August 2011
1 post
Why Ideologies and Magical Thinking Rule
Human brains, and other animals, are hyperbolic discounters, pattern seeking and prefer magical beliefs over evidence-based.
All brains are cognitive misers so the less brain work the better. The “weaknesses” and shortcut heuristics of our brains are codified in ideologies. Magical-religious-spiritual beliefs are just ideologies. It appears that internal consistency and sales...
July 2011
5 posts
“there is nothing in the realm of human knowledge that requires anything...”
“Many sex addicts do have one thing in common…80 to 90 percent suffered...”
“The people and places that cause terror in childhood cause attraction in...”
"There’s an etiquette to texting for the...
June 2011
4 posts
“…serotonin regulates sexual preference in mammals…high levels of...”
– Link
“Each incremental hunting success moves a man up a notch in the male-dominance...”
“the diet of ordinary Romans included a lot of vegetables and fruits, especially...”
“Populations exploded when the availability of “soft carbohydrate weaning...”
May 2011
15 posts
“Suffering and the virtue of overcoming is a trope of western culture rooted in...”
“A relationship is the price we pay for the excitement and anticipation of...”
“late Neanderthals and modern humans were not likely to experience any...”
“the median age of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way is about 1.8 gigayears...”
“the existence of extraterrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.
...”
“For most rapists, violence is no more than a tool to force the nonconsenting...”
“rape is almost always a manifestation of common criminality of one sort or...”
sexual sadism defined...in case u were wondering
sexual sadism requires prolonged, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, urges, or behaviors in which the psychological or physical suffering and humiliation of the victim is sexually exciting to the person. The sadistic acts may involve restraint, blindfolding, paddling, spanking, whipping, pinching, beating, burning, electrical shocks, rape, cutting, stabbing, strangulation, torture,...
"Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal?" No. Macho US... →
1 tag
“Ecstasy use is associated with a loss of serotonin signaling, which leads to...”
“Religion, it was suggested, could buffer people from the affective consequences...”
“religious belief is a cornerstone for roughly 85 percent of the world’s...”
“it’s not only the belief in personal control that helps protect people...”
“religion supports people’s need to feel personal control over events in...”
possible genetic biology of child abuse...
A new research study, summarized this weekend in Science Daily, suggests a possible mechanism for PTSD’s link with having shorter life. … veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who were diagnosed with PTSD had shorter telomeres than those without. The study defined telomeres as “DNA-protein complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes and protect them from damage and...
April 2011
18 posts
“There is increasing evidence that nicotine can reduce neurological impairment...”
1 tag
“smoking-prevalence rates of 70% in bipolar outpatients,… 63% of Spanish...”
1 tag
“In patients with major depression, smoking prevalence rates are 50% to...”
1 tag
“Smoking is not only a comorbid condition for schizophrenia; it may also have an...”
“understanding — comes down to knowing a phenomenon subjectively by...”
“Clinicians who treat parenting drug abusers should assume that a significant...”
1 tag
“When parenting problems are present, children are highly likely to show conduct...”
1 tag
“Approximately 20% of adults in treatment for drug dependence live with and...”
Religion isn't really a way of knowing anything –... →
“the laws of physics and cosmology are so accurate, we can predict what will...”
“People with liberal views tended to have increased grey matter in the anterior...”
“Soviet citizens were just as likely to die during the war years because of...”
“The 5.4 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust mostly died instantly, in gas...”
“In the period between 1930 and 1953, the number of people who died in labor...”
“To look at the history of mid-twentieth-century Europe in this way also has...”
“Stalin and Hitler also came to hate each other. This hatred proved fatal to both...”
“Of the 5.4 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, four million were from the...”
“Stalin and Hitler also shared a hatred for the Jews who had long flourished in...”
March 2011
26 posts
1 tag
"fitness" not a requirement for evolution?
Darwin’s notion that only the fittest survive has been called into question by new research published today in Nature
A collaboration …challenges our current understanding of evolution by showing that biodiversity may evolve where previously thought impossible.
Conventional wisdom has it that for any given niche there should be a best species, the fittest, that will eventually...
“animal hoarders — many came from chaotic childhood environments and had...”
1 tag
"Primate Prejudice Goes Way Back"
YALE (US) — Humans aren’t the only creatures to perceive others as “us versus them.” Our primate cousins have been doing it for at least 25 million years.
In series of experiments, Yale University researchers led by psychologist Laurie Santos showed that monkeys treat individuals from outside their groups with the same suspicion and dislike as their human cousins tend to treat outsiders,...
“in experimental animals, dopamine mediates exploratory behavior”
1 tag
“As much as 30-60% of variance in personality traits is due to inherited factors...”
1 tag
“highly insecure, disorganized attachment in infancy has been repeatedly...”
“Addicts don’t care about the cost of drugs.”