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Morning people are dumber.

It would sound like the perfect troll: find out how timid a kid was at age 3, that tells you how conservative he'll be at 23.

As it goes, it's completely backed up by research. And the researchers weren't looking for that info, it just sat there in the data.

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments.

They weren't even thinking about political orientation. And why would they? They're psychology professors researching personality theory, personality development, research methodology, and stuff like that.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. Why? Who knows. Maybe for craps and giggles. Maybe because they had a column blank on their spreadsheet and wanted to fill it with one more metric to see if there was a link between voting and eating the erasers on the tops of pencils.

What was interesting to them was the arresting patterns they found.

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.

People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3.

Don't forget: the Blocks had NO IDEA what political affiliation any of the three year-olds would have when they did the survey in 1969. But go forward twenty years, and there it is. Everything that people say they want their kids to be: kids just like that became Libs. Everything that makes short-tempered parents scream and beat their kids: future applicants for a CPAC pass and an EIB golf shirt request on the Christmas list.

The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics. The article doesn't say if Professor N.S.Sherlock lit his pipe and smiled knowingly to himself upon hearing the results, but I wouldn't die of surprise if it happened.

Pure science: sometimes, the truth just hurts. Especially if you've been easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable all your life.

Men do everything they do in order to get laid.

Posting to /. just isn't working like we'd all hoped, is it?

Some people? You mean all of them who penises but aren't attracted to them.

Men do everything they do in order to get laid.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plus2sd/200809/the-stupidity-crowds

"What can you do? I gained some insight into this problem several years ago when my research group performed an fMRI study of social conformity. We recreated a version of the famous Asch experiment of the 1950s and used fMRI to determine how a group changes an individual's perception of the world. Two things emerged from the study. First, when individuals conform to a group's opinion, even when the group is wrong, we observe changes in perceptual circuits in the brain, suggesting that groups change the way we see the world. Second, when an individual stands up against the group, we observed strong activation in the amygdala, a structure closely associated with fear. All this tells me that not only are our brains not wired for truly independent thought, but it takes a huge amount of effort to overcome the fear of standing up for one's own beliefs and speaking out".

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manslaughter#United_States_Law_2

2. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/promoting-hope-preventing-suicide/201006/making-them-feel-not-alone

3. http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1677546&cid=32483118

I understand where you're coming from, but I do not like where you're going. The only resolution for your demands is to completely remove our soldier's ability to initiate combat entirely, which as shown by the video already required several authorizations and confirmations before they went ahead. The appearance was even that the enemy had fired and was getting ready to fire, so even saying that the enemy must fire first does not live up to these standards.

I'm sorry, but barring severe disability, childlike naivety, or plain insanity everyone that goes towards a combat zone in order to accomplish an objective within the combat zone damn well ought to evaluate those risks before achieving that objective. Bridges and buildings have a pretense of safety, an obligation to humanity to operate in a manner which is not grossly negligent or predatory. Soldiers, armies, combat zones, etc. function without any such pretense, in fact, the context is so fundamentally opposed that I cannot understand why nobody has pursued Reuters for providing inadequate training for an employee given an incredibly hazardous task.

Now, I'm not saying that nobody should be punished, but I cant see any cause for legal liability, not by that video alone. Find a policy or procedure they did not follow and you might have something, but that video does not present anything blatantly negligent.

There is no false dichotomy that you can only be good at one or the other, and neither one comes naturally

But there is research suggesting that you can't be good at multitasking, or rather very few people actually are. Link. Even though talking on the phone and driving isn't necessarily what this article is talking about, I think it does fall into your classification of "boring things".

It would be interesting to see some research actually showing whether you can improve your multitasking skills.

Another factor is the "self esteem movement" and its pernicious notion that "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself."

I don't know if the "self esteem movement" is effective or not (I would guess "not"), but what the fuck is she really advocating here? Self-hatred is okay? If you don't like yourself, you don't believe that other people should like you either, which is a formidable obstacle to love. Whether we go about creating it the right way or not, calling self-esteem "pernicious" seems...pernicious.

