My entire adult life all of social and biological science has been engaged in the dispute that either DNA or Socialization can explain everything about human behavior. The biologists can explain a lot at one end of the spectrum with DNA. The Social Sciences can explain a lot at the other end of the spectrum with learned experience. But for all of my life it has been equally apparent that neither, nor both, explanations can begin to account for the richness and diversity of humanity.
It drives me crazy. The data is out there to fill in the gap between nature and nurture, and, to me, has been for years, decades in some cases.
When I was in college nearly 40 years ago I learned that our brain has lots of different systems for processing data that all overlap in the mass of wiring in our head. Different systems use different chemicals (nuerotransmitters) to differentiate their communications from the overlapping systems communications. At that time people had known for decades the many of these neurotransmitters were cyclical. Some would be more prevalent in the spring or fall, whereas others might be more prevalent in the summer and the winter. Some of the cycles were complementary, other of the cycles seem unconnected to other cycles. For some neurotransmitters there are daily and yearly cycles, for others there are monthly and yearly cycles.
Being a non-scientist I was free to leap to the conclusion this sounded like astrology to me. The fluctuations of these chemicals in the first year of developing life would be different for every person, as we would all start from a slightly different mix than anyone else. I wasn't the only one to see this intriguing connection. In the early 1980's a researcher reporting on a study at the National Institute of Health on nuerotransmitter cycles was quoted as saying something like ...this sort of sounds like astrology - isn't that amusing, we aren't of course taking that seriously - I knew at the time he couldn't say there might actually be some core truth to astrology because that would have ended his career.
40 years later DNA or learned experience are still the only options on the table for explaining personality for the social and hard sciences. This despite the fact biologists have discovered that women born in the spring reach menopause well before women born in the fall. Recent studies have found humans exhibit three different mixes of bacteria that live in our gut, the variation between people doesn't seem to be related to DNA, upbringing or life style. Your blood type can't really be explained with DNA, upbringing or lifestyle.
Business has not been so timid. Auto insurers have done studies and discovered that Gemini's are the worst drivers, Capricorns the best. A fact that was floated out into the media land then disappeared.
I'ts unfortunate that science has ceded astrology to commerce. Astrology predated modern science by hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Commerce in astrology by folks quite willing to go far beyond what traditional astrology is capable of doing was established long before science came on the scene. The folks willing to say whatever you need to say to make the sale are still profiting in the little books in the supermarket checkout line, the blurbs about your daily horoscope in the newspaper, even the charts done by professional astrologers. If science could get beyond its disdain for rampant commercial hucksterism the underlying body of observational data could be a road map toward research delineating how variations in nuerotransmitter cycles impact our development and personality.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Red State / Blue State - The odd case of biting the hand that feeds you
I have previously alluded to the curious fact that Republicans, who are seeking to cut government spending get their greatest support in States who actually receive more money back from the Federal Government than they pay in taxes, while the Democrats who defend government spending generally represent the states that pay more than the get back.
A September 11 opinion piece by Robert Reich broke it down into detail, using statistics from the Tax Foundation. Mr. Reich did not specify which figures from the Tax Foundation he used but it appears he used the figures from 2005, the most recent data they have (see link to the study itself below).
Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Alaska and Mississippi all get more than $1.50 back from the Government for every dollar they pay in taxes. The top beneficiary is Mississippi at $2.02 back for every dollar of taxes spent, followed closely by Alaska at $1.84 back per $1 paid. Pretty good return on investment I would say.
Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas all get back between $1.10 and $1.50 per $1 paid.
The Red State exception is Texas who get only $.94 back for every dollar paid.
The largest Blue States on the other hand, are footing most of the bill. Californians get back 78 cents for every $1 paid. New York 79 cents, Massachusetts 82 cents and Oregon 92 cents.
Here is the link to the actual compiled data by State for the period from 1961 to 2005 (they say they are compiling more current data) http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
A September 11 opinion piece by Robert Reich broke it down into detail, using statistics from the Tax Foundation. Mr. Reich did not specify which figures from the Tax Foundation he used but it appears he used the figures from 2005, the most recent data they have (see link to the study itself below).
Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Alaska and Mississippi all get more than $1.50 back from the Government for every dollar they pay in taxes. The top beneficiary is Mississippi at $2.02 back for every dollar of taxes spent, followed closely by Alaska at $1.84 back per $1 paid. Pretty good return on investment I would say.
Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming and Kansas all get back between $1.10 and $1.50 per $1 paid.
The Red State exception is Texas who get only $.94 back for every dollar paid.
The largest Blue States on the other hand, are footing most of the bill. Californians get back 78 cents for every $1 paid. New York 79 cents, Massachusetts 82 cents and Oregon 92 cents.
Here is the link to the actual compiled data by State for the period from 1961 to 2005 (they say they are compiling more current data) http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html
Monday, September 12, 2011
A balanced budget amendment
Republicans in the House have been arguing for a balanced budget amendment. I believe this is a good idea and merits serious attention.
It is a simple truth about democracy that it is politically difficult to impose taxes and politically easy to spend money. We the voters pretty much all dislike paying taxes and we all like getting things from the government. History demonstrates the universality of the result from that basic truth. Democratic Governments around the world are saddled with pension and debt obligations they can no longer hide behind accounting tricks and rosy economic forecasts.
This is not a good time for the US to start trying to immediately balance its budget. In our current economic condition it would cause further economic weakness and higher unemployment. But it is an opportunity to begin the long process of having States adopt a balanced budget amendment that would take effect in the future. For example the amendment could be worded so it would not take effect until the US economy hit some specified targets in unemployment and GDP growth.
What else might we want in a balanced budget amendment package?
How about requiring Congress to index tax rates so they can't use inflation and the subsequent bracket creep to impose stealth taxes? In the same way benefits should be indexed to whatever assumptions they are based on. For example the life expectancy data that Social Security is based on should adjust automatically as our data about life expectancy changes.
How about we require Congress enact any appropriation, tax credit or other monetary benefit be enacted in a separate bill from substantive law provisions, and provide an item veto for the President to give voters one person to hold accountable for nonsensical earmarks? Congress currently passes thousands of little perks and tax cuts every year that almost nobody knows about until after the fact because they are buried in huge bills that are hundreds, or thousands of pages long.
I know that some argue a balanced budget amendment is unnecessary, that Congress could/should create rules to impose the necessary discipline on the process. But the historical reality is Congress won't. In the last thirty years the only time having a balanced budget became an important political issue is when Republicans are out of power and have used the issue to bully the Democrats into paying attention to the deficit. But the biggest deficits have been generated by the Republicans when they have taken over the Congressional agenda. All the rules the Republicans and Democrats imposed in the early 1990's that led to balanced budgets in the late 1990's have been repealed, sidestepped or ignored from 2002 to the present.
A balanced budget amendment would remove the issue from political football status. It would limit the ability of both Republicans and Democrats to buy votes ( - ooops, I mean "serve their constituents") by spending government money now and forcing voters of the future to deal with the paying the bill.
It is a simple truth about democracy that it is politically difficult to impose taxes and politically easy to spend money. We the voters pretty much all dislike paying taxes and we all like getting things from the government. History demonstrates the universality of the result from that basic truth. Democratic Governments around the world are saddled with pension and debt obligations they can no longer hide behind accounting tricks and rosy economic forecasts.
What else might we want in a balanced budget amendment package?
How about requiring Congress to index tax rates so they can't use inflation and the subsequent bracket creep to impose stealth taxes? In the same way benefits should be indexed to whatever assumptions they are based on. For example the life expectancy data that Social Security is based on should adjust automatically as our data about life expectancy changes.
How about we require Congress enact any appropriation, tax credit or other monetary benefit be enacted in a separate bill from substantive law provisions, and provide an item veto for the President to give voters one person to hold accountable for nonsensical earmarks? Congress currently passes thousands of little perks and tax cuts every year that almost nobody knows about until after the fact because they are buried in huge bills that are hundreds, or thousands of pages long.
I know that some argue a balanced budget amendment is unnecessary, that Congress could/should create rules to impose the necessary discipline on the process. But the historical reality is Congress won't. In the last thirty years the only time having a balanced budget became an important political issue is when Republicans are out of power and have used the issue to bully the Democrats into paying attention to the deficit. But the biggest deficits have been generated by the Republicans when they have taken over the Congressional agenda. All the rules the Republicans and Democrats imposed in the early 1990's that led to balanced budgets in the late 1990's have been repealed, sidestepped or ignored from 2002 to the present.
