from different cultural backgrounds.

 

All Creatures Great And Small

James Herriot's classic books had influenced me as an adolescent and a young man which eventually culminated in Maximus and me. He has been a seminal source of inspiration for so many youngsters to choose a career path as a veterinarian. 

Now PBS has a series on his first book,  All Creatures Great And Small. A must watch!!

What I've Been Reading

Science, the discipline in which we should find the harshest skepticism, the most pin-sharp rationality, and the hardest-headed empiricism, has become home to a dizzying array of incompetence, delusion, lies, and self-deception.

[---]

That moral case - that making errors in science is much more than just an academic matter, because of the harm it can cause - applies similarly to fields of research that directly sacrifice lives. I'm referring, of course, to research on non-human animals, where the subjects are often 'euthanized' - that is killed - as part of the experiment (for example, to examine their brains after a new drug has been administered). This kind of research is usually strictly regulated by government agencies since virtually everyone agrees it would be immoral to kill lab animals, or even just to cause them to suffice, for no good scientific reason. So animal studies don't just carry the usual of trying to produce accurate, replicable results without wasting resources. They also have an additional responsibility: ensuring that errors in their design and analysis don't render pointless pain and death that they inevitably cause. Unfortunately, a considerable proportion - by some measures, a majority - of animal research studies fail this test. 

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie. 

There is a common misconception that religion, socialism et al., are the only sources that unleash the pain, destruction, and death. No question they caused and still causing immense pain, destruction, and death but we conveniently forget the only common factor amongst these is humans. Science is no exception; last time I checked scientists are humans. 

Unless, we as a society at a meta-level change the incentives from money and fame to morality - this is not going to change. 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

- Henry G. Bohn, A Hand-Book of Proverbs

Ultra-Hyped Fields:

Stem cells, genetics, epigenetics, machine learning, and brain imagining; for the past few years, a strong contender for the 'most hyped' award has been research on the microbiome - the countless millions of microbes that inhabit our bodies. 

Perverse Incentives:

Because studies reporting positive, flashy, novel, newsworthy results are rewarded so much more than others, scientists are incentivized to generate them to the detriment of everything else. To convenience the reviewers and editors that their papers really do have all those qualities, too many of them end up bending or breaking the rules (of Mertonian norms of universalism, commonality, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism). 

[---]

The system incentives scientists not to practice science, but simply to meet its own perverse demands. The incentives are at the root of so many of the dubious practices that undermine our research. 

Fixing Science:(addresses symptoms but not causes - which is basic human nature)

Some of the proposed solutions for the corresponding issues:

Fake data and negligence: Algorithms (services such as GRIM and Statcheck) do and could help with these issues. 

Novelty Bias: Journals should also publish null results and journals making the authors responsible for publishing further work checking whether it replicates. 

Statistical bias and p-hacking: Cannot remove them completely since its scary to move towards a subjective metric (current issue with nutrition studies), use more of the Bayesian approach (although the prior is subjective), and other metrics such as multi-verse analysis (if we imagine infinite parallel universes, in each of which you ran the analysis slightly differently, in what proportion of them would you find the complete opposite? Would all these analyses converge to the same overall result?)

Preprints and Pre-registration take out a lot of issues. Registering a study involves positing a public, time-stamped document online that details what the researchers are planning to do, in advance of collecting any data. It allows us to see the hypothesis the researchers intended to test, so we can check if any of them were switched mid-study. This is all about transparency. 

Replication crisis: Team Science - Large Collaborative Projects such as 'Plan S', and Open Access with funding from government and major funders, help force changes in research practice. These large-scale projects can directly address the applicability of their respective fields and because the results are being shared around a larger community of usually very opinionated scientists, they can also, in theory, act as a check on the biases of any individual scientist. 

Just as publishing more null results and replication studies is a more dependable way to build our knowledge, becoming more aware of the uncertain and preliminary nature of research is, in the long run, a better way to appreciate science fully. Let's work to resist our neophiliac, magpie-like focus on shiny research findings, and instead learn to value results that are solid, even if they're less immediately thrilling. In other words, let's Make Science Boring Again. 

[---]

Treating each study as a tentative step towards an answer, rather than as the answer itself.

Copernican Moment In Economics Is Near (Hopefully!)

If you never understood some rudimentary economic principles and their "grand" problems; Dennis J. Snower's piece lays it out brilliantly. 

It's a great place to understand what is microeconomics, macroeconomics, behavior economics, government regulation, and the famous invisible hand of Adam Smith. 

Here are some grand problems in reality which current economic "theories" refuse to address: 

• If the free-market system is meant to satisfy our needs efficiently, why is it despoiling our environment? 

• Why is it generating inequalities and other inequities that threaten the social cohesion of our societies? 

