MJ's Ghost

Finally, proof...

Throwing Babies

Lilterally. It makes them grow up strong and healthy...or if they miss, a paraplegic. Seems worth it...

Top Down Processing and Michael Shermer

Another old TED video from 2006, this time with Michael Shermer about belief. He covers some great topics in this, in particular how our beliefs shape our perceptions, another perfect example of top-down processing. A quick example:





If you don't feel like watching the whole thing, here are some highlights:

At 7:10 he talks about how we see happy faces on pictures of Mars, and my favorite, "The Nun Bun." He explains how we're primed to see faces based on our extensive experience looking at faces throughout our lives. Our brains shape our incoming sensory information into what it expects to see. So if anything even remotely looks like the features of a face, we'll see a face. It's very difficult not to see it once you already have.

At about 9:07 in he talks about how to hear satanic messages when music is played backwards. He plays Stairway to Heaven for a few seconds normally; then he plays it backwards and everything sounds typically gibberish. That is until he projects some satanic worship lyrics on the screen as you listen to the backwards version, at which point you can "hear" what Robert Plant was REALLY trying to tell us.

God's Prodigal Son

No need to rip on this shockingly indoctrinated kid speaking out against the "fallacy" of evolution and science to his congregation - the madness sort of speaks for itself.

Disturbing as he is to watch, the kid's is sort of amazing. Every time I see a child as precocious and intelligent as this, it saddens me to know he's not using his potential for something more vital or useful - like becoming a contestant on Viva Hollywood.

(via Pharyngula)

Elusive Objectivity

Great op-ed by Nicholas Kristof about the elusiveness of objectivity. He refers mostly to politics here, but it really applies to everything. In most cases, I try to let my subjectivity and bias apply only to my sports teams.

We think and argue emotionally, only looking for the facts that support our theory; as opposed to the opposite - looking at the facts, then structuring our theories. It's so deeply embedded in our brains, it's very difficult to stop. I know this is true because I'm so guilty of it.

No,it's not new news exactly, but it it's a phenomenon of neuroscience referred to as top-down processing. We have an expectation of an experience, and we literally structure how the sensory information enters our brains. That sensory info distorts as we contort it based on what we expect. It's a reminder that much of what we see, touch, and hear are self-induced illusions.

On Kristof's blog, of course, all the crazy commenters (with a few exceptions) revert right back to partisan politics. The irony!

Here is some commentary from one of my favorite writers Jonah Lehrer - I think his point about resigning yourself to a sense of certainty despite knowing you are torn between two conflicting ideas is really apt. That craving for the feeling of certainty is what drives most bad thinking. It's probably the root of religious thinking, and why people think they have answers to unanswerable questions - it feels better to feel certain. Questioning creates a sort of psychic pain. I liken it to western music that doesn't return to the tonic (leaving a sense of unpalatable dissonance), or watching a bad TV mystery movie that you can't walk away from because you have to know "who done it."

Anyway, Mr. Lehrer states it better than I do...

Fighting the Curse

As a Red Sox fan, I was all for the burial of a Sox jersey in the foundation of the new Yankee Stadium, which sent the new generation of Crazy Monkey Steinbrenner (Hank Steinbrenner, son of George) to flip out. Unfortunately, they actually found the jersey, effectively lifting the potential curse.

I'm against all kinds of magical thinking, but I've admittedly been guilty of believing in the curse of the Bambino most of my child and adult life (very hard not to when watching the '86 World Series and the 2003 ALCS). I'd say I've been guilty of it up until 2004 when the curse and the belief in such silly baseball ghosts finally began to dissipate.

So it's unfortunate that the Sox fan construction worker that planted the jersey was also a magical thinker, or he would have been smart enough to simply lie that he actually did it, causing Hank and the rest of the Yankee fan monkeys to perpetuate the myth of the "unfound" Sox jersey in the bowels of the newly cursed Yankee Stadium. Too bad...

9/11 Conspiracy Theories Are "Ridiculous" Says Al Queda

To Illustrate this point, Onion video


9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

You Look Gay In Those Genes

I'm realizing now this should have been the title of my senior thesis. Instead it was called "Assessing the Biological Causality of Human Homosexuality," or something pedantic like that.

Let me not digress from this beautiful little piece of Australian satire (originally posted by Vaughan at Mind Hacks, who also includes a great quote from Carl Zimmer about the stupidity of these gene studies). The gay scientists over at The Pink Tiger Research Institute have finally isolated the Christian gene.