The author also absurdly idealizes the past, seriously advocating "playing outside" as a panacea. She should take pushing her books to the next level and give Dr. Laura Schlesinger a run for her money on the radio. Malevolent conservatism vs. malevolent liberalism. They could have their own malevolent channel, where anything goes (except facts).

She spends the last half of the article railing against Social Darwinism, which (after it was invented by Ronald Reagan!) apparently created the empathy epidemic. It is interesting that reliable polling data invariably indicates that the (40% more sociopathic) millennial generation is overwhelming more liberal (the only true measure of empathy, according to the author) than the Tea-Partying baby boomers, who enjoyed such empathetic childhoods, romping under the open sky. Either there is no empathy epidemic, empathy is not closely correlated with political leaning, or both (my bet). In any event, the author obviously doesn't really care.

In relation to having "healthy social and emotional skills", this study from a while back came to mind.

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

This may go some way to explaining why nobody from the conservative ranks in the US has stood up to their own bullies, going so far as to apologize to them when they say something out of line.

It also explains why the bullies themselves also seem easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable too.

I know that this will either be marked as Insightful or Troll-bait. I also know that will be because of someone's opinion. But facts are cold, hard things.

Looking at the matter with an oversimplistic view is potentially harmful.

But, as many folk aren't interested in thinking harder, I'll endorse the basic idea that standing up for yourself helps. Note that bullying is a dynamic that requires victims to complete it. It should probably be referred to as the Bully/Victim Dynamic to help people remember this fact. If you don't stand up for yourself, bullies will target you.

If you look into what makes bullies feel like they have to dominate others, you will gain a much deeper understanding of bullying.

Again, I highly recommend this article for anyone interested in understanding bullying better.

Now, the source quoted in this /. article is appallingly fourth-hand and diluted. Here are some other sources:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article7133986.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18mind.html?pagewanted=print

And here's an abstract for the actual study (which took a while to track down): Mutual antipathies during early adolescence: More than just rejection

...else we'll have a whole generation who never really grow up into proper adults.

That's already happened. Thanks helicopter parents!

...I mean, the word "News" really is in scare quotes on their "More 'News' Here..." button. And that's considering that there's just one source, and British newspapers make things up.

It's common for the most "angry" people at some group to actually be a repressed "member" of this group. See Reaction Formation. There's also a paper that shows that effect.

So maybe it's not the judge who should be investigated...

If you trust kids to learn, and trust parents to usually have their kids' best interests at heart, then you can see that parents of older children can hire tutors, acquire learning materials, visit homeschool resources centers, and so on, to create good learning experiences. Here is a labor of love by Salman Khan over the past few years to create 1000 educational videos that step-by-step cover most of the information about math and science most kids would ever learn in high school:
http://www.khanacademy.org/

The fact is, as John Holt or John Taylor Gatto have said (both celebrated teachers with decades of classroom experience), most of what teachers know is how to manage a classroom of twenty children of roughly the same age and background and how to maintain discipline in the room. That's it. That is 90% of what most teachers have been taught. And they do it in all sorts of ways (including things like cutting sarcasm). Some teachers know more, like Jaime Escalante. Most do no.

Here is a study that shows that not only do most elementary school teachers know next-to-nothing about math, but the less math kids are taught in school, the better they are at it:
"When Less is More: The Case for Teaching Less Math in Schools"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-schools

Kids should be learning because they want to, not because they are forced to. For example, a person of any age can learn to read in about 50 contact hours if they really want to, or a school system can spend thousands of hours trying to pound literacy into a child and still produce functional illiterates (as is the case with many US high school graduates). The same goes for many other subjects.

The fact is, when someone learns math or chemistry, especially today with so many great video resources,
http://www.learner.org/resources/browse.html
almost all of the learning is done by kids themselves. Plus, parents can learn together with kids. And kids can learn together with other kids at the local library or through the internet. And old school buildings could be repurposed as learning centers.

Can this all be better? Sure. Let's put learning resource centers (or just better libraries) on every street corner, where anyone can go there at any time to get help learning whatever they want to learn about, whether reading, chemistry, carpentry, or cooking.

So, let's say that some parents send their kids to the cheapest private school and "keep the change". Are most kids going to be much worse off than they are now? About half of all kids in the USA can't even graduate from high school for one reason or another. Could it be that much worse?

