Vexen Crabtree <VexenCrabtree>

"Make the world a better place!"

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The Physical Basis of Emotions2 days ago
 
Do emotions result from us having a soul, or merely from the laws of nature? Degenerative diseases of the brain that erode personality, and cases where brain damage causes sudden changes in character, are both only possible if character itself is biological. Mood disorders and mind-altering drugs indicate that the sources of feelings are biochemical. Inherited mood disorders and developmental diseases show us that personality is driven by biology. Depression, love, niceness, politeness, aggression, basic drives, abstract thinking, judgement, patience, considered behaviour, instincts, memories, language construction and comprehension, and every emotion, have turned out to have biochemical causes, not spiritual ones, and can all be radically affected by brain damage and brain surgery. If there was a soul, brain damage could not also damage our emotional feelings, but it does. If memory, behaviour and emotions are all controlled by the physical brain, what is a soul for? It seems that there isn't anything for a soul to do - it certainly does not control behaviour or character, and, any free will it exerts is promptly overridden by biological chemistry, hence why so many diseases have an uncontrollable effect on personality. Modern science proves that the idea of souls is misguided.

I have written up all these ideas including lots of case studies where people have suffered from brain damage which has altered their personality, and put it all on http://www.humantruth.info/emotions.html
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Genetic Diseases and Heterozygote Advantage: How nature hides some terrible genes behind good ones86 days ago
 
I've been writing a little on genetic diseases, here is an excerpt:

The way genetics works, some genes that have terrible effect only when inherited from both parents. This means, the gene can be successful and get passed on from generation to generation, but, it occasionally wrecks havoc on a baby or child. It is very unfortunate that this type of gene exists, but, thankfully the march of evolution means that most dysfunctional genes are eventually removed from the gene pool because they reduce the average viability of offspring. If would be so much better if evolution could see what it was doing, because there is an unfortunate twist to the way that proteins are produced from the haphazard order that genes are thrown together in. Some of these terrible diseases, which only strike families occasionally, have an advantage> when they're not showing their ugly side. This is known as "heterozygote advantage". Examples of this type of disease include sickle-cell anaemia. This disease is spread because in its hidden, harmless form it gives an advantage against malaria. Likewise, cystic fibrosis is believed to give protection against cholera, and the terrible neurodegenerative tay-sachs disease linked with protection against tuberculosis.

“Sickle cell [...] exhibits the phenomenon known as "heterozygote advantage." Heterozygotes have only one copy of a mutant gene. Since sickle cell is a recessive disorder, heterozygous people carry the sickle cell trait but do not usually get sick. It is now known that the mutation that causes sickle cell arose several thousand years ago in parts of Africa where the parasite that causes malaria had recently made its appearance. Over time, the mutation became widely disseminated in those populations, because, even though people who inherited two copies of the gene often died, those with just one copy, the heterozygotes, had significantly improved resistance to malaria.[...] Heterozygote advantage explains why some harmful mutations persist and proliferate.”
Prof. Ronald M. Green (2007)

If I was an evil architect who wanted to create a species that would suffer needlessly, then, I would design evolution in such a way that terrible diseases were hidden by genes that conferred an advantage and therefore spread well in the population. If I was a good designer, I wouldn't create genetic diseases at all. Which way does the evidence point? The existence of genetic diseases with heterozygous advantage is evidence that, if there is a creator, or a designer of evolution, such a being is either malevolent or a very poor geneticist.

Anyway, the rest of the this text is on http://www.humantruth.info/evolution... along with much more detail on evolution in general, and some of its other quirks and inefficiencies.
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Work99 days ago
 
Since January I've been in a new position and role at work - something suitably technical yet still very diverse, and it's much better than the radio-repair work I was doing in Germany! Although I did get away for 12 months to do computer networking in faraway places, the rest of my time I was mostly bored.

Now my day to day job is interesting, productive, lots of opportunity to learn things (Oracle infrastructure), and I work with people who aren't really stupid. Which is nice!
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The Food Industry's Manipulation of News Media170 days ago
 
You cannot trust much of the news when it comes to issues that have commercial impact, not even when it comes to the reporting of scientific studies on nutrition and food. Some of these studies were funded and managed by scientists supplied by the food industry itself!