"We've already prevented this rat from being born christian, hopefully humans will follow."

Relating to Robots

From an article in the Washington Post about military personnel and their relationships with their field robots:

"Ours was called Sgt. Talon," says Sgt. Michael Maxson of the 737th Ordnance Company (EOD). "We always wanted him as our main robot. Every time he was working, nothing bad ever happened. He always got the job done. He took a couple of detonations in front of his face and didn't stop working. One time, he actually did break down in a mission, and we sent another robot in and it got blown to pieces. It's like he shut down because he knew something bad would happen."

Something about the specific filter of human consciousness can turn anything into a real life character - inanimate or not. It's everywhere from Santa Clause, to Father Time, to God, to talking teapots in Disney films. It's an illusion that's generally impossible to see past.

Somehow I doubt the robot knew something bad was going to happen, it's far more likely God decided to spare Sgt Talon at that moment (I kid!).

Army Colonel Shows Compassion...for Robot

A robotics physicist, Mark Tilden was demoing quite a piece of technology in Los Alamos for an army colonel - a search and destroy robot for land mines. It's a five-foot centipede that will seek out a mine, set if off, put itself back together, and continue its work.

As the amazingly willful little creature was down to its last, charred leg, the army colonel aborted the demo. Apparently, the sight of this non-sentient being barely functioning, but soldiering on had an effect on the colonel who deemed the demo inhumane.

I'm pretty fascinated by the anthropomorphizing colonel. He has to know somewhere in his mind that it's just a robot, that it doesn't have "courage," or a sense of "duty." Assuming this colonel has seen action, it was too traumatic to watch the poor little robot put to its limits.

Ironically, the robot is actually incredibly humane - it would be saving countless lives and terrible agony. What's interesting is that the demo was inhumane for the colonel. It's basically an exercise in post traumatic stress for anyone that's fought in a war.

Couldn't find a video of the robot in question, but here's a creepy, primitive version.

The Emporer's Clothes Don't Keep Him Warm

Aside from my father who is working on a ground breaking book on psychotherapy and consciousness, this Psychology PhD from Austin, TX, John Breeding is the clearest I've seen about the danger of prescribing pscyhotropic drugs for "bogus, made-up" conditions like ADHD and depression. Pretty ballsy given the current climate of psychiatric treatments. Amen, brother.

CLARIFICATION: After a brief comment dicussion (thanks Adam), I wanted to say that I don't think the symptoms of depression or ADHD aren't real, and that certain drugs can't be helpful in certain, specific instances. What I will say is that the idea behind the mechanism of action for anti-depressants is heavily flawed, and basically unproven. Contrary to popular belief, there is no established baseline for the "normal" levels of the neurotransmitter most anti-depressants are supposedly regulating (serotonin and dopamine).

Most studies say it's barely more effective than placebo. Other reports mention how studies showing their ineffectiveness are often shelved, and even worse, the side effects of many of these drugs can be pretty awful - decreased libido, movement disorders, psychotic behavior, and most bizarrely, the zaps. The over-diagnosis of these conditions and the pursuant over-prescription of frankly experimental psychotropic drugs is a sloppy and irresponsible practice.

Actually, this is all stated better in this clip of Dr. Breeding.

Creationism Alive and Well

A pretty transparent picture of creationist indoctrination. This bible study field trip to a science museum has the "teachers" exposing why evolution is "somebody's fantasy."

These kids are taught pretty well how to defend their lunacy, here's a good argument:

"With the amount of damage happening to the earth these days, all the crazy things? it would have fallen apart by now, like billions of billions of years." Which is why it's obviously only been around for 6000 years. Convinced?

This poor brainwashed little girl just made me feel badly, she so effectively embodies what they teach - that any scientific explanation is like a cute, silly fairytale (about 7:00 into the video, watch how she says the following quote):

"God created the earth, and it didn't, like, evolve from a big asteroid in a bagillion years (like an asteroid is some absurd figment of our imagination) ."

Is the only way to fight this kind of indoctrination with indoctrination? Instead of explaining evolution like a science, maybe it just has to be taught like a religion. No matter how it's taught, the creationists will paint it that way. At best, their argument is "they have their story, we have ours." For the record, I don't believe you should fight misinformation with misinformation - as far as I'm concerned any indoctrination, even with a good cause, is a bad thing.