Also, see my other comment in this thread.

One thing to watch out for. Like most people in the USA (myself included), you've been exposed to decades of propaganda by schools that schools are the solution (and the only solution) to making society work. What if some of that was self-serving?

Also, even assuming what you said was true, that you need some "specialist" to teach you chemistry (my kid and I just watched entire "The World of Chemistry" series at Learner.org, essentially with a Nobel Prize winning society as our chemistry "teacher"), what other lessons are teachers teaching that you don't want your kid to learn?
"The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"""
Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training fo

People acting like assholes happens for actual reasons. Don't wave away the effort of figuring it out. That will just make you less able to cope.

Want insight? Here's a great starter: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/big-bad-bully

In the paper he cites Ethiopia's national IQ of 63, the world's lowest, and the fact that men and women are only expected to live until their mid-40s as an example of his finding that intelligence is the main determinant of someone's health.

Having examined the effects of economic development and income inequality on health, he was 'surprised' to find that IQ had a much more important impact, he said. 'Poverty, lack of sanitation, clean water, education and healthcare do not increase health and longevity, and nor does economic development.'

He also seems to be a fan of nuclear war?

Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who’s running.

-Satoshi Kanazawa (source) This guy seems to make a habit out of making crazy claims to get attention. Move along, nothing to see here.

My apologies for inordinate craptitude.

I mean Morton's Demon.

See here; http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb02.html

It's an idea off the back of Maxwell's Demon (all those M's, confusing :-P)

Instead of (as in Maxwell's demon) letting molecules past depending on their energy/room they are in (as part of a thought-experiment that tried to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics), Morton's demon;

" ... was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data."

If you regard arguing with Creationists as a stress-relieving hobby (like some people treat squash - they ARE similar; hitting dense objects hard so they bounce around... ), it is a term you will eventually run accross.

Outside of that arena it has gained some recognition;

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/200811/truth-lies-and-self-deception

Bullying is a big deal. Of course it's simplistic to say that it is caused entirely by any one factor, but I think Lavoie's 5 steps to help develop social skill are great for addressing part of the overall equation.

If you want to understanding bullying in more detail, however, you can read this article: Big Bad Bully. I highly recommend it.

The debate over the autism link is being stirred by personal injury lawyers, it has nothing to do with science:

Among the dozens of charges the GMC deemed proven against Wakefield are that he provided a research proposal to a lawyer seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers for causing autism.

Social mammals tend to emulate the alpha individuals of their groups. The alphas, by dint of successfully establishing themselves as alphas, are viewed as successful -- When sociopaths lead our companies, the employees themselves will, generally speaking, start behaving more sociopathically. It's basic survival.

By coincidence, I was just looking at this: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissism-epidemic/200905/is-there-epidemic-narcissism-today/

People literally ARE becoming more and more narcissistic and I believe you are probably right in ascribing it to poor societal role models...

It is laughable to say that girls don't tend to prefer toys that suit their gender. Girls always like babies and quite rightly, they're the ones that have to give birth to them when they grow up.

I'm not sure if this is what he was referencing but yes there has been a study done on animal youth and toys.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/why-do-boys-and-girls-prefer-different-toys

No, that's reporting the "news", not reporting the news. Who gives a fuck what the wife of a washed up singer thinks of a new singer?

It seems many people do, otherwise it wouldn't be watched. Why do you think there is bad gangster rap on MTV? Because people vote it up.

Things like these are easier to follow than todays complex coherencies in politics or economy. Watching those the whole day would be quite heavy.

Also, a psychology study found that following celebrities (or other public figures) and relating to them and their everyday situations, playing through the scenarios and solutions, is almost required for psychological balance.

______
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossip http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199607/the-real-slant-gossip

Yes. I hold both these beliefs. The justice system is not about blame, it's about keeping criminals safe from society and (in my mind) rehabilitating them.

The U.S. justice system is founded on the monastery model of repentance. See: Michael Foucault, "Discipline & Punish". The modern-day U.S. prison system is an industrial model that seeks taxpayer rent in exchange for effectively perpetual incarceration for anything that may be classified in the public's eyes as a crime. (See: Ann Krueger's paper on "rent seeking").

