New Study Finds Women and Men's Brains Are Hardwired Differently
Posted by Zenphamy 10 years, 5 months ago to Philosophy
So once again, how do we as Objectivist thinkers accept these differences and their consequences to our lives and governance and derive ways and methods to compensate and correct for skewing towards 'gut feeling' decision making?
"Because the female connections link the left hemisphere, which is associated with logical thinking, with the right, which is linked with intuition, this could help to explain why women tend to do better than men at intuitive tasks, she added.
“Intuition is thinking without thinking. It's what people call gut feelings."
"Because the female connections link the left hemisphere, which is associated with logical thinking, with the right, which is linked with intuition, this could help to explain why women tend to do better than men at intuitive tasks, she added.
“Intuition is thinking without thinking. It's what people call gut feelings."
In the event of extreme longevity (1000 years) I have doubts that the basic design would hold up. Even in a perfectly functioning brain, there's a process of information sorting and winnowing. We forget. It's an open question whether a 1000-year-old brain would have the capacity to remember more than 100 years of data… and at what fidelity.
Speaking of Obamacare, the article you referenced contained this future snapshot of what our "health care" system is about to become:
_____ Unless it was repaired, my heart would steadily worsen,
_____ until it couldn't function any more. Even though I needed
_____ the operation straight away, the NHS waiting list was two
_____ years, which really worried me.
Thanks for the reference.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/articl...
I agree, it's an amazing time in this type of medicine. Only problem is that I'm at the age where I'm not sure they could do me much good, but for someone in the 40's, maybe even 50's, it's just unbelievable. I can still remember all the foofarah when the first heart transplant was done in S. Africa and how amazing that seemed. But what they're doing now is like magic.
The longevity, I just don't know about mental functioning though. Yeah, Obamacare just ran into another mathematical impossibility. Think of the impact on some of the retirement pensions.
I don't doubt that it's being done on an experimental basis, but I think we're still a ways out from being able to control the process reliably.
Still, consider the implications of being able to regrow a severed limb, or grow a working pancreas (goodbye Type 1 diabetes), or repair a heart or a kidney. Human longevity might surge in a way that would rock the world.
You think there's an overpopulation problem now? You think elder care is a problem now?
OTOH, if the therapy reaches the point of putting genetic analysis equipment in a vending machine where you stuff in a $20, it analyses your blood and generates the appropriate stem cells (which drop out the slot at the bottom in an easy-to-self-administer syringe), I could see the cost of health care crashing.
Brave new world.
We're there. It's been reported within the last couple of months. The placement of stem cell derived treatment in an in situ heart to repair a valve, (I'm pretty sure. Still searching through old files to find the article)
I think it admirably captures the spirit of the Gulch.
But they always wait until the dog is in the room.
Poor dog.
Color me skeptical.
What color is the sky in your world?
Either learn to read or learn to think. Both would be better.
I specifically said that if you wanted to perpetuate genetic defects using your own money, go right ahead. Just don't steal from other people (through taxes, for example) to subsidize your fetish.
>> Those are infantile comments born of spite and pettiness. That those conditions exist is a fact - just as human emotions are a fact - but one over which neither you nor I have control to wave some magic wand and eliminate.
Except, if we can detect them, and even eliminate them, we may not do it via magic wand - but through science. By the way, what's your problem with that?
>> If you wish to continue with a civil discussion, comments like that will cease immediately.
Bite me.
>> Your tone sneers condescension and superiority - not logic.
It may seem that way to the emotional cripple - but you left logic long ago.
>> Rather, the challenges should impel us individually to action
And the challenge is to eliminate the genetic malfunction.
Look, I don't know why you're so gung ho to breed defective humans. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't require people to pay for other people's genetic mistakes. If two Down's Syndrome folks want to have a kid - fine. Not... one... taxpayer... penny to subsidize the Frankenstein experiment. If the kid winds up with its brain outside of its body, requiring a million dollars in medical care to "survive", then the parents can pony up the money - or not.
I'm not in favor of pouring millions and millions of dollars into such a lost cause. I'd much rather the money be spent on research to prevent the problems from happening in the first place.
You paint a pretty broad brush there because you imply that my money should be under your control and my decisions should be subject to your whims. I reject such notions.
"What is $500/month for medications compared to $6000/year for research?"
