BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 17 Jan 23 - 12:04 PM

> It isn't that taste is mostly smell, it is that taste and smell are
> needed to produce FLAVOR.

Taste, smell, texture, and sight. Herself can smell whether something is off as soon as she's seen the Use-By date.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jan 23 - 05:32 PM

The key to gaining more control of your autonomic nervous system is through breath control. Your breath is part automatic and part conscious to begin with. It can help you to cope with extreme cold, anxiety, and as you know even music.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 11:43 AM

I am half-anosmic. Can't smell stink but fragrance, yes.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 01:08 PM

That is also a trait of the Zeta Reticuli who smell like ammonia to begin with. Do you have bumps on your scalp too?

The Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico has been turned into a transmitter to broadcast Tik Tok into space in an effort to attract the attention of very silly aliens. https://public.nrao.edu/ask/can-the-vla-antennas-be-used-as-transmitters/

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 02:36 PM

Neurotoxins in your world

Forty-one million IQ points. That’s what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.

Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.



In my opinion belief systems can be as bad as neurotoxins.
Examples are Scientology, Essential oils, QAnon, Trumpism, and a million other dangerous belief systems.

While sleep is our natural means of cleansing neurotoxins, a good nights sleep will not help a bad belief system. Even Steve has a loss of common sense regarding a few of his beliefs.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 04:42 PM

Well, serial troll, first of all I don't "believe" things. I want evidence. And, as you probably know but don't give a flying shite about, the invention of IQ by Eysenck and similar quasi-Nazis has long been discredited. Not least because of the overt racial connotations (maybe you haven't noticed, so I should be kind). So choose your professors more carefully is my advice.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 05:21 PM

Right. IQ. I was tested at primary school and I did another supervised test at the age of 20 (it cost me two quid to send it off and get it marked). I can't remember my scores but in both tests I was placed in the top two-percentile of the population (and was repeatedly invited to join Mensa).

None of it means a bloody thing. It is measuring how good you are at doing the tests and how much you've practised the tests. Nothing more. Whoever invented this stuff didn't have a clue what "intelligence" actually is, and we still don't know. It may not even be a "thing" at all. I can't say I'm surprised that you try to predicate your "wisdom" on the doings of these charlatans. Maybe your IQ isn't high enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 06:47 PM

Yeah yeah water's wet. Once again you missed the point and are off on a tangent IQ descriptor in language. Where you lack common sense, for one, is not even looking at 4 decades of actual research on the medicinal value of fungi. You don't want evidence you want either Victimhood or abject Trollism. Like a pendulum, you go from one extreme to the other.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 07:15 PM

Victimhood is the first and most central feature of fascism.
I believe some people are exasperated at your criticism of my being human and you being a pathological human from my POV.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jan 23 - 07:36 PM

I don't go as deep as that. You are simply a raving nutter, and you reinforce that with every post! Had you stepped back for a minute before posting your bigging-up of IQ, you would have realised that hanging your "science" on such discredited racist nonsense was opening you up to the sort of criticism that would make anyone bar you recoil from. You're not only a serial troll, you're also a racist sympathiser. Go back to your mushroom stash and do less harm.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 06:55 AM

Its is your delusion that I am the author of the article from the Atlantic. I am not but it is well written and you come off sounding like a senile curmudgeon. You really should get that check-up. You might be able to slow the progression of Alzheimer's.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 07:20 AM

You two squabbling brats are allowed to ignore each other, you know.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 07:29 AM

I am proud that I 'actively' resisted the draft and induction into the military to kill yellow people from Viet Nam. I later received a full Presidential pardon.
I was at the MLK speech at the Lincoln Memorial after a 6 hour bus trip.
My POV is shaped by the fact I have never been harmed or wronged by a black person but only by whites in my lifetime.

I am biographical and you are a shadow.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 07:45 AM

Enough said, our true colors are apparent. Mom used to say you should never argue with crazy folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 08:24 AM

Nobody knows what intelligence is, yet. Or how to test it.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 08:41 AM

The 2000 year old thoughts of a desert culture was intelligent for its time but much of it is erased and changed. The intelligence of another culture across the ocean is much different although they did co coexist.
The Mayan was much more cosmologically based than the Jewish culture although the Spaniards later did a fairly complete job of burning all the Mayan books. Knowing what they were truly about is as hard as determining the thoughts of the most intelligent dinosaurs as they watched the setting sun.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 09:02 AM

"Nobody knows what intelligence is, yet. Or how to test it."