A balanced budget amendment would remove the issue from political football status. It would limit the ability of both Republicans and Democrats to buy votes ( - ooops, I mean "serve their constituents") by spending government money now and forcing voters of the future to deal with the paying the bill.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
"Friends" and "Others"
Brain research is revealing that we have have two different parts of our brain that we use to make decisions about people. People that are "friends" we treat as individuals, we keep a little file on them in our head with identifying characteristics and decide how it is appropriate to interact with them based on that information specific to them and we may be predisposed to trust them.
But the part of our brain that has this capability can only handle about 150 or so "friend" files. But we all, particularly in modern life, regularly encounter hundreds of people. To make decisions about how to interact with these other people we have another part of our brain were we deal with "others". The others catagory looks for distinguishing characteristics through which it can lump people together and draw conclusions about them. We may sort by color, ethnicity, religion, where they are from. The varieties are endless - black, white, Asian, Nordic, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Republican, Democrat, New Yorker, Texan, Mexican - or even Giants fan.
Brain research is also discovering that we cannot make decisions without a preference by our emotions. We couldn't buy underwear - we would stand at a department store frozen with indecision for days - in the absence of some emotional decision (I like black, or I like red, or - for me personally, the emotional decision that I don't care - it doesn't matter).
Historically the reason we have have a separate part of the brain for "other" categories is to create a link to our emotions to allow us to make a quick decision about someone or something. Through much of human history the unknown could be dangerous or deadly. Those who stood around contemplating how to react to an unknown could end up dead. So we create categories - if we can categorize we have a basis for reacting quickly. Then we build knowledge about the category. And if we have no category knowledge we are predisposed to be suspicious or cautious.
The science isn't there yet to confirm (to my knowledge) but I suspect one of the differences between the "friends" and "others" is the biochemistry and structural organization of our brains makes the "friends" area of the brain inclined more toward trust and cooperation and the "others" inclined more toward caution or suspicion.
Have you ever wondered how ordinary humans, with the same brain you have, can commit genocide? How could the people of Germany have stood by and often helped in the extermination of the jews? Or the people in Rwanda who slaughtered their neighbors because they were from a different tribe?
It appears the roots of genocide, and many other combative behaviors are found in this quirk in our brain organization. Angry people pick a category to direct their anger at - and if the conditions are right they can use emotionally charged language to manipulate large populations perceptions to dehumanize a category. In Rwanda, from what I have read, radio commentators played a big part in fueling the genocide with gossip and outright lies.
We are not immune in the United States. Timothy McVie, the Oklahoma City bomber was an angry guy who became obsessed with destroying evil as his brain categories saw it. Much of modern media is angry people railing against some category of "other" people. In its worst manifestations an other category designation can trump the friends category. Some sports fans will beat the daylights out of some other sports fan because he is wearing the wrong team colors.
If people understand the roots of our emotional tendency to create "others" categories for convenience will they strive to use the categories appropriately? Will it inoculate us a little bit from people who want to use other people for scapegoats or to forward their personal ambitions?
I don't know, but its worth a try. Spread the word.
But the part of our brain that has this capability can only handle about 150 or so "friend" files. But we all, particularly in modern life, regularly encounter hundreds of people. To make decisions about how to interact with these other people we have another part of our brain were we deal with "others". The others catagory looks for distinguishing characteristics through which it can lump people together and draw conclusions about them. We may sort by color, ethnicity, religion, where they are from. The varieties are endless - black, white, Asian, Nordic, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Republican, Democrat, New Yorker, Texan, Mexican - or even Giants fan.
Brain research is also discovering that we cannot make decisions without a preference by our emotions. We couldn't buy underwear - we would stand at a department store frozen with indecision for days - in the absence of some emotional decision (I like black, or I like red, or - for me personally, the emotional decision that I don't care - it doesn't matter).
Historically the reason we have have a separate part of the brain for "other" categories is to create a link to our emotions to allow us to make a quick decision about someone or something. Through much of human history the unknown could be dangerous or deadly. Those who stood around contemplating how to react to an unknown could end up dead. So we create categories - if we can categorize we have a basis for reacting quickly. Then we build knowledge about the category. And if we have no category knowledge we are predisposed to be suspicious or cautious.