From my page http://www.humantruth.info/food.html#PR :

“The food industry in Europe recently has been funding groups to protect its position against public and government alarm over obesity, junk food, misleading food labelling, diabetes and the advertising of fatty foods to children. British newspapers routinely carry reports and quotes on diet from the Social Issues Research Center, the British Nutrition Foundation and the International Life Sciences Foundations and routinely fail to point out that all three have received significant funding variously from Cadbury Schweppes, Nestlé, Kelloggs, the Dairy Council, Kraft and the Sugar Bureau. In 2003, Fleet Street reported the comments of a nutritionist called Dr Susan Jebb who attacked the Atkins Diet as 'a massive health risk', without explaining that her research into the low-carbohydrate diet had been funded the Flour Advisory Bureau. This kind of research may or may not be accurate; but it is the hidden hand of PR which is paying for it to happen and promoting it into the news.”
"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008) 15

My page which criticizes the mass media explains why such lobby groups find it so easy to insert content into the news. From http://www.humantruth.info/mass_medi... :

“Modern journalists work at breakneck speed to process stories as fast as possible. Therefore most news services rely heavily on public relations (PR) material in order to rapidly produce the stream of news. Much of this news comes from trusted wire agencies, but these also rely on PR input. Because of these pressures, public relations firms and commercial companies are having a heyday and find it easy to insert material into news media. In general, over half of all news stories are mostly PR or contain substantial PR-sourced material. Journalists themselves do not check the facts or figures of such inputs, nor admit in the articles themselves that PR material is the true source of the information, so the news often appears unbiased. Powerful commercial lobbies use this weakness to pervert public opinion.

For example in the 1950s the smoking lobby created a waft of innocent-sounding and scientific-sounding groups in order to discredit government information about the dangers of smoking. Oil and petrol lobbies have spent fortunes on the same PR tricks, as have food industry lobbies. They produce scientific reports engineered by their own scientists, which serve to boost their own industries by deceiving the public. In short, don't trust the news media directly even when they are reporting on scientific-sounding research groups. Always check facts with long-standing scientific bodies such as the Royal Society. Rich and activist commercialist lobby groups have a set of well-practised and efficient methods for manipulating the news and public opinion. The scientists and welfare groups who wish to get real scientific worries about certain industries out into the open are not funded or equipped to run public relations campaigns. Only multinational information campaigns, legal agreements and inter-national political bodies such as the EU have the oomph to be able to fight back against such powerful industries.”
"The Modern Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)
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Redesign of my /USA/ pages216 days ago
 
I've redesigned all the http://www.vexen.co.uk/USA/index.html and cleared it all up so it is less clutered, and has colours that are easier on the eyes. The content is still the same, relevent to USA foreign policy (mostly) up to about 2003. The main page is the "Why do People Hate America", a summary of street-level criticisms of the USA, plus reasonable commentary on how much of the criticism is short-cited, illogical, irrational or ignorant. Nevertheless, a great deal of valid criticism remains.
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Living back in the UK293 days ago
 
After four years in Germany we have now moved back to the UK, near Salisbury. Many things we had taken for granted are now gone!

The house is a good size, really, for what we were expecting. The house overall is small and decrepid. Not only is UK housing smaller, older, less functional and designed worse than German houses, but *Army* houses are all but the worst on offer, excepting rundown council welfare houses.

But we're *making* this house good!

The front door is wonky and old, the whole house has poor insulation by any modern standards, there is no attic and no basement, and the kitchen for some reason is half devoid of cupboards... we will put up our own along one of its 2 walls, but, how many people have lived here without adding a little kitchen storage? There is no plumbing for a dishwasher machine, and it 'takes months' to get one installed - we started the process the day we moved in.

Not only is this cheap UK housing (would the Army pay for anything else, given the shortcomings of squaddies themselves?), but, we have to deal with Army beurocracy in order to get changes done. We have a broken pane of glass in the double glazing in the front room, and it has been a struggle simply to get it booked for someone to come fix it...

The worst thing is that many of the faults we're having (boiler, front door, dishwasher plumbing, bathroom light pullcord, shelves in airing cupboard and broken pane of glass in the front room), should all have been fixed in the period of time before we moved in - the house has been unoccupied since November at least, and we moved in Jan 26th.

We'll get there, and it'll be good, just got to battle on!
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Happy new year!327 days ago
 
2009, we love you!