You would be very hard pressed to find anyone conscious of what the system is who would describe the prison system as something that in any way rehabilitates. In the criminal justice industry (lawyers, police, judges, etc.) often it's called "criminal college": where one learns the trade and networks. The prison system stigmatizes and ostracizes - it makes travel, finding a job, getting education all more difficult; it has no benefit for prisoners (in my opinion, and according to the three federal court judges I've asked this very question of). It also has questionable benefit or society - but that's a bigger question.

You would never blame a computer for a programmer's error, but you would try to fix the bugs, and if there was a dangerous bug you couldn't fix you wouldn't use that computer.

I agree. The prison system necessarily presumes culpability - i.e. that the criminal act was conducted of one's own free will. If it were otherwise the prison system would simply be segregation of those whose relationship with society is unacceptable because of factors they are unable to change - their genetics and/or environment, and our prison system would be analogous to apartheid.

There is some persuasive evidence that many crimes including aggression, theft, and abuse can all be linked to neurological/physiological traits. Unfortunately, it appears the NIH has little motivation to study neurological conditions giving rise to choice, as a result of their choice of head.

Alas, the barbaric industrial prison complex will continue. But make no mistake, it's barbaric.
 

the whole system is based on confidence, and not confidence in production or sales or sustainable growth but confidence in getting a return

Asides from the rules there is increasing consensus that the screen based culture many traders have been brought up with has created a generation of economists with poorly functioning pre-frontal lobes in the brain. Primary behavioral symptoms of this is greed and risk taking of people trapped in the moment, unable to function on a more cognitive level. When combined with the Oxytocin response it's little wonder we are in the situation we are in now.

I want to believe that we will find a way out of this but not only are we up against a 'economic theory' that has no basis in reality but plain old human nature. I'm not saying it's impossible, actually the changes are surprisingly subtle. But the change in mindset is equivalent to breathing underwater. It's no longer a political issue anymore, it's a matter of survival.

It doesn't matter that they retracted the story, because it will fuel the beliefs of conspiracy theorists even more.

Ah, the standard emotional appeal response. Never mind that it doesn't even apply to what I said.

Your article? Are you actually the author? Steve Silberman?

First, you didn't "cite" anything. You mentioned that some studies might exist. Citing them requires providing the information so that the reader might check to make sure that is actually the case. I certainly don't see any citations.

I see nowhere in your article where you make any mention whatsoever of the placebo effect size increasing in chemotherapy patients or Parkinson's disease. You mention that the placebo effect has been shown to provide relief to chemo patients, but I didn't disagree with (or even mention that). Your mention of Parkinson's is in connection with development on a drug being stopped after a phase III trial because it did not show benefit over placebo. Again, that has nothing to do with the idea that the magnitude of the observed placebo effect is significantly greater now than it was before.

Which leaves us with depression. I notice you say major depression in your post. Here is a relevant bit from your article:

Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

Again, note that at no time did I suggest either of those trials might be wrong (how could I, since you didn't provide citations so I could go check their methodology). Rather the opposite, I suggested that the results aren't really surprising. I also note the absence of any mention of "major depression." Rather, these studies seem to have looked at antidepressant trials. Now, perhaps those trials were dominated by major depressives. Again, I can't check because you've failed to cite them properly. I find it unlikely though. While depression is certainly a real, serious medical condition, it is not a novel idea that many people (most, according to some sources) who are on antidepressants probably should not be, and likely aren't really suffering from clinical depression in the first place. [1][2] You point out yourself that drug companies aren't always as careful as they should be about recruiting subjects.

Okay, so supposing that you actually are clinically depressed and you're enrolled in an antidepressant trial. In order to measure any improvement we have to have some sort of metric. We have to at least assess your level of depression before and after the treatment. How do we do that? Here are the DSM IV criteria for major depressive disorder. I chose that source because it is publicly available. You can confirm it by looking at the DSM IV itself, of course. Note that many of the criteria are subjective. Some others might be reasonably objectively assessed by following the subject (without his knowledge) for two weeks or so. How likely is it that the drug trials your "cited" studies analyzed did this? I can't tell, of course, but I find it very plausible that much of the assessment could involve the subjects reporting how they feel.