You've obviously never met my daughters. There is joy of today. The possibilities of the future. There are all the things that spring from hope rather than cynicism. You make the argument that the price is too high. I rejoin by asking just what is the value of YOUR life? Of your friends? Family? Are you truly so jaded that these mean so little to you? If so, I pity you.
"In other words, what is your argument for PRESERVING resource sucking, anti-progress, maladies in H. Sapiens?"
I never argued for the preservation of disease - only the afflicted. You mistakenly inferred that for yourself. But until there IS a cure (which by-the-way there was for my nephew), you advocate simply eliminating the afflicted.
It reminds me of a Star Trek: TNG episode where they find a planet entirely peopled by healthy specimens but for whom ANY abrogation of the law meant certain death - regardless of how illogical or transient the law may have been. What you are proposing sounds eerily similar - no concept of mercy whatsoever. No thought that the person could reform or be rehabilitated.
"Maybe you think severe mental retardation, type 1 diabetes, gastroschisis, anencephaly, hypo plastic heart defects are all part of the "charity, mercy, love, kindness" of the species."
Those are infantile comments born of spite and pettiness. That those conditions exist is a fact - just as human emotions are a fact - but one over which neither you nor I have control to wave some magic wand and eliminate. If you wish to continue with a civil discussion, comments like that will cease immediately.
I had another daughter that died due a heart defect just before her first birthday and for which my wife and I rejected the government-subsidized heart-transplant being all but pushed down our throats by doctors. So you can take your self-righteous contempt to someone else. Either maintain a civil discussion or it ends right now. Your tone sneers condescension and superiority - not logic. If you are so entirely controlled by your logic and objectivity, such emotions would be beneath you and this conversation.
I am not advocating a welfare state. But I will firmly oppose any notion that the progress of humanity is somehow subverted by the variety of challenges which we face and can only be overcome by eliminating the challenged! Rather, the challenges should impel us individually to action - with kindness towards the afflicted, just as we would want others to treat us if our positions were reversed. There is a reason why it is called the "Golden Rule".
Also, please understand that I do not condone the government welfare state. My comments are NOT an endorsement of what I view as a perversion of the word charity. To me, charity means teaching self-sufficiency while temporarily providing means. Charity is what parents provide for their children as the children grow up. Charity is not economic enslavement to perpetuate power. Real charity is an act of kindness motivated by love and hope for the future welfare of that person. Any computer can allocate resources - only a concerned human can see beyond the physical into the possibility of the future. I don't believe in government-sponsored handouts, but I absolutely believe that humankind is humankind only so far as we treat other humans better than the animals treat each other (though admittedly one wonders about that sometimes...)
What I am trying to point out is that the conversation has taken such a turn to the extremes of objectivism that now humanity is becoming a slave to resources rather than the master of them! Perhaps one of the best philosophical movie quotes of all time:
"Yeah, but your scientists were so busy thinking about whether or not they COULD, they didn't stop to think if they SHOULD." (Jurassic Park) If we do not consider the HOW and WHY in the approach to solving a problem, we are not even seeing the whole picture. The conversation has lost sight of the greater picture of humanity entirely and focused solely on allocation of resources! If all one considers is the zero-sum game of "if I have something then you don't", we are no better than the animals around us. Trade ceases. Markets cease. Society disintegrates. As thinking, rational beings, we should be concerned with the WHY and HOW of our solutions just as much as the end result. If not, we advocate the bankrupt philosophy that "the ends justify the means".
That is why the concept being proffered to just deny medication or treatment is so perverted and inhumane to me that it horrifies me that any sane, logical person would suggest it! That mentality would attempt to justify a slow and painful death without even the mercy of an execution for the sake of a few thousand dollars! It condemns the imperfect to a grisly death solely on the basis of one person's imperfect rationale of resource allocation - because let's face it: hope isn't rational. On the one hand, you would deny hope to the afflicted, yet on the other dole it out to someone with the title of "scientist"? Isn't that a glaring self-contradiction given the ingenuity of man? It further assumes that an imperfect person can not be a benefit to society - even if it is only their immediate family - without even giving them a chance to prove otherwise. That kind of thinking would have destroyed such greats as Ludvig von Beethoven, Hellen Keller, or Stephen Hawking and I'm frankly appalled that objectivism would be painted with such a brush.
