amanda more

As I recall around puberty there is a pruning of neurons. I know we now know there is more plasticity of the brain throughout adulthood than was once thought. I had long had a question of the energy source of brain cells. They need to be bathed in glucose but only recently have they found the insulin that enables glucose to go into the cells. Perhaps these types of cells would, oddly enough,do less "work" than other cell types. They could then afford to be more longlived? I just read of the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon. People have the memory but in the frontal lobes they don't have the ability to access it as they age. Is the shrinking of the frontal lobes representing cell death or poor energy utilization? It seems kind of odd that those memories do retain within us stored somewhere.

Houston, we have a disagreement. One can think of math then science then engineering. Math is the language of science. I could let X = scientist. Any scientist studying any science. I grow weary of the idea that detailists have found the road to nirvana through a type of exactness. Generalists or practitioners in the real world have then stepped out of the realm of science, according to those into a tree instead of the forest. If a statistician was to come into your classroom and count the number of students there, then that work would not be probabilistic and subjective. It would also be a tree. Science is however more interested than in just a data point. Even if the height of the students was taken and the mean and median was found that is actually not subjective and probabilistic. It is exact. (within measurement variance) Science is encumbered with doing more than adding together a huge number of data points. As one looks at a forest, then one has essentially lost the characteristics of the individual tree. That loss is more than made up for in relevance. back to topic- one person's meaningless tree is another's treasured Bonsai. How does the above arguement play out when people form couples? Is there too much pressure today to have people have the same interests? Instead of seeing someone as part of a generation or in line with most in their gender is it so passe to do that we find ourselves wondering at our difficulties with Jane or George specifically individually? Could we benefit from allowing more difference from ourselves and considering group characteristics?

This thread is about IQ. I,personally, have absolutely no interest in this. But I'm odd. One guy at a coffee shop thought if he talked jazzy then everyone could get their ears talked off by his views on UFOS. I do not care. I told him if one landed a block away I would not be one of the ones who would go look. Equation to your heart's content. Start it as a new subject line. I am not checking physics or speculations for a reason. There is a huge body of knowledge that I will never know much of and lots I just can't be bothered with it. There is this kind of thinking. Now we could go on and on about George. He has this kind of thinking. We look on him as odd. But wait. Here is Jane. She also has this kind of thinking. The struggle may be if we color coded different groups of people then maybe it would be a more neutral evaluation. Having more of the kind of thinking measured on a test does not imply higher esteem. It is like saying the red colored M and Ms are somehow more elevated than the yellow ones. And is it really true that someone with athletic ability is, instead of a different category of M and M somehow the Duke, or Count or King in some kind of feudal system? A high IQ is a potential for genius. Derek Jeter could have had a test showing athletic promise. It doesn't make him a better person or a superior person and a high IQ doesn't make anyone of higher status than anyone else. We are kind of OK accepting that some are born with a level of natural athletic ability. Of these most will not make the major leagues. Why not accepting that some are born with a little more of just those skills measured on IQ tests? Especially since it may also test a different outlook on life? Unless George happens to run across Jane he may not fully appreciate the loneliness and lack of in depth in communication with others. By virtue of this highly complicated intricate modern era, personally, I have no problem finding a way to find the Georges and at least not crush them. The Derek Jeters of another generation may be born without the ground to play and run. We then won't have any more. Constant adamant consideration of George only and "that way he is" can be most counterproductive. Suppose Will liked to sit around and stare at a box every Sunday and Monday night in the fall? Although he may be surrounded by these creatures who never do it themselves, he can take heart. There are millions of others showing him that he is not alone. He is thus put in the group of green M and M's that watch football this much.

You do know enough to check the level of poison when doing anything chemical? Right? Oddly enough though common it may be, H2S is toxic. When I was new to a job as a mechanic in a chemical plant they looked to me. Despite alarms that were depended upon. I let them know when I smelled it. They were so used to it that they couldn't. They could unknowing get a toxic dose. Saying that- in the good old days of real chemistry sets I made it. Not enough to effect me. uh- not enough to effect me not enuf to effec me .............

Except this may be a case of someone who particularly enjoys the one person account over and above a scientific study. Even here he could have all the problems you mention and site them as benefits. Huge corporations can't site real data showing two year effectiveness for weightloss. So they report how they all have now so much "energy." The obesity epidemic is still actually intractable as far as I can see. Unless the 120,000 per person derivatives do crash (really off topic) At that point even with huge resources, people will suddenly need food. That is one way to stop obesity.

I think you have answered my question from another topic. As long as scientists stick to the herd behavior of antelopes they are cool. Once they look at humans though, they then are not traditional scientists. I assume biologists who do forest work you would consider traditional scientists. That individual tree has a bug on it. A data point. But that scientist may have a stronger interest in the forest or the ecosystem. By yours and it seems most people's reckoning then he loses being a traditional scientist if he generalizes something about the forest from his data points. Alternatively, you and many people find if he knows about the ecosystem, he may bring something with him to tell about the condition of the forest. For herds of human that would be considered subjective. Crime drops. Would it be out of line for science to notice there are less males in the 18 to 25 year old group? If so, why? Data gathering surely without any kind of ties to things that are of importance surely is not even really science?

As sexist as it is when one thinks of nursing one thinks of females. A guy benefits when he has married an able bodied female for nursing care. If he marries older he isn't as disadvantaged because he won't have societal pressure to do caretakering. While in this marriage (to an older woman) he has less need of nursing but benefits from mothering. The males in a marriage are as a general rule not good nurses or mothers. Although a guy who goes for young may find that as motivation enough to take care of himself. He may eat right and work out and go to doctors to attempt to keep up. Women may take care of themselves whether they marry someone younger or not.