Well said, Mrrzy. The scoundrels who came up with the concept of "IQ" and the claim that it could be measured via silly paper tests have used it for nefarious, mostly racist purposes only, and "scientists" who use data derived from that lack both credibility and integrity.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 03:58 PM

> Nobody knows what intelligence is, yet. Or how to test it.

Basically, if you can do a deterministic test for it, it's not intelligence. Researchers repeatedly fall into the following circular trap:

* One group says: "*This* can't be done by a machine, so it must be a sign of intelligence."
* Another group then says, "If we build a machine that can do *this*, the machine will be intelligent."
* The second (or a third) group succeeds in producing *that* machine ,which can do *this*, much to everybody's surprise.
* The first group then says, "If *this* can be done by *that* machine, we were mistaken. Let's find something else ...."

.... and we repeat.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 04:26 PM

I think another myth about our brain is that Chimps share 99% of our DNA. I think other factors make us much more different.
Picture a Chimp playing Chopin but not very well. I don't think so. Does that one percent difference contain so much difference between our species? It seems bigger than 1%

We are actually called Homo Sapien Sapien. (Hominid who knows he will die) This might be another myth.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 04:44 PM

Evolution has evolved different forms of life after various extinction events on Earth. Life could have evolved very differently with the smallest of alternative events. Suppose the first chordate fish all died out, we would not be here or with only 1,000 hominids surviving suppose a flood wiped them all out.

Most sci-fi writers approach different forms of life evolving from different environments which led to different abilities and senses.
This makes some profound differences in the possibilities of life around various life-friendly stars on planets or moons.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 04:45 PM

Another post riddled with inaccuracy and wrong perspectives.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 05:55 PM

> I think another myth about our brain is that Chimps share 99% of our DNA.

They do, or nearly so, but not everything is in the genotype --- after all, we also share something like 60% of our DNA with cabbages (which might explain why I feel a bit green some mornings). What chimps (and cabbages) are lacking isn't intelligence, but extelligence: speech and writing in particular, and education in general. Once you get as far as clay tablets, papyri, books, printing, computers etc, the information is outside any one particular organism, so it can survive the death of said individual, and sometimes the death of an entire civilisation.

Side note: What I'm waiting for is for someone to crack Etruscan script. We might then get to see what the early Roman civilisation looked like from the outside.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 06:12 PM

"They share 99% of our DNA" is meaningless. Oh, if life were only so simple.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 07:00 PM

> "They share 99% of our DNA" is meaningless.

Not entirely meaningless, but a bit, well, incomplete in isolation; you need a mother, a world of the right temperature and full of oxygen and nutrients, and (in Hom Sap's case) a culture, to complete the spell. I find recipes somewhat lacking in nutrition, unless they're printed on rice paper.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 07:46 PM

Well the problem is that "DNA" has become a catch-all in the realm of popular science (or potted science). DNA is one hundred percent shared by all living organisms bar some viruses. The real science talks instead about genome sequences, the millions of individual nucleotide differences, insertions and deletions, mutation, gene activation and inactivation, gene duplications and a lot more besides. "We share 99% of DNA" is a less-than-half-truth lifted straight out of the pages of New Scientist or some other multicoloured glossy non-peer-reviewed mag. It doesn't help.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 08:11 PM

"We are actually called Homo Sapien Sapien. (Hominid who knows he will die) This might be another myth."

Well here we go again. We are actually designated Homo sapiens sapiens. The name is Latin for "wise man" and has nothing to do with knowing that we will die. Note correct spellings and appropriate capitalisation. Accuracy is everything in science. The second "sapiens" is the presumed subspecies designation which applies to all living humans. The question of subspecies in humans is somewhat fraught, as all the claimed subspecies bar our one are extinct. The Neanderthals have been variously assigned to a subspecies of Homo sapiens and to a species in their own right. Who knows. Not me. Arguments for numerous subspecies of humans have lost a lot of ground in recent decades.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 08:24 PM

A cracking headline from the Guardian website (knowing them, they'll fix it soon):

Scientists discover emperor penguin colony using satellite images

Damn clever, those birds!