• Why does it leave so many people economically insecure, vulnerable to unemployment and trapped in dead-end jobs? 

• Why does it not correct for the excesses of consumerism, workaholism and digital addictions, frequently leading to anxiety, depression, burnout, substance abuse and crime? 

• Why is it giving us so little guidance in promoting public compliance with social distancing rules during the Covid-19 pandemic, even though such compliance has economic causes and consequences?

• Why does it keep so many businesses focused on short-term profit and shareholder value, even though so many business leaders are genuinely concerned about the environment and the wellbeing of their customers and employees?

My meta-level answers to the above questions are (to state the obvious - socialism is the worst virus and here we are trying to avoid capitalism becoming a virus before its too late):

Capitalism and free-market have become an ideology rather than seen as a tools-in-progress to be improved continuously to benefit life on earth, 

Tribalism -  "believing" and "following" other sapiens in their network by mindless habit and for social bonding with relic moral values (and if morality is part of that bonding),

And finally, the sheer inability of sapiens to change their minds as and when realities change. 

Crazy as it sounds, economists answers to these questions have no skin-in-the-game and if-you-have-a-hammer-every-problem-is-like-a-nail syndrome: 

• These questions may be important, but the answers lie outside the domain of economics. For environmental problems, turn to the life sciences; for social problems, turn to sociology and anthropology; for psychological problems, turn to psychology; for crime, turn to law; and so on. 

• Economics can deal with these questions through its standard policy toolbox: taxes and subsidies, government regulations, quotas, remuneration schemes, and other instruments that provide monetary incentives for some behaviors and forbid others. 

Shower shares some positive news and I read with a healthy dose of skepticism: 

Now the practitioners’ patience with mainstream economics is wearing thin. Unlike the academic economists, the practitioners must actually address the great economic questions of our time. They cannot afford to be satisfied with the two above-mentioned standard answers. They cannot accept that these questions lie outside the domain of economics, even though they have many important economic causes (the world economy as driver of climate change, economic inequalities as drivers of populism and social fragmentation, and so on) and many important economic consequences (climate change driving migration, populism leading to protectionism, and so on). Nor can the practitioners be content with the economists’ standard policy toolbox, since these instruments are obviously not overcoming the growing problems of climate change, social conflict, “deaths of despair,” containment of the Covid-19 pandemic, and much more. 

And finally, the practitioners are no longer enamored by the mainstream narrative on the division of responsibilities. Consumers in their millions are taking an interest in the social, political and environmental consequences of consumption and production activities, school children are out in the streets in protest about climate change, international organizations are beginning to measure economic performance beyond GDP (such as through the OECD’s Better Life Index and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals), businesses are beginning to measure business performance beyond shareholder value (such as through Environmental, Social and Governance criteria along with the initiatives of the WEF International Business Council, the OECD Business for Inclusive Growth coalition, the Value Balancing Initiative, the British Academy’s Future of the Corporation programme), national governments are beginning to design budgets with regard to notions of wellbeing that extend beyond consumption of goods and services (such as New Zealand’ wellbeing budget). In short, the practitioners are not waiting for the mainstream economics profession to adjust to reality; instead, they are forging ahead on multiple fronts, extending the domain of economics to the existential challenges we face. 

[---]

This is a different starting point from the one underlying mainstream economics. The discipline of economics is based on classical physics, i.e. the inanimate world. Evolution, by contrast, is appropriate to the animate world. Not a bad point of departure for economics. After all, humans are living creatures. If we choose this path, economics will be reaching its Darwinian – not Copernican – Moment. 

This is why now is probably the most exciting and fruitful time ever to become an aspiring economist. The Dutch philosopher Erasmus famously said:

“At the end, you will ask yourself: What have I made of my life? That wish you wish to answer then, do now.” 

Who would not wish to be alive and active at such a moment, when a great contribution is waiting to be made and there is no one around to execute you for it?

Chemoton - Tibor Gánti & Fundamentals Of Life

This is the beauty of life.  As of today, we know that this beauty doesn't exist anywhere in any other universes, galaxies, and whatever other nouns we have in physics. It is fundamentally despicable to destroy this beauty for gastro-intestinal pleasures. Stop killing our fellow life partners on this beautiful blue planet. 

“I think Gánti has thought deeper about the fundamentals of life than anybody else I know”

Hungarian born biologist Tibor Ganti's model of the simplest possible living organism, which he called the chemoton, that points to an exciting explanation for how life on Earth began.

The origin of life is one of science’s most perplexing mysteries, partly because it is several mysteries in one. What was Earth-like when it formed? What gases made up the air? Of the thousands of chemicals that living cells now use, which ones are essential—and when did those must-have substances arise?

Perhaps the hardest question is the simplest: What was the first organism?