The science isn't there yet to confirm (to my knowledge) but I suspect one of the differences between the "friends" and "others" is the biochemistry and structural organization of our brains makes the "friends" area of the brain inclined more toward trust and cooperation and the "others" inclined more toward caution or suspicion.
Have you ever wondered how ordinary humans, with the same brain you have, can commit genocide? How could the people of Germany have stood by and often helped in the extermination of the jews? Or the people in Rwanda who slaughtered their neighbors because they were from a different tribe?
It appears the roots of genocide, and many other combative behaviors are found in this quirk in our brain organization. Angry people pick a category to direct their anger at - and if the conditions are right they can use emotionally charged language to manipulate large populations perceptions to dehumanize a category. In Rwanda, from what I have read, radio commentators played a big part in fueling the genocide with gossip and outright lies.
We are not immune in the United States. Timothy McVie, the Oklahoma City bomber was an angry guy who became obsessed with destroying evil as his brain categories saw it. Much of modern media is angry people railing against some category of "other" people. In its worst manifestations an other category designation can trump the friends category. Some sports fans will beat the daylights out of some other sports fan because he is wearing the wrong team colors.
If people understand the roots of our emotional tendency to create "others" categories for convenience will they strive to use the categories appropriately? Will it inoculate us a little bit from people who want to use other people for scapegoats or to forward their personal ambitions?
I don't know, but its worth a try. Spread the word.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
America's Socialized Medicine system
One wouldn't know it from the health care debate last year but the United States has had a huge government run and payed for health system for decades. The Veterans Administration Hospitals are the largest single hospital system in the United States. According to a Fortune magazine article (May 11, 2006) the VA provides some of the best quality care in the United States at a cost of about $5000 per patient, whereas the private system the rest of us deal with costs about $6300 per patient per year. So our wonderful "free market" medical care system is about 20% more expensive than the government financed and run bureaucracy and the bureaucracy also provides top quality care.
Remind me again why we "solved" the problem of people without health insurance with "mandates" that people buy private health insurance?
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The two parts of deficit reduction
Deficit reduction needs to address two distinct issues that seem to often get fuzzed together in current media and politician speak.
1. How to do it - what mix of taxes and spending cuts can accomplish the desired reduction.
The Bi-Partisan Simpson-Bowles Commission Report published in December 2010, after extensive study concluded the budget could not be balanced on spending cuts alone. A problem is many Republican's have signed a no new taxes pledge. So their deficit reduction plans have refused to even consider revenue increases of any kind.
But the bigger problem is issue 2.
2. What will be the economic impact of the particular mix chosen.
The Republican bottom line non-negotiable position of no new revenues is economic suicide. It would have been great if they were this serious about cutting spending in 2003 or so when they were cutting taxes and the economy was reasonably healthy. But their current obsession with big cuts in spending with no new taxes is like breaking a leg to cure a limp.
The Economist July 16 issue, page 79, has a survey of what has happened historically when big cuts in public expenditures are made during a period of economic weakness. The article discusses a recent study that looked at 173 policy changes in rich world economies between 1978 and 2009. The study found cutting budgets consistently resulted in a drop in GDP and a rise in unemployment. Is that really what we want to accomplish at the current time? The few rare occasions where the cuts in government spending were followed by an economic upturn were in countries with really high interest rates - the exact opposite of our current situation. It makes sense in that situation because when Government stops borrowing it lowered demand so interest rates drop - making money more available to business and consumers. Couldn't be more inapplicable to our current situation where our interest rates are practically at zero.
A classic example that it is a poor idea to start chopping at Government spending during serious downturn is the Great Depression. In the mid-1930's as the US was beginning to crawl out of the worst depths of the depression deficit hawks talked Congress into big cuts in Government spending. The stock market crashed again and the economy stalled. Luckily (?) WW II came along a few years later to jump start our climb out of our economic doldrums with massive amounts of Government spending..
Sunday, August 28, 2011
How our brains react to cities
Interesting article in the June 25 Economist (p.94) looking at a study just published in Nature about MRI studies of the brains of people raised in the city, in towns and in the country. The study involved deliberately raising stress levels by giving subjects difficult problems and then chiding them for failure. The study found varying responses in only two parts of our brain, both of which deal with emotion. One part was in the "instinctual" part of the brain that is similar to the structure of animal brains. This "instinctual" brain area deals with interpreting what we are experiencing right now. The other part of the brain was in our cortex, the part of our brain that is so characteristically human, and seems to control whether our immediate experience alters our underlying willingness to change our learned behavioral responses.