Normally I try to give science journalists the benefit of the doubt. They have a tough job and for the most part they are not trained scientists, so mistakes and misunderstandings are bound to occur. However, your posts here have demonstrated your willingness to appeal to emotional statements, misrepresentations, strawmen, and other poor tactics.

Disclaimer: I am not a physician. I am an academic researcher involved with drug trial analysis. I see you've been panned by physicians as well though.

A lot of people -- like the author of Talking Back to Prozac -- claim that some drug trials (especially for popular antidepressants) are compromised to the point that getting drugs like Prozac approved required requires a surprising amount of massaging of the data from drug trials just to get to the point where the drug seems to perform better than placebo. This New Scientist article from last year about how antidepressants' effects may have been exaggerated, has a good definition of a particular form of publication bias that is apparently common:

It's called the "file-drawer problem". A study fails to produce interesting results, so is filed away and forgotten - a practice that might mean antidepressants don't work as well as doctors think.

If that's true, then it's a gambit that would get less and less effective over time. Certainly, drug companies have a very large commercial interest in boosting the apparent effectiveness of their drugs by "enhancing" the results of their trials through selectively ignoring results they don't like. It does sound somewhat conspiracy theory-ish, but it seems like there's increasing evidence. Plus, if it's true that antidepressants are less effective than many doctors believed in the past, that's more evidence that the trials drew incorrect conclusions.

Deal with which structures? The structures in daily life? Or prison structures, like are found in most schools? What crime have children committed (besides being young) that they deserve to have to learn how to live inside a prison instead of learn to live inside a healthy family and healthy neighborhood?

From:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
"""
Ask any schoolchild why they don't like school and they'll tell you. "School is prison." They may not use those words, because they're too polite, or maybe they've already been brainwashed to believe that school is for their own good and therefore it can't be prison. But decipher their words and the translation generally is, "School is prison."
Let me say that a few more times: School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison. School is prison.
Willingham surely knows that school is prison. He can't help but know it; everyone knows it. But here he writes a whole book entitled "Why Don't Students Like School," and not once does he suggest that just possibly they don't like school because they like freedom, and in school they are not free.
"""

How parents can best interact with their children is a complex topic, depending in part on the parent's temperment and the child's temperment. One resource:
http://www.motherstyles.com/
Another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting_styles

I would agree that *some* unschoolers (especially "radical" ones with young children) tend too far to permissive parenting. But, that does not invalidate the general concept of "unschooling" as defined by John Holt decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
"""
Unschooling refers to a range of educational philosophies and practices centering around allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play, household responsibilities, and social interaction, rather than through the confines of a conventional school. Exploration of activities is often led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.
"""

Just look at this one essay on how harmful grading is:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm

Or this on how pointless homework is:
http://www.thecaseagainsthomework.com/

Or this on how people are punished by "rewards" in school:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Or this on how the secret to a happy life is in part how we think about time in a balanced way (schools are unbalanced in that sense):
http://www.thetimeparadox.com/
http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studi

As John Taylor Gatto suggests, if you can only keep your kids out of school for a few years, the early years are most important to avoid.
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/18s.htm
"""
What to do?
    Take Melville's insight "I would prefer not to," from Bartleby, the Scrivener and make it your own watchword. Read Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych for a shock of inspiration about what really matters. Breaking the hold of fear on your life is the necessary first step. If you can keep your kid out of any part of the school sequence at all, keep him or her out of kindergarten, then first, second, and maybe third grade. Homeschool them at least that far through the zone where most of the damage is done. If you can manage that, they'll be okay.
    Don't let a world of funny animals, dancing alphabet letters, pastel colors, and treacly music suffocate your little boy or girl's consciousness at exactly the moment when big questions about the world beckon. Funny animals were invented by North German social engineers; they knew something important about fantasy and social engineering that you should teach yourself.
    Your four-year-old wants to play? Let him help you cook dinner for real, fix the toilet, clean the house, build a wall, sing "Eine Feste Burg." Give her a map, a mirror, and a wristwatch, let her chart the world in which she really lives. You will be able to tell from the joy she displays that becoming strong and useful is the best play of all. Pure games are okay, too, but not day in, day out. Not a prison of games. There isn't a single formula for breaking out of the trap, only a general one you tailor to your own specifications. ...
"""