I can't embrace that kind of objectivism - the kind that reduces humans to binary inputs and outputs. I don't agree with much of how government currently governs. Most are liberal philosophies that are proven false and self-destructive and are perpetuated simply for power's sake. But to claim that this type of extreme objectivism would be a cure is to ignore that it makes the same mistakes that liberalism/progressivism makes: that the fallible and human mind is capable of deciding what is best or right for other human beings. If the heart of objectivism relies on such, it will not find in me a disciple.
Liberals are too self-absorbed with power to further society. As evidenced by Detroit, progressivism is ntaurally destructive, not creative. The Rise of the Machines could only come from an objectivist mindset like that being proposed here, because those involved would believe in their own minds that they would be doing the "right" thing - even while looking down the barrel of their own demise.
Please tell me that this is not the type of objectivism being advocated here.
>>"To you, everyone is an animal - nothing more, nothing less. There is no such thing as humanity. There is only squabbling over resources; no such thing or value as charity, mercy, love, kindness, friendship, etc. What an ironically short-sighted and pessimistic view of life. No hope. Only despair. No joy, only pain. No purpose whatsoever. How depressing. It is no wonder that you can not see the beauty and majesty in life and would actively choose to destroy that which you deem to be subservient or to have no value. To you, there are no positive gains to be had from the experience of life, only debits in terms of resource costs. It is no wonder you take such a jaundiced view of the future when you can take no joy in the experience of the present."<<
I don't mean this as a personal attack, but your arguments are the perfect examples of non-objectivist thinking and rationality. I completely understand the difficulty in applying objectively rational and critical thought to personally involved and individual issues and conditions.
But the terms of this thread have been aimed at the species in general and life in total. And when viewed from those levels, it's hard to not see that our current altruistic and socialist approach to the moochers and looters of our species as well as denying and fighting nature's extinction of other species is threatening and damaging to us in general and even all of life.
Nature has no altruism, individually or generally. It has no care for value. It is simply a set of conditions and rules. It strikes me that our goal should be to seek understanding and knowledge, not tilt at windmills.
Not at all.
Your hobbies are your own - so long as you're not stealing from other people to subsidize them.
As for the rest - there's a lot of projection going on there. Your rose-colored glasses hide the fact that there are real - and difficult - issues that we as a Nation, as a species, are not addressing.
Yes, I do feel a measure of despair. While we as a society think nothing of shelling out $50,000 a year to "educate" mentally-defective individuals who will never learn more than not to mess their pants, we virtually ignore those who, given the same resources, might solve the problems of mental retardation. What is $500/month for medications compared to $6000/year for research? If the past three generations had been wiser in allocating resources, we might have solved the problem of Type 1 Diabetes by now. But instead of cures, we create band-aids. It's a policy that's short-sighted and anti-progress.
So, nothing against your uncle or daughter or nephew, but do you really prefer to repair problems after they occur? Or solve them before they even happen?
Look at the trillions (yes, TRILLIONS) of dollars flushed down the rat hole of welfare. Can you not see that every moron we save, and allow to reproduce, is a room full of morons at a later date? A debt charged against the future with compound interest?
Hitler's eugenics programs were an affront to the world because the goal was to establish the Nazis as a "Master Race". But when you put the same argument in the form of, "Eliminating Type 1 Diabetes" or "Eliminating clubbed feet" or "Eliminating imbecility", are you for it? Or against it? In other words, what is your argument for PRESERVING resource sucking, anti-progress, maladies in H. Sapiens?
Watson and Crick didn't unravel DNA until 1953. Up until then, we might have been forgiven for preserving human misery through random rolls of the genetic dice. With the cost to sequence the human genome now in the $1000 range, there's no excuse for failing to screen for a wide range of genetic defects.
Maybe you think severe mental retardation, type 1 diabetes, gastroschisis, anencephaly, hypo plastic heart defects are all part of the "charity, mercy, love, kindness" of the species.
I don't. I view them as abominations that should be eliminated.
But I don't have a problem with you perpetrating the defects… so long as you don't ask anyone else to pay for them.
Yes, I was intentionally quibbling over the definition. I did so for all the reasons I mentioned but also to spur the conversation into an exploration of values. I was honestly curious as to why you chose longevity as your paramount virtue. I am frankly quite horrified at the results.
To you, everyone is an animal - nothing more, nothing less. There is no such thing as humanity. There is only squabbling over resources; no such thing or value as charity, mercy, love, kindness, friendship, etc. What an ironically short-sighted and pessimistic view of life. No hope. Only despair. No joy, only pain. No purpose whatsoever. How depressing. It is no wonder that you can not see the beauty and majesty in life and would actively choose to destroy that which you deem to be subservient or to have no value. To you, there are no positive gains to be had from the experience of life, only debits in terms of resource costs. It is no wonder you take such a jaundiced view of the future when you can take no joy in the experience of the present.