With regard to activity in our "instinctual" brain, City folk experienced the most immediate stress, town folk less and country folk were the most relaxed. In general the "thoughtful" brain reflected the amount of activity in the "instinctual" brain, city folks thought the most, country folk the least.
In a way the first part of this finding is a no-brainer. In cities you are constantly in contact with many people, and little potential conflicts arising over little things like vacant bus seats, or space to walk on a sidewalk Those conflicts are far less frequent in towns, and even less frequent in the country. City folk are forced to get smart about human interactions to a degree country folk are not. The country folk seem to regard the fact the folks doing the study are criticizing them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The city raised folk care. That is a two edged sword - seems like the overall level of anxiety in the city raised folk is probably higher, but another word for anxiety is vigilance, so they are also probably becoming more capable of finding adaptive strategies to avoid the stress in the future.
The exception to the tendency for both parts of the brain to exhibit similar levels of activity was for people who grew up in the city. There was sometimes a disconnect - either the "instinctual" brain could be buzzing away with the "thoughtful" brain much less active, or vice versa. (The authors of the study note this sort of disconnect is characteristic of schizophrenia).
It seems like as a result of the sheer level of stress people who are raised in the city experience some learn to tune the stress out from either the"thoughtful" brain or the "instinctual" brain. It probably allows them to lower their overall anxiety level, but at the cost of giving up a degree of their ability to learn from experience.
I find my thoughts going to a completely unrelated bit of information I ran into, some research from the Pew Foundation that found that New York and Florida, in 2000, incarcerated the same amount of people, about 70,000 persons. Today Florida has increased their prison population by an additional 30,000, while New York has added only 10,000. Crime has fallen in both states about the same, slightly more in New York.
I assume a larger percentage of the population of New York state have more heavily urban life experience than in Florida, and more Floridians come from a more small town or rural environment. That makes me wonder it this particular statistic reflects the fact New Yorkers are a bit more savvy about human behavior, about when incarceration is necessary and useful and when it is just wasted public money.
With regard to activity in our "instinctual" brain, City folk experienced the most immediate stress, town folk less and country folk were the most relaxed. In general the "thoughtful" brain reflected the amount of activity in the "instinctual" brain, city folks thought the most, country folk the least.
In a way the first part of this finding is a no-brainer. In cities you are constantly in contact with many people, and little potential conflicts arising over little things like vacant bus seats, or space to walk on a sidewalk Those conflicts are far less frequent in towns, and even less frequent in the country. City folk are forced to get smart about human interactions to a degree country folk are not. The country folk seem to regard the fact the folks doing the study are criticizing them as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The city raised folk care. That is a two edged sword - seems like the overall level of anxiety in the city raised folk is probably higher, but another word for anxiety is vigilance, so they are also probably becoming more capable of finding adaptive strategies to avoid the stress in the future.
The exception to the tendency for both parts of the brain to exhibit similar levels of activity was for people who grew up in the city. There was sometimes a disconnect - either the "instinctual" brain could be buzzing away with the "thoughtful" brain much less active, or vice versa. (The authors of the study note this sort of disconnect is characteristic of schizophrenia).
It seems like as a result of the sheer level of stress people who are raised in the city experience some learn to tune the stress out from either the"thoughtful" brain or the "instinctual" brain. It probably allows them to lower their overall anxiety level, but at the cost of giving up a degree of their ability to learn from experience.
I find my thoughts going to a completely unrelated bit of information I ran into, some research from the Pew Foundation that found that New York and Florida, in 2000, incarcerated the same amount of people, about 70,000 persons. Today Florida has increased their prison population by an additional 30,000, while New York has added only 10,000. Crime has fallen in both states about the same, slightly more in New York.
I assume a larger percentage of the population of New York state have more heavily urban life experience than in Florida, and more Floridians come from a more small town or rural environment. That makes me wonder it this particular statistic reflects the fact New Yorkers are a bit more savvy about human behavior, about when incarceration is necessary and useful and when it is just wasted public money.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)