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 10:02 PM

I do not pretend to know why ONLY left-hand proteins are involved in life on Earth. Perhaps a right handed protein life form could exist.
Cracking open that chestnut could lead to more mysteries of life in the universe.

Has anyone ever seen a human that has the appearance of being a throw back of a Neanderthal? I think people who look like they are a throwback to Cro Magnon are very attractive. Perhaps some of these people could actually share DNA sequences. My point is we are an amalgam of more than we know but there are no other sapien species for us to mingle with. We might hit an evolutionary dead end and could be best served by more than mutations alone. I haven't thought this out yet but I know there are dangers in a lack of diversity or growing mono crops.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 03:45 PM

There is only one sapien [sic] species as "sapiens" is the specific name. Duh. You can look at people and see Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon all you like. The thing is, we can only guess what they actually looked like from the relatively limited material we have. Genetic variation is rife in we sexual beings, so be careful who you accuse of looking like a Neanderthal. Perhaps you should google genotype/phenotype and spend the next few years thinking things through a bit more.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 07:53 PM

It is a fact we can share some Neanderthal DNA IN OUR SAPIEN GENOME.
I don't know about Cro Magnon, do you?

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 08:47 PM

We can share some amoeba DNA in our genome. You're seriously out of your depth. I've tried to explain "sapiens" to you but you don't listen.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 09:30 PM

So you didn't know:

Some 40,000 years ago, Cro-Magnons -- the first people who had a skeleton that looked anatomically modern -- entered Europe, coming from Africa. A group of geneticists, coordinated by Guido Barbujani and David Caramelli of the Universities of Ferrara and Florence, shows that a Cro-Magnoid individual who lived in Southern Italy 28,000 years ago was a modern European, genetically as well as anatomically

The Cro-Magnoid people long coexisted in Europe with other humans, the Neandertals, whose anatomy and DNA were clearly different from ours. However, obtaining a reliable sequence of Cro-Magnoid DNA was technically challenging.
The risk in the study of ancient individuals is to attribute to the fossil specimen the DNA left there by archaeologists or biologists who manipulated it," Barbujani says. "To avoid that, we followed all phases of the retrieval of the fossil bones and typed the DNA sequences of all people who had any contact with them."

The researchers wrote in the newly published paper: "The Paglicci 23 individual carried a mtDNA sequence that is still common in Europe, and which radically differs from those of the almost contemporary Neandertals, demonstrating a genealogical continuity across 28,000 years, from Cro-Magnoid to modern Europeans."

The results demonstrate for the first time that the anatomical differences between Neandertals and Cro-Magnoids were associated with clear genetic differences. The Neandertal people, who lived in Europe for nearly 300,000 years, are not the ancestors of modern Europeans.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 10:16 PM

CATCH UP. You're at least 15 years behind

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 04:03 AM

I'm puzzled as to how you think that your unattributed and uncommented-on copy-and-paste negates anything I've said.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 07:37 PM

I know who i am and it is not an ego. Your negativity has no effect on me because I know you have little comprehension of my narrative. The things we can say about life let alone consciousness and intelligence is that it is self-organized all the way down to the organization of the cell.
As I have always noticed the conscious mind is not the bass of everything, it is the unconscious mind. If you will, the conscious mind is a monkey atop an elephant
THAT CAN PROD THE ELEPHANT TO GO THIS WAY OR THAT BUT THE ELEPHANT GOES THE WAY IT NEEDS OR WANTS.
The monkey will have a first-person perspective and can make decisions and makes a model of free will but the unconsious system of the elephant is paramount.
Our monkey can make models of the world we see and touch but those models are only an interface perception. The world of our thoughts is not bound by our constructed models.
You may have had flying dreams in your dreams unbound by conscious models. For those who know about psychedelics, you may see how your conscious models become desynchronized.