You have chosen the dark side, and I pity you. I would take the brightness and maturity of my 13-year-old daughter over depression and selfishness any day, even if it costs me $500/month in medication/supplies out of my non-government-subsidized paycheck. I would gladly watch football with my uncle (who has held the same paying job now for 25+ years at the local supermarket) any day over despair. And there is no way you could get me to take the joy away from my sister-in-law from watching her little boy grow up and walk. If you can honestly say that you would take away these experiences just because you view them as a waste of resources, you are the animal you want to see in everyone else.
I would invite you to try a different set of glasses. Not rose-colored lenses, but at least ones that aren't so covered in soot as to darken the world. There is much in life to celebrate - if one desires such. You may even enjoy it.
There's a difference between breeding for a "master race" and deliberately subsidizing the rat-like breeding conditions of the stupid class at the expense of the more… human… class. If it's intelligence that makes us human, then less intelligent humans must be "less human". That's using your own definitions!
We don't need to exterminate the stupid. We just need to stop subsidizing them. Let them die naturally.
There are entire regions of the earth that provide examples of human stupidity. Portions of Africa routinely breed out-of-control until the population exceeds the capacity of the land to support them. That's when morons step in with "aid programs" and funnel tons of food in - the better to enable more people to survive, to breed, to produce larger populations that will crash even harder.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Your uncle with Down's syndrome - is he fully human? How much is spent correcting club feet, and do you advocate passing that trait on to future generations where it will be costly to correct? What is the cost of Type 1 diabetes, and are you taking food off the table of others to treat your daughter? If so, by what right? (If not, then it's your affair. But every dollar of government subsidy is a dollar stolen from someone else.)
Hopefully not before some...
"...come terraforming time"...
come Terraforming time? What do you mean *come* Terraforming time? Terraforming time begins *now*.
For you, it couldn't be done. For normal homo sapiens, a few millennia should do.
You mention claws, etc., yet man has created their own advantages that outdo everything nature has produced. I find it interesting yet limiting that you seem to treat man as if we are naked primates running around in the wilderness. If survival of the fittest is your criteria, man is king. Man has eliminated more species than all others combined. All it takes is the ingenuity of a bullet or simple urban sprawl to render claw and tooth as obsolete and extinct as the dodo.
I also find your argument for selective breeding more than disturbing. I have an uncle with Down's Syndrome. I have a nephew that was born with two club feet. I have a daughter with Type I Diabetes. To say that any of these individuals should be deprived of life because of perceived imperfection is the classical slippery slope problem that created Hitler and his "master race" and fuels worldwide justification of abortion and genocide. It is the path to the dark side in a very real and literal sense. It is also a natural consequence of viewing humans as animals. I would hope that you aren't seriously a proponent of such evil.
I believe that even though man has shown the propensity for self-destruction, he has also shown the proclivity for greatness. But maybe that's the primary difference between our views: I believe that man is greater than animal and invested with a purpose of being and intellect that transcends that of animal. To me, the test of life is to see how we choose to use our intellect - for greatness or not.
If you want to view species on the scale of time, feel free. In another million years, you will be free to conclude that longevity is all that matters and I will bow to your greatness. Until then, I invite you to consider the alternative as a possibility - even a remote one.
Okay - here's the test: If a mammalian species lasts for at least 1 million years, it is "proven". Less than 1 million year, it is not proven. 500,000 years? Not proven. 1,200,000 years? Proven. Don't even try to argue the point - you've asked for a definition - now you have it. Has Homo Sapiens been around for 1 million years? No. Therefore, it is not a proven species. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Now, if you want to coin another term, like say, "fru-fru" to describe whatever your theory is regarding H. Sapiens, and declare that Homo Sapiens is more "fru-fru" than any other species, (indeed, that you are personally the most "fru-fru" H. Sapient who has ever lived)... feel free. But the term "proven" is taken and now explicitly defined. You can't have it. And Homo Sapiens is NOT... proven.
WILL Homo Sapiens last 1 million years?
Hard to say. I don't think so.