2008, good riddance!
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The Natural Diversity of Sexuality, and its Evolution360 days ago
 
I've added this to http://www.humantruth.info/sex.html#BD

Many animal species share a common set of sexualities: heterosexuals, homosexuals and plenty of dysfunctionals, plus lots of situation-dependent behaviour. Monogamy, polygamy, polyandry and all those other social combinations of the basic sexualities are also present throughout the animal world (including Humanity of course). But although this may look like enough diversity, there is more, because all of these are variants of bi-gender behaviour. Throughout half of the history of life on Earth, living things reproduced asexually, through simple duplicative division. Sexual diversity, like the rest of living complexity10, had to undergo a slow process of evolution, proceeding first through isogamy where there are no genders.

“Sex seems to have been invented around two billion years ago. Before then, new varieties of organisms could arise only from the accumulation of random mutations - the selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been agonizingly slow. With the invention of sex, two organisms could exchange whole paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA code, producing new varieties ready for the sieve of selection.”
"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)

Even then, evolution did not simply jump straight to bi-gender heterosexuality of course. Sexual reproduction started out with cells that were no different to each other; there were no genders. The first sexuality in history was therefore isogamy, which we mentioned above. Isogamous species still exist today:

“In certain primitive organisms, for instance some funghi, maleness and femaleness do not occur, although sexual reproduction of a kind does. In the system known as isogamy the individuals are not distinguishable into two sexes. Anybody can mate with anybody else.”
"The Selfish Gene" by Prof. Richard Dawkins (1976)

All this should put human wranglings about the sanctity of the nuclear family, or arguments about what sexualities are 'normal' into perspective, because truly everything is natural in nature. We have to work out simply how to live in peace with the realities of sexual diversity in our own species.
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Reverse Psychosomosis - Bodily Health Through Mental Effort446 days ago
 
http://www.vexen.co.uk/self/psychoso...

New edition of this page is launched, the conclusion reads:

There seems to be no limits to the seriousness of possible physical problems resulting from subconscious mental dysphoria; but there are many benefits also from certain mental exercises and from holding a positive mental attitude. Good reactions to stress are an indicator of long-term health, both physical and mental. Willpower and determination sit alongside hopeful thinking as elements of a reverse psychosomosis mechanism; helping protect the body against disease. Meditation, self-reflection and having a 'fighting spirit' against health problems all contribute to actual physical health.

Summarizing the techniques and conclusions drawn on this page, it follows that various good practices can increase the health of individuals and of entire nations.

* "Therapists of all persuasions agree that reducing anxiety or anger is the best way to alleviate suffering from psychophysiological disorders"

* Good reactions to stress facilitate long-term health

* Maintaining strong willpower, a fighting spirit, and a positive attitude towards your own body help against diseases that seem purely physical, such as cancer, because our immune system and our body's maintenance are linked to our nervous system, and can therefore be effected by emotional factors.

* Many psychosomatic diseases and somatoform disorders can be avoided (and sometimes cured) through education. The promotion of critical thinking and hysteria-awareness can prevent symptoms appearing in the first place.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/self/psychoso... contains full references and discussion of related topics.
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The implications of split-brain patients' explanations of their own behaviour, for free will.720 days ago
 
I've added some text to http://www.humantruth.info/split_bra... :

The philsopher Thomas Gilovich explains studies where two different pictures are presented to a split-brain patient. The language center in the left hemisphere gives responses according to its interpretation of the right's actions. A patient can point to a picture in accordance with what one eye has seen, but the left-hand side of the brain couldn't see, and the person tries to explain their selection of photo in accordance with the wrong input. For example a picture of a snow-filled field is shown to a patient's non-verbal right hemisphere, and they select a shovel from a list of pictures. But the left-hand side of their split-brain doesn't know what input they have seen. When asked, they construct a rational-sounding reason and when quizzed, believe that this made-up reason is the actual reason whey they selected it. The most important philosophical issue is that the person does not realize that they are inventing a reason. It teaches us that our brains\interprets our own behaviour and gives us an illusion of agency even when there is none. Further examples and discussion held in Crabtree "Free Will & Determinism" (1999) include cases of hypnotism and other sociological experiments where people give wrong reasons for their own behaviour, revealing that people in general are more like observers than we can admit.

http://www.humantruth.info/split_bra... contains the full text, and http://www.humantruth.info/free_will... contains the full discussion of free will vs. determinism.
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