When the conscious mind chooses its own local incentives greed, status, and evil, that results can threaten its own species' survival. These narcissists can even use the concept of love
to destroy humanity. Germany certainly loved their strongman. This has happened millions of times. With world-ending oil greed and nuclear weapons I do think mankind has much more than a thousand years.
Taming the self incentives of the conscious mind has been attempted throughout history to help human morality to project itself into the future with mixed results.
The differences in culture are obvious between the native Americans and the western whiteman. One treats its environment with deep respect and the other does not.
This is why I see the ego of the conscious mind as the most dangerous part of our psyche. Those that are enlightened know how to go beyond their ego desires.
Changing the mindset, philosophy, the paradigm of everyone on Earth is not likely to happen. I see an altered state of consciousness as a hopeful path.
Experience usually outperforms classroom instruction. You would choose a surgeon with the most experience and not the one with classroom learning.
I am not an anarchist but I do not embrace religion or state control of thought. I spend the time you spend on your phone simply thinking and don't use my phone.

Einstien said life goes against the grain of spacetime. What he means is that for a time we grow, heal, and become more organized and better while entropy takes a back seat.
Eventually, entropy takes over again along with the aging of the inanimate world. However, on the quantum level, a proton does not decay and seems immortal.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 07:43 PM

There are times when a narcissist may be good for the tribe but that would be in the event of a total collapse of civilization and people would have to learn new means of survival. The ego personality would have benefits many others may lack.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 07:49 PM

The power of the unconscious mind which has evolved for 3.8 billion years knows how to digest food and use the building blocks and created proteins to create growth and energy. It does everything the conscious mind has no idea how to accomplish step by self-correcting step.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 08:08 PM

"Your negativity has no effect on me because I know you have little comprehension of my narrative."

My alleged "negativity" usually takes the form of polite enquiry. And I take your accusation of my having little comprehension of your narrative to be a badge of honour. In fact, I'd be amazed if anyone else here could claim to have much comprehension of your rather tortuous and unfocused "narrative." I'd challenge any defender of yours to give me a rundown as to what that rather lengthy recent post of yours actually means. And you are the last person I'd ever ask to provide such a rundown. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 09:03 AM

It's not about you although you wish it were. It's not about censoring or controlling thought. It's not what you can understand from another person's lifetime of specific inquiry in 5 minutes. It is about experience and consciousness. It seems you are stuck in a loop that will not allow you to comprehend. Maybe one or two other people can glean something here but they are free to do so or not. I like you have most of my public contributions to society behind me. I'm just being honest and not an automaton of repetitive redundant insults.

While my thoughts are highly compressed I believe they are transparent.
I accept the notion of enlightenment beyond the popular term of "woke".

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 09:17 AM

Experience AND Consciousness

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 09:36 AM

As a matter of fact, I'm contributing far more to society as a retired chap far more than I did when I was working for a living. You really do make lots of unsupportable assumptions that you think you can glean from the two-dimensional world of typewritten stuff you read here. In fact, I don't try to hide any facets of my persona. A few tuniferous comments, not enough maybe (I'm a tunester, not a songster), a good few jokes (real ones, googled or not), some recipes, a bit of leftie political argiebargie and me putting you right about science. Bejaysus, that last one is SO hard... That's about it. But enough about me. Do your homework first, write in good English, cut out all the online pretence about yourself and, you never know, we'll all end up loving you to bits.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 08:08 AM

As a teacher I can see why it was less of a contribution than you are as a retired chap. Your teaching is still all about your notion of punishment and accusation.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 08:13 AM

Well you haven't a clue about that and you shouldn't be saying it. By the way, I love your dangling modifier.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 09:36 AM

Seems to me you screwed up more Brit kids than you helped.
It also seems to me that making reasonable mistakes is essential for learning.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Rain Dog
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 09:46 AM

How many British people have you spoken to?
How many of those were people who were taught by Steve Shaw?

Not many I guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 09:52 AM

None. He's just a frustrated has-been.

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 10:30 AM

https://news.virginia.edu/content/deep-dive-neuroscience-discoveries

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 11:54 AM

That was tantamount to an accusation of child abuse, Steve. You are taking it ver calmly! Well done :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 11:59 AM

No problem, Dave. As Denis Healey once said after being criticised by Geoffrey Howe, it's like being savaged by a dead sheep...

Subject: RE: BS: Neuroscience-how your brain really works
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 12:13 PM

And…100!