Chemoton, Gánti’s concept of the simplest possible living organism: genes, metabolism, and membrane, all linked. The metabolism produces building blocks for the genes and membrane, and the genes exert an influence over the membrane. Together they form a self-replicating unit: a cell so simple it could not only arise with relative ease on Earth, it could even account for alternate biochemistries on alien worlds.

“Life is not proteins, life is not RNA, life is not lipid bilayers. What is it? It’s all those things hooked together in the right organization.”

- More here

Simple Ways To Deactivate Your Bad Genes

Like most sapiens, I do have my quota of bad genes. Since Max was a puppy, I have been working to "mute" them as humanely as possible - one day at a time (thanks to Epigenetics - whatever that means at this point and time). The good news is the compound effect has played its part and helped me tremendously. 

Epigenetics, the study of the code that controls our DNA, tells us that our lifestyle choices can have a significant impact on our gene expression and our lives - BBC Video. The three pillars are: 

• Mind (Meditation, sadly I have skipped this since Max was ill)
• Mouth (Healthy food)
• Muscle (Work out and Walk an hour a day)

The important message - it is never, never too late. So start today. 

Diet was one of the critical culprits in Max's illness. The crazy thing was I was so "convinced", he was eating healthy (using the logic of bullshit relativism of how other sapiens feed their dogs). There are so many mistakes I made because of a lack of knowledge. He did eat fruits and vegetables but the base diet was mass-produced with once a week home-cooked meal. Whatever little knowledge I gained on this front was from seeing Max suffer for almost 2 years. 

Now, Neo, Fluffy, and Graph are entirely opposite; no mass-produced/outsourced food,  all their meals are fresh food, Neo's treats are mostly fruits/veggies, many supplements (turmeric, milk thistle, etc.), and mushrooms extracts. 

The important question which the BBC video doesn't cover is the "why" question. Why is that a "bad" gene is malleable? The short answer is there is nothing called bad genes. 

In a nutshell, a simple hierarchy of actions:

1. Take care of oneself using age-old wisdom of mind, diet, and activity. Knowledge of evolutionary biology is crucial here. Grandma's wisdom is important but not everything grandma said was correct.

2. Follow insights from science and do a constant Bayesian update. The hardest task is to get an intuitive understanding of what research and who to trust. There is no magic bullet here but healthy skepticism with help of evolutionary biology will do the trick over the years.  Ignore everything from the popular news and beware of confirmation bias. 

3. Sponsoring/supporting scientific research. Support comes from donating microbiome, gene, blood, and other data. The rest is left to hope, love, and god or whatever abstractions you believe.  This is what stoics called not under our control while we are at the mercy of randomness. 

Annaliese Griffin in this thoughtful post asks people to drop the insane metrics of weight and calories and proposes five simple checklist questions to answer  every day: 

1. How much green stuff are you eating?
2. What did your body do for you today?
3. How stoked are you to move your body?
4. Are you sleeping enough?
5. How are you checking in on your mental health?

Taking care of one's body and mind is not only for prevention but most importantly to live and feel life differently. One cannot feel how feeling different feels like unless one experiences that feeling. So try. 

It's Ok That I am Not Ok & Ditto For You Too

Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. Grief does not obey your plans or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. 

- Elizabeth Gilbert

Maria Popova has a beautiful piece drawing an analogy between love and grief: 

Like love, grief swells into an entire inner universe that comes to color the whole of the outside world. Like love — that rapturous raw material for most of the songs and poems and paintings our species has produced — grief lives itself through the grieving and can’t but speak its truth. Unlike love, our culture meets the voice of grief with an alloy of disquiet and denial. We want to make the sadness go away, to lift the sorrowing heart out of its sorrow immediately. Often, we mistake for personal failure our inability to salve another’s grief or mistake for their failure the inability to snap out of it on the timeline of our wishes.

 

Life without Max will never be the same. He left me with a black hole and a small goldilocks zone inside it which keeps me alive. Being with him for 13 plus years I became a new being and now, grieving his loss who knows what it will bring tomorrow?

There is no timetable, no cure, no self-deception - I will continue to feel whatever I feel until it feels so. 

I will miss my Max for the rest of the time but I will not destroy myself in self-pity.  The life we lived together keeps me going and I am ok even if it boils down to only kissing his ashes next to my bed. 

 

It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine covers what I went through days and weeks after I lost Max. 

I don't want to repeat what I have written many times last year.  

We all know how ridiculous new year's resolutions are. So whenever you are ready and most importantly "understand" grief and loss then please don't do this to your friends and family. 

And when the time comes for you to grieve (yes, it will happen to everyone) then take your time even if takes an eternity. 

Act, eschew ideology, speak less, improve awareness, and change your body, mind and your little world consciously in 2021.

Good luck!