Until the late 19th early 20th Century, there was no "defective gene breeding program". But there is now. It's called "socialism" or "welfare" or "food stamps" or "Obamacare" - whatever it is that enables the mentally, physically and most importantly, genetically inferior/defective to survive and reproduce against all the dictates of nature.
I do not believe H. Sapiens is still evolving. I believe it is DE-volving, become less capable, less intelligent, less fit as a result of programs which allow the feeble-minded and the physically unfit to reproduce.
Homo Sapiens expresses new kinds of stupidity every day. How many other species foul their own "nests"? How many murder their own species? How many wipe out entire species and produce huge wastelands? Name a species other than H. Sapiens that can produce a Three Mile Island, a Fukishima meltdown, a Second World War, or, for that matter, war in any form? Yeah, animals fight, but the higher forms rarely fight to the death. Insects sometimes wage war - especially ants - but against their own species?
The irony of war is that we send some of our most capable people off to die, while the detritus of humanity sits fat, dumb and happy at home, oblivious. Overeating. Under-performing. Growing mentally feeble and physically weak. Turning into a gigantic pile of gelatinous poo.
More importantly, how many species make a practice of keeping around the genetically inferior versions of their species? Can you imagine other species keeping (and breeding) Downs Syndrome equivalents? Autistics? The mentally or physically retarded? Picture a wolf pack where the least fit breed out of control and the most fit don't breed at all!? Wolves would be chihuahuas. Scrawny, pathetic, stupid - food for other species.
Supreme Court Justice Holmes famously commented on the uncontrolled reproduction of the mentally defective saying, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough". But it's been far more than three generations. And now the morons are running the world. Do the research: Stupid women have far more children than intelligent women. The genes of the stupid are being passed down in record numbers. Intelligence (our defining characteristic) is being BRED OUT of H. Sapiens.
The most recent research shows a decline in IQ in the Western world of 14 points in the past century. An IQ of 116 is the equivalent of a "B" on standard 10% per grade level test. It's the 85th percentile. 14 IQ points down the scale is 102... which is the 55th percentile. In other words, a difference of 14 IQ points is the difference between a solid "B" and a "D-" or "F".
You know who's to blame?
Women. Same people who have wrecked our economy are destroying the species.
Stupid women are polluting the gene pool. Yeah, some will want to blame the men too - but you know, ladies, unless a woman is raped, she's the one choosing who will be the daddy to her baby, and as all the "I am woman, hear me roar" types will tell you, "My body, my choice". So the bottom line is, stupid women are CHOOSING to have stupid babies and are driving Homo Sapiens to the bottom - and they're doing it very quickly.
So much for the mental superiority of H. Sapiens.
How does one reverse the trend?
I suppose you could offer a reward for every child a woman with a 120+ IQ has (something along the lines of Heinlein's concept for the Long Society - but addressed to intelligence rather than longevity). Or we could have a big war and make sure lots and lots and lots of the fat, dumb, happy cows sitting in front of the TV chomping bon bons get killed. Or we could end any incentive for stupid women to have children (like ending all welfare in all forms - or penalizing people on welfare who have children). But short of something like that, in another 5 ort 10 generations, we could be too stupid as a species to survive, because you know what? Brains and opposable thumbs are all we have going for us. Most of our competitors have bigger muscles, sharper claws, longer teeth, more strength and greater speed than we do.
Will Homo Sapiens become a proven species?
I doubt it.
That's one of the things that to me separates man from beast: our intelligence allows us to even ponder and consider these questions at all. Intelligence and self-awareness to me rate much higher than the simple ability to pro-create. Intelligence allows us to grow, adapt, reason, invent, adjust, and improve - and we can even pass down some of our knowledge to following generations!
No, I believe that the test is something more than just living, breathing and dying. I believe in purpose for my life that differs from and is greater than any of the animals simply because I recognize my own existence.
They still have to deal with physics. So unless 10,000 year life spans are the norm, don't look for them to show up here any time soon.
Will we ever detect them? Will they ever detect us? Hard to say. When you think of a million years in context of 4 or 5 billion years (age of earth) it's like one week in a human lifetime. So assuming we're transmitting for a million years before we blow ourselves up, or poison ourselves, run out of resources, or just get dumbed down to the point where we don't know what an electron is anymore, it's still pretty much a crap shoot that an alien species would exist at the same time, and be using similar technology, and be listening and have any clue what it is they're hearing and seeing. Assuming they have ears. And eyes. And that sort of thing.
'fraid we're alone after all.
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