So, by the time a kid is ten or so, they may be tough enough to survive in a prison-like environment as most schools without as much damage. Some might even thrive on it as long is they choose it themselves and know they can leave. Different kids have different needs and interests.
""Why Don't Students Like School?" Well, Duhhhh... "
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh

Unfortunately, for many kids, it is the opposite way usually, with school before homeschooling. The parents try school for a few years, when the most damage is done, and then homeschool the rest of the time after not liking the results of schooling. They may spend years trying to undo schooling and try to get kids to love learning again, and helping children unlearn a lot of consumerism, excessive stereotyped war-play, and a bad self-image that often comes from all that (of having your main role models be an authoritarian teacher and media-absorbed age-mates). A review of a related book I recommend to everyone that goes into some of these issues:
    "The War Play Dilemma"
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html

Just to be clear, I think many school teachers are wonderful people trying their hardest to make a broken system work as best as they can. It's the "abstraction that has escaped its handlers" (Gatto's phrase) that is evil, not most of the people who are trapped inside that system.

I'm shocked by the amount of ignorance in the comments here about schooling and the reason for alternatives. I can only think the "Stockholm Syndrome" is in play. With that said, I did not understand these issue when I was in school, either, and I resisted accepting them even when they were pointed out once or twice back then.

Some links:

"John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

http://www.school-survival.net/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200909/why-don-t-students-school-well-duhhhh
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/18s.htm
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/freeschool.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/faqabouthomescho.html

My writings:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html

From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling
"""
During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy
Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early
Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by
other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early
Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.
They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8-12 not only lacked the
anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores
began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young
children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They
presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency,
nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education
classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier
enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that
orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent,
with superior long term effects - even though the mothers were mentally
retarded teenagers - and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced
children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical
western children, by western standards of measurement.[9]
Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made
at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results
that were cut short by enro

Being able to sense the drug incoming, I was able to examine my reaction over the years.

THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin-Mediated Attachment System) How to run a con

Schneir on Oxytocin

Oxytocin.

Now, you know that whole "chemistry" thing, where some people strike you as attractive and some just... don't? That's in part determined by the differences between your immune systems.

That works because if the genes that code for your major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are similar to the other person's, you'll tend to find them less attractive than otherwise, and vice-versa. Why mate with someone who's immune to the same stuff you are? Your offspring won't have any survival advantage. Instead, evolution has selected for creatures that mate with partners whose immune systems are incompatible. Either because both parents tend to be unlikely to be sick at the same time, ensuring the presence of at least one caregiver. Or because some the offspring of such pairings get a mix of genes that features the the best bits of both parents. (Offspring that get the worst of both parents tend not to survive, but that's a problem for individuals, not the species.)

Love is just a chemical reaction in your brain, anyway. It's not magical, or sacred, or even very special. It's your brain recognizing the opportunity to mate with someone who matches your particular template for an ideal partner (usually based on early experiences, parents, and other external factors), and shooting you up with natural drugs to make you feel like it's way more than it really is.

Being able to sense the drug incoming, I was able to examine my reaction over the years.

THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin-Mediated Attachment System) How to run a con

Schneir on Oxytocin

Oxytocin.

Now, you know that whole "chemistry" thing, where some people strike you as attractive and some just... don't? That's in part determined by the differences between your immune systems.

That works because if the genes that code for your major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are similar to the other person's, you'll tend to find them less attractive than otherwise, and vice-versa. Why mate with someone who's immune to the same stuff you are? Your offspring won't have any survival advantage. Instead, evolution has selected for creatures that mate with partners whose immune systems are incompatible. Either because both parents tend to be unlikely to be sick at the same time, ensuring the presence of at least one caregiver. Or because some the offspring of such pairings get a mix of genes that features the the best bits of both parents. (Offspring that get the worst of both parents tend not to survive, but that's a problem for individuals, not the species.)

