From intarts at teleport.com Thu Jul 1 00:53:47 2004 From: intarts at teleport.com (John Beahrs) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 19:53:47 -0500 Subject: [Paleopsych] test 4 References: <02bf01c45ec0$57d0ccd0$6ce04518@yourjqn2mvdn7x> Message-ID: <009401c45f07$d870d6e0$c02279a5@JOBeahrs> received fine. thx. ----- Original Message ----- From: Val Geist To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 11:36 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] test 4 All your messages came through. Thanks. ----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen Lee To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 9:14 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] test 4 If I'm right it shoudl only go to list owner now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From 'will you?' to 'I do,' MSN Life Events is your resource for Getting Married. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.712 / Virus Database: 468 - Release Date: 6/27/2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Thu Jul 1 03:30:43 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 23:30:43 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Message-ID: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly ?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A% 2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+s s+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph +hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B 0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use. Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p Item: 10544899 Top of Page Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View Folder screen.Folder is empty. ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com Thu Jul 1 04:32:24 2004 From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:32:24 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> Message-ID: <003401c45f24$684ee9c0$0200a8c0@dad> Howard Actually, Freud thought that repression is an unconscious act. Freud thought that conscious states must have sensory qualities in order to be conscious. Counscious is a fabric of smells, tastes, sounds, sights etc. It follows that mental states devoid of these 'qualia' (as they are nowadays called) must be unconscious. Thought, then, has to be unconscious. How, then, do these nonsensory thoughts become conscious? Freud thought that they have to become associated with language. Language can serve as a go-between mediating the relationship between thought and consciousness because it shares the same abstract structure as thought but it is also a richly sensory symbol system. Freud thought that repression is a motiviated failure to translate unconscious thought into language, a failure to articulate our own thoughts to ourselves. According to this thesis repression can't be conscious because it undercuts consciousness. Cheers David ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 11:30 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use. Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p Item: 10544899 Top of Page Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View Folder screen.Folder is empty. ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Thu Jul 1 04:44:54 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 00:44:54 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Message-ID: <103.4971d8ad.2e14f0c6@aol.com> Sounds like Freud intuited a lot of material that modern neurobiology would support. All thanks, David. Meanwhile, let's hope this message makes it out of my laptop and into the paleopsych listserv, which may be bouncing my emails because they come from aol. Howard In a message dated 7/1/2004 12:33:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, dsmith06 at maine.rr.com writes: Actually, Freud thought that repression is an unconscious act. Freud thought that conscious states must have sensory qualities in order to be conscious. Counscious is a fabric of smells, tastes, sounds, sights etc. It follows that mental states devoid of these 'qualia' (as they are nowadays called) must be unconscious. Thought, then, has to be unconscious. How, then, do these nonsensory thoughts become conscious? Freud thought that they have to become associated with language. Language can serve as a go-between mediating the relationship between thought and consciousness because it shares the same abstract structure as thought but it is also a richly sensory symbol system. Freud thought that repression is a motiviated failure to translate unconscious thought into language, a failure to articulate our own thoughts to ourselves. According to this thesis repression can't be conscious because it undercuts consciousness. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Jul 1 14:27:30 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 07:27:30 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> Message-ID: <002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> Repression of trauma may be an old survival response that preserves the body while killing the soul. People who have suffered a serious psychic trauma such as crime or incest may continue to function, but they are crippled by the things they don't care to think about. A frozen emotional response makes it hard for them to make life choices that would move them forward. The current problems of Michael Jackson, for example, undoubtedly result from early abuse that went untreated. In terms of Goleman's work on emotional intelligence these people have suffered a stroke. Sometimes the repression is so complete that people can't remember the cause even though they exhibit all of the symptoms. The challenge for unsuccessful components of a learning system is to figure out how to do better. While they are in their impaired state they emit poisons that hurt the performance of other components. It's in the interest of society to figure out how to prevent and repair this damage. ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:30 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use. Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p Item: 10544899 Top of Page Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View Folder screen.Folder is empty. ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Jul 1 14:28:23 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 07:28:23 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <003401c45f24$684ee9c0$0200a8c0@dad> Message-ID: <003301c45f77$aac412a0$210110ac@hppav> It's also worth remembering that people can be traumatized before they learn to speak, which can make it totally impossible to elicit the causes. ----- Original Message ----- From: David Smith To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 9:32 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Howard Actually, Freud thought that repression is an unconscious act. Freud thought that conscious states must have sensory qualities in order to be conscious. Counscious is a fabric of smells, tastes, sounds, sights etc. It follows that mental states devoid of these 'qualia' (as they are nowadays called) must be unconscious. Thought, then, has to be unconscious. How, then, do these nonsensory thoughts become conscious? Freud thought that they have to become associated with language. Language can serve as a go-between mediating the relationship between thought and consciousness because it shares the same abstract structure as thought but it is also a richly sensory symbol system. Freud thought that repression is a motiviated failure to translate unconscious thought into language, a failure to articulate our own thoughts to ourselves. According to this thesis repression can't be conscious because it undercuts consciousness. Cheers David ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 11:30 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use. Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p Item: 10544899 Top of Page Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View Folder screen.Folder is empty. ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Thu Jul 1 15:53:37 2004 From: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 17:53:37 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> Message-ID: <010901c45f83$933057f0$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> Dear Steve, Liked your message. You might be interested in the attached papers. All the best, Eshel Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #?s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Hovland To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:27 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Repression of trauma may be an old survival response that preserves the body while killing the soul. People who have suffered a serious psychic trauma such as crime or incest may continue to function, but they are crippled by the things they don't care to think about. A frozen emotional response makes it hard for them to make life choices that would move them forward. The current problems of Michael Jackson, for example, undoubtedly result from early abuse that went untreated. In terms of Goleman's work on emotional intelligence these people have suffered a stroke. Sometimes the repression is so complete that people can't remember the cause even though they exhibit all of the symptoms. The challenge for unsuccessful components of a learning system is to figure out how to do better. While they are in their impaired state they emit poisons that hurt the performance of other components. It's in the interest of society to figure out how to prevent and repair this damage. ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:30 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. 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Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: NI-AI.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1026656 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Functional-holography.doc Type: application/msword Size: 2066944 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wisdom.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 102931 bytes Desc: not available URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Jul 1 16:03:11 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 09:03:11 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com><002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> <010901c45f83$933057f0$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> Message-ID: <001d01c45f84$e8e2dc80$210110ac@hppav> Thanks. ----- Original Message ----- From: Eshel Ben-Jacob To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 8:53 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Dear Steve, Liked your message. You might be interested in the attached papers. All the best, Eshel Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #?s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Hovland To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 4:27 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? Repression of trauma may be an old survival response that preserves the body while killing the soul. People who have suffered a serious psychic trauma such as crime or incest may continue to function, but they are crippled by the things they don't care to think about. A frozen emotional response makes it hard for them to make life choices that would move them forward. The current problems of Michael Jackson, for example, undoubtedly result from early abuse that went untreated. In terms of Goleman's work on emotional intelligence these people have suffered a stroke. Sometimes the repression is so complete that people can't remember the cause even though they exhibit all of the symptoms. The challenge for unsuccessful components of a learning system is to figure out how to do better. While they are in their impaired state they emit poisons that hurt the performance of other components. It's in the interest of society to figure out how to prevent and repair this damage. ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:30 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the grizzly and live another 30 years or so? Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of post-traumatic stress disorders. The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, individual components of a learning system, components like cells in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our understanding? Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or ride a bicycle? One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. What do you think? Howard glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web EBSCOhost Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 EBSCOhost : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have recently come to understand a great deal about the role that stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and depression, currently available medications do not work for vast numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. Out of Balance, WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the volume; she has a sense of control. But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she can actually master. Depression is upon her. Stress and Anxiety FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory information, including specialized areas that recognize individual faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely abstract thought. The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once assaulted her. The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in victims of trauma. Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not require conscious awareness. Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition called long-term potentiation (LTP). Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie forms of free-floating anxiety. It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of mind-body feedback can result. Assuaging Anxiety AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians more to work with. The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the vagus nerve. Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural couriers. Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, July 1997]. Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously shocked. Stress and Depression IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less active: psychomotor retardation sets in. Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the feelings of pleasure fade. Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports this analysis. Memory and New Cells STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or cardiac arrest. Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with declarative memory formation in general--in people going about their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and startling medical literature shows that in those who have been seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a loss in response to depression. At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial memory dysfunction typical of major depression. New Drugs for Depression THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately related to the interactions between stress and depression. Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such drugs are probably not far off. Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this treatment can work in animals. As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. The Stress Continuum IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone enhances dopamine release. Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased glucocorticoid secretion. And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy blanket thrown on top of it. Stress and Genes I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, and so on. But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain environments, including how readily the brain and body reequilibrate after stress. Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or that they must always feel helpless. SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support this finding. Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block anxiety and depression. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal atrophy often seen in depressed people. Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). MORE TO EXPLORE Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1998. The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. OVERVIEW / Battling Stress ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform anxiety into depression. ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies for treatments. ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many people are not helped by currently available medications. VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress pathways. DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS DOPAMINE DEPLETION Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and attentiveness is accordingly diminished. SEROTONIN DEPLETION Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the locus coerlueus and the cortex. HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. DIAGRAM DIAGRAM GRAPH GRAPH GRAPH PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) PHOTO (COLOR) ~~~~~~~~ By Robert Salzano ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy and the physiology of primates. Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or e-mail articles for individual use. Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p Item: 10544899 Top of Page Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View Folder screen.Folder is empty. ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Jul 1 18:51:42 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 11:51:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] repression and consciousness In-Reply-To: <200407011501.i61F1TF16596@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040701185142.72497.qmail@web13421.mail.yahoo.com> >>Freud thought that repression is a motiviated failure to translate unconscious thought into language, a failure to articulate our own thoughts to ourselves. According to this thesis repression can't be conscious because it undercuts consciousness.<< --Consciousness and unconsciousness could just be figure/ground to one another. It's entirely possible that the repression mechanisms are conscious on some level, but out of sight of the "ego" (whatever that is). The unconscious can be quite intelligent, but it has to speak in code to avoid the ego poking around. Why the ego would be a threat is an interesting question... maybe it's necessary for the ego not to gain too much control over machinery that is too complex for it to operate smoothly. Hypnotherapists say things like "You know that your conscious mind has tried to solve this problem and failed. Now I'd like to have you give your OTHER mind a chance." Such statements seem nonsensical to people who think of the "self" as an impermeable unity, but they work. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From metzger at disinfo.com Thu Jul 1 19:03:48 2004 From: metzger at disinfo.com (Richard Metzger) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:03:48 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Fw: Synchronization Message-ID: <10cd01c45f9e$24e86ce0$635ca345@richard> >From Robert Anton Wilson's elist > >http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-6/p59.html > >Decoding the Science of Synchronization >by Nigel Goldenfeld >Physics Today, June 2004 > >After a prolonged and difficult adolescence, the science of complex >systems has finally come of age. No longer dismissable as being long on >hype and short on results, the field boasts some remarkable and >genuinely wide-ranging discoveries that are starting to make an impact >across the spectrum of scientific endeavor-from mathematical physics to >cell biology, genomics, and even social science. The recent developments >are especially notable because they are detailed quantitative analyses >or predictions, clearly moving beyond the grandiose collection of >aphorisms and paradigms that, to some, characterized the field's early >days and drew the ire of skeptics. > >Advances in the characterization of networks are arguably the most >fundamental insights that have arisen in recent years. How can one >describe the structural complexity of networks? How do networks evolve? >What new features emerge when dynamical systems are strongly coupled >into complex networks? These questions would be a fruitless line of >inquiry if the answers exhibited sensitive dependence on the specifics >of the networks. But remarkably, it turns out that some generic >applicable principles permit useful idealization, classification, >quantification, and even insight. Answers to these questions are >relevant to a whole host of real-life systems, such as food webs, >microbial communities, metabolic and gene networks, the power grid, the >Internet, and social or affiliation networks. > >Two network phenomena are of special interest to researchers: >synchronization and connectedness. Synchronization refers to the way in >which networked elements, due to their dynamics, communicate and exhibit >collective behavior. Connectedness describes the architecture of >networks. For example, are there just a few highly connected "hubs" >(think airline route maps) from which lots of short hops are made? Or is >everything connected to everything else in a way that has no >recognizable, simple structure? Connectedness is an important aspect of >networks that determines, among other things, their efficiency and their >vulnerability. We now know that many real networks are not random >collections of nodes and links. Real networks are connected in special >ways that have functional significance. Perhaps no one has been closer >to the epicenter of the recent progress than Steven Strogatz, the author >of the smart, carefully written, and fascinating account that is Sync: >The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. > >Sync is a collection of vignettes about spatially-extended dynamical >systems that fall (or fail to fall) into synchronization-often in >spectacular ways. The captivating opening chapter describes the massive >displays of synchronized firefly flashing that are observed in Southeast >Asia. The chapter then moves rapidly into the synchronization of cells >in a beating heart and the general problem of the effect of pulse >coupling on a set of identical nonlinear oscillators. In a beautifully >simple explanation that faithfully captures the elements of his rigorous >proof, Strogatz shows that, regardless of the initial conditions, the >oscillators will inevitably become synchronized. > >Indeed, the first section sets the tone of the book, which has crystal >clear explanations of mathematical proofs-often geometrical or >topological-that are enlivened by thumbnail descriptions of the key >protagonists. Strogatz uses a discussion of entrainment and Christiaan >Huygens's discovery of the synchronization of pendula to launch a >fascinating chapter on the examples of synchronization in everyday life, >such as lasers, power grids, computer chips, global positioning systems, >and orbits of celestial bodies. Strogatz even finds examples of quantum >synchronization in superfluidity and superconductivity, especially in >the phenomena associated with Josephson tunneling. > >But this is not merely a book about mathematical results on idealized >models. Strogatz clearly describes experimental observations, sometimes >putting into perspective the mathematics that is his central interest. >For instance, a lengthy account of the sometimes grueling experimental >exploration into the sleep cycle suddenly segues into Strogatz's >graduate work at Harvard University. His research helped provide firm >evidence in the circadian cycle of forbidden zones during which sleep >onset has a very low likelihood. > >One of the many nice things about Sync is its disarmingly frank account >of the personalities and careers of some of the people whose work has, >in some sense, been related to synchronization. Most affectionately >recalled is Arthur Winfree, a brilliant and unconventional thinker who >has had a profound influence on many people. I will never forget my own >excitement when I corresponded with Winfree in the early 1980s. He was >kind enough to send me my own Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction kit, which I >treasured until all the reagent was used up. Perhaps the most difficult >chapter, on scroll wave patterns in three-dimensional chemical >reactions, is enlivened by Strogatz's personal account of his summer >work with Winfree. The work involved trying to model the sought-after >wave forms with pipe cleaners, dental floss, and modeling clay. The >eclectic array of brilliant and sometimes quirky thinkers who also make >an appearance in the book include Brian Josephson, Norbert Wiener, >Yoshiki Kuramoto, and Charles Peskin. Strogatz evidently is fascinated >by his colleagues and paints their portraits in ways that are generous >and true to life yet refraining from judgment. > >To my surprise, only at the end of the book does Strogatz devote a >slightly short chapter to what is perhaps his most widely recognized >work: the field of small-world networks. The prime example is known as >"six degrees of separation," which refers to the parlor game in which >one tries to link a given actor to a target (historically actor Kevin >Bacon) through the smallest chain of movies sharing common costars. >Strogatz describes how small-world networks are intermediate between >regular and random networks. A few shortcuts that link random points in >a regular network have a drastic effect on the connectivity: The average >path length goes down significantly, while the local order in the >network is hardly affected. Small-world networks have been found in >numerous situations, such as in the nervous system of the worm C. >elegans, the US power grid, and the Internet. But their influence is not >always benign: Viruses and epidemics, for example, can easily spread >globally. > >Sync is one of those rare books that can profitably be read and enjoyed >by both experts and laypeople. It comes with a very complete set of >notes that provide detailed literature citations and technical comments. >The book could even serve as an excellent reading assignment for an >introductory course on complexity. So go read Sync. And if you like it, >tell all your friends about it. > >On second thought, don't bother. I already have. > olga666 at rattlebrain.com http://www.rawilson.com/ http://rawilsonfans.com/ http://www.maybelogic.com/ http://www.maybelogic.org/ http://raw23.home.comcast.net/ http://www.alphane.com/raw.htm http://www.deoxy.org/learyraw.htm http://www.gunsanddope.com/ et in arcadia ego Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died [in Iraq]. That's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Madeline Albright: "The price -- we think the price is worth it." --60 Minutes, 5/12/96 Make the most of the Indian hemp seed and plant it everywhere. --George Washington IF WE CANNOT ACHIEVE TOLERANCE LET US AT LEAST ATTEMPT COURTESY From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Jul 1 19:04:56 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:04:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] amygdala and repression In-Reply-To: <200407011501.i61F1TF16596@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040701190456.35034.qmail@web13422.mail.yahoo.com> >>What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind can???t crack into?<< --Maybe to avoid overloading the filters that make fine discrimination between incoming sensory events? An overwhelming, emotion-laden image superimposed on reality can scramble meanings, as in schizophrenia where innocent statements can sound like hostile innuendo or threat. Overflow from the amygdala would result in a whole flood of associations and hidden meanings that could result in mistake after mistake, leading in the worst case to violent pre-emptive attack (what percentage of violent offenders have serious trauma in their background and impaired ability to discern threat from non-threat?). In order to perceive "ordinary reality" your emotions have to be muted somewhat so that the complexities of language and context can operate. Otherwise ambiguity becomes anxiety and the shifting power differentials inherent in communication become an intolerable form of combat. It's also possible that the conscious mind has a subordinate relationship to something else, like a 2-dimensional map to the terrain it represents. For the ego to render the world, including other humans, in a 2-dimensional way (more manageable, easier to feel in control) would be to risk confusing the map-territory relationship, causing all sorts of problems. It's useful for the brain to have an echo chamber, but if the echoes get stuck and there's no "out of the box" function, everything grinds down and autism results. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Jul 1 19:28:30 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:28:30 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] amygdala and repression References: <20040701190456.35034.qmail@web13422.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000a01c45fa1$97942ba0$210110ac@hppav> Another aspect of trauma is that it impairs the ability to correctly interpret many inputs- the whole life experience becomes discolored by the trauma. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Christopher" To: Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 12:04 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] amygdala and repression > >>What could the evolutionary value be of keeping key > experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind > can??Tt crack into?<< > > --Maybe to avoid overloading the filters that make > fine discrimination between incoming sensory events? > An overwhelming, emotion-laden image superimposed on > reality can scramble meanings, as in schizophrenia > where innocent statements can sound like hostile > innuendo or threat. Overflow from the amygdala would > result in a whole flood of associations and hidden > meanings that could result in mistake after mistake, > leading in the worst case to violent pre-emptive > attack (what percentage of violent offenders have > serious trauma in their background and impaired > ability to discern threat from non-threat?). In order > to perceive "ordinary reality" your emotions have to > be muted somewhat so that the complexities of language > and context can operate. Otherwise ambiguity becomes > anxiety and the shifting power differentials inherent > in communication become an intolerable form of combat. > > > It's also possible that the conscious mind has a > subordinate relationship to something else, like a > 2-dimensional map to the terrain it represents. For > the ego to render the world, including other humans, > in a 2-dimensional way (more manageable, easier to > feel in control) would be to risk confusing the > map-territory relationship, causing all sorts of > problems. It's useful for the brain to have an echo > chamber, but if the echoes get stuck and there's no > "out of the box" function, everything grinds down and > autism results. > > Michael > > > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From paul.werbos at verizon.net Fri Jul 2 01:36:21 2004 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Werbos, Dr. Paul J.) Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:36:21 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas In-Reply-To: <002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20040701211602.00ba05a0@incoming.verizon.net> Hi, folks! There are a lot of cognitive psychologists who are as traumatized by Freud's ideas as Freud's patients were by childhood experiences. This may be due in part to many of them associating of Freud with sneaky girls who really did use Freud out of context to try to traumatize any easy victims like young nerds. But it is also due to the diificulty of "making sense" of Freud's ideas in more operational, functoinal terms. Before you hit the traumas -- there was a famous, beautifully clear critique of psychoanalysis (including Freud and others) by Baret and Yankelovi(t)ch years ago, a nice cheap paperback. It described Freud's theory of psychodynamics and the flow of cathexis -- and characterized it as hopelessly mystical. But in fact, for my Harvard PhD thesis, I translated it into mathematics -- and it maps into a very general useful theorem, and to the most powerful and widely used algorithms available in the field of artificial neural networks. (Unfortunately, most folks only use a stripped-down version of backpropagation, whose power is limited, but something close to the original more complex translation of Freud has been proven out on some very tough engineering control tasks; see Si et al, eds, Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming, literally in press at Wiley and IEEE Press.) The history and links to Freud are discussed in my book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered derivatives to Neural Networks and Political Forecasting, especially chapter 10, Wiley, 1994. (A good university library should have it, as it contains the original material on backpropagation, for which the popularized versions are generally very inadequate.) ------- But... well... it has taken a long time to catch up to that one part of Freud, and really understand what's going on, functionally. The trauma part I discussed 'way back in my paper in the 1977 General systems yearbook, in a small section entitled "syncretism." And I have tried to revisit it, in a simpler way, many times since. But I haven't had time to really hammer home all of the key points to the general community. (There is a book on supervised learning edited by Roychowdhury, and the IJCNN proceedings from 1994...). Basically, global generalization requires many iterations through experience. Learning "from memory" is critical to our ability to generalize without needing to relive bad experience over and over again in real life. That's one reason why we need these kinds of memories, which might be called subsymbolic episodic memories. "Assimilation into the ego" basically means adapting our more coherent "egoic" generalizing model of the world so as to be able to "backcast" or "explain" the memory, retroactively. But for the most accurate expectations, we need to COMBINE our "egoic" predictions together with a kind of "nearest neighbor" kind of allowance for memories we have not been able to assimilate, which point towards weaknesses in our egoic model. Maturity does NOT consist in reducing the influence of the "id," the collection of unassimilated engrams; rather, it involves a process of better assimilation of existing memories, COMBINED WITH teh formatoin of new memories or experiences which "expand the being space" (in Heiddegerian terms). Of course, people vary in their drive to assimilate (intolerance of cognitive dissonance, driving need for ego ...) and their drive to accumulate new experience (novelty seeking). -------- All for now... Best, Paul From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Jul 2 01:48:52 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 18:48:52 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.0.20040701211602.00ba05a0@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <000801c45fd6$ba683c90$210110ac@hppav> Trauma is like "baking" a computer- running in an environment that is too hot. The computer continues to run but does all kinds of weird things :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." To: "The new improved paleopsych list" ; "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 6:36 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas > Hi, folks! > > There are a lot of cognitive psychologists who are as traumatized by > Freud's ideas as > Freud's patients were by childhood experiences. This may be due in part to > many of them > associating of Freud with sneaky girls who really did use Freud out of > context to try to traumatize > any easy victims like young nerds. But it is also due to the diificulty of > "making sense" of Freud's > ideas in more operational, functoinal terms. > > Before you hit the traumas -- there was a famous, beautifully clear > critique of psychoanalysis > (including Freud and others) by Baret and Yankelovi(t)ch years ago, a nice > cheap paperback. > It described Freud's theory of psychodynamics and the flow of cathexis -- > and characterized it as hopelessly > mystical. But in fact, for my Harvard PhD thesis, I translated it into > mathematics -- and it maps > into a very general useful theorem, and to the most powerful and widely > used algorithms available in the field > of artificial neural networks. (Unfortunately, most folks only use a > stripped-down version > of backpropagation, whose power is limited, but something close to the > original more complex translation of Freud > has been proven out on some very tough engineering control tasks; see Si et > al, eds, Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic > Programming, literally in press at Wiley and IEEE Press.) The history and > links to Freud are discussed in > my book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered derivatives to Neural > Networks and Political Forecasting, > especially chapter 10, Wiley, 1994. (A good university library should have > it, as it contains the original material > on backpropagation, for which the popularized versions are generally very > inadequate.) > > ------- > > But... well... it has taken a long time to catch up to that one part of > Freud, and really understand what's going on, > functionally. > > The trauma part I discussed 'way back in my paper in the 1977 General > systems yearbook, in a small section entitled > "syncretism." And I have tried to revisit it, in a simpler way, many times > since. But I haven't had time to > really hammer home all of the key points to the general community. (There > is a book on supervised learning edited by Roychowdhury, > and the IJCNN proceedings from 1994...). > > Basically, global generalization requires many iterations through > experience. Learning "from memory" is critical to > our ability to generalize without needing to relive bad experience over and > over again in real life. That's one > reason why we need these kinds of memories, which might be called > subsymbolic episodic memories. > "Assimilation into the ego" basically means adapting our more coherent > "egoic" generalizing model > of the world so as to be able to "backcast" or "explain" the memory, > retroactively. But for the most accurate expectations, > we need to COMBINE our "egoic" predictions together with a kind of "nearest > neighbor" kind of > allowance for memories we have not been able to assimilate, which point > towards weaknesses in our egoic model. > > Maturity does NOT consist in reducing the influence of the "id," the > collection of unassimilated engrams; > rather, it involves a process of better assimilation of existing memories, > COMBINED WITH teh formatoin > of new memories or experiences which "expand the being space" (in > Heiddegerian terms). > > Of course, people vary in their drive to assimilate (intolerance of > cognitive dissonance, driving need for ego ...) > and their drive to accumulate new experience (novelty seeking). > > -------- > > All for now... > > Best, > > Paul > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com Fri Jul 2 02:01:59 2004 From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 22:01:59 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.0.20040701211602.00ba05a0@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <017101c45fd8$8fe6aa90$0200a8c0@dad> Paul Despite my rather severe mathematical handicaps, I am a big fan of your transduction of Freud's 1895 learning algorithm. Contemporary psychologists often seem to make a virtue of their ignorance of Freud, particularly in the US. I get into endless scrapes about these matters, because I have not yet learned to keep my mouth shut when I hear people getting it wrong, and when people claim that Freud is scientifically worthless, I play my Werbos card! David ----- Original Message ----- From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." To: "The new improved paleopsych list" ; "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 9:36 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas > Hi, folks! > > There are a lot of cognitive psychologists who are as traumatized by > Freud's ideas as > Freud's patients were by childhood experiences. This may be due in part to > many of them > associating of Freud with sneaky girls who really did use Freud out of > context to try to traumatize > any easy victims like young nerds. But it is also due to the diificulty of > "making sense" of Freud's > ideas in more operational, functoinal terms. > > Before you hit the traumas -- there was a famous, beautifully clear > critique of psychoanalysis > (including Freud and others) by Baret and Yankelovi(t)ch years ago, a nice > cheap paperback. > It described Freud's theory of psychodynamics and the flow of cathexis -- > and characterized it as hopelessly > mystical. But in fact, for my Harvard PhD thesis, I translated it into > mathematics -- and it maps > into a very general useful theorem, and to the most powerful and widely > used algorithms available in the field > of artificial neural networks. (Unfortunately, most folks only use a > stripped-down version > of backpropagation, whose power is limited, but something close to the > original more complex translation of Freud > has been proven out on some very tough engineering control tasks; see Si et > al, eds, Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic > Programming, literally in press at Wiley and IEEE Press.) The history and > links to Freud are discussed in > my book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered derivatives to Neural > Networks and Political Forecasting, > especially chapter 10, Wiley, 1994. (A good university library should have > it, as it contains the original material > on backpropagation, for which the popularized versions are generally very > inadequate.) > > ------- > > But... well... it has taken a long time to catch up to that one part of > Freud, and really understand what's going on, > functionally. > > The trauma part I discussed 'way back in my paper in the 1977 General > systems yearbook, in a small section entitled > "syncretism." And I have tried to revisit it, in a simpler way, many times > since. But I haven't had time to > really hammer home all of the key points to the general community. (There > is a book on supervised learning edited by Roychowdhury, > and the IJCNN proceedings from 1994...). > > Basically, global generalization requires many iterations through > experience. Learning "from memory" is critical to > our ability to generalize without needing to relive bad experience over and > over again in real life. That's one > reason why we need these kinds of memories, which might be called > subsymbolic episodic memories. > "Assimilation into the ego" basically means adapting our more coherent > "egoic" generalizing model > of the world so as to be able to "backcast" or "explain" the memory, > retroactively. But for the most accurate expectations, > we need to COMBINE our "egoic" predictions together with a kind of "nearest > neighbor" kind of > allowance for memories we have not been able to assimilate, which point > towards weaknesses in our egoic model. > > Maturity does NOT consist in reducing the influence of the "id," the > collection of unassimilated engrams; > rather, it involves a process of better assimilation of existing memories, > COMBINED WITH teh formatoin > of new memories or experiences which "expand the being space" (in > Heiddegerian terms). > > Of course, people vary in their drive to assimilate (intolerance of > cognitive dissonance, driving need for ego ...) > and their drive to accumulate new experience (novelty seeking). > > -------- > > All for now... > > Best, > > Paul > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com Fri Jul 2 02:02:52 2004 From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith) Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 22:02:52 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.0.20040701211602.00ba05a0@incoming.verizon.net> <000801c45fd6$ba683c90$210110ac@hppav> Message-ID: <017701c45fd8$af261620$0200a8c0@dad> Except that for Freud, trauma is basically an internal state. The computer is, so to speak, baked from the inside. David ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Hovland" To: "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 9:48 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas > Trauma is like "baking" a computer- running > in an environment that is too hot. The computer > continues to run but does all kinds of weird things :-) > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." > To: "The new improved paleopsych list" ; "The new > improved paleopsych list" > Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 6:36 PM > Subject: [Paleopsych] Freud and traumas > > > > Hi, folks! > > > > There are a lot of cognitive psychologists who are as traumatized by > > Freud's ideas as > > Freud's patients were by childhood experiences. This may be due in part to > > many of them > > associating of Freud with sneaky girls who really did use Freud out of > > context to try to traumatize > > any easy victims like young nerds. But it is also due to the diificulty of > > "making sense" of Freud's > > ideas in more operational, functoinal terms. > > > > Before you hit the traumas -- there was a famous, beautifully clear > > critique of psychoanalysis > > (including Freud and others) by Baret and Yankelovi(t)ch years ago, a nice > > cheap paperback. > > It described Freud's theory of psychodynamics and the flow of cathexis -- > > and characterized it as hopelessly > > mystical. But in fact, for my Harvard PhD thesis, I translated it into > > mathematics -- and it maps > > into a very general useful theorem, and to the most powerful and widely > > used algorithms available in the field > > of artificial neural networks. (Unfortunately, most folks only use a > > stripped-down version > > of backpropagation, whose power is limited, but something close to the > > original more complex translation of Freud > > has been proven out on some very tough engineering control tasks; see Si > et > > al, eds, Handbook of Learning and Approximate Dynamic > > Programming, literally in press at Wiley and IEEE Press.) The history and > > links to Freud are discussed in > > my book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered derivatives to Neural > > Networks and Political Forecasting, > > especially chapter 10, Wiley, 1994. (A good university library should have > > it, as it contains the original material > > on backpropagation, for which the popularized versions are generally very > > inadequate.) > > > > ------- > > > > But... well... it has taken a long time to catch up to that one part of > > Freud, and really understand what's going on, > > functionally. > > > > The trauma part I discussed 'way back in my paper in the 1977 General > > systems yearbook, in a small section entitled > > "syncretism." And I have tried to revisit it, in a simpler way, many times > > since. But I haven't had time to > > really hammer home all of the key points to the general community. (There > > is a book on supervised learning edited by Roychowdhury, > > and the IJCNN proceedings from 1994...). > > > > Basically, global generalization requires many iterations through > > experience. Learning "from memory" is critical to > > our ability to generalize without needing to relive bad experience over > and > > over again in real life. That's one > > reason why we need these kinds of memories, which might be called > > subsymbolic episodic memories. > > "Assimilation into the ego" basically means adapting our more coherent > > "egoic" generalizing model > > of the world so as to be able to "backcast" or "explain" the memory, > > retroactively. But for the most accurate expectations, > > we need to COMBINE our "egoic" predictions together with a kind of > "nearest > > neighbor" kind of > > allowance for memories we have not been able to assimilate, which point > > towards weaknesses in our egoic model. > > > > Maturity does NOT consist in reducing the influence of the "id," the > > collection of unassimilated engrams; > > rather, it involves a process of better assimilation of existing memories, > > COMBINED WITH teh formatoin > > of new memories or experiences which "expand the being space" (in > > Heiddegerian terms). > > > > Of course, people vary in their drive to assimilate (intolerance of > > cognitive dissonance, driving need for ego ...) > > and their drive to accumulate new experience (novelty seeking). > > > > -------- > > > > All for now... > > > > Best, > > > > Paul > > > > _______________________________________________ > > paleopsych mailing list > > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Fri Jul 2 03:19:36 2004 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:19:36 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? In-Reply-To: <002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> References: <129.45235f62.2e14df63@aol.com> <002101c45f77$8af4ea30$210110ac@hppav> Message-ID: <40E4D448.7020209@solution-consulting.com> I agree, Steve. Well put. Lynn Johnson ps - glad the list is running again. Steve Hovland wrote: > Repression of trauma may be an old survival response > that preserves the body while killing the soul. > > People who have suffered a serious psychic trauma > such as crime or incest may continue to function, but > they are crippled by the things they don't care to think > about. A frozen emotional response makes it hard > for them to make life choices that would move them > forward. The current problems of Michael Jackson, for > example, undoubtedly result from early abuse that > went untreated. > > In terms of Goleman's work on emotional intelligence > these people have suffered a stroke. Sometimes the > repression is so complete that people can't remember > the cause even though they exhibit all of the symptoms. > > The challenge for unsuccessful components of a learning > system is to figure out how to do better. While they are > in their impaired state they emit poisons that hurt the > performance of other components. It's in the interest > of society to figure out how to prevent and repair this > damage. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: HowlBloom at aol.com > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 8:30 PM > Subject: [Paleopsych] why is the amygdala so sneaky? > > The following tidbit from an article in The Scientific American on > stress and memory gives a neurobiological explanation for > something Sigmund Freud described way back in the early days of > psycho-speculation?repression and suppression. > > > > When something ghastly happens to us, says this piece, which > derives its wisdom from Joseph LeDoux, a strange thing happens in > our brain. The hippocampus, the traffic center that sends > material to the conscious mind, goes through shut down. It?s > paralyzed by glucocorticooids, stress hormones. But something > very different happens to our fear and body-knowledge traffic > center, the amygdala. The amygedala thrives, grows new threads of > connection to the sympathetic nervous system, and implants > memories of the frightful experience in us. Not only ss that > memory of a nightmare event woven into our permanent store of > lessons about life, it gets woven way down at a level that can > kick our heart into a high-speed trot, get our sweat glands > oozing, and tie knots in our stomach. But it also gets woven in > at a level that?s impossible for us to ?see? and think out. > > > > Here?s the question. What could the evolutionary value be of > keeping key experiences locked in a vault that the conscious mind > can?t crack into? Is this one of the shortcuts the mind uses to > speed up our reactions by cutting the dither of thinking out of > the process? Is it one of those things that helps Val Geist > sprint away from a murderous grizly bear before he has a chance to > think out a response, thus letting Val win the race with the > grizzly and live another 30 years or so? > > > > Many of the responses encoded into us by this trauma-reaction > process are nowhere near as helpful as Val?s instant dash to the > nearest sturdy tree, his climb up its trunk, and his victory > swing high in the branches above the grizzly?s head. Many, in > fact, are paralyzing. They?re the high-anxiety mind-and-body > freezes of extreme anxiety. They?re the torture-terrors of > post-traumatic stress disorders. > > > > The Bloom Grand Unified Theory of Everything In the Universe > Including the Human Soul says that when they?re failing, > individual components of a learning system, components like cells > in the body or like bacteria in a colony, disable themselves or > worse, kill themselves off. Why? So their influence will be > minimized. Sp their mistaken strategies won?t sway the decisions > of the group. And so their mistakes will stand as a warning to the > others in the consultative assemblies of collective intelligence. > > > > Are humans disabled by their traumas and slowed to a painful crawl > by the mark of experiences they can?t remember as a lesson to the > rest of us? If those who suffer this sort of amygdalic sabotage > can?t remember why they are breaking out in a cold sweat and > hiding in a corner, how in the world can their agonies add to our > understanding? > > > > Or is the bypass of consciousness an accidental result of a system > that was wired long before there was a thinking center in the > brain, long before there was a theater of awareness beneath the > dome of the skull? Has that old system been retained so it can > take care of things too difficult for the conscious mind to > handle?tasks like digestion and orchestrating muscles to walk or > ride a bicycle? > > > > One thing this amygdala-centered understanding hints at is this. > Freud implied that repression was a conscious act, a mistaken act > of will or cowardice. We were conscious of the trauma when it > happened, couldn?t face its consequences, so tucked it out of > sight. That?s not the way the LeDoux scenario explains it. > LeDoux?s work seems to imply that our experiences of horror > trigger a system that never bothers to show the conscious mind its > perceptions and its decisions about how to handle what it sees. I > suspect there?s a little bit of truth to both points of view. > What do you think? Howard > > > > glucocorticoid exposure can impair LTP in the hippocampus and can > even cause atrophy of neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes > the opposite of the stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress > can harm the hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a > conscious, explicit memory of the event; at the same time, new > neuronal branches and enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's > implicit memory machinery. In subsequent situations, the amygdala > might respond to preconscious information--but conscious awareness > or memory may never follow. Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the > World Wide Web EBSCOhost > > Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, > 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 > > > > > > > > Retrieved June 30, 2004, from the World Wide Web > > http://web9.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+BB4951D1%2DC74E%2D42C7%2DAB5A%2D27F66A8435DD%40sessionmgr6+dbs+aph+cp+1+D09B&_us=hs+True+cst+0%3B2+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+sl+0+dstb+KS+ri+KAAACB4A00000109+37EF&_uso=tg%5B0+%2D+db%5B0+%2Daph+hd+False+clv%5B1+%2Dscientific++american+clv%5B0+%2D20030900%2D20030900+op%5B0+%2D+cli%5B1+%2DSO+cli%5B0+%2DDT1+st%5B0+%2Damygdala+1438&cf=1&fn=1&rn=1 > > EBSCOhost > > : Taming stress , By: Salzano, Robert, Scientific American, > 00368733, Sep2003, Vol. 289, Issue 3 > > > > An emerging understanding of the brain's stress pathways points > toward treatments for anxiety and depression beyond Valium and Prozac > > > > OVER THE CENTURIES, SOCIETY'S APPROACHES TO TREATING the mentally > ill have shifted dramatically. At present, drugs that manipulate > neurochemistry count as cutting-edge therapeutics. A few decades > ago the heights of efficacy and compassion were lobotomies and > insulin-induced comas. Before that, restraints and ice baths > sufficed. Even earlier, and we've entered the realm of exorcisms. > > > > Society has also shifted its view of the causes of mental illness. > Once we got past invoking demonic possession, we put enormous > energy into the debate over whether these diseases are more about > nature or nurture. Such arguments are quite pointless given the > vast intertwining of the two in psychiatric disease. Environment, > in the form of trauma, can most certainly break the minds of its > victims. Yet there is an undeniable biology that makes some > individuals more vulnerable than others. Conversely, genes are > most certainly important factors in understanding major disorders. > Yet being the identical twin of someone who suffers one of those > illnesses means a roughly 50 percent chance of not succumbing. > > > > Obviously, biological vulnerabilities and environmental > precipitants interact, and in this article I explore one arena of > that interaction: the relation between external factors that cause > stress and the biology of the mind's response. Scientists have > recently come to understand a great deal about the role that > stress plays in the two most common classes of psychiatric > disorders: anxiety and major depression, each Of which affects > close to 20 million Americans annually, according to the National > Institute of Mental Health. And much investigation focuses on > developing the next generation of relevant pharmaceuticals, on > finding improved versions of Prozac, Wellbutrin, Valium and > Librium that would work faster, longer or with fewer side effects. > > > > At the same time, insights about stress are opening the way for > novel drug development. These different tacks are needed for the > simple fact that despite laudable progress in treating anxiety and > depression, currently available medications do not work for vast > numbers of people, or they entail side effects that are too severe. > > > > Research in this area has applications well beyond treating and > understanding these two illnesses. The diagnostic boundary that > separates someone who is formally ill with an anxiety disorder or > major depression from everyone else is somewhat arbitrary. > Investigations into stress are also teaching us about the everyday > anxiety and depression that all of us experience at times. > > Out of Balance, > > > > WHEN A BODY is in homeostatic balance, various measures--such as > temperature, glucose level and so on--are as close to "ideal" as > possible. A stressor is anything in the environment that knocks > the body out of homeostasis, and the stress response is the array > of physiological adaptations that ultimately reestablishes > balance. The response principally includes the secretion of two > types of hormones from the adrenal glands: epinephrine, also known > as adrenaline, and glucocorticoids. In humans, the relevant > glucocorticoid is called cortisol, also known as hydrocortisone. > > > > This suite of hormonal changes is what stress is about for the > typical mammal. Iris often triggered by an acute physical > challenge, such as fleeing from a predator. Epinephrine and > glucocorticoids mobilize energy for muscles, increase > cardiovascular tone so oxygen can travel more quickly, and turn > off nonessential activities like growth. (The hormones work at > different speeds. In a fight-or-flight scenario, epinephrine is > the one handing out guns; glucocorticoids are the ones drawing up > blueprints for new aircraft carriers needed for the war effort.) > > > > Primates have it tough, however. More so than in other species, > the primate stress response can be set in motion not only by a > concrete event but by mere anticipation. When this assessment is > accurate ("This is a dark, abandoned street, so I should prepare > to run" ), an anticipatory stress response can be highly adaptive. > But when primates, human or otherwise, chronically and erroneously > believe that a homeostatic challenge is about to come, they have > entered the realm of neurosis, anxiety and paranoia. > > > > In the 1950s and 1960s pioneers such as John Mason, Seymour Levine > and Jay Weiss--then at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, > Stanford University and the Rockefeller University, > respectively-began to identify key facets of psychological stress. > They found that such stress is exacerbated if there is no outlet > for frustration, no sense of control, no social support and no > impression that something better will follow. Thus, a rat will be > less likely to develop an ulcer in response to a series of > electric shocks if it can gnaw on a bar of wood throughout, > because it has an outlet for frustration. A baboon will secrete > fewer stress hormones in response to frequent fighting if the > aggression results in a rise, rather than a fall, in the dominance > hierarchy; he has a perception that life is improving. A person > will become less hypertensive when exposed to painfully loud noise > if she believes she can press a button at any time to lower the > volume; she has a sense of control. > > > > But suppose such buffers are not available and the stress is > chronic. Repeated challenges may demand repeated bursts of > vigilance. At some point, this vigilance may become > overgeneralized, leading an individual to conclude that he must > always be on guard--even in the absence of the stress. And thus > the realm of anxiety is entered. Alternatively, the chronic stress > may be insurmountable, giving rise to feelings of helplessness. > Again this response may become overgeneralized: a person may begin > to feel she is always at a loss, even in circumstances that she > can actually master. Depression is upon her. > > Stress and Anxiety > > > > FOR ITS PART, anxiety seems to wreak havoc in the limbic system, > the brain region concerned with emotion. One structure is > primarily affected: the amygdala, whi.ch is involved in the > perception of and response to fear-evoking stimuli. > (Interestingly, the amygdala is also central to aggression, > underlining the fact that aggression can be rooted in fear--an > observation that can explain much sociopolitical behavior.) > > > > To carry out its role in sensing threat, the amygdala receives > input from neurons in the outermost layer of the brain, the > cortex, where much high-level processing takes place. Some of this > input comes from parts of the cortex that process sensory > information, including specialized areas that recognize individual > faces, as well as from the frontal cortex, which is involved in > abstract associations. In the realm of anxiety, an example of such > an association might be grouping a gun, a hijacked plane and an > anthrax-tainted envelope in the same category. The sight of a fire > or a menacing face can activate the amygdala--as can a purely > abstract thought. > > > > The amygdala also takes in sensory information that bypasses the > cortex. As a result, a subliminal preconsci0us menace can activate > the amygdala, even before there is conscious awareness of the trigger. > > > > Imagine a victim of a traumatic experience who, in a crowd of > happy, talking people, suddenly finds herself anxious, her heart > racing. It takes her moments to realize that a man conversing > behind her has a voice similar to that of the man who once > assaulted her. > > > > The amygdala, in turn, contacts an array of brain regions, making > heavy use of a neurotransmitter called corticotropin-releasing > hormone (CRH). One set of nerve cells projecting from the amygdala > reaches evolutionarily ancient parts of the midbrain and brain > stem. These structures control the autonomic nervous system, the > network of nerve cells projecting to parts of the body over which > you normally have no conscious control (your heart, for example). > One half of the autonomic nervous system is the symigathetic > nervous system, which mediates "fight or flight." Activate your > amygdala with a threat, and soon the sympathetic nervous system > has directed your adrenal glands to secrete epinephrine. Your > heart is racing, your breathing is shallow, your senses are sharpened. > > > > The amygdala also sends information back to the frontal cortex. In > addition to processing abstract associations, as noted above, the > frontal cortex helps to make judgments about incoming information > and initiating behaviors based on those assessments. So it is no > surprise that the decisions we make can be so readily influenced > by our emotions. Moreover, the amygdala sends projections to the > sensory cortices as well, which may explain, in part, [hb: could > this explain why everything goes into slow motion in an accident?] > why sensations seem so vivid when we are in certain emotional > states--or perhaps why sensory memories (flashbacks) occur in > victims of trauma. > > > > Whether it orchestrates such powerful reimmersions or not, the > amygdala is clearly implicated in certain kinds of memory. There > are two general forms of memory. Declarative, or explicit, memory > governs the recollection of facts, events or associations. > Implicit memory has several roles as well. It includes procedural > memory: recalling how to ride a bike or play a passage on the > piano. And it is involved in fear. Remember the woman reacting to > the similarity between two voices without being aware of it. In > that case, the activation of the amygdala and the sympathetic > nervous system reflects a form of implicit memory that does not > require conscious awareness. > > > > Researchers have begun to understand how these fearful memories > are formed and how they can be overgeneralized after repeated > stress. The foundation for these insights came from work on > declarative memory, which is most likely situated in a part of the > brain called the hippocampus. Memory is established when certain > sets of nerve cells communicate with one another repeatedly. Such > communication entails the release of neurotransmitters--chemical > messengers that travel across synapses, the spaces between > neurons. Repeated stimulation of sets of neurons causes the > communication across synapses to be strengthened, a condition > called long-term potentiation (LTP). > > > > Joseph LeDoux of New York University has shown that repeatedly > placing rats in a fear-provoking situation can bring about LTP in > the amygdala. Work by Sumantra Chattarji of the National Center > for Biological Science in Bangalore extends this finding one > remarkable step further: the amygdalic neurons of rats in > stressful situations sprout new branches, allowing them to make > more connections with other neurons. As a result, any part of the > fear-inducing situation could end up triggering more firing > between neurons in the amygdala. A victim if he had been robbed > several times at night, for instance--might experience anxiety and > phobia just by stepping outside his home, even under a blazing sun. > > > > LeDoux has proposed a fascinating model to relate these changes to > a feature of some forms of anxiety. As discussed, the hippocampus > plays a key role in declarative memory. As will become quite > pertinent when we turn to depression, glucocorticoid exposure can > impair LTP in the hippocampus and can even cause atrophy of > neurons there. This phenomenon constitutes the opposite of the > stress response in the amygdala. Severe stress can harm the > hippocampus, preventing the consolidation of a conscious, explicit > memory of the event; at the same time, new neuronal branches and > enhanced LTP facilitate the amygdala's implicit memory machinery. > In subsequent situations, the amygdala might respond to > preconscious information--but conscious awareness or memory may > never follow. According to LeDoux, such a mechanism could underlie > forms of free-floating anxiety. > > > > It is interesting that these structural changes come about, in > part, because of hormones secreted by the adrenal glands, a source > well outside the brain. As mentioned, the amygdala's perception of > stress ultimately leads to the secretion of epinephrine and > glucocorticoids. The glucocorticoids then activate a brain region > called the locus coeruleus. This structure in turn, sends a > powerfully activating projection back to the amygdala, making use > of a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine (a close relative of > epinephrine). The amygdala then sends out more CRH, which leads to > the secretion of more glucocorticoids. A vicious circle of > mind-body feedback can result. > > Assuaging Anxiety > > > > AN UNDERSTANDING of the interactions between stress and anxiety > has opened the way for new therapies, some of which hold great > promise. These drugs are not presumed better or safer than those > available today. Rather, if successful, they will give clinicians > more to work with. > > > > The medicines that already exist do target aspects of the stress > system. The minor tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium, are > in a class of compounds called benzodiazepines. They work in part > by relaxing muscles; they also inhibit the excitatory projection > from the locus coeruleus into the amygdala, thereby decreasing the > likelihood that the amygdala will mobilize the sympathetic nervous > system. The net result is a calm body--and a less anxious body > means a less anxious brain. While effective, however, > benzodiazepines are also sedating and addictive, and considerable > research now focuses on finding less troublesome versions. > > > > In their Search for alternatives, researchers have sought to > target the stress response upstream of the locus coeruleus and > amygdala. Epinephrine activates a nerve called the vagus, which > projects into a brain region that subsequently stimulates the > amygdala. A new therapy curtails epinephrine's stimulation of the > vagus nerve. > > > > Chemical messengers such as epinephrine exert theft effects by > interacting with specialized receptors on the surface of target > cells. A receptor is shaped in such a way that it can receive only > a certain messenger-just as a mold will fit only the statue cast > in it. But by synthesizing imposter messengers, scientists have > been able to block the activity of some of the body's natural > couriers. > > > > Drugs called beta blockers fit into some kinds of epinephrine > receptors, preventing real epinephrine from transmitting any > information. Beta blockers have long been used to reduce high > blood pressure driven by an overactive sympathetic nervous system, > as well as to reduce stage fright. But Larry Cahill and James > McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine have shown that > the drugs also blunt the formation of memories of emotionally > disturbing events or stories. Based on their findings and others, > clinicians such as Roger Pitman of Harvard University have started > studies in which beta blockers are given to people who have > experienced severe trauma in the hope of heading off the > development of post-traumatic stress disorder. > > > > Other therapies are being designed to act in the amygdala itself. > As described, the amygdala's shift from merely responding to an > arousing event to becoming chronically overaroused probably > involves memory formation as well as the growth of new synapses. > Work in my laboratory is exploring the molecular biology > underlying those changes. Because prolonged stress has opposite > effects on synapse formation in the hippocampus and the amygdala, > we would like to know how the profiles of genes turned on and off > by stress differ in those two structures. Our goal is to then try > to block the changes by introducing genes into the amygdala that > might give rise to proteins that could inhibit synapse formation > during stress. In this work, viruses that have been rendered safe > are used to ferry genes to the amygdala [see Gene Therapy in the > Nervous System, by Dora Y. Ho and Robert M. Sapolsky; SCIENTIFIC > AMERICAN, July 1997]. > > > > Another strategy--for both anxiety and depression--targets CRH, > the neurotransmitter used by the amygdala when it sends > information elsewhere. Based on insights into the structure of CRH > and its receptors, scientists have developed chemical imposters to > bind with the receptors and block it. In research by Michael Davis > of Emory University, these compounds have proved effective in rat > models of anxiety. They have reduced the extent to which a rat > anxiously freezes when placed in a cage where it was previously > shocked. > > Stress and Depression > > > > IN CONTRAST TO ANXIETY, which can feel like desperate > hyperactivity, major depression is characterized by helplessness, > despair,, an exhausted sense of being too overwhelmed to do > anything (psychomotor retardation) and a loss of feelings of > pleasure. Accordingly, depression has a different biology and > requires some different strategies for treatment. But it, too, can > be related to stress, and there is ample evidence of this > association. First of all, psychological stress entails feeling a > loss of control and predictability--an accurate description of > depression. Second, major stressful events seem to precede > depressive episodes early in the course of the disease. Finally, > treating people with glucocorticoid hormones to control conditions > such as rheumatoid arthritis can lead to depression. > > > > One way in which stress brings about depression is by acting on > the brain's mood and pleasure pathways. To begin, prolonged > exposure to glucocorticoid hormones depletes norepinephrine levels > in the locus coeruleus neurons. Most plausibly, this means that > the animal--or person--becomes less attentive, less vigilant, less > active: psychomotor retardation sets in. > > > > Continued stress also decreases levels of serotonin--which may be > important in the regulation of mood and sleep cycles, among other > things--as well as the number of serotonin receptors in the > frontal cortex. Serotonin normally arrives in the frontal cortex > by way of the raphe nucleus, a structure that also communicates > with the locus coeruleus. You can probably see where this is > going. Normally, serotonin stimulates the release of > norepinephrine from the locus coeruleus. When serotonin becomes > scarce, less norepinephrine is released--exacerbating the shortage > caused by earlier unremitting glucocorticoid bombardment. > > > > Stress affects dopamine, the main currency of the pleasure > pathway, in a way that seems counterintuitive at first. Moderate > and transient amounts of stress--and the ensuing presence of > glucocorticoids--increase dopamine release in the pleasure > pathway, which runs between a region called the ventral > tegmentum/nucleus accumbens and the frontal cortex. More dopamine > can lead to a feeling of well-being in situations of moderate or > transient stress during which a subject is challenged briefly and > not too severely. For a human, or a rat, this situation would > entail a task that is not trivial, but one in which there is, > nonetheless, a reasonably high likelihood of success--in other > words, what we generally call "stimulation." But with chronic > glucocorticoid exposure, dopamine production is curbed and the > feelings of pleasure fade. > > > > Not surprisingly, the amygdala also appears relevant to > depression. Wayne Drevets of the National Institute of Mental > Health reports that the images of the amygdala of a depressed > person light up more in response to sad faces than angry ones. > Moreover, the enhanced autonomic arousal seen in anxiety-- thought > to be driven by the amygdala--is often observed in depression as > well. This fact might seem puzzling at first: anxiety is > characterized by a skittish: torrent of fight-or-flight signals, > whereas depression seems to be about torpor. Yet the helplessness > of depression is not a quiet, passive state. The dread is active, > twitching, energy-consuming, distracting, exhausting--but > internalized. A classic conceptualization of depression is that it > represents aggression turned inward--an enormous emotional battle > fought entirely internally--and the disease's physiology supports > this analysis. > > Memory and New Cells > > > > STRESS ALSO ACTS ON the hippocampus, and this activity may bring > about some of the hallmarks of depression: difficulty learning and > remembering. As I explained before, stress and glucocorticoids can > disrupt memory formation in the hippocampus and can cause > hippocampal neurons to atrophy and lose some of their many > branches. In the 1980s several laboratories, including my own, > showed that glucocorticoids can kill hippocampal neurons or impair > their ability to survive neurological insults such as a seizure or > cardiac arrest. > > > > Stress can even prevent the growth of new nerve cells. Contrary to > long-held belief, adult brains do make some new nerve cells. This > revolution in our understanding has come in the past decade. And > although some findings remain controversial, it is clear that new > neurons form in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus of many > adult animals, including humans [see "Brain, Repair Yourself," by > Fred H. Gage]. Many things, including learning, exercise and > environmental enrichment, stimulate neurogenesis in the > hippocampus. But stress and glucocorticoids inhibit it. > > > > As would be expected, depression is associated with impaired > declarative memory. This impairment extends beyond remembering the > details of an acute trauma. Instead depression can interfere with > declarative memory formation in general--in people going about > their everyday routine or working or learning. Recent and > startling medical literature shows that in those who have been > seriously depressed for years, the volume of the hippocampus is 10 > to 20 percent smaller than in well-matched control subjects. There > is little evidence that a small hippocampus predisposes someone > toward depression; rather the decreased volume appears to be a > loss in response to depression. > > > > At present, it is not clear whether this shrinkage is caused by > the atrophy or death of neurons or by the failure of neurogenesis. > Disturbingly, both the volume loss and at least some features of > the cognitive impairments persist even when the depression > resolves. (It is highly controversial whether new neurons are > required for learning and memory; thus, it is not clear whether an > inhibition of neurogenesis would give rise to cognitive deficits.) > > > > Glucocorticoids may act on the hippocampus by inhibiting levels of > a compound called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)--which > may aid neurogenesis. Several known antidepressants increase > amounts of BDNF and stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in > laboratory animals. These findings have led some scientists to > speculate that the stress-induced inhibition of neurogenesis and > of BDNF are central to the emotional symptoms of depression. I > find it to be somewhat of a stretch to connect altered hippocampal > function with the many facets of this disease. Nevertheless, these > hippocampal changes may play a large part in the substantial > memory dysfunction typical of major depression. > > New Drugs for Depression > > > > THE CURRENT GENERATION of antidepressants boost levels of > serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, and there is tremendous > ongoing research to develop more effective versions of these > drugs. But some novel therapies target steps more intimately > related to the interactions between stress and depression. > > > > Not surprisingly, some of that work focuses on the effects of > glucocorticoids. For example, a number of pharmaceuticals that are > safe and clinically approved for other reasons can transiently > block the synthesis of glucocorticoids in the adrenal glands or > block access of glucocorticoids to one of their important > receptors in the brain. Fascinatingly, the key compound that > blocks glucocorticoid receptors is RU486, famous and controversial > for its capacity to also block progesterone receptors in the > uterus and for its use as the "abortion drug." Beverly Murphy of > McGill University, Owen Wolkowitz of the University of California > at San Francisco and Alan Schatzberg of Stanford have shown that > such antiglucocorticoids can act as antidepressants for a subset > of severely depressed people with highly elevated glucocorticoid > levels. These findings are made even more promising by the fact > that this group of depressed individuals tend to be most resistant > to the effects of more traditional antidepressants. > > > > Another strategy targets CRH. Because depression, like anxiety, > often involves an overly responsive amygdala and sympathetic > nervous system, CRH is a key neurotransmitter in the communication > from the former to the latter. Moreover, infusion of CRH into the > brain of a monkey can cause some depressionlike symptoms. These > findings have prompted studies as to whether CRH-receptor blockers > can have an antidepressant action. It appears they can, and such > drugs are probably not far off. > > > > Using the same receptor-blocking strategy, researchers have curbed > the action of a neurotransmitter called Substance P, which binds > to the neurokinin-1 (NK-1) receptor. In the early 1990s workers > discovered that drugs binding with NK-1 prevent some aspects of > the stress response. In one trial and several animal studies, > Substance P has worked as an antidepressant. > > > > Other approaches center on the hippocampus. Investigators are > injecting BDNF into the brains of rats to counteract the > inhibitory effects of glucocorticoids on neurogenesis. My own > laboratory is using gene therapy to protect the hippocampus of > rats from the effects of stress--much as we are doing in the > amygdala to prevent anxiety. These genes are triggered by > glucocorticoids; once activated, they express an enzyme that > degrades glucocorticoids. The net result blocks the deleterious > effects of these hormones. We are now exploring whether this > treatment can work in animals. > > > > As is now clear, I hope, anxiety and depression are connected. Yet > a state of constant vigilance and one of constant helplessness > seem quite different. When does stress give rise to one as opposed > to the other? The answer seems to lie in how chronic the stress is. > > The Stress Continuum > > > > IMAGINE A RAT trained to press a lever to avoid a mild, occasional > shock--a task readily mastered. Thai rat is placed into a cage > with the lever, and the anticipatory sense of mastery might well > activate the pleasurable dopaminergic projections to the frontal > cortex. When the increase in glucocorticoid secretion is moderate > and transient--as would likely be the case here--the hormone > enhances dopamine release. > > > > Suppose that in this circumstance, however, the lever has been > disconnected; pressing it no longer prevents shocks. Initially > this alteration produces a wildly hypervigilant state in the rat > as it seeks a new coping response to stop the shocks. The animal > presses the lever repeatedly, frantically trying to regain > control. This is the essence of anxiety and of the multiple, > disorganized attempts at coping. Physiologically, this state is > characterized by massive activation of the sympathetic nervous > system by epinephrine and of the norepinephrine projection from > the locus coeruleus, as well as moderately increased > glucocorticoid secretion. > > > > And as the shocks continue and the rat finds each attempt at > coping useless, a transition occurs. The stress response becomes > more dominated by high glucocorticoid levels than by epinephrine > and the sympathetic nervous system--which are largely in control > of the immediate fight-or-flight reaction. The brain chemistry > begins to resemble that of depression as key neurotransmitters > become depleted and the animal ceases trying to cope. It has > learned to be helpless, passive and involuted. If anxiety is a > crackling, menacing brushfire, depression is a suffocating heavy > blanket thrown on top of it. > > Stress and Genes > > > > I DO NOT WANT to conclude this article having given the impression > that anxiety and depression are "all" or "only" about stress. > Obviously, they are not:. Both illnesses have substantial genetic > components as well. Genes code for the receptors for dopamine, > serotonin and glucocorticoids. They also code for the enzymes that > synthesize and degrade those chemical messengers, for the pumps > that remove them from the synapses, for growth factors like BDNF, > and so on. > > > > But those genetic influences are not inevitable. Remember, if an > individual has one of the major psychiatric disorders, her > identical twin has only about a 50 percent chance of having it. > Instead the genetic influences seem to be most about > vulnerability: how the brain and body react to certain > environments, including how readily the brain and body > reequilibrate after stress. > > > > Experience, beginning remarkably early in life, also influences > how one responds to stressful environments. The amount of stress a > female rat is exposed to during pregnancy influences the amount of > glucocorticoids that cross the placenta and reach the fetus; that > exposure can then alter the structure and function of that fetus's > hippocampus in adulthood. Separate a newborn rat from its mother > for a sustained period and it will have increased levels of CRH as > an adult. Seymour Levine, One of the giants of psychobiology, > illustrates this point with a quotation from William Faulkner: > "The past is not dead. It's not even the past." > > > > An understanding of the role of stress in psychiatric disorders > offers much. It teaches us that a genetic legacy of anxiety or > depression does not confer a life sentence on sufferers of these > tragic diseases. It is paving the way for some new therapies that > may help millions. Given that there is a continuum between the > biology of these disorders and that of the "normal" aspects of > emotion, these findings are not only pertinent to "them and their > diseases" but to all of us in our everyday lives. Perhaps most > important, such insight carries with it a social imperative: > namely, that we must find ways to heal a world in which so many > people learn that they must always feel watchful and on guard or > that they must always feel helpless. > > SOME NOVEL THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES > > > > Substance P. This compound is released during painful sensations > and stress and are found throughout the central nervous system but > in greater amounts in the amygdala and locus coeruleus, among > other stress related areas. Current work-including one clinical > trial--suggests that blocking the action of Substance P may blunt > anxiety and depression. But another clinical trial did not support > this finding. > > > > Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone. This hormone is released by the > amygdala and initiates the stress cascade. Research efforts now > include trying to block receptors for CRH in the brain stem. > Without information from CRH, the brain stem will not set the > sympathetic nervous system in motion,, thus preventing the release > of epinephrine by the adrenal glands. This blockade could block > anxiety and depression. > > > > Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor. This substance is important to > the creation of new nerve cells. By injecting BDNF into brains, > researchers hope to counteract the deleterious effects of > glucocorticoids on neurogenesis in the hippocampus, thereby > maintaining healthy memory function and preventing the hippocampal > atrophy often seen in depressed people. > > > > Gene Therapy. This treatment can introduce novel genes to specific > regions of the brain; these genes can then produce proteins that > can undo or prevent the effects of stress. Current studies aim to > figure out which genes are active in the amygdala during stress. > Introducing genes that inhibit unwanted neural branching in the > amygdala might then thwart the anxiety-inducing effects of stress. > For depression, the goal is different: genes placed in the > hippocampus could produce proteins that would break down > glucocorticoids, preventing damage to nerve cells-and, > accordingly, the memory impairment-that can accompany depression. > > > > Anxiety becomes depression if stress is chronic and levels of > dopamine [D}, glucocorticoids [ G} and epinephrine [E} change > accordingly. If a rat knows how to press a lever to avoid a shock, > it can feel pleasure in that mastery. If the lever no longer > works, however, anxiety sets in and the animal desperately tries > different strategies to avoid the shock (2}. As coping proves > elusive, hypervigilance is replaced by passivity and depression (3). > > MORE TO EXPLORE > > > > Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Robert M. Sapolski. W. H. Freeman and > Company, 1998. > > > > The End of Stress as We Know It. Bruce McEwen, with Elizabeth > Norton Lasley. Joseph Henry Press, Washington D.C., 2002. > > > > Better Than Prozac. Samuel H. Barondes. Oxford University Press, 2003. > > OVERVIEW / Battling Stress > > > > ? Scientists understand a lot about the role stress plays in the > development of anxiety disorders and major depression, which may > affect as many as 40 million people in the U.S. And they are > coming to see the ways in which unremitting stress can transform > anxiety into depression. > > > > ? Insights into the neurochemistry of stress are allowing > researchers to develop new ways of thinking about drug > development. In addition to refining drugs that are already on the > market, these findings are leading to entirely novel strategies > for treatments. > > > > ? Finding these alternatives is crucially important because many > people are not helped by currently available medications. > > VICIOUS CYCLE OF STRESS > > > > STRESS PATHWAYS are diverse and involve many regions of the brain > in feedback loops that sometimes greatly amplify a response. The > process-simplified somewhat in this diagram-begins when an actual > or perceived threat activates the sensory and higher reasoning > centers in the cortex. The cortex then sends a message to the > amygdala, the principal mediator of the stress response. > Separately, a preconscious signal my precipitate activity in the > amygdala. The amygdala releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, > which stimulates the brain stem to activate the sympathetic > nervous system via the spinal cord. In response, the adrenal > glands produce the stress hormone epinephrine; a different pathway > simultaneously triggers the adrenals to release glucocorticoids. > The two types of hormones act on the muscle, heart and lungs to > prepare the body for "fight or flight". If the stress becomes > chronic, glucocorticoids induce the locus coeruleus to release > norepinephrine that communicates with the amygdala, leading to the > production of more CRH- and to ongoing reactivation of stress > pathways. > > DEPRESSION'S EFFECTS > > > > DOPAMINE DEPLETION > > > > Prolonged exposure to stress hormones can increase the risk of > depression by depleting levels of dopamine. This neurotransmitter > is integral to the pleasure pathway, which involves many brain > structures, including the prefrontal cortex. > > > > NOREPINEPHRINE DEPLETION > > > > Because stimulation from the raphe nucleus falls off after chronic > stress, the locus coeruleus secretes less norepinephrine, and > attentiveness is accordingly diminished. > > > > SEROTONIN DEPLETION > > > > Stress brings about reduced secretion of the neurotransmitter > serotonin from the raphe nucleus, which communicates with the > locus coerlueus and the cortex. > > > > HIPPOCAMPAL SHRINKAGE > > > > Stress brings about cell death in the hippocampus- and studies > have found that this brain region is 10 to 20 percent smaller in > depressed individuals. Such impairment can lead to memory problems. > > > > DIAGRAM > > > > DIAGRAM > > > > GRAPH > > > > GRAPH > > > > GRAPH > > > > PHOTO (COLOR) > > > > PHOTO (COLOR) > > > > PHOTO (COLOR) > > > > ~~~~~~~~ > > > > By Robert Salzano > > > > ROBERT SAPOLSKY is professor of biological science and neurology > at Stanford University and a research associate at the National > Museums of Kenya, where he has studied a population of wild > baboons for more than two decades. He earned a Ph.D. in > neuroendocrinology from the Rockefeller University in 1984. > Sapolsky's research interests include neuronal death, gene therapy > and the physiology of primates. > > Copyright of Scientific American is the property of Scientific > American Inc. and its content may not be copied or e-mailed to > multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright > holder`s express written permission. However, users may print, > download, or e-mail articles for individual use. > > Source: Scientific American, Sep2003, Vol. 289 Issue 3, p88, 10p > > Item: 10544899 > > > > Top of Page > > Formats: CitationCitation HTML Full TextHTML Full Text > > No previous pages 1 of 1 No additional pages Result List | > Refine Search PrintPrint E-mailE-mail SaveSave Items added > to the folder may be printed, e-mailed or saved from the View > Folder screen.Folder is empty. > > > > ? 