Love is just a chemical reaction in your brain, anyway. It's not magical, or sacred, or even very special. It's your brain recognizing the opportunity to mate with someone who matches your particular template for an ideal partner (usually based on early experiences, parents, and other external factors), and shooting you up with natural drugs to make you feel like it's way more than it really is.

Except primates are not all vegetarians. Many use sticks to dig out insects, chimpanzees hunt and use sticks to dig out termites to eat.

Falcon

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200706/ten-politically-incorrect-truths-about-human-nature

The transplant thing has been observed, but so far I think it's only anecdotal evidence (maybe a bunch of people made stuff up, but so far I'll accept the reports on face value). Not aware of big research going on about it.

But I won't be surprised if scientists finally find out that your organs (or transplanted organs) can influence what sort of foods/drinks you'd want to consume[1], or even who you want to mate with. It does make some sense from an evolutionary advantage point of view.

[1] Like fried chicken and beer: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1096219000000135

And if your entire immune system can change after a liver transplant, it means you're not just getting a liver - it's not quite so "neat and clean" as that.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/teen-changes-immune-system/story-e6frf00r-1111115390103

So if the donor's stem cells manage to leak out and help form neurons in the recipient's brain or "stomach brain"[2], why shouldn't there be changes?

[2] The Enteric Nervous System:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199905/our-second-brain-the-stomach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system

Who is the boss? From the point of view of the ENS, the "central nervous system" (aka brain/CNS) might just be a means to keeping the ENS satisfied.

ENS to CNS: "Hey CNS go eat a double cheese burger!".
CNS: "Hmm, I feel like eating a double cheese burger, lets do a lot of complicated stuff like driving, walking etc so that I can eat that".

Of course the CNS could say, "Must resist, have to stick to diet".

You can deny it all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that marriage (among people with with European ancestry, anyway) was essentially a financial transaction for millennia. That didn't start to change until the mid 1500's, when the Catholic church stepped in and demanded that marriages be approved by priests.

Obligatory bullying ref:

Big, Bad Bully

Excellent article on the phenomenon of bullying. Gave me a lot of insight into the dynamic.

Some very good points, but as I understand it (if you'll pardon my lack of references), the often conflicting commands of the Quran are a large part of the problem. For every peaceful/sensible command there is a bloodthirsty/unpleasant one that a hateful preacher can counter it with. The same can be said for the Bible of course, but it does make me wonder why God's prophets can't just be consistent with themselves.

As an aside, it may not really be the Quran that is at fault with regards to suicide bombings, but the sexual mores of arab culture (see point 4), which due to polygamy, leave a large pool of young men with no wife and no access to casual sex. Far easier to whip people up into an angry frenzy if they're not getting any.

There was also a more indepth article about this last year in Psychology Today: http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml

here's a list from Wikipedia that cites several sources. here is an article discussing the relationship between Autism/Asperger and genius. here is an article on Psychology Today that discusses a growing movement within academic circles that views autism and similar disorders as just part of the spectrum of neurodiversity that our society is comprised of. and if you do a search for "Geek Syndrome" you can find a Wired article that i believe may have been on Slashdot a few years ago. i also recall reading something a few years ago on PubMed that discussed the correlation between genius and mental disorder.

another interesting paper i read on PubMed also discussed the evolutionary advantage of Bipolarism. basically, the author(s) argued that while Bipolarism/Manic-Depression may present an evolutionary disadvantage to the individual, the genes have been perpetuated because it fosters altruistic actions which coincide with kin selection.

all of this makes a certain amount of sense to me. i've always felt that bipolarism endows an individual with greater capacity for emotional experience. this can be a beneficial trait to artists/musicians since good artwork is defined by its ability to evoke strong emotions, and, likewise, good artwork is often inspired by emotional trauma in the artist's life. but greater emotional depth can also enable one to better empathize with others, which could potentially lead to altruistic behavior.

The real question about Clinton is not that he did it while in office. After all it is a powerful position. Men do not ascend to positions of power and be choir boys.

The only problem with his sex is that he got caught. You should be more worried about a man who ascends to high office and has tons of power and does not get some nookie on the side.