2004 EBSCO Publishing. Privacy Policy - Terms of Use > > > > > ---------- > Howard Bloom > Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the > Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind > From The Big Bang to the 21st Century > Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York > University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute > www.howardbloom.net > www.bigbangtango.net > Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board > member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The > Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New > York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement > of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political > Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International > Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: > Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. > For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: > www.paleopsych.org > for two chapters from > The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of > History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer > For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from > the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From unstasis at gmail.com Sat Jul 3 18:54:14 2004 From: unstasis at gmail.com (Stephen Lee) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 14:54:14 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Some interesting reflections... Message-ID: <951ad0704070311542cb683dd@mail.gmail.com> Thought you guys would find this interesting. got this from here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/194939.html#cutid1 Here it is reposted for ease of perusement: -- (feed your head) So, I made another list on a bus. Or, not a list, maybe... more like an outline. Clearly, I have too much free time. "The way I think," condensed into easy-to-follow recipe format! - Question everything. - The question is more important than the answer. The question is growth; the answer is entropy. - Assumptions are never objective-- identify your assumptions & analyze the resulting reasoning for linear or associative jumps (though some jumps are, of course, inevitable). - Assumptions/beliefs which aren't 'refreshed' or challenged will naturally attract flawed/jumpy reasoning with time, like bread attracts mold. - Thus, pure belief/assumption thinking is always wrong-- though there's no superiority implied by that statement. It's simply the flip-side of the basic tenet of subjectivism: everyone is right. It only follows that everyone is also wrong. - Saying 'everyone is wrong' is as lazy as 'everyone is right', but it's helpful to realize that principle of uncertainty. - The key is learning how to think & not accepting even your own conclusions as more than working theories. This is the difference between learning and knowing. 'Knowing' is not thinking; it's not a learning-curved process and is therefore subject to deteriorative behavior. - Most people's errors in judgement happen because they don't know how to think without becoming complacent. - The process of sharpening your perception is more useful than any possible result. - Love or any other emotion shouldn't become an excuse for operating in a static mindset. - Avoid using excuses in general-- they prevent further questioning and are thus unhelpful. - Mental stasis based on unquestioned beliefs/assumptions creates holes in perception and thus one's overall intelligence. - Therefore an unquestioned, static religious belief is detrimental to overall mental acuity. On the other hand, a 'humbler', more philosophical approach to metaphysical subjects isn't intrinsically 'the opiate of the masses', as per Marx. - No single -fixed- philosophical system can be correct. - 'Subjectivism' doesn't excuse accepting stasis. True 'progress' doesn't have an end goal in mind-- the progress is a continuous process of minute adjustments to and re-evaluations of all mental constructs. - Intelligence is directly proportional to the degree of mental fluidity coupled with perceptive acuity in motion. - Motion is life. Stasis is entropy. - The X-Files had it right: Trust No One's (version of reality-- even-- especially your own). And The Truth Is Out There. - Finding contradictions means you're on the right track. - As long as you don't take yourself too seriously, you can imagine, invent and play in thousands of make-believe worlds made of symbol and non-linear association. Dreams are doors to your own truths. - The truth is multifaceted and contradictory, like a crystal with incomprehensible levels of complexity. But it -is- out there. - You'll never find it. Keep looking. ~~ {So that was the main parts of interest to the list as far as I could see. Hope You found this Interesting too} Stephen Lee -- When there's nothing left... There's always something or you're dead. Use it. -- http://www.freewebs.com/rewander/ http://hopeisus.fateback.com/story.html http://www16.brinkster.com/quibbit/pid/ From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Jul 4 02:53:10 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 19:53:10 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Some interesting reflections... References: <951ad0704070311542cb683dd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000401c46172$0afd3970$210110ac@hppav> My main art form is photography, but I find that drawing and painting improves my ability to perceive all sorts of visual information, and this improves my photography. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Lee" To: Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 11:54 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] Some interesting reflections... > Thought you guys would find this interesting. > got this from here: > http://www.livejournal.com/users/reenka/194939.html#cutid1 > Here it is reposted for ease of perusement: > -- > (feed your head) > So, I made another list on a bus. Or, not a list, maybe... more like > an outline. Clearly, I have too much free time. > > "The way I think," condensed into easy-to-follow recipe format! > > > - Question everything. > > - The question is more important than the answer. The question is > growth; the answer is entropy. > > - Assumptions are never objective-- identify your assumptions & > analyze the resulting reasoning for linear or associative jumps > (though some jumps are, of course, inevitable). > > - Assumptions/beliefs which aren't 'refreshed' or challenged will > naturally attract flawed/jumpy reasoning with time, like bread > attracts mold. > > - Thus, pure belief/assumption thinking is always wrong-- though > there's no superiority implied by that statement. It's simply the > flip-side of the basic tenet of subjectivism: everyone is right. It > only follows that everyone is also wrong. > > - Saying 'everyone is wrong' is as lazy as 'everyone is right', but > it's helpful to realize that principle of uncertainty. > > - The key is learning how to think & not accepting even your own > conclusions as more than working theories. This is the difference > between learning and knowing. 'Knowing' is not thinking; it's not a > learning-curved process and is therefore subject to deteriorative > behavior. > > - Most people's errors in judgement happen because they don't know how > to think without becoming complacent. > > - The process of sharpening your perception is more useful than any > possible result. > > - Love or any other emotion shouldn't become an excuse for operating > in a static mindset. > > - Avoid using excuses in general-- they prevent further questioning > and are thus unhelpful. > > - Mental stasis based on unquestioned beliefs/assumptions creates > holes in perception and thus one's overall intelligence. > > - Therefore an unquestioned, static religious belief is detrimental to > overall mental acuity. On the other hand, a 'humbler', more > philosophical approach to metaphysical subjects isn't intrinsically > 'the opiate of the masses', as per Marx. > > - No single -fixed- philosophical system can be correct. > > - 'Subjectivism' doesn't excuse accepting stasis. True 'progress' > doesn't have an end goal in mind-- the progress is a continuous > process of minute adjustments to and re-evaluations of all mental > constructs. > > - Intelligence is directly proportional to the degree of mental > fluidity coupled with perceptive acuity in motion. > > - Motion is life. Stasis is entropy. > > - The X-Files had it right: Trust No One's (version of reality-- > even-- especially your own). And The Truth Is Out There. > > - Finding contradictions means you're on the right track. > > - As long as you don't take yourself too seriously, you can imagine, > invent and play in thousands of make-believe worlds made of symbol and > non-linear association. Dreams are doors to your own truths. > > - The truth is multifaceted and contradictory, like a crystal with > incomprehensible levels of complexity. But it -is- out there. > > - You'll never find it. Keep looking. > ~~ > > {So that was the main parts of interest to the list as far as I could > see. Hope You found this Interesting too} > > Stephen Lee > -- > When there's nothing left... > There's always something or you're dead. > Use it. > -- > http://www.freewebs.com/rewander/ > http://hopeisus.fateback.com/story.html > http://www16.brinkster.com/quibbit/pid/ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Tue Jul 6 18:49:58 2004 From: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 20:49:58 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] from Eshel Ben Jacob / Physicaplus Message-ID: <001101c4638a$182ebf50$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> The second issue of Physicaplus - the online magazine of the Israel Physical Society is on the air. You are welcome to visit and send criticisms/comments/requests/.... Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #?s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Thu Jul 8 21:32:52 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 17:32:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Human Nature': My World, and Welcome to It Message-ID: 'Human Nature': My World, and Welcome to It New York Times Book Review, 4.7.4 By MICHAEL RUSE HUMAN NATURE A Blueprint for Managing the Earth -- by People, for People. By James Trefil. 249 pp. Times Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $26. About a year ago, some aged English relatives of mine joined like-minded citizens, taking off their clothes and lying down in a farmer's field to spell out NO GM FOODS. I do not know if they caught a chill but they certainly caught attention. The next morning, in Florida, as I surfed the Net to read the headlines, there they were. Beaming up at me, as one might say. This is an emotive issue. Heaven help the British supermarket that is caught with anything that smacks of such Doctor Frankenstein-type entities. And do not bother to point out that genetically modified foods require less artificial fertilizer or pesticide. They are just not ''natural,'' and that is an end to things. These and like issues are the topics of James Trefil, a George Mason University physics professor, in his new book, ''Human Nature: A Blueprint for Managing the Earth -- by People, for People.'' He is concerned about the state of the earth and the denizens thereof. Are we heading for -- are we already in -- a crisis of ecology, resources, climate, population and more? Is this something we have recently brought upon ourselves? Is this something about which we must do something, assuming that it is not already too late? And if we are to do something, what is the right approach? Should we be pushing some kind of return-to-nature strategy, or does the key lie in technology? Trefil takes a pretty robust attitude to questions like these. The leading philosopher of ecology, Holmes Rolston, tells of a campsite he likes to visit, up in the mountains around his home in Colorado. The signs on the trail into it used to read: ''Please do not pick the plants. Leave them for others to enjoy.'' Now they read, ''Let the plants live.'' For many, to use a hackneyed phrase, there has been something of a paradigm shift in our thinking about nature, a change reflected in these two messages. It used to be that we thought of nature with respect to our human needs and interests. Now we think, or should think, of nature with respect to its own needs and interests. Trefil will have none of this. His repeated, bottom-line philosophy is: the global ecosystem should be managed for the benefit, broadly conceived, of human beings. Forget about plant rights. If we like them, they are flowers and we keep them. If we don't like them, they are weeds and we chuck them out. And so it should be. Trefil combines with this philosophy an assertive attitude to the problems and challenges of ecology. He tells us that in the 1970's he did the back-to-the-land thing, building his own house on an abandoned farm and growing his own vegetables and so forth. The experience seems to have inoculated him against the joys of the outside world. The Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson has long argued for something he calls ''biophilia.'' He thinks we humans have evolved in such a way that we need nature, spiritually as well as physically. A world of plastic would, quite literally, be deadly. This is one of the main reasons that Wilson is an ardent defender of the wilderness in North America and the rain forests in South America. For him, plant rights and human rights are ultimately one and the same. Trefil thinks that is all pretty silly. He hates rain forests, finding them hot and sweaty. And if cutting down a few of the trees kills off several species of beetle, it doesn't bother him. Trefil has an optimistic view of the power of technology. Wilson, again, makes a pragmatic plea. Many new medicines, of value to humans, have come from plants, especially those in the tropics. We simply cannot afford to destroy one species after another. As we do so, we almost certainly are destroying one potentially valuable drug after another. Trefil has little time for this. Modern pharmaceutical technology has reached the stage where scientists can design their own drugs as needed. It is all a question of the shapes of molecules, and we know now how to shape molecules with the kind of skill Michelangelo showed with a piece of marble. Rain forests are a luxury, not a necessity. Given the fact that I have the leftish inclinations of most academics, I ought to dislike this book intensely. Trefil tells us proudly that some of his friends and others who fed him information specifically asked not to be mentioned in the acknowledgments. In fact, I enjoyed ''Human Nature.'' Trefil knows how to tell a good tale, with just the right amount of science and a nice use of anecdote. There is nothing pompous or preachy about this book, and on these sorts of topics that is uncommon and refreshing. Moreover, Trefil is right when he tells us that instead of whining about technology and modern society, we should do more to guide and influence them. The secret is not to give up on the use of electricity but to find ways of producing it that are not so environmentally harmful. However, his discussion of issues like G.M. foods is often so quick and unreflective as to be nearly useless. Granted, Europeans are not always entirely rational about these issues. But the way forward is not simply to say that, but to ask what can be done. Is it just a matter of distrust of new technology, or is it something deeper? Is it, to go all the way, a manifestation of a deep-seated anti-Americanism, which can be solved only in a much broader context -- political and other relationships across the Atlantic? Also, even for a reader with sympathy for Trefil's human-oriented approach, some attempt is needed to justify the stance. Why focus just on the benefit of humans and not of other organisms? Is there nothing to be said about benefits for the apes? And if for chimpanzees, then why not for warthogs -- and so forth? Or conversely, why for all humans? Why not just for Americans or just for Floridians? Personally, I have a much closer relationship with my ferrets than with the citizens of Outer Mongolia. Why should my actions benefit Outer Mongolians rather than my ferrets? I am not saying they should not. I am saying that in a book-length discussion, especially for the general reader, some attention should have been paid to these questions. Hence, while this is not as offensive a book as the author rather hopes, it is not as thoughtful a book either -- but worth reading nevertheless. Michael Ruse is a philosopher at Florida State University. His most recent book is ''Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/books/review/04RUSEL.html From checker at panix.com Thu Jul 8 21:40:15 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 17:40:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Republic: Mobbed Up by Cass R. Sunstein Message-ID: Mobbed Up by Cass R. Sunstein Post date 06.17.04 | Issue date 06.28.04 The Wisdom of Crowds Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations By James Surowiecki (Doubleday, 296 pp., $24.95) In the summer of 2003, analysts at the Department of Defense had an unusual idea. To predict important events in the world, including terrorist attacks, they would create a kind of market in which ordinary people could actually place bets. The proposed Policy Analysis Market would allow each of us to invest in our predictions about such matters as the growth of the Egyptian economy, the death of Yasir Arafat, and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the United States. Investors would win or lose money on the basis of the accuracy of their predictions. Predictably, the Policy Analysis Market produced a storm of criticism. Ridiculed as "offensive" and "useless," the proposal was abandoned. Amid the war on terrorism, why was the Defense Department so interested in the Policy Analysis Market? The answer is simple: it wanted to have some help in predicting geopolitical events, including those that would endanger American interests, and it believed that a market would provide that help. It speculated that if a large number of people could be given an incentive to aggregate their private information, in the way that the Policy Analysis Market would do, government officials would learn a great deal. Does this idea seem ludicrous? Since 1988, the University of Iowa has run the Iowa Electronic Markets, which allow people to bet on the outcome of presidential elections. As a predictor, the Iowa Electronic Markets have produced extraordinarily accurate judgments, often doing better than professional polling organizations. In the week before each of the last four elections, the predictions in the Iowa market have shown an average absolute error of just 1.5 percentage points, a significant improvement over the 2.1 percentage point error in the final Gallup Polls. Or consider the Hollywood Stock Exchange, in which people predict Oscar nominees and winners, as well as opening weekend box-office successes. Here, too, the level of accuracy has been exceptionally impressive, with (for example) correct predictions of thirty-five out of forty Oscar nominees in 2002. In fact, prediction markets are springing up all over the Internet, allowing people to make bets on the likely outcomes of sports, entertainment, finance, and political events. On tradesports.com, people have been betting on whether Donald Rumsfeld will resign soon (extremely unlikely), whether Osama bin Laden will be captured by June 2004 (extremely unlikely), whether John Edwards will be selected as John Kerry's running mate (a good chance, but probably not), and whether George W. Bush will be re-elected (more likely than not). One can imagine prediction markets on any number of questions: Will gas prices reach $3 per gallon? Will cellular life be found on Mars? Will smallpox return to the United States? Will there be a sequel to Master and Commander? Will the Federal Communications Commission be abolished? (I didn't make these up; they are actual or proposed questions on existing markets.) James Surowiecki is fascinated by prediction markets. In his opinion, they demonstrate that crowds are often wise. He rejects the widespread view that groups of ordinary people are usually wrong--and that we do better to ignore them and follow experts instead. Even when individuals blunder, he believes, groups can excel: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." This is so even when "most of the people within the group are not especially well-informed or rational." What is wonderful, and surprising, is that "when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent." Instead of chasing experts, we should consult that collective intelligence. As an example, Surowiecki points to the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, on which contestants, if stumped, are permitted either to consult the studio audience or to place a call to a trusted friend or family member (selected in advance precisely because of his or her knowledge and intelligence). As it happens, the trusted allies perform well, producing correct answers 65 percent of the time. But the studio audience performs much better, picking right answers a remarkable 91 percent of the time. Surowiecki also invokes an astonishing finding by the British scientist Francis Galton, who tried to draw lessons about collective intelligence by examining a competition in which contestants guessed the weight of a fat ox at a regional fair in England. The ox weighed 1,198 pounds; the average guess, from the 787 contestants, was 1,197 pounds. Or consider Google, the astonishingly successful Internet search engine. Why does Google work so well? Surowiecki contends that its technology "is built on the wisdom of crowds." The company's founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, explain that the system "capitalizes on the uniquely democratic character of the Web." Google is good at telling you which site you are likely to want for one reason: it uses the collective "votes" of many other people. Surowiecki is concerned with how crowds can solve three kinds of problems. The first are cognitive. These are factual questions with definite solutions, identifiable now or in the future. Who will win the World Series? How far from the Sun is the Earth? Will a certain surgery be successful? A second set of problems involve coordination. Individuals often need to select a shared course of action--driving on the same side of the road or meeting at a certain place. A third set involve cooperation. If people follow their self-interest, they might fail to cooperate with one another, and hence they will lose their opportunities for mutual advantage. Surowiecki contends that groups of people show far more cooperation than we might predict. Surowiecki does not make the implausible suggestion that all crowds are wise. To qualify as such, a crowd needs to satisfy three conditions. It must be diverse; its members must be independent; and it must have a "particular kind of decentralization." Each of these conditions is designed to ensure what most interests Surowiecki, which is the emergence and the aggregation of information that group members have. Diversity is important simply to ensure that the group has a lot of information. If a crowd consists of nearly identical people, it is unlikely to be wise, because the group will not know more than the individuals of whom it is composed. Independence is necessary to ensure that people say what they know rather than hide it. Surowiecki is alert to the fact that groups often go wrong if members simply follow one another without pooling individually held information. Hence he notes, correctly, that organizations often do best if each individual behaves independently and does not pay a great deal of attention to the acts and the statements of others. "The smartest groups," he writes, "are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other." The worst-performing investment clubs in the United States consist of people who like one another, socialize together, and show a great deal of consensus. The best performers consist of people who do not see each other much and welcome dissent. In calling for independence, Surowiecki emphasizes the serious risks associated with "information cascades," which occur when people neglect what they know and pay attention instead to the signals given by others. (In social science, such cascades have been found to arise not only among ordinary people choosing restaurants, sneakers, and political candidates, but also among doctors making diagnoses and even federal judges deciding cases.) The problem with information cascades is that group members are likely to do far worse than they would if everyone disclosed his or her private information. By pointing to the dangers of bad cascades, Surowiecki signals the importance of starting with a "wide array of options and information" and of having at least a few people who are willing "to put their own judgment ahead of the group's, even when it's not sensible to do so." Much of the time, Surowiecki writes, groups do best if their members pay little "attention to what everyone else is saying." That about decentralization? Of Surowiecki's three conditions, this is the least intuitive. He attempts to clarify it by focusing on the war against terrorism. To wage that war successfully, of course, a great deal of information must be assembled. Surowiecki is critical of the widespread idea that what is needed is more centralization. Good solutions are far more likely to follow, he argues, "if you set a crowd of self-interested, independent people to work in a decentralized way on the same problem." Surowiecki seeks processes in which independent people, all armed with their own knowledge, are able to attend to problems "while also being able to aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole." The Iraq war is Surowiecki's example. Local American commanders had considerable latitude to act on their own, but they were also able to communicate rapidly, thus allowing successful overall strategies to develop from a multitude of local judgments. Surowiecki concludes that successful wars "may depend as much on the fast aggregation of information from the field as on preexisting, top-down strategies." (The problems that have arisen since the end of formal hostilities raise obvious difficulties for Surowiecki's claims; perhaps information on the ground is not being properly aggregated, or perhaps American officials don't have enough information on the ground to stop continuing attacks.) For intelligence relating to terrorism, Surowiecki argues that what is needed is aggregation, not centralization. And here Surowiecki returns to the ill-fated and roundly condemned Policy Analysis Market, suggesting that it "was potentially a very good idea." Surowiecki is also fascinated by the very different phenomenon of social coordination. He points to the behavior of pedestrians on streets and sidewalks, where individuals are able to coordinate their movement so as not to bump into one another. Surowiecki pays tribute to "the beauty of a well-coordinated crowd, in which lots of small, subtle adjustments in pace and stride and direction add up to a relatively smooth and efficient flow," as people "are constantly anticipating each other's behavior." He thinks that pedestrian behavior helps to explain a great deal about the human ability to understand and to follow norms or conventions that other people follow at the same time. Consider a little experiment by Thomas Schelling, who put the following puzzle to law students at Yale in 1958: You are going to meet someone in New York City. You do not know when or where, and you are unable to talk to the other person ahead of time. What time and place do you choose? Almost all the students said that they would meet at noon, and more than half said that they would meet at the information booth at Grand Central Station. As a more practical example, consider the universally accepted rule of first-come, first-served seating in buses, subways, and movie theaters. In Surowiecki's account, people are extremely good at generating conventions by which they organize their relationships. Solutions to coordination problems are stable; once we hit upon a shared approach, we are likely to stick to it. Unfortunately, social cooperation is much more fragile, simply because each cooperator has an incentive to defect. Suppose that everyone in a certain community thinks that the community will be better off if people engage in a recycling program. Even if everyone agrees, some people will refuse to participate, thinking that for them as individuals the costs of recycling exceed the benefits, even if the reverse is true for the group as a whole. Self-interested human beings try to "free ride" on the cooperation of others. And positing that people are self-interested, many economists expect cooperation to be rare. What interests Surowiecki is that cooperation is not rare at all. He emphasizes the enormous importance of reciprocity to human endeavors. Usually people will participate in a cooperative endeavor as long as they believe that other people are doing so too. Borrowing a claim by the political scientist Margaret Levi, Surowiecki concludes that people are "contingent cooperators." Most people don't want to be selfish jerks, but they also don't want to be dupes or fools. They will contribute to the common good if they believe that this is the general practice. Surowiecki uses these points to explore a wide range of social phenomena, including scientific collaboration, stock prices, and corporate performance. One of his most interesting discussions involves the Columbia disaster and less-than-wise group deliberations at NASA. In Surowiecki's account, NASA emphasized consensus over dissent, and so it failed to take advantage of the information held by its engineers, who were perfectly aware of the underlying uncertainties. Stressing "the utter absence of debate and minority findings" in pre-launch discussions about the Columbia, Surowiecki argues for the need to counteract the risks associated with "group polarization." When group polarization occurs, people engaged in deliberation with one another end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk. For example, those who believe that global warming is a serious problem are likely, as a result of internal discussions, to come to believe that global warming is an extremely serious problem; people who think that the Department of Justice is compromising civil liberties are likely to think, after they talk with one another, that the Department of Justice has no respect for civil liberties at all. So too officials at NASA, thinking that space shuttles are essentially safe, might well end up believing that safety is not a problem--even if several of them have private information suggesting otherwise. Surowiecki knows that the phenomenon of group polarization raises problems for his thesis. If group members predictably end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before, what makes them likely to be wise? His answer is that groups need to contain safeguards to ensure that individual judgments are genuinely independent. NASA would have done far better if it had promoted a diversity of opinions and asked people to say what they really thought, rather than allowing internal pressures to lead people to squelch their doubts. The lesson here extends to many private and public institutions. Surowiecki is aware that his celebration of wise crowds has implications for democracy. In light of his general argument, Surowiecki is suspicious of rule by a "technocratic elite," insisting that insulated officials lack the information to produce good decisions. But he does not think that democracies are really solving cognition problems; that's not their business. The reason is that unlike in cases involving simple facts, we "have no standard that allows us to judge a political decision to be 'right' or 'wrong.'" For all the public talk about the "common good," that idea is too disputed to provide objective solutions to political disputes. Surowiecki concludes that democracy should be seen as a way not to produce correct answers to particular questions, but to deal with "the most fundamental problems of cooperation and coordination: How do we live together? How can living together work to our mutual benefit?" On that count, democracy has crucial advantages. The performance of groups is a wonderful subject, and Surowiecki has a remarkable eye for the telling anecdote, illustrating abstract claims with vivid examples. His central point is convincing. Groups, and even crowds, can be wiser than most and sometimes even all of their members, at least if they aggregate information. But there is a serious problem with Surowiecki's discussion: he does not provide an adequate account of the circumstances that make crowds wise or stupid. Note first that the "conditions" that he identifies (diversity, independence, and decentralization) are neither necessary nor sufficient for the wisdom of crowds. On his own analysis, those are the conditions for the solution of problems of cognition, not problems of coordination or cooperation. People do not have to be diverse, or independent, to choose Grand Central Station as a meeting place in New York. If we want people to coordinate or to cooperate, it might well be best if they are similar and if they follow one another. To solve Surowiecki's three kinds of problems, quite different conditions come into play. In any case, coordination and cooperation problems don't come in neat boxes; life turns up all sorts of mixtures (consider marriage) that Surowiecki neglects. Even for cognition problems, some groups sometimes perform best if their members are not independent and if they listen closely to one another. Groups can benefit when error-prone people silence themselves and follow the views expressed by their most sensible members. If the group contains authorities on the question at hand, members ought to listen closely--and possibly to shut up. Diversity is usually good, above all because it allows groups to acquire more information. But what is needed is not diversity as such, but diversity of the right kind. NASA's judgment would not have been improved if the relevant officials had included members of the Flat Earth Society, or people who believed that aliens are among us or that space flight is simply impossible. All of these points suggest that the key question is how much information is held by various group members. Most generally, groups are wise only if their members actually know something about the relevant questions. Suppose that the studio audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? were asked not about popular culture but instead about the number of decisions made by the Supreme Court every year. Is there any reason to expect that the majority or even the plurality would be right? Galton's crowd was good at judging the weight of a fat ox. But if its members were asked about the number of atoms in that ox, the median guess wouldn't be very reliable. (To have a reliable average response, the answers have to be better than random, and there cannot be a systematic bias in one or another direction.) Or imagine that a group of law professors is making decisions about how to build a space shuttle. They are unlikely to decide well, simply because law professors tend to know nothing about space shuttles. (I undertook a little experiment, asking law professors to guess the weight of the fuel used on a space shuttle; the right answer is 4.6 million pounds, and I won't embarrass my colleagues by announcing their answers, except to say that the average was way off.) Surowiecki thinks that the "simplest way to get reliably good answers is just to ask the group each time." Judging the numbers of beans in a jar, groups almost always outperform most of their individual members. (Try it and you'll see.) Asking two hundred students to rank items by weight, one experimenter found that the group's estimate was 94 percent accurate--a figure excelled by only five individuals in that group. But it doesn't follow that groups will always, or generally, produce good answers. Everything depends on what the relevant people know. If you ask a group of randomly selected people about how to perform heart surgery, you will probably do better than if you asked a randomly selected individual; but you would do better still if you asked someone who actually knew how to perform heart surgery. Surowiecki loads the dice by pointing to areas in which good answers come from properly aggregating information that is held by many. In many areas, it is far more sensible to consult specialists. The uses and the limits of Surowiecki's argument are helpfully approached via the Condorcet Jury Theorem, a significant omission from Surowiecki's presentation. Suppose that people are answering a common question with two possible answers, one false and one true, and that the average probability that each voter will answer correctly exceeds 50 percent. The Condorcet Jury Theorem holds that if each member of the group is answering independently, the probability of a correct answer, by a majority of the group, increases toward certainty as the size of the group increases. The theorem is based on some simple arithmetic, the details of which are irrelevant here. Its importance lies in the demonstration that groups are likely to do better than individuals, and large groups better than small ones, if majority rule is used and if each person is more likely than not to be correct. The crucial proviso is the last one. If each person is more likely than not to err, then the theorem's prediction is reversed: the probability of a correct answer, by a majority of the group, decreases toward zero as the size of the group increases! It follows that groups are error-prone if most of their members are likely to blunder. Surowiecki might object that some crowds can be wise even when ignorance is widespread. Consider the astonishing accuracy of the Iowa Electronic Markets (and other prediction markets), in which good judgments come from groups of investors that include many people who know little and are perhaps more likely to be wrong than to be right. But we cannot easily generalize from prediction markets, because they have several distinctive features. Most important, they do not simply rely on the median or average judgment of a randomly selected group of people. They are genuine markets, in which people voluntarily choose to participate, presumably because they think they know something. In addition, people are permitted to buy and to sell shares on a continuing basis. In these circumstances, accurate answers can emerge even if only a small percentage of participants have good information. In the Iowa Electronic Markets, it turns out that 85 percent of the traders aren't so smart. They hold onto their shares for a long period and then just accept someone else's prices. The market's predictions appear to be driven by the other 15 percent--frequent traders who post their offers rather than accepting those made by other people. The broader point is that to work well, prediction markets do not require accurate judgments by anything like the majority of participants. In this sense, prediction markets are very different from judgments by ordinary crowds. Surowiecki's claims about group wisdom don't adequately emphasize the unique characteristics of these markets. Surowiecki might have been expected to celebrate the cognitive virtues of democratic judgments--to suggest that a system that allows a voice for heterogeneous people and that encourages dissent is likely to come to sensible decisions, simply because it heeds the wisdom of the crowd. If 51 percent of voters support George W. Bush, maybe we have reason to think that they are right. But Surowiecki does not make this argument. As I have said, he insists that in the democratic domain we lack standards permitting us to distinguish decisions that are right from those that are wrong. But political decisions depend crucially on predictions. Will large deficits significantly increase interest rates? Will pre-emptive wars increase or decrease the threat of terrorist attacks? Will tax cuts spur economic growth? Problems of cognition are absolutely central to democratic governance. Of course democratic judgments often involve disputed judgments of value, for which demonstrably objective evidence is hard to find. Are pre-emptive wars just? Is economic growth more important than generous social safety nets? Still, in many matters government's performance is improved, or undermined, because of how it deals with cognition problems, and Surowiecki does not acknowledge this. Return here to NASA, whose failures have been partly a product of a culture that disfavors dissent. In fact, group polarization is a pervasive problem in government circles, where like-minded officials often end up holding a more extreme version of the view with which they began. Surowiecki offers the example of the Bay of Pigs disaster, in which President Kennedy's advisers squelched their private doubts and developed unjustified enthusiasm for a ludicrous invasion plan predicated on the absurd thought that twelve hundred people could unseat Castro and take over Cuba. Is it too speculative to suggest that the current problems in Iraq are partly a product of group polarization within the executive branch--and that those problems could have been anticipated if the White House had had a better process for aggregating privately held information? Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famously disorganized and much-criticized White House, with confusing lines of authority and multiple people working on similar tasks, was ideally suited to the production of a wide range of views and information. In this light, Surowiecki's dismissal of the idea that sometimes democracy faces cognition problems prevents him from exploring, or even seeing, some possible lessons for how to structure democratic institutions. In war and in peace, such institutions could take much more aggressive steps to elicit and to use existing information, above all by creating mechanisms to aggregate what people know. Cass R. Sunstein is a contributing editor at TNR. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=BulT1I7dWaPtjtyUfMCrMA== From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Jul 10 01:29:42 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 18:29:42 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Human group energy fields Message-ID: <000f01c4661d$60c1e0e0$210110ac@hppav> Is there any hard science out there about this? We know that we have an electromagnetic field, and perhaps there are effects when the fields of individuals merge in groups. I'm also thinking about why we love events like the Kentucky Derby, where the actual race only lasts a few minutes, yet people flock to the buildup, enjoy the climax (and the sexual connotation may be totally appropriate :-)), and then wind down. Steve Hovland http://www.stevehovland.net From checker at panix.com Thu Jul 15 20:35:05 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:35:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ted Rogers: The Revolution Will Be Televised Message-ID: The Revolution Will Be Televised http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html Richard Stivers, The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality In Decline, (Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994). [1]W. Ted Rogers What Guy Debord calls la societe du spectacle[2]1, what Jean Baudrillard calls la societe de consommation[3]2 , what R.H. Tawney calls the acquisitive society[4]3 , what Istvan Meszaros calls "a metabolic system of control"[5]4 , what Arthur Kroker and David Cook call the postmodern scene and excremental culture[6]5 , what Jacques Ellul calls the technological society[7]6, Richard Stivers calls the culture of cynicism. What is it? How did we get here? Stivers offers an important analysis that proposes an answer to these questions. "American society is experiencing a moral decline, the critics say. [M]ost critics [from both the political right and the political left, respectively] seem to think [social problems] can be solved by a greater exercise of moral authority or by political reform." (p.vii) Stivers counters these prevailing views by adding that "the decline runs much deeper than this. For it is not signaled by a series of discrete moral problems that the conventional morality can no longer control, but by the Very Morality Itself, a morality that encourages, even promotes, cynical and self-serving behavior." (p.vii) The conventionality of Stivers' perception is highlighted by its echoing of Solzhenitsyn here. Although Stivers contrasts the relative positions of Kierkegaard (an ethical position) and Nietzsche (an aesthetic position), it is evident in some fashion that Stivers would agree with Nietzsche's assertion that the Moral God is dead because we have killed him: "the nation [America] has conquered the god of American Christianity [sic] and become one itself in the process." (p.33) If the Moral God is dead, what has the new god given us in his stead? Stivers responds: "Modern American morality in its totality (content and form) is an expression of the marriage between technological utopianism (mental structure) and technological power (material structure)." (p.166) If this new morality was only America's, Stivers' thesis might be of limited interest; but he expresses agreement with Baudrillard that America is the realised utopia towards which the rest of the world is headed: "[A]s the most technologically advanced society, America is the future of all modern societies." (p.viii) As societies based on capital develop, they become more technological and exalt the "virtues" of productivism - echoes of Baudrillard's analyses in Le miroir de la production. This exaltation of productivism leads to an emphasis on technique [technical rules] that are extrapolated to all social action. Citing Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society: "'Technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.'" (pp.71-72) The invasion of technique into all human action has a telling result for Stivers' story: Technical rules are rapidly supplanting moral norms by making them irrelevant. A technological civilization is one in which the means absorb the ends. Traditional norms place limits on power; technical norms are a form of power. (p.74) [...And, important for a society of the spectacle:] Ethical meaning [derives] from a limitation of power. [...] Power is more spectacular than the limitation of power [!]" (P. 154) This "power-play" has detrimental effects in that it breeds either cynicism or idealism - one more piece of evidence in support of Nietzsche's assertion that we have killed the Moral God and his ethical system. "Ethical action has a source other than reality itself, whereas cynicism and idealism both draw their inspiration from reality in the very act of deceiving us about it. [In other words, they cause us to enter into the hyperreal]. They are thus ideological." (p.ix) The ideology is power and the good that is sought is success. The goal is accomplished through a naive belief in technological evolution. "With evolutionary progress perceived as a deterministic process [technique], power and goodness become identical. Success [the bitch goddess, Stivers tells us, that Americans exclusively worship] is not the result of moral character; rather it is moral character itself." (p.24) The emphasis on technique makes technology into a system, a bureaucracy, which recharacterises the nature of power: "to the extent that technology becomes a system [...], power becomes objectified and abstract." (p.91) Therefore, a simulacrum of power leading into the hyperreality in which we find ourselves. Borrowing from Owen Barfield's Saving The Appearances, Stivers explains: The equation of reality and truth is the most pernicious aspect of the onslaught of technology and bureaucracy. It is not enough to say that science has become the arbiter of truth in the modern world, for the value of science today lies in technology. Technology becomes truth. This represents the materialization of truth. Perhaps this is what Heidegger meant when he called technology the metaphysics of the twentieth century. (p.88) This metaphysics works to replace "reality" with Baudrillard's hyperreality which is more real than the real. Reality is destroyed! Atomistic science has produced in effect a universe of random facts. [...F]acts and reality are one, and our approach to reality is purely aesthetical [therefore, hyper-aesthetics!]. We are detached consumers of interesting facts. Reality is the sum of all facts but is known one fact at a time. Therefore reality is experienced as both fragmentary and interesting."(p.107) Power as simulacrum, reality fragmented, destroyed, then metamorphosed into hyperreality, a weltanschauung of hyper-aesthetics where technology is truth [anti-truth] - voila! the new morality [anti-morality]! A nightmare desert where the both the subject and the social are corpses, victims of this society's brutal sign-violence. "Technical rules, public opinion, peer group norms, and visual images [spectacle], therefore, converge to create a morality of power, morality without meaning. This morality of power, morality without meaning, is, of course, an anti- morality from the perspective of traditional morality, for it destroys symbolically- mediated experiences. Technology and the visual images of the media tend to destroy meaning, without which all norms become exclusively norms of power. (p.167) [... And a]s technology attenuates a common morality, the competition for the fruits of technology - increased consumption - becomes more brutal."(p.165) Therefore, a landscape of empty signs marked with a monument to anti-morality and the graves of meaning, the subject, and the social - all of the characteristics of the postmodern scene! A Modest Proposal, Or Is Resistance Futile? In the final chapter of The Culture of Cynicism Richard Stivers pleads for a new ethic of opposition to the anti-morality, "a life-affirming ethic instead of a self-destructive ethic. This ethic, however, must be as unrelenting as the civilization it opposes. A life-affirming ethic today must be an ethic of non-power and freedom." (p.180) A total resistance to manipulation and forced conformity, a total opposition "to technology as milieu and as a system out of control." (p.181) Beyond Stivers' analysis of the morality of postmodern technological society, Stivers lends his voice to the slowly growing chorus calling for total resistance, a resistance even to the appropriation of resistance and its subsequent transformation into spectacle: "Were it ever to attempt to become a morality rather than an ethic of individual love and freedom, it would be swallowed up by the very civilization it had chosen to oppose." (p.181) The revolution will be televised! But, if the alternative to resistance is the nightmare Stivers and others describe, then maybe Stivers' modest proposal, far from being feeble and naive, deserves consideration. Therein lies its real importance. Although Stivers is somewhat vague about how to implement this resistance [is he referring us to Kierkegaard?], other voices in the chorus are more specific, if not more blunt: Why not get together with some friends soon and say NO! Say no to the draft, or work, or religion, or authority figures, or school; say no to television, patriotism, political ideologies, any of the thousand and one ways in which this society keeps you from realizing your own needs and desires. You'll find the more you do it, the more you'll like it! JUST SAY 'FUCK OFF.' YOU'LL GET A LOT OF SATISFACTION.[8]7 However, there is a common theoretical position today that all resistance to this anti-morality of the society of the spectacle is doomed because it gets caught in the "doubling logic" of said society, viz. it is coopted by society through the violence done on all signs by the spectacle. Although Stivers is not explicit on this position, he obviously rejects it. Echoes of Cornelius Castoriadis come through: Someone who is afraid of cooptation has already been coopted. His attitude has been coopted - since it has been blocked up. The deepest reaches of his mind have been coopted, for there he seeks guarantees against being coopted, and thus he has already been caught in the trap of reactionary ideology: the search for an anticooptation talisman or fetishistic magic charm. There is NO guarantee against cooptation [...] Everything can be coopted - save one thing: our own reflective, critical, autonomous activity. To fight cooptation is to extend this activity beyond the here and now; it is to give it a form that will convey its content for all time and make it utterly impossible to coopt - that is, capable of being conquered again and again, in its ever-new truth, by living beings.[9]8 Len Bracken would agree that this is also the position taken by Guy Debord, another theorist who rejects the Lyotardian position taken in The Postmodern Condition - i.e., the death of the metanarrative of liberation: "More serious play along the line of a Bakhtinian-parasitutationist dialogue needs to be done rather than following the nihilisticly cynical path of Baudrillard [...]"[10]9 Debord recommended doing violence to the signs of the society of the spectacle through detournement among other strategies of negation - a negation that saves Stivers' politics of total refusal from indifference. For the society of the spectacle to be effectively destroyed, what is needed are people setting a practical force in motion. A critical theory of the spectacle cannot be true unless it joins forces with the practical movement of negation within society; and this negation which constitutes the resumption of revolutionary class struggle, cannot for its part achieve self-consciousness unless it develops the critique of the spectacle, a critique that embodies the theory of negation's real conditions - the practical conditions of present-day oppression - and that also, inversely, reveals the secret of negation's potential.[11]10 The revolution will be televised but that, in itself, can be a weapon against the tyranny of the culture of cynicism. The alternative is an implicit endorsement of this culture. _________________________________________________________________ W.Ted Rogers is the Serials Librarian of Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. He discovered the politics of postmodernism when he read two books: The Ecstasy of Communication by Jean Baudrillard and The Postmodern Scene, by Arthur Kroker and David Cook, and moved on to discover one of its sources in the International Situationiste. [12]1. Guy Debord. La societe du spectacle. (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967; Paris: Champ Libre, 1971). [13]2. Jean Baudrillard. La societe de consommation: ses mythes, ses structures. ([s.l.]: Editions Denoel, 1970). [14]3. R.H. Tawney. The Acquisitive Society. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1920). [15]4. "Marxism Today: An interview with Istvan Meszaros", Radical Philosophy (62: Autumn 1992). [16]5. Arthur Kroker, David Cook. The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper-Aestetics. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986). [17]6. Jacques Ellul. The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson. (New York : Vintage, 1964). [18]7. Anti-Authoritarian Anonymous. "Midge and Cindy", Semiotext(e) (13: 1987). [19]8. Cornelius Castoriadis. "The anticipated revolution", in Cornielius Castoriadis, Poltical and Social Writings: Volume 3, 1961-1979: Recommencing the Revolution: From Socialism to the Autonomous Society trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis. (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p.132. [20]9. Len Bracken, [21]The Spectacle Of Secrecy, [22]CTHEORY (17: 1994). [23]10. Guy Debord. "The Society of the Spectacle" trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Thesis (203), p.143. _________________________________________________________________ [24]Baudrillard on the Web References 1. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#bio 2. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 1 3. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 2 4. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 3 5. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 4 6. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 5 7. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 6 8. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 7 9. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 8 10. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 9 11. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#note 10 12. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 1 13. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 2 14. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 3 15. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 4 16. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 5 17. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 6 18. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 7 19. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 8 20. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 9 21. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/R-Spectacle_Of_Secrecy.html 22. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/ctheory.html 23. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/texts/revolution.html#text 10 24. http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/baudweb.html From HowlBloom at aol.com Fri Jul 16 04:43:21 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:43:21 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Fwd: Hawking surprises GR 17 Message-ID: <1ed.2563ac35.2e28b6e9@aol.com> In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:07:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes: The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service Hawking cracks black hole paradox ========================== 19:00 14 July 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox. It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). Big reputation Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. "He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation." Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out." Forever hidden At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed". "Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at will". Jenny Hogan ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Joel Isaacson" Subject: Hawking surprises GR 17 Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 14:07:23 -0400 Size: 5150 URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Fri Jul 16 04:43:22 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:43:22 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 Message-ID: <1e.2e5a9305.2e28b6ea@aol.com> All thanks, Joel. I seized on this one, too. The insight--that black holes DO allow information to escape, seemed intuitively obvious, perhaps because in big bang theory this entire cosmos leaked into existence from the equivalent of a black hole--a singularity. If I understand what Hawking's getting at, and there's a chance that I may not, his notion gives credence to one of my bizarre speculations--that whatever information this cosmos gathers in its lifetime, it will be able to pass on to the universe on the other side of the big crunch in which the cosmos will end. In other words, universes, I suspect, can gather a store of networked information and, if they have clever beings with will and hubris, can compress that information and pass it on to their progeny. J ust as we living beings pass information on through genes or through memes, the cosmos that produces willfull, living beings can take their primitive capacities a long way in 20 billion years or so. That 20 billion year figure, by the way, is based on my guess that this cosmos will survive for a total span of 30 billion years from birth to destruction. Others better qualified than I am--Max Tegmark for example, who has a toroidal theory like mine-- put the total lifespan of the universe in the trillions of years. Onward--Howard In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:07:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes: The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service Hawking cracks black hole paradox ========================== 19:00 14 July 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox. It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). Big reputation Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. "He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation." Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out." Forever hidden At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed". "Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at will". Jenny Hogan ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kendulf at shaw.ca Fri Jul 16 05:42:38 2004 From: kendulf at shaw.ca (Val Geist) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:42:38 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 References: <1e.2e5a9305.2e28b6ea@aol.com> Message-ID: <002701c46af7$b4892650$6ce04518@yourjqn2mvdn7x> Dear Howard, Is not every living being shedding irretrivable information into the universe? Cheers, Val Geist ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: isaacsonj at hotmail.com Cc: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:43 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 All thanks, Joel. I seized on this one, too. The insight--that black holes DO allow information to escape, seemed intuitively obvious, perhaps because in big bang theory this entire cosmos leaked into existence from the equivalent of a black hole--a singularity. If I understand what Hawking's getting at, and there's a chance that I may not, his notion gives credence to one of my bizarre speculations--that whatever information this cosmos gathers in its lifetime, it will be able to pass on to the universe on the other side of the big crunch in which the cosmos will end. In other words, universes, I suspect, can gather a store of networked information and, if they have clever beings with will and hubris, can compress that information and pass it on to their progeny. J ust as we living beings pass information on through genes or through memes, the cosmos that produces willfull, living beings can take their primitive capacities a long way in 20 billion years or so. That 20 billion year figure, by the way, is based on my guess that this cosmos will survive for a total span of 30 billion years from birth to destruction. Others better qualified than I am--Max Tegmark for example, who has a toroidal theory like mine-- put the total lifespan of the universe in the trillions of years. Onward--Howard In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:07:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes: The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service Hawking cracks black hole paradox ========================== 19:00 14 July 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox. It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). Big reputation Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. "He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation." Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think you have to say the jury is still out." Forever hidden At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed". "Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at will". Jenny Hogan ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.720 / Virus Database: 476 - Release Date: 7/14/2004 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From isaacsonj at hotmail.com Fri Jul 16 11:15:06 2004 From: isaacsonj at hotmail.com (Joel Isaacson) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 07:15:06 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 Message-ID: >From: HowlBloom at aol.com >To: isaacsonj at hotmail.com >CC: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 >Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 00:43:22 EDT > >All thanks, Joel. I seized on this one, too. > >The insight--that black holes DO allow information to escape, seemed >intuitively obvious, perhaps because in big bang theory this entire cosmos >leaked into >existence from the equivalent of a black hole--a singularity. > >If I understand what Hawking's getting at, and there's a chance that I may >not, his notion gives credence to one of my bizarre speculations--that >whatever >information this cosmos gathers in its lifetime, it will be able to pass on >to >the universe on the other side of the big crunch in which the cosmos will >end. Intuitively, it is more satisfying -- I agree -- to hold that information is never totally destroyed... rather, that information may be diluted and condensed at various stages... perhaps a "black hole" effects an extreme condensation stage... Trouble is that many-many things in cosmological physics are counter-intuitive.. The actual Hawking talk will be delivered Wed. the 21st, so we should then have more clarification... -- Joel > >In other words, universes, I suspect, can gather a store of networked >information and, if they have clever beings with will and hubris, can >compress that >information and pass it on to their progeny. J > >ust as we living beings pass information on through genes or through memes, >the cosmos that produces willfull, living beings can take their primitive >capacities a long way in 20 billion years or so. > >That 20 billion year figure, by the way, is based on my guess that this >cosmos will survive for a total span of 30 billion years from birth to >destruction. > Others better qualified than I am--Max Tegmark for example, who has a >toroidal theory like mine-- put the total lifespan of the universe in the >trillions >of years. Onward--Howard >In a message dated 7/15/2004 2:07:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, >isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes: > >The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service > > >Hawking cracks black hole paradox >========================== > >19:00 14 July 04 > >Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free >issues. > >After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that >falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black >holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will >present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. > > > > > > > > > > > > > >The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of >Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More >importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern >physics, known as the black hole information paradox. > >It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated >that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. >This "Hawking radiation" contains no information about the matter inside >the >black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. > >But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such >information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that >the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of >quantum physics. > >Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, >Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed >that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the >universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like >particles >- then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking >radiation emitted by this "fuzzball" does contain information about the >insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). > > >Big reputation > > >Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the >physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last >minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International >Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. > >"He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox >and >I want to talk about it'," says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert >Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's >scientific committee. "I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be >quite >honest, I went on Hawking's reputation." > >Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, >sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. >According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of >black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic >black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything >within them from the outside world. > >In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble >up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and >eventually open up to reveal the information within. "It's possible that >what he presented in the seminar is a solution," says Gibbons. "But I think >you have to say the jury is still out." > > >Forever hidden > > >At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. >If >he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical >physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in >Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. > >They argued that "information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, >and can never be revealed". > >"Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do >not >destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet," Preskill >told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an >encyclopaedia of his choice "from which information can be recovered at >will". > > >Jenny Hogan > >---------- >Howard Bloom >Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of >History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to >the >21st Century >Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; >Faculty >Member, The Graduate Institute >www.howardbloom.net >www.bigbangtango.net >Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic >of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: >The >Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American >Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, >Academy >of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International >Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; >executive >editor -- New Paradigm book series. >For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: >www.paleopsych.org >for two chapters from >The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, >see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer >For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big >Bang >to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net From paul.werbos at verizon.net Fri Jul 16 12:07:24 2004 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Werbos, Dr. Paul J.) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 08:07:24 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20040716080207.00ba4908@incoming.verizon.net> My personal view -- The world is learning a lot here about the internal logic of a nice imaginary mathematical world. This is not the first piece of big news. (Forgive me for feeling an analogy to the big news the TV also reports about Brittany Spears, who is also good about such things.) The second edition of the short history of time repudiated the most interesting insights of the first. Huw Price (whose stuff is worth googling) was clearly very disappointed, and I agree with his assessment. The best stuff received slight frowns from the establishment and the vested interests, and the eagerness with which Hawking accommodated illogic... well, it reminds me of discussions I have had with my wife about George Tenet. Back to the trenches... Best, Paul From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Jul 16 12:56:58 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 05:56:58 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 References: <5.2.1.1.0.20040716080207.00ba4908@incoming.verizon.net> Message-ID: <001a01c46b34$61c924a0$210110ac@hppav> Are there other long-standing theories in any area of science which may be candidates for similar rethinking? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." To: "The new improved paleopsych list" ; Cc: Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 5:07 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 > My personal view -- > > The world is learning a lot here about the internal logic of a nice imaginary > mathematical world. > > This is not the first piece of big news. (Forgive me for feeling an analogy > to the big news the TV also reports about > Brittany Spears, who is also good about such things.) > > The second edition of the short history of time repudiated the most > interesting insights of the first. > Huw Price (whose stuff is worth googling) was clearly very disappointed, > and I agree with his assessment. > The best stuff received slight frowns from the establishment and the vested > interests, and the eagerness > with which Hawking accommodated illogic... well, it reminds me of > discussions I have had with my wife about > George Tenet. > > Back to the trenches... > > Best, > > Paul > > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From jsturner at mailbox.syr.edu Fri Jul 16 13:06:45 2004 From: jsturner at mailbox.syr.edu (Scott Turner) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:06:45 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 References: <5.2.1.1.0.20040716080207.00ba4908@incoming.verizon.net> <001a01c46b34$61c924a0$210110ac@hppav> Message-ID: <00ae01c46b35$c551fd20$8ea8ba3f@esf.edu> In response to Steve Hovland's query, I think there are two: (1) what is the nature of the organism (is it a thing or process? where does it end and the environment begin?) and a subsidiary question that follows from it: (2) what is the nature of the evolutionary process? Is it genetic (i.e. neoatomist), or is it physiological (goal-directed). I will offer a shameless plug for a book that addresses both: The Extended Organism. The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures. Scott Turner Associate Professor Env & Forest Biol SUNY College of Env Sci & Forestry Syracuse, NY 13210 315 470 6806 (office) 315 470 6934 (fax) jsturner at mailbox.syr.edu http://www.esf.edu/efb/turner/Turner.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Hovland" To: "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 8:56 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 > Are there other long-standing theories in any area of > science which may be candidates for similar rethinking? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." > To: "The new improved paleopsych list" ; > > Cc: > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 5:07 AM > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 > > > > My personal view -- > > > > The world is learning a lot here about the internal logic of a nice > imaginary > > mathematical world. > > > > This is not the first piece of big news. (Forgive me for feeling an > analogy > > to the big news the TV also reports about > > Brittany Spears, who is also good about such things.) > > > > The second edition of the short history of time repudiated the most > > interesting insights of the first. > > Huw Price (whose stuff is worth googling) was clearly very disappointed, > > and I agree with his assessment. > > The best stuff received slight frowns from the establishment and the > vested > > interests, and the eagerness > > with which Hawking accommodated illogic... well, it reminds me of > > discussions I have had with my wife about > > George Tenet. > > > > Back to the trenches... > > > > Best, > > > > Paul > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > paleopsych mailing list > > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From checker at panix.com Fri Jul 16 15:55:32 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 11:55:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE Colloquy Live: Fair Use and Academic Publishing Message-ID: Colloquy Live: Fair Use and Academic Publishing The Chronicle of Higher Education [I made a comment, mentioning my article, "Copyright, Congress, Due Diligence, and Coase." Thanks to Karen for putting it on her site. May it's ideas spread!] Wednesday, July 14, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time Indiana University Press's withdrawal of a scholarly book is just the latest example of copyright claims trumping scholarship. Just what use are "fair use" provisions in copyright law if presses lack the wherewithal to challenge such claims? What steps can be taken by scholars to protect fair use? _________________________________________________________________ The newest postings appear at the top of the page. _________________________________________________________________ Wendy Seltzer: Thanks again! See you all online. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): That's a wrap for today's Colloquy Live, Once again, I want to thank Wendy Seltzer for her expertise and enthusiasm in discussing these tricky and contentious issues. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Mary, academic publishing company: Wendy, thank you for your introduction citing the fair use section of the U.S. Copyright Act. Is there any other concrete information that publishers can use to determine what determines fair use? Wendy Seltzer: Aside from the Copyright Act ([48]17 U.S.C. 101 et. seq.), the cases themselves are the best guidance. Stanford has [49]a good collection of cases and other materials. EFF has a [50]Fair Use FAQ, and our [51]Chilling Effects project has a [52]Fair Use module with its own [53]FAQ. For more literature on copyright, fair use, and the battles surrounding copyright expansion, I'd recommend a few recent books: Lawrence Lessig, [54]The Future of Ideas and [55]Free Culture; Jessica Litman, [56]Digital Copyright; and Siva Vaidhyanathan, [57]Copyrights and Copywrongs and [58]The Anarchist in the Library. Thanks again for joining here. I'm sorry I couldn't get to all the questions in an hour, but I'd be glad to talk further by email, [59]wendy at eff.org and on [60]EFF's DeepLinks weblog. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Richard Byrne: Many of the most high profile disputes over copyright and fair use have centered on conflicts between scholars and copyright holders. From experience or anecdote -- because it clearly is not written in the law or numbered among the "four prongs" -- do courts take motive for asserting fair use or rejecting permission into account in such cases? Wendy Seltzer: Courts have recognized that some of the most important fair uses will be those -- like scathing parody or criticism -- for which the copyright holder would never grant permission. Because those uses would never be met in the market, yet benefit the public, the courts take extra care to preserve them as fair use. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): Still working on a few more questions. Stay tuned a bit longer! _________________________________________________________________ Comment from Kenny Crews, Indiana University (IUPUI): I have to be careful to emphasize that while I am part of Indiana University, I have had absolutely nothing to do with the case in question. I am faculty in the law school in Indianapolis, and I direct a copyright office ([61]www.copyright.iupui.edu). I am NOT legal counsel to the university or press. Some quick and general points. To clarify the matter of copyright duration, as of Jan 1, 2003, unpublished works from the past were given the duration term applied to current works. For most works, such as the ones likely at issue here, that is "life plus 70 years." The rules are even more complicated, because the old and unpublished works may be "works made for hire," or "anonymous," in which event the rules get messy. The point: Copyright lives on a long time. Another critical issue for universities to consider is "sovereign immunity." State colleges and universities may well have the benefit of immunity in federal courts (where copyright claims must be filed) according to a series of cases from the Supreme Court. We should always weight that possibility in the balance. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Peter Hirtle, Cornell University: Part of the problem with fair use is that you don't really know if your use is fair until a judge tells you. Yet there have been relatively few cases that address scholarly use of material. Is it time for a test lawsuit that could provide some guidance? Or alternatively, could professional associations specify their own "best practices" for working with copyrighted works, and hope that the courts will later endorese them? Wendy Seltzer: There have been attempts, by NINCH, among others, to create fair use guidelines, but since judges can't give advisory opinions (they can only decide specific contested cases), it's hard to know whether the guidelines reflect what a court would decide. Test cases would help -- real disputes that presses were willing to litigate would at least provide some firm guideposts one way or the other. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): We're at 2 PM, but Wendy Seltzer will stay on for a few more minutes to answer some back-logged questions. Thanks once again for all the response! _________________________________________________________________ Question from Richard Altschuler, scholarly publisher, Gordian Knot Books and other imprints: You just answered a question in which you said the market factor might be the most important of the four factors in determining fair use. If that is the case, then why wouldn't it be fair use for a scholarly anthology to include a reprint of an entire article from a journal under use fair use law, since there is no way anyone would purchase the anthology to read the article when they could read the article in the journal for free? In other words, the journal that originally published the article (presumed to be the copyright holder) would not suffer any possibility of economic loss by the inclusion of the article in a commercial anthology. Correct? If so, why are permissions required to reprint articles from academic journals, usually for a fee to boot? Wendy Seltzer: Because the courts have recently (since American Geophysical, particularly) found a "market for licensing copies" relevant, not just the market for the work in complete original form. Elsewhere, I've complained about the circularity of this reasoning. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Steve McDonald, Rhode Island School of Design: In terms of risk analysis, the "good faith fair use defense" (17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2)) provides a potent defense for nonprofit educational institutions and libraries that simply make an honest mistake when trying to interpret the vast gray area of fair use -- no statutory damages can be awarded. In fact, the mere existence of that defense probably makes it considerably less likely that they would even be defendants in the first place. Shouldn't we be taking that into account when we make decisions about whether and how to proceed? Wendy Seltzer: Yes, thanks for calling attention to this point, although I'm not aware of much caselaw interpreting the subsection. ( See [62]http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html#504.c_2_i ) _________________________________________________________________ Comment from Linda Goff, CSU, Sacramento: As an academic librarian, I've been teaching about proper citation styles, plagiarism, copyright and fair use for over 30 years and I must tell you that many (most?) students think all these rules and nuances about the proper use of information are stupid and that we've made them up just to complicate their lives. That said, I've just found a wonderful new online tutorial at UCLA called "Bruin Success with Less Stress" that is a great way to teach students and faculty the basics. I recommend it to everyone: [63]http://www.library.ucla.edu/bruinsuccess/ I congratulate the project team at UCLA, led by Pauline Swartz. I'd like to meet her. Linda J. Goff, California State University, Sacramento. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Jack Bernard, University of Michigan: Wendy: I think one of the reasons we see presses balking is that the amount of work (fact gathering, legal analysis, and guesswork) that it takes to make a fair use assessment is considerable. Many academic presses do not have the resources to support such work. In an increasingly contentious climate and with increasingly tight budgets it is not surprising that presses want authors to assume more responsibility for getting permission or "proving" that the law permits the use the want. The transaction costs around fair use analyses can be quite high. With all this in mind, do you have thoughts about how presses might streamline their analysis without burdening ill-prepared academics? Wendy Seltzer: In the short term, it's often cheaper for a press to ask an author to get permission or to cut a quote rather than risk the fair use test. In the long term, though, those practices raise costs by reducing the number of examples of fair use to which courts can look when evaluating "industry practice." I heard one publisher complain about being asked for permission for a 10-word quotation, and my colleague Cory Doctorow was furious about being asked for signed consent to reprint [64]a work he had explicitly dedicated to the public domain. Instead of demanding proof every time, in the same way that many publishers have internal guidelines for the maximum permissible use, publishers should also set floors below which they won't ask for permission -- perhaps a paragraph quotation, to start. If we can establish some clear practices and precedents, we can reduce the costs of future fair use analyses. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Llloyd Davidson, Northwestern Univ.: Robert Greenwald's new film, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, will probably attempt to escape copyright infringement lawsuits against his use of significant excerpts from Fox's news programs by claiming that critical and satirical use of such material is protected. Whether you have seen the movie or not, do you think that such a significant use of material could ever have a chance of being protected from copyright infringement suits based on such a defense? Wendy Seltzer: While I haven't seen the film, I'd argue strongly in its favor as protected fair use -- whatever political angle it takes. I'd similarly defend a critic of Michael Moore's who wanted to use excerpts from Fahrenheit 9/11. So long as the excerpts are used in the process of criticism, and not merely gratuitously, they serve a purpose different from that of the original work and don't substitute for the original's commercial market. In today's multimedia environment, you can't effectively criticize newsmakers without using materials in which they may claim copyright. We need to ensure our critics have access to the same tools and technologies that their targets have. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): We're closing in on 10 minutes left in our Colloquy Live. Thanks to everyone for all the good questions and comments. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Sandora, small liberal arts college: If ten years ago people had challenged the decisions making it so hard to produce course reader packets, would it have made any difference today? Would it have ever been possible to establish enough legal precedence for fair use to be interpreted in the way its plain language intended? It seems too late now. Wendy Seltzer: You're referring to cases like Princeton Univ. Press v. Michigan Document Services, where the court held that the copy-shop's production and sale of coursepacks infringed copyright of some of the books it excerpted. Those decisions, and the American Geophysical v. Texaco case that found the "market for licensing copies" to be a relevant market for fair use analysis, rather than looking at the market for the books or magazines themselves. It's sadly true that the questionable reasoning of these cases has become conventional wisdom even in courts where they're not binding precedent. Arguments about "markets for licenses" tend to become circular fast, because any use _could_ be sold and licensed. Instead, it's important to keep arguing that fair use is not just "market failure," as Wendy Gordon once wrote, but an important public policy that some uses of copyrighted works _should_ be available without pay or permission. "Fair use as First Amendment policy" arguments are stronger in the case of more transformative works (commentary, criticism, and quotations in original scholarship are better than coursepacks), and we should press our arguments harder in those circumstances. _________________________________________________________________ Comment from Frank Forman, U.S. Department of Education: I wrote a piece a couple of years ago (which has nothing to do with my official work) making an economist's case for making it easy for low value works to enter the public domain. The argument is a little complicated and novel to non-economists, as it goes into "transaction costs" and the like. I can only advertise it here: It's "Copyright, Congress, Due Diligence, and Coase" and can be found at [65]http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/FrankForman.html . I hope you find the ideas of some merit and steal them. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): There are 20 minutes left in today's Colloquy Live on Fair Use and Academic Publishing. We have time for more questions and comments, so please keep them coming. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Marshall, Large Private Institution: A researcher wants to conduct an experiment testing the effectiveness of spoofing technologies that the recording industry uses to dilute the universe of copyrighted music that is available for illegal copying on the Internet. The experiment requires that the researcher deploy a device that will roam the Internet and make copies of music files. The copies will be used only for research purposes, destroyed when the data has been collected, and there is no other way for the researcher to collect such data. Fair use? Wendy Seltzer: Fascinating question, and I think indeterminate but likely fair on the four factors. The use is non-commercial and transformative (for a different purpose than listening to music) (plus); the works are creative (minus); the entire works are used, but that's no more than necessary for the purpose (slight minus); there's no effect on the market because these aren't substituting for music purchases and the record companies and music publishers would never sell licenses for such research (strong plus). On balance, I'd say the strong showings on transformative use and lack of market effect tip toward fair use. The researcher will also want to watch out for potential anticircumvention problems if the research encounters technological protection measures. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Bruce L. Rockwood, Prof. of Legal Studies, Bloomsburg University: I teach and write about law and literature, as well as business law. The paperback editions of Shakespeare I use include essays on his "sources" -- essentially borrowings or more from previous plays used without paying a royalty. In the Sixties we called this the "folk process," and in teaching we call it "putting together teaching materials." I am inclined to think copyright law is going in the wrong direction if such forms of creativity are going to be the object of legal action or publishing censorship. Further, I think it facilitates ideological censorship. For example, I would like to use Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, but the publisher informed me they had no plans to bring it in to print any time soon. No doubt it would offend Ashcroft. My position is simple: if the copyright holder isn't keeping a book in print, anyone should be able to reprint it for teaching and research (or pamphleteering, for that matter). Appreciate your comments. Thank you. Wendy Seltzer: Thanks. Your examples show copyright being used in ways that clearly don't "promote the progress of science and useful arts" as the Constitution describes it. As copyright term increase, it takes ever longer for us to be able to build upon past culture as Shakespeare and even Jazz musicians could. Specifically regarding out-of-print works, Rep. Zoe Lofgren has introduced the [66]Public Domain Enhancement Act, following a proposal from Lawrence Lessig, to permit copyrighted works to enter the public domain after 50 years if their copyright holders did not pay a nominal fee to renew the copyrights. You can [67]urge your representatives to co-sponsor the Eldred Act with [68]this letter. For more examples of copyright's divergence from promotion of culture, see Siva Vaidhyanathan's [69]Copyrights and Copywrongs and Lawrence Lessig's [70]The Future of Ideas. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Daniel Marshall, TCI Coll. of Technology: How many copies of a videotape is it Fair Use for an academic library to make for its own use? What if a faculty member owns the videotape? Wendy Seltzer: Outside of fair use, there are additional copyright exceptions for libraries and archives, particularly for materials no longer commercially available. Even libraries can't make copies that substitute for market purchases, though, so if the tape belongs to a faculty member, the library won't have a strong defense for making a copy rather than buying its own. (Under the first sale doctrine, however, the faculty member remains free to give his tape to the library.) _________________________________________________________________ Question from Joe, Coastline Com. College: Can you give some clarification as to what and how much copyrighted material can be used in a classroom? For example: 2 to 4 pages at most per class from various sources. Wendy Seltzer: As I mentioned, there are no bright-line rules, and attempts to create fair use guidelines have generally stalled. The statute specifically says that copying for "teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use)" may be fair, and more than four pages is probably still fair. The most important factor in the evaluation is often the fourth, effect on the market. Making copies of entire short stories out of an anthology or articles out of a magazine might be okay for classroom use, while making copies of an entire textbook meant to be sold to students wouldn't be. (The caselaw has also distinguished between schools making copies and copy shops profiting from selling copies to students.) _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): We have roughly 35 minutes left to go in today's Colloquy Live. We've received some terrific questions thus far -- and we'd love to get more. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Rodney Petersen, EDUCAUSE: It occurs to me that the need to assert "fair use" is often necessary because authors and institutions of higher education have not done a very good job managing copyrights in the first place, especially the allocation of rights between authors and publishers. The "Principles for Balancing Stakeholder Interests in Scholarship Friendly Copyright Practices" ([71]http://www.surf.nl/copyright/keyissues/scholarlycommunication/pri nciples.php) are aimed at "optimizing access to scholarly communications in all formats". Rather than simply relying on "fair use", wouldn't all of the stakeholders (authors, publishers, universities, librarians, and the public) be better off if we followed the principles recommended by this international working conference on copyright and universities? Wendy Seltzer: I agree that academics may be better served by wide dissemination of their works than by the "exclusive rights" copyright permits them to assert. It would be terrific if more institutions made their works more widely available, including under more reader-friendly copyright licenses like those offered by [72]Creative Commons. I don't think that would eliminate the need for fair use, but it could provide greater certainty for authors wanting to quote or otherwise re-use in many instances. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Christine L. Sundt, University of Oregon: The article cited mentions 'infringing copies' but why not 'fair-use copies'? Fair use is meant to be used as a defense and it must be used in order to survive as a right and privilege. This right is clearly stated in the law as a balance against privileges granted to the author. Fair use does not require permission or a license. Isn't obtaining permission to use (quote or interpret) anything and everything unpublished signaling the death of scholarship? When does the denial of permission to quote become censorship? Wendy Seltzer: Yes! If we move from a fair use culture to a permission culture, we lose important freedoms to criticize and reinterpret. We don't want to live in a society where every biography is an "authorized" biography, where every movie review is approved by the producer. Our culture would be far poorer for it, and that's what fair use is supposed to help shield us against. As the Supreme Court said in 1994, holding that 2 Live Crew's parody of Roy Orbisons "Pretty Woman" was fair use: "[T]he unlikelihood that creators of imaginative works will license critical reviews or lampoons of their own productions removes such uses from the very notion of a potential licensing market. 'People ask . . . for criticism, but they only want praise.' S. Maugham, Of Human Bondage 241 (Penguin ed. 1992).... The fact that a parody may impair the market for derivative uses by the very effectiveness of its critical commentary is no more relevant under copyright than the like threat to the original market." _________________________________________________________________ Question from Rich Byrne. Chronicle of Higher Ed: I know that one of the ideas that you've been kicking around to enable academic and small presses to defend themselves when they assert fair use provisions is pooling of financial/legal resources along the lines of insurance. Can you explain how that might work? Wendy Seltzer: "Cost" and "risk" are the most common reasons I hear why authors and publishers don't rely on the fair use defense. Even when it's very likely that a short quotation would be "fair," publishers are afraid to litigate and afraid of the potential damages if they lost. The economics of publishing makes presses and universities unduly risk averse. Too often, then, our fair use rights are lost not in court, but because no one even takes them to court. In other areas of life, we insure against expensive but improbable risks. It strikes me that publishers who share a common interest in expanding the reach of fair use could similarly pool resources to insure against infringement lawsuits where fair use was at issue. Instead of relying on commercial insurers, whose primary goal is limiting financial exposure, an academic collective could put greater weight on academic freedom and scholarly commentary. Together, they could generate the resources to pay legal counsel and litigate suits through to establish more legal precedents favoring fair use. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Richard Altschuler, scholarly book publisher, Gordian Knot Books and other imprints: After reading the Chronicle's article about the "fair use" issue, I wonder, "What would be the penalty if a court found against Indiana Press and Ms. Curtis?" After all, the contested issue is a legitimate one, especially because the amount of disputed text is less than one percent of the entire book. As for the cost of IUP to litigate the issue, why don't they just have the Press editor and/or book editor present the defense case? The defense argument is so clear cut and easy to present, that it seems the Press would incur little or no cost to litigate the issue. Of course, if the penalty would be substantial in case of a loss, then that would be worth the Press and editor considering, from a cost-benefit viewpoint. By the way, would the lawsuit be civil or criminal, or even both? Thank you. Wendy Seltzer: I'd like to see more presses making that analysis, rather than ducking and running at the mere thought of a lawsuit. A victory for fair use could be a substantial benefit to Indiana, Clarke scholars, and the wider academic community. Statutory damages for copyright infringement run from $750 -$30,000 per copyrighted work (statutory damages are awarded without proof of actual harm to the copyright holder, so long as the copyright holder has registered the copyright and proved infringement). Damages can be lowered to $200 for innocent infringement or raised to $150,000 for willful infringement. In clear cases, courts can also award costs and attorneys' fees to the _prevailing_ party -- either the copyright claimant or the fair use defendant. In the recent case by Mattel against artist Tom Forsythe, who put Barbie into enchiladas and margarita glasses, the court ordered Mattel to pay Forsythe nearly $2 million in fees and costs because it ruled his work was clear fair use. Copyright infringement suits are almost always civil, between two private parties. The justice department can prosecute those who infringe for commercial purposes or financial gain, but those are usually "piracy" cases involving wholesale reproduction, not quotation. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Siva Vaidhyanathan, NYU: Didn't the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act place all unpublished material created before January 1, 1978 into the public domain if it was not published by Jan. 1 2003? Therefore, is not all the material in question in the public domain anyway? Wendy Seltzer: You're right that the Bono Act gave term limits to copyrights in unpublished pre-1978 works, but unfortunately for the public domain, it gave those works until the later of 2003 or the end of the terms they would have gotten if created post-Bono. So Rebcecca Clarke's estate gets life+70 years -- until 2049 -- in all unpublished works. [You can see copyright serving its incentive function, because of course, Clarke was posthumously induced to write by that term extension... NOT.] _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): Two of the first questions that we have received deal specifically with the story that I wrote last week, [73]"Silent Treatment" -- about Indiana University Press's withdrawal of a book on Anglo-American composer Rebecca Clarke after a claim of copyright infringement by the holder of copyright to Clarke's unpublished writings. _________________________________________________________________ Wendy Seltzer: Thanks for inviting me to join you. First let me give a few notes about fair use, an important part of the public-private balance of copyright. It is now codified at Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act as a limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Fair uses are fair without the permission of the copyright holder, even against that permission. The law sets out a four-factor test: 1) the purpose and character of the use (non-commercial or commercial; transformative or mere duplication) 2) the nature of the copyrighted work (fiction or nonfiction, published or unpublished) 3) the amount used in proportion to the whole 4) the effect on the market for the work (See [74]http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ) More factors in your favor makes a finding of fair use more likely, but the law gives us no bright lines or percentages. That's part of the reason why Lawrence Lessig has been saying that "fair use is merely the right to hire a lawyer." I should also note that the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other public interest organizations do try to make it easier to hire a pro bono lawyer in fair use cases. We think it's critically important to preserve fair use as an actual, not merely hypothetical defense. _________________________________________________________________ Richard Byrne (Moderator): Good afternoon. Welcome to this week's Colloquy Live. My name is Richard Byrne. I am the editor of the Chronicle's research and publication section. Our chat today concerns Fair Use and Academic Publishing. Copyright laws protect the rights of authors, but at times they also have bedeviled scholars' research efforts. The "fair use" provisions of copyright law should provide scope for scholars to do their work and stay on the right side of the law, but changes to copyright law and strong challenges to fair use have made both scholars and academic presses skittish about asserting fair use. Our guest today, Wendy Seltzer, is a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She will be answering questions today about the uses that fair use can be put to in an academic setting, and she will also discuss a few ideas that she has been kicking around about how scholars and academic presses might assert fair use provisions of copyright law in a more active fashion. Thank you, Wendy, for agreeing to appear on our chat today. Welcome. References 47. http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2004/07/copyright/chat_manual.php3 48. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ 49. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/ 50. http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html 51. http://www.chillingeffects.org/ 52. http://www.chillingeffects.org/fairuse/ 53. http://www.chillingeffects.org/fairuse/faq 54. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726446/bibliotrackcom 55. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594200068/bibliotrackcom 56. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573928895/bibliotrackcom 57. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814788076/bibliotrackcom 58. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465089844/bibliotrackcom 59. mailto:wendy at eff.org 60. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/ 61. http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/ 62. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html#504.c_2_i 63. http://www.library.ucla.edu/bruinsuccess/ 64. http://www.craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt 65. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/FrankForman.html 66. http://eldred.cc/ 67. http://eldred.cc/howyoucanhelp/ 68. http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2853 69. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814788076/bibliotrackcom 70. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726446/bibliotrackcom 71. http://www.surf.nl/copyright/keyissues/scholarlycommunication/principles.php 72. http://creativecommons.org/ 73. http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i45/45a01401.htm 74. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html From isaacsonj at hotmail.com Fri Jul 16 18:47:15 2004 From: isaacsonj at hotmail.com (Joel Isaacson) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:47:15 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 Message-ID: >From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." >Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >To: The new improved paleopsych list , >HowlBloom at aol.com >CC: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: Hawking surprises GR 17 >Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 08:07:24 -0400 > >My personal view -- > >The world is learning a lot here about the internal logic of a nice >imaginary >mathematical world. > >This is not the first piece of big news. (Forgive me for feeling an analogy >to the big news the TV also reports about >Brittany Spears, who is also good about such things.) > >The second edition of the short history of time repudiated the most >interesting insights of the first. >Huw Price (whose stuff is worth googling) was clearly very disappointed, >and I agree with his assessment. >The best stuff received slight frowns from the establishment and the vested >interests, and the eagerness >with which Hawking accommodated illogic... well, it reminds me of >discussions I have had with my wife about >George Tenet. > >Back to the trenches... > >Best, > > Paul > Yeah... Huw Price's problems with Hawking go back to 1989... following is a delightful paper by Price =======>>>> [Draft of an article published as ?A Point on the Arrow of Time?, Nature, 20 July 1989, 181-182.] HAWKING'S HISTORY OF TIME: A PLEA FOR THE MISSING PAGE Huw Price One of the outstanding achievements of recent cosmology has been to offer some prospect of a unified explanation of temporal asymmetry. The explanation is in two main parts, and runs something like this. First, the various asymmetries we observe are all thermodynamic in origin ? all products of the fact that we live in an epoch in which the universe is far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Second, this thermodynamic disequilibrium is associated with the condition of the universe very soon after the Big Bang ? the essential point being that in the rapidly expanding universe of the time, gravity is able to create organisation much faster than other processes can destroy it. The stars, galaxies and other forms of organisation we find in the present universe are all products of this early period. Such concentrated energy sources themselves make possible the kinds of asymmetric phenomena with which we are most familiar, such as life itself. If this explanation proves to be right it will surely rank as one of the most impressive achievements in the whole of natural philosophy. Where else do we find this breathtaking scale, this extraordinary conjunction of fundamental physics, the first moments of Creation, the possibility of life and the basic character of human experience? And it is very much a contemporary achievement: even if its roots go back on one side to the investigation of time asymmetry in nineteenth century statistical mechanics, and on the other to Hubble's discovery in the 1920's of the expansion of the universe, the body of the picture has only begun to be filled in in the last twenty or thirty years. This fascinating story has recently been given some well-deserved publicity in Stephen Hawking's bestseller, A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988) ? well-deserved, not least, because Hawking himself is responsible for a considerable part of the story as it presently stands. Hawking's book is a clear and exciting guide to the recent search for a cosmological understanding of temporal asymmetry ? a scientific thriller. Despite its merits, however, I think it commits one of the worst sins of that literary genre. The last pages offer us a surprising denoument, but fail to explain its most puzzling aspect. It is as Page 2 if we are assured that the butler did it, without being told how he overcame the evident obstacles (the fact that he was already incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs at the time, for example). If the omission goes unnoticed by the casual reader, it is simply because he or she has not been told enough of the story to see that the climax is so surprising. Such a reader is doubly deprived, for mystery is the heart of a good detective story. In the case of the story of cosmology and temporal asymmetry, the mystery lies in the fact that the attempt to explain thermodynamic asymmetry in terms of the expansion of the universe from the Big Bang seems to lead to an inevitable and unpalatable dilemma. I'll describe this dilemma in a moment. In effect, it's rather as if the clues point overwhelmingly to two possible suspects, but one turns out to have a perfect alibi and the other to have no possible motive. We can see perfectly well what the two possible solutions are, but individually they both seem untenable. Hawking's popular account of his own contribution serves to mark this dilemma, in that he describes how he was led to change his mind about which of the possible conclusions is the right one. In the process, however, he appears to gloss over the difficulty that has long plagued the conclusion he finally opts for. So it is not clear whether he has found some way around this difficulty, or whether he has perhaps overlooked it. Either way, some clarification seems in order. The dilemma stems from the fact that the universe may not always expand. If the density of matter is sufficiently great, gravity will eventually reverse the expansion, and the entire universe will collapse to a black hole. What would then happen to entropy? Would entropy decrease as the universe contracted? Or would it go on increasing, to reach its maximum value in the final singularity? Both answers have seemed unsatisfactory, though for quite different reasons. The problem with the former answer is that it seems to entail that all the ordinary time asymmetries would be reversed as the universe begins to contract. The universe would enter an age of miracles. Radiation would converge on stars, apples would compose themselves in decompost heaps and leap into trees, and humanoids would arise from their own ashes, grow younger, and become unborn. These humanoids wouldn't see things this way, of course. Their psychological time sense would also be reversed, so that from their Page 3 point of view their world would look much as ours does to us. The difficulty really lies in managing the transition. They lie in our future, as we lie in theirs. Various sorts of paradoxes seem to arise in the middle. I won't try to describe these problems here. (Interested readers may consult P. C. W. Davies, The Physics of Time Asymmetry, Surrey University Press, 1974, particularly sections 4.5, 5.6 and 7.4; and R. Penrose, 'Singularities and time-asymmetry', in Hawking and Israel, (eds.), General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 581-638, section 12.2.6.) For the moment let me simply note that we can't avoid the problem by supposing (as on present evidence may well be the case) that the universe never contracts. Even if the universe as a whole never re-collapses to a singularity, there is now a very strong case that parts of it do, as certain massive objects collapse to black holes. Does entropy decrease in these cases? If we say that it does, the same sorts of paradoxes seem to arise. What then of the alternative answer, namely that entropy does not decrease as one approaches a future singularity (either the collapse of the universe as a whole, or the collapse of some part of it)? The problem with this answer is that it makes it mysterious why entropy does decrease in the other direction, as one approaches the singularity at the beginning of the universe. The difficulty stems from the time-symmetric character of the physical theories involved. If these theories imply that entropy was low in the region of this initial singularity, then in virtue of their time-symmetric character, it seems that they should also imply that entropy will be low towards a final singularity ? i.e., that entropy decreases as the universe contracts. So if we reject that option, we seem forced to conclude that physical theory does not explain the low initial entropy of our universe. We can't explain temporal asymmetry, in other words, but simply have to accept it as an extratheoretical 'initial condition'. This then is the dilemma: either we have to admit reversal of the thermodynamic arrow of time in the case of local or universal gravitational collapse; or temporal asymmetry turns out to be inexplicable after all, since we can't account for the low initial entropy of the universe as a more or less inevitable consequence of our best physical theory of the universe as a whole. The dilemma is particularly acute for Hawking, for he Page 4 has an additional reason to avoid resorting to unexplained boundary conditions. For him their effect is not simply to make time asymmetry inexplicable. They also conflict with the spirit of his 'no boundary proposal', namely that one restrict possible histories for the universe to those that 'are finite in extent but have no boundaries, edges, or singularities.' (BHT, p. 148) Hawking describes how initially he thought that this proposal favoured the former horn of the above dilemma: 'I thought at first that the no boundary condition did indeed imply that disorder would decrease in the contracting phase.' (BHT, p. 150) He changed his mind, however, in response to objections from two colleagues: 'I realized that I had made a mistake: the no boundary condition implied that disorder would in fact continue to increase during the contraction. The thermodynamic and psychological arrows of time would not reverse when the universe begins to contract or inside black holes.' (BHT, p. 150) In an earlier article in New Scientist (9 July 1987, pp. 46-9) Hawking describes his change of mind in this way: 'I then realised that although it was possible for the Universe to contract back to a smooth and ordered state, it was much more likely to contract to a very disordered state, because there are so many more disordered states. Thus the thermodynamic arrow of time will not reverse. It will continue to point in the same direction.' (p. 49) This change of mind enables Hawking's proposal to avoid the difficulties associated with reversing the thermodynamic arrow of time. What is not clear is how he avoids the alternative difficulties associated with not reversing the thermodynamic arrow of time. That is, Hawking does not explain how his proposal can imply that entropy is low near the big bang, without equally implying that it is low near the 'big crunch' (or in a black hole). The problem was to get a temporally asymmetric consequence from a symmetric physical theory. Hawking suggests that he has done it, but doesn't explain how. Readers are entitled to feel a little dissatisfied. As it stands, Hawking's account reads a bit like a suicide verdict on a man who has been stabbed in the back: not an impossible feat, perhaps, but we'd certainly like to know how it was done. Page 5 To my admittedly unqualified eye, there seem to be three possible resolutions of this mystery. The first, obviously, is that Hawking has found a way round the difficulty, but hasn't told us what it is. I think that the easiest way to get an idea of what he would have to have established is to think of three classes of possible universes: those which are smooth and ordered at both temporal extremities, those which are ordered at one extremity but disordered at the other, and those which are disordered at both extremities. If Hawking is right, then he has found a way to exclude the last class, without thereby excluding the second class. In other words, he has found a way to exclude disorder at one temporal extremity of the universe, without excluding disorder at both extremities. Why is this combination the important one? Because if we can't exclude universes with disorder at both extremities, then we haven't explained why our universe doesn't have disorder at both extremities ? we know that it has order at at least one temporal extremity, namely the extremity we think of as at the beginning of time. And if we do exclude disorder at both extremities, we are back to the answer that Hawking gave up, namely that order will increase when the universe contracts. Has Hawking shown that the second class of universal histories, the order-disorder universes, are overwhelmingly probable? If so, then he hasn't yet explained to his lay readers how the trick was turned. What seems clear is that it can't be turned by reflecting on the consequences of the no boundary principle for the state of one temporal extremity of the universe, considered in isolation. For if that worked for the 'initial' state it would also work for the 'final' state; unless of course the argument had illicitly appealed to temporal asymmetry, in applying some constraint to the 'initial' state that it didn't apply to the 'final' state. This is an important point. When we're trying to explain temporal asymmetry, we are not allowed for example to put any weight on the idea that the Big Bang occurs at the start of the universe. After all, how could we tell that we aren't mistaken, and that the Big Bang isn't really the finish of the universe? We must assume that the truth of the matter is that it is neither, and that our ordinary inclination to treat it as the start is just one manifestation of the temporal asymmetry we're trying to explain. Page 6 Hawking thus needs an argument that excludes disorder-disorder universes (i.e., universes with high entropy at both temporal extremities), without also excluding orderdisorder universes (or, what comes to the same thing, disorder-order universes). The above point suggests that it is impossible to get such an argument from the no boundary proposal (or indeed from any other time-symmetric physical theory), simply by reflecting on its consequences for one temporal extremity. In virtue of the underlying theoretical time symmetry, a consequence for one extremity is also a consequence for the other. What is needed is therefore some more general argument, to the effect that disorder-disorder universes are impossible (or at least overwhelmingly improbable). It needs to be shown that almost all possible universes have at least one ordered temporal extremity ? or equivalently, at most one disordered extremity. (As Hawking points out, it will then be quite legitimate to invoke a weak anthropic argument to explain why we regard the ordered extremity thus guaranteed as an initial extremity. In virtue of its consequences for temporal asymmetry elsewhere in the universe, conscious observers are bound to regard this state of order as lying in their past.) That's the first possibility: Hawking has such an argument, but hasn't explained to his lay public what it is. As I see it, the other possibilities are that Hawking has made one of two mistakes. Either his no boundary proposal does exclude disorder at both temporal extremities of the universe, in which case his mistake was to change his mind about contraction leading to decreasing entropy; or the proposal doesn't exclude disorder at either temporal extremity of the universe, in which case his mistake is to think that the no boundary proposal does away with the need for initial conditions in explaining temporal asymmetry. The former mistake would be a more pleasing outcome than the latter. For one thing, it would restore the appealing symmetry in time, which Hawking says he originally saw as one of the attractions of the no boundary proposal ? a symmetry which is lost if contraction needn't lead to decreasing entropy. More importantly, it would mean that Hawking's explanation of time asymmetry would still be intact ? a much happier Page 7 conclusion than the latter possibility, the discovery that the no boundary proposal simply fails to deliver its promised benefits, at least in this respect. What is more, the former mistake might itself have a nice explanation, in terms of the temporally asymmetric character of our ordinary view of the world. One of the manifestations of this ordinary asymmetry is that we regard it as 'natural' for physical systems to be governed by initial constraints, but as highly unnatural for them to be governed by final constraints. We expect events to be determined by their past, but not by their future. Accordingly, we find it much easier to make sense of a universe evolving 'from' tightly constrained initial conditions, than of it evolving evolving 'towards' similarly constrained final conditions. So it would seem odd to say that the universal histories whose discovery led Hawking to change his mind about entropy in the contracting universe ? those histories that start with order and finish with disorder ? are excluded because they violate a final condition stemming from the no boundary condition. It seems miraculous that the course of the universe at a particular time could be bound by conditions many billions of years in the future. However, this seeming oddity is surely just a manifestation of our ordinary asymmetric way of looking at time. If we look at things from an atemporal perspective, as we need to if we are to explain temporal asymmetry in a non-circular way, then the oddity vanishes. As I noted earlier, from this perspective it makes no more sense to say that the universe really 'begins' at one temporal extremity and 'evolves' towards the other, than vice versa. So initial and final constraints stand and fall together. If we're entitled to one then we're entitled to the other. To pay lip service to the need for such an atemporal perspective is one thing, however; to be faithful in practice is quite another. This being so, it is conceivable that Hawking's concession to his colleagues does rest on a breach of faith at precisely this point ? on a failure to insist that final constraints are as legitimate as initial constraints in narrowing the class of possible world histories. To show that entropy decreases in a recontracting universe, we don't need to show that the initial constraints themselves entail that entropy behaves in this way ? that they themselves so restrict the class of possible Page 8 histories of the universe. We only need to show that the initial and final constraints jointly restrict the possible histories in the appropriate way. Given that much, and of course a plausible argument for both the initial and final constraints, there's nothing mysterious going on. Only a lingering attachment to the ordinary asymmetric perspective makes this use of final conditions look in any way suspicious. (It is true that there is still the mystery of what happens 'at the changeover', when entropy changes direction. But Hawking presumably regards this as a surmountable problem, since he was earlier prepared to advocate this view.) It may be unfair of me to suggest that Hawking's concession to his colleagues might rest on this sort of conceptual mistake. If so, I apologise, and can only say in my defence that I'm a philosopher, and philosophers and physicists have a longstanding tendency to under-estimate one another. (The tendency is illustrated by Hawking's own gentle dig at twentieth century philosophy in the concluding pages of A Brief History of Time). But I don't think that it is unfair to claim that there is a tantalizing gap in Hawking's popular account of his endeavour to explain the asymmetry of time. I'll happily accept Hawking's verdict, and go back to the analysis of language (or whatever we philosophers do these days), if only he will tell us how the butler pulled it off. Department of Philosophy Research School of Social Sciences Australian National University Canberra Australia 2601 From guavaberry at earthlink.net Fri Jul 16 20:10:30 2004 From: guavaberry at earthlink.net (K.E.) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:10:30 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: CHE Colloquy Live: Fair Use and Academic Publishing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.0.20040716160837.031f6230@wheresmymailserver.com> Hey Frank, this was great! best, Karen At 11:55 AM 7/16/2004, you wrote: >Colloquy Live: Fair Use and Academic Publishing >The Chronicle of Higher Education > >[I made a comment, mentioning my article, "Copyright, Congress, Due >Diligence, and Coase." Thanks to Karen for putting it on her site. May >it's ideas spread!] > > Wednesday, July 14, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time > Indiana University Press's withdrawal of a scholarly book is just the > latest example of copyright claims trumping scholarship. Just what use > are "fair use" provisions in copyright law if presses lack the > wherewithal to challenge such claims? What steps can be taken by > scholars to protect fair use? > _________________________________________________________________ > > The newest postings appear at the top of the page. > _________________________________________________________________ > > Wendy Seltzer: > Thanks again! See you all online. > _________________________________________________________________ > > Richard Byrne (Moderator): > That's a wrap for today's Colloquy Live, Once again, I want to > thank Wendy Seltzer for her expertise and enthusiasm in discussing > these tricky and contentious issues. > _________________________________________________________________ > > > > Comment from Frank Forman, U.S. Department of Education: > I wrote a piece a couple of years ago (which has nothing to do > with my official work) making an economist's case for making it easy > for low value works to enter the public domain. The argument is a > little complicated and novel to non-economists, as it goes into > "transaction costs" and the like. I can only advertise it here: It's > "Copyright, Congress, Due Diligence, and Coase" and can be found at > [65]http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/FrankForman.html . I hope you > find the ideas of some merit and steal them. > _________________________________________________________________ > > >References > > 47. http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2004/07/copyright/chat_manual.php3 > 48. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/ > 49. http://fairuse.stanford.edu/ > 50. http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html > 51. http://www.chillingeffects.org/ > 52. http://www.chillingeffects.org/fairuse/ > 53. http://www.chillingeffects.org/fairuse/faq > 54. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726446/bibliotrackcom > 55. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594200068/bibliotrackcom > 56. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573928895/bibliotrackcom > 57. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814788076/bibliotrackcom > 58. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465089844/bibliotrackcom > 59. mailto:wendy at eff.org > 60. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/ > 61. http://www.copyright.iupui.edu/ > 62. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/504.html#504.c_2_i > 63. http://www.library.ucla.edu/bruinsuccess/ > 64. http://www.craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt > 65. http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Internet/FrankForman.html > 66. http://eldred.cc/ > 67. http://eldred.cc/howyoucanhelp/ > 68. http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=2853 > 69. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814788076/bibliotrackcom > 70. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375726446/bibliotrackcom > 71. > http://www.surf.nl/copyright/keyissues/scholarlycommunication/principles.php > 72. http://creativecommons.org/ > 73. http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i45/45a01401.htm > 74. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> The Educational CyberPlayGround http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ National Children's Folksong Repository http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/Repository/NCFR.html Hot List of Schools Online and Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/index.html 7 Hot Site Awards New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink, USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> From checker at panix.com Sat Jul 17 11:42:18 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 07:42:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] H-N: How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's Human Accomplishment by Mark Roberts Message-ID: How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's Human Accomplishment by Mark Roberts http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html 4.3.28 [Thanks to Ole Peter for this. I stopped reading Human Nature regularly ever since Ian Pitchford had to give up his weekly digests due to his own time constraints. He continues to run the Yahoo! group evolutionary-psychology, which more or less emptied Human Evolution and Behavior (which Howard Bloom characterized as "*the* place to be on the Net") after that list got bogged down in high decibel arguments over race and Jews. Ian has shown an amazing talent for shutting down discussions at just the right point, esp. since many of his list's participants are college professors and liable to get into trouble for straying away from the strait and narrow.] Evolutionary Psychology 2: 52-65 Book Review How Uncivilized! Reconfiguring Narratives of Innateness in Murray's Human Accomplishment. A review of Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Mark S. Roberts, Department of Philosophy, Suffolk County Community College, Ammerman Campus, 533 College Road, Selden, NY 11784-2899, USA. Charles Murray, the most influential social thinker in America today, [[9]1] has published a new book that purports to trace the provenance of genius and accomplishment in the arts and sciences from 800 B.C.E to 1950. The book fails to present a scientifically plausible, logically convincing account of the subject at hand. It depends on highly selective evidence to support the various central claims, and this often-spurious evidence is reinforced with a welter of confusing and sometimes superfluous statistical data that seems beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent reader, and, in some cases, I suspect, the statistical specialist. Moreover, Murray tends to consistently eliminate, diminish or overlook much of the evidence that would weaken or entirely refute his case for absolute Western superiority in both the arts and sciences. But, even given its flaws, Human Accomplishment is an unmitigated success, a brilliant shining star in a movement that extends back nearly two centuries to the nascent pseudo-scientific ideologies of "scientific" racism and biodeterminism. The reason it is such a roaring success is that it does not, in the end, intend to illuminate, enlarge, edify or inform, but, rather, to demonstrate and establish the intrinsic pre-eminence of a small group of elites, to differentiate human accomplishment on the grounds of racial and intellectual superiority--which it in no short measure succeeds in doing. It is precisely from this perspective that I wish to examine and critically evaluate Human Accomplishment. The Development of Racist Ideology Among the several caveats appearing at the beginning of Human Accomplishment, Murray stresses that the reader should not confuse his book with those that attempt to give a historical account of the fall and rise of the West--the type of account usually associated with writers like Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. [[10]2] In this regard he is entirely correct. The book is clearly not an attempt to trace, in historical terms, the trajectory of the fall and rise of the West, or to explain Western preeminence from the perspective of comparative history. But, even so, the work is positioned unambiguously in a set of interrelated traditions that aspire to explain the supremacy of Western, primarily white, culture--those of "scientific" racism, inner constitution, innateness, and, ultimately, biodeterminism. The idea of innateness is hardly a modern invention, as one can find coherent expressions of it throughout the history of Western thought. Aristotle, for example, argued that human difference in intellect and therefore worldly position was entirely the result of a fixed natural order. This characterization of innateness is perhaps most evident in Aristotle's justification of human slavery. Although human slavery had existed long before Aristotle, and chattel slavery (the ownership of human beings as a form of property) was common from at least 500 BCE, he was the first to develop a systematic philosophical position regarding the nature of the slave and his or her station in the order of things. Briefly stated, Aristotle's theory of slavery is derived largely from his political thought. For him, the Greek political paradigm was the ultimate indicator of civilization. Greek culture, he argued, had evolved to the point where laws, self-rule and justice had replaced the chaotic barbarism of much of the rest of the ancient world. This idea of the capacity to rule politically extended to individuals and "elements" as well. Civil society was viewed as divided into those capable of ruling and those only capable of being ruled. This distinction also involves Aristotle's notion of intellect as opposed to physical strength. Some individuals have a preponderance of intellect, others physical strength. Since intellect is supreme in political life, those having mere physical power will naturally fall under the sway of those who exercise intellect: "an element able `by virtue of its intelligence to exercise fore-thought,' and an element `able by virtue of its bodily power to do what the other element plans.'" [[11]3] Slavery, for Aristotle, is thus a more or less accurate reflection of the natural state of things. Some rise up in nature to rule, others are there but to serve. And the difference is rooted politically in the natural ability to move from barbaric forms of governance to more sophisticated ones, particularly those like the Greek polis. Indeed, the Greek political and civil paradigm was the main indication of the difference between civilized and brutish regimes. Brutish regimes lack the faculty of intellect, living in a primitive state based on natural affinity and sensuality: And of foolish people those who by nature are thoughtless and live their senses are brutish, like some races of the distant barbarians, while those who are so as a result of disease (e.g., epilepsy) or of madness are morbid. . . It is plain that some incontinence is brutish and some morbid, while only that which corresponds to human self-indulgence is continence simply. [[12]4] Aristotle also derives this idea of natural superiority and inferiority from his conception of the relationship between soul and body, since the soul has a natural superiority over the body, and that superiority translates into a principle of necessity: "And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient." What Aristotle is getting at is the "fact" that inferiority is the result of the natural and metaphysical state of things, and therefore irreversible. Those who are born superior will remain superior by virtue of an undeviating, inevitable natural order: "from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." Slaves, like women and lower animals, are thus no more than accurate reflections of their natural inferiority, their set place in the universal order of things. But the ineluctable order of things, this inevitable ranking of individuals, is not at all "natural" in any conventional sense of the term. Rather, it is a fully constructed system, devised and articulated by Aristotle himself. Based on his priorities and biases, the system is designed to coincide exactly with and therefore justify the prevailing Greek political and social structure. Slaves are beneficial to the expansion and development of Greek culture, so they are deemed to be inferior and therefore altogether suppressible--in many respects, even animal like. And this inferior position is guaranteed by the sacrosanct order of nature. By the nineteenth century the natural order of innateness emphasized by Aristotle was transformed into a biosocial principle. It became a standard in calculating the relative worth of particular people, races and civilizations. Though many utilized the standard in some form or other--including Kant, Lessing, Linnaeus, and the great anatomist Cuvier--it was not directly applied to Western civilization, i.e., white culture and achievement, until the advent of racist ideology in the work of the nineteenth century social and political thinker Arthur Compte de Gobineau. As a racist ideologue, Gobineau did not fall back on classical social and political theory, nor was he concerned overly to find a theory of racial difference in the philosophical tradition as a whole. Rather, he sought a new explanatory racist ideology in what he conceived to be a kind of collective natural, "internal" history. For Gobineau, the peoples composing a nation were pulsating with a certain "germ," which carried their destiny. This "germ," though subject to certain types of invasive degeneration, was irreversible and inevitable, sheltered from outside change, coursing through the blood of a particular race or people. Gobineau also rejected the idea of applying external data - particularly, cases of individual achievement within a race--to the explanation of racial inequality, basing inequality on purely physical and mental characteristics that could be determined empirically. The environment had virtually no effect on individual capacity. Each individual within a given racial strain had an innate ability to achieve certain levels of culture and civilization: "The true health of a people and the cause of life and death were to be found, as Kant and Lessing had observed, in `inner constitution.'" [[13]5] Given his "empirical" method, what Gobineau referred to as "elements of civilization" could be classified and expressed in "objective" terms, such as relative proportions. In H. Hotz's detailed "Analytic Introduction" to the English translation of Gobineau's Essai sur l'in?galit? des races humains (1853-55), a chart appears that divides the races into three categories: intellect, animal propensities, and moral manifestations. The relative disproportion of these characteristics in the various races is instructive in understanding Gobineau's general theory, as well as in early biodeterministic thought. The white race is classified as having a "vigorous intellect," "strong" animal propensities, and "highly cultivated" moral manifestations," while the black race has a "feeble" intellect, "partially latent" moral manifestations, but "very strong" animal propensities." With an "objective" unilinear scale to determine the relative humanness of individual races, those judged lowest on the scale were subject to comparisons with the mindless, though instinctually proficient, brutes and beasts. In effect, they were doomed to an imposed set of limitations that could be calculated with mathematical precision. And the only salvation for these lower races was the intervention of the white race, which contained within it the germ of perfection: Such is the lesson of history. It shows us that all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of our species. [[14]6] The cultural and political fate of a civilization, then, is largely dependent on its racial composition. The more white germ stock that a civilization can preserve, the greater the possibility of advancement. The greater a civilization is contaminated by impure blood--i.e., that of the black or yellow races--the less the chance of advancement. The attractiveness of such a notion of racial accomplishment--particularly, to the prevailing Teutonic types--set off a wave of parallel racist conceptions of culture and advancement. Gobineau had generated what at least appeared to be an objective means of classifying and comparing racial characteristics and human development: the exigencies of environment and external conditions in general had been largely eliminated from his calculation, thus rendering human achievement an incontrovertible "fact" of inner constitution. The more scientifically subtle aspects of innateness, however, were left to others--particularly, Paul Broca, the famed French surgeon and anthropologist. His positivistic method in the sciences expanded Gobineau's theory to include newly discovered ways of calculating innate difference. Broca rejected virtually all forms of speculative science, placing his faith in a positivistic, data based approach to scientific research. This fondness for objectivity was not, however, always present in his own research. Most of the results of his anthropological and craniological experiments were simply disguised confirmations of one of the dominant prejudices of the time, that is, white males, Teutonic types, in the vocabulary of racism, were at the very top of the intelligence pyramid and women and the lower races occupied the bottom. His method, based on these prejudices, consisted in formulating a conclusion commensurate with this bias, and then manipulating the facts to fit that conclusion. After having reviewed Broca's research for an extended period of time, Stephen Jay Gould reached the following conclusion: I found a definite pattern in his methods. He traversed the gap between fact and conclusion by what may be the usual route - predominately in reverse. Conclusions came first and Broca's conclusions were the shared assumptions of most successful white males during this period--themselves on top by the good fortune of nature, and women, blacks, and the poor people below. His facts were reliable (unlike Morton's), but they were gathered selectively and then manipulated unconsciously in the service of prior conclusions. By this route, the conclusions achieved not only the blessings of science, but the prestige of numbers. [[15]7] Indeed, what Broca had really discovered was a method by which one could make just about any favored conclusion seem correct. Whether the results were arrived at validly or not was of little significance; what counted was that the so-called facts were correctly derived, properly documented, and, most importantly, elaborately quantified. Numbers became a sort of underlying, unchallenged truth of the research, and if one could generate impressive enough statistics regarding the object of inquiry, the validity of the conclusions would inevitably follow. Needless to say, many, many variations of this self-serving statistical method issued from Broca's original approach. Comparative anatomists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, experimental psychologists and the like generated an immense quantity of statistical data related to universal white supremacy in every conceivable field of knowledge and endeavor. Blacks, women and other races were "proven" to be inferior in the minutest detail, with the "irrefutable" support of objectively derived statistical data. The nineteenth century culmination of this wave of statistical proofs of human worth occurred with the work of the English natural scientist and biometrician, Sir Francis Galton. Galton articulated the modern theory of eugenics in an extended article turned book, entitled Hereditary Genius (1869). The gist of the book is that genius, of course, was hereditary, and that those possessed of it should be encouraged to propagate among their peers. Galton even encouraged a national exam to determine genius, whose high-scorers would be brought together, married at Westminster Abbey, and sent off to breed new generations of British leaders, men of genius, and captains of industry. This eugenicist trend led to the creation of various statistical procedures, most of which were intended to provide empirical data about the desirability of inbreeding the genetically superior. With a simmering brew of quasi-science, arcane statistics, and socially agreeable theory, Galton went on to establish entities like the Anthropometric Laboratory for the study of genetic variation, which, in the end, simply contributed to a somewhat new, statistically oriented means of measuring inferiority, and thus reinforcing the perpetual myth of white male superiority. What is Charles Murray's Stake in Innateness? Obviously, it is impossible to cover thoroughly the entire history of innateness theory here--a theory that branches off into several disciplines and includes important figures in experimental social science, like H. H. Goddard, Havelock Ellis, and R. M. Yerkes. Suffice to say that Charles Murray has followed a considerable tradition of firm believers in the use and unequivocal truth of statistical analysis in assigning inferiority to certain types and races. Although there are no doubt instances of this approach in Murray's earlier work on social welfare, Losing Ground, the most elaborate demonstration of an appeal to statistics as means of black derogation appears in The Bell Curve, co-authored with Richard Herrnstein. In his critique of The Bell Curve, Gould characterizes the effort as one that "contains no new arguments and presents no compelling data to support its anachronistic social Darwinism." The "social Darwinism" argument so obvious in Murray and Herrnstein's text lands full force on blacks, assuming that IQ test data is sufficient proof of inferior intelligence in the black race, and that, further, this "incontrovertible" statistical proof empowers an elite class to abandon all efforts to improve the standing of a "black underclass" in society, even sanctions their eventual isolation and, in the end, their internment: Over the next decades, it will become broadly accepted by the cognitive elite that the people we now refer to as the underclass are in that condition through no fault of their own but because of inherent shortcomings about which little can be done.. . .In short, by custodial state, we have in mind a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business. In its less benign forms, the solutions will become more and more totalitarian. . .One possibility is that a variety of old police practices--especially the stop and frisk--will quietly come back into use in new guises. New prisons will continue to be built, and the cells already available will be used more efficiently to incarcerate dangerous offenders. . .Technology will provide new options for segregating and containing criminals, as the electronic bracelets are being used to enforce house arrest (or maybe "neighborhood arrest"). . .The underclass will become even more concentrated spatially than it is today. [[16]8] This harsh solution, however, is built upon several false assumptions. To begin with, Murray and Herrnstein, following the abovementioned tradition of innateness, suppose that IQ is a fully objectifiable entity that is situated somewhere in the human brain--in short, they reify intelligence. Arguments against this move abound. Gould ranks the reification of intelligence as one of the two deadly sins of innateness theory, by arguing that intelligence is really a vast array of skills and abilities, immeasurable by any single standard. The psychologist Howard Gardner, likewise, offers a theory of multiple intelligences, employing a complex set of physical and mental skills as standards for measurement. And, more recently, studies on emotional intelligence have been advanced in the behavioral sciences. Another error of The Bell Curve authors lies in their assertion that human worth can actually and accurately be ranked on a unilinear scale. This process of unilinear ranking consists of extrapolating data from various statistical protocols and then arranging them in an ascending order--in this case, ranking blacks well below whites and other groups in intelligence. But their conclusions are, once again, based on a false assumption: that within group heritability can explain differences between groups. Gould explains this fundamental error as the "central fallacy of using the substantial heritability of within group IQ (among whites, for example) as an explanation for average differences between groups (whites vs. blacks, for example)." [[17]9] The problem with this sort of manipulation is that environmental factors affecting each group vary significantly. To argue that lower black IQ scores are strictly the result of heritable traits within the group overlooks the fact that each of the groups exists under largely different socio-economic, educational, dietary, etc. conditions. If these conditions were improved over a period of time, the IQ disparity might well also improve, which was the case with the minus-fifteen percent immigrant populations entering the U.S. at the turn of century. In the end, however, Murray and Herrnstein are not really concerned to produce an objective and scientifically sound basis for IQ comparison. Rather, their interest lies fully in using statistical analysis to support a social imperative: class distinctions are not determined by history or socio-economic conditions, but are the result of innate characteristics that are entirely unalterable through external means. Class is a given of biology, and race is a function of biological givens. In short, the white race has earned its dominance, not by repression, exclusion, preference, force or discrimination, but by some irrevocable genetic superiority, one that is buried deep within the minute ganglia and neurons of the human brain. The Uses of Innateness in Human Accomplishment Although Murray does not use IQ statistics in Human Accomplishment to determine Western superiority in culture and science, he does nonetheless create an "irrevocable given" to solidify his position. This time, the incontrovertible proof lies in a vast compilation of entries from source biographies, encyclopedias, and dictionaries of prominent individuals throughout both the ancient and modern history of world science, art, and culture in general. In fact, Murray is able to identify no less than 4,002 worldwide geniuses who have soared above ordinary mortals for nearly three millennia. These geniuses are deemed geniuses not so much due to their basic contributions to culture or science--though Murray does offer a number of criteria for assessing the legacy of genius--but due to the fact that they were given significant linear column space in widely acknowledged and accepted record books of accomplishment. For Murray, it seems that accomplishment bears some resemblance to a road map--an extra inch or so is equivalent to a considerable number of miles. Moreover, with a few statistical adjustments here and there, Murray claims that this method is entirely objective, eliminating or accounting for any possible variables. The picture of all world achievement, then, is neatly and completely laid out in an "objective" skein of statistics culled painstakingly from the world's most definitive dictionaries and encyclopedias of achievement and eminence. If the above method and results seem familiar, they are. This is precisely what Galton attempted to do on a much smaller scale in his Hereditary Genius, that is, provide an "objective," statistical method for determining superiority with, in his case, the use of obituaries and a single biographical dictionary. Murray's revival of the old eugenicist "axiom" suffers from all of its obvious flaws. Like Galton's conception of hereditary genius, it is a method that is constructed to realize a presupposition about race, sex and class, and, one might add, socioeconomic standing. The white, mostly male, race is superior due to some irreversible and innate condition--in this case, overwhelming evidence of recorded genius. Other groups are inferior for the same irrevocable reasons. The force of this presupposition is obvious in a number of Murray's calculated oversights. He does, for example, spend considerable time and space acknowledging the contribution of China to world science and culture. But, in the end, the Chinese contribution is considered inferior to that of the West. Why? Basically, the Chinese were never able to measure their science in terms of a "framework that would enable the accumulation of scientific knowledge." [[18]10] But the idea of a "framework" presupposes a number of conditions that were largely available to Western science, but did not for the most part exist in China. One of those conditions was effective means of distance communication. China was for most of its history a vast isolated country, divided into numerous districts and provinces, each having its own forms of governance. Communication was thus not in any way uniform or, in many cases, even existent. That a scientist working in Western China, let alone a lay-person, would know of, record, or comment upon the discovery of another scientist working in an eastern province was highly unlikely. Indeed, Joseph Needham, the great historian of Chinese science and civilization, recounts a story in which a group of Chinese scientists were absolutely fascinated by a mechanical clock shown to them by Jesuit missionaries, completely unaware that the Chinese had invented precisely this type of clock two centuries earlier. [[19]11] In essence, then, the Chinese may have demonstrated--according to Needham, did in fact demonstrate--significant genius in various areas of science. But this "genius" for creativity and invention is overshadowed by Western science simply because the Chinese were unable to erect a "framework for the accumulation of scientific knowledge." That is to say, were unable to "objectively" quantify scientific and cultural achievement in some unified, well-structured way. Murray's strategy is quite transparent. Without a "framework" for quantification, achievement really does not count. If individual achievements haven't been minutely and properly recorded, analyzed, disseminated, and set down in writing--techniques much more common in the West than elsewhere-- they are subject to being overlooked, diminished or dismissed entirely. Such is clearly the case in Murray's treatment of African and Mezzo-American art and achievement. For example, in the 624 pages of text that constitute the body of Human Accomplishment, the whole of African culture is given six references--significantly less than the biographical dictionary entries for Forrest Moulton (U.S. astronomer). Africans simply did not meet the standards imposed by Murray for the determination of artistic achievement--in short, the entire contribution of Africa in the arts was merely "decorative," which, in Murray's estimation, made them too insignificant to even record as art items. Indeed, Murray tends to reduce thousands of years of African artistic achievement to the mere production of functional items: "Shall we treat functional objects--gracefully designed eating utensils, baskets, warrior's shields, fabrics from non-European cultures as works of art?" Just in case we do, Murray has a quick remedy: "We will have to include centuries of European production of beautiful things. . . an endless variety of categories of beautiful things coming out of every European country." [[20]12] Of course, the claim--that Africans merely produced "functional objects"--is patently false: they produced structurally complex and aesthetically striking art objects, including both conventional and monumental sculptures, and numerous other purely aesthetic items that profoundly influenced Western European art from the mid-nineteenth century onward. But to maintain the exclusivity and centrality of "objective standards" for assessing accomplishment, Murray must regard all of African art as devoted to creating basic utensils, just a knife and fork kind of culture, and therefore entirely lacking the intellectual "framework" necessary for cultural accomplishment. Thus, in Human Accomplishment, the traditional theory of innateness is simply transferred to and grounded in a complex statistical model, based on yet another "objective measure." Virtually all human worth in the arts and sciences is distilled down to a compilation of expert opinion. The compilation is then elaborated statistically, adjusted and weighted to balance out "external" factors, and presented as the ultimate measure of world art and science. But the measure is in itself reductive and closed, in that it is formulated not so much to objectively measure human accomplishment, but to once again confirm an age-old bias about race, sex, and class. This is obvious in the various oversights and exclusions in the book: Black Africans have no science to speak of and are only producers of practical items, like eating utensils, shields and textiles. This notion follows precisely the long-established view of scientific racism regarding inferior cultures. The lack of high art and scientific discovery indicates inferior intellect and sensibility; it is palpable evidence of backwardness, of primitiveness. Or, as Gobineau puts it, ". . . .no Negro race is seen as the initiator of a civilization. Only when it is mixed with some other can it even be initiated into one. Similarly, no spontaneous civilization is to be found among the yellow races; and when the Aryan blood is exhausted stagnation supervenes." [[21]13] So, even though Murray does not introduce explicit racist ideology in Human Accomplishment, he still conveys precisely the same message as thinkers like Gobineau, Broca, the IQ hereditarians, and the like: white males, "Europeans" and "North Americans" in Murray's terminology, are on top and other races lag way behind. The inviolable order of superiority/inferiority remains, despite the fact that Murray claims he has adjusted all the relevant variables. What Agendas Subtend Innateness? To be sure, inherent White supremacy is not the sole message conveyed by Human Accomplishment. The book not only follows the conventions of racial science, but also touches upon virtually all of the ideological points of American reactionary conservatism--largely concealed, I should add, by the statistical jargon of European eminence in the arts and sciences. The prime target of Murray's conservatism is, obviously, multiculturalism. His support of Eurocentricism is rife in most of the book's material. Indeed, one could argue that support of Eurocentricism is a principal by-product of Murray's entire project. He is not shy, however, about demonstrating explicitly the disproportionate superiority of European culture and science, making the claim that 97 percent of the accomplishment in the scientific inventories occurred in Europe and North America. He claims, among other things, to prove this by carefully choosing two books which tend to correspond exactly to his own statistical conclusions, but which, on the surface (the book jackets, to be precise) appear to support a multiculturalist view. After performing what he generously refers to as "literary criticism," that is, comparing the book jacket copy (which generally tend to exaggerate the book's purpose and value) to the texts themselves, Murray concludes that the two books on multiculturalism weren't really on multiculturalism, but, rather, profoundly in support of his own Eurocentric hypothesis. [[22]14] What's missing here? First of all, Murray attributes absolute statistical certainty regarding European and North American accomplishment to his own compilation of scientific inventories. As we have seen, his compilation is biased from the outset, secreting a long-standing predisposition about race, sex, class and achievement. Moreover, as Judith Shulevitz, in her New York Times review of Human Accomplishment correctly argues, written scientific inventories were infinitely more common to Europe and North America than to China, the Far East in general, Africa, the Mideast, South America, or the various island civilizations. [[23]15] And to argue, as Murray does, that the fact that inventories did not exist indicates that accomplishment in the arts and sciences in non-European cultures was meager, is patently absurd. The only reasonable conclusion that one can draw from the fact that inventories do not exist is that inventories were either lost, unaccounted for, or, more likely, were just not made. In short, the non-existence of a collection of biographical entries says virtually nothing about whether important scientific and artistic contributions existed in a given civilization. Thus, Murray turns the statistical certainty and preponderance of entries claim against multiculturalism. Without a store of collected entries in a variety of dictionaries and encyclopedias--that is, a fairly large statistical sampling--non-European cultural achievement can only muster a meager 3 percent of world achievement in the arts and sciences. This is a fact that in Murray's mind, should finally and completely undo the egregious "myths" of multiculturalism. With the specter of multiculturalism out of the way, Murray takes on another conservative aversion: Godlessness. Without taking account of Christianity's unparalleled repression of new ideas, the routine imprisonment of humanists and dissenters, the suppression of scientific progress, the burnings at the stake of so-called heretical thinkers, etc., Murray goes on to identify it as the primary source of Western individualism, which, in his reckoning, was handmaiden to accomplishment. One would think that arresting and indefinitely imprisoning Galileo, burning Giordano Bruno at the stake, penalizing every scientist who even breathed the fact that the earth revolved around the sun, would be sufficient reason to at least take pause when arguing for the "inspiration" provided science and art by Christianity. But, as is often the case with Murray, he tends to overlook destabilizing factors, arguing instead for his conception of the big picture, the gift of individualism so generously given by the late Medieval Christian Church to European elites. These elites, moreover, were given an even greater gift once Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the cathedral doors. Accomplishment became a reality of everyday life, and one did not have to wait for some heavenly finger to judge and acquit. Life, so dull and boring before Luther and the reformers, was now given purpose and direction: "The sense that life in general has a purpose, as opposed to being pointless, and the sense that this life is uniquely important, and is not just one of an ongoing sequence of lives." [[24]16] But all of this joy and creativity shared by the European elites came to a somewhat abrupt halt. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, a dark pessimism spread over Europe. The forces of atheism and fatalism, particularly as expressed in the work of Nietzsche and Freud, had, remarkably, convinced virtually all of the European elites that life was now, once again, pointless and, worse, Godless: "After Freud, Nietzsche, and others with similar messages, the belief in man as rational and volitional took a body blow. It became fashionable in the Europe of the early 20C to see humans as unwittingly acting out neurosis and subconscious drives. God was mostly dead among the European creative elites; morality became relative. These and allied beliefs substantially undermined the belief in creative elites that their lives had purpose or that their talents could be efficacious." [[25]17] Seen from another perspective, however, one might argue that this dark period at the beginning of the twentieth century was not all that dim. After all, virtually every important and influential modernist movement flourished in the period. Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism emerged in the fine arts. Experimental literary forms exfoliated, with unique contributions by authors like Jarry, Joyce, Mann, Pound, Kafka, Musil, and many more. Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Berg, to name just a few, developed brilliant new variations in musical composition and structure. Einstein was even able to envision the new physics in the calamitous darkness of modern irrationality. Obviously, Murray's analysis of the modern era is patently absurd, a risible misinterpretation to anyone even remotely aware of the modernist contributions to art and science made in the latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. But seen for what it is--an attack on modernist agnosticism, Godlessness, and cultural and moral relativism--it makes sense. With his sympathies lying squarely with the American Christian Right, Murray is compelled to spell out intellectual history entirely in terms of this sort of ideology. In a certain sense, Joyce must be seen as an "arid" writer, devoid of the values imparted through the Christian tradition. C?zanne, Picasso, Duchamp, all the modernists, must necessarily be viewed as inferior, as leaders of a great decline in Western creativity. But the claim for the great decline, the "descent of man," is not the result of some objective historical analysis of the arts and sciences in the modern period; rather, it results from the imposition of a supposition about the role of Christianity in Western achievement. Christianity brings light, inspiration and individualism, modernism brings only darkness and despair. Once again, reactionary ideology perfectly mirrors the entire history and intent of Western creativity in the arts and sciences. The conservative penchant for the inevitability of absolute--read, white male--authority is also addressed in Human Accomplishment. In this regard Murray pays special attention to the extreme differences between ordinary mortals and the 4,002 recorded geniuses, even going so far as to quote a passage that compares the ordinary with worms in face of some of these remarkable men. These giants, Murray argues, are the result of a "magnificent inequality" that is wholly quantifiable, and therefore an indisputable fact. But the "magnificent inequality" is wholly the invention of Murray, and, in this case, used as a means of justifying a set of social relations, which, in reality, are infinitely more complex than Murray leads us to believe. Social and intellectual ranking are largely the result of extraordinarily intricate socio-economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions and relations, not the stipulations of conservative ideology. Moreover, one just might not feel worm-like or have the irresistible urge to prostrate oneself before such giants as Alfonso X of Castile, Karl L. Immerman, Antonis Mor van Dashorst, William McCune or C. H. D. Buys-Ballot, earth scientist. In the end, one must ask a simple question about Human Accomplishment: Why would anyone want to read such a book? It is filled with what turn out to be arcane, difficult, largely incomprehensible statistics, flow charts, bell curves, directional charts, indices, appendices, and so on. Is it really important to the general reader that the combined separate subscores on The Correlation Matrix for the Index Sources for the Astronomy Inventory place Taton two cuts above Wussing? Or that Wussing nearly caught up with Taton on the Chemistry Index, placing just one notch below him? Or that Giovanni Animucchia had only one entry in the Roster of Significant Figures in Music and Giovanni Bononcini had three? Moreover, the book is filled with false and often absurd claims. How could one possibly believe that James Joyce was a ruined, "arid" writer, drawn away from a sense of purpose, goodness, light and Godliness by Freud and Nietzsche? That the vivid, life-affirming canvases of artists like Matisse, ?duoard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Robert Delaunay were the result of a gloomy pessimism that engulfed modernist Europe? Or that over countless millennia the entire continent of black Africa did not create a single artwork? The book is also filled with convenient and obvious omissions--the fact, for instance, that Plato and Aristotle, two of the highest scorers in the world achievement indices, could never have achieved their towering positions without those lowly slaves who, among many other things, toiled deep in the silver, gold, copper, and iron mines that enriched the Greek states, thus allowing the Patrician class its leisure and learning. The negatives go on, and on--but it is, strangely enough, a foregone conclusion that the book will be read, and read widely. The main reason for this sort of popularity is the fact that the book fits seamlessly into a long-standing invention of conservative ideology: innateness. And innateness, in its turn, proves what Aristotle had first suggested and Gobineau and others had later calculated: that the status quo was a direct reflection of an irrevocable inner constitution, that certain types and races are destined to lead while others can but slavishly follow. And the attractiveness of this idea is made even more attractive by Murray's persistent claim that Human Accomplishment provides definitive proof for what had, up till now, been merely a hypothesis: that elites rule by nature rather than by circumstance. Indeed, it is the final word in the game of finality played out over the past two centuries by the racist ideologues. Notes [26]1 This statement may sound a bit extreme, but if one looks closely at American sociological and political theory with regard to its effect on actual legislation, then Murray ranks right on top as theorist. For example, his book, Losing Ground, served as the model for welfare reform during and well after the Reagan Administration. The Bell Curve has often been taken up by the U.S. Congress as a model for educational reform. And his "Bloody Code-like" suggestions for policing and criminal justice reform have been applied by many municipal administrations--most recently, the Giuliani administration in New York City. [27]2 Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, (New York: Harper & Row, 2003), p. xvii. [28]3 Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 53. [29]4 Ibid., p. 55 [30]5 Ibid., p. 267 [31]6 Arthur Compte de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, (New York: Howard Fettis, 1967), p. 210. [32]7 Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996), p. 117. [33]8 Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 523-524. [34]9 Gould, op. cit., p. 369. [35]10 Murray, op. cit., p. 237. [36]11 Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 years of Science, Discovery, and Invention, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 7 [37]12 Murray, op. cit., p. 261. [38]13 Gobineau, op. cit., p. 212. [39]14 See Murray, op. cit., pp. 254-255. [40]15 Judith Shulevitz, "The Best and the Brightest," New York Times Book Review, Sunday, November, 30, 2003, p. 12. [41]16 Murray, op. cit., p. 406. [42]17 Ibid., p. 407. Email [43]Mark Roberts References 9. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#1 10. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#2 11. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#3 12. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#4 13. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#5 14. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#6 15. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#7 16. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#8 17. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#9 18. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#10 19. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#11 20. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#12 21. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#13 22. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#14 23. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#15 24. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#16 25. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#17 26. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#1a 27. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#2a 28. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#3a 29. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#4a 30. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#5a 31. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#6a 32. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#7a 33. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#8a 34. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#9a 35. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#10a 36. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#11a 37. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#12a 38. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#13a 39. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#14a 40. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#15a 41. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#16a 42. http://human-nature.com/ep/reviews/ep025265.html#17a 43. mailto:schreber1 at aol.com From checker at panix.com Sat Jul 17 11:59:45 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 07:59:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Arendt's Judgment by Mark Greif Message-ID: Arendt's Judgment by Mark Greif Dissent Magazine - Spring 2004 http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/sp04/greif.htm Responsibility and Judgment by Hannah Arendt, edited and with an Introduction by Jerome Kohn Schocken, 2003 336 pp $25 Letters 1925-1975: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger edited by Ursula Ludz translated by Andrew Shields Harcourt, 2004 360 pp $28 Dissent played a part in the controversy over Eichmann in Jerusalem. In 1963, when Hannah Arendt's articles for the New Yorker on Adolf Eichmann's trial in an Israeli court provoked consternation in intellectual journals and condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, Irving Howe decided to hold a public forum, under the auspices of the magazine, to invite the principals to debate. Arendt declined. Daniel Bell and Raul Hilberg took Arendt's side, with Howe moderating, and met a violent clamor of opposition. History remembers the forum for its breakdown of civility among the New York Intellectuals. The immediate recriminations centered on whether Alfred Kazin had been shouted down. "[A]t no point-I repeat: at no point-was anyone, not Bell or Hilberg or Kazin, 'shouted down,'" Howe wrote. "[N]obody seemed to listen to what Alfred Kazin, who spoke up for Hannah, was saying," William Phillips offered: "In fact, as I remember, he was booed." The last word on the forum currently belongs to Ted Solotaroff, who just last year, in Alfred Kazin's America, published his recollection of what happened: [T]he rhetoric became more inflamed as each speaker tried to outdo the others in telling outrage. Finally, Howe introduced a survivor of the Holocaust and was happily translating for the audience his Yiddish testimony against Arendt when Kazin stood up, walked to the podium, and said, "That's enough, Irving. This disgraceful piling on has to stop." The disgraceful piling on hasn't really stopped for forty years. Even today Hannah Arendt is misremembered as a betrayer of her fellow Jews. It's true that much of the sound and fury around Eichmann came from provoking habits of Arendt's own. She never defined "the banality of evil," the notorious phrase from her subtitle. Only a minority of commentators who have used the phrase since then understood what she meant. Arendt's style was ironic and cutting. It was as if she had reversed the famous esoteric doctrine of her contemporary, Leo Strauss, and demanded persecution from those who should have been her allies by creating a surface full of provocations, and leaving between the lines the highly traditional principles that would have out-moralized the moralizers. Arendt's paradoxes were calls to philosophical thought. But they could only have been elucidated in the philosophical works that the tumult surrounding Eichmann kept her from writing. Two new books illuminate the perplexities of Arendt's thought and the controversies surrounding her. Responsibility and Judgment collects lectures, addresses, and essays from the era of Eichmann in Jerusalem, letting us see how Arendt clarified her position in response to her critics, and turned a reporter's insights into philosophy. Letters 1925-1975: Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger invites English-language readers to examine the most controversial aspect of Arendt's biography more recently, her love affair and lifelong friendship with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who joined the Nazis as Arendt fled them. The banality of evil was a simple concept. It meant the following: A person who committed the most evil deeds could do so without having a wicked heart or a criminal temperament. To Arendt, this created a conceptual problem. Most people who did evil deeds really should have a corrupt temperament. Normal people, she firmly believed, held an aversion to evil: "It is, I think, a simple fact that people are at least as often tempted to do good and need an effort to do evil as vice versa." To many of us, this wouldn't have caused a conceptual problem. In her era as in ours, everyday opinion made less of individual choice and more of circumstance. Bureaucracy reduced personal autonomy. An individual could be trained, controlled, or coerced. He could be made a "cog" in a machine; refusal is pointless if a more malleable person will instantly replace you. The "banality of evil" was misunderstood partly because it sounded so easy to assimilate to these ideas of reduced responsibility-all of which Arendt rejected. At the Eichmann trial, Arendt had a perception for which she has often been faulted, but which every journalist who covered Eichmann in 1961 seemed to find. He was too normal. Mainstream magazines such as Life, Newsweek, and the Atlantic presented Eichmann's averageness, dullness, and familiarity. He had arranged Jewish deportations from Reich territories. He transported populations to the death camps. But unlike Hitler and the major Nazi criminals, who had done evil from evil motives, Eichmann's terrible deeds seemed to come from ambition and concern with his organizational task rather than a will to kill Jews. (This is controversial still; Arendt insisted on it.) In a psychological, though not a legal sense, he seemed to lack mens rea, a criminal mind. It particularly troubled Arendt that Eichmann didn't reject law or morality as higher-ranking Nazis did. He quoted Kant's moral theory accurately and claimed to follow it. He had kept his "conscience," meaning he had avoided compromises, shortcuts, or the intrusion of personal feelings into his arrangements to transport Jews. The under-recognized outcome of her sense of Eichmann's "normalcy," for Arendt, was a shoring up of her already demanding sense of individual responsibility. This emerged, in Eichmann, in two very different projects. One was an empirical investigation. She wanted to know what in Eichmann's inner makeup had allowed him not to see that his acts were wrong. The other was a separate task of publicity. Arendt was inspired to name all the ordinary people who were not being tried in Jerusalem, everyone from the Nazi era who had escaped judgment. This led to her notorious, bitter pages on the Judenr?te, the councils of Jewish leaders assembled by the Nazis when Jewish populations were ghettoized and deported. To minimize the suffering of the community, or to have some say in a terrible process, Judenr?te did such things as deliver lists to the Nazis, select people to be deported, and round deportees up with a Jewish Police. Arendt believed it was immoral whenever leaders of a community made exceptions for some while they sent others to die. This judgment against the Judenr?te earned Arendt the permanent enmity of friends like Gershom Scholem and her mentor, the Zionist Kurt Blumenfeld. Her many angry pages of names of West Germans who had escaped judgment for their Nazi past, including officials in the Adenauer government, did nothing to blunt the controversy. By judging the Judenr?te, yet coolly and ironically studying Eichmann, Arendt seemed to her critics to be exculpating the captured Nazi and blaming his victims. But others' interpretations had their own weaknesses. The American press viewed Eichmann as a symbol of the possibility of having one's actions determined by bad circumstances. "There is an Eichmann in every one of us": anyone might be capable of what Eichmann had done, and must be on guard against "conformism." Jewish critics of Arendt's reading of Eichmann, instead, believed that Eichmann's normalcy was utterly an illusion or a put-on. Because Eichmann had been capable of monstrous deeds, he must be a monster inside. To Arendt, these two positions seemed far more exculpatory than her own. An "Eichmann in everyone" diminished moral responsibility for those who crossed the line from conformism to actual evil. The idea that Eichmann was an utter monster, pathological and unique, refused realities uncovered by the trial and investigation. It set a standard of evil that ordinary wrongdoers wouldn't meet. This jeopardized the process of judging wrongs in normal people. In her critics' violent defense of the Judenr?te, Arendt saw a fear of judgment. Why was everyone so afraid to do what any well-trained child could do: to judge those who had done wrong as wrongdoers-if not in court, then in speech and the freedom of their own thought-and let the chips fall where they might? There exists in our society a widespread fear of judging . . . [B]ehind the unwillingness to judge lurks the suspicion that no one is a free agent, and hence the doubt that anyone is responsible or could be expected to answer for what he has done. . . . Who am I to judge? actually means We're all alike, equally bad, and those who try, or pretend that they try, to remain halfway decent are either saints or hypocrites, and in either case should leave us alone. Hence the huge outcry the moment anyone fixes specific blame on some particular person. Arendt's own solution to the Eichmann enigma came closer to the views of her critics than of the American press. If Eichmann was "normal," she thought, there was still something else wrong with him to let him do such evil. Her answer, based on observation, was not monstrosity but "thoughtlessness." This judgment has irritated readers ever since. Eichmann could obviously think in the ordinary sense. Arendt's use of this word could only point to some philosophical concept she seemed too proud to spell out. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, "thinking" had two immediate meanings, as the two human things Eichmann seemed unable to do. He couldn't think from the point of view of others. Interrogated by the Israelis, when his own life depended on it, he treated his questioners as if their worries and priorities were identical to his own. And he couldn't see "reality": that is, he failed to respond to the facts in front of his eyes if he could slip into a stock phrase (as when he loftily promised to remember everyone, in his speech before being hanged). Thinking and judging: at this stage, the concepts' definitions were pre-philosophical, rooted in Arendt's immediate responses to Eichmann's character. Yet their elaboration as grounds for philosophy occupied her for the rest of her life. None but committed Arendt scholars, or those personally close to her, would have known that she built up an explicit moral philosophy under the direct influence of her insights from Eichmann. By the time The Life of the Mind was published, posthumously, in 1978, her late ideas seemed so transformed that though she credited the Eichmann trial with initiating them, the reader could hardly believe it. Responsibility and Judgment, however, publishes a set of four lectures she gave at the New School in 1965, "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy." Because this material comes from the earliest period of post-Eichmann philosophizing, the continuity of her thought becomes clear. Her task was to formulate the morality that kept average people from doing evil in emergency situations. The emergency she had in mind was Nazi Germany. She wished more people had possessed principles that led them to refuse the Nazis. Refusal was exhibited by rare individuals of every social type. Set against them, though, were those "normal" people who couldn't be relied on: Eichmann-types on the one hand, and advanced "intellectuals," her former colleagues, on the other. These two groups loved to judge things by rules-but in the Third Reich all rules had been reversed. "Thou Shalt Kill," she liked to say, became the First Commandment. Therefore, Arendt set herself the difficult task of a morality that would not depend on rules. Examining the history of philosophy, she found she had two natural allies for her concepts. The first was Socrates, who had made thinking the fundamental task of the good life. The second was Kant, who put judgment at the center of his aesthetics, in the power to identify a particular object, like a rose, as "beautiful" without a rule to follow. Kant, it's true, already had a moral philosophy. Yet his three formulations of the Categorical Imperative, the most impressive ethical rule-book of modern times, and his picture of reason giving law to the self, had proven inadequate protections against participation in the evil of the Nazis. Socrates provided her model of thinking. In the agora or the gymnasium, he questioned others to see what ideas would not stand up. When he was alone, thinking continued as an internal version of that same dialogue. It was "the silent dialogue between me and myself," Arendt wrote. It made the thinker like two speakers internally, "two-in-one," always testing possible beliefs and actions, grappling with the reality of the outer situation by a kind of inner company. In his refusal to escape Athens when sentenced to death, Socrates also formulated the fundamental positive doctrine of Arendt's vision of morality: "it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong." Arendt saw this doctrine as a consequence of the conception of being two-in-one, an inevitable outcome of Socratic thinking. Thinking produced a kind of "don't step beyond this line" that moral people held as their base for all behavior. If a thinking person did wrong, he would henceforth be in the presence of a wrongdoer, himself, and the long-term attempt to live with himself would be worse than any punishment the world could give. But one needed to be able to judge right and wrong when it was not just a matter of refusing or saying "no." Arendt knew that Kant had "defined judgment as the faculty which always comes into play when we are confronted with particulars." For the judgment of a person's action or his character, also, Arendt realized, one had no rule that could fit the always particular details and always unique circumstances. Quoting Kant's phrase, "Examples are the go-cart of judgment," Arendt stressed the need of exemplary persons and actions for training in judgment. "We judge and tell right from wrong by having present in our mind some incident and some person, absent in time or space, that have become examples. There are many such examples. They can lie far back in the past or they can be among the living." Exemplary wrongdoers and right-doers gave reason, the individual faculty of thought, its tie to the sensus communis. Such a common sense would keep the knowledge of human community intact even in an emergency like Nazism, when a whole society made laws that violated it. As a moral theory, this is coherent but extremely demanding for anyone with modern expectations. Arendt rejected every argument we use to diminish the individual responsibility of a person in extreme situations. Determinism by circumstance, "cog" theory, collective guilt-she rejected them all. She also rejected the "argument of the lesser evil," that it is acceptable to collaborate with an evil act if it might prevent or divert one greater. Participation, she insisted, always communicated consent. You could not collaborate with an evil process, whatever your motives, without in effect supporting it, and the practical consequences were nearly always better if enough people refused. She rejected a moral exception for physical coercion, even to the threat of death, using a formulation she had worked out with her close friend Mary McCarthy: "If somebody points a gun at you and says, 'Kill your friend or I will kill you,' he is tempting you, that is all." Finally, though, it is her idea of judgment that is most alien to us. On Arendt's model, we must judge, and judge, and judge: thoughtfully, implacably, publicly. At both the individual level and the level of the community, people must always be judging the acts and characters of others. If you think of our current world, there may be truth to her charge that we are afraid of judging. We complain about people, we hate them, we love scandals, we opine about what people shouldn't dare say in public. But we would think it arrogant for one person to stand up and coolly say to another-"I, so-and-so, having considered it carefully, judge that what you, Mr. X, did, was morally wrong. I need no more authority to judge you than the fact that I am a fellow human being, and that I have judged by good examples, and asked myself what I, myself, could not live with doing." Of course, it would be a very curious world in which one constantly dared to judge others, and not so much one's enemies. As Arendt always insisted, the real moral issue was never with one's enemies, who like the Nazis could be so obviously evil) but with one's friends, and those one loved. Hannah Arendt would not have become political, she later believed, if the Nazis had not made life as a philosopher inadequate. At age twenty-seven, author of a published dissertation on Love and Saint Augustine, she was arrested for anti-Nazi activities on behalf of the German Zionist Organization. Upon her release, she fled Germany, living first in Geneva, then Paris. Deported with other "enemy aliens" in 1940 to the French internment camp at Gurs, released at the fall of France, she and her husband made it to America. In New York, she began the work that would make her the most important theorist of totalitarianism in the postwar years, while working for a variety of Jewish organizations. Then in 1963, she wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem, and her reputation reversed: she earned accusations of self-hatred and Jewish betrayal. But only after the revelations, in the last two decades, of her liaison with Martin Heidegger, did some commentators dare to tar her with the Nazi brush. Arendt was a nineteen-year-old philosophy student at Marburg in 1925 when Heidegger discovered her seated in his early morning lectures. He initiated a love affair. ("You are my pupil and I your teacher, but that is only the occasion for what has happened to us.") Heidegger was married, thirty-six years old, and had two sons. The affair lasted a year, until Arendt switched universities, to Freiburg. Heidegger continued to summon her to meet him secretly when he traveled, perhaps as late as 1929. Letters 1925-1975 is surprisingly unrevealing. Passion is evident, on both sides, as is Heidegger's tremendous self-centered pomposity. Heidegger destroyed most of Arendt's letters; she kept his. The high German tone, the notes on Being mixed with romantic schmaltz, and the fragmentary instructions on their assignations don't add up to much. Read alongside Responsibility and Judgment, however, the framework of interpretation has to be that old question: does the philosopher live by her philosophy? The notion that Arendt subtly imbibed anti-Semitism from Heidegger is nonsense. If Arendt ever betrayed something with her attachment to the elder philosopher, it was her own late philosophy of judgment. For what Heidegger could have been made, in his genius and in his evil deeds, was an example. In late 1932 or early 1933, she confronted him directly, in the final exchange of their prewar correspondence. She had heard rumors of his abandonment of Jewish colleagues and students, reports of his anti-Semitism. "[S]landers," Heidegger declared all of it. He ended the letter with a typical guilt trip for daring to accuse him: "In any case, I have long since given up expecting any sort of gratitude or even just decency from so-called 'disciples.'" In 1933, while Arendt ran from the Nazis, Heidegger politicked with Nazi colleagues to be appointed rector of the University of Freiburg. He delivered a Rectorial Address giving philosophical cover to National Socialism, arranging for it to be greeted with the Nazi Party anthem, stiff-armed salutes, and cries of Sieg Heil. He undertook the Nazification of the university, approving the anti-Semitism that excluded even his own mentor Husserl, and he cut off contact with Jewish colleagues and dumped Jewish graduate students. Heidegger's enthusiastic Nazism has been well documented, despite his postwar prevarications, by a generation of recent German scholarship that turned up shameful new details as late as 1989. By the war's end, Arendt's letters to her husband and to the philosopher Karl Jaspers indicate she knew enough about Heidegger's actions to judge him a liar, a coward, and a participant in appalling deeds. She wrote sarcastically about his Nazism in a footnote to a dry 1946 Partisan Review essay on European existentialism. Then Arendt met with Heidegger again, impulsively, in 1950, on a visit to Germany to recover pillaged cultural objects for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. "This evening and this morning are the confirmation of an entire life," she wrote him afterward. "I became aware of . . . how . . . the power of the impulse had mercifully saved me from committing the only really inexcusable act of infidelity and forfeiting my life." The "infidelity" would have been to abandon Heidegger forever. In a few further elliptical phrases, she in essence apologized to him for her plan of abandonment; even repudiating the "reasons" which could have kept her away. One has to imagine these "reasons" were his Nazi attachments. In effect, she stopped judging him, at least to his face, at least publicly. Or, perhaps, she under-judged him: giving too much public credit to his deceptions, and too little to her long-standing intuitions about his character. Letters 1925-1975 reprints her tribute "Martin Heidegger at 80," delivered in 1969 on radio and published internationally. Knowing what we know now-though we can't say precisely how much of it Arendt knew-one can't help but feel that she soft-pedals his Nazism. She said Heidegger made a "mistake," but corrected it. She suggested this was to be expected in a philosopher, a role she evidently doesn't assume for herself. "We who want to honor thinkers, even if our residence is in the middle of the world, can hardly help but find it striking and perhaps even irritating that, when they got involved in human affairs, both Plato and Heidegger resorted to tyrants and F?hrers." Again, a crucial essay from Responsibility and Judgment helps to clarify matters. Late in "Some Questions of Moral Philosophy," Arendt digresses to admit a major objection to her views about thinking and judgment. An ineradicable subjectivism haunts her idea of the freedom to choose one's company, both outer and inner. She gives her response in an anecdote from Cicero. Cicero is choosing between the ideas of Plato and the Pythagoreans, where their opinions differ. He bursts out: " 'By God, I'd much rather go astray with Plato than hold true views with these people.' " Arendt goes on as follows: And he lets his partner in the dialogue once more emphasize the point: he too would not mind at all going astray and erring with such a man [as Plato]. . . . The point is that . . . there comes a point where all objective standards-truth, rewards and punishments in a hereafter, etc.-yield precedence to the "subjective" criterion of the kind of person I wish to be and live together with. Heidegger was her Plato. She preferred to go astray with him than remain with the views of those who hewed to decency-even herself. She knew Heidegger as a liar, a betrayer, and a lover whom she declared (in private writings) she had never quite ceased to love. She also knew him as a genius. It is not often in history that one finds a Plato for one's teacher. She evaluated his philosophy, in letters to her husband and friends, completely separately from her gloomy assessments of his character. A fair sampling of readers today confirms the perception that Heidegger was the preeminent continental philosopher of the twentieth century. Though he turned to tyrants, to abandon him would have been to give up her "life," that is, her other life as a philosopher, beyond the political persona and ethic of judgment she tried to maintain in the world. This was Hannah Arendt's lesser evil. It is not excusable in the context of her philosophy. Elsewhere she rejected involvement with the lesser evil, for a good reason. "Politically, the weakness of the argument [for lesser evils] has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil." Whether Arendt forgot, we can't say. But she did not judge Heidegger, as she judged others, or in the manner that she demanded we all judge. What Arendt did not know about Heidegger, and what she excused, one hesitates to separate. The clear thing is that she made her choice. Her philosophy of judgment, together with her one key refusal to judge, can be understood in human terms but never reconciled. Mark Greif is a senior correspondent at the American Prospect. From checker at panix.com Sat Jul 17 12:02:55 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 08:02:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: In His Majesty's, Ahem, Service Message-ID: In His Majesty's, Ahem, Service http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19416-2004Jun30?language=printer By Jonathan Yardley, whose e-mail address is yardleyj at washpost.com Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page C01 SEX WITH KINGS 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge By Eleanor Herman Morrow. 287 pp. $25.95 If one is inclined to believe Eleanor Herman's amusing, once-over-very-lightly account of the amatory deeds and misdeeds of kings and their kinfolk, the R in "royal" also stands for "randy." As portrayed herein, kings and princes and such were and are priapic to the max, ever in search of erotic satisfaction and ever en garde, as it were, to achieve it. If ever a monarch's spirit was willing but his flesh weak, the occasion apparently has not come to Herman's attention, for she portrays royalty as eternally ready, willing and able. Well, maybe not Edward VIII, who during his brief reign became besotted with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee and social climber whose "nose was lumpy, her mouth large and ugly, her hands short and stubby." Could it have been, as often was bruited about, that she "had conquered Edward with bizarre Asian sexual techniques she had learned in China," or could it have been that "the two were brought together by an avid aversion to sex -- that Edward was hopelessly impotent and Wallis icily frigid"? Whatever the truth of it, Edward gave up the British throne for his Wallis and married her, consigning the two of them to a purgatory that lasted from 1937 until his death in 1972. They got what they deserved, you may say, and you are quite right, but they also were handed a fate quite different from that dealt out to most kings and their mistresses. History shows that kings have mostly bounced from bedchamber to bedchamber and that the ladies they encountered along the way did a fair amount of bouncing themselves, sometimes to their profit, sometimes to their sorrow. This is put in the past tense because the royal mistress is mostly a creature of the past: Royalty isn't what it used to be, what with a lot less money and power to be handed out as favors, and the press insists on shoving its sharp little nose (not to mention the lens of its camera) into just about everything. If His Majesty wants to have a little fun on the side, he can expect to read about it in the tabloids, which presumably can be a powerful anti-tumescent. In the good old days it was another story: "In the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the position of royal mistress was almost as official as that of prime minister. The mistress was expected to perform certain duties -- sexual and otherwise -- in return for titles, pensions, honors, and an influential place at court. She encouraged the arts -- theater, literature, music, architecture, and philosophy. She wielded her charm as a weapon against foreign ambassadors. She calmed the king when he was angry, buoyed him up when he was despondent, encouraged him to greatness when he was weak. She attended religious services daily, gave alms to the poor, and turned in her jewels to the treasury in times of war." The "quintessential royal mistress was Jeanne-Antoinette d'Etioles, marquise de Pompadour, who reigned for nineteen years over Louis XV and France." Frigidity, from which apparently she suffered, did not prevent her from finding ways to give the king pleasure in and out of her lavish bedchamber at Versailles, and in time "she wielded the greatest power of any royal mistress ever," to the point that in 1753 one insider wrote: "The mistress is Prime Minister, and is becoming more and more despotic, such as a favorite has never been in France." At her death in 1764 she was mourned by precious few. Kings sought the favors of mistresses because their marriages were often empty and unhappy. Royal marriages were almost always arranged for political reasons and in the expectation that they would produce heirs. What Herman calls "the old portrait trick" was frequently used to persuade a ruler or ruler-in-waiting to take a bride. Thus Henri IV of France was shown a flattering likeness of Marie de Medici, though when she arrived at Marseilles he complained, "I have been deceived! She is not beautiful!" He "was expecting a slender beauty with elegant features, not this heavy woman with a flat farmer's face." He managed to get her pregnant, but he found happiness (such as it was) with his mistress, Henriette-Catherine de Balzac d'Entragues. In truth, happiness seems to have been a rare commodity in most of these royal trysts. Kings often were spoiled, simple-minded and self-aggrandizing, their thinking warped by obsequious courtiers and generations of inbreeding. The court "was a world of twisted values, strange honor and disgraces incomprehensible to later generations," a world in which "the fundamental human matters of life and death and love meant little compared to the crumbs of success or specks of failure." Kings may have ruled supreme in this poisonous environment, but they were scarcely immune to the discontents and jealousies that thrived therein. As for the mistresses, they may have been pampered and even adored, but they lived in limbo. A mistress's claim upon the king's time and exchequer rested entirely on her ability to please and amuse him. There was an endless stream of "pretty women attempting to gain the king's attention," and the mistress of the moment was forever on red alert: "When the royal eye wandered, as it did with alarming frequency, there was great speculation as to whether the object of kingly desires would prove a meaningless flirtation or if she would completely replace the existing power structure at court." A further complication for some mistresses was that just as kings had queens, so mistresses sometimes had husbands. Some kings beckoned to married women as a way of flexing the royal muscles and/or putting their husbands (mostly high-ranking members of the court) in their places. Other husbands saw advantage in having their wives in the king's bed, and encouraged them; "indeed," Herman writes with perhaps an excess of cuteness, "many a man was willing to lay down his wife for the good of his country." What is truly peculiar about kings and their mistresses is that many a king tolerated a mistress who was every bit as much a harridan as his queen. Charles II of England "put up with his beautiful virago, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine, for nearly a dozen years." She "badgered, threatened and intimidated Charles into submission with her unending stream of demands for money, titles and honors for herself and her children and sometimes, in a burst of selfishness, for her friends." Similarly, the legendary Lola Montez, mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria, was no day at the beach: "whorish, selfish deceitful Lola who had broken old King Ludwig's heart and lost him his kingdom." By 1848, he finally had had enough and banished her; she went to the United States and made a new life for herself in the Wild West. All of which should make plain that despite Herman's occasional inability to resist the temptations of coy prose, "Sex With Kings" is entertaining: a beach book, and a lot more fun than Danielle Steel or Dan Brown. From paul.werbos at verizon.net Sun Jul 18 13:49:22 2004 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Werbos, Dr. Paul J.) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 09:49:22 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown, Hegel and Hinduism Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20040718090034.00af3470@incoming.verizon.net> Good morning! Sometimes on a Sunday morning, it is so pleasant to look out to the complex multithreaded fabric around us, and try to make out (or imagine?) patterns not seen before... If only we had more of such mornings.... -------- Regarding Dan Brown, someone on this list recently said he would rather read titillating stories about the sex lives of the British royals than read HIS books. (The voice of a former teenager in my mind immediately thought: "Once again we are too much a nation of couch potatoes...", but I will not follow that first thread here.) Whatever his problems, Dan Brown does deserve a bit more than that. Certainly, Brown makes assertions in his books which raised immediate hackles in my mind -- though I still enjoyed reading them anyway. He talks a lot about groups, people and history that I know better, first-hand, and he constantly overreached and enshrined speculations that could become dangerous if taken too seriously. But after a certain point, I began to think... I have to agree with some of his taste in subjects, because I have found almost all of the groups he discusses worth of intense attention. With one perhaps central exception: the Priory of Sion. The last trace I saw of them crossing paths with the real world.. was probably about 80 years ago... He also made a few technical points about codes which I had not heard of - but which I have not checked (at least, not checked out completely). (Oops: I have also had no contact whatsoever with any French royal lines, unless you count De Broglie or De Beauregard, from a distance.) And yet, in retrospect... Brown does have an important role to play. Crudely -- if the world is obsessed with a "thesis," there really are times when an antithesis must be well-articulated and pushed before it is possible to move on to a synthesis. This has been something of a hard lesson for me to learn over the past few years. As an individual, I often want to move straight to the synthesis to a point closer to the truth. In my own thinking, I can get away with doing that, and can move ahead many steps... but there comes a time when one must either communicate or face up to the fact that one has contributed very little real to the world as whole. And in that process... as people move one step at a time... one needs to value the Great Antithesis. Of course, this is straight Hegel. Hegel is not satisfying at all as a theory of how human brains really learn and progress. Freud makes a lot more sense, in my view, as a guide to the wiring of a system that really works. Hegel is as unsatisfying to the intellect as the "yin-yang" ideas from Daoism. (And Hegel, like Daoist folk healers, also has his barnacles and cheap shots that I don't mean to comment on here.) And yet... we do need phenomenological guides to everyday life, and Hegel's triangle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis does seem to recur in many, many parts of life experience. It can be seen as a kind of crude but very useful approximation to a kind of emergent dynamic property of intelligent systems and social systems. The Financial Times yesterday morning had a big article (page W4) on the new... worldview... emerging in Russia. They say that the rediscovery of Hegel is a large part of it. That also is interesting. And when I think of it... in complex ways... I realize how the Orthodox Hindu trinity of Brahman-Siva-Krishna mirrors very nicely the trinity of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In some ways, one might even argue that Hegel gives a kind of purified version of that trinity, stripped of confusing and deceptive barnacles.. (but also stripped of poetry and side stories, yes). Why would one care? Why would a more cosmic intellect waste time with such things? The whole Hegelian process can help us become conscious of a pervasive challenge we all face as intelligent systems ourselves" a tendency to be caught in local minima. And it highlights how diversities in HUMAN personalities can be helpful in society as a whole making progress. Many of us, in the rationalist part of the world, have tended to gravitate towards incremental progress and incremental learning. For example, the neural network learning algorithm I developed more than thirty years ago, now called "backpropagation," is an incremental learning system, and it accounts for perhaps 80 percent of the useful real-world applications of artificial neural networks. (I have free time right now because I am basically waiting to fly to a couple of conferences, including IJCNN04 -- a term you can google -- to give a tutorial on this. Would be happy to email the powerpoint with text notes to anyone who doesn't mind getting 4 megs.) But it has been widely criticized because of how it can sometimes get stuck in "local minima." The local minimum problem actually is radically different from what quickie users of backpropagation in the MatLab program imagine. (Again, the tutorial explains more.) Some key aspects: simple pattern classification systems usually do not get stuck in local minima; incremental learning always IMPROVES what you have, and that's useful, even if it is not the global optimum; as learning challenges grow more and more complex, local minima become more and more unavoidable -- so that we can never "solve" them with a magic bullet but we do need to have a whole multi-layer arsenal of methods to try to improve creativity, to find ways to get out of local minima. So this Hegelian stuff is basically about fighting our way out of local minima. Years ago, I discussed this with Michael Conrad, one of the people I used to fund, and we put together one interesting story -- where the "thesis" is the local minimum we are now stuck in, an "antithesis" may be another valley we can reach only by jumping "irrationally" in opposition to the local gradient we experience -- and synthesis or transcendence is when the learning system ADDS A NEW VARIABLE to its representation of the problem such that there is again an incremental path to the ultimate point. The strategy of seeking transcendence is my favorite strategy in trying to improve social systems. But the energy to MOTIVATE synthesis is often lacking... and it can be hard at times to sell the objective truth... and often one must wait until an extreme idiot is willing to formulate the antithesis in he starkest most extreme form before the world is ready for the synthesis. That is hard for an incremental, rational Quaker to learn... but there it is. (Comment: Quaker lobby groups these days tend to have a different personality from Quakers in general on this particular point.... perhaps for reasons related to what I am saying here.) And so.. Dan Smith. The Goddess stuff tends to be an extreme antithesis, and some of what he say about specific people would drive them into orbit -- not just the woman he wrongs from the space movement but also many men whom he praises in ways they would not like... And yet, it is certainly true that the world as a whole is entrenched in a thesis in its treatment of women which is extreme in the opposite direction, and dangerously destabilizing. I am not thinking of the US especially... where we have many, many technical problems but not such a crisis... but rather of parts of the world where the instability of the old thesis really is an urgent crisis. All for now. Best of luck, Paul From paul.werbos at verizon.net Sun Jul 18 15:03:37 2004 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Werbos, Dr. Paul J.) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 11:03:37 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown versus reality -- an example Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20040718105032.00af3470@incoming.verizon.net> Good morning! In that email just now, I made some broad statements about the accuracy of some of Brown's inferences. If I did something like that in an NSF review statement, some people would be very upset: where are the particulars to prove the point? Two mitigating circumstances: (1) this is not a proposal review, or representation of anyone's official views, or anything so formal; (2) Brown says so MANY things it would take a book to address all of them -- and many of them lead off into complicated side-issues. But... OK... one easy example. If my memory is right (I don't claim it is so reliable in this case!)... Brown even had Walt Disney in there with the promoters of goddess worship, of an asymmetrical matriarchal view. Disney really was pushing certain cultural images very, very hard. That much is clear. But Mickey Mouse was not a matriach (even if some Japanese children will tell you they think Mickey is actually a girl...). I wonder how many of the New England Neopagans have thought enough about The Sorceror's Apprentice? Disney really was part of an institution, not a loner. That institution has given us movies like Pocohontas, Mulan and Atlantis, all of which conveyed very strongly a proper and strong role for women and for the "yin" in human life. But they were not pushing a position of feminist antithesis fighting male thesis. (If it were only Mulan, I have to admit I would need to be careful here...) The central theme of Pocohontas, for example, was one of synthesis and balance and harmony, not at all matriarchy. And Atlantis - was probably the least popular of the movies, but arguably the one which bucked the market the hardest to convey images closer to the kind of institutional roots Brown was alluding to. ====== Just one random thread... Back to packing... Best, Paul From guavaberry at earthlink.net Sun Jul 18 16:06:24 2004 From: guavaberry at earthlink.net (K.E.) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:06:24 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.0.20040718120422.01cdeec0@mail.earthlink.net> A View from the Eye of the Storm Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science. During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured Professors and became one of the highest royalty-earning academic organizations in the world. Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science Administration and Policy Making. A View from the Eye of the Storm Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004 As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to question, when you visit a country. I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities. Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on. The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine would have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers. The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago. Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world. It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves. Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would have been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different. I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem families. They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional. The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views. The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in the region. These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III". I have no better name for the present situation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already well into it. The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes. More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition occupation of Iraq. So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey. But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport security in the world.. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war! What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, na?ve children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead. Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power. The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way. Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family". If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism. The United States understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders will arrive in Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot. You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to similar liars. After all, if you want to be an antisemite, there are subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true. It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything. Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes. But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows. There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors. The third aspect is money. Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder. In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure. Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming everybody outside the Moslem world, for the miseries of the region. Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred. Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.? Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands Dollars per month from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical local ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at the retail level.? The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking of all laws. The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other liberties. There are na?ve old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe now. Every student of political science debates how you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set. Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation. The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law and define all those who attack them as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the allegations. The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international law have changed and the same will happen after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done. The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run ? only educate the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilized world against all three circles of evil. Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both. But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years. In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these people. I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the resulting situation.??? In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies.. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hizbulla and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekhistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals. In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them collaborate beautifully. It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance. Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more. Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have worked in China. I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn. ~~ Bless the founders of the Net~~ They've allowed me to become a woman of my time instead of ahead of it. Timing & Luck in the rhythm of life is more important than anything else. Just a curious grrl . . . ~~~ KSE~~~ "The illiterate of the year 2000 will not be the individual who cannot read and write, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." ~~~Alvin Toffler~~~ "Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send." John B. Postel, RFC 791 quoted by Bob Braden UCLA Computer Science Dept. "Jon Postel Remembered" October 30, 1998 <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> /// Karen Ellis /// Educational CyberPlayGround http://www.edu-cyberpg.com __ /// Guavaberry Books \\\/// \X/ 7 Hot Site Awards from New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, \/ Earthlink USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty <>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> From isaacsonj at hotmail.com Sun Jul 18 16:20:07 2004 From: isaacsonj at hotmail.com (Joel Isaacson) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:20:07 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown, Hegel and Hinduism Message-ID: Yeah... I'd like to take a look at that 4 MB ppt tutorial. Please forward. Thanks! -- Joel >From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." >Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >To: HowlBloom at aol.com, paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown, Hegel and Hinduism >Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 09:49:22 -0400 > >Good morning! > >Sometimes on a Sunday morning, it is so pleasant to look out to the complex >multithreaded fabric around >us, and try to make out (or imagine?) patterns not seen before... > >If only we had more of such mornings.... > >-------- > >Regarding Dan Brown, someone on this list recently said he would rather >read titillating stories about >the sex lives of the British royals than read HIS books. (The voice of a >former teenager in my mind >immediately thought: "Once again we are too much a nation of couch >potatoes...", but I will not follow >that first thread here.) > >Whatever his problems, Dan Brown does deserve a bit more than that. > >Certainly, Brown makes assertions in his books which raised immediate >hackles in my mind -- though I still >enjoyed reading them anyway. He talks a lot about groups, people and >history that I know >better, first-hand, and he constantly overreached and enshrined >speculations that could become dangerous >if taken too seriously. But after a certain point, I began to think... I >have to agree with some of his taste in subjects, >because I have found almost all of the groups he discusses worth of intense >attention. With one perhaps >central exception: the Priory of Sion. The last trace I saw of them >crossing paths with the real world.. >was probably about 80 years ago... He also made a few technical points >about codes which I had not heard of - but >which I have not checked (at least, not checked out completely). (Oops: I >have also had no contact whatsoever >with any French royal lines, unless you count De Broglie or De Beauregard, >from a distance.) > >And yet, in retrospect... Brown does have an important role to play. > >Crudely -- if the world is obsessed with a "thesis," there really are times >when an antithesis must >be well-articulated and pushed before it is possible to move on to a >synthesis. This has been >something of a hard lesson for me to learn over the past few years. As an >individual, I often want to move >straight to the synthesis to a point closer to the truth. In my own >thinking, I can get away with >doing that, and can move ahead many steps... but there comes a time when >one must either >communicate or face up to the fact that one has contributed very little >real to the world as whole. >And in that process... as people move one step at a time... one needs to >value >the Great Antithesis. > >Of course, this is straight Hegel. Hegel is not satisfying at all as a >theory of how human brains really >learn and progress. Freud makes a lot more sense, in my view, as a guide to >the wiring of a system >that really works. Hegel is as unsatisfying to the intellect as the >"yin-yang" ideas from Daoism. >(And Hegel, like Daoist folk healers, also has his barnacles and cheap >shots that I don't mean to comment on here.) >And yet... we do need phenomenological guides to everyday life, and Hegel's >triangle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis >does seem to recur in many, many parts of life experience. It can be seen >as a kind of crude but >very useful approximation to a kind of emergent dynamic property of >intelligent systems and social systems. > >The Financial Times yesterday morning had a big article (page W4) on the >new... worldview... emerging >in Russia. They say that the rediscovery of Hegel is a large part of it. >That also is interesting. > >And when I think of it... in complex ways... I realize how the Orthodox >Hindu trinity of Brahman-Siva-Krishna >mirrors very nicely the trinity of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In some >ways, one might even argue >that Hegel gives a kind of purified version of that trinity, stripped of >confusing and deceptive barnacles.. >(but also stripped of poetry and side stories, yes). > >Why would one care? Why would a more cosmic intellect waste time with such >things? > >The whole Hegelian process can help us become conscious of a pervasive >challenge we all face as >intelligent systems ourselves" a tendency to be caught in local minima. And >it highlights how diversities >in HUMAN personalities can be helpful in society as a whole making >progress. > >Many of us, in the rationalist part of the world, have tended to gravitate >towards incremental progress >and incremental learning. For example, the neural network learning >algorithm I developed >more than thirty years ago, now called "backpropagation," is an incremental >learning system, >and it accounts for perhaps 80 percent of the useful real-world >applications of artificial neural networks. >(I have free time right now because I am basically waiting to fly to a >couple of conferences, including IJCNN04 -- >a term you can google -- to give a tutorial on this. Would be happy to >email the powerpoint with text notes >to anyone who doesn't mind getting 4 megs.) But it has been widely >criticized because of how it can sometimes >get stuck in "local minima." > > >The local minimum problem actually is radically different from what quickie >users of backpropagation in the MatLab >program imagine. (Again, the tutorial explains more.) Some key aspects: >simple pattern classification systems >usually do not get stuck in local minima; incremental learning always >IMPROVES what you have, and that's >useful, even if it is not the global optimum; as learning challenges grow >more and more complex, >local minima become more and more unavoidable -- so that we can never >"solve" them with a magic bullet but >we do need to have a whole multi-layer arsenal of methods to try to improve >creativity, to find ways to get out of local minima. > >So this Hegelian stuff is basically about fighting our way out of local >minima. > >Years ago, I discussed this with Michael Conrad, one of the people I used >to fund, and we put together one interesting story -- >where the "thesis" is the local minimum we are now stuck in, an >"antithesis" may be another valley >we can reach only by jumping "irrationally" in opposition to the local >gradient we experience -- and >synthesis or transcendence is when the learning system ADDS A NEW VARIABLE >to its representation of the problem such that >there is again an incremental path to the ultimate point. > >The strategy of seeking transcendence is my favorite strategy in trying to >improve social systems. But the >energy to MOTIVATE synthesis is often lacking... and it can be hard at >times to sell the objective truth... >and often one must wait until an extreme idiot is willing to formulate the >antithesis in >he starkest most extreme form before the world is ready for the synthesis. >That is hard for an incremental, rational Quaker to learn... but there it >is. >(Comment: Quaker lobby groups these days tend to have a different >personality from Quakers in >general on this particular point.... perhaps for reasons related to what I >am saying here.) > >And so.. Dan Smith. The Goddess stuff tends to be an extreme antithesis, >and some of what he >say about specific people would drive them into orbit -- not just the woman >he wrongs from the space movement >but also many men whom he praises in ways they would not like... > >And yet, it is certainly true that the world as a whole is entrenched in a >thesis in its treatment of women >which is extreme in the opposite direction, and dangerously destabilizing. >I am not thinking >of the US especially... where we have many, many technical problems but not >such a crisis... >but rather of parts of the world where the instability of the old thesis >really is an urgent crisis. > >All for now. > >Best of luck, > > Paul > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Jul 18 19:35:24 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:35:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Mideast polarization In-Reply-To: <200407181800.i6II0MW29632@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040718193524.44318.qmail@web13422.mail.yahoo.com> >>It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.<< --And to make things worse, Israel and the West are quick to embrace extremists on their own side who believe in an ultimate confrontation with Islam. Suicide bombings work because they empower the most rigid, uncompromising elements on both sides, keeping the extremes in business and locking out the moderates. It has become very difficult for moderates on either side to advocate for their counterparts on the other, without being painted as weak-willed appeasers, collaborators or dangerously naive peaceniks. So greater and greater sacrifice becomes almost inevitable as time passes without resolution. Nobody wants to feel vulnerable, lose face, or deal with the possibility that God will not avenge their losses. It would be bad enough if all sides were dominated by pragmatists with a goal of security. But when you add religious extremism, the view that God himself has predicted a bloody clash of civilizations (who will go against "God's infallible word"?), the logic of the pragmatists only accelerates an amplifying spiral of mutual paranoia and one-sided blame. Then, add the weight of collective insanity. Walk into a Jewish or Islamic chatroom, and watch the insults fly. Watch the moderates leave in frustration. The grassroots virus of anger, anonymous fire-setting, and projection of faults will ultimately push leaders on all sides to posture against moderacy and in favor of "final solutions". You'd be shocked how many Christians in the US believe the "final solution" will involve all Palestinians being removed from the land given to the Jews by God. And we know the final solution envisioned by Islamic extremists. How to oppose them, while locking out each side's religious extremists, enabling the moderates, and reassuring the security-minded pragmatists? Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ From paul.werbos at verizon.net Sun Jul 18 16:28:09 2004 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Werbos, Dr. Paul J.) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 12:28:09 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown, Hegel and Hinduism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20040718122709.00bb21a0@incoming.verizon.net> At 12:20 PM 7/18/2004 -0400, you wrote: >Yeah... I'd like to take a look at that 4 MB ppt tutorial. >Please forward. > >Thanks! -- Joel Thanks for your interest. Best, Paul P.S. Again, it's "notes view" in PPT for the text. >>From: "Werbos, Dr. Paul J." >>Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >>To: HowlBloom at aol.com, paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Brown, Hegel and Hinduism >>Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 09:49:22 -0400 >> >>Good morning! >> >>Sometimes on a Sunday morning, it is so pleasant to look out to the >>complex multithreaded fabric around >>us, and try to make out (or imagine?) patterns not seen before... >> >>If only we had more of such mornings.... >> >>-------- >> >>Regarding Dan Brown, someone on this list recently said he would rather >>read titillating stories about >>the sex lives of the British royals than read HIS books. (The voice of a >>former teenager in my mind >>immediately thought: "Once again we are too much a nation of couch >>potatoes...", but I will not follow >>that first thread here.) >> >>Whatever his problems, Dan Brown does deserve a bit more than that. >> >>Certainly, Brown makes assertions in his books which raised immediate >>hackles in my mind -- though I still >>enjoyed reading them anyway. He talks a lot about groups, people and >>history that I know >>better, first-hand, and he constantly overreached and enshrined >>speculations that could become dangerous >>if taken too seriously. But after a certain point, I began to think... I >>have to agree with some of his taste in subjects, >>because I have found almost all of the groups he discusses worth of >>intense attention. With one perhaps >>central exception: the Priory of Sion. The last trace I saw of them >>crossing paths with the real world.. >>was probably about 80 years ago... He also made a few technical points >>about codes which I had not heard of - but >>which I have not checked (at least, not checked out completely). (Oops: I >>have also had no contact whatsoever >>with any French royal lines, unless you count De Broglie or De >>Beauregard, from a distance.) >> >>And yet, in retrospect... Brown does have an important role to play. >> >>Crudely -- if the world is obsessed with a "thesis," there really are >>times when an antithesis must >>be well-articulated and pushed before it is possible to move on to a >>synthesis. This has been >>something of a hard lesson for me to learn over the past few years. As an >>individual, I often want to move >>straight to the synthesis to a point closer to the truth. In my own >>thinking, I can get away with >>doing that, and can move ahead many steps... but there comes a time when >>one must either >>communicate or face up to the fact that one has contributed very little >>real to the world as whole. >>And in that process... as people move one step at a time... one needs to >>value >>the Great Antithesis. >> >>Of course, this is straight Hegel. Hegel is not satisfying at all as a >>theory of how human brains really >>learn and progress. Freud makes a lot more sense, in my view, as a guide >>to the wiring of a system >>that really works. Hegel is as unsatisfying to the intellect as the >>"yin-yang" ideas from Daoism. >>(And Hegel, like Daoist folk healers, also has his barnacles and cheap >>shots that I don't mean to comment on here.) >>And yet... we do need phenomenological guides to everyday life, and >>Hegel's triangle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis >>does seem to recur in many, many parts of life experience. It can be seen >>as a kind of crude but >>very useful approximation to a kind of emergent dynamic property of >>intelligent systems and social systems. >> >>The Financial Times yesterday morning had a big article (page W4) on the >>new... worldview... emerging >>in Russia. They say that the rediscovery of Hegel is a large part of it. >>That also is interesting. >> >>And when I think of it... in complex ways... I realize how the Orthodox >>Hindu trinity of Brahman-Siva-Krishna >>mirrors very nicely the trinity of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. In some >>ways, one might even argue >>that Hegel gives a kind of purified version of that trinity, stripped of >>confusing and deceptive barnacles.. >>(but also stripped of poetry and side stories, yes). >> >>Why would one care? Why would a more cosmic intellect waste time with >>such things? >> >>The whole Hegelian process can help us become conscious of a pervasive >>challenge we all face as >>intelligent systems ourselves" a tendency to be caught in local minima. >>And it highlights how diversities >>in HUMAN personalities can be helpful in society as a whole making progress. >> >>Many of us, in the rationalist part of the world, have tended to >>gravitate towards incremental progress >>and incremental learning. For example, the neural network learning >>algorithm I developed >>more than thirty years ago, now called "backpropagation," is an >>incremental learning system, >>and it accounts for perhaps 80 percent of the useful real-world >>applications of artificial neural networks. >>(I have free time right now because I am basically waiting to fly to a >>couple of conferences, including IJCNN04 -- >>a term you can google -- to give a tutorial on this. Would be happy to >>email the powerpoint with text notes >>to anyone who doesn't mind getting 4 megs.) But it has been widely >>criticized because of how it can sometimes >>get stuck in "local minima." >> >> >>The local minimum problem actually is radically different from what >>quickie users of backpropagation in the MatLab >>program imagine. (Again, the tutorial explains more.) Some key aspects: >>simple pattern classification systems >>usually do not get stuck in local minima; incremental learning always >>IMPROVES what you have, and that's >>useful, even if it is not the global optimum; as learning challenges grow >>more and more complex, >>local minima become more and more unavoidable -- so that we can never >>"solve" them with a magic bullet but >>we do need to have a whole multi-layer arsenal of methods to try to >>improve creativity, to find ways to get out of local minima. >> >>So this Hegelian stuff is basically about fighting our way out of local >>minima. >> >>Years ago, I discussed this with Michael Conrad, one of the people I used >>to fund, and we put together one interesting story -- >>where the "thesis" is the local minimum we are now stuck in, an >>"antithesis" may be another valley >>we can reach only by jumping "irrationally" in opposition to the local >>gradient we experience -- and >>synthesis or transcendence is when the learning system ADDS A NEW >>VARIABLE to its representation of the problem such that >>there is again an incremental path to the ultimate point. >> >>The strategy of seeking transcendence is my favorite strategy in trying >>to improve social systems. But the >>energy to MOTIVATE synthesis is often lacking... and it can be hard at >>times to sell the objective truth... >>and often one must wait until an extreme idiot is willing to formulate >>the antithesis in >>he starkest most extreme form before the world is ready for the synthesis. >>That is hard for an incremental, rational Quaker to learn... but there it is. >>(Comment: Quaker lobby groups these days tend to have a different >>personality from Quakers in >>general on this particular point.... perhaps for reasons related to what >>I am saying here.) >> >>And so.. Dan Smith. The Goddess stuff tends to be an extreme antithesis, >>and some of what he >>say about specific people would drive them into orbit -- not just the >>woman he wrongs from the space movement >>but also many men whom he praises in ways they would not like... >> >>And yet, it is certainly true that the world as a whole is entrenched in >>a thesis in its treatment of women >>which is extreme in the opposite direction, and dangerously >>destabilizing. I am not thinking >>of the US especially... where we have many, many technical problems but >>not such a crisis... >>but rather of parts of the world where the instability of the old thesis >>really is an urgent crisis. >> >>All for now. >> >>Best of luck, >> >> Paul >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: IJCNN04tutorialWerbosV2.ppt Type: application/octet-stream Size: 4390400 bytes Desc: not available URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Jul 18 22:15:23 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 18:15:23 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: <12d.460c9537.2e2c507b@aol.com> Bear with me if I posted this before, but it's something I wrote up for paleopsych that I think was sent while our listserv was down. Howard Has anyone noticed that the current World War between militant Islam and the Western Way of Life is actually something so basic even a bacterium could understand it? It's a battle of reproductive strategies. Specifically it's a battle of what population biologists call r and k strategies. One definition of the r strategy is this. You're up against the threat of a swift and hungry predator. You mate with as many females as you can, keep them pregnant constantly, use them as serial baby incubators, and put very few resources into each child. Why? So you can have as many kids as possible. The gamble goes like this. The more kids I shove out there, the more are likely to survive. The opposite strategy is k. One version of the k strategy (the let's-konserve strategy) is this. Have very few kids but put a huge investment into each one. This only works when you can be pretty sure each kid will survive. Predators--like wild dogs and large cats--lions, tigers, cheetahs--top of the food-chain dominators--tend to use the k strategy. They don't have to face death at the hands of bigger enemies, but do have to teach their young an awful lot to turn them into good hunters. If an adolescent cheetah hasn't learned her hunting skills well enough to bring down one big kill out of every four she tries, she is dead. Prey--like the mice, voles, and other rodents that even big cats and wild dogs hunt down as quick snacks--go for the r strategy. Breed like rabbits and hope that 4 out of every 12 pups survive. Cheetahs often have just two cubs at a time. Right now we Westerners dominate the worldwide food chain. We've opted for k. But Osama bin Laden has declared openly that he's going for the r strategy. He's said that his form of Islam honors women. It keeps them off the street, out of public sight, out of careers that might distract their attention, and keeps them pregnant so they can have between seven and seventeen children each. Men in Osama's privileged position can also have four wives at a time. And they can add to that advantage by wife-trading. They can divorce one wife and bring in another, running through as many wives as Osama's dad did. Bin Laden senior, with his 54 children, had eleven wives. We in the Western World, on the other hand, are having fewer kids than would be needed to replace our current population. What are we doing with those kids? We're investing in them hugely. These days we're doing far more than educating the hell out of them. We're also accessorizing them with ability-extenders--the equivalent of mega-arms, macro-legs, super-eyes, and tele-ears. We are giving them appendages it would have taken evolution 200 million years to develop...cell phones, digital cameras and videocams built into those phones, laptops, Google, instant access to the fastest-growing library in world history--the World Wide Web-- cars, cheap airline tickets, ubiquitous video displays, and the imagination-extenders of X-Boxes, Sony Play Stations, and Nintendo sets. We're turning our kids into digipedes--creatures with newly-invented cyber-senses and digi-limbs. That's precisely why Osama says we will fall as victim's of our own blindness, obesity, and decay. "We love death more than you love life," he says. To paraphrase his communiqu??s to the Ummah of Islam, "We can afford to sacrifice as many as 250 million of our believers even if you strike us with your nuclear weapons. The blood of our martyrs will only strengthen the 1.75 million of us who remain." You and I are very different, says Osama. You, he says, are cowards. You quiver when one of your soldiers is killed and his body is dragged through the streets of Somalia. You cringe when the warriors of holiness cut off a single head. You speak of exit strategies, Osama sneers, when a mere thousand of your soldiers have died in Iraq. Osama says he can whip us right left and cente r. Again, to paraphrase his speeches, "Our religion tells us to put ourselves into the battle and to kill and take the chance of being killed. We know that your corruption will do away with the brief wisp of putrescence you call a civilization. But our God has ordered that your destruction shall not be left to your rot. It shall not be left to your lack of manners and of decency. Our God has ordered that your sinews and bones be severed by the swords of our sons, by the fire and flame of our students-turned-to knights, and by the hellstorms delivered to you by our teenage heroes." Osama inspires with the poetry of the r strategy, the poetry of a rodent reproductive passion. In his own words: "By Allah, it is either victory or martyrdom and only those whose life span has come to an end will be killed, so his family will miss him, only for his soul to be, as our Messenger (peace and mercy be upon him) said, to be in the bellies of green birds that roam freely in heaven as they please, then head towards lanterns suspended with the throne of the Most Compassionate. There is no comparison between the two vicinities, the vicinity of his family and the vicinity of his lord. So dear youth of Islam everywhere, especially those of the neighborhood, where the duty upon you is conclusive, dear Muslim youths in the Arabic peninsula, and in Egypt and greater Syria, dear youths of Rabia???a [an Iraqi poetess born in 717 ad] and Mudhr, dear grandsons of Salahuddine, dear knights of Mohammed the Conqueror, dear Fedayeen of Umm Al-Fida and Aleppo, and the lions of Muan and Al-Zarqa, and the brave of Azad, the heroes of Assir, Hashed, Madhaj and Bakil, let your supplies be continuous so that you may rescue the land of the two rivers." Osama's betting on lots of kids. We're betting on few. Osama's betting on small investments in each body he sends into battle. Osama's betting that as one Egyptian contemporary of bin Laden's said way back in the early 1980s when al Qaeda was just beginning: "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and grows on severed limbs." Osama is betting on the strategy of homicidal plague bacteria-- Yersinia pestis --bacteria that bet on flagrant, fast reproduction--bacteria that put their chips on the r strategy. We are betting on the strategy of elephants--the k strategy. This is far more than what Osama says it is when he uses Samuel Huntington's words and declares that: "this struggle is a religious and a doctrinal one and that the clash is in fact a clash of civilizations." It is more than what Osama calls, "a rare opportunity???and a priceless one???to sharpen the faculties of the Ummah and to break its shackles, in order to storm forward towards the battlefields of Jihad." And it is more than Osama's "decisive war", the war he says has opened "a crossroads" in history. It is a war between two ancient reproductive strategies in a new environment, a global, cyber-niche.. But primitive as it is, it is also a war between two different views of darkness and of light. I choose to believe that the light is that of the Western religion of human rights, women's rights, gay rights, democracy, free speech, secularism, and science. Osama believes the light lies in the purity of a seventh century vision that muzzles minds and tears the tongues from the mouths of blasphemers. In the end this is a fight to see: v whether humanity can continue its technological, philosophical, and artistic-mindleaps and soul-expansions v or whether our race cowers beneath clouds of nuclear soot and the veils of burqas and trudges back to what it experienced from 550 ad to 1100 AD--a Mad-Max dark ages. It is a war to see which reproductive strategy can grab the new cyber-global niche--this new wireless planet. It is a war to see which strategy can mobili ze speed, conviction, whacko-cleverness, extremely long-term thinking, and implacable, adamantine persistence. Does either of our presidential candidates, Bush or Kerry, have a clear vision of just how desperate and critical this war of two colonies of organisms in the petri dish of our planet is? Does either have the persuasive and poetic capacity to turn a nation of couch potatoes and self-hating critics into a nation of secular humanist saviors...saviors of the fast-track experiment in the reinvention of mass mind, of personal passion, and of human powers that we call our civilization? Howard Bloom ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Jul 18 22:42:25 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 15:42:25 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy References: <12d.460c9537.2e2c507b@aol.com> Message-ID: <001101c46d18$7f952520$210110ac@steve> Given the religious inclinations of Bush, it's more like a battle between two sects of fundamentalists, each pursuing Armageddon in their own way. Given the long-standing relationship between the Bush and bin Ladin families, it's also a spat between boyhood friends. Being a predator is hard work- a tiger makes a kill once for every 20 times it hunt. If our leaders had kept their eye on the ball and had hunted Osama down, we would have fewer problems. Perhaps a regime change will return us to the correct path. No group produces more than 5% or so of alpha animals, so if you iterate decapitation enough times, the other side will run out of leaders. ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 3:15 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Bear with me if I posted this before, but it's something I wrote up for paleopsych that I think was sent while our listserv was down. Howard Has anyone noticed that the current World War between militant Islam and the Western Way of Life is actually something so basic even a bacterium could understand it? It's a battle of reproductive strategies. Specifically it's a battle of what population biologists call r and k strategies. One definition of the r strategy is this. You're up against the threat of a swift and hungry predator. You mate with as many females as you can, keep them pregnant constantly, use them as serial baby incubators, and put very few resources into each child. Why? So you can have as many kids as possible. The gamble goes like this. The more kids I shove out there, the more are likely to survive. The opposite strategy is k. One version of the k strategy (the let's-konserve strategy) is this. Have very few kids but put a huge investment into each one. This only works when you can be pretty sure each kid will survive. Predators--like wild dogs and large cats--lions, tigers, cheetahs--top of the food-chain dominators--tend to use the k strategy. They don't have to face death at the hands of bigger enemies, but do have to teach their young an awful lot to turn them into good hunters. If an adolescent cheetah hasn't learned her hunting skills well enough to bring down one big kill out of every four she tries, she is dead. Prey--like the mice, voles, and other rodents that even big cats and wild dogs hunt down as quick snacks--go for the r strategy. Breed like rabbits and hope that 4 out of every 12 pups survive. Cheetahs often have just two cubs at a time. Right now we Westerners dominate the worldwide food chain. We've opted for k. But Osama bin Laden has declared openly that he's going for the r strategy. He's said that his form of Islam honors women. It keeps them off the street, out of public sight, out of careers that might distract their attention, and keeps them pregnant so they can have between seven and seventeen children each. Men in Osama's privileged position can also have four wives at a time. And they can add to that advantage by wife-trading. They can divorce one wife and bring in another, running through as many wives as Osama's dad did. Bin Laden senior, with his 54 children, had eleven wives. We in the Western World, on the other hand, are having fewer kids than would be needed to replace our current population. What are we doing with those kids? We're investing in them hugely. These days we're doing far more than educating the hell out of them. We're also accessorizing them with ability-extenders--the equivalent of mega-arms, macro-legs, super-eyes, and tele-ears. We are giving them appendages it would have taken evolution 200 million years to develop...cell phones, digital cameras and videocams built into those phones, laptops, Google, instant access to the fastest-growing library in world history--the World Wide Web-- cars, cheap airline tickets, ubiquitous video displays, and the imagination-extenders of X-Boxes, Sony Play Stations, and Nintendo sets. We're turning our kids into digipedes--creatures with newly-invented cyber-senses and digi-limbs. That's precisely why Osama says we will fall as victim's of our own blindness, obesity, and decay. "We love death more than you love life," he says. To paraphrase his communiqu??s to the Ummah of Islam, "We can afford to sacrifice as many as 250 million of our believers even if you strike us with your nuclear weapons. The blood of our martyrs will only strengthen the 1.75 million of us who remain." You and I are very different, says Osama. You, he says, are cowards. You quiver when one of your soldiers is killed and his body is dragged through the streets of Somalia. You cringe when the warriors of holiness cut off a single head. You speak of exit strategies, Osama sneers, when a mere thousand of your soldiers have died in Iraq. Osama says he can whip us right left and center. Again, to paraphrase his speeches, "Our religion tells us to put ourselves into the battle and to kill and take the chance of being killed. We know that your corruption will do away with the brief wisp of putrescence you call a civilization. But our God has ordered that your destruction shall not be left to your rot. It shall not be left to your lack of manners and of decency. Our God has ordered that your sinews and bones be severed by the swords of our sons, by the fire and flame of our students-turned-to knights, and by the hellstorms delivered to you by our teenage heroes." Osama inspires with the poetry of the r strategy, the poetry of a rodent reproductive passion. In his own words: "By Allah, it is either victory or martyrdom and only those whose life span has come to an end will be killed, so his family will miss him, only for his soul to be, as our Messenger (peace and mercy be upon him) said, to be in the bellies of green birds that roam freely in heaven as they please, then head towards lanterns suspended with the throne of the Most Compassionate. There is no comparison between the two vicinities, the vicinity of his family and the vicinity of his lord. So dear youth of Islam everywhere, especially those of the neighborhood, where the duty upon you is conclusive, dear Muslim youths in the Arabic peninsula, and in Egypt and greater Syria, dear youths of Rabia???a [an Iraqi poetess born in 717 ad] and Mudhr, dear grandsons of Salahuddine, dear knights of Mohammed the Conqueror, dear Fedayeen of Umm Al-Fida and Aleppo, and the lions of Muan and Al-Zarqa, and the brave of Azad, the heroes of Assir, Hashed, Madhaj and Bakil, let your supplies be continuous so that you may rescue the land of the two rivers." Osama's betting on lots of kids. We're betting on few. Osama's betting on small investments in each body he sends into battle. Osama's betting that as one Egyptian contemporary of bin Laden's said way back in the early 1980s when al Qaeda was just beginning: "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and grows on severed limbs." Osama is betting on the strategy of homicidal plague bacteria-- Yersinia pestis --bacteria that bet on flagrant, fast reproduction--bacteria that put their chips on the r strategy. We are betting on the strategy of elephants--the k strategy. This is far more than what Osama says it is when he uses Samuel Huntington's words and declares that: "this struggle is a religious and a doctrinal one and that the clash is in fact a clash of civilizations." It is more than what Osama calls, "a rare opportunity???and a priceless one???to sharpen the faculties of the Ummah and to break its shackles, in order to storm forward towards the battlefields of Jihad." And it is more than Osama's "decisive war", the war he says has opened "a crossroads" in history. It is a war between two ancient reproductive strategies in a new environment, a global, cyber-niche.. But primitive as it is, it is also a war between two different views of darkness and of light. I choose to believe that the light is that of the Western religion of human rights, women's rights, gay rights, democracy, free speech, secularism, and science. Osama believes the light lies in the purity of a seventh century vision that muzzles minds and tears the tongues from the mouths of blasphemers. In the end this is a fight to see: v whether humanity can continue its technological, philosophical, and artistic-mindleaps and soul-expansions v or whether our race cowers beneath clouds of nuclear soot and the veils of burqas and trudges back to what it experienced from 550 ad to 1100 AD--a Mad-Max dark ages. It is a war to see which reproductive strategy can grab the new cyber-global niche--this new wireless planet. It is a war to see which strategy can mobilize speed, conviction, whacko-cleverness, extremely long-term thinking, and implacable, adamantine persistence. Does either of our presidential candidates, Bush or Kerry, have a clear vision of just how desperate and critical this war of two colonies of organisms in the petri dish of our planet is? Does either have the persuasive and poetic capacity to turn a nation of couch potatoes and self-hating critics into a nation of secular humanist saviors...saviors of the fast-track experiment in the reinvention of mass mind, of personal passion, and of human powers that we call our civilization? Howard Bloom ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Jul 18 23:10:36 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 19:10:36 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Osama and the Petri Dish--Jihad as a reproductive strategy Message-ID: <1e5.255789d5.2e2c5d6c@aol.com> I wrote this up for paleopsych a few months ago, and don't remember whether it went out or was stopped by our listserv's 8-week hiccup. So please bear with me if you've seen it before. Howard Has anyone noticed that the current World War between militant Islam and the Western Way of Life is actually something so basic even a bacterium could understand it? It's a battle of reproductive strategies. Specifically it's a battle of what population biologists call r and k strategies. One definition of the r strategy is this. You're up against the threat of a swift and hungry predator. You mate with as many females as you can, keep them pregnant constantly, use them as serial baby incubators, and put very few resources into each child. Why? So you can have as many kids as possible. The gamble goes like this. The more kids I shove out there, the more are likely to survive. The opposite strategy is k. One version of the k strategy (the let's-konserve strategy) is this. Have very few kids but put a huge investment into each one. This only works when you can be pretty sure each kid will survive. Predators--like wild dogs and large cats--lions, tigers, cheetahs--top of the food-chain dominators--tend to use the k strategy. They don't have to face death at the hands of bigger enemies, but do have to teach their young an awful lot to turn them into good hunters. If an adolescent cheetah hasn't learned her hunting skills well enough to bring down one big kill out of every four she tries, she is dead. Prey--like the mice, voles, and other rodents that even big cats and wild dogs hunt down as quick snacks--go for the r strategy. Breed like rabbits and hope that 4 out of every 12 pups survive. Cheetahs often have just two cubs at a time. Right now we Westerners dominate the worldwide food chain. We've opted for k. But Osama bin Laden has declared openly that he's going for the r strategy. He's said that his form of Islam honors women. It keeps them off the street, out of public sight, out of careers that might distract their attention, and keeps them pregnant so they can have between seven and seventeen children each. Men in Osama's privileged position can also have four wives at a time. And they can add to that advantage by wife-trading. They can divorce one wife and bring in another, running through as many wives as Osama's dad did. Bin Laden senior, with his 54 children, had eleven wives. We in the Western World, on the other hand, are having fewer kids than would be needed to replace our current population. What are we doing with those kids? We're investing in them hugely. These days we're doing far more than educating the hell out of them. We're also accessorizing them with ability-extenders--the equivalent of mega-arms, macro-legs, super-eyes, and tele-ears. We are giving them appendages it would have taken evolution 200 million years to develop...cell phones, digital cameras and videocams built into those phones, laptops, Google, instant access to the fastest-growing library in world history--the World Wide Web-- cars, cheap airline tickets, ubiquitous video displays, and the imagination-extenders of X-Boxes, Sony Play Stations, and Nintendo sets. We're turning our kids into digipedes--creatures with newly-invented cyber-senses and digi-limbs. That's precisely why Osama says we will fall as victim's of our own blindness, obesity, and decay. "We love death more than you love life," he says. To paraphrase his communiqu??s to the Ummah of Islam, "We can afford to sacrifice as many as 250 million of our believers even if you strike us with your nuclear weapons. The blood of our martyrs will only strengthen the 1.75 million of us who remain." You and I are very different, says Osama. You, he says, are cowards. You quiver when one of your soldiers is killed and his body is dragged through the streets of Somalia. You cringe when the warriors of holiness cut off a single head. You speak of exit strategies, Osama sneers, when a mere thousand of your soldiers have died in Iraq. Osama says he can whip us right left and center. Again, to paraphrase his speeches, "Our religion tells us to put ourselves into the battle and to kill and take the chance of being killed. We know that your corruption will do away with the brief wisp of putrescence you call a civilization. But our God has ordered that your destruction shall not be left to your rot. It shall not be left to your lack of manners and of decency. Our God has ordered that your sinews and bones be severed by the swords of our sons, by the fire and flame of our students-turned-to knights, and by the hellstorms delivered to you by our teenage heroes." Osama inspires with the poetry of the r strategy, the poetry of a rodent reproductive passion. In his own words: "By Allah, it is either victory or martyrdom and only those whose life span has come to an end will be killed, so his family will miss him, only for his soul to be, as our Messenger (peace and mercy be upon him) said, to be in the bellies of green birds that roam freely in heaven as they please, then head towards lanterns suspended with the throne of the Most Compassionate. There is no comparison between the two vicinities, the vicinity of his family and the vicinity of his lord. So dear youth of Islam everywhere, especially those of the neighborhood, where the duty upon you is conclusive, dear Muslim youths in the Arabic peninsula, and in Egypt and greater Syria, dear youths of Rabia???a [an Iraqi poetess born in 717 ad] and Mudhr, dear grandsons of Salahuddine, dear knights of Mohammed the Conqueror, dear Fedayeen of Umm Al-Fida and Aleppo, and the lions of Muan and Al-Zarqa, and the brave of Azad, the heroes of Assir, Hashed, Madhaj and Bakil, let your supplies be continuous so that you may rescue the land of the two rivers." Osama's betting on lots of kids. We're betting on few. Osama's betting on small investments in each body he sends into battle. Osama's betting that as one Egyptian contemporary of bin Laden's said way back in the early 1980s when al Qaeda was just beginning: "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and grows on severed limbs." Osama is betting on the strategy of homicidal plague bacteria-- Yersinia pestis --bacteria that bet on flagrant, fast reproduction--bacteria that put their chips on the r strategy. We are betting on the strategy of elephants--the k strategy. This is far more than what Osama says it is when he uses Samuel Huntington's words and declares that: "this struggle is a religious and a doctrinal one and that the clash is in fact a clash of civilizations." It is more than what Osama calls, "a rare opportunity???and a priceless one???to sharpen the faculties of the Ummah and to break its shackles, in order to storm forward towards the battlefields of Jihad." And it is more than Osama's "decisive war", the war he says has opened "a crossroads" in history. It is a war between two ancient reproductive strategies in a new environment, a global, cyber-niche.. But primitive as it is, it is also a war between two different views of darkness and of light. I choose to believe that the light is that of the Western religion of human rights, women's rights, gay rights, democracy, free speech, secularism, and science. Osama believes the light lies in the purity of a seventh century vision that muzzles minds and tears the tongues from the mouths of blasphemers. In the end this is a fight to see: v whether humanity can continue its technological, philosophical, and artistic-mindleaps and soul-expansions v or whether our race cowers beneath clouds of nuclear soot and the veils of burqas and trudges back to what it experienced from 550 ad to 1100 AD--a Mad-Max dark ages. It is a war to see which reproductive strategy can grab the new cyber-global niche--this new wireless planet. It is a war to see which strategy can mobilize speed, conviction, whacko-cleverness, extremely long-term thinking, and implacable, adamantine persistence. Does either of our presidential candidates, Bush or Kerry, have a clear vision of just how desperate and critical this war of two colonies of organisms in the petri dish of our planet is? Does either have the persuasive and poetic capacity to turn a nation of couch potatoes and self-hating critics into a nation of secular humanist saviors...saviors of the fast-track experiment in the reinvention of mass mind, of personal passion, and of human powers that we call our civilization? Howard Bloom ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Jul 18 23:46:02 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 19:46:02 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: I'm not a good tactician, so can't comment on whether decapitating militant Islam over and over again is good strategy. But the research I reviewed for The Lucifer Principle, my first book, hints that there may be a flipside to the idea that, "No group produces more than 5% or so of alpha animals." That second side may be this: Every group produces 5% or so of alpha animals. Or, to put it differently, leaders create groups, but groups also create leaders. Remove the leaders from a group and, if the group retains its cohesion, the group will generate new commanders, generals, and generalissimos. In experiments on human groups, if I remember them correctly, if you gathered a bunch of beta males and put them together, a leader would emerge. So would two sidekicks to the leader--a lieutenenant/enforcer and a comedic buddy. If you put a bunch of ants together without a leader or a hierarchical structure, a hierarchical structure would eventually emerge. If you removed the queen from an ant colony, the workers would sense the absence of thesuppressor hormones her majesty sent out to keep the workers in their place. Several workers would undergo a metamorphosis. Their sexual hormones would rev up and turn them into potential egg-bearing queen candidates. Then the candidates would fight it out to see which one would take over the regal chamber--the huge room in the colony where a small squadron of handmaidens tended the swelling queen so she could turn herself into a monstrous giant--an egg-factory. If this principle holds true for al Qaeda, removing leaders will help but won't necessarily wipe al Qaeda away. Al Qaeda is now a group whose legend is competing on the battlefield of history. It's competing for an endurance that goes beyond one generation or two. The way to make al Qaeda go away is to defeat it so dramatically and so persistently that it comes to be associated with failure. The taint of persistent failure is a repulsion cue. It drives followers and new recruits away. The trick is this. Al Qaeda has a perceptual antidote to defeat. Every time its members are killed, their death is defined as a triumph. Each death is turned into martyrdom. Martyrs are bonding devices. They are attraction cues. They're sources of publicity that bring a group sympathy...and notoriety. Christianity used the same device to spread its fame and to gain converts in the first and second centuries ad. Christian enthusiasts literally begged Roman judges to send them into the stadiums with starving animals and to rocket them directly to Christ's side in heaven via the liftoff pad of martyrdom. Sorry, the animals and the martyrdom were what they begged for. The image of the liftoff pad with liquid engines fueled by blood is mine. Howard What does one do when an enemy upends the rules and turns humiliation into a recruitment tool? Howard In a message dated 7/18/2004 6:43:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, shovland at mindspring.com writes: If our leaders had kept their eye on the ball and had hunted Osama down, we would have fewer problems. Perhaps a regime change will return us to the correct path. No group produces more than 5% or so of alpha animals, so if you iterate decapitation enough times, the other side will run out of leaders. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Jul 19 04:31:11 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (shovland at mindspring.com) Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 21:31:11 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: <30776624.1090211472194.JavaMail.root@wamui10.slb.atl.earthlink.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Jul 19 14:40:04 2004 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 08:40:04 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm In-Reply-To: <6.1.0.6.0.20040718120422.01cdeec0@mail.earthlink.net> References: <6.1.0.6.0.20040718120422.01cdeec0@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <40FBDD44.90201@solution-consulting.com> Karen, this was most interesting and valuable. What is the reference? Where did it come from. Thanks, Lynn K.E. wrote: > A View from the Eye of the Storm > > > > Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson > Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to > 2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science. > > From guavaberry at earthlink.net Mon Jul 19 20:37:00 2004 From: guavaberry at earthlink.net (K.E.) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 16:37:00 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm In-Reply-To: <40FBDD44.90201@solution-consulting.com> References: <6.1.0.6.0.20040718120422.01cdeec0@mail.earthlink.net> <40FBDD44.90201@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.0.20040719163545.01fa0ec0@mail.earthlink.net> Lynn, unfortunately it was posted without a reference best, karen At 10:40 AM 7/19/2004, you wrote: >Karen, this was most interesting and valuable. What is the reference? >Where did it come from. >Thanks, >Lynn > >K.E. wrote: > >>A View from the Eye of the Storm >> >> >> >>Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson >>Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, >>of the Weizmann Institute of Science. > ><>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> >The Educational CyberPlayGround >http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ > >National Children's Folksong Repository >http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/Repository/NCFR.html > >Hot List of Schools Online and >Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters >http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/index.html > >7 Hot Site Awards >New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink, >USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty ><>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> From isaacsonj at hotmail.com Mon Jul 19 20:57:28 2004 From: isaacsonj at hotmail.com (Joel Isaacson) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 16:57:28 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm Message-ID: A number of websites posted Harari's speech. Here is one: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Z8jmMfz4uXYJ:globalspecops.com/vieweyestorm.html+haim+harari+eye+of+the+storm&hl=en -- Joel >From: "K.E." >Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm >Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 16:37:00 -0400 > >Lynn, > >unfortunately it was posted without a reference > >best, >karen > > >At 10:40 AM 7/19/2004, you wrote: >>Karen, this was most interesting and valuable. What is the reference? >>Where did it come from. >>Thanks, >>Lynn >> >>K.E. wrote: >> >>>A View from the Eye of the Storm >>> >>> >>> >>>Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson >>>Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, >>>of the Weizmann Institute of Science. >> >><>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> >>The Educational CyberPlayGround >>http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ >> >>National Children's Folksong Repository >>http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/Repository/NCFR.html >> >>Hot List of Schools Online and >>Net Happenings, K12 Newsletters, Network Newsletters >>http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Community/index.html >> >>7 Hot Site Awards >>New York Times, USA Today , MSNBC, Earthlink, >>USA Today Best Bets For Educators, Macworld Top Fifty >><>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<> > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Mon Jul 19 21:15:25 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:15:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: House Committee Tells NIH to Post Research Results Online and Make Them Free Message-ID: House Committee Tells NIH to Post Research Results Online and Make Them Free News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.7.19 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2004/07/2004071902n.htm [45]By ANDREA L. FOSTER Washington In a coup for the open-access movement, the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has recommended that the National Institutes of Health provide the public with free, online access to articles resulting from research it has financed. The recommendation is included in a report that accompanies a spending bill for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services for the 2005 fiscal year. The report says that within six months after an article is published, the NIH should make available researchers' final manuscripts via PubMed Central, a popular digital archive maintained by the National Library of Medicine. The report also instructs the NIH to submit a document to the House committee by December stating how it plans to carry out the recommendation. The Association of American Publishers is aggressively pressing members of Congress to gut the open-access language in the report, saying that the recommendation is worded like a requirement and would threaten publishers' ability to decide when and if to make articles free. "To mandate the government to declare the open-access model as the model for government-funded research publication is not in the best interest of business and readers," said Barbara Meredith, the association's vice president for professional and scholarly publishing. The House Appropriations Committee, which approved the bill and the report on Wednesday, justified the recommendation by saying that taxpayers deserve free access to the results of research they helped finance. "The committee is very concerned that there is insufficient public access to reports and data resulting from NIH-funded research," the committee report reads. "This situation, which has been exacerbated by the dramatic rise in scientific-journal subscription prices, is contrary to the best interests of the U.S. taxpayers who paid for this research." Scholars and librarians have long shared similar views. Indeed, librarians and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or Sparc, have been lobbying the Appropriations Committee behind the scenes to include the open-access language in the committee's report, according to a Washington consultant familiar with the issue. Sparc is an alliance of university and research libraries working to cut costs and enhance competition in scientific publishing. "This is going to make more information available to more people," James G. Neal, Columbia University's vice president for information services and its chief librarian, said of the House report. "That is in the public interest. It's in the government interest. It's in the national interest." Mr. Neal is chairman of Sparc's steering committee, which was instrumental in persuading the Appropriations Committee to adopt the open-access language. He said he hopes the committee's action last week will spur the government to consider whether articles resulting from research financed by other federal agencies should also be posted free online. He offered as an example research supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scientific papers emerging from NASA-backed research, he said, are largely made available through expensive scholarly journals owned by commercial publishers. The Appropriations Committee's report caught the Association of American Publishers by surprise and prompted what Ms. Meredith described as a two-day "blitz" of telephone calls, letters, and faxes last week from publishers to members of Congress, urging them to reject the report. "It was authored by the NIH, and it really caught us off-guard," Ms. Meredith said. "We feel that no publishers were consulted on it." Specifically, the association wants the last sentence of the open-access language removed from the report. The sentence instructs the NIH to submit a report to the Appropriations Committee by December 1, 2004, stating how it will carry out the recommendation. The publishers' group also wants to change the period after which articles would be made freely available. The report recommends six months. Ms. Meredith said it should state that articles would be posted after a "reasonable period after publication." A six-month time frame might strike some scholarly publishers as too short. The journal Science, for example, makes articles free on its Web site one year after they appeared in print. In letters to federal officials last month, officials of the publishers' group warned of the perils of open-access publishing. "Public policy that compels journal publishers to adopt a monolithic and unproven economic model of publishing could present a serious threat to science and the value that NIH-sponsored biomedical research delivers to society," stated the letters, which were sent to Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, and John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The full House is expected to vote on the spending bill this week, before it adjourns for the summer. Ms. Meredith said her group would continue pushing to have the open-access language stripped from the report before that vote. If the language remains in the report, she said, the publishing group would lobby to have it removed when the Senate takes up its version of the spending bill. The Senate is likely to consider the bill after Labor Day. _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [55]The Promise and Peril of 'Open Access' (1/30/2004) * [56]Publishers Fear Government Intervention (1/30/2004) References 45. mailto:andrea.foster at chronicle.com 55. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i21/21a01001.htm 56. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i21/21a01201.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Mon Jul 19 21:21:14 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:21:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Waking Up From the American Dream Message-ID: Waking Up From the American Dream The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.7.23 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i46/46b00901.htm By SASHA ABRAMSKY Last year I visited London and stumbled upon an essay in a Sunday paper written by Margaret Drabble, one of Britain's pre-eminent ladies of letters. "My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable," she wrote. "It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world." The essay continued in the same rather bilious vein for about a thousand words, and as I read it, two things struck me: The first was how appalled I was by Drabble's crassly oversimplistic analysis of what America was all about, of who its people were, and of what its culture valued; the second was a sense somewhat akin to fear as I thought through the implications of the venom attached to the words of this gentle scribe of the English bourgeoisie. After all, if someone whose country and class have so clearly benefited economically from the protections provided by American military and political ties reacts so passionately to the omnipresence of the United States, what must an angry, impoverished young man in a failing third world state feel? I grew up in London in the 1970s and 1980s, in a country that was struggling to craft a postcolonial identity for itself, a country that was, in many ways, still reeling from the collapse of power it suffered in the post-World War II years. Not surprisingly, there was a strong anti-American flavor to much of the politics, the humor, the cultural chitchat of the period; after all, America had dramatically usurped Britannia on the world stage, and who among us doesn't harbor some resentments at being shunted onto the sidelines by a new superstar? Today, however, when I talk with friends and relatives in London, when I visit Europe, the anti-Americanism is more than just sardonic asides, rueful Monty Python-style jibes, and haughty intimations of superiority. Today something much more visceral is in the air. I go to my old home and I get the distinct impression that, as Drabble put it, people really loathe America somewhere deep, deep in their gut. A Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Project survey recently found that even in Britain, America's staunchest ally, more than 6 out of 10 people polled believed the United States paid little or no attention to that country's interests. About 80 percent of French and German respondents stated that, because of the war in Iraq, they had less confidence in the trustworthiness of America. In the Muslim countries surveyed, large majorities believed the war on terror to be about establishing U.S. world domination. Indeed, in many countries -- in the Arab world and in regions, such as Western Europe, closely tied into American economic and military structures -- popular opinion about both America the country and Americans as individuals has taken a serious hit. Just weeks ago, 27 of America's top retired diplomats and military commanders warned in a public statement, "Never in the 21/4 centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted." If true, that suggests that, while to all appearances America's allies continue to craft policies in line with the wishes of Washington, underneath the surface a new dynamic may well be emerging, one not too dissimilar to the Soviet Union's relations with its reluctant satellite states in Eastern Europe during the cold war. America's friends may be quiescent in public, deeply reluctant to toe the line in private. Drabble mentioned the Iraq war as her primary casus belli with the United States. The statement from the bipartisan group calling itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change focused on the Bush administration's recent foreign policy. But to me it seems that something else is also going on. In many ways, the Iraq war is merely a pretext for a deeper discontent with how America has seemed to fashion a new global society, a new economic, military, and political order in the decade and a half since the end of the cold war. America may only be riding the crest of a wave of modernization that, in all likelihood, would have emerged without its guiding hand. But add to the mix a discontent with the vast wealth and power that America has amassed in the past century and a deep sense of unease with the ways in which a secular, market-driven world divvies up wealth and influence among people and nations, and you have all the ingredients for a nasty backlash against America. I'm not talking merely about the anti-globalism of dispossessed Third World peasants, the fears of the loss of cultural sovereignty experienced by societies older and more traditional than the United States, the anger at a perceived American arrogance that we've recently been reading so much about. I'm talking about something that is rooted deeper in the psyches of other nations. I guess I mean a feeling of being marginalized by history; of being peripheral to the human saga; of being footnotes for tomorrow's historians rather than main characters. In short, a growing anxiety brought on by having another country and culture dictating one's place in the society of nations. In the years since I stood on my rooftop in Brooklyn watching the World Trade Center towers burn so apocalyptically, I have spent at least a part of every day wrestling with a host of existential questions. I can't help it -- almost obsessively I churn thoughts over and over in my head, trying to understand the psychological contours of this cruel new world. The questions largely boil down to the following: Where has the world's faith in America gone? Where is the American Dream headed? What is happening to that intangible force that helped shape our modern world, that invisible symbiotic relationship between the good will of foreigners and the successful functioning of the American "way of life," that willingness by strangers to let us serve as the repository for their dreams, their hopes, their visions of a better future? In the same way that the scale of our national debt is made possible only because other countries are willing to buy treasury bonds and, in effect, lend us their savings, so it seems to me the American Dream has been largely facilitated by the willingness of other peoples to lend us their expectations for the future. Without that willingness, the Dream is a bubble primed to burst. It hasn't burst yet -- witness the huge numbers who still migrate to America in search of the good life -- but I worry that it is leaking seriously. Few countries and cultures have risen to global prominence as quickly as America did in the years after the Civil War. Perhaps the last time there was such an extraordinary accumulation of geopolitical, military, and economic influence in so few decades was 800 years ago, with the rise of the Mongol khanates. Fewer still have so definitively laid claim to an era, while that era was still unfolding, as we did -- and as the world acknowledged -- during the 20th century, "the American Century." While the old powers of Europe tore themselves apart during World War I, the United States entered the war late and fought the fight on other people's home terrain. While whole societies were destroyed during World War II, America's political and economic system flourished, its cities thrived, and its entertainment industries soared. In other words, as America rose to global pre-eminence during the bloody first half of the 20th century, it projected outward an aura of invulnerability, a vision of "normalcy" redolent with consumer temptations and glamorous cultural spectacles. In an exhibit at the museum on Ellis Island a few years back, I remember seeing a copy of a letter written by a young Polish migrant in New York to his family back home. Urging them to join him, he wrote that the ordinary person on the streets of America lived a life far more comfortable than aristocrats in Poland could possibly dream of. In a way America, during the American Century, thus served as a safety valve, allowing the world's poor to dream of a better place somewhere else; to visualize a place neither bound by the constraints of old nor held hostage to the messianic visions of revolutionary Marxist or Fascist movements so powerful in so many other parts of the globe. Throughout the cold war, even as America spent unprecedented amounts on military hardware, enough was left over to nurture the mass-consumption culture, to build up an infrastructure of vast proportions. And despite the war in Vietnam, despite the dirty wars that ravaged Latin America in the 1980s, despite America's nefarious role in promoting coups and dictatorships in a slew of countries-cum-cold-war-pawns around the globe, somehow much of the world preserved a rosy-hued vision of America that could have been culled straight from the marketing rooms of Madison Avenue. Now something is changing. Having dealt with history largely on its own terms, largely with the ability to deflect the worst of the chaos to arenas outside our borders (as imperial Britain did in the century following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, through to the disastrous events leading up to World War I in 1914), America has attracted a concentrated fury and vengeful ire of disastrous proportions. The willingness to forgive, embodied in so much of the world's embrace of the American Dream, is being replaced by a rather vicious craving to see America -- which, under the Bush administration, has increasingly defined its greatness by way of military triumphs -- humbled. Moreover, no great power has served as a magnet for such a maelstrom of hate in an era as saturated with media images, as susceptible to instantaneous opinion-shaping coverage of events occurring anywhere in the world. I guess the question that gnaws at my consciousness could be rephrased as: How does one give an encore to a bravura performance? It's either an anticlimax or, worse, a dismal failure -- with the audience heading out the doors halfway through, talking not of the brilliance of the earlier music, but of the tawdriness of the last few bars. If the 20th century was the American Century, its best hopes largely embodied by something akin to the American Dream, what kind of follow-up can the 21st century bring? In the immediate aftermath of September 11, an outpouring of genuine, if temporary, solidarity from countries and peoples across the globe swathed America in an aura of magnificent victimhood. We, the most powerful country on earth, had been blindsided by a ruthless, ingenious, and barbaric enemy, two of our greatest cities violated. We demanded the world's tears, and, overwhelmingly, we received them. They were, we felt, no less than our due, no more than our merit. In the days after the trade center collapsed, even the Parisian daily Le Monde, not known for its pro-Yankee sentimentality, informed its readers, in an echo of John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, that "we are all Americans now." Perhaps inevitably, however, that sympathy has now largely dissipated. Powerful countries under attack fight back -- ruthlessly, brutally, with all the economic, political, diplomatic, and military resources at their disposal. They always have; like as not, they always will. In so doing, perhaps they cannot but step on the sensibilities of smaller, less powerfuldare I say it, less imperialnations and peoples. And as Britain, the country in which I grew up, discovered so painfully during the early years of World War II, sometimes the mighty end up standing largely alone, bulwarks against history's periodic tidal waves. In that fight, even if they emerge successful, they ultimately emerge also tarnished and somewhat humbled, their power and drive and confidence at least partly evaporated on the battlefield. In the post-September 11 world, even leaving aside Iraq and all the distortions, half-truths, and lies used to justify the invasion, even leaving aside the cataclysmic impact of the Abu Ghraib prison photographs, I believe America would have attracted significant wrath simply in doing what had to be done in routing out the Taliban in Afghanistan, in reorienting its foreign policy to try and tackle international terror networks and breeding grounds. That is why I come back time and again in my mind to the tactical brilliance of Al Qaeda's September 11 attacks: If America hadn't responded, a green light would have been turned on, one that signaled that the country was too decadent to defend its vital interests. Yet in responding, the response itself was almost guaranteed to spotlight an empire bullying allies and enemies alike into cooperation and subordination and, thus, to focus an inchoate rage against the world's lone standing superpower. Damned if we did, damned if we didn't. Which brings me back to the American Dream. In the past even as our power grew, much of the world saw us, rightly or wrongly, as a moral beacon, as a country somehow largely outside the bloody, gory, oft-tyrannical history that carved its swath across so much of the world during the American Century. Indeed, in many ways, even as cultural elites in once-glorious Old World nations sneered at upstart, crass, consumerist America, the masses in those nations idealized America as some sort of Promised Land, as a place of freedoms and economic possibilities simply unheard of in many parts of the globe. In many ways, the American Dream of the last 100-some years has been more something dreamed by foreigners from afar, especially those who experienced fascism or Stalinism, than lived as a universal reality on the ground in the United States. Things look simpler from a distance than they do on the ground. In the past foreigners might have idealized America as a place whose streets were paved if not with gold, at least with alloys seeded with rare and precious metals, even while those who lived here knew it was a gigantic, complicated, multifaceted, continental country with a vast patchwork of cultures and creeds coexisting side by messy side. Today, I fear, foreigners slumber with dreamy American smiles on their sleeping faces no more; that intangible faith in the pastel-colored hue and soft contours of the Dream risks being shattered, replaced instead by an equally simplistic dislike of all things and peoples American. Paradoxically these days it is the political elites -- the leaders and policy analysts and defense experts -- who try to hold in place alliances built up in the post-World War II years as the pax Americana spread its wings, while the populaces shy away from an America perceived to be dominated by corporations, military musclemen, and empire-builders-in-the-name-of-democracy; increasingly they sympathize with the unnuanced critiques of the Margaret Drabbles of the world. The Pew survey, for example, found that sizable majorities in countries such as Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Germany, and France believed the war on terror to be largely about the United States wanting to control Middle Eastern oil supplies. In other words, the perception -- never universally held, but held by enough people to help shape our global image -- is changing. Once our image abroad was of an exceptional country accruing all the power of empire without the psychology of empire; now it is being replaced by something more historically normal -- that of a great power determined to preserve and expand its might, for its own selfish interests and not much else. An exhibit in New York's Whitney Museum last year, titled "The American Effect," presented the works of 50 artists from around the world who portrayed an America intent on world dominance through military adventurism and gross consumption habits. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, Mikhail Gorbachev lambasted an America he now viewed as operating in a manner "far from real world leadership." Nelson Mandela talked of the United States as a country that "has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world." Maybe the American Dream always was little more than marketing hype (the author Jeffrey Decker writes in Made in America that the term itself was conjured up in 1931 by a populist historian named James Truslow Adams, perhaps as an antidote to the harsh realities of Depression-era America). But as the savagery of the images coming out of Iraq demonstrate all too well, we live in a world where image is if not everything, at least crucial. Perhaps I'm wrong and the American Dream will continue to sweeten the sleep of those living overseas for another century. I certainly hope, very much, that I'm wrong -- for a world denuded of the Dream, however far from complex reality that Dream might have been, would be impoverished indeed. But I worry that that encore I mentioned earlier won't be nearly as breathtaking or as splendid as the original performance that shaped the first American century. Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and author of Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation (St. Martin's Press, 2002). From checker at panix.com Mon Jul 19 21:20:15 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:20:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: The Tease of Memory Message-ID: The Tease of Memory The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.7.24 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i46/46a01201.htm Psychologists are dusting off 19th-century explanations of d?j? vu. Have we been here before? By DAVID GLENN In the summer of 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne visited a decaying English manor house known as Stanton Harcourt, not far from Oxford. He was struck by the vast kitchen, which occupied the bottom of a 70-foot tower. "Here, no doubt, they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl," he wrote in an 1863 travelogue, Our Old Home. Hawthorne wrote that as he stood in that kitchen, he was seized by an uncanny feeling: "I was haunted and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this strange spectacle before. The height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my grandmother's kitchen." He was certain that he had never actually seen this room or anything like it. And yet for a moment he was caught in what he described as "that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember some previous scene or incident, of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication." When Hawthorne wrote that passage there was no common term for such an experience. But by the end of the 19th century, after discarding "false recognition," "paramnesia," and "promnesia," scholars had settled on a French candidate: "d?j? vu," or "already seen." The fleeting melancholy and euphoria associated with d?j? vu have attracted the interest of poets, novelists, and occultists of many stripes. St. Augustine, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, and Tolstoy all wrote detailed accounts of such experiences. (We will politely leave aside a certain woozy song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.) Most academic psychologists, however, have ignored the topic since around 1890, when there was a brief flurry of interest. The phenomenon seems at once too rare and too ephemeral to capture in a laboratory. And even if it were as common as sneezing, d?j? vu would still be difficult to study because it produces no measurable external behaviors. Researchers must trust their subjects' personal descriptions of what is going on inside their minds, and few people are as eloquent as Hawthorne. Psychology has generally filed d?j? vu away in a drawer marked "Interesting but Insoluble." During the past two decades, however, a few hardy souls have reopened the scientific study of d?j? vu. They hope to nail down a persuasive explanation of the phenomenon, as well as shed light on some fundamental elements of memory and cognition. In the new book The D?j? Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology (Psychology Press), Alan S. Brown, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, surveys the fledgling subfield. "What we can try to do is zero in on it from a variety of different angles," he says. "It won't be something like, 'Boom! The explanation is there.' But we can get gradual clarity through some hard work." Fatigue and Freud In their brief late-19th-century flirtation with d?j? vu, academic psychologists developed remarkably sophisticated hypotheses, some of which survive today. An article in a German psychology journal in 1878 suggested that d?j? vu happens when the processes of "sensation" and "perception," which normally occur simultaneously, somehow move out of sync. Fatigue, it said, may be a cause. Eleven years later, William H. Burnham, a psychologist at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., offered the opposite suggestion: that d?j? vu occurs when the nervous system is unusually well rested. "When we see a strange object," he wrote, "its unfamiliar aspect is largely due to the difficulty we find in apperceiving its characteristics. ... [But] when the brain centers are over-rested, the apperception of a strange scene may be so easy that the aspect of the scene will be familiar." That idea may sound peculiar: Could our minds really be thrown out of kilter by unusually speedy and well-greased visual signals? But a large body of modern research strongly suggests that brains do use speed as a tool to assess whether an image or situation is familiar or not. If we can process an image fluently and quickly, our brains unconsciously interpret that as a cue that we have seen it before. Both the "fatigue" and the "well rested" theories of d?j? vu remain on the table today. In 1896 Arthur Allin, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote a long essay that covered many potential explanations. Among other possibilities, he suggested that d?j? vu situations feel familiar because they remind us of elements of forgotten dreams; that our emotional reactions to a new image can conjure a false feeling of familiarity; and that d?j? vu is generated when our attention is very briefly interrupted during our introduction to a new image. Such inquiries nearly ground to a halt in the early-20th century, in part because of the shadow of Freud. A new generation of scholars arose for whom d?j? vu was unmistakable evidence of the ego's struggle to defend itself against id and superego. In 1945 the British psychologist Oliver L. Zangwill wrote a 15-page essay explaining that Hawthorne's episode at Stanton Harcourt stemmed from an unresolved erotic yearning for his mother. (This despite Hawthorne's own plausible conclusion that his d?j? vu was sparked by a dimly remembered Alexander Pope poem about the building.) As late as 1975 the prominent psychologist Bernard L. Pacella proposed that d?j? vu occurs when the ego goes into a regressive panic, "scanning the phases of life in a descent historically to the composite primal-preobject-early libidinal object-representations of mother." 4 Modern Approaches Most of today's d?j? vu scholars have chucked primal-preobject-libidinal representations in favor of brain scans and neuroimaging. Taking advantage of a recent explosion of experimental research on memory errors, Mr. Brown and a few like-minded colleagues have dusted off the theories of d?j? vu proposed during the late Victorian era. At last, he hopes, such hypotheses can be subject to rigorous experimental tests. He warns, however, not to expect quick results: "A lot of science is geared at, How can I get tenure? How can I crank out a study in a year? The luxury of being able to attack difficult problems is often more risky. There's a little more investment of your personal resources, a little bit of gambling." In Mr. Brown's account, scientific theories of d?j? vu fall into four broad families. The first are theories of "dual processing." The late neuropsychiatrist Pierre Gloor conducted experiments in the 1990s strongly suggesting that memory involves distinct systems of "retrieval" and "familiarity." In a 1997 paper, he speculated that d?j? vu occurs at rare moments when our familiarity system is activated but our retrieval system is not. Other scholars argue that the retrieval system is not shut off entirely but simply fires out of sync, evoking the fatigue theory of a century earlier. In the second category are more purely neurological explanations. One such theory holds that d?j? vu experiences are caused by small, brief seizures, akin to those caused by epilepsy. That idea is buttressed by the fact that people with epilepsy often report having d?j? vu just before going into full-blown seizures. Researchers have also found that d?j? vu can be elicited by electrically stimulating certain regions of the brain. In a 2002 paper, the Austrian physician Josef Spatt, who works with epilepsy patients, argued that d?j? vu is caused by brief, inappropriate firing in the parahippocampal cortex, which is known to be associated with the ability to detect familiarity. Mr. Brown's third category consists of memory theories. These propose that d?j? vu is triggered by something we have actually seen or imagined before, either in waking life, in literature or film, or in a dream. Some of these theories hold that a single element, perhaps familiar from some other context, is enough to spark a d?j? vu experience. (Suppose, for example, that the chairs in Stanton Harcourt's kitchen were identical in color and shape to Hawthorne's decorously neat grandmother's, but that he didn't recognize them in this new context.) At the other end of the scale are gestalt theories, which suggest that we sometimes falsely recognize a general visual or audio pattern. (Suppose that the Stanton Harcourt kitchen looked similar, in broad visual outline, to a long-forgotten church that Hawthorne had once attended.) In the final box are "double perception" theories of d?j? vu, which descend from Allin's 1896 suggestion that a brief interruption in our normal process of perception might make something appear falsely familiar. In 1989, in one of the first laboratory studies that tried to induce something like d?j? vu, the cognitive psychologists Larry L. Jacoby and Kevin Whitehouse, of Washington University in St. Louis, showed their subjects a long list of words on a screen. The subjects then returned a day or a week later and were shown another long list of words, half of which had also been on the first list. They were asked to identify which words they had seen during the first round. The experimenters found that if they flashed a word at extremely quick, subliminal speeds (20 milliseconds) shortly before its "official" appearance on the screen during the second round, their subjects were very likely to incorrectly say that it had appeared on the first list. Those results lent at least indirect support to the notion that if we attend to something half-consciously and then give it our full attention, it can appear falsely familiar. The study is one of many that demonstrate the potential pitfalls of everyday memory and cognition, says Mr. Jacoby. "At our core, I think all of us are na?ve realists. We believe the world is as it presents itself," he says. "All of these experiments are a little unsettling if you're a na?ve realist." He hopes that this line of research will point toward new ways to repair the mental abilities of elderly people with impaired memories. "If we highlight the distinction between memory as expressed in performance and memory as we subjectively experience it," he says, we might be able to train elderly people to avoid common errors. Speak, Memory Having published his survey of the d?j? vu world, Southern Methodist's Mr. Brown is embarking on a research program of his own. Together with Elizabeth J. Marsh, an assist-ant professor of psychology at Duke University, he is developing an experiment that may extend the findings of Mr. Jacoby and Mr. Whitehouse. In the new studies, subjects are asked to quickly locate a small red cross that is superimposed on photographs of various campus landscapes. The researchers' expectation is that the subjects will concentrate on the crosses and not pay much attention to the backgrounds. A week later, when the subjects return, they are shown the campus photographs again -- along with many photographs not used in the first round -- and are asked, "Have you seen this place before?" and "Have you been to this place before?" (After all the slides have been shown, the participants are asked about which campuses they have actually visited.) Mr. Brown and Ms. Marsh wonder if the experiment will produce incorrect "yes" answers -- or even d?j? vu experiences -- when the subjects look at the images they have half-consciously seen the week before. Ms. Marsh, who specializes in more-orthodox studies of memory, had no particular interest in d?j? vu before last year, when she was asked to review Mr. Brown's book manuscript. "I came at this as a student of basic memory and memory errors," she says. "But I became fascinated by what Alan had to say about the d?j? vu literature. He described all of these funky little findings -- that people who travel frequently, for example, are more likely to experience d?j? vu." Further down the road, Mr. Brown would like to see studies that shed light on some of those odd findings. Why does d?j? vu become less common as people grow older? Why do political liberals report more frequent d?j? vu experiences than conservatives do? And why do the majority of d?j? vu experiences seem to occur when people are in mundane settings? (Arthur T. Funkhouser, a Jungian analyst in Switzerland who is considering writing a book about the phenomenon, believes that it offers a window into the self -- but concedes that the raw material of d?j? vu experiences are often oddly dull. "Why does the unconscious pick such banal elements for us to think about?" he asks.) Mr. Brown would also like to work with people with epilepsy, and with people who have the rare condition of suffering d?j? vu pretty much every day. "I'm in contact with someone by e-mail who has almost constant d?j? vu," he says. "Someone like that would be very fruitful to work with in the lab." But he does not expect to see any clear conceptual or experimental breakthroughs anytime soon. It is possible, he says, that what we call d?j? vu is actually five or six phenomena, with separate causes. "This will be very slow progress toward a very abstract phenomenon," he says. "It's kind of like space exploration. You're not sure exactly what you'll find." From checker at panix.com Mon Jul 19 21:56:11 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:56:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: All eyes on Blinkx Message-ID: All eyes on Blinkx http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1260983,00.html Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google Thursday July 15, 2004 Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. The editor she was meeting brought two other people as he didn't know much about the subject himself. She left the office at noon, saddened that it had not gone very well. "I thought I did a lousy job. I've never really done this whole PR thing." She retired round the corner to Starbucks with her public relations adviser for a debriefing. He told her to be more provocative in future, not so humble and more proud of what she had accomplished. "He was also convinced we didn't stand a good chance". But by the time she had got back to her hotel, there was an email from one of the people at the meeting, Om Malik, whom she had never heard of. He said he had "blogged" the item on his website at 12.40pm while she was still commiserating over coffee. Malik wrote that he had the same tingling sensation watching Blinkx being demonstrated as he had had almost five years ago when two fresh-faced boys called Larry and Sergey had stopped by the offices of Forbes.com to demonstrate something called Google. Malik's comments were soon picked up by other bloggers and Rittweger started getting a wave of emails and calls, including some from venture capitalists, a breed thought to be in hibernation after the dotcom excesses. The blog was posted on a Friday, and by the Monday there were 5,000 links to it and people were discussing it all over the world. Since then, there have been 130,000 direct downloads, and many more through users swapping files. This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity. You would be forgiven for thinking that Rittweger and her British business partner, Suranga Chanratillake, who used to work for the UK search engine company Autonomy, ought to be locked up for even thinking of trying to take on the almighty Google, especially at a time when it and the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo - not to mention dozens of smaller companies - are teeing up for the next battle in the search engine wars. [39]Blinkx has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. It does all this unobtrusively in the background until you pass your cursor over icons at the top or bottom of the page, when it reveals a digest of related sites as well as material from Word, Excel or PDF files. If you are working in a word processing document, it provides the same service. It also searches blogs. This function has just been added because Malik suggested it would be a good thing to do. "I didn't appreciate the significance until he wrote the article and then I thought, 'Right, I get it'," she said disarmingly. Blinkx can also search digital TV on the internet, which, in practice, means video output from the BBC. Why? "Because the BBC posts its digital TV free on the internet." Both Google and Microsoft are working on unified engines that search your desktop as well as the web, and some others already do it. But Rittweger believes Blinkx is the only one that offers all these facilities including video search now. So the company has a window of opportunity in a market where consumers can switch allegiance with two blinkx of an eyelid. The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. "What it is trying to say," she explains, "is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas." Blinkx's planned business model involves getting advertising revenue from contextual adverts, product channels and white labelling, but she emphasises that the search is independent: it is mathematically based and just looks at words and their context. She adds: "It is clean, but users don't know that so we show our advertisements in a different colour". Her moment of truth came when doing a project on Japanese tourism a few years ago and found that when she put a page into a search engine, nothing happened because search was limited to 10 words. Later, she met Suranga Chanratillake, who shared her ideas and had the technological expertise to develop them. Whether they succeed is an open question. It is a tough market to crack because for many users, Google is as good as it gets - and, like Yahoo and Microsoft, it has immense resources. But people are also starting to realise that search engines are mining only a tiny proportion of available knowledge. And loyalty is only as deep as the click of a mouse. 39. http://www.blinkx.com/ From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Jul 21 05:31:51 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 22:31:51 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Applying John Nash to the conflict with Islamic Jihadists Message-ID: <01C46EA9.5AD603C0.shovland@mindspring.com> "The concept of a Nash equilibrium n-tuple is perhaps the most important idea in noncooperative game theory. ... Whether we are analysing candidates' election strategies, the causes of war, agenda manipulation in legislatures, or the actions of interest groups, predictions about events reduce to a search for and description of equilibria. Put simply, equilibrium strategies are the things that we predict about people. " I can't do this, but it would be interesting to see some of the math folks in the group look at this and see how it might apply. I seem to recall that the basic idea is the competing groups will contend until each group thinks they have gotten the best deal they can get under the circumstances. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From checker at panix.com Wed Jul 21 15:14:09 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:14:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Education Week: Character Education Message-ID: Character Education - http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=112 Updated: July 16, 2004 In a large and growing number of schools around the country, students are learning more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are learning what character education advocates call the fourth and fifth Rs: respect and responsibility. The formal teaching of morals and values is not a new phenomenon; rather, it has been part of democratic thought throughout history. Plato and Aristotle in the Greece of the 4th century B.C.E. believed the role of education was to train good and virtuous citizens. John Locke, the 17th-century democratic philosopher, believed that learning was secondary to virtue. "Reading and writing and learning I allow to be necessary, but yet not the chief business [of education]. I imagine you would think him a very foolish fellow, that should not value a virtuous or a wise man infinitely before a great scholar." As public schools proliferated in the early United States, McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, which consisted of collections of stories used to educate and transmit moral lessons, were "the most widely read books in 19th-century America" outside of the King James Bible (Gorn, 1998). The readers were used as school textbooks and were designed to instill both biblical values and train good workers by preaching sobriety, thrift, responsibility, and self-restraint. But the influence of McGuffey's Readers waned in the early 20th century because of their reliance on religious precepts and because of changes in the way society viewed morality. However, by the 1960s, the idea of teaching character and values in school was regaining prominence. But rather than prescribe a set of common values to be taught, popular programs of the time would "contribute to the development of the student in six areas of human interaction: communicating, empathizing, problem-solving, assenting and dissenting, decisionmaking, and personal consistency" (Casteel and Stahl, 1975). In such a program, the teacher would serve simply as the facilitator, with a mandate not to impose his or her own values on students. A program developed by the late Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg also became prominent during that time. Although based on democratic ideals derived from citing the U.S. Constitution as the moral document of American society, Kohlberg's program held that students must be allowed a certain degree of moral reasoning and that values must not be imposed by the teacher (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). Under Kohlberg's program, students would be told short stories that presented moral dilemmas, placing values like loyalty and honesty in conflict. While the stories were sure to incite lively conversation, critics argued that Kohlberg's dilemmas assumed that students already had strong feelings about the values in question or promoted moral relativism, rather than helping children to define values (Kilpatrick, 1992). Character education, as it is known today, began to appear in the early 1990s. A 1991 book by Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character, reintroduced the idea that there is a set of common beliefs and values upon which all people can agree. A year later, a group of educators, ethicists, and scholars met in Aspen, Colo., for a gathering that resulted in the Aspen Declaration and the beginning of the Character Counts Coalition. Since the early 1990s, the federal government has embraced the idea of offering character education in public schools and has made grants available to states interested in piloting new character education programs in their schools. In response, for-profit and nonprofit organizations have developed character programs for schools, districts, and states. Most recently, first lady and former teacher Laura Bush has promoted the use of character education in schools, saying that "reading and writing are not all we need to teach our children." "Respect and responsibility are just as important," Mrs. Bush continued. "And we need to make sure we're teaching our children to be responsible citizens who have good values and ethics." Implementation of a character education program can be contentious. One of the first questions people ask when learning that their school plans to implement a character education program is "Whose values are you going to teach?" (Brooks and Goble, 1997). Most character education programs in use today are based on the traits developed from the civic virtues found in the U.S. Constitution and the United Nations charteras well as common civil and moral values such as honesty, courage, and respect for others. Advocating that honesty is better than dishonesty, or that free speech is better than censorship, rarely invites controversy. What has developed from this basis varies by program. For example, the Character Counts program is based on the "six pillars of character": trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Character Works, used throughout Georgia, emphasizes 38 character traits, one for each week of a typical school year, including courtesy, integrity, creativity, fairness, and accomplishment. The Character Education Partnership has drawn up 11 principles of effective character education that schools can use to guide their efforts. The principles include the advice that the term "character" must be well-defined, that the program must be integrated into the curriculum, and that parents and community members must be involved (Lickona, T., Schaps, E., and Lewis, C., no date). The final principle is the need to assess the progress of the school involved in the program. But while there has been much anecdotal evidence about the effects of character education, not much in the way of scientifically based research exists. Of the few studies that have been conducted so far, a few suggest that "as you facilitate social development, you are concurrently, for many kids, advancing their academic function," according to Stephen N. Elliott, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Citing one specific example, an Italian study in 2000 that found children's positive social skills to be powerful predictors of academic achievement, Elliott suggests that social skills that are part of character education programs may be "academic enablers" (Viadero, 2003). The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning recently examined 242 health, prevention, and positive-youth-development programs. Its examination resulted in the report "Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader's Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning Programs," which reviews 80 nationally available, multiyear, sequenced programs for general education classrooms (2003). The report identifies 22 programs that are especially effective in preventing substance abuse, improving academic performance, promoting general health, or supporting other social behaviors. --Ron Skinner Sources Brooks, D.B., & Goble, F.G., The Case for Character Education: The Role of the School in Teaching Values and Virtue, Northridge, Calif.: Studio 4 Productions, 1997. Casteel, J., & Stahl, R.J., Values Clarification in the Classroom: A Primer, Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear Publishing Company, 1975. [30]Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, "Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader's Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs," 2003. Gorn, E.J., The McGuffey Readers: Selections From the 1879 Edition, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998. Kilpatrick, W.K., Why Johnny Can't Tell Right from Wrong, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. Lickona, T., Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility, New York: Bantam Books, 1991. Lickona, T., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C., [31]"Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education," [32]The Character Education Partnership, no date. Viadero, D., [33]"Nice Work," Education Week, 22 (33), pp. 38-41, 2003. On the Web [34]GoodCharacter.com offers free resources, materials, and lesson plans for character education. The site also contains links to major character education organizations and teaching guides. [35]Character Counts! is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of schools, communities, and nonprofit organizations working to advance character education by teaching the "six pillars of character": trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. The group posts [36]lesson plans for teaching good character. [37]The Character Education Partnership, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations and individuals, identifies [38]11 principles of effective character education. [39]The National Character Education Center offers a free newsletter and discussion board for educators and parents who want to learn more about character education. The mission of the [40]Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning is to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through high school. As of FY 2002, the [41]U.S. Department of Education program to support character education, called [42]Partnerships in Character Education, has awarded grants to [43]46 states and the District of Columbia to start and support character education programs. The [44]Character Education & Civic Engagement Technical Assistance Center provides support and information for and about schools involved in character education and civic engagement across the country. [45]The Office for Studies in Moral Development and Education at the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago provides an [46]overview of moral education and maintains an [47]archive of articles regarding character education. The [48]Center for the 4th and 5th Rs (respect and responsibility) promotes a [49]12-point comprehensive approach to character education that uses all aspects of school life as deliberate opportunities for character development. Related Organizations [17]Character Counts! [18]Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning [19]Partnerships in Character Education [20]The Character Education Partnership From the Archives [23]"New Web Site Offered on Character Education," News in Brief, Feb. 25, 2004. [24]"Civics Should Be a Higher Priority, State Education Group Concludes," Nov. 19, 2003. [25]"Is Punishment Pass??," Commentary, Nov. 5, 2003. [26]"Teaching Social Awareness Through Reading," Commentary, Sept. 17, 2003. [27]"High-Tech Tools Help Students Put Veterans in Limelight," Sept. 10, 2003. [28]"Nice Work," April 30, 2003. [29]"Character Education: Our High Schools' Missing Link," Jan. 29, 2003. References 16. mailto:edissues at epe.org 17. http://www.edweek.org/context/orgs/orgitem.cfm?orgid=437 18. http://www.edweek.org/context/orgs/orgitem.cfm?orgid=438 19. http://www.edweek.org/context/orgs/orgitem.cfm?orgid=439 20. http://www.edweek.org/context/orgs/orgitem.cfm?orgid=441 21. http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=112#otw 22. http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=112#fta 23. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=24Fed.h23#ched 24. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=12Civics.h23 25. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=10goodman.h23 26. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=03selman.h23 27. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=02Techpage.h23 28. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=33character.h22 29. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=20ryan.h22 30. http://www.casel.org/ 31. http://www.character.org/principles/files/ElevenPrinciples.pdf 32. http://www.character.org/ 33. http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=33character.h22 34. http://www.goodcharacter.com/ 35. http://www.charactercounts.org/ 36. http://www.charactercounts.org/ideas/ideatoc.htm 37. http://www.character.org/ 38. http://www.character.org/principles 39. http://www.ethicsusa.com/ 40. http://www.casel.org/ 41. http://www.ed.gov/ 42. http://www.ed.gov/programs/charactered/index.html 43. http://www.ed.gov/programs/charactered/awards.html 44. http://www.cetac.org/ 45. http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/index.html 46. http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/overview.html 47. http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/articles.html 48. http://www.cortland.edu/c4n5rs/ 49. http://www.cortland.edu/c4n5rs/12pnt_iv.asp From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Wed Jul 21 17:30:42 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:30:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] america In-Reply-To: <200407201800.i6KI0QW11663@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040721173042.83339.qmail@web13422.mail.yahoo.com> >>The willingness to forgive, embodied in so much of the world's embrace of the American Dream, is being replaced by a rather vicious craving to see America -- which, under the Bush administration, has increasingly defined its greatness by way of military triumphs -- humbled.