I know this is not PC to say, but alas it is a truism

Read and pay attention to number 9 http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-4359.html

I ran across a very insightful article a few years back, which is still just as true today:

A Nation of Wimps

The idea is that by over-protecting our children, we deprive them of the opportunity to learn for themselves, to learn to assess a situation and choose an appropriate course of action. In the long run, it actually hurts them, because they haven't had the chance to develop those skills.

We really cannot prevent terrorism in an open society - our long-term choice is between living in a paranoid dictatorship and learning to live with the (statistically minor) risks of terrorism.

*DING* *DING* *DING*

Stop the commenting, folks, we have a winner!

Stop fearing the threats that are not likely to happen. That means 9/11 needs to be marginalized. Remember the victims, but forget the attackers. Ignore whatever the hell it was they stood for.

For anyone who is interested, Psychology Today had an article on how bad we are at evaluating risks, and had an interesting quiz on testing your grasp of risk. I've repeated it here:

How good is your grasp of risk?

1. What's more common in the United States, (a) suicide or (b) homicide?
2. What's the more frequent cause of death in the United States, (a) pool drowning or (b) falling out of bed?
3. What are the top five causes of accidental death in America, following motor-vehicle accidents, and which is the biggest one?
4. Of the top two causes of nonaccidental death in America, (a) cancer and (b) heart disease, which kills more women?
5. What are the next three causes of nonaccidental death in the United States?
6. Which has killed more Americans, bird flu or mad cow disease?
7. How many Americans die from AIDS every year, (a) 12,995, (b) 129,950, or (c) 1,299,500?
8. How many Americans die from diabetes every year? (a) 72,820, (b) 728,200, or (c) 7,282,000?
9. Which kills more Americans, (a) appendicitis or (b) salmonella?
10. Which kills more Americans, (a) pregnancy and childbirth or (b) malnutrition?

1. a
2. a
3. In order: drug overdose, fire, choking, falling down stairs, bicycle accidents
4. b
5. In order: stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes
6. No American has died from either one
7. a
8. a
9. a
10. b

.haeger

I just think about what kind of circumstances there must have been to make
someone think that blowing themselves up looks like something they would
contemplate.

I definitely don't think that it is OK for any of those scenarios.
The whole thing is messed up, and everyone involved probably needs
a good spanking, and some time in the corner to reflect.

There are policing agencies out there who already do similar things. Despite it's absense, they may explain that there's incontrevertible evidence that shows that the suspect is guitly, they just want a confession so that the trial goes faster and with less fuss/humiliation for others/etc...

Turns out that one can get a fairly large number of confessions that way, much like you apparently desire. The problem is, it's not all THAT uncommon for the confessions to be lies. Innocent people will lie and confess to horrible, horrible crimes. And a confession given to a jury is a really really good predictor of them finding the defendent guitly. Even if there's little to no other evidence. People tend to believe confessions, which is sort of confusing since they have to reconcile the idea that "this is a dangerous lunatic with no morals and a willingness to kill" against "this is an honest man, who will condemn himself to jail by giving a confession". Still, they manage it.

Feel free to read a bit more about the subject of false confessions here, on some webnotes for a college class here or even here(this last one is perhaps more likely to cherrypick it's evidence, but what it says appears to be true).

False confessions are a rather worrying thing to me, as once a person confesses, the police have a tendency to cease looking for other potential guilty parties. While it's possible some other person will eventually be found guilty and you get released, it's not really something that The System tries for. Makes 'em look bad if they accidentally put someone in jail and gave 'em a whole bunch of publicity as a convicted rapist.

Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment. Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men--the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls--but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto- 20070622-000002.xml

I think parent is right and this article seems to confirm it. It also relates to this article that I read the other day. The article is called "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature", pretty good although some of the thing it says are very politically incorrect, it rings true. How it relates to this topic is that this article states that Polygamy favors women while monogamy favors man, since men seem to have a larger "fitness margin". So while few will be fit enough to mantain many women, that will in turn take away from the rest of the guys that are less fit, thus less attractive to women.

Maybe because most terrorists are Muslim

Note #4