<< --I wouldn't disconnect the anger at America from the anger in America. Anger tends to spread out on both sides of a conflict, causing each to mirror the others, or to take amplified polar stances that are part of a single dance. It's inaccurate to say "America is the root of all the world's problems" and it's just as inaccurate to say "America is just doing good, and is hated for no rational reasons." Both are oversimplifications designed to promote group unity over group sanity, and both are impotent to solve the problems that need to be solved. In frustration, groups resort to self-congratulation and martyrdom, and the US oscillates between strength-pride ("We will prevail, God is with us!") and victim-pride ("Why does everyone pick on us! We never did anything wrong!"), just as the Arab nations do. There are poisonous forms of nationalism, including religious nationalism, both in the US and throughout the Middle East. The nationalist groups mirror one another's anger, and they both undermine long term security by fuelling fantasies of absolute and final war. On all sides, the security-minded pragmatists are drawn into alliances with fanatics because the alternatives are seen as weak. It is when the religious fanatics and dysfunctionally patriotic groups (who, often as not, use politics as an outlet for personal rage and frustration) go too far, are shamed by their own actions, that the security minded pragmatists detach themselves and are better able to make appropriate strategic moves while the liberal wing of the culture forms alliances with liberal groups on the other side. As long as liberals on all sides are marginalized and religious fanatics appeased, there can be no solution because the strategic thinking of the pragmatists is co-opted and distorted by the pro-Armageddon factions. The United States is almost evenly split, so it is inappropriate to generalize except to say that US policy has been a mixture of pragmatism and idealism, in sometimes disastrous proportions. Middle Eastern nations are dealing with a more precarious balance, and pragmatists are routinely overruled by fanatics. With so much of the world falling into absolutist mindsets coupled with visceral anger and frustration, the situation looks very bad both for long-term pragmatists who want security and liberals who want fairness and moral balance. Fanaticism may, at least temporarily, draw the world's neural net and physical resources into something resembling insanity, which makes it exponentially likely that nuclear or biological weapons will be used. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Jul 21 17:38:40 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 10:38:40 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] america Message-ID: <01C46F0E.E3D74DE0.shovland@mindspring.com> If the fanatics, both here and elsewhere, are seen to be damaging the whole, then they will be extruded from the mass :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 10:31 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] america >>The willingness to forgive, embodied in so much of the world's embrace of the American Dream, is being replaced by a rather vicious craving to see America -- which, under the Bush administration, has increasingly defined its greatness by way of military triumphs -- humbled.<< --I wouldn't disconnect the anger at America from the anger in America. Anger tends to spread out on both sides of a conflict, causing each to mirror the others, or to take amplified polar stances that are part of a single dance. It's inaccurate to say "America is the root of all the world's problems" and it's just as inaccurate to say "America is just doing good, and is hated for no rational reasons." Both are oversimplifications designed to promote group unity over group sanity, and both are impotent to solve the problems that need to be solved. In frustration, groups resort to self-congratulation and martyrdom, and the US oscillates between strength-pride ("We will prevail, God is with us!") and victim-pride ("Why does everyone pick on us! We never did anything wrong!"), just as the Arab nations do. There are poisonous forms of nationalism, including religious nationalism, both in the US and throughout the Middle East. The nationalist groups mirror one another's anger, and they both undermine long term security by fuelling fantasies of absolute and final war. On all sides, the security-minded pragmatists are drawn into alliances with fanatics because the alternatives are seen as weak. It is when the religious fanatics and dysfunctionally patriotic groups (who, often as not, use politics as an outlet for personal rage and frustration) go too far, are shamed by their own actions, that the security minded pragmatists detach themselves and are better able to make appropriate strategic moves while the liberal wing of the culture forms alliances with liberal groups on the other side. As long as liberals on all sides are marginalized and religious fanatics appeased, there can be no solution because the strategic thinking of the pragmatists is co-opted and distorted by the pro-Armageddon factions. The United States is almost evenly split, so it is inappropriate to generalize except to say that US policy has been a mixture of pragmatism and idealism, in sometimes disastrous proportions. Middle Eastern nations are dealing with a more precarious balance, and pragmatists are routinely overruled by fanatics. With so much of the world falling into absolutist mindsets coupled with visceral anger and frustration, the situation looks very bad both for long-term pragmatists who want security and liberals who want fairness and moral balance. Fanaticism may, at least temporarily, draw the world's neural net and physical resources into something resembling insanity, which makes it exponentially likely that nuclear or biological weapons will be used. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Wed Jul 21 17:55:32 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:55:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] IOP: Stephen Hawking presents new black hole theory Message-ID: Stephen Hawking presents new black hole theory http://www.iop.org/news/783 The Institute of Physics Wednesday 21 July 2004 One of the most intriguing problems in theoretical physics has been solved by Professor Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge. He presented his findings at GR17, the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, in Dublin on Wednesday 21st July. Black holes are often thought of as being regions of space into which matter and energy can fall, and disappear forever. In 1974, Stephen Hawking discovered that when one fused the ideas of quantum mechanics with those of general relativity, it was no longer true that black holes were completely black. They emitted radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. This radiation carried energy away from the black hole, which meant that the black hole would gradually shrink and then disappear in a final explosive outburst. These ideas led to a fundamental difficulty, the information paradox, the resolution of which is to be revealed in Dublin. The basic problem is that black holes, as well as eating matter, also appear to eat quantum mechanical information. Yet the most fundamental laws of physics demand that this information be preserved as the universe evolves. The information paradox was explored and formalised by Hawking in 1975. Since then, many have tried to find a solution. Whilst most physicists think that there must be a resolution of the paradox, nobody has really produced a believable explanation. In fact, seven years ago the issue prompted Hawking, together with Kip Thorne of Caltech, to make a wager against John Preskill also of Caltech, that the information swallowed by black holes could never be recovered. Hawking has now conceded that he has lost the bet! The way his new calculations work is to show that the event horizon, which is the surface of the black hole, has quantum fluctuations in it. These are the same uncertainties in position that were made famous by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and are central to quantum mechanics. The fluctuations gradually allow all the information inside the black hole to leak out, thus allowing us to form a consistent picture. The information paradox is now unravelled. A complete description of this work will be published in professional journals and on the web in due course. Prof. Hawking's lecture forms part of the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR17). This lecture forms part of the scientific programme of the conference, and is not open to the public. However, the conference programme also includes two public lectures. On Monday 19th at 8pm, Prof. Kip Thorne delivered a lecture entitled "Probing the Universe and Black Holes with Gravitational Waves", while on Friday 23rd, also at 8pm, Prof. Sir Roger Penrose will speak on "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in Modern Physical Theories". Tickets for Prof. Penrose's lecture will be available at the door. The lectures take place in the Concert Hall of the RDS (Merrion Road entrance). The weeklong GR17 conference is taking place in the RDS Conference Centre, Dublin. It is being attended by upwards of 600 scientists from 48 different countries. As well as Prof. Hawking, GR17 is being attended by such renowned scientists as Sir Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne and Sir Martin Rees. The conference was officially inaugurated on Monday 19th by Her Excellency Mrs Mary McAleese, President of Ireland. GR17 is the latest edition in a triennial series held under the auspices of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. This conference series constitutes the principal international meetings in the areas of relativity, gravitation and cosmology. The subject matter of the conference is all areas of general relativity and gravitation, including Gravitational Waves: Detection and Generation, Astrophysics of Black Holes, the Early Universe, String Theory, and Quantum Gravity. See the [14]GR17 web site for more information about the conference. References 14. http://www.gr17.com/ From checker at panix.com Wed Jul 21 17:56:43 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:56:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BBC: Q&A: Hawking and black holes Message-ID: Q&A: Hawking and black holes http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tec h/3914165.stm 2004/07/21 14:40:17 GMT Stephen Hawking has put forward a new theory that changes the way scientists view black holes, saying he was wrong about them in the past. The physicist told a conference on gravitation in Dublin that he has revised his belief that black holes destroy everything that falls on them. Our science editor David Whitehouse explains what they are. What is a black hole? It is an object from which nothing can escape because its escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Since nothing can travel faster than light nothing can get out. Inside a black hole strange things are done to space and time, and at its centre could be a so-called singularity where space and time are squeezed to an infinitely small point. But some scientists are unhappy with this idea. Have they been detected? Probably. There are many objects that could be black holes seen orbiting stars. Often these objects pull material from their stellar companions and drag it onto themselves. It becomes hot and gives off high-energy radiation. If astronomers are lucky they can use this radiation to determine the size and mass of the compact object. It is also believed by many astronomers that there are supermassive black holes at the centres of many galaxies. There are many lines of observational evidence, such as the motion of stars in its vicinity, that lend support to this. What was Hawking's black hole theory? In 1975, Hawking calculated that once a black hole forms, it radiates energy and starts losing mass by giving off so-called "Hawking radiation". Scientists were astounded because this work established a connection between gravity and entropy, which is a measure of how energy changes from one form to another. Entropy has a lot to do with the information in a system. For example, a pile of bricks has more entropy than when they have been made into a house. It takes bricks and information to turn them into a house. Can anything make a black hole? Yes. It was said that black holes had no hair, meaning that it did not matter what came together to make them. All that mattered was that a sufficiently large mass be squashed into a sufficiently small space. Before Hawking's latest thinking it was thought that, once formed, it would be impossible to tell what went in; once something had fallen in, it was lost forever and the only information that remained was its mass and spin. What exactly has he changed his mind about? Hawking now believes that black holes may allow information to leak out. For several years many scientists had been unhappy with the idea that a black hole could just disappear, because it represented a loss of information from the Universe. This ran contrary to the laws of quantum physics, which are the rules to describe the behaviour of the Universe at the smallest scales. These laws say that information can never be totally lost. Whether information is or is not lost has important practical and philosophical consequences. Is it complicated? Certainly is. Here is the summary of his presentation. Professor Stephen Hawking (Cambridge) The information paradox for black holes The Euclidean path integral over all topologically trivial metrics can be done by time slicing and so is unitary when analytically continued to the Lorentzian. On the other hand, the path integral over all topologically non-trivial metrics is asymptotically independent of the initial state. Thus the total path integral is unitary and information is not lost in the formation and evaporation of black holes. The way the information gets out seems to be that a true event horizon never forms, just an apparent horizon. From checker at panix.com Wed Jul 21 18:21:26 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:21:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] UCIrvine: Human intelligence determined by volume and location of gray matter tissue in brain Message-ID: Human intelligence determined by volume and location of gray matter tissue in brain http://today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1187 [q.v.] [I'm adopting the convention of adding q.v. (quod vide, Latin for "which see") after URLs that you might well want to see in a graphics browser. In this particular case, link 38 employs a javascript to take you to a cool graphic. And so I leave in the link in the references at the bottom so you'll know this is the one, even though you can't get to the graphic by clicking on the link from this e-message. I'll try, depending on my energy level, to remove javascript and other non-functioning links that don't point to anything useful. [I'm sending this article to many lists for which this particular item may not be of great interest so that you all will learn of my new convention.] University of California, Irvine - A Top-10 Public University Wednesday, July 21, 2004 Single `intelligence center' in brain unlikely, UCI study also finds Irvine, Calif. , July 19, 2004 General human intelligence appears to be based on the volume of gray matter tissue in certain regions of the brain, UC Irvine College of Medicine researchers have found in the most comprehensive structural brain-scan study of intelligence to date. The study also discovered that because these regions related to intelligence are located throughout the brain, a single "intelligence center," such as the frontal lobe, is unlikely. Dr. Richard Haier, professor of psychology in the Department of Pediatrics and long-time human intelligence researcher, and colleagues at UCI and the University of New Mexico used MRI to obtain structural images of the brain in 47 normal adults who also took standard intelligence quotient tests. The researchers used a technique called voxel-based morphometry to determine gray matter volume throughout the brain which they correlated to IQ scores. Study results appear on the online version of NeuroImage. Previous research had shown that larger brains are weakly related to higher IQ, but this study is the first to demonstrate that gray matter in specific regions in the brain is more related to IQ than is overall size. Multiple brain areas are related to IQ, the UCI and UNM researchers have found, and various combinations of these areas can similarly account for IQ scores. Therefore, it is likely that a person's mental strengths and weaknesses depend in large part on the individual pattern of gray matter across his or her brain. "This may be why one person is quite good at mathematics and not so good at spelling, and another person, with the same IQ, has the opposite pattern of abilities," Haier said. While gray matter amounts are vital to intelligence levels, the researchers were surprised to find that only about 6 percent of all the gray matter in the brain appears related to IQ. "There is a constant cascade of information being processed in the entire brain, but intelligence seems related to an efficient use of relatively few structures, where the more gray matter the better," Haier said. "In addition, these structures that are important for intelligence are also implicated in memory, attention and language." The findings also suggest that the brain areas where gray matter is related to IQ show some differences between young-adult and middle-aged subjects. In middle age, more of the frontal and parietal lobes are related to IQ; less frontal and more temporal areas are related to IQ in the younger adults. The research does not address why some people have more gray matter in some brain areas than other people, although previous research has shown the regional distribution of gray matter in humans is highly heritable. Haier and his colleagues are currently evaluating the MRI data to see if there are gender differences in IQ patterns. Haier's colleagues in the study include Dr. Michael T. Alkire and Kevin Head of UCI and Drs. Rex E. Jung and Ronald A. Yeo of the University of New Mexico. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development supported the study. About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with approximately 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,300 faculty members. The third-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion. [38]Areas in brain activated by IQ testing Areas in brain activated by IQ testing Related Links [39]Department of Pediatrics Contact Tom Vasich (949) 824-6455 tmvasich at uci.edu References 38. javascript:openWin('image.asp?section=press_release%E2%84%91_name=Haier_intelligencefigure_lg.jpg') 39. http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/com/pediatrics/index.html?top.html&menu.html&home.html From checker at panix.com Wed Jul 21 18:27:49 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 14:27:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Safire: Inside a Republican Brain Message-ID: Inside a Republican Brain NYT July 21, 2004 By WILLIAM SAFIRE [We badly need a counterpart article for Democratic brains.] Washington What holds the five Republican factions together? To find out, I depth-polled my own brain. The economic conservative (I'm in the supply-side division) opposes the enforced redistribution of wealth, advocating lower taxes for all to stimulate growth with productivity, thereby to cut the deficit. Government should downhold nondefense spending, stop the litigation drain and reduce regulation but protect consumers from media and other monopolies. My social conservative instinct wants to denounce the movie-and-TV treatment of violence and porno-sadism as entertainment; repeal state-sponsored gambling; slow the rush to same-sex marriage; oppose partial-birth abortion; resist genetic manipulation that goes beyond therapy. However, this conflicts with - My libertarian impulse, which is pro-choice and anti-compulsion, wants to protect the right to counsel of all suspects and the right to privacy of the rest of us, likes quiet cars in trains and vouchers for education, and wants snoops out of bedrooms and fundamentalists out of schoolrooms. The idealistic calling grabs me when it comes to America's historic mission of extending freedom in the world. This brand of thinking is often called neoconservative. In defense against terror, I'm pre-emptive and unilateral rather than belated and musclebound, and would rather be ad hoc in forming alliances than permanently in hock to global bureaucrats. Also rattling around my Republican mind is the cultural conservative. In today's ever-fiercer kulturkampf, I identify with art forms more traditional than avant-garde, and language usage more standard than common. I prefer the canon to the fireworks and a speech that appeals to the brain's reasoning facilities to a demidocumentary film arousing the amygdala. Do these different streams of conservatism flow gently together to form a grand Republican river inside the head? "Do I contradict myself?" asked Walt Whitman, singing of himself and answering, "Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" If these different strains of thought were held by discrete groups of single-minded people, we would have a Republican Party of five warring bands. Social conservatives would fight libertarians over sex, who in turn would savage neocons over pre-emption, who in turn would hoot at the objections of economic conservatives (traditional division) to huge deficits. But think of these internecine battles not as tugs of war among single-minded groups; instead, think of them as often-conflicting ideas held within the brain of an individual Republican. What goes on is "cognitive dissonance," the jangling of competing inclinations, with the owner of the brain having to work out trade-offs, suppressions and compromises until he or she achieves a kind of puzzled tranquillity within. What helps me work out that continual internal skirmishing is a mind-set. That brings us to those "values" that every candidate talks about. My values include self-reliance over community dependence, intervention over isolation, self-discipline over society's regulation, finding pleasure in work rather than working to find pleasure. Principles like those help me gel a mind-set that reduces the loudest dissonances among my fistful of clanging conservatisms. Another aid to resolve the dissonance is every partisan's need for a political home. Independence is fine for the occasionally involved, but if influence as a participant or commentator is desired, one political side or the other must be taken. The political brain doesn't have to go all the way to conform to either side because each side - Republican and its loyal opposition - contains this conglomeration of nonconformity. I'm a right-winger who is hot for gun control, dismaying all but the wishy-washies called "moderates," but that specific dissent is made inside my Republican home. And home has been defined as the place where - when you have to go there - they have to take you in. Finally, the dissonance inside my head will be forced into harmony by the need to choose one leader who reflects the preponderance of my views and my judgment of his character. I will take my teeming noggin to both conventions, watch all the debates and cast my vote - careful, in the tradition of Times columnists, not to endorse anyone. But now you know how one Republican mind will be made up. I presume the liberal brain works the same way. E-mail: safire at nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/opinion/21safi.html From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Wed Jul 21 20:21:38 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:21:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] fanatics In-Reply-To: <200407211800.i6LI0RW04782@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040721202138.16568.qmail@web13426.mail.yahoo.com> >>If the fanatics, both here and elsewhere, are seen to be damaging the whole, then they will be extruded from the mass :-)<< --We can only hope so. For that to happen, they must be seen to be damaging BY the mass, not just TO it. At what point does species patriotism overtake religious nationalism or historical grudge matches? Perhaps the point where the wellbeing of the species itself is threatened? Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Jul 21 20:31:39 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 13:31:39 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] fanatics Message-ID: <01C46F27.0E682350.shovland@mindspring.com> It's pretty hard to assess the state of the American whole right now because the data comes from polls that have all sorts of biases. It seems to me that a lot of people have been damaged but don't recognize it, and that a lot of people will persist in supporting certain people because of value appeals. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 1:22 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] fanatics >>If the fanatics, both here and elsewhere, are seen to be damaging the whole, then they will be extruded from the mass :-)<< --We can only hope so. For that to happen, they must be seen to be damaging BY the mass, not just TO it. At what point does species patriotism overtake religious nationalism or historical grudge matches? Perhaps the point where the wellbeing of the species itself is threatened? Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Vote for the stars of Yahoo!'s next ad campaign! http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/yahoo/votelifeengine/ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com Thu Jul 22 01:58:26 2004 From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 21:58:26 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Religion, Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology Message-ID: <007001c46f8f$6110bd70$0200a8c0@dad> A selection of the papers presented at the New England Institute's 2003 conference on Religion, Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology have now been published in a special issue of Evolution and Cognition 10(1) edited by Robert E. Haskell and myself. CONTENTS 1.. Robert A. Hinde 'Religious systems: evolution, cultural change and the development of religiosity' 2.. Hank Davis & Andrea Javor 'Religion, death and horror movies: some striking evolutionary parallels' 3.. Joseph Bubulia 'Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention' 4.. Allen D. McNeill 'The capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation to warfare' 5.. Jesper Sorensen 'Religion, evolution and an immunology of cultural systems' 6.. Bradley Franks 'Negation and doubt in religious representations: context-dependence, emotion and action' 7.. Robert E. Haskell 'Subliteral (SubL) schemata of deity in verbal narratives' 8.. Steven W. Kercel & Donald C. Mikulecky 'Why do people behave religiously?' 9.. Ryan McKay 'Hallucinating God? The cognitive neuropsychiatry of religious belief and experience. 10.. Jesse M. Bering 'Natural selection is nondenominational: why evolutionary models of religion should be more concerned with behavior than concepts' 11.. Craig T. Palmer & Lyle B. Steadman 'With or without belief: a new approach to the definition and explanation of religion' For information on obtaining the journal, contact the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research sec at kla.univie.ac.at From dsmith06 at maine.rr.com Thu Jul 22 12:47:38 2004 From: dsmith06 at maine.rr.com (David Smith) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 08:47:38 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Address error Message-ID: <006101c46fea$122e6f80$0200a8c0@dad> The contact address given in my previous posting appears to be invalid. Instead, contact the editor at Manfred.Wimmer at kli.ac.at Cheers David "Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho." From HowlBloom at aol.com Thu Jul 22 13:28:40 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:28:40 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] the embryo's balancing act Message-ID: <88.f97ffe8.2e311b08@aol.com> Below is an intriguing bit of research, one that seems to demonstrate how the body keeps its balance, or, to put it more esoterically, how the community of over 100 billion neurons in the brain and body keep from going over the edge. Wait, that wasn?t the esoteric wording I had in mind. In addition to demonstrating mechanisms that zero in on a golden mean, mechanisms that act like catchers in the rye, this research shows a homeostatic mechanism at work. Oh, that cellular neighbor of ours is passing to great an electrical current and threatening to grab undue influence and to skew the consensus that makes our community (the community of neurons) a survival mechanism? Ok, girls, let?s go to work, let?s reengineer or reorient our activities a bit, and let?s put out inhibitory chemicals, tranquillizers to calm this obstrerous shouter, this electrically-hyperactive cell down. Hmmm, now we?ve got the opposite problem: a cell among us that puts out too little electrical activity. We?ve got a cripple, a limper. Let?s retool ourselves or readjust our output to manufacture some some uppers, some stimulants that will bring her up to speed. The community of neurons this study is peeping-tomming seems to have a norm it ?s trying collectively to achieve. That?s a very teleological and anthropomorphic way of putting it. But that?s one reason the German biologists of the 19th century showed a better understanding of the approach to a grand unified theory of everything, than did the physicists cooking up their steam-engine-based notion of thermodynamics. Time has more than just an arrow in an embryo. Not only is the idea that time is reversible absurd when your starting point is an embryo, but there?s a goal unfolding, one that came from a vast condensation of past experience stored in the genome, the protoplasm, and in the fabric of the cell?s walls, but one that points at a teleos, a future. How did the future get into the present? Why is it lurking there? Why does this seem a cosmos with a loose but certain goal? A cosmos with plans it may not know, plans it discovers as it goes along, but plans and intentions, will and motivation, nonetheless? Howard Retrieved July 21, 2004, from the World Wide Web http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040703/note11.asp Science News Online Week of July 3, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 1 Neurons take charge to change messages Bruce Bower Neurons in a developing embryo respond to changes in their own electrical activity by altering the types of chemical messengers that they produce, a new study suggests. This finding counters the traditional scientific view that genes alone determine which neurotransmitters a brain cell synthesizes. A team led by Laura N. Borodinsky and Nicholas C. Spitzer, both of the University of California, San Diego, first measured distinctive patterns of electrical activity in each of four types of embryonic neurons in the spinal cords of frogs. The researchers then changed the electrical activity in such cells in other frog embryos by genetically engineering them to pass either more or less current through their membranes. Those alterations that led to boosts in electrical activity also led to a surge in the number of cells producing inhibitory neurotransmitters that slow down neurons . Conversely, changes that caused electrical activity to decline triggered a rise in the number of neurons generating excitatory neurotransmitters that ramp up other cells' actions. The scientists report their findings in the June 3 Nature. Despite undergoing these electrical and chemical changes, all the neurons retained their distinctive structures. The study indicates that some embryonic neurons can switch the chemical signals they produce in response to changes in their own electrical activity or that of nearby cells, the investigators theorize. It's not yet known whether shifts in electrical activity similarly influence neurotransmitter release throughout embryonic nervous systems or in adult neurons. If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors at sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location. References: Borodinsky, L.N. . . . and N.C. Spitzer. 2004. Activity-dependent homeostatic specification of transmitter expression in embryonic neurons. Nature 429(June 3):523-530. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature02518. Further Readings: Goulding, M. 2004. A matter of balance. Nature 429(June 3):515-517. Sources: Laura N. Borodinsky Neurobiology Section Division of Biological Sciences Center for Molecular Genetics University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0357 Nicholas C. Spitzer Neurobiology Section Division of Biological Sciences Center for Molecular Genetics University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0357 http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040703/note11.asp From Science News, Vol. 166, No. 1, July 3, 2004, p. 13. Copyright (c) 2004 Science Service. All rights reserved. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Thu Jul 22 17:18:21 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:18:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: About Those Fearsome Black Holes? Never Mind Message-ID: About Those Fearsome Black Holes? Never Mind NYT July 22, 2004 By DENNIS OVERBYE Dr. Stephen W. Hawking threw in the towel yesterday, or at least an encyclopedia. Dr. Hawking, the celebrated Cambridge University cosmologist and best-selling author, declared at a scientific conference in Dublin that he had been wrong in a controversial assertion he made 30 years ago about black holes, the fearsome gravitational abysses that can swallow matter and energy, even light. As atonement he presented Dr. John Preskill, a physicist from the California Institute of Technology, with a baseball encyclopedia. The encyclopedia was the stake in a famous bet Dr. Hawking and another Caltech physicist, Dr. Kip Thorne, made with Dr. Preskill in 1997. Dr. Hawking and Dr. Thorne said information about what had been swallowed by a black hole could never be retrieved from it; Dr. Preskill and many other physicists said it could. The winner was to get an encyclopedia, from which information could be freely retrieved. This esoteric sounding debate is of great consequence to science, because if Dr. Hawking had been right, it would have violated a basic tenet of modern physics: that it is always possible to reverse time, run the proverbial film backward and reconstruct what happened in, say, the collision of two cars or the collapse of a dead star into a black hole. Now, on the basis of a new calculation, Dr. Hawking has concluded that physics is safe and information can escape from a black hole. "I want to report that I think that I have solved a major problem in theoretical physics," he told his colleagues, according to a transcript of his remarks. Standing in front of television cameras, as well as an auditorium full of physicists, Dr. Preskill said he had always dreamed that there would be witnesses when Dr. Hawking conceded, but "this really exceeds my expectations," according to an account by The Associated Press. Dr. Hawking's new calculation was received by other physicists with reserve. They cautioned that it would take time to understand it. Some of them emphasized that a long line of work by various theorists in recent years suggested that information could escape from black holes. "Until Stephen's recent reversal, he was about the only person still getting it wrong," said Dr. Leonard Susskind, a theorist at Stanford. Dr. Hawking spoke yesterday at the 17th International Conference of General Relativity and Gravitation. He was added to the program at the last minute, only two weeks ago, after sending a note to the organizers that he had solved the problem. His dramatic timing seems sure to add to his legend. Dr. Hawking, 62, has been confined to a wheelchair for decades by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and speaks through a voice synthesizer hooked to a computer on which he types one letter at a time. Nevertheless, he has been one of the world's leading experts on gravity, traveling the world constantly, training generations of graduate students at Cambridge and writing books like the popular "Brief History of Time." He has also married twice and fathered three children, and appeared on "The Simpsons" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Theorists have worried about the fate of information in black holes since the 1960's. In 1974, Dr. Hawking stunned the world by showing that when the paradoxical quantum laws that describe subatomic behavior were taken into account, black holes should leak and eventually explode in a shower of particles and radiation. The work was, and remains, hailed as a breakthrough in understanding the connection between gravity and quantum mechanics, the large and the small in the universe. But there was a hitch, as Dr. Hawking pointed out. The radiation coming out of the black hole would be random. As a result, all information about what had fallen in - whether it be elephants or donkeys - would be erased. In a riposte to Einstein's famous remark that God does not play dice, rejecting quantum uncertainty, Dr. Hawking said in 1976, "God not only plays dice with the universe, but sometimes throws them where they can't be seen." That was a violation of quantum theory, which says that information is preserved, and quantum theory is a foundation of all modern physics. Dr. Susskind, who along with Dr. Gerard 't Hooft of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands was among those who rose to the defense of quantum theory, said, "Stephen correctly understood that if this was true it would lead to the downfall of much of 20th-century physics." The notion that information is always preserved has gained credence from recent results in string theory, which hopes to produce a Theory of Everything that would explain all the forces of nature. Work by several theorists, including Dr. Andrew Strominger and Dr. Cumrun Vafa, both of Harvard, and Dr. Juan Maldacena, now at the Institute for Advanced Study, has contributed to a strange new view of the universe as a kind of hologram, in which the information about what happens inside some volume of space is somehow encoded on the surface of its boundary. In such a picture, "there is no room for information loss," Dr. Maldacena explained. But, he added, it does not explain what Dr. Hawking did wrong in 1974 or how information does get out of the black hole. In his new calculation, Dr. Hawking said that because of quantum uncertainty, one could never be sure from a distance that a black hole had really formed. There is no way to discriminate between a real black hole and an apparent one. In the latter case an event horizon, the putative point of last return, could appear to form and then unravel; in that case the so-called Hawking radiation that came back out would not be completely random but would have subtle correlations and thus could carry information about what was inside. According to quantum theory, both possibilities - a real black hole and an apparent one - coexist and contribute to the final answer. The contribution of the no-black-hole possibilities is great enough to suffice to allow information to escape, Dr. Hawking argued. Another consequence of his new calculations, Dr. Hawking said, is that there is no baby universe branching off from our own inside the black hole, as some theorists, including himself, have speculated. "I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes,'' he said yesterday. "If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state." The new results are hardly likely to be the last word, either about the black hole information problem or about black-hole travel. Few physicists agree with the approach Dr. Hawking is using in his new calculation. Nobody knows how to weigh the different possibilities in such a quantum calculation, said Dr. Sean Carroll of the University of Chicago. In conceding the bet, Dr. Hawking offered Dr. Preskill a cricket encyclopedia but said that Dr. Preskill, being "all American,'' refused. So Dr. Hawking had a copy of "Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia" flown in. Dr. Hawking's partner in the bet, Dr. Thorne, is sticking to his guns for now. Dr. Hawking commented, "If Kip agrees to concede the bet later, he can pay me back later." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/science/22hawk.html From eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Fri Jul 23 23:34:30 2004 From: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 01:34:30 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy References: <12d.460c9537.2e2c507b@aol.com> Message-ID: <02f301c4710d$99fbb520$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> Hi, I agree with what you have wrote. I am convinced that if western society will continue along the current approach it will stop to exist. What will happen then is not clear. You did not talk about China. It might become the next power and not the Islam. Eshel Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #?s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 12:15 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Bear with me if I posted this before, but it's something I wrote up for paleopsych that I think was sent while our listserv was down. Howard Has anyone noticed that the current World War between militant Islam and the Western Way of Life is actually something so basic even a bacterium could understand it? It's a battle of reproductive strategies. Specifically it's a battle of what population biologists call r and k strategies. One definition of the r strategy is this. You're up against the threat of a swift and hungry predator. You mate with as many females as you can, keep them pregnant constantly, use them as serial baby incubators, and put very few resources into each child. Why? So you can have as many kids as possible. The gamble goes like this. The more kids I shove out there, the more are likely to survive. The opposite strategy is k. One version of the k strategy (the let's-konserve strategy) is this. Have very few kids but put a huge investment into each one. This only works when you can be pretty sure each kid will survive. Predators--like wild dogs and large cats--lions, tigers, cheetahs--top of the food-chain dominators--tend to use the k strategy. They don't have to face death at the hands of bigger enemies, but do have to teach their young an awful lot to turn them into good hunters. If an adolescent cheetah hasn't learned her hunting skills well enough to bring down one big kill out of every four she tries, she is dead. Prey--like the mice, voles, and other rodents that even big cats and wild dogs hunt down as quick snacks--go for the r strategy. Breed like rabbits and hope that 4 out of every 12 pups survive. Cheetahs often have just two cubs at a time. Right now we Westerners dominate the worldwide food chain. We've opted for k. But Osama bin Laden has declared openly that he's going for the r strategy. He's said that his form of Islam honors women. It keeps them off the street, out of public sight, out of careers that might distract their attention, and keeps them pregnant so they can have between seven and seventeen children each. Men in Osama's privileged position can also have four wives at a time. And they can add to that advantage by wife-trading. They can divorce one wife and bring in another, running through as many wives as Osama's dad did. Bin Laden senior, with his 54 children, had eleven wives. We in the Western World, on the other hand, are having fewer kids than would be needed to replace our current population. What are we doing with those kids? We're investing in them hugely. These days we're doing far more than educating the hell out of them. We're also accessorizing them with ability-extenders--the equivalent of mega-arms, macro-legs, super-eyes, and tele-ears. We are giving them appendages it would have taken evolution 200 million years to develop...cell phones, digital cameras and videocams built into those phones, laptops, Google, instant access to the fastest-growing library in world history--the World Wide Web-- cars, cheap airline tickets, ubiquitous video displays, and the imagination-extenders of X-Boxes, Sony Play Stations, and Nintendo sets. We're turning our kids into digipedes--creatures with newly-invented cyber-senses and digi-limbs. That's precisely why Osama says we will fall as victim's of our own blindness, obesity, and decay. "We love death more than you love life," he says. To paraphrase his communiqu??s to the Ummah of Islam, "We can afford to sacrifice as many as 250 million of our believers even if you strike us with your nuclear weapons. The blood of our martyrs will only strengthen the 1.75 million of us who remain." You and I are very different, says Osama. You, he says, are cowards. You quiver when one of your soldiers is killed and his body is dragged through the streets of Somalia. You cringe when the warriors of holiness cut off a single head. You speak of exit strategies, Osama sneers, when a mere thousand of your soldiers have died in Iraq. Osama says he can whip us right left and center. Again, to paraphrase his speeches, "Our religion tells us to put ourselves into the battle and to kill and take the chance of being killed. We know that your corruption will do away with the brief wisp of putrescence you call a civilization. But our God has ordered that your destruction shall not be left to your rot. It shall not be left to your lack of manners and of decency. Our God has ordered that your sinews and bones be severed by the swords of our sons, by the fire and flame of our students-turned-to knights, and by the hellstorms delivered to you by our teenage heroes." Osama inspires with the poetry of the r strategy, the poetry of a rodent reproductive passion. In his own words: "By Allah, it is either victory or martyrdom and only those whose life span has come to an end will be killed, so his family will miss him, only for his soul to be, as our Messenger (peace and mercy be upon him) said, to be in the bellies of green birds that roam freely in heaven as they please, then head towards lanterns suspended with the throne of the Most Compassionate. There is no comparison between the two vicinities, the vicinity of his family and the vicinity of his lord. So dear youth of Islam everywhere, especially those of the neighborhood, where the duty upon you is conclusive, dear Muslim youths in the Arabic peninsula, and in Egypt and greater Syria, dear youths of Rabia???a [an Iraqi poetess born in 717 ad] and Mudhr, dear grandsons of Salahuddine, dear knights of Mohammed the Conqueror, dear Fedayeen of Umm Al-Fida and Aleppo, and the lions of Muan and Al-Zarqa, and the brave of Azad, the heroes of Assir, Hashed, Madhaj and Bakil, let your supplies be continuous so that you may rescue the land of the two rivers." Osama's betting on lots of kids. We're betting on few. Osama's betting on small investments in each body he sends into battle. Osama's betting that as one Egyptian contemporary of bin Laden's said way back in the early 1980s when al Qaeda was just beginning: "Islam is a tree that feeds on blood and grows on severed limbs." Osama is betting on the strategy of homicidal plague bacteria-- Yersinia pestis --bacteria that bet on flagrant, fast reproduction--bacteria that put their chips on the r strategy. We are betting on the strategy of elephants--the k strategy. This is far more than what Osama says it is when he uses Samuel Huntington's words and declares that: "this struggle is a religious and a doctrinal one and that the clash is in fact a clash of civilizations." It is more than what Osama calls, "a rare opportunity???and a priceless one???to sharpen the faculties of the Ummah and to break its shackles, in order to storm forward towards the battlefields of Jihad." And it is more than Osama's "decisive war", the war he says has opened "a crossroads" in history. It is a war between two ancient reproductive strategies in a new environment, a global, cyber-niche.. But primitive as it is, it is also a war between two different views of darkness and of light. I choose to believe that the light is that of the Western religion of human rights, women's rights, gay rights, democracy, free speech, secularism, and science. Osama believes the light lies in the purity of a seventh century vision that muzzles minds and tears the tongues from the mouths of blasphemers. In the end this is a fight to see: v whether humanity can continue its technological, philosophical, and artistic-mindleaps and soul-expansions v or whether our race cowers beneath clouds of nuclear soot and the veils of burqas and trudges back to what it experienced from 550 ad to 1100 AD--a Mad-Max dark ages. It is a war to see which reproductive strategy can grab the new cyber-global niche--this new wireless planet. It is a war to see which strategy can mobilize speed, conviction, whacko-cleverness, extremely long-term thinking, and implacable, adamantine persistence. Does either of our presidential candidates, Bush or Kerry, have a clear vision of just how desperate and critical this war of two colonies of organisms in the petri dish of our planet is? Does either have the persuasive and poetic capacity to turn a nation of couch potatoes and self-hating critics into a nation of secular humanist saviors...saviors of the fast-track experiment in the reinvention of mass mind, of personal passion, and of human powers that we call our civilization? Howard Bloom ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Jul 24 00:11:40 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:11:40 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: <01C470D8.1FBEA090.shovland@mindspring.com> If we are not capable of learning, then of course we are headed toward extinction. But I think that at the interface between competing systems learning is very rapid, and in today's interlinked world the learning is also disseminated very quickly. We should not be dismayed by the paralysis of our so-called leaders. They follow us. What do we want? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Eshel Ben-Jacob [SMTP:eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il] Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 4:35 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy << File: ATT00002.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00003.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00004.txt >> From checker at panix.com Sat Jul 24 01:01:28 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 21:01:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LibertyGuide.com: Evolutionary Psychology and the Social Sciences Message-ID: Evolutionary Psychology and the Social Sciences http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1 Evolutionary Psychology and the Social Sciences by [1]Todd Zywicki From [2]Humane Studies Review Vol. 13, No. 1 Recent years have seen an explosion in interest in evolutionary biology and its implications for the social sciences. Few areas of social science research have been untouched by the Darwinian revolution currently taking place. Economics, sociology, political science, law, history, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have seen Darwinian arguments slowly gravitate from the periphery toward the center of their disciplines. The purpose of this essay is to provide an introduction to the field and to suggest future avenues for further research in the intersection between evolutionary biology and the humane sciences. It is a fortuitous time for young scholars interested in the application of Darwinian evolution to problems of social science. Increasing understanding of DNA sequencing, combined with the impetus of the human genome project, have given rise to an unprecedented understanding of the genetic basis of much of our physical and mental natures. These developments have also eroded some of the stigma associated with prior efforts to apply Darwinian evolution to the study of human society, the most recent being E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology, which met with a firestorm of protest when published in the 1975. See E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Today the field travels under a variety of names; although the traditional term "sociobiology" is still occasionally used, more common today is evolutionary psychology, which is can be classified as a subset of evolutionary biology of "neo-Darwinism." The negative political reception of Wilson's Sociobiology set back the field for an entire generation of social scientists. This means that there remains a large degree of low-hanging fruit for young scholars to pluck in forming a research agenda in the field. Moreover, because much of the science remains fluid and ongoing, working in the field requires a degree of mental dexterity and the development of new skills that provides a comparative advantage to younger scholars. This essay will not attempt to provide a comprehensive guide to the field of evolutionary psychology. The field is vast and can become technical very quickly. This essay therefore will only attempt to provide an overview and introduction to the field. The sources mentioned will generally be highly comprehensive and generally provide detailed references for those interested in pursuing issues in greater depth. Indeed, this work will not attempt to identify more than a handful of the interesting social science issues that seem to be worth exploring through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, this portion of the essay is avowedly idiosyncratic and subjective, and is intended primarily to suggest some of the types of questions that can be gainfully addressed through a Darwinian framework. In the remainder of the essay I will first discuss why an understanding of evolutionary psychology is useful for those interested in studying the social sciences. The next section will provide an overview of some of the important concepts that have emerged from evolutionary psychology, focusing in particular on the "four paths to cooperation" that have been identified by scholars. The final section will discuss some of the implications of evolutionary psychology for research in different fields of inquiry. Why Study Evolutionary Psychology? Most classical liberals are somewhat skeptical about the value of studying evolutionary psychology. To some extent this is rooted in the historical association of classical liberalism with the mistaken tenets of "Social Darwinism" at the turn of the century. To some extent this skepticism resides in the frosty reception of sociobiology by a prior generation of scholars. Finally, to some extent this skepticism resides in a misunderstanding of the import of evolutionary psychology, and in particular in the belief that evolutionary psychology believes in the perfect determinacy of human behavior. This latter belief makes evolutionary psychology anathema to those concerned about issues of free will and personal autonomy. This skepticism is unfounded. Social Darwinism was a perversion of the insights of evolutionary psychology. Social Darwinists committed the classic naturalist fallacy, reasoning from the empirical observation that evolution operated according to the principle of the "survival of the fittest" to the normative conclusion that it should be the job of society to weed out the weak so as to further this evolutionary imperative. In so doing, Social Darwinists jumped from the "is" of evolution to the "ought" that the product of natural evolution is morally justified. Interestingly, today some environmentalists are prone to commit the naturalist fallacy in their belief that somehow what is "natural" is morally preferable to that which is not. On the other hand, this does not rule out a belief that what is normatively good for human beings must in some sense be consistent with their fundamental psychological natures. See E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); R. D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine De Gruyter, 1987). This latter argument recognizes the "is-ought" gap, so the naturalistic fallacy is avoided. Nonetheless, it argues that individuals will flourish only if they act consistently with their evolved natures. See Owen D. Jones, "On the Nature of Norms: Biology, Morality, and the Disruption of Order," Michigan Law Review 98: 801-832 (Forthcoming 2000). Whether a particular behavior is normatively good or bad cannot be established simply by determining that the actor is "naturally" inclined to behave in such a manner. Certain behaviors can be good or bad only according to an external normative standard. Thus, as discussed below it appears that human beings may be naturally predisposed to engage in trade, act compassionately, and enter into reciprocal arrangements for mutual benefit. By almost any moral code, all of these behaviors are normatively good. By contrast, it also appears that some human beings may be predisposed naturally toward violence and rape. See Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000); Owen D. Jones, "Sex, Culture, and the Biology of Rape: Toward Explanation and Prevention," California Law Review 827-941 (1999). The fact that these behaviors are "natural" is irrelevant to the fact that they are universally morally condemned. Finally, other predispositions, such as our tendencies to eat too many candy bars, are morally neutral. The desire to consume sugar served an evolutionary purpose in an era where food was scarce and it was useful to have a built-in craving to encourage us to seek food. The task of the philosopher and social scientist is to understand the degree to which certain predilections are hard-wired into human psychology, and thereby to determine what set of institutions and incentives are necessary to restrain, modify, or channel these predilections into pro-social behavior and away from anti-social behavior. Moreover, evolutionary psychology does not imply biological determinism. Modern biology makes clear, rather, that one's behavior is a function of the mutual interaction between evolved traits and one's environment, or as the case is frequently (if inaccurately) put, between nature and nurture. Indeed, evolution itself is driven by the interaction of biological variation interacting with environmental selection. There are no absolute degrees of fitness, only comparative degrees of fitness relative to a given environment. Evolutionary psychology simply provides evidence of general tendencies that interact with an individual's environment. At the same time, evolutionary psychology rejects the claims of current theorists who argue that one's personality is entirely socially constructed and thus infinitely malleable. As Marxists learned the hard way, there are certain characteristics of human nature that seem to be virtually impossible to eliminate, such as the tendency to prefer the welfare of one's family to strangers, the tendency to free ride on others' labors where possible, and the tendency to seek wealth and status. Thus, although the morality of a given behavior cannot be determined simply by whether it is natural, the recognition that there are certain hard-wired tendencies to human nature may constrain what aspirations are attainable or may provide guidance as to what tools are available to accomplish one's goals. Thus, evolutionary psychology illustrates the folly of the scholarship of recent decades that has tried to ignore the reality of an innate human nature that is not infinitely malleable. More fundamentally, it provides a warning against indulging in the utopian schemes characteristic of the twentieth century, most of which rested on the supposition that human nature could be molded to fit the desires of utopian reformers, rather than recognizing the limits that human nature placed on such schemes. It is now generally accepted that evolutionary biology provides a persuasive explanation for our biological natures, e.g., two arms, two legs, upright gait, vision, hearing, warm-bloodedness, etc. Although evolutionary biology has triumphed for biological evolution, scholars remain reluctant to recognize that evolution has psychological consequences as well. Instead, scholars have preferred to believe that humans remain a tabula rasa, blank personalities subject to molding by social, cultural, legal, political, and economic forces. I have elsewhere dubbed this incongruity, "Darwinism from the neck up," because even as secular scholars have generally embraced biological Darwinism, they have rejected psychological Darwinism with equally forceful zeal. See Todd J. Zywicki, "The State of Nature and the Nature of the State: A Comment on Grady and McGuire," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(3): 241-261 (1999). The flaw in this reasoning is obvious. Just as we have physically evolved to solve a number of common problems that arose in our evolutionary environment, we have similarly developed psychological skills necessary to operate in the social environment of our evolutionary ancestors. Put more simply, nobody believes that education or culture will make me physically able to dunk a basketball; why are Marxists so optimistic that education, economic, and political reform could make me treat strangers as if they were my genetic kin? For most animals the relevant variable for one's evolutionary fitness turns on the fitness for a given physical environment. Thus, a wolf's fitness will be a function of its ability to hunt down elk and an elk's fitness will be a function of its ability to outrun and evade wolves. For humans, however, the relevant environment primarily is other humans, a social environment rather than a physical environment. Because of the immensely social nature of human societies, one's fitness is not merely a function of the ability to seek prey and to avoid predation. Rather, human societies place a fundamental premium on the ability to interact with other human beings in a social environment. The evolutionary environment for humans is the body of institutions, rules, customs, and expectations of others. Thus, the fundamental evolutionary difficulty for humans is to solve inherently social puzzles as to how to interact with others. Although other animals have some degree of culture, none of them even approximates the complexity of even the simplest human cultures. See F. De Waal, "Cultural Primatology Comes of Age," Nature 399:635-636 (1999). A massive database has been established to collate the various different chimpanzee cultures that researchers have identified. See A. Whiten, et al. "Cultures in Chimpanzees," Nature 399:682-685 (1999). Their results can be found on-line at <[3]http://www.chimp-st-and.ac.uk/cultures/database.htm>. An incongruity arises in that evolutionary psychologists recognize that the social problems that humans must solve are not actually the social problems of today's global economy, but that our minds are molded to solve the social problems of our human ancestors. Our brains and minds (as with our bodies) took on their current configuration in what is generally referred to as the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, or EEA, during the Pleistocene Era several million years ago. During this time our human ancestors lived in small, stable hunter-gatherer bands characterized by stable social groups, repeated interaction over time, and relatively long life spans. In evolutionary terms a few million years is a relatively short amount of time. Thus it is believed that humans have largely the same biological natures as the humans of hunter-gatherer time. Cultural evolution, however, operates much more rapidly than biological evolution. Thus, we live in high-speed global economies characterized by rapid economic change, although our essential natures remain essentially hunter-gatherer in nature. This creates a mismatch between some of our innate desires and the realities we confront on a daily basis. See F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988) (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, W. W. Bartley III ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press). For Hayek, therefore, the purpose of culture and institutions is to control our self-destructive impulses to impose our small-group sentiments on modern society. Robert Wright, by contrast, builds on the foundation of human sociability and argues that biological and cultural evolution share the common trait that they both have a tendency toward increasing complexity driven by the mutual benefits of "non-zero-sum exchange." See Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (2000) (New York: Pantheon Books). Unlike Hayek, therefore, Wright views culture and institutions as the extension of an innate tendency to engage in mutually beneficial exchange, without Hayek's emphasis on the small-group setting of the EEA. Just as the study of evolutionary biology should not be interpreted to denigrate the importance of environmental factors, it should also not be interpreted to denigrate the value of free will and purposefulness in human action. It is true that some commentators such as Robert Wright have suggested that evolutionary psychology calls into question the entire concept of free will by reducing human action to a predictable set of impulses. See Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994) (New York: Vintage Books). Others, however, have argued that a proper understanding of science and human nature actually enhances the importance of free will and moral decision by recognizing the importance of restraining our anti-social and unhealthy impulses even when tempted to act otherwise. See Pope John Paul II, "Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences," The Vatican (Oct. 22, 1996). Studying animal behavior and cooperation, therefore, is useful in the same way that game theory is useful, to provide evidence of how humans might be predicted to act absent the restraints of human nature and social institutions and norms. Studying animal behavior provides insight on possible solutions to various problems of human societies, such as problems of collective action, conflict resolution, and the like. Social animals are confronted with many of the same problems as human societies, of keeping internal peace and resolving conflicts over scarce resources. And they do so without any sophisticated cultural or institutional mechanisms. As evolutionary biologist Lee Dugatkin observes, Lee Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans (New York: Free Press, 1999), studying human behavior and cooperation: shows us what to expect when the complex web of human social networks, as well as the laws and norms found in all human societies, are absent, and so these studies act as a sort of baseline from which to operate. Animals show us a stripped-down version of what behavior in a given circumstance would look like without moral will and freedom. Only with this understanding of what a particular behavior looks like outside the context of some moral code can we use human morality to focus on and foster cooperation in our species. [4][1] Four Paths to Cooperation Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that absent a central political authority the state of nature would devolve into a war of "all against all." Selfish individuals, he believed, would be unable to cooperate for mutual advantage because of the constant temptation for individuals to take advantage of one another. Stated in modern game theory terms, Hobbes believed that individuals would "defect" in every interaction they had with one another. The insights of evolution rebut Hobbes's belief. All living creatures face certain difficulties maintaining social cooperation and peace. This section will review the "four paths to cooperation" that evolutionary biologists have identified as mechanisms for creating social peace without the necessity of a central rule-making authority. In fact, most cooperation in nature exists not only without legal and political institutions, but also without what has fashionably come to be called "norms" and which previously was called custom. Norms and institutions can extended the sphere of cooperation, but it appears that much cooperative behavior is in fact natural and rooted in human nature. It is likely that the presence of a hard-wired tendency toward cooperation is a necessary condition for the emergence of social cooperation; indeed, in many animal societies it is also a sufficient condition. Although Hobbes's solution was utterly confused, he posed the correct question -- how can selfish individuals be induced to cooperate with one another? Biologists start with a similar reductionist premise. Rather than selfish individuals, however, biologists begin their analysis with selfish genes. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (2d edition, 1989) (New York: Oxford University Press). The two are closely related but analytically distinct. Genes are the basic units of natural selection; individuals can be understood as collections of genes. The only measure of success for a gene is its ability to be replicated into a new generation. Genes produce phenotypic traits in human beings, such as intelligence, athleticism, and physical appearance, that when selected for by the environment, affect an individual's likelihood of successfully mating and passing along his or her genetic material to a new generation. Matt Ridley provides an excellent introduction to the ways in which genotypes are reflected in specific human phenotypic traits. See Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). In this sense genes can be figuratively said to be "selfish" in the same way an individual can be said to be selfish (even though genes do not act with "intent"); particular genes "care" only about their own survival into a new generation. Thus, genes are "selfish," and do not "care" about the plight of any other genes, except to the extent that it helps that particular gene survive into the next generation. In turn, this suggests that individuals will act in the self-interest of his genes. This analysis really just restates the basic question: given the existence of selfish genes, why do we see so many instances of cooperation among animals, including human beings? Lee Dugatkin provides a virtual encyclopedia of documentation and explanation of cooperation among animals in Cooperation Among Animals: An Evolutionary Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Moreover, cooperation in non-human animals is especially puzzling, given the absence of cultural norms or a state to enforce compliance with cooperative behavior. Four mechanisms have been suggested by evolutionary biologists to explain the evolution of cooperation in nature: (1) kin selection, (2) cooperation for mutual advantage, (3) reciprocal altruism, and (4) group selection. In each of these situations, one individual (i.e., collection of genes) acts altruistically in bestowing a benefit upon some other individual (collection of genes). This is surprising, in that it seems to be inconsistent with the self-interest axiom. Nonetheless, each of these mechanisms potentially makes it more likely that certain genes will be propagated in a new generation. Sometimes the benefit for the genes is direct, as in the kin selection model. For others it is indirect, in that by pursuing cooperation an individual increases his wealth and health, increasing his reproductive capacity relative to less cooperative individuals. This section of the essay will discuss each of these paths to cooperation in turn. Kin Selection Kin selection operates on the premise that the marginal sacrifice of one individual may make that individual relatively worse off, but that the sacrifice may also make that individual's genes better off as a result. For instance, consider the following situation confronting a family of ground squirrels. Amy the ground squirrel is out foraging for food one day with her sisters when she spots a hawk circling above. At this point, Amy has two options: she can either quietly slink back to the lair, leaving the hawk to eat a less-observant sister. Alternatively, she can sound a warning call, thereby alerting Betty, Claire, Denise, Edith, and Francis that a hawk has been spotted and warning them to retreat to the lair. Assume further that if she sounds the call, it will increase her likelihood of being eaten by the hawk by 10% but will reduce the likelihood of her sisters being eaten by 5% each. Will she call the alarm? Surprisingly, the answer is yes for Belding's ground squirrels. See Paul W. Sherman, "Nepotism and the Evolution of Alarm Calls," Science 197: 1246-1253 (Sept. 23, 1977). For a less technical presentation, see Lee Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans (New York: Free Press, 1999). Although it makes it more likely that Amy will be killed, it makes it sufficiently less likely that her sisters will be eaten that it is worth it for her to call the alarm. Even though sounding an alarm call is dangerous to the individual caller's survival, it is favorable toward the caller's genes. Individual ground squirrels (as with most animals) are diploid, meaning that they draw one-half of their chromosomes from each of their two parents (a female mother and a male father). This means that on average Amy shares 50% of her genes with her sisters. Thus, even though Amy's call decreases her likelihood of surviving the hawk attack by 10%, it increases the overall likelihood of saving her sisters by 25% (five sisters times 5% increased likelihood of survival). Because Amy shares on average 50% of her genes with her sisters, sounding the alarm call will increase the likelihood of her genes surviving by 12-1/2% overall (25% times 50%), while costing her only a 10% likelihood of being eaten. Thus, while it is irrational from Amy's individual perspective to call the alarm, it is "rational" from her genes' perspective to induce Amy to call the alarm. This tendency to act altruistically toward one's kin is called "inclusive fitness." See W. D. Hamilton, "The Genetical Evolutionary of Social Behavior, Parts I and II," Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:1-52 (1964); J. Maynard Smith, "Group Selection and Kin Selection," Nature 201:1145-1147 (1964). The theory of inclusive fitness predicts that natural selection will favor altruism among kin: the closer two individuals are related to one another, the lower the costs to the altruist, and the greater the benefits to the recipient. Therefore, if the five individuals that Amy's call would save were grandchildren, rather than her sisters, each individual granddaughter would have only a 25% expected relatedness to Amy. As a result, it would be "irrational" for Amy to sound the alarm, as she would be increasing her likelihood of being attacked by 10%, but only increasing the likelihood of her genes' survival by 6.25%. Restated, natural selection predicts that, on average, we would tend to act more altruistically toward siblings, parents, and children with whom we share an average relatedness of 50% than toward grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, and uncles, with whom we share an average relatedness of only 25%. Interestingly, this theory also provides no instinctive reason why we would act more altruistically toward a spouse than toward a stranger. Thus, the observed tendency to act altruistically towards one's spouse must rest on some other basis than the theory of inclusive fitness. This is not to imply that ground squirrels make such rational calculations in deciding whether to issue an alarm in a given situation ("Let me see, how many sisters and granddaughters are around right now..."). There is a burgeoning literature on how animals determine who is kin and who is not. See P. G. Hepper, Kin Recognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Most of the methods of identification, such as close inspection of physical features or odors, are relatively costly to perform. Thus, rather than engaging in a close inspection of every member of an animal society, most animals seem to rely on the simple heuristic of treating as kin everyone who grew up in the relevant area (e.g., nest, territory, burrow, etc.). As a rule of thumb, this approach is subject to error, most notably by animal parasites who try to trick other animals into raising their offspring (suck as cuckoos). But in general, treating those with whom you grew up as kin provides a pretty accurate shortcut for determining who is kin and who is not. Thus, it is interesting to note that the so-called "incest taboo" of not being attracted to kin actually appears to be not so much an aversion on being attracted to a relative, but instead is an aversion against being attracted to a person with whom you grew up. See E. A. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 1891). Thus, stepsiblings raised together are rarely attracted to one another, as are very close childhood friends. By contrast, this further suggests that if sexual activity takes place within the family, the most common type will be between father and daughter, because the father is beyond the age where familiarity breeds aversion. See M. Daly and M. Wilson, Sex, Evolution, and Behavior (2d ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1983). So there is no rational calculation as to whether to make an alarm call. The analysis suggests instead that ground squirrels would develop an instinct to call alarms when they are near their homes because in general they will be surrounded by multiple close family members and on net it will help the squirrels genes to reproduce. This instinct is merely a tendency, and in fact ground squirrels suppress this instinct when environmental conditions change. First, it is only female ground squirrels who sound alarm calls. This is because in ground squirrel communities males emigrate, while females remain in kin groups. Thus, males tend to be surrounded by individuals with whom they have no genetic relation, thus they become purely interested in their own personal survival. Second, studies have been done of the rare situations where female ground squirrels have been forced to emigrate to new groups. Sure enough, these newcomers are less likely than the incumbents to give alarm calls. Kin selection also explains why ant colonies and beehives have such a high degree of cooperation. Many ants are actually sterile and do not reproduce at all, the ultimate act of individual self-sacrifice. But individual self-sacrifice is not genetic self-sacrifice. Most creatures are diploid for purposes of reproduction, meaning that an offspring requires both a mother and a father for a fertilized egg to reproduce, and therefore draws half her genes from her father and half from her mother, making for a 50% degree of genetic relatedness. Ants, by contrast, are haplodiploid: females are diploid and have two sets of chromosomes (one from each parent), but males arise from unfertilized eggs, thus they only have a mother and have only one set of chromosomes. Unlike most creatures who share a 50% expected genetic relatedness with siblings, ants share an expected 75% expected genetic relatedness with siblings. This high degree of genetic relatedness explains the remarkable social cohesion among ant communities as well as the willingness of individual ants to sacrifice their individual reproduction in order to tend to the feeding and raising of others' offspring. The pull of kin selection, for instance, may explain why it is that the law tends not to contractually enforce promises made between family members. See Charles J. Goetz and Robert E. Scott, "Enforcing Promises: An Examination of the Basis of Contract," Yale Law Journal 89: 1261-1359 (1980). Kin selection suggests that at some base level the utility functions of family members are interdependent, and that, for instance, mothers and fathers will tend not to act opportunistically with respect to their children. As a result, when a family member fails to carry through on a promise, we can assume with a high degree of reliability that the breach was due to a sincere regret contingency and was not merely an opportunistic breach. This analysis will also have implications for rules governing inheritance law and other familial relations. On the other hand, it has also been argued that the absence of genetic relationships may help to explain the relatively higher degree of abuse of children raised by stepparents relative to those raised by their natural parents. See M. Daly and M. Wilson, Homicide (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine, 1988); Owen D. Jones, "Evolutionary Analysis in Law: An Introduction and Application to Child Abuse," North Carolina Law Review 1117-1242 (1997). It has been argued that courts should consider such statistical regularities in making child-custody determinations in the event of divorce. See Robin Fretwell Wilson, "Children At Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children After Divorce," Cornell Law Review 86(2) (Forthcoming 2000). Finally, the innate pull to take care of one's genetic relations has obvious implications for how we think of society as a social organism. It is suggestive of the visceral appeal used in times of war for individuals to pull together with their "brothers and sisters." It also evidences the folly in some current schemes to break down the family as the basic social unit of society. Kin selection theory suggests that it is the family, even more than the individual, that is the basic social unit of society. Thus, while utopian reformers may talk about treating strangers as one's brothers, this rhetoric really tends to miss the point. For kin-based altruism to flourish, little is required in the way of conscious action. Also, its payoff in terms of reproductive fitness is quite direct. Unsurprisingly, therefore, kin-based altruism is ubiquitous in nature. In fact, it is often cited as a basic building block of other forms of altruistic behavior. Cooperation for a Given End A second form of altruistic behavior is cooperation for a given end, or by-product mutualism. Cooperation for a given end exists when there is some goal that can be best accomplished through a group of individuals working together, rather than acting separately. In such situations there is a payoff from teamwork, so long as it is possible to monitor the members of the team to make sure that contribute to the final output. Group hunting provides an excellent example of cooperation for a given end. A pack of wolves hunting together, for instance, will be able to capture more and different types of game than the same wolves hunting alone. Similarly a group of hunter-gatherers generally can capture more and larger game than individual hunter-gatherers hunting alone. In this model, therefore, cooperation arises from the self-interest of the various members of the group. Each of the members of the group benefits individually from the larger production that can be generated by hunting together as a team rather than hunting alone. Hunting together, therefore, produces a social surplus relative to what would be produced hunting individually. For instance, assume that five members of a hunter-gatherer band could, hunting alone, capture one rabbit apiece (five total), but that no single individual could bring down a woolly mammoth. Assume further that if the five individuals worked together, they could kill a woolly mammoth that would provide the food equivalent of eight rabbits. The social surplus from hunting together, therefore, would be the equivalent of three additional rabbits. But there are also costs that are potentially incurred as a result of cooperation for a given end. Group activity raises the threat of free riding by members of the group. For instance, it may be that it is much more dangerous to hunt woolly mammoths than rabbits. Thus, each individual member of the hunting party will have some incentive to lay back and free ride on the efforts of the other members of the party. This may reduce the probability of slaying the mammoth; at the very least it will allow the coward to capture a share of the social surplus despite his unequal contribution to its production. It is interesting, therefore, that societies predicated on a high degree of group hunting have devised a number of norms and practices designed to limit shirking. First, food sharing (absent reciprocal relationships, which are discussed below) is limited only to those goods that actually require joint production to be produced. Thus, for instance, fruits and berries are generally collected through female effort. This production requires no team production, thus labor inputs are directly reflected in the amount of food outputs generated. As a result, these food products are generally consumed within the family and not shared. Among the Ache of Paraguay, plant food and insect grubs are not shared outside the nuclear family, although meat is. Among the Yora of Peru, on "a fishing trip, everybody shares; back at the camp, food is freely shared only in the family, and at all times meat is more widely shared than vegetables. Thus, while fish, monkeys, alligators and turtles are shared, plantains are hidden in the forest until they ripened to prevent neighbors stealing them." [5][2] See Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Viking, 1996). See also K. Hill and H. Kaplan, "Population and Dry-Season Subsistence Strategies of the Recently Contacted Yora of Peru," National Geographic Research 5: 317-334 (1989). Second, group hunting is generally engaged in only when economically efficient. Thus when pursuing small game, animals tend to hunt individually, but when pursuing large game requiring teamwork, animals hunt together. See Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys at 114-116; D. Scheel and C. Packer, "Group Hunting Behavior of Lions: A Search for Cooperation," Animal Behavior 41: 697-709 (1991). Fish also tend to forage individually unless their environment requires them to hunt together. For instance, it is impossible for an individual or even a small group of wrasse to penetrate the defenses of a single damselfish. Working together in coordinated action, however, a large group of wrasse can distract and overwhelm the damselfish's defenses. Thus, it appears that wrasse work together in plundering damselfish eggs but forage separately when coordinated action is not as necessary. See S. A. Foster, "Acquisition of a Defended Resource: A Benefit of Group Foraging for the Neotropical Wrasse, Thalassoma lucasanum, Environmental Biology of Fishes 19: 215-222 (1987); R. J. Schmitt and S. Strand, "Cooperative Foraging by Yellowtail Seriola lalandei (Carangidae) on Two Species of Fish Prey," Coeia 1982: 714-717. Where teamwork is unnecessary the gains to group hunting are small, but the problems of preventing free riding remain constant. As a result, group hunting will be less common. Third, unusually good hunters are rewarded with a disproportionately large share of the social surplus. Skilled chimpanzees, for instance, get first choice of the meat from slain prey, as well as retain primary responsibility for distributing the spoils. See Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Skilled hunters in primitive human societies are rewarded not only with primary hunting spoils but also with disproportionate sexual favors from women, who often directly exchange sex for meat. See K. Hill and H. Kaplan, "Tradeoffs in Male and Female Reproductive Strategies among the Ache," in Human Reproductive Behavior (L. Betzig, M. Borgehoff Mulder, and P. Turke eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); K. Hill and H. Kaplan, "On Why Male Foragers Hunt and Share Food," Current Anthropology 34:701-706 (1994); for a slightly different argument see K. Hawkes, "Why Hunter-Gatherers Work: An Ancient Version of the Problem of Public Goods," Current Anthropology 34: 341-361 (1993). Interestingly, the bulk of this analysis rebuts the traditional myth that primitive societies are socialist in orientation. As discussed below, it is true that they are highly egalitarian in their social arrangements (at least as compared to other species), but this social egalitarianism is often misunderstood as economic socialism. Neither chimpanzee bands nor human hunter-gatherer societies are socialist. I am aware of no human or animal society that has sustained an ethic of unconditional sharing of social surplus for very long. It is true that large game is, in fact, shared. But a good deal of sharing is sharing among kin, which is predicted by the kin-group selection model described above. As to non-kin, animal and human societies universally practice an ethic of conditional sharing. An able-bodied individual who could work but chooses not to has no entitlement to the any amount of the social surplus. Male chimpanzees who attempt to free ride by trying to participate in eating without participating in hunting "tend to receive little or nothing." [6][3] See also C. Boesche and H. Boesch, "Hunting Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees in the Tai Nation Park," American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78: 547-573 (1989); C. Boesch, "Cooperative Hunting in Wild Chimpanzees," Animal Behavior 48: 653-667 (1994). At the very least, those who fail to contribute are given the last pick of any meat available, and this is simply because large game will spoil on the open plains (where refrigerators traditionally have been somewhat scarce). Thus, the effective marginal cost of giving food to shirkers in this situation is zero. In contrast to this strictness of dealing with able-bodied shirkers, weak and infirm individuals are often accorded special treatment and protection from other members of the relevant society, even in chimpanzee societies. Compassion and sympathy toward those who are unable to help themselves appear to be as much a part of human nature as the unwillingness to feel much sympathy for shirkers who subsequently seek to share in the social product. This may account for the universal tendency to distinguish "worthy" from "unworthy" recipients of charity. [A somewhat similar analysis is provided in Amy Wax, "Rethinking Welfare Rights: Reciprocity Norms, Reactive Attitudes, and Political Economy of Welfare Reform," Law and Contemporary Problems (Forthcoming Fall 2000)]. We seek to help those who are unable to help themselves, but we are outraged when our charity is exploited by those who could help themselves but choose not to do so. The contextual nature of food-sharing is a theme that I will return to below. The problem of cooperation for a given end is identical to the problem confronted by an economic firm. See A. Alchian and H. Demsetz, "Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, 62: 777-795 (1972). Alchian and Demsetz argue that the economic function of a firm is team production. Team production can produce outcomes that are unavailable to uncoordinated individuals working alone. They provide the example of moving a couch: no single individual could do it, but four men can do it easily. Thus, there is social surplus as a result of the team production. The problem is that each individual will have an incentive to "shirk" by not working as hard as the other members of the team. Each member of the team faces the same incentives; thus, unless the shirking problem can be contained, either the couch will not get moved, or it will take more time than it would otherwise, thereby reducing the effective social surplus. Alchian and Demsetz argue that, in response to these incentives, some individual will be designated to be a residual claimant whose primary responsibility will be to constrain shirking by the team members. In return, the residual claimant will be rewarded out of the general social surplus. The economic organization of the firm faces virtually identical opportunities and problems as the wolf pack seeking to bring down an elk. Cooperation for a given end is an important component of cooperation in nature, but it is limited in its utility to serve as a general mechanism for social coordination. Cooperation for a given end presupposes the existence of some uniform goal that all members of the team seek to attain. Society and economy, however, are characterized by a plurality of ends, not a single uniform end. See F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1944); Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1976). Thus, although cooperation for a given end is valuable in allowing individuals to accomplish their individual goals, it does not provide a general theory for organizing society. See Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Todd J. Zywicki, "Epstein and Polanyi on Simple Rules, Complex Systems, and Decentralization," Constitutional Political Economy 9: 143-150 (1998). At the level of the social abstraction of an economy and a society, the fundamental question is how to coordinate these disparate goals peacefully and efficiently. The appeal of organizing society so as to accomplish a given goal explains the appeal to many social thinkers of a society and economy at war. During such times, it is argued, individuals suppress their plurality of individual goals in favor of attaining a goal that is good for society generally, namely conquest of the common enemy. After such wars end, however, there is a tendency for this uniformity of vision to falter, and individuals return to their individual purposes. As the foregoing has suggested, this duality is natural. Thus, while the hunt is on, there are incentives for each individual to contribute to the common goal of capturing prey. As soon as the prey is downed, however, each individual quickly turns toward attempting to acquire for himself as much as possible of the common surplus. Evolutionary biology teaches us that selfishness is the norm, but that short-term selfishness can sometimes be subsumed into a joint project. Sometimes this joint project can be protection from a common enemy. See Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys. In the end, however, where cooperation is for some common goal, each individual participates in furtherance of his self-interest. Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone presents an interesting recent example of the error of viewing all of society as having a common purpose, and as all members of society working cooperating to accomplish this end purpose. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). Putnam glorifies the effect of World War II in inculcating a heightened sense of civic responsibility in those who fought the war, a commitment that continued after the war's conclusion. Putnam relishes "the moral equivalent of war" without the bloodshed and disruption of war. [7][4] Thus, Putnam endorses the role played by the post-war organs of civil society in building a civic-mindedness aimed at solving collective problems. In stressing these unifying purposes of civil society, Putnam ignores a second, equally important strand of scholarship on civil society, namely the role of civil society organizations in fulfilling a plurality of individual ends. This strand of analysis, exemplified by scholars such as Hannah Arendt and Ernest Gellner, stress the importance of civil society as serving as a guardian of individual liberty and as a counterweight to the tendency of the state to atomize individuals into democratic rent-seekers and to infantilize individuals into passive recipients of the state's largesse. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1973); Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994). A full understanding of the vital role played by civil community in a free society requires understanding that the organs of civilization not only help to build social unity in the sense offered by Putnam, but also to preserve a sphere of personal autonomy and pursuit of a diversity of human ends in the sense identified by Arendt and Gellner. Cooperation for a given end is relatively common in nature. Where the benefits to coordination for a given end are sufficiently large (such as group hunting) and it is possible to constrain shirking and free riding, the ability to cooperate to accomplish a given end is likely to emerge spontaneously and to become hard-wired in an animal's instinctive nature. Moreover, such coalition actions tend to arise only where necessitated by the environment, and thus such coalitions can be quite fluid and temporary. More stable coalitions tend to be held together by the glue of reciprocal altruism, where gains are provided over time, rather than the more direct and short-term gains offered by cooperation for a given end. Reciprocal Altruism A third basis for cooperation in nature is "reciprocal altruism." Although termed "altruism," like kin selection and cooperation for a given end, reciprocal altruism is really rooted in self-interest. But the mutual gains from reciprocal altruism are produced over time rather than through a single interaction, as with cooperation for a given end. In reciprocal altruism an individual provides a benefit for another in exchange for a reciprocal benefit, or the expectation of a reciprocal benefit in the future. Because the benefits are traded over time, however, at the outset one of the individuals must provide a benefit (thereby incurring a cost) in exchange for the mere expectation of a reciprocal benefit. By being the first mover, the party that first incurs a cost for another's benefit can be said to act altruistically, even though the cost is incurred in expectation of a long-term benefit. Assuming that the expectation is eventually realized, this series of reciprocal exchanges over time is called reciprocal altruism. Robert Trivers, generally credited with identifying the model, defines reciprocal altruism as "the trading of altruistic acts in which benefit is larger than cost so that over a period of time both enjoy a net gain." See Robert Trivers, Social Evolution (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1985); see also Robert L. Trivers, "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," Quarterly Review of Biology 46: 35 (1971). Frans de Waal similarly observes, "Cost-benefit analyses are the staple of evolutionary arguments. The premise is always that there must be something in it for the performer, if not immediately then at least in the long run, and if not for him then at least for his relatives." [8][5] De Waal defines three characteristics of reciprocal altruism: 1. The exchanged acts, while beneficial to the recipient, are costly to the performer. 2. There is a time lag between giving and receiving. 3. Giving is contingent on receiving. Because the benefits to the giver of reciprocal altruism are generated indirectly (unlike the direct benefits of kin selection) and over a long period of time (rather than in a relatively discrete transaction, as with cooperation for a given end), a system of reciprocal altruism requires a large number of supplementary psychological and social institutions to develop. On a psychological level, reciprocal altruism requires that those bound up in the reciprocal relationship have sufficient cognitive ability to recognize and remember the degree of their reciprocal relationships with others. On a social level, reciprocal altruism requires sufficient stability of population that the long-term benefits of social cooperation can accrue over time. As de Waal poses the challenge, "Reciprocal altruism differs from other patterns of cooperation in that it is fraught with risk, depends on trust, and requires that individuals whose contributions fall short be shunned or punished, lest the whole system collapse." [9][6] Because of the huge number of supplementary psychological and social institutions necessary to run a system of reciprocal altruism, this form of cooperation is relatively rare in nature, being confined to only the "brainiest" and most social of animals. Again the analysis turns on the relative benefits and costs of this form of cooperation relative to others. The benefits of reciprocal altruism are potentially large. A system of reciprocal altruism potentially creates huge social surplus to be captured by the society. By allowing trade over a period of time, reciprocal altruism opens up the possibility of a division of labor and credit-based relationships. These innovations make possible the recognition of the gains from specialization, comparative advantage, and the insurance and risk-shifting elements of inter-temporal trade. More fundamentally, absent the possibility of reciprocal altruism, every interaction between strangers would be essentially a one-shot prisoner's dilemma game, with mutual defection as the dominant strategy. Of course, as the foregoing has indicated, a failure to solve the problem of reciprocal exchange would not mean the end of all cooperation -- kin-based cooperation and some degree of cooperation for a given end would continue. So, for instance, a sex-based division of labor (presumably driven by kin-based cooperation) is universal in human societies and is not likely to be the result of mere norms working alone. See Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). Cooperation for purposes of accomplishing a given goal might also be possible, but even this may break down if there is some need to devise a system of cooperation outside of the joint project (such as how to divide the surplus of the group activity, i.e., how tigers will divide an impala carcass if there is not enough for each to eat to satisfaction). But reciprocity opens the possibility of social surplus on a scale unimaginable for kin-based and by-product cooperation. See Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000). Indeed, Matt Ridley has argued that what makes human beings unique is the division of labor, which allows for maximum realization of gains from trade and reciprocal relations. See Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Viking 1996). For instance, if six hunters establish an arrangement to share food over time (allowing for temporarily unlucky hunters and lucky hunters to share together), it is estimated that they will reduce the variance in their food supply by eighty percent relative to hunters who do not share their game. The ability to trade different types of products (rather than just trading meat inter-temporally) opens up the possibility of even greater exchange, such as the possibility of trading axes for spears, or spears for vegetables. One man may be good at fishing and another at hunting; there are clear benefits to trading fish for meat in such circumstances. As noted, however, reciprocal altruism raises a classic prisoner's dilemma. If you give me meat today, how do you know that I will give you meat next week when I am the lucky one? Wouldn't I be better off to take your meat today and stiff you when you come open-handed next week? If so, then you will be unwilling to share with me today. The classic prisoner's dilemma problem of mutual defection seems to prevail. Of course, it is now known that this analysis is too facile. Once the possibility of repeated interactions in the prisoners' dilemma scenario is introduced, then it is possible for cooperation to result from these interactions. A stable cooperative outcome can result if the gains from long-term interactions exceed the gains to one party from a one-shot defection of acting opportunistically toward the trading partner. Although a number of scholars hit upon this analysis at approximately the same time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the most famous was probably Robert Axelrod, who popularized the notion that the "repeat" or "iterated" prisoners' dilemma provides a cooperative solution to the prisoners' dilemma game. Axelrod famously ran a computer game where he determined that the optimal strategy to play in such a game was one of "tit for tat," where the player cooperates so long as his trading partner cooperates, then punishes those who defect. See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). It may be less well-known to readers of this article that Axelrod wrote a subsequent article with biologist William D. Hamilton (the "inventor" of kin-selection, as discussed above) where they ran the same experiment to study evolutionary systems. See Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton, "The Evolution of Cooperation in Biological Systems," Science 211: 1390-1396 (1981); reprinted in Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Chapter 5. Rather than accumulating points, as in the first game, this time Axelrod and Hamilton's players accumulated "offspring" who were "genetically programmed" to play the same strategy as their "parents." Thus, successful strategies would reproduce more rapidly than unsuccessful, leading to more offspring over time. Playing the game in evolutionary time, Axelrod and Hamilton discovered that tit for tat was again the optimal strategy to play, leaving the most genetic offspring. This suggests that there would an evolutionary benefit for those who develop a natural tendency to engage in guarded cooperation of the tit for tat strategy. Moreover, once established, tit for tat is an "Evolutionary Stable Strategy," or "ESS," meaning that it cannot be invaded by a small group of outsiders playing some other strategy. Given the ease with which tit for tat can arise in a community, as well as its "robustness" and adaptability in a wide variety of evolutionary contexts, Axelrod and Hamilton suggest that it is likely that human beings have evolved a natural predilection to engage in guarded cooperation of the tit for tat variety. This hard-wired predilection toward cooperation stands in sharp contrast to the always-defect advice of the Hobbesian worldview that has dominated liberalism for centuries. Subsequent investigators have questioned Axelrod's conclusion that tit for tat is the optimal evolutionary strategy, instead proposing refinements to tit for tat, such as "Pavlov" and "Firm-but-fair." Although these variations question whether tit for tat is a uniquely best strategy in the repeat prisoners' dilemma situation, they are sufficiently similar to tit for tat so as to reinforce the conclusion of the evolutionary value of pursuing a strategy of guarded generosity. The instinctive nature of reciprocal altruism is illustrated by vampire bat societies. Vampire bats must eat every 48-60 hours or perish. Vampire bats feed on the blood of cattle and horses. These mammals are wary and large enough to brush off bats if they are noticed. Thus, substantial skill is required for a bat to locate prey and to successfully feed. In fact, on any given night, a large percentage of bats (especially young bats) will be unsuccessful in feeding, which would lead to a large number of deaths. To guard against this eventuality, vampire bats have devised a network of relationships where successful bats on any given night share excess blood with unsuccessful bats. Although much of this is sharing between kin, a substantial amount of sharing is between non-related bats. Sharing among non-related bats appears to be driven by reciprocal altruism, or more specifically, a tit for tat relationship. Any given bat is more likely to share with a bat that has shared with him in the past than a mere stranger. Stingy neighbors are later rebuffed. See Gerald S. Wilkinson, "Reciprocal Food-Sharing in the Vampire Bat," Nature 308: 181-184 (March 8, 1984). Successful bats have an ability to detect which bats are most in need of blood, and hence share with them first. This maximizes the marginal benefit to the recipient bat and minimal marginal cost to the donor. More importantly, it turns out that vampire bats have an uncanny ability to recognize one another as individual bats. This is essential for reciprocity to prevail, as it enables bats to discriminate among one another in deciding to whom to donate food. Thus, it is also not surprising that for their size, vampire bats have unusually large neocortex regions of their brains. The neocortex region of the brain is responsible for processing information relating to social arrangements, such as the reciprocal relationships described. Humans, of course, have tremendously large neocortex regions relative to our body sizes, reflecting the complexity of our interpersonal and social relationships. In fact, a significant proportion of our brain's resources are devoted to the task of recognizing individual faces. Ridley, Origins of Virtue, at 69. Vampire bats also have relatively long lifespans and a relatively low degree of social out-migration. As will be discussed below, these social conditions also help to sustain a system of reciprocal altruism. As Matt Ridley sums up Wilkinson's research, "Wilkinson found that [the bats] seem to play Tit-for-tat. A bat that has donated blood in the past will receive blood from the previous donee; a bat that has refused blood will be refused blood in turn. Each bat seems to be quite good at keeping score.... Reciprocity rules the roost." [10][7] Given the immense benefits offered by reciprocal trade, why isn't it ubiquitous in nature? In addition to vampire bats, reciprocal relationships have been identified in species as diverse as vervet monkeys, sea bass, fig trees and fig wasps, baboons, chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales. As suggested above, the main reason is that it is costly to run a system of reciprocity, both psychologically and socially. In general, it is only the brainiest species that have sufficient cognitive capacity to remember not only individual identities, but to associate discrete patterns of sharing with each individual. Moreover, the brain is an extremely expensive organ to run in terms of caloric consumption. Thus, large brains will tend to evolve only where sufficient environmental forces require them to do so. In general, only highly social species such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales have sufficiently complicated social structures to require large brain capacities. In addition to requiring sufficient cognitive power, reciprocal altruism requires specific social conditions to prevail. Reciprocal altruism requires that individuals will interact repeatedly and over long periods of time. The benefits of long-term interaction are sufficiently large to reward long-term cooperative behavior and also make it possible to punish those who do not cooperate. In turn, this requires a relatively small and stable social group characterized by repeat interactions among the members of the group. The relationships of the group must be largely egalitarian, thus making it feasible for one individual to punish another. In a highly hierarchical society, it may not be possible for a subordinate to punish someone who is higher-ranked in the dominance hierarchy. Life spans must also be such that the "shadow of the future" is sufficiently long for parties to garner the mutual benefits of long-term reciprocal relations. Finally, long-term parental care and extensive relationships with relatives encourage the development of reciprocal altruism; the presence of cooperation with kin relations provides a "core" group of cooperation that can allow reciprocal cooperation to spread to unrelated individuals. [11][8] Few creatures will meet the three conditions necessary for reciprocal altruism to flourish: (1) sufficient benefit from reciprocal altruism in light of one's environment, (2) sufficient cognitive capacity to process the information necessary to maintain a system of reciprocity, and (3) the long-term, egalitarian, stable social relationships sufficient to maintain reciprocal relationships. On the other hand, humans appear to be uniquely well-suited to developing reciprocal altruism. "During the Pleistocene, and probably before," Trivers writes, "a homonid species would have met the preconditions for the evolution of reciprocal altruism; for example, long lifespan, low dispersal rate, life in small, mutually dependent and stable social groups, and a long period of parental care leading to extensive contacts with close relatives over many years." [12][9] Moreover, early human society was also highly egalitarian, making reciprocal benefits and punishments available to all. As Matt Ridley states Trivers's point, "Of all the species on the planet most likely to satisfy the criteria of prisoners' dilemma tournaments -- the ability to meet repeatedly, recognize each other and remember the outcomes of past encounters... -- human beings are the most obvious. Indeed, it might be what is special about us: we are uniquely good at reciprocal altruism." [13][10] This analysis suggests that like other animals, humans may have a "reciprocity instinct," a hard-wired predilection for cooperation combined with the development of psychological skills and social and cultural norms designed to reinforce this reciprocity instinct. As noted, reciprocal altruism is evident in some animals, and humans have the requisite biological and social organizations that make humans fertile for planting the seeds of reciprocal altruism. In addition, it appears that the tendency toward reciprocity is universal, not culture-specific. For instance, my research has uncovered no culture or religion where it is morally neutral to file bankruptcy and default on one's financial obligations. See Todd J. Zywicki, "The Reciprocity Instinct: An Evolutionary Analysis of Norms, Promise-Keeping, and Bankruptcy Law" (working paper, George Mason University School of Law, October 28, 1999). Like the incest taboo, the universal nature of the anti-bankruptcy promise-keeping norm suggests that the norm may in fact be a hard-wired product of natural selection and the psychological modules necessary to operate a society on the principle of reciprocal altruism. If humans do, in fact, have a reciprocity instinct, the consequences of this insight are profound. In particular, it suggests that the recent interest in "norms" theory in legal scholarship is incomplete. See Eric A. Posner, Law and Social Norms (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Robert C. Ellickson, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Richard H. McAdams, "The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms," Michigan Law Review 96: 338-433 (1997). To be sure, these scholars are correct in identifying the strong tendency humans exhibit to establish voluntary and spontaneous norms to resolve potential disputes arising from day-to-day interactions. But their emphasis on the social construction and transmission of norms is incomplete. The foregoing discussion suggests that a theory of norms is flawed without accounting for the hard-wired tendencies of human beings to generate reciprocal relationships. Indeed, it is striking that most important norms are largely universal, and only slightly context-dependent. This includes such things as telling the truth and keeping one's promises, as well as emotions such as love, friendship, compassion, vengeance, and the like. See Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). Absent compulsory control, human behavior is a combination of a hard-wired reciprocity instinct combined with cultural norms. It is striking, however, that vampire bats, sea bass, and chimpanzees all exhibit promise-keeping and reciprocal relationships without any social norms instructing them to do so. An evolution-based model of reciprocity also avoids the problem of having to develop complicated and fairly implausible models of norms-internalization that fail to explain the presence of reciprocal behavior in non-human species, in children, and in cross-cultural interactions. For instance, Robert Frank has observed that most of the signals used to determine one's reliability in a social context are actually involuntary. See Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of Emotions (New York: Norton, 1988). For instance, an attempt to lie about the truth is generally met with an involuntary blush, stammering speech, and shifty eyes. It is hard to see how these wholly involuntary actions could be triggered a conscious learning about the impropriety of not telling the truth. It is far more likely that we have evolved in such a way as to trigger involuntary physical manifestations of a hard-wired knowledge about the impropriety of lying. Similarly, we seem to have instinctive "truth-detection" skills designed to read individuals to determine whether they are telling the truth. It further appears that the facial expressions that accompany certain emotional states also are universal rather than culture-specific. See Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of Research in Review (Paul Ekman ed.) (New York: Academic Press, 1973). In fact, the current state of norms theory is remarkably similar to the state of cultural anthropology a decade or two ago. Fascinated with issues of relativism, cultural anthropologists focused on the task of documenting largely trivial differences between different societies. Introducing evolutionary psychology into the equation has opened a much more important and fruitful examination of the underlying similarities among most cultures throughout the world and throughout history. See The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby eds.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). This essay is in part an opening attempt to propose a similar approach to norms theorists in the law to ground themselves in a stronger theory of human nature and social evolution. Group Selection A final potential path to cooperation is offered by the possibility of group selection. This is the most controversial of the approaches offered here, and most evolutionary thinkers remain highly skeptical of the importance, if not the very concept, of group selection. Nonetheless, recent scholars have argued that the concept is in fact viable, rendering it an empirical question as to whether it has operated in practice. See Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Despite the skepticism that has generally surrounded group selection, it represents a potentially powerful method for generating social cooperation on a scale exceeding all of the foregoing. Reciprocal altruism is most compelling in providing a theory of cooperation in small-group, face-to-face settings; although it can be extended from these relations of specific reciprocity to general reciprocity on a society-wide basis, this step is tenuous. By contrast, group selection holds out the possibility of encouraging cooperation on a large-scale society-wide basis directly. Group selection arguments come in two forms, biological group selection and cultural group selection. Although there are differences between the two, the essential structure of the argument is similar. Moreover, both cultural and biological group selection arguments have traditionally been attacked on similar grounds. As a result, although there are differences between the two, for purposes of this brief essay I will treat them as largely interchangeable. The analysis presented here summarizes the more detailed arguments presented in Todd J. Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right About Group Selection After All?" Review of Austrian Economics 13: 81-95 (2000). On its face, the argument in favor of group selection is highly persuasive. Indeed, it is quite common that authors will advance a group selection argument without being fully conscious of having done so. Advocates of biological group selection argue that under certain environmental conditions it may be adaptive on the individual level to develop altruistic traits toward others. Altruism builds trust and reciprocity, thereby reducing the transaction costs of living together in a given society. Greater trust spurs trade, specialization, and the growth of wealth. In turn, this allows for the maintenance of a larger, richer, and healthier population. Such populations will tend to prosper and spread at the expense of less robust populations, leading to the gradual displacement of non-altruistic populations with more altruistic, and causing the altruistic trait to spread. See Sober and Wilson, Unto Others. Cultural group selection arguments are similar, except that rather than propagating one's genetic traits, natural selection operates on "memes" of rules, customs, institutions, and norms. Groups that adopt "better" cultural practices will again tend to grow healthier, wealthier, and more populous, gradually supplanting less efficient cultures through conquest, migration, or conscious adoption. See F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek (W. W. Bartley, III, ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 1: Rules and Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973); F. A. Hayek, "The Origins and Effects of Our Morals: A Problem for Science," in The Essence of Hayek (C. Nishiyama and K. R. Keube, eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Both biological and cultural group selection arguments have been attacked on similar grounds. Although the development of altruistic traits or customs is adaptive on the group level, altruism is not adaptive on the individual level. Because altruism creates social surplus, it is argued, any single individual would do better by acting selfishly rather than altruistically with others. Altruists, therefore, would share with altruists and selfish members alike, whereas selfish members would receive these benefits but would not share with others. Selfish members can thereby free ride on altruists. Over time, it is argued, this would lead to selfish members of society prospering at the expense of altruists, giving selfish individuals a comparative advantage in propagating their genes, and causing those with selfish traits to gradually displace altruists in the population. Thus it is argued that a theory of group selection lacks adequate "micro" foundations in individual reproductive activity to be a sustainable equilibrium theory. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (2d ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); V. Vanberg, "Spontaneous Market Order and Social Rules: A Critique of F. A. Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution," Economics and Philosophy 2: 75-100 (1986). For more comment on Hayek's model of cultural group selection, see D. G. Whitman, "Hayek contra Pangloss on Evolutionary Systems," Constitutional Political Economy 9: 45-66; G. M. Hodgson, "Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution: An Evaluation in Light of Vanberg's Critique," Economics and Philosophy 7: 67-82 (1991). But these criticisms of group selection models overstate their conclusion in implying that group selection is invalid a priori. Like individual natural selection, group selection should be understood as an empirical question, not an a priori question. For group selection to be viable requires the satisfaction of three criteria: (1) benefit to the group from the biological trait or cultural rule; (2) some mechanism for intergroup competition, so that "more fit" groups can displace "less fit" groups; and (3) some mechanism for policing intragroup free riding. See Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right About Group Selection After All?" supra. First, there must be some benefit to the group from the trait or practice. Beneficial adaptations are those that reduce transaction costs and conflict, and thereby allow for the growth of economic wealth and population. Hayek points to property, contract, and the rule of law as examples of cultural adaptations that would tend to create social benefit and thus be favored by cultural group selection. Second, there must be some mechanism for intergroup competition to take place. This may be through war and conquest, migration and intermarriage, or conscious adaptation of new practices or institutions. Third, there must be some mechanism for policing free riding behavior within the group to prevent some individuals from claiming social surplus without contributing to it themselves. This suggests that the type of altruism that would be favored by group selection would be of the "guarded cooperation" described by reciprocal altruism. Thus, it is doubtful that cultural group selection would tend to favor the evolution of psychological traits or cultural practices that permitted unconditional sharing in the social surplus. Rather, group selection would tend to favor altruistic and cooperative behavior, but it would tend to limit this altruism so as to prevent exploitation by unscrupulous free riders. As noted above, it is improper to draw normative conclusions directly from the facts of evolutionary biology. Nonetheless, this tendency toward guarded generosity suggests that socialism and the welfare state rest on an unsound evolutionary foundation. By allowing free riders unlimited opportunity to tap into social surplus, these regimes empower free riders rather than constrain them. See Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right about Group Selection After All?" at 90-93; Paul H. Rubin, "Group Selection and the Limits of Altruism," Journal of ioeconomics 2(1) (Forthcoming 2000); compare Hodgson, "Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution," at 79-80 (arguing that cultural group selection leads to a mixed economy). Evolutionary arguments further suggest that individuals may have an innate and culturally reinforced tendency to offer charity and altruism, thereby making compulsory provision of social services unnecessary. Moreover, evolution suggests that voluntarily-provided social services would tend to be provided on a local level and embedded in a network of social connectedness and reciprocal relationships. See David T. Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). By embedding the charitable relationship in this social and reciprocal context, it is likely that this system will be more rewarding and empowering for both the donor and donee. By contrast, it is hard to imagine how natural selection would favor individual preferences that are satisfied through delivery of social services through the inefficient and rent-seeking mechanism of the modern welfare state. Implications for Social Sciences and Law Throughout this essay I have attempted to interweave specific examples of types of natural cooperation with implications for social science and the law. It is certainly tenuous to draw specific conclusions from the general observations of evolutionary psychology. In addition to those presented above, this concluding section will add a few thoughts on potential avenues of further research in law and social science. As suggested above, there has been a recent resurgence in legal scholarship in the concept of norms, or what was formerly know as custom, and the law. This analysis is refreshing, in that it has caused scholars to increasingly look beyond formal legal rules and to the norms and practices that underlie and support legal rules. Individual actors tend spontaneously to develop norms and customs to solve coordination problems as they arise. Properly understood, norms theory reminds lawyers of an earlier era where the law was generally used to buttress and enforce these spontaneously-developed extra-legal norms and customs. See A. C. Pritchard and Todd J. Zywicki, "Finding the Constitution: An Economic Analysis of Tradition's Role in Constitutional Interpretation," North Carolina Law Review 77: 409-521 (1999); Robert D. Cooter, "Structural Adjudication and the New Law Merchant: A Model of Decentralized Law," International Review of Law & Economics 14: 215-239 (1994). Although important, norms theory only goes halfway. The evolution of norms and customs can only be properly understood within a framework that also includes evolutionary psychology. As noted, there is a huge degree of different types of cooperation in nature that prospers without anything like norms or institutions to enforce them. Evolutionary psychology helps to explain why pro-social and pro-cooperative norms tend to be more prevalent in the world than anti-social and anti-cooperative norms. There is a certain universality to many of the norms that are found throughout the world and even within a given society. Assuming that it is not purely historical accident, this tendency toward universality in the types of norms that develop can be explained in only two ways, either as the result of universal human nature that drives the types of norms that will be developed, or through a system of cultural group selection that allows good practices to drive out bad. As noted, cultural group selection remains controversial in both the natural and social sciences, tending to suggest that evolutionary psychology presents a more compelling explanation. Interestingly, however, the new norms theorists seem to be either unaware of the existence of human universals or largely unaware of the problem of explaining these universals. Just as norms theorists have recognized that norms lie behind law, evolutionary psychologists have long recognized that evolution lies behind norms. Law would also benefit from understanding how animals generate solutions to certain social problems. For instance, like humans, social animals are required to deal with the potential problem of internal conflict over scarce resources. Animals, like humans, have devised two basic ways of preventing conflict, property rights and hierarchy. In hierarchical relations, disputes over resources or breeding opportunities are decided by the highest-ranked, or "alpha," individual in the pack or group. Subordinate individuals must obey the will of the alpha or be punished. Although this social arrangement tends to minimize internal social conflict (except for conflict at the top among rivals for dominance), it also means that the resources of all other members of the society are subject to the will of the dominant and are subject to having those resources expropriated at any time. More complex societies rely less on hierarchy and more on systems of private property, or territories, to resolve disputes. Territories demarcate specific resources over which particular animals have control. By marking these territories, animals can avoid constant conflict over ownership of resources. Thus, the primary initial impulse for recognizing property rights is to minimize social conflict. Moreover, once property rights are recognized, it is likely that psychological tendencies to retain and protect property rights evolve so as encourage the holder of the property to protect it. Animals and small children exhibit instinctive evidence of property rights and territoriality, suggesting that the desire to claim and protect property is hard-wired. For a fascinating discussion of the instinctive basis of property, see Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). It seems that concepts of private property, consensual transfer, and protection from involuntary transfer are likely hard-wired in humans and other cognitively-sophisticated and socially-complex creatures. This further suggests that it is an error to see property rights allocations as being merely conventional and subject to rearrangement at the will of political actors. See Todd J. Zywicki, Book Review, Constitutional Political Economy 8: 355-359 (1997) [reviewing Cass R. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996)]. Allowing individuals to plunder others' property rights and to acquire economic resources through use of rent-seeking and political force, by contrast, can be understood as a reversion to the political and economic structure of hierarchy. Evolutionary psychology also has potentially revolutionary implications for political science. Since the publication of James Q. Wilson's superb book The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993), a handful of political scientists have attempted to understand the implications of evolutionary psychology for the study of politics. Straussian thinkers have been particularly attracted to understanding the implications of evolutionary psychology for political behavior, probably because of the robust view of human nature offered by evolutionary psychology and the potential of constructing natural law from human nature. Roger Masters was perhaps the most aggressive early exponent of the importance of evolutionary psychology and human nature for a proper understanding of politics and society. Beginning really with The Nature of Politics (New Have: Yale University Press, 1989), Masters published a series of articles and papers designed to spell out his view of the implications of evolutionary psychology for politics. In addition to The Nature of Politics, Masters also wrote such interesting and provocative works as Beyond Relativism: Science and Human Values (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1993) and edited with Margaret Gruter the pathbreaking collection of essays The Sense of Justice: Biological Foundations of Law (Roger D. Masters and Margaret Gruter eds.) (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992). In recent years Larry Arnhart has carried forward the Darwinian research program in political science. Building on an Aristotelian foundation, Arnhart has explicitly advocated an evolutionary understanding of human nature and politics. Arnhardt's exposition can be found in his challenging book, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998). The general thrust of Darwinian-influenced political thinking also is surveyed in Arnhardt's earlier article "The New Darwinian Naturalism in Political Theory," American Political Science Review 89: 389-400 (1995). Francis Fukuyama has similarly argued for the relevance of evolutionary psychology for understanding politics and social policy. See The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999). A common strand in the Straussian view of evolutionary psychology and politics is the emphasis on innate human inequality of abilities and character as well as an Aristotelian belief in the inherently "political" nature of man. Both of these arguments have important implications for those interested in political science and political theory. Contrasting with this emphasis on natural inequality is the work of Christopher Boehm, who has stressed the concept of "reverse dominance hierarchy" in human societies. Master and Arnhardt stress the continuity of humans with lower animals and see humans as exhibiting a tendency toward hierarchical social and political relations. Boehm, by contrast, stresses the egalitarian tendency of humans in contrast to hierarchy. Boehm is a democrat and sees human political societies as characterized by fluid social and political arrangements rather than rigid status hierarchies. Boehm's scholarly output has been prodigious; most relevant for current purposes is his most recent book, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Boehm's insights have been largely untapped by political scientists, but it seems that his emphasis on social and political egalitarianism raises questions about the Straussian emphasis on inequality as the basis for political society. Indeed, Boehm's insights may even be relevant to an understanding of such mundane observations as the public's tendencies to support anti-establishment "outsider" political candidates such as John McCain and its attraction to populists and political underdogs. Finally, no discussion of the relevance of evolutionary psychology for politics would be complete without mentioning Frans de Waal's masterpiece Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982). De Waal's extensive study of the social and "political" relations among chimpanzees tells a Shakespearean tale of political interactions and coalition-forming that strikingly illustrates the political processes of primates further up the evolutionary ladder. The belief in the inherently "political" nature of humanity is also open to debate. In making this argument, one must be careful to distinguish humans' inherently political nature from humans' inherently social nature. Although individuals are naturally social and enthusiastic about egalitarian reciprocity-based interactions, this type of interaction is distinct from political interactions. There is little reason to believe that politics has anything to do with a desire to seek "the good" or the "public good." Instead, politics is primarily about the expropriation of wealth by politically powerful coalitions or individuals. Thus, while individuals may be naturally inclined to use political power to further their own ends, it is doubtful that this sort of behavior should be encouraged. Instead, it would seem to make more sense to try to tame this expropriative behavior through constitutions and political institutions designed to discourage the use of the political means of acquiring wealth and instead channel wealth-acquisition into positive-sum market exchange. See Mark Grady and Michael McGuire, "The Nature of Constitutions," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(3): 227-240 (1999); Todd J. Zywicki, "The State of Nature and the Nature of the State: A Comment on Grady and McGuire," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(3): 241-261 (1999). The insights of evolutionary psychology also cast a powerful influence over the study of economics. Economists generally taken personal preferences as "given." Evolutionary psychology presents one avenue for understanding individual preferences. Moreover, it suggests that many such preferences, such as the desires for wealth and status, are hard-wired predilections that are relatively unresponsive to changes in relative prices. Of course, what qualifies as wealth or what activities generate high social status may differ according to different temporal and cultural forces. Nonetheless, the basic impulses are relatively constant over time and independent of particular social or economic contexts. This casts doubt on the belief that preferences are primarily socially constructed and that they therefore can be changed through the moral force of law or changes in norms. Vernon Smith, Kevin McCabe, and other researchers at the University of Arizona have been using the tools of experimental economics to make predictions about individual preference functions based on insights drawn from evolutionary psychology. All of their work on this topic is fascinating and important. Good introductions to their experimental approach and some of the conclusions they draw from their research can be found in Vernon L. Smith, "Property Rights as a Natural Order: Reciprocity, Evolutionary and Experimental Considerations," in Who Owns the Environment? 55-80 (1998); Elizabeth Hoffman, Kevin McCabe, and Vernon Smith, "Behavioral Foundations of Reciprocity: Experimental Economics and Evolutionary Psychology," Economic Inquiry 36: 335-355 (1998); Kevin A. McCabe, et al., "Reciprocity, Trust, and Payoff Privacy in Extensive Form Bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior 24: 10-22 (1998). In time, evolutionary psychology is likely to exert its greatest influence in the field of economics. Evolutionary psychology reinforces the economist's emphasis on methodological individualism and self-interest as the foundations of analysis in the social sciences. Thus, rather than merely assuming the primacy of self-interest, economists can ground this postulate in human nature. See Zywicki, "Nature of the State." In so doing, evolutionary psychology also tends to justify the emphasis of the public choice school on building political systems on the basis of self-interest rather than public beneficence. Perhaps most interesting, evolutionary psychology holds out the possibility of looking into the "black box" of individual preferences to try to understand the structure of consumer preferences, and in particular, why some preferences may be more or less elastic and responsive to incentives and relative prices than other preferences. The two earliest expositors of examining economics through the lens of biology were Jack Hirshleifer, see Jack Hirshleifer, "Evolutionary Models in Economics and the Law: Cooperation versus Conflict Strategies," Research in Law & Economics 4: 1-60 (1982); and Gordon Tullock, see The Economics of Non-Human Societies (Tucson, AZ: Pallas Press, 1994). In addition to Smith, McCabe, and the others at the University of Arizona, many contemporary economists are working in the evolutionary tradition, most notably Nobel Laureate Douglas North. Others include Adam Gifford, see "Being and Time: On the Nature and the Evolution of Institutions," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(2): 127-149 (1999); Hebert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); and Paul Rubin, who has written several illuminating articles applying evolutionary psychology to economics. This proliferation of research has coalesced into the study of "bioeconomics" with its own society (the International Society for Bioeconomics) and journal (the Journal of Bioeconomics). The Journal of Bioeconomics is co-edited by Janet Landa, an economist, and Michael T. Ghiselin, an evolutionary biologist. Conclusion This essay is not intended to be comprehensive. It has attempted to state the case why those interested in law and social science should be aware of developments in evolutionary psychology. It has also provided a broad overview of the "four paths to cooperation" that have been identified for understanding cooperation in nature. Finally, it has offered some scattered thoughts on future research ideas for those intereste References 1. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/people.php/50.html 2. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/index.php#13-1 3. http://www.chimp-st-and.ac.uk/cultures/database.htm 4. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn1 5. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn2 6. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn3 7. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn4 8. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn5 9. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn6 10. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn7 11. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn8 12. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn9 13. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn10 From HowlBloom at aol.com Sat Jul 24 06:36:12 2004 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 02:36:12 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: <12d.4687030a.2e335d5c@aol.com> In a message dated 7/23/2004 6:35:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il writes: I agree with what you have wrote. I am convinced that if western society will continue along the current approach it will stop to exist. What will happen then is not clear. You did not talk about China. It might become the next power and not the Islam. Eshel--I've written about China elsewhere...in ?Will This Be The Chinese Century?? In Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies. New York: The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2002. The gist of the matter is this. China has a unique historical luxury. It can watch while the West and Islam pummel each other to death. It can sit by while militant Islam cuts the sinews and tendons of the United States and, in the process, wastes the Islamic Umma's resources and strength. Then it can step into the vacuum that this war of civilizations, this war of worlds, creates. Howard ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Sat Jul 24 08:28:30 2004 From: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 10:28:30 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductivestrategy References: <12d.4687030a.2e335d5c@aol.com> Message-ID: <003201c47158$3384abd0$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> Dear Howard, Thanks for the additional clarification. We have the same perception about the Chinese strategy. The additional point I would add the Bush Ben-Laden "Exscistance Tango" they can not survive one with out the other but for that they must move on all thetime drawing the western society and the Islam into a hurricane fuelled by the Europeans stupidity and hypocrisy as if all the problems in the world will vanish once Israel will get out of the West Bank (forgetting how they fuelled the war between Iran and Iraq for making profited ignoring the fact that over 2,000,000 people have died within 8 years by using the weapon they soled to both sides). In short Europe takes also the Chinese strategy waiting for the US and the Islam to eliminate each other just that they don't realise that they lost their self-identity and become Islamic driven countries. Perhaps there is a super justice to these developments considering the evil done in the past. But who are we to judge global justice. This is why I personally try to study Bacterial wisdom and at best Bacteria roads to human cognition. Yours, Eshel Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #?s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 8:36 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductivestrategy In a message dated 7/23/2004 6:35:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il writes: I agree with what you have wrote. I am convinced that if western society will continue along the current approach it will stop to exist. What will happen then is not clear. You did not talk about China. It might become the next power and not the Islam. Eshel--I've written about China elsewhere...in ?Will This Be The Chinese Century?? In Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies. New York: The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2002. The gist of the matter is this. China has a unique historical luxury. It can watch while the West and Islam pummel each other to death. It can sit by while militant Islam cuts the sinews and tendons of the United States and, in the process, wastes the Islamic Umma's resources and strength. Then it can step into the vacuum that this war of civilizations, this war of worlds, creates. Howard ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Sat Jul 24 09:10:50 2004 From: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:10:50 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] LibertyGuide.com: Evolutionary Psychology and theSocial Sciences References: Message-ID: <004301c4715e$1df5f7a0$c8ed4284@IBMF68D4578947> The essay "Evolutionary Psychology and Social Sciences" is based on the idea that with the recent new discoveries in genomics we can now apply the Neo-Darwinian paradigm towards social human behaviour. To quote : The purpose of this essay is provide an introduction to the field and to suggest future avenues for further research in the intersection between evolutionary biology and the humane sciences.It is a fortuitous time for young scholars interested in the application of Darwinian evolution to problems of social science. I agree that new discoveries might lead to a new understanding of human cognitive functioning and thus also social behaviour. However, the finding I refer to question the validity of the Neo-Darwinian paradigm. To put is simply with in this paradigm there is no room for organisms development of semantic and pragmatic (linguistic) communication, self-identity decision-making and other features associated with social intelligence. I present the arguments considering the most fundamental organisms on earth - the bacteria which do conduct social behaviour. It can be shown that Decision-making of organisms is in contradiction with the foundations of physics unless one realises that Neo-Darwinian picture has to be replaced by a new understanding of a cybernetic genome (see the additional attached paper). During last two years there is an accumulated experimental finding about the crucial role of the once called 'Junk DNA' it can designee and construct new genes and regulates the dynamics of the gene network. Metaphorically speaking the coded part of the DNA is just the recipe for a meal the 'Junk DNA' has the role of the creative chef. A meal prepared by most of us ( I dare to say) given a recipe from a professional chef will not be the same he will prepare. In addition the Neo-Darwinian picture when applied to eukaryotes ( as is currently done) ignores crucial players - the mitochondria that provide energy to our cells and play a crucial role in the regulation of our hormones. They also produce or participate in the production of all !!! steroid hormones. Some of the once radical ideas are now considered as a possible option as is reflected by the fact that they have just published in the opinion paper "Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence" by Trends in Microbiology. The attached paper is very close to the final version. If it is used please give reference as required by the journal to Article title: Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence Reference: TIMI190 Journal title: Trends in Microbiology Corresponding author: Dr. B.J. Eshel First author: Dr. B.J. Eshel Citation Information: Vol 12/8 pp 366-372 Looking forward to your comments. Comments by Joel and Howard during writing of the papers made crucial impact on the emerged ideas and their presentations, Thanks, Eshel Eshel Ben Jacob E-mail: eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il Professor of Physics Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ School of Physics and Astronomy The Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel President of the Israel Physical Society Visit the IPS on-line magazine http://physicaplus.org.il Tel #'s Country (972) City (3) Home: (972-3) 644-8265 Office: 640-7845; Secretary: 640-7604; Fax: 642-5787; Laboratory: 640-8066; 640-8261 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Premise Checker" To: "World Transhumanist Ass." ; Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 3:01 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] LibertyGuide.com: Evolutionary Psychology and theSocial Sciences > Evolutionary Psychology and the Social Sciences > http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1 > > > Evolutionary Psychology and the Social Sciences > > by [1]Todd Zywicki > > From [2]Humane Studies Review Vol. 13, No. 1 > > Recent years have seen an explosion in interest in evolutionary > biology and its implications for the social sciences. Few areas of > social science research have been untouched by the Darwinian > revolution currently taking place. Economics, sociology, political > science, law, history, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have > seen Darwinian arguments slowly gravitate from the periphery toward > the center of their disciplines. The purpose of this essay is to > provide an introduction to the field and to suggest future avenues for > further research in the intersection between evolutionary biology and > the humane sciences. > > It is a fortuitous time for young scholars interested in the > application of Darwinian evolution to problems of social science. > Increasing understanding of DNA sequencing, combined with the impetus > of the human genome project, have given rise to an unprecedented > understanding of the genetic basis of much of our physical and mental > natures. These developments have also eroded some of the stigma > associated with prior efforts to apply Darwinian evolution to the > study of human society, the most recent being E. O. Wilson's > Sociobiology, which met with a firestorm of protest when published in > the 1975. See E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) > (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Today the field travels > under a variety of names; although the traditional term "sociobiology" > is still occasionally used, more common today is evolutionary > psychology, which is can be classified as a subset of evolutionary > biology of "neo-Darwinism." > > The negative political reception of Wilson's Sociobiology set back the > field for an entire generation of social scientists. This means that > there remains a large degree of low-hanging fruit for young scholars > to pluck in forming a research agenda in the field. Moreover, because > much of the science remains fluid and ongoing, working in the field > requires a degree of mental dexterity and the development of new > skills that provides a comparative advantage to younger scholars. > > This essay will not attempt to provide a comprehensive guide to the > field of evolutionary psychology. The field is vast and can become > technical very quickly. This essay therefore will only attempt to > provide an overview and introduction to the field. The sources > mentioned will generally be highly comprehensive and generally provide > detailed references for those interested in pursuing issues in greater > depth. Indeed, this work will not attempt to identify more than a > handful of the interesting social science issues that seem to be worth > exploring through the lens of evolutionary psychology. Indeed, this > portion of the essay is avowedly idiosyncratic and subjective, and is > intended primarily to suggest some of the types of questions that can > be gainfully addressed through a Darwinian framework. > > In the remainder of the essay I will first discuss why an > understanding of evolutionary psychology is useful for those > interested in studying the social sciences. The next section will > provide an overview of some of the important concepts that have > emerged from evolutionary psychology, focusing in particular on the > "four paths to cooperation" that have been identified by scholars. The > final section will discuss some of the implications of evolutionary > psychology for research in different fields of inquiry. > > Why Study Evolutionary Psychology? > > Most classical liberals are somewhat skeptical about the value of > studying evolutionary psychology. To some extent this is rooted in the > historical association of classical liberalism with the mistaken > tenets of "Social Darwinism" at the turn of the century. To some > extent this skepticism resides in the frosty reception of sociobiology > by a prior generation of scholars. Finally, to some extent this > skepticism resides in a misunderstanding of the import of evolutionary > psychology, and in particular in the belief that evolutionary > psychology believes in the perfect determinacy of human behavior. This > latter belief makes evolutionary psychology anathema to those > concerned about issues of free will and personal autonomy. > > This skepticism is unfounded. Social Darwinism was a perversion of the > insights of evolutionary psychology. Social Darwinists committed the > classic naturalist fallacy, reasoning from the empirical observation > that evolution operated according to the principle of the "survival of > the fittest" to the normative conclusion that it should be the job of > society to weed out the weak so as to further this evolutionary > imperative. In so doing, Social Darwinists jumped from the "is" of > evolution to the "ought" that the product of natural evolution is > morally justified. Interestingly, today some environmentalists are > prone to commit the naturalist fallacy in their belief that somehow > what is "natural" is morally preferable to that which is not. On the > other hand, this does not rule out a belief that what is normatively > good for human beings must in some sense be consistent with their > fundamental psychological natures. See E. O. Wilson, Consilience: The > Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); R. D. Alexander, > The Biology of Moral Systems (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine De Gruyter, > 1987). This latter argument recognizes the "is-ought" gap, so the > naturalistic fallacy is avoided. Nonetheless, it argues that > individuals will flourish only if they act consistently with their > evolved natures. See Owen D. Jones, "On the Nature of Norms: Biology, > Morality, and the Disruption of Order," Michigan Law Review 98: > 801-832 (Forthcoming 2000). > > Whether a particular behavior is normatively good or bad cannot be > established simply by determining that the actor is "naturally" > inclined to behave in such a manner. Certain behaviors can be good or > bad only according to an external normative standard. Thus, as > discussed below it appears that human beings may be naturally > predisposed to engage in trade, act compassionately, and enter into > reciprocal arrangements for mutual benefit. By almost any moral code, > all of these behaviors are normatively good. By contrast, it also > appears that some human beings may be predisposed naturally toward > violence and rape. See Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, A Natural > History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion (Cambridge: MIT > Press, 2000); Owen D. Jones, "Sex, Culture, and the Biology of Rape: > Toward Explanation and Prevention," California Law Review 827-941 > (1999). The fact that these behaviors are "natural" is irrelevant to > the fact that they are universally morally condemned. Finally, other > predispositions, such as our tendencies to eat too many candy bars, > are morally neutral. The desire to consume sugar served an > evolutionary purpose in an era where food was scarce and it was useful > to have a built-in craving to encourage us to seek food. The task of > the philosopher and social scientist is to understand the degree to > which certain predilections are hard-wired into human psychology, and > thereby to determine what set of institutions and incentives are > necessary to restrain, modify, or channel these predilections into > pro-social behavior and away from anti-social behavior. > > Moreover, evolutionary psychology does not imply biological > determinism. Modern biology makes clear, rather, that one's behavior > is a function of the mutual interaction between evolved traits and > one's environment, or as the case is frequently (if inaccurately) put, > between nature and nurture. Indeed, evolution itself is driven by the > interaction of biological variation interacting with environmental > selection. There are no absolute degrees of fitness, only comparative > degrees of fitness relative to a given environment. Evolutionary > psychology simply provides evidence of general tendencies that > interact with an individual's environment. At the same time, > evolutionary psychology rejects the claims of current theorists who > argue that one's personality is entirely socially constructed and thus > infinitely malleable. As Marxists learned the hard way, there are > certain characteristics of human nature that seem to be virtually > impossible to eliminate, such as the tendency to prefer the welfare of > one's family to strangers, the tendency to free ride on others' labors > where possible, and the tendency to seek wealth and status. Thus, > although the morality of a given behavior cannot be determined simply > by whether it is natural, the recognition that there are certain > hard-wired tendencies to human nature may constrain what aspirations > are attainable or may provide guidance as to what tools are available > to accomplish one's goals. Thus, evolutionary psychology illustrates > the folly of the scholarship of recent decades that has tried to > ignore the reality of an innate human nature that is not infinitely > malleable. More fundamentally, it provides a warning against indulging > in the utopian schemes characteristic of the twentieth century, most > of which rested on the supposition that human nature could be molded > to fit the desires of utopian reformers, rather than recognizing the > limits that human nature placed on such schemes. > > It is now generally accepted that evolutionary biology provides a > persuasive explanation for our biological natures, e.g., two arms, two > legs, upright gait, vision, hearing, warm-bloodedness, etc. Although > evolutionary biology has triumphed for biological evolution, scholars > remain reluctant to recognize that evolution has psychological > consequences as well. Instead, scholars have preferred to believe that > humans remain a tabula rasa, blank personalities subject to molding by > social, cultural, legal, political, and economic forces. I have > elsewhere dubbed this incongruity, "Darwinism from the neck up," > because even as secular scholars have generally embraced biological > Darwinism, they have rejected psychological Darwinism with equally > forceful zeal. See Todd J. Zywicki, "The State of Nature and the > Nature of the State: A Comment on Grady and McGuire," Journal of > Bioeconomics 1(3): 241-261 (1999). The flaw in this reasoning is > obvious. Just as we have physically evolved to solve a number of > common problems that arose in our evolutionary environment, we have > similarly developed psychological skills necessary to operate in the > social environment of our evolutionary ancestors. Put more simply, > nobody believes that education or culture will make me physically able > to dunk a basketball; why are Marxists so optimistic that education, > economic, and political reform could make me treat strangers as if > they were my genetic kin? > > For most animals the relevant variable for one's evolutionary fitness > turns on the fitness for a given physical environment. Thus, a wolf's > fitness will be a function of its ability to hunt down elk and an > elk's fitness will be a function of its ability to outrun and evade > wolves. For humans, however, the relevant environment primarily is > other humans, a social environment rather than a physical environment. > Because of the immensely social nature of human societies, one's > fitness is not merely a function of the ability to seek prey and to > avoid predation. Rather, human societies place a fundamental premium > on the ability to interact with other human beings in a social > environment. The evolutionary environment for humans is the body of > institutions, rules, customs, and expectations of others. Thus, the > fundamental evolutionary difficulty for humans is to solve inherently > social puzzles as to how to interact with others. Although other > animals have some degree of culture, none of them even approximates > the complexity of even the simplest human cultures. See F. De Waal, > "Cultural Primatology Comes of Age," Nature 399:635-636 (1999). A > massive database has been established to collate the various different > chimpanzee cultures that researchers have identified. See A. Whiten, > et al. "Cultures in Chimpanzees," Nature 399:682-685 (1999). Their > results can be found on-line at > <[3]http://www.chimp-st-and.ac.uk/cultures/database.htm>. > > An incongruity arises in that evolutionary psychologists recognize > that the social problems that humans must solve are not actually the > social problems of today's global economy, but that our minds are > molded to solve the social problems of our human ancestors. Our brains > and minds (as with our bodies) took on their current configuration in > what is generally referred to as the Environment of Evolutionary > Adaptedness, or EEA, during the Pleistocene Era several million years > ago. During this time our human ancestors lived in small, stable > hunter-gatherer bands characterized by stable social groups, repeated > interaction over time, and relatively long life spans. In evolutionary > terms a few million years is a relatively short amount of time. Thus > it is believed that humans have largely the same biological natures as > the humans of hunter-gatherer time. Cultural evolution, however, > operates much more rapidly than biological evolution. Thus, we live in > high-speed global economies characterized by rapid economic change, > although our essential natures remain essentially hunter-gatherer in > nature. This creates a mismatch between some of our innate desires and > the realities we confront on a daily basis. See F. A. Hayek, The Fatal > Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988) (The Collected Works of F. A. > Hayek, W. W. Bartley III ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press). > For Hayek, therefore, the purpose of culture and institutions is to > control our self-destructive impulses to impose our small-group > sentiments on modern society. Robert Wright, by contrast, builds on > the foundation of human sociability and argues that biological and > cultural evolution share the common trait that they both have a > tendency toward increasing complexity driven by the mutual benefits of > "non-zero-sum exchange." See Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of > Human Destiny (2000) (New York: Pantheon Books). Unlike Hayek, > therefore, Wright views culture and institutions as the extension of > an innate tendency to engage in mutually beneficial exchange, without > Hayek's emphasis on the small-group setting of the EEA. > > Just as the study of evolutionary biology should not be interpreted to > denigrate the importance of environmental factors, it should also not > be interpreted to denigrate the value of free will and purposefulness > in human action. It is true that some commentators such as Robert > Wright have suggested that evolutionary psychology calls into question > the entire concept of free will by reducing human action to a > predictable set of impulses. See Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: > Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (1994) (New York: Vintage > Books). Others, however, have argued that a proper understanding of > science and human nature actually enhances the importance of free will > and moral decision by recognizing the importance of restraining our > anti-social and unhealthy impulses even when tempted to act otherwise. > See Pope John Paul II, "Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences," > The Vatican (Oct. 22, 1996). Studying animal behavior and cooperation, > therefore, is useful in the same way that game theory is useful, to > provide evidence of how humans might be predicted to act absent the > restraints of human nature and social institutions and norms. Studying > animal behavior provides insight on possible solutions to various > problems of human societies, such as problems of collective action, > conflict resolution, and the like. Social animals are confronted with > many of the same problems as human societies, of keeping internal > peace and resolving conflicts over scarce resources. And they do so > without any sophisticated cultural or institutional mechanisms. As > evolutionary biologist Lee Dugatkin observes, Lee Dugatkin, Cheating > Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and > Humans (New York: Free Press, 1999), studying human behavior and > cooperation: > shows us what to expect when the complex web of human social networks, > as well as the laws and norms found in all human societies, are > absent, and so these studies act as a sort of baseline from which > to operate. Animals show us a stripped-down version of what > behavior in a given circumstance would look like without moral > will and freedom. Only with this understanding of what a > particular behavior looks like outside the context of some moral > code can we use human morality to focus on and foster cooperation > in our species. [4][1] > > Four Paths to Cooperation > > Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that absent a central political > authority the state of nature would devolve into a war of "all against > all." Selfish individuals, he believed, would be unable to cooperate > for mutual advantage because of the constant temptation for > individuals to take advantage of one another. Stated in modern game > theory terms, Hobbes believed that individuals would "defect" in every > interaction they had with one another. The insights of evolution rebut > Hobbes's belief. All living creatures face certain difficulties > maintaining social cooperation and peace. This section will review the > "four paths to cooperation" that evolutionary biologists have > identified as mechanisms for creating social peace without the > necessity of a central rule-making authority. In fact, most > cooperation in nature exists not only without legal and political > institutions, but also without what has fashionably come to be called > "norms" and which previously was called custom. Norms and institutions > can extended the sphere of cooperation, but it appears that much > cooperative behavior is in fact natural and rooted in human nature. It > is likely that the presence of a hard-wired tendency toward > cooperation is a necessary condition for the emergence of social > cooperation; indeed, in many animal societies it is also a sufficient > condition. > > Although Hobbes's solution was utterly confused, he posed the correct > question -- how can selfish individuals be induced to cooperate with > one another? Biologists start with a similar reductionist premise. > Rather than selfish individuals, however, biologists begin their > analysis with selfish genes. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (2d > edition, 1989) (New York: Oxford University Press). The two are > closely related but analytically distinct. Genes are the basic units > of natural selection; individuals can be understood as collections of > genes. The only measure of success for a gene is its ability to be > replicated into a new generation. Genes produce phenotypic traits in > human beings, such as intelligence, athleticism, and physical > appearance, that when selected for by the environment, affect an > individual's likelihood of successfully mating and passing along his > or her genetic material to a new generation. Matt Ridley provides an > excellent introduction to the ways in which genotypes are reflected in > specific human phenotypic traits. See Matt Ridley, Genome: The > Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (London: Fourth Estate, > 1999). In this sense genes can be figuratively said to be "selfish" in > the same way an individual can be said to be selfish (even though > genes do not act with "intent"); particular genes "care" only about > their own survival into a new generation. Thus, genes are "selfish," > and do not "care" about the plight of any other genes, except to the > extent that it helps that particular gene survive into the next > generation. In turn, this suggests that individuals will act in the > self-interest of his genes. > > This analysis really just restates the basic question: given the > existence of selfish genes, why do we see so many instances of > cooperation among animals, including human beings? Lee Dugatkin > provides a virtual encyclopedia of documentation and explanation of > cooperation among animals in Cooperation Among Animals: An > Evolutionary Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). > Moreover, cooperation in non-human animals is especially puzzling, > given the absence of cultural norms or a state to enforce compliance > with cooperative behavior. > > Four mechanisms have been suggested by evolutionary biologists to > explain the evolution of cooperation in nature: (1) kin selection, (2) > cooperation for mutual advantage, (3) reciprocal altruism, and (4) > group selection. In each of these situations, one individual (i.e., > collection of genes) acts altruistically in bestowing a benefit upon > some other individual (collection of genes). This is surprising, in > that it seems to be inconsistent with the self-interest axiom. > Nonetheless, each of these mechanisms potentially makes it more likely > that certain genes will be propagated in a new generation. Sometimes > the benefit for the genes is direct, as in the kin selection model. > For others it is indirect, in that by pursuing cooperation an > individual increases his wealth and health, increasing his > reproductive capacity relative to less cooperative individuals. This > section of the essay will discuss each of these paths to cooperation > in turn. > > Kin Selection > > Kin selection operates on the premise that the marginal sacrifice of > one individual may make that individual relatively worse off, but that > the sacrifice may also make that individual's genes better off as a > result. For instance, consider the following situation confronting a > family of ground squirrels. Amy the ground squirrel is out foraging > for food one day with her sisters when she spots a hawk circling > above. At this point, Amy has two options: she can either quietly > slink back to the lair, leaving the hawk to eat a less-observant > sister. Alternatively, she can sound a warning call, thereby alerting > Betty, Claire, Denise, Edith, and Francis that a hawk has been spotted > and warning them to retreat to the lair. Assume further that if she > sounds the call, it will increase her likelihood of being eaten by the > hawk by 10% but will reduce the likelihood of her sisters being eaten > by 5% each. Will she call the alarm? > > Surprisingly, the answer is yes for Belding's ground squirrels. See > Paul W. Sherman, "Nepotism and the Evolution of Alarm Calls," Science > 197: 1246-1253 (Sept. 23, 1977). For a less technical presentation, > see Lee Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of > Cooperation in Animals and Humans (New York: Free Press, 1999). > Although it makes it more likely that Amy will be killed, it makes it > sufficiently less likely that her sisters will be eaten that it is > worth it for her to call the alarm. Even though sounding an alarm call > is dangerous to the individual caller's survival, it is favorable > toward the caller's genes. Individual ground squirrels (as with most > animals) are diploid, meaning that they draw one-half of their > chromosomes from each of their two parents (a female mother and a male > father). This means that on average Amy shares 50% of her genes with > her sisters. Thus, even though Amy's call decreases her likelihood of > surviving the hawk attack by 10%, it increases the overall likelihood > of saving her sisters by 25% (five sisters times 5% increased > likelihood of survival). Because Amy shares on average 50% of her > genes with her sisters, sounding the alarm call will increase the > likelihood of her genes surviving by 12-1/2% overall (25% times 50%), > while costing her only a 10% likelihood of being eaten. Thus, while it > is irrational from Amy's individual perspective to call the alarm, it > is "rational" from her genes' perspective to induce Amy to call the > alarm. > > This tendency to act altruistically toward one's kin is called > "inclusive fitness." See W. D. Hamilton, "The Genetical Evolutionary > of Social Behavior, Parts I and II," Journal of Theoretical Biology > 7:1-52 (1964); J. Maynard Smith, "Group Selection and Kin Selection," > Nature 201:1145-1147 (1964). The theory of inclusive fitness predicts > that natural selection will favor altruism among kin: the closer two > individuals are related to one another, the lower the costs to the > altruist, and the greater the benefits to the recipient. Therefore, if > the five individuals that Amy's call would save were grandchildren, > rather than her sisters, each individual granddaughter would have only > a 25% expected relatedness to Amy. As a result, it would be > "irrational" for Amy to sound the alarm, as she would be increasing > her likelihood of being attacked by 10%, but only increasing the > likelihood of her genes' survival by 6.25%. Restated, natural > selection predicts that, on average, we would tend to act more > altruistically toward siblings, parents, and children with whom we > share an average relatedness of 50% than toward grandparents, > grandchildren, aunts, and uncles, with whom we share an average > relatedness of only 25%. Interestingly, this theory also provides no > instinctive reason why we would act more altruistically toward a > spouse than toward a stranger. Thus, the observed tendency to act > altruistically towards one's spouse must rest on some other basis than > the theory of inclusive fitness. > > This is not to imply that ground squirrels make such rational > calculations in deciding whether to issue an alarm in a given > situation ("Let me see, how many sisters and granddaughters are around > right now..."). There is a burgeoning literature on how animals > determine who is kin and who is not. See P. G. Hepper, Kin Recognition > (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Most of the methods of > identification, such as close inspection of physical features or > odors, are relatively costly to perform. Thus, rather than engaging in > a close inspection of every member of an animal society, most animals > seem to rely on the simple heuristic of treating as kin everyone who > grew up in the relevant area (e.g., nest, territory, burrow, etc.). As > a rule of thumb, this approach is subject to error, most notably by > animal parasites who try to trick other animals into raising their > offspring (suck as cuckoos). But in general, treating those with whom > you grew up as kin provides a pretty accurate shortcut for determining > who is kin and who is not. Thus, it is interesting to note that the > so-called "incest taboo" of not being attracted to kin actually > appears to be not so much an aversion on being attracted to a > relative, but instead is an aversion against being attracted to a > person with whom you grew up. See E. A. Westermarck, The History of > Human Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 1891). Thus, stepsiblings raised > together are rarely attracted to one another, as are very close > childhood friends. By contrast, this further suggests that if sexual > activity takes place within the family, the most common type will be > between father and daughter, because the father is beyond the age > where familiarity breeds aversion. See M. Daly and M. Wilson, Sex, > Evolution, and Behavior (2d ed., Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1983). > > So there is no rational calculation as to whether to make an alarm > call. The analysis suggests instead that ground squirrels would > develop an instinct to call alarms when they are near their homes > because in general they will be surrounded by multiple close family > members and on net it will help the squirrels genes to reproduce. This > instinct is merely a tendency, and in fact ground squirrels suppress > this instinct when environmental conditions change. First, it is only > female ground squirrels who sound alarm calls. This is because in > ground squirrel communities males emigrate, while females remain in > kin groups. Thus, males tend to be surrounded by individuals with whom > they have no genetic relation, thus they become purely interested in > their own personal survival. Second, studies have been done of the > rare situations where female ground squirrels have been forced to > emigrate to new groups. Sure enough, these newcomers are less likely > than the incumbents to give alarm calls. > > Kin selection also explains why ant colonies and beehives have such a > high degree of cooperation. Many ants are actually sterile and do not > reproduce at all, the ultimate act of individual self-sacrifice. But > individual self-sacrifice is not genetic self-sacrifice. Most > creatures are diploid for purposes of reproduction, meaning that an > offspring requires both a mother and a father for a fertilized egg to > reproduce, and therefore draws half her genes from her father and half > from her mother, making for a 50% degree of genetic relatedness. Ants, > by contrast, are haplodiploid: females are diploid and have two sets > of chromosomes (one from each parent), but males arise from > unfertilized eggs, thus they only have a mother and have only one set > of chromosomes. Unlike most creatures who share a 50% expected genetic > relatedness with siblings, ants share an expected 75% expected genetic > relatedness with siblings. This high degree of genetic relatedness > explains the remarkable social cohesion among ant communities as well > as the willingness of individual ants to sacrifice their individual > reproduction in order to tend to the feeding and raising of others' > offspring. > > The pull of kin selection, for instance, may explain why it is that > the law tends not to contractually enforce promises made between > family members. See Charles J. Goetz and Robert E. Scott, "Enforcing > Promises: An Examination of the Basis of Contract," Yale Law Journal > 89: 1261-1359 (1980). Kin selection suggests that at some base level > the utility functions of family members are interdependent, and that, > for instance, mothers and fathers will tend not to act > opportunistically with respect to their children. As a result, when a > family member fails to carry through on a promise, we can assume with > a high degree of reliability that the breach was due to a sincere > regret contingency and was not merely an opportunistic breach. This > analysis will also have implications for rules governing inheritance > law and other familial relations. > > On the other hand, it has also been argued that the absence of genetic > relationships may help to explain the relatively higher degree of > abuse of children raised by stepparents relative to those raised by > their natural parents. See M. Daly and M. Wilson, Homicide (Hawthorne, > NY: Aldine, 1988); Owen D. Jones, "Evolutionary Analysis in Law: An > Introduction and Application to Child Abuse," North Carolina Law > Review 1117-1242 (1997). It has been argued that courts should > consider such statistical regularities in making child-custody > determinations in the event of divorce. See Robin Fretwell Wilson, > "Children At Risk: The Sexual Exploitation of Female Children After > Divorce," Cornell Law Review 86(2) (Forthcoming 2000). > > Finally, the innate pull to take care of one's genetic relations has > obvious implications for how we think of society as a social organism. > It is suggestive of the visceral appeal used in times of war for > individuals to pull together with their "brothers and sisters." It > also evidences the folly in some current schemes to break down the > family as the basic social unit of society. Kin selection theory > suggests that it is the family, even more than the individual, that is > the basic social unit of society. Thus, while utopian reformers may > talk about treating strangers as one's brothers, this rhetoric really > tends to miss the point. > > For kin-based altruism to flourish, little is required in the way of > conscious action. Also, its payoff in terms of reproductive fitness is > quite direct. Unsurprisingly, therefore, kin-based altruism is > ubiquitous in nature. In fact, it is often cited as a basic building > block of other forms of altruistic behavior. > > Cooperation for a Given End > > A second form of altruistic behavior is cooperation for a given end, > or by-product mutualism. Cooperation for a given end exists when there > is some goal that can be best accomplished through a group of > individuals working together, rather than acting separately. In such > situations there is a payoff from teamwork, so long as it is possible > to monitor the members of the team to make sure that contribute to the > final output. > > Group hunting provides an excellent example of cooperation for a given > end. A pack of wolves hunting together, for instance, will be able to > capture more and different types of game than the same wolves hunting > alone. Similarly a group of hunter-gatherers generally can capture > more and larger game than individual hunter-gatherers hunting alone. > In this model, therefore, cooperation arises from the self-interest of > the various members of the group. Each of the members of the group > benefits individually from the larger production that can be generated > by hunting together as a team rather than hunting alone. Hunting > together, therefore, produces a social surplus relative to what would > be produced hunting individually. For instance, assume that five > members of a hunter-gatherer band could, hunting alone, capture one > rabbit apiece (five total), but that no single individual could bring > down a woolly mammoth. Assume further that if the five individuals > worked together, they could kill a woolly mammoth that would provide > the food equivalent of eight rabbits. The social surplus from hunting > together, therefore, would be the equivalent of three additional > rabbits. > > But there are also costs that are potentially incurred as a result of > cooperation for a given end. Group activity raises the threat of free > riding by members of the group. For instance, it may be that it is > much more dangerous to hunt woolly mammoths than rabbits. Thus, each > individual member of the hunting party will have some incentive to lay > back and free ride on the efforts of the other members of the party. > This may reduce the probability of slaying the mammoth; at the very > least it will allow the coward to capture a share of the social > surplus despite his unequal contribution to its production. It is > interesting, therefore, that societies predicated on a high degree of > group hunting have devised a number of norms and practices designed to > limit shirking. > > First, food sharing (absent reciprocal relationships, which are > discussed below) is limited only to those goods that actually require > joint production to be produced. Thus, for instance, fruits and > berries are generally collected through female effort. This production > requires no team production, thus labor inputs are directly reflected > in the amount of food outputs generated. As a result, these food > products are generally consumed within the family and not shared. > Among the Ache of Paraguay, plant food and insect grubs are not shared > outside the nuclear family, although meat is. Among the Yora of Peru, > on "a fishing trip, everybody shares; back at the camp, food is freely > shared only in the family, and at all times meat is more widely shared > than vegetables. Thus, while fish, monkeys, alligators and turtles are > shared, plantains are hidden in the forest until they ripened to > prevent neighbors stealing them." [5][2] See Matt Ridley, The Origins > of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation (New York: > Viking, 1996). See also K. Hill and H. Kaplan, "Population and > Dry-Season Subsistence Strategies of the Recently Contacted Yora of > Peru," National Geographic Research 5: 317-334 (1989). > > Second, group hunting is generally engaged in only when economically > efficient. Thus when pursuing small game, animals tend to hunt > individually, but when pursuing large game requiring teamwork, animals > hunt together. See Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys at 114-116; D. Scheel > and C. Packer, "Group Hunting Behavior of Lions: A Search for > Cooperation," Animal Behavior 41: 697-709 (1991). Fish also tend to > forage individually unless their environment requires them to hunt > together. For instance, it is impossible for an individual or even a > small group of wrasse to penetrate the defenses of a single > damselfish. Working together in coordinated action, however, a large > group of wrasse can distract and overwhelm the damselfish's defenses. > Thus, it appears that wrasse work together in plundering damselfish > eggs but forage separately when coordinated action is not as > necessary. See S. A. Foster, "Acquisition of a Defended Resource: A > Benefit of Group Foraging for the Neotropical Wrasse, Thalassoma > lucasanum, Environmental Biology of Fishes 19: 215-222 (1987); R. J. > Schmitt and S. Strand, "Cooperative Foraging by Yellowtail Seriola > lalandei (Carangidae) on Two Species of Fish Prey," Coeia 1982: > 714-717. Where teamwork is unnecessary the gains to group hunting are > small, but the problems of preventing free riding remain constant. As > a result, group hunting will be less common. > > Third, unusually good hunters are rewarded with a disproportionately > large share of the social surplus. Skilled chimpanzees, for instance, > get first choice of the meat from slain prey, as well as retain > primary responsibility for distributing the spoils. See Frans de Waal, > Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other > Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). Skilled > hunters in primitive human societies are rewarded not only with > primary hunting spoils but also with disproportionate sexual favors > from women, who often directly exchange sex for meat. See K. Hill and > H. Kaplan, "Tradeoffs in Male and Female Reproductive Strategies among > the Ache," in Human Reproductive Behavior (L. Betzig, M. Borgehoff > Mulder, and P. Turke eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, > 1988); K. Hill and H. Kaplan, "On Why Male Foragers Hunt and Share > Food," Current Anthropology 34:701-706 (1994); for a slightly > different argument see K. Hawkes, "Why Hunter-Gatherers Work: An > Ancient Version of the Problem of Public Goods," Current Anthropology > 34: 341-361 (1993). > > Interestingly, the bulk of this analysis rebuts the traditional myth > that primitive societies are socialist in orientation. As discussed > below, it is true that they are highly egalitarian in their social > arrangements (at least as compared to other species), but this social > egalitarianism is often misunderstood as economic socialism. Neither > chimpanzee bands nor human hunter-gatherer societies are socialist. I > am aware of no human or animal society that has sustained an ethic of > unconditional sharing of social surplus for very long. It is true that > large game is, in fact, shared. But a good deal of sharing is sharing > among kin, which is predicted by the kin-group selection model > described above. As to non-kin, animal and human societies universally > practice an ethic of conditional sharing. An able-bodied individual > who could work but chooses not to has no entitlement to the any amount > of the social surplus. Male chimpanzees who attempt to free ride by > trying to participate in eating without participating in hunting "tend > to receive little or nothing." [6][3] See also C. Boesche and H. > Boesch, "Hunting Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees in the Tai Nation Park," > American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78: 547-573 (1989); C. > Boesch, "Cooperative Hunting in Wild Chimpanzees," Animal Behavior 48: > 653-667 (1994). At the very least, those who fail to contribute are > given the last pick of any meat available, and this is simply because > large game will spoil on the open plains (where refrigerators > traditionally have been somewhat scarce). Thus, the effective marginal > cost of giving food to shirkers in this situation is zero. > > In contrast to this strictness of dealing with able-bodied shirkers, > weak and infirm individuals are often accorded special treatment and > protection from other members of the relevant society, even in > chimpanzee societies. Compassion and sympathy toward those who are > unable to help themselves appear to be as much a part of human nature > as the unwillingness to feel much sympathy for shirkers who > subsequently seek to share in the social product. This may account for > the universal tendency to distinguish "worthy" from "unworthy" > recipients of charity. [A somewhat similar analysis is provided in Amy > Wax, "Rethinking Welfare Rights: Reciprocity Norms, Reactive > Attitudes, and Political Economy of Welfare Reform," Law and > Contemporary Problems (Forthcoming Fall 2000)]. We seek to help those > who are unable to help themselves, but we are outraged when our > charity is exploited by those who could help themselves but choose not > to do so. The contextual nature of food-sharing is a theme that I will > return to below. > > The problem of cooperation for a given end is identical to the problem > confronted by an economic firm. See A. Alchian and H. Demsetz, > "Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American > Economic Review, 62: 777-795 (1972). Alchian and Demsetz argue that > the economic function of a firm is team production. Team production > can produce outcomes that are unavailable to uncoordinated individuals > working alone. They provide the example of moving a couch: no single > individual could do it, but four men can do it easily. Thus, there is > social surplus as a result of the team production. The problem is that > each individual will have an incentive to "shirk" by not working as > hard as the other members of the team. Each member of the team faces > the same incentives; thus, unless the shirking problem can be > contained, either the couch will not get moved, or it will take more > time than it would otherwise, thereby reducing the effective social > surplus. Alchian and Demsetz argue that, in response to these > incentives, some individual will be designated to be a residual > claimant whose primary responsibility will be to constrain shirking by > the team members. In return, the residual claimant will be rewarded > out of the general social surplus. The economic organization of the > firm faces virtually identical opportunities and problems as the wolf > pack seeking to bring down an elk. > > Cooperation for a given end is an important component of cooperation > in nature, but it is limited in its utility to serve as a general > mechanism for social coordination. Cooperation for a given end > presupposes the existence of some uniform goal that all members of the > team seek to attain. Society and economy, however, are characterized > by a plurality of ends, not a single uniform end. See F. A. Hayek, The > Road To Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1944); Adam > Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, > 1976). Thus, although cooperation for a given end is valuable in > allowing individuals to accomplish their individual goals, it does not > provide a general theory for organizing society. See Michael Polanyi, > The Logic of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); > Todd J. Zywicki, "Epstein and Polanyi on Simple Rules, Complex > Systems, and Decentralization," Constitutional Political Economy 9: > 143-150 (1998). At the level of the social abstraction of an economy > and a society, the fundamental question is how to coordinate these > disparate goals peacefully and efficiently. > > The appeal of organizing society so as to accomplish a given goal > explains the appeal to many social thinkers of a society and economy > at war. During such times, it is argued, individuals suppress their > plurality of individual goals in favor of attaining a goal that is > good for society generally, namely conquest of the common enemy. After > such wars end, however, there is a tendency for this uniformity of > vision to falter, and individuals return to their individual purposes. > As the foregoing has suggested, this duality is natural. Thus, while > the hunt is on, there are incentives for each individual to contribute > to the common goal of capturing prey. As soon as the prey is downed, > however, each individual quickly turns toward attempting to acquire > for himself as much as possible of the common surplus. Evolutionary > biology teaches us that selfishness is the norm, but that short-term > selfishness can sometimes be subsumed into a joint project. Sometimes > this joint project can be protection from a common enemy. See > Dugatkin, Cheating Monkeys. In the end, however, where cooperation is > for some common goal, each individual participates in furtherance of > his self-interest. > > Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone presents an interesting recent > example of the error of viewing all of society as having a common > purpose, and as all members of society working cooperating to > accomplish this end purpose. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The > Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & > Schuster, 2000). Putnam glorifies the effect of World War II in > inculcating a heightened sense of civic responsibility in those who > fought the war, a commitment that continued after the war's > conclusion. Putnam relishes "the moral equivalent of war" without the > bloodshed and disruption of war. [7][4] Thus, Putnam endorses the > role played by the post-war organs of civil society in building a > civic-mindedness aimed at solving collective problems. In stressing > these unifying purposes of civil society, Putnam ignores a second, > equally important strand of scholarship on civil society, namely the > role of civil society organizations in fulfilling a plurality of > individual ends. This strand of analysis, exemplified by scholars such > as Hannah Arendt and Ernest Gellner, stress the importance of civil > society as serving as a guardian of individual liberty and as a > counterweight to the tendency of the state to atomize individuals into > democratic rent-seekers and to infantilize individuals into passive > recipients of the state's largesse. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of > Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1973); Ernest > Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: > Hamish Hamilton, 1994). A full understanding of the vital role played > by civil community in a free society requires understanding that the > organs of civilization not only help to build social unity in the > sense offered by Putnam, but also to preserve a sphere of personal > autonomy and pursuit of a diversity of human ends in the sense > identified by Arendt and Gellner. > > Cooperation for a given end is relatively common in nature. Where the > benefits to coordination for a given end are sufficiently large (such > as group hunting) and it is possible to constrain shirking and free > riding, the ability to cooperate to accomplish a given end is likely > to emerge spontaneously and to become hard-wired in an animal's > instinctive nature. Moreover, such coalition actions tend to arise > only where necessitated by the environment, and thus such coalitions > can be quite fluid and temporary. More stable coalitions tend to be > held together by the glue of reciprocal altruism, where gains are > provided over time, rather than the more direct and short-term gains > offered by cooperation for a given end. > > Reciprocal Altruism > > A third basis for cooperation in nature is "reciprocal altruism." > Although termed "altruism," like kin selection and cooperation for a > given end, reciprocal altruism is really rooted in self-interest. But > the mutual gains from reciprocal altruism are produced over time > rather than through a single interaction, as with cooperation for a > given end. In reciprocal altruism an individual provides a benefit for > another in exchange for a reciprocal benefit, or the expectation of a > reciprocal benefit in the future. Because the benefits are traded over > time, however, at the outset one of the individuals must provide a > benefit (thereby incurring a cost) in exchange for the mere > expectation of a reciprocal benefit. By being the first mover, the > party that first incurs a cost for another's benefit can be said to > act altruistically, even though the cost is incurred in expectation of > a long-term benefit. Assuming that the expectation is eventually > realized, this series of reciprocal exchanges over time is called > reciprocal altruism. Robert Trivers, generally credited with > identifying the model, defines reciprocal altruism as "the trading of > altruistic acts in which benefit is larger than cost so that over a > period of time both enjoy a net gain." See Robert Trivers, Social > Evolution (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1985); see also Robert > L. Trivers, "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," Quarterly Review > of Biology 46: 35 (1971). Frans de Waal similarly observes, > "Cost-benefit analyses are the staple of evolutionary arguments. The > premise is always that there must be something in it for the > performer, if not immediately then at least in the long run, and if > not for him then at least for his relatives." [8][5] De Waal defines > three characteristics of reciprocal altruism: > > 1. The exchanged acts, while beneficial to the recipient, are costly > to the performer. > 2. There is a time lag between giving and receiving. > 3. Giving is contingent on receiving. > > Because the benefits to the giver of reciprocal altruism are generated > indirectly (unlike the direct benefits of kin selection) and over a > long period of time (rather than in a relatively discrete transaction, > as with cooperation for a given end), a system of reciprocal altruism > requires a large number of supplementary psychological and social > institutions to develop. On a psychological level, reciprocal altruism > requires that those bound up in the reciprocal relationship have > sufficient cognitive ability to recognize and remember the degree of > their reciprocal relationships with others. On a social level, > reciprocal altruism requires sufficient stability of population that > the long-term benefits of social cooperation can accrue over time. As > de Waal poses the challenge, "Reciprocal altruism differs from other > patterns of cooperation in that it is fraught with risk, depends on > trust, and requires that individuals whose contributions fall short be > shunned or punished, lest the whole system collapse." [9][6] Because > of the huge number of supplementary psychological and social > institutions necessary to run a system of reciprocal altruism, this > form of cooperation is relatively rare in nature, being confined to > only the "brainiest" and most social of animals. Again the analysis > turns on the relative benefits and costs of this form of cooperation > relative to others. > > The benefits of reciprocal altruism are potentially large. A system of > reciprocal altruism potentially creates huge social surplus to be > captured by the society. By allowing trade over a period of time, > reciprocal altruism opens up the possibility of a division of labor > and credit-based relationships. These innovations make possible the > recognition of the gains from specialization, comparative advantage, > and the insurance and risk-shifting elements of inter-temporal trade. > More fundamentally, absent the possibility of reciprocal altruism, > every interaction between strangers would be essentially a one-shot > prisoner's dilemma game, with mutual defection as the dominant > strategy. Of course, as the foregoing has indicated, a failure to > solve the problem of reciprocal exchange would not mean the end of all > cooperation -- kin-based cooperation and some degree of cooperation > for a given end would continue. So, for instance, a sex-based division > of labor (presumably driven by kin-based cooperation) is universal in > human societies and is not likely to be the result of mere norms > working alone. See Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: > McGraw-Hill, 1991). Cooperation for purposes of accomplishing a given > goal might also be possible, but even this may break down if there is > some need to devise a system of cooperation outside of the joint > project (such as how to divide the surplus of the group activity, > i.e., how tigers will divide an impala carcass if there is not enough > for each to eat to satisfaction). > > But reciprocity opens the possibility of social surplus on a scale > unimaginable for kin-based and by-product cooperation. See Robert > Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Pantheon Books, > 2000). Indeed, Matt Ridley has argued that what makes human beings > unique is the division of labor, which allows for maximum realization > of gains from trade and reciprocal relations. See Matt Ridley, The > Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation > (New York: Viking 1996). For instance, if six hunters establish an > arrangement to share food over time (allowing for temporarily unlucky > hunters and lucky hunters to share together), it is estimated that > they will reduce the variance in their food supply by eighty percent > relative to hunters who do not share their game. The ability to trade > different types of products (rather than just trading meat > inter-temporally) opens up the possibility of even greater exchange, > such as the possibility of trading axes for spears, or spears for > vegetables. One man may be good at fishing and another at hunting; > there are clear benefits to trading fish for meat in such > circumstances. > > As noted, however, reciprocal altruism raises a classic prisoner's > dilemma. If you give me meat today, how do you know that I will give > you meat next week when I am the lucky one? Wouldn't I be better off > to take your meat today and stiff you when you come open-handed next > week? If so, then you will be unwilling to share with me today. The > classic prisoner's dilemma problem of mutual defection seems to > prevail. > > Of course, it is now known that this analysis is too facile. Once the > possibility of repeated interactions in the prisoners' dilemma > scenario is introduced, then it is possible for cooperation to result > from these interactions. A stable cooperative outcome can result if > the gains from long-term interactions exceed the gains to one party > from a one-shot defection of acting opportunistically toward the > trading partner. Although a number of scholars hit upon this analysis > at approximately the same time in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the > most famous was probably Robert Axelrod, who popularized the notion > that the "repeat" or "iterated" prisoners' dilemma provides a > cooperative solution to the prisoners' dilemma game. Axelrod famously > ran a computer game where he determined that the optimal strategy to > play in such a game was one of "tit for tat," where the player > cooperates so long as his trading partner cooperates, then punishes > those who defect. See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation > (New York: Basic Books, 1984). It may be less well-known to readers of > this article that Axelrod wrote a subsequent article with biologist > William D. Hamilton (the "inventor" of kin-selection, as discussed > above) where they ran the same experiment to study evolutionary > systems. See Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton, "The Evolution of > Cooperation in Biological Systems," Science 211: 1390-1396 (1981); > reprinted in Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Chapter 5. Rather > than accumulating points, as in the first game, this time Axelrod and > Hamilton's players accumulated "offspring" who were "genetically > programmed" to play the same strategy as their "parents." Thus, > successful strategies would reproduce more rapidly than unsuccessful, > leading to more offspring over time. Playing the game in evolutionary > time, Axelrod and Hamilton discovered that tit for tat was again the > optimal strategy to play, leaving the most genetic offspring. This > suggests that there would an evolutionary benefit for those who > develop a natural tendency to engage in guarded cooperation of the tit > for tat strategy. Moreover, once established, tit for tat is an > "Evolutionary Stable Strategy," or "ESS," meaning that it cannot be > invaded by a small group of outsiders playing some other strategy. > Given the ease with which tit for tat can arise in a community, as > well as its "robustness" and adaptability in a wide variety of > evolutionary contexts, Axelrod and Hamilton suggest that it is likely > that human beings have evolved a natural predilection to engage in > guarded cooperation of the tit for tat variety. This hard-wired > predilection toward cooperation stands in sharp contrast to the > always-defect advice of the Hobbesian worldview that has dominated > liberalism for centuries. Subsequent investigators have questioned > Axelrod's conclusion that tit for tat is the optimal evolutionary > strategy, instead proposing refinements to tit for tat, such as > "Pavlov" and "Firm-but-fair." Although these variations question > whether tit for tat is a uniquely best strategy in the repeat > prisoners' dilemma situation, they are sufficiently similar to tit for > tat so as to reinforce the conclusion of the evolutionary value of > pursuing a strategy of guarded generosity. > > The instinctive nature of reciprocal altruism is illustrated by > vampire bat societies. Vampire bats must eat every 48-60 hours or > perish. Vampire bats feed on the blood of cattle and horses. These > mammals are wary and large enough to brush off bats if they are > noticed. Thus, substantial skill is required for a bat to locate prey > and to successfully feed. In fact, on any given night, a large > percentage of bats (especially young bats) will be unsuccessful in > feeding, which would lead to a large number of deaths. To guard > against this eventuality, vampire bats have devised a network of > relationships where successful bats on any given night share excess > blood with unsuccessful bats. Although much of this is sharing between > kin, a substantial amount of sharing is between non-related bats. > > Sharing among non-related bats appears to be driven by reciprocal > altruism, or more specifically, a tit for tat relationship. Any given > bat is more likely to share with a bat that has shared with him in the > past than a mere stranger. Stingy neighbors are later rebuffed. See > Gerald S. Wilkinson, "Reciprocal Food-Sharing in the Vampire Bat," > Nature 308: 181-184 (March 8, 1984). Successful bats have an ability > to detect which bats are most in need of blood, and hence share with > them first. This maximizes the marginal benefit to the recipient bat > and minimal marginal cost to the donor. More importantly, it turns out > that vampire bats have an uncanny ability to recognize one another as > individual bats. This is essential for reciprocity to prevail, as it > enables bats to discriminate among one another in deciding to whom to > donate food. Thus, it is also not surprising that for their size, > vampire bats have unusually large neocortex regions of their brains. > The neocortex region of the brain is responsible for processing > information relating to social arrangements, such as the reciprocal > relationships described. Humans, of course, have tremendously large > neocortex regions relative to our body sizes, reflecting the > complexity of our interpersonal and social relationships. In fact, a > significant proportion of our brain's resources are devoted to the > task of recognizing individual faces. Ridley, Origins of Virtue, at > 69. Vampire bats also have relatively long lifespans and a relatively > low degree of social out-migration. As will be discussed below, these > social conditions also help to sustain a system of reciprocal > altruism. As Matt Ridley sums up Wilkinson's research, "Wilkinson > found that [the bats] seem to play Tit-for-tat. A bat that has donated > blood in the past will receive blood from the previous donee; a bat > that has refused blood will be refused blood in turn. Each bat seems > to be quite good at keeping score.... Reciprocity rules the roost." > [10][7] > > Given the immense benefits offered by reciprocal trade, why isn't it > ubiquitous in nature? In addition to vampire bats, reciprocal > relationships have been identified in species as diverse as vervet > monkeys, sea bass, fig trees and fig wasps, baboons, chimpanzees, > dolphins, and whales. As suggested above, the main reason is that it > is costly to run a system of reciprocity, both psychologically and > socially. In general, it is only the brainiest species that have > sufficient cognitive capacity to remember not only individual > identities, but to associate discrete patterns of sharing with each > individual. Moreover, the brain is an extremely expensive organ to run > in terms of caloric consumption. Thus, large brains will tend to > evolve only where sufficient environmental forces require them to do > so. In general, only highly social species such as chimpanzees, > dolphins, and whales have sufficiently complicated social structures > to require large brain capacities. > > In addition to requiring sufficient cognitive power, reciprocal > altruism requires specific social conditions to prevail. Reciprocal > altruism requires that individuals will interact repeatedly and over > long periods of time. The benefits of long-term interaction are > sufficiently large to reward long-term cooperative behavior and also > make it possible to punish those who do not cooperate. In turn, this > requires a relatively small and stable social group characterized by > repeat interactions among the members of the group. The relationships > of the group must be largely egalitarian, thus making it feasible for > one individual to punish another. In a highly hierarchical society, it > may not be possible for a subordinate to punish someone who is > higher-ranked in the dominance hierarchy. Life spans must also be such > that the "shadow of the future" is sufficiently long for parties to > garner the mutual benefits of long-term reciprocal relations. Finally, > long-term parental care and extensive relationships with relatives > encourage the development of reciprocal altruism; the presence of > cooperation with kin relations provides a "core" group of cooperation > that can allow reciprocal cooperation to spread to unrelated > individuals. [11][8] > > Few creatures will meet the three conditions necessary for reciprocal > altruism to flourish: (1) sufficient benefit from reciprocal altruism > in light of one's environment, (2) sufficient cognitive capacity to > process the information necessary to maintain a system of reciprocity, > and (3) the long-term, egalitarian, stable social relationships > sufficient to maintain reciprocal relationships. On the other hand, > humans appear to be uniquely well-suited to developing reciprocal > altruism. "During the Pleistocene, and probably before," Trivers > writes, "a homonid species would have met the preconditions for the > evolution of reciprocal altruism; for example, long lifespan, low > dispersal rate, life in small, mutually dependent and stable social > groups, and a long period of parental care leading to extensive > contacts with close relatives over many years." [12][9] Moreover, > early human society was also highly egalitarian, making reciprocal > benefits and punishments available to all. As Matt Ridley states > Trivers's point, "Of all the species on the planet most likely to > satisfy the criteria of prisoners' dilemma tournaments -- the ability > to meet repeatedly, recognize each other and remember the outcomes of > past encounters... -- human beings are the most obvious. Indeed, it > might be what is special about us: we are uniquely good at reciprocal > altruism." [13][10] > > This analysis suggests that like other animals, humans may have a > "reciprocity instinct," a hard-wired predilection for cooperation > combined with the development of psychological skills and social and > cultural norms designed to reinforce this reciprocity instinct. As > noted, reciprocal altruism is evident in some animals, and humans have > the requisite biological and social organizations that make humans > fertile for planting the seeds of reciprocal altruism. In addition, it > appears that the tendency toward reciprocity is universal, not > culture-specific. For instance, my research has uncovered no culture > or religion where it is morally neutral to file bankruptcy and default > on one's financial obligations. See Todd J. Zywicki, "The Reciprocity > Instinct: An Evolutionary Analysis of Norms, Promise-Keeping, and > Bankruptcy Law" (working paper, George Mason University School of Law, > October 28, 1999). Like the incest taboo, the universal nature of the > anti-bankruptcy promise-keeping norm suggests that the norm may in > fact be a hard-wired product of natural selection and the > psychological modules necessary to operate a society on the principle > of reciprocal altruism. > > If humans do, in fact, have a reciprocity instinct, the consequences > of this insight are profound. In particular, it suggests that the > recent interest in "norms" theory in legal scholarship is incomplete. > See Eric A. Posner, Law and Social Norms (Cambridge: Harvard > University Press, 2000); Robert C. Ellickson, Order Without Law: How > Neighbors Settle Disputes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, > 1991); Richard H. McAdams, "The Origin, Development, and Regulation of > Norms," Michigan Law Review 96: 338-433 (1997). To be sure, these > scholars are correct in identifying the strong tendency humans exhibit > to establish voluntary and spontaneous norms to resolve potential > disputes arising from day-to-day interactions. But their emphasis on > the social construction and transmission of norms is incomplete. The > foregoing discussion suggests that a theory of norms is flawed without > accounting for the hard-wired tendencies of human beings to generate > reciprocal relationships. Indeed, it is striking that most important > norms are largely universal, and only slightly context-dependent. This > includes such things as telling the truth and keeping one's promises, > as well as emotions such as love, friendship, compassion, vengeance, > and the like. See Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: > McGraw-Hill, 1991). Absent compulsory control, human behavior is a > combination of a hard-wired reciprocity instinct combined with > cultural norms. It is striking, however, that vampire bats, sea bass, > and chimpanzees all exhibit promise-keeping and reciprocal > relationships without any social norms instructing them to do so. An > evolution-based model of reciprocity also avoids the problem of having > to develop complicated and fairly implausible models of > norms-internalization that fail to explain the presence of reciprocal > behavior in non-human species, in children, and in cross-cultural > interactions. For instance, Robert Frank has observed that most of the > signals used to determine one's reliability in a social context are > actually involuntary. See Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role > of Emotions (New York: Norton, 1988). For instance, an attempt to lie > about the truth is generally met with an involuntary blush, stammering > speech, and shifty eyes. It is hard to see how these wholly > involuntary actions could be triggered a conscious learning about the > impropriety of not telling the truth. It is far more likely that we > have evolved in such a way as to trigger involuntary physical > manifestations of a hard-wired knowledge about the impropriety of > lying. Similarly, we seem to have instinctive "truth-detection" skills > designed to read individuals to determine whether they are telling the > truth. It further appears that the facial expressions that accompany > certain emotional states also are universal rather than > culture-specific. See Darwin and Facial Expression: A Century of > Research in Review (Paul Ekman ed.) (New York: Academic Press, 1973). > > In fact, the current state of norms theory is remarkably similar to > the state of cultural anthropology a decade or two ago. Fascinated > with issues of relativism, cultural anthropologists focused on the > task of documenting largely trivial differences between different > societies. Introducing evolutionary psychology into the equation has > opened a much more important and fruitful examination of the > underlying similarities among most cultures throughout the world and > throughout history. See The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and > the Generation of Culture (Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John > Tooby eds.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). This essay is > in part an opening attempt to propose a similar approach to norms > theorists in the law to ground themselves in a stronger theory of > human nature and social evolution. > > Group Selection > > A final potential path to cooperation is offered by the possibility of > group selection. This is the most controversial of the approaches > offered here, and most evolutionary thinkers remain highly skeptical > of the importance, if not the very concept, of group selection. > Nonetheless, recent scholars have argued that the concept is in fact > viable, rendering it an empirical question as to whether it has > operated in practice. See Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson, Unto > Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Cambridge: > Harvard University Press, 1998). Despite the skepticism that has > generally surrounded group selection, it represents a potentially > powerful method for generating social cooperation on a scale exceeding > all of the foregoing. Reciprocal altruism is most compelling in > providing a theory of cooperation in small-group, face-to-face > settings; although it can be extended from these relations of specific > reciprocity to general reciprocity on a society-wide basis, this step > is tenuous. By contrast, group selection holds out the possibility of > encouraging cooperation on a large-scale society-wide basis directly. > > Group selection arguments come in two forms, biological group > selection and cultural group selection. Although there are differences > between the two, the essential structure of the argument is similar. > Moreover, both cultural and biological group selection arguments have > traditionally been attacked on similar grounds. As a result, although > there are differences between the two, for purposes of this brief > essay I will treat them as largely interchangeable. The analysis > presented here summarizes the more detailed arguments presented in > Todd J. Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right About Group Selection After All?" > Review of Austrian Economics 13: 81-95 (2000). > > On its face, the argument in favor of group selection is highly > persuasive. Indeed, it is quite common that authors will advance a > group selection argument without being fully conscious of having done > so. Advocates of biological group selection argue that under certain > environmental conditions it may be adaptive on the individual level to > develop altruistic traits toward others. Altruism builds trust and > reciprocity, thereby reducing the transaction costs of living together > in a given society. Greater trust spurs trade, specialization, and the > growth of wealth. In turn, this allows for the maintenance of a > larger, richer, and healthier population. Such populations will tend > to prosper and spread at the expense of less robust populations, > leading to the gradual displacement of non-altruistic populations with > more altruistic, and causing the altruistic trait to spread. See Sober > and Wilson, Unto Others. Cultural group selection arguments are > similar, except that rather than propagating one's genetic traits, > natural selection operates on "memes" of rules, customs, institutions, > and norms. Groups that adopt "better" cultural practices will again > tend to grow healthier, wealthier, and more populous, gradually > supplanting less efficient cultures through conquest, migration, or > conscious adoption. See F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of > Socialism, in The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek (W. W. Bartley, III, > ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988); F. A. Hayek, Law, > Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 1: Rules and Order (Chicago: University > of Chicago Press, 1973); F. A. Hayek, "The Origins and Effects of Our > Morals: A Problem for Science," in The Essence of Hayek (C. Nishiyama > and K. R. Keube, eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); > Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary > Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). > > Both biological and cultural group selection arguments have been > attacked on similar grounds. Although the development of altruistic > traits or customs is adaptive on the group level, altruism is not > adaptive on the individual level. Because altruism creates social > surplus, it is argued, any single individual would do better by acting > selfishly rather than altruistically with others. Altruists, > therefore, would share with altruists and selfish members alike, > whereas selfish members would receive these benefits but would not > share with others. Selfish members can thereby free ride on altruists. > Over time, it is argued, this would lead to selfish members of society > prospering at the expense of altruists, giving selfish individuals a > comparative advantage in propagating their genes, and causing those > with selfish traits to gradually displace altruists in the population. > Thus it is argued that a theory of group selection lacks adequate > "micro" foundations in individual reproductive activity to be a > sustainable equilibrium theory. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene > (2d ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); V. Vanberg, > "Spontaneous Market Order and Social Rules: A Critique of F. A. > Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution," Economics and Philosophy 2: > 75-100 (1986). For more comment on Hayek's model of cultural group > selection, see D. G. Whitman, "Hayek contra Pangloss on Evolutionary > Systems," Constitutional Political Economy 9: 45-66; G. M. Hodgson, > "Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution: An Evaluation in Light of > Vanberg's Critique," Economics and Philosophy 7: 67-82 (1991). > > But these criticisms of group selection models overstate their > conclusion in implying that group selection is invalid a priori. Like > individual natural selection, group selection should be understood as > an empirical question, not an a priori question. For group selection > to be viable requires the satisfaction of three criteria: (1) benefit > to the group from the biological trait or cultural rule; (2) some > mechanism for intergroup competition, so that "more fit" groups can > displace "less fit" groups; and (3) some mechanism for policing > intragroup free riding. See Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right About Group > Selection After All?" supra. > > First, there must be some benefit to the group from the trait or > practice. Beneficial adaptations are those that reduce transaction > costs and conflict, and thereby allow for the growth of economic > wealth and population. Hayek points to property, contract, and the > rule of law as examples of cultural adaptations that would tend to > create social benefit and thus be favored by cultural group selection. > > Second, there must be some mechanism for intergroup competition to > take place. This may be through war and conquest, migration and > intermarriage, or conscious adaptation of new practices or > institutions. > > Third, there must be some mechanism for policing free riding behavior > within the group to prevent some individuals from claiming social > surplus without contributing to it themselves. This suggests that the > type of altruism that would be favored by group selection would be of > the "guarded cooperation" described by reciprocal altruism. Thus, it > is doubtful that cultural group selection would tend to favor the > evolution of psychological traits or cultural practices that permitted > unconditional sharing in the social surplus. Rather, group selection > would tend to favor altruistic and cooperative behavior, but it would > tend to limit this altruism so as to prevent exploitation by > unscrupulous free riders. As noted above, it is improper to draw > normative conclusions directly from the facts of evolutionary biology. > Nonetheless, this tendency toward guarded generosity suggests that > socialism and the welfare state rest on an unsound evolutionary > foundation. By allowing free riders unlimited opportunity to tap into > social surplus, these regimes empower free riders rather than > constrain them. See Zywicki, "Was Hayek Right about Group Selection > After All?" at 90-93; Paul H. Rubin, "Group Selection and the Limits > of Altruism," Journal of ioeconomics 2(1) (Forthcoming 2000); compare > Hodgson, "Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution," at 79-80 (arguing > that cultural group selection leads to a mixed economy). Evolutionary > arguments further suggest that individuals may have an innate and > culturally reinforced tendency to offer charity and altruism, thereby > making compulsory provision of social services unnecessary. Moreover, > evolution suggests that voluntarily-provided social services would > tend to be provided on a local level and embedded in a network of > social connectedness and reciprocal relationships. See David T. Beito, > From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social > Services, 1890-1967 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, > 2000). By embedding the charitable relationship in this social and > reciprocal context, it is likely that this system will be more > rewarding and empowering for both the donor and donee. By contrast, it > is hard to imagine how natural selection would favor individual > preferences that are satisfied through delivery of social services > through the inefficient and rent-seeking mechanism of the modern > welfare state. > > Implications for Social Sciences and Law > > Throughout this essay I have attempted to interweave specific examples > of types of natural cooperation with implications for social science > and the law. It is certainly tenuous to draw specific conclusions from > the general observations of evolutionary psychology. In addition to > those presented above, this concluding section will add a few thoughts > on potential avenues of further research in law and social science. > > As suggested above, there has been a recent resurgence in legal > scholarship in the concept of norms, or what was formerly know as > custom, and the law. This analysis is refreshing, in that it has > caused scholars to increasingly look beyond formal legal rules and to > the norms and practices that underlie and support legal rules. > Individual actors tend spontaneously to develop norms and customs to > solve coordination problems as they arise. Properly understood, norms > theory reminds lawyers of an earlier era where the law was generally > used to buttress and enforce these spontaneously-developed extra-legal > norms and customs. See A. C. Pritchard and Todd J. Zywicki, "Finding > the Constitution: An Economic Analysis of Tradition's Role in > Constitutional Interpretation," North Carolina Law Review 77: 409-521 > (1999); Robert D. Cooter, "Structural Adjudication and the New Law > Merchant: A Model of Decentralized Law," International Review of Law & > Economics 14: 215-239 (1994). > > Although important, norms theory only goes halfway. The evolution of > norms and customs can only be properly understood within a framework > that also includes evolutionary psychology. As noted, there is a huge > degree of different types of cooperation in nature that prospers > without anything like norms or institutions to enforce them. > Evolutionary psychology helps to explain why pro-social and > pro-cooperative norms tend to be more prevalent in the world than > anti-social and anti-cooperative norms. There is a certain > universality to many of the norms that are found throughout the world > and even within a given society. Assuming that it is not purely > historical accident, this tendency toward universality in the types of > norms that develop can be explained in only two ways, either as the > result of universal human nature that drives the types of norms that > will be developed, or through a system of cultural group selection > that allows good practices to drive out bad. As noted, cultural group > selection remains controversial in both the natural and social > sciences, tending to suggest that evolutionary psychology presents a > more compelling explanation. Interestingly, however, the new norms > theorists seem to be either unaware of the existence of human > universals or largely unaware of the problem of explaining these > universals. Just as norms theorists have recognized that norms lie > behind law, evolutionary psychologists have long recognized that > evolution lies behind norms. > > Law would also benefit from understanding how animals generate > solutions to certain social problems. For instance, like humans, > social animals are required to deal with the potential problem of > internal conflict over scarce resources. Animals, like humans, have > devised two basic ways of preventing conflict, property rights and > hierarchy. In hierarchical relations, disputes over resources or > breeding opportunities are decided by the highest-ranked, or "alpha," > individual in the pack or group. Subordinate individuals must obey the > will of the alpha or be punished. Although this social arrangement > tends to minimize internal social conflict (except for conflict at the > top among rivals for dominance), it also means that the resources of > all other members of the society are subject to the will of the > dominant and are subject to having those resources expropriated at any > time. > > More complex societies rely less on hierarchy and more on systems of > private property, or territories, to resolve disputes. Territories > demarcate specific resources over which particular animals have > control. By marking these territories, animals can avoid constant > conflict over ownership of resources. Thus, the primary initial > impulse for recognizing property rights is to minimize social > conflict. Moreover, once property rights are recognized, it is likely > that psychological tendencies to retain and protect property rights > evolve so as encourage the holder of the property to protect it. > Animals and small children exhibit instinctive evidence of property > rights and territoriality, suggesting that the desire to claim and > protect property is hard-wired. For a fascinating discussion of the > instinctive basis of property, see Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom > (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). It seems that concepts of private > property, consensual transfer, and protection from involuntary > transfer are likely hard-wired in humans and other > cognitively-sophisticated and socially-complex creatures. This further > suggests that it is an error to see property rights allocations as > being merely conventional and subject to rearrangement at the will of > political actors. See Todd J. Zywicki, Book Review, Constitutional > Political Economy 8: 355-359 (1997) [reviewing Cass R. Sunstein, Legal > Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996)]. Allowing individuals to > plunder others' property rights and to acquire economic resources > through use of rent-seeking and political force, by contrast, can be > understood as a reversion to the political and economic structure of > hierarchy. > > Evolutionary psychology also has potentially revolutionary > implications for political science. Since the publication of James Q. > Wilson's superb book The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993), a > handful of political scientists have attempted to understand the > implications of evolutionary psychology for the study of politics. > Straussian thinkers have been particularly attracted to understanding > the implications of evolutionary psychology for political behavior, > probably because of the robust view of human nature offered by > evolutionary psychology and the potential of constructing natural law > from human nature. Roger Masters was perhaps the most aggressive early > exponent of the importance of evolutionary psychology and human nature > for a proper understanding of politics and society. Beginning really > with The Nature of Politics (New Have: Yale University Press, 1989), > Masters published a series of articles and papers designed to spell > out his view of the implications of evolutionary psychology for > politics. In addition to The Nature of Politics, Masters also wrote > such interesting and provocative works as Beyond Relativism: Science > and Human Values (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, > 1993) and edited with Margaret Gruter the pathbreaking collection of > essays The Sense of Justice: Biological Foundations of Law (Roger D. > Masters and Margaret Gruter eds.) (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992). > > In recent years Larry Arnhart has carried forward the Darwinian > research program in political science. Building on an Aristotelian > foundation, Arnhart has explicitly advocated an evolutionary > understanding of human nature and politics. Arnhardt's exposition can > be found in his challenging book, Darwinian Natural Right: The > Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany, NY: State University of New > York Press, 1998). The general thrust of Darwinian-influenced > political thinking also is surveyed in Arnhardt's earlier article "The > New Darwinian Naturalism in Political Theory," American Political > Science Review 89: 389-400 (1995). Francis Fukuyama has similarly > argued for the relevance of evolutionary psychology for understanding > politics and social policy. See The Great Disruption: Human Nature and > the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Free Press, 1999). > > A common strand in the Straussian view of evolutionary psychology and > politics is the emphasis on innate human inequality of abilities and > character as well as an Aristotelian belief in the inherently > "political" nature of man. Both of these arguments have important > implications for those interested in political science and political > theory. Contrasting with this emphasis on natural inequality is the > work of Christopher Boehm, who has stressed the concept of "reverse > dominance hierarchy" in human societies. Master and Arnhardt stress > the continuity of humans with lower animals and see humans as > exhibiting a tendency toward hierarchical social and political > relations. Boehm, by contrast, stresses the egalitarian tendency of > humans in contrast to hierarchy. Boehm is a democrat and sees human > political societies as characterized by fluid social and political > arrangements rather than rigid status hierarchies. Boehm's scholarly > output has been prodigious; most relevant for current purposes is his > most recent book, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of > Egalitarian Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). > Boehm's insights have been largely untapped by political scientists, > but it seems that his emphasis on social and political egalitarianism > raises questions about the Straussian emphasis on inequality as the > basis for political society. Indeed, Boehm's insights may even be > relevant to an understanding of such mundane observations as the > public's tendencies to support anti-establishment "outsider" political > candidates such as John McCain and its attraction to populists and > political underdogs. > > Finally, no discussion of the relevance of evolutionary psychology for > politics would be complete without mentioning Frans de Waal's > masterpiece Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes (London: > Jonathan Cape, 1982). De Waal's extensive study of the social and > "political" relations among chimpanzees tells a Shakespearean tale of > political interactions and coalition-forming that strikingly > illustrates the political processes of primates further up the > evolutionary ladder. > > The belief in the inherently "political" nature of humanity is also > open to debate. In making this argument, one must be careful to > distinguish humans' inherently political nature from humans' > inherently social nature. Although individuals are naturally social > and enthusiastic about egalitarian reciprocity-based interactions, > this type of interaction is distinct from political interactions. > There is little reason to believe that politics has anything to do > with a desire to seek "the good" or the "public good." Instead, > politics is primarily about the expropriation of wealth by politically > powerful coalitions or individuals. Thus, while individuals may be > naturally inclined to use political power to further their own ends, > it is doubtful that this sort of behavior should be encouraged. > Instead, it would seem to make more sense to try to tame this > expropriative behavior through constitutions and political > institutions designed to discourage the use of the political means of > acquiring wealth and instead channel wealth-acquisition into > positive-sum market exchange. See Mark Grady and Michael McGuire, "The > Nature of Constitutions," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(3): 227-240 > (1999); Todd J. Zywicki, "The State of Nature and the Nature of the > State: A Comment on Grady and McGuire," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(3): > 241-261 (1999). > > The insights of evolutionary psychology also cast a powerful influence > over the study of economics. Economists generally taken personal > preferences as "given." Evolutionary psychology presents one avenue > for understanding individual preferences. Moreover, it suggests that > many such preferences, such as the desires for wealth and status, are > hard-wired predilections that are relatively unresponsive to changes > in relative prices. Of course, what qualifies as wealth or what > activities generate high social status may differ according to > different temporal and cultural forces. Nonetheless, the basic > impulses are relatively constant over time and independent of > particular social or economic contexts. This casts doubt on the belief > that preferences are primarily socially constructed and that they > therefore can be changed through the moral force of law or changes in > norms. Vernon Smith, Kevin McCabe, and other researchers at the > University of Arizona have been using the tools of experimental > economics to make predictions about individual preference functions > based on insights drawn from evolutionary psychology. All of their > work on this topic is fascinating and important. Good introductions to > their experimental approach and some of the conclusions they draw from > their research can be found in Vernon L. Smith, "Property Rights as a > Natural Order: Reciprocity, Evolutionary and Experimental > Considerations," in Who Owns the Environment? 55-80 (1998); Elizabeth > Hoffman, Kevin McCabe, and Vernon Smith, "Behavioral Foundations of > Reciprocity: Experimental Economics and Evolutionary Psychology," > Economic Inquiry 36: 335-355 (1998); Kevin A. McCabe, et al., > "Reciprocity, Trust, and Payoff Privacy in Extensive Form Bargaining," > Games and Economic Behavior 24: 10-22 (1998). > > In time, evolutionary psychology is likely to exert its greatest > influence in the field of economics. Evolutionary psychology > reinforces the economist's emphasis on methodological individualism > and self-interest as the foundations of analysis in the social > sciences. Thus, rather than merely assuming the primacy of > self-interest, economists can ground this postulate in human nature. > See Zywicki, "Nature of the State." In so doing, evolutionary > psychology also tends to justify the emphasis of the public choice > school on building political systems on the basis of self-interest > rather than public beneficence. Perhaps most interesting, evolutionary > psychology holds out the possibility of looking into the "black box" > of individual preferences to try to understand the structure of > consumer preferences, and in particular, why some preferences may be > more or less elastic and responsive to incentives and relative prices > than other preferences. > > The two earliest expositors of examining economics through the lens of > biology were Jack Hirshleifer, see Jack Hirshleifer, "Evolutionary > Models in Economics and the Law: Cooperation versus Conflict > Strategies," Research in Law & Economics 4: 1-60 (1982); and Gordon > Tullock, see The Economics of Non-Human Societies (Tucson, AZ: Pallas > Press, 1994). In addition to Smith, McCabe, and the others at the > University of Arizona, many contemporary economists are working in the > evolutionary tradition, most notably Nobel Laureate Douglas North. > Others include Adam Gifford, see "Being and Time: On the Nature and > the Evolution of Institutions," Journal of Bioeconomics 1(2): 127-149 > (1999); Hebert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, N.J.: > Princeton University Press, 2000); and Paul Rubin, who has written > several illuminating articles applying evolutionary psychology to > economics. This proliferation of research has coalesced into the study > of "bioeconomics" with its own society (the International Society for > Bioeconomics) and journal (the Journal of Bioeconomics). The Journal > of Bioeconomics is co-edited by Janet Landa, an economist, and Michael > T. Ghiselin, an evolutionary biologist. > > Conclusion > > This essay is not intended to be comprehensive. It has attempted to > state the case why those interested in law and social science should > be aware of developments in evolutionary psychology. It has also > provided a broad overview of the "four paths to cooperation" that have > been identified for understanding cooperation in nature. Finally, it > has offered some scattered thoughts on future research ideas for those > intereste > > References > > 1. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/people.php/50.html > 2. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/index.php#13-1 > 3. http://www.chimp-st-and.ac.uk/cultures/database.htm > 4. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn1 > 5. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn2 > 6. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn3 > 7. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn4 > 8. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn5 > 9. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn6 > 10. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn7 > 11. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn8 > 12. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn9 > 13. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=36&print=1#_ftn10 > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: NI-AI.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1026656 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wisdom.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 102931 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Trends-PDF.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1972322 bytes Desc: not available URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Jul 24 10:45:33 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 03:45:33 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy Message-ID: <01C47130.ACE145B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Perhaps America will wake up and realize we have been giving China the family jewels. What happens if we pull out a lot of the manufacturing that we have exported to them in recent years? They also have their own problem with restive peoples in their far west, and an on-coming epidemic of AIDS. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Friday, July 23, 2004 11:36 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Jihad and the petri dish--Osama's reproductive strategy << File: ATT00000.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00001.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00002.txt >> From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sat Jul 24 18:56:09 2004 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:56:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] defiant habits In-Reply-To: <200407241800.i6OI0NW31671@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20040724185609.45067.qmail@web13423.mail.yahoo.com> >>Perhaps America will wake up and realize we have been giving China the family jewels. What happens if we pull out a lot of the manufacturing that we have exported to them in recent years?<< --What's odd to me is that despite growing anti-immigration and anti-globalization sentiment in the US, people are still content to shop at WalMart and reap low priced goods in return for the exporting of jobs. And, despite the widespread recognition that the Saudi regime is corrupt and leaks money to Al Qaeda and extremist schools of Islam, people are still content to drive cars that eat a lot of gas. At some level, personal decisions are not being connected to the big picture. Once a person splits his own actions from the effect on the whole, it becomes very difficult to reconnect them. Guilt and cognitive dissonance build up and result in defiant continuation in habit. Thus, someone who uses more gasoline than necessary can say "No treehugging environmentalist is going to tell ME what to drive!" when he could just as easily say "No Saudi royal is going to use MY gas money to fund hateful Madrasas. I'm going to WALK!" The question is, does a point come where defiant habit becomes defiant reaction against habit? Will we defiantly buy American to support American jobs, and force WalMart to switch to American-made products? Or will we just go for what's cheapest and most convenient? Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Jul 24 21:00:23 2004 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 14:00:23 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] defiant habits Message-ID: <01C47186.914E2330.shovland@mindspring.com> Eventually this negative feedback loop will cause unbearable pain, and then there will be a reaction. Our trade deficit tells us we are well on the way to a turning point. The Opium War was the result of massive exports of silver from Great Britain in exchange for the Chinese tea to which they had become addicted. If you look up the census data regarding distribution of income you will find that 80% of the American people have seen their incomes decline during the past 10 years. This means that although the macro statistics may be improving, everyday life is getting harder for most of us. Overall consumer confidence numbers may be up, but they are down for people earning less than $50,000. For a lot of things, there are no "made in America" alternatives, so we buy (if we can, if we must) in spite of our discomfort. Making changes in regard to energy depends on flushing the Oil Boys out of the Executive branch. If we had a progressive regime that launched a serious effort to increase the use of wind power etc then our bargaining position in regard to the Saudi's would be improved. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 11:56 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] defiant habits >>Perhaps America will wake up and realize we have been giving China the family jewels. What happens if we pull out a lot of the manufacturing that we have exported to them in recent years?<< --What's odd to me is that despite growing anti-immigration and anti-globalization sentiment in the US, people are still content to shop at WalMart and reap low priced goods in return for the exporting of jobs. And, despite the widespread recognition that the Saudi regime is corrupt and leaks money to Al Qaeda and extremist schools of Islam, people are still content to drive cars that eat a lot of gas. At some level, personal decisions are not being connected to the big picture. Once a person splits his own actions from the effect on the whole, it becomes very difficult to reconnect them. Guilt and cognitive dissonance build up and result in defiant continuation in habit. Thus, someone who uses more gasoline than necessary can say "No treehugging environmentalist is going to tell ME what to drive!" when he could just as easily say "No Saudi royal is going to use MY gas money to fund hateful Madrasas. I'm going to WALK!" The question is, does a point come where defiant habit becomes defiant reaction against habit? Will we defiantly buy American to support American jobs, and force WalMart to switch to American-made products? Or will we just go for what's cheapest and most convenient? Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Sat Jul 24 22:54:16 2004 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:54:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] 9/11 Report: Exectitve Summary Message-ID: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/politics/22CND-EXEC-SUMM.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position= [Note under "Financing" that the attacks cost $400-500,000 and that the annual budget of Al Qaeda is estimated to be about $30 million. I say that any undergraduate engineering class in the United States could have pulled it off. My biggest fear is a virus that could take large numbers of computers out of service for a long time. (The Internet itself was happily designed to be routed around.) But this would require a level of cognitive ability way ahead of what Moslem nations, with an average IQ of about 90, could accomplish. The higher IQ nations are far more interested in trading with the U.S. than in destroying it. [Relax, folks. Life will go on, even if 100,000 Americans are killed during another attack. 6,000 Americans die every day.] Published: July 22, 2004 We present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow from it to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners, five Republicans and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation's capital at a time of great partisan division, have come together to present this report without dissent. We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared. ------ A NATION TRANSFORMED At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed. An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hour and carrying some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. At 9:03, a second airliner hit the South Tower. Fire and smoke billowed upward. Steel, glass, ash and bodies fell below.The Twin Towers, where up to 50,000 people worked each day, both collapsed less than 90 minutes later. At 9:37 that same morning, a third airliner slammed into the western face of the Pentagon. At 10:03, a fourth airliner crashed in a field in southern Pennsylvania. It had been aimed at the United States Capitol or the White House, and was forced down by heroic passengers armed with the knowledge that America was under attack. More than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Center; 125 died at the Pentagon; 256 died on the four planes. The death toll surpassed that at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan. Some had been in the United States for more than a year, mixing with the rest of the population. Though four had training as pilots, most were not well-educated. Most spoke English poorly, some hardly at all. In groups of four or five, carrying with them only small knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray, they had hijacked the four planes and turned them into deadly guided missiles. Why did they do this? How was the attack planned and conceived? How did the U.S. government fail to anticipate and prevent it? What can we do in the future to prevent similar acts of terrorism? ------ A SHOCK, NOT A SURPRISE The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade. In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb.They killed six and wounded a thousand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as "Black Hawk down." Years later it would be learned that those Somali tribesmen had received help from al Qaeda. In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airline