CharonY Wrong. Meaningless? You want truckers to do what?

"That bridge will hold 20 tons" If one is a mathematician and a pure scientist it may be considered throwing numbers around. Is there scientific proof? Have you sent trucks across identical bridges and discovered when they collapse? Science is certainly a tool with some heavy mathematics underpinning what is relevant here. Arguments that belabor the lack of perfection in practical use in the real world are not of interest to me. Those individual trees. on topic: Steroids have shown that a lot of athletes who were assumed to be better than one in 100,000 in athletic ability have actually gamed the system. They might have been considered the "geniuses" of the athletic world. Baseball statistics do measure something. They may be measuring a faulty something. An IQ test could well be just as faulty. One would expect a series of questions would have all kinds of problems. Still, even steroid users who make it to the big leagues do have athletic prowess. IQ measures something. There will certainly we can all agree a higher potential in the upper pool of test scorers than the lower pool. Fulfilling high potential has to do with endeavors that are generally nonmenial jobs or pursuits. If we provide the environment for high productivity, if we try to at least not hang them out to dry then there are geniuses who will bloom into productive geniuses. And well genius is like a lot of things- I know em when I see em. I do have to admit I find it discomforting though that doctoring is as much an art as a science.

This is certainly old school stuff and many today do say this. Then why would it be possible that sleeping more means thinner people? At first look surely sleeping uses less calories?

The essence of science is mathematics. Mathematics is used for logic and what is called stochastic processes. Sorry that in the real world statistics means a lot. More than hearing from one person's personal account however much your heart may go out to them. You might consider that you already use statistics. You feel exhausted but figure your odds of sleeping on the grass is safer than the highway. People can be lied to in thousands of ways. It seems a shame that a little arithmetic is somehow weighted so differently that people rather listen to George than the AMA. This is retrospective studies. They show how many have changed say from last year. The point is however poor the crystal balls are that culturally each one distorts how things are and have been getting by in the present. I am thoroughly tired of the idea that it is distortion to ever talk about the forest when we can be so exacting and more exacting about a tree. So what? My interests lie in the forest although others may jump much more quickly to the ecosystem. So lambasting real thought this way does nothing to advance what I consider on topic. I will say that is one reason that educated people whatever the IQ or if genius or not can lose patience rather quickly with others. Perhaps impatience is a well correlated characteristic of genius? Although not in the definition exactly.

"lower classes" as in say lower middle class middle middle class and upper middle class The study i was thinking about had something to do with those in poverty advancing to the middle class. Not being versed in England English I can't quibble on the vernacular. So would you like not a wager but a guess. _______ % of Americans advancing from poverty to the middle class ________ % of Britishers advancing from poverty to the middle class

Statistically, a male lives longer if married. Women may be up for the risk if it means they have a better shot at offspring. People who aren't OK off are still having children- just not marrying. Again here people may be willing to do risky things in other aspects of their life- but center on one particular behavior which engenders fear? I think if you don't have a society strongly indoctrinating the ones without the biological imperative to couple in a deep way, then they don't. I also think that many are comforted by a kind of media lie regarding not only their infinite chances in the future but the James Bond life of singlehood. Instead of the fifties "You are not a man until you have a family" it has become "How can anyone have been so unlucky as to have been caught with any dose of responsibility."

I think that there seems to be a big misunderstanding regarding science and nutrition. On a news segment, this one old guy only ate hot dogs and had lived on them for years. So idiosyncratic diet may not be immediately life threatening. Just don't even try to envision that what you describe has any strong support in science. You can really do what you want. I recently met a 40year old who had been vegan for ten years. She said she felt great until she didn't. Had no B12 for those years. The impression I got is that she expects to have permanent difficulty. Science knows about that one but can't possibly know them all. At least not now. So I am confidant in saying there is no double blind scientific study that has proven a substance that you surmise would be of benefit to health in any way. If you hate the taste so you don't eat much of it then you could lose weight. But you could go on a hot dog diet and lose weight.

Well we all make personal choices. Just because a technology is available to do something doesn't mean there is a reason to do it. I wonder how many technological innovations ever get much science regarding benefits behind them?

Gees, one would think anyone using measurement here is against mom, America and apple pie. Give me an example say in the world of herd behavior of antelope. For descriptions of natural phenomena such as the herd behavior of antelopes one would generally find very little to quibble about regarding certain defined characteristics. Few things in science really have the accuracy everyone seems to demand from IQ. Why? I am astounded at cultural differences clouding everyone's perceptions. There is this very blind American Horatio Algerism. It is the American religion. Fine, but true believers don't acknowledge their religious zeal. Isn't it well known that those born even with in utero nutritional deficiencies say have the exact same chance of making six figures as those born with already paid for Ivy League educations? Really? On the flipside in England "everyone knows" that the lower classes can't really make it out of their class. Are we left with Horatio Algerism versus European fatalism? So, class,money what do they have to do with anything. I ask you to acknowledge your rose colored spectacles or dark shady sunglasses. I'd like to wonder from some -quantifiable- (ah yes imperfect- and rife I suppose with lots of socio-politico-historical analysis) concept here. Like if one can see that 160 IQ people are being measured on something are there enough non-menial jobs in this country even? And perhaps do the jobs even exist for people who have this -something-? If lots of these positions providing a living wage are going begging then by some measure this group of people aren't fulfilling a kind of potential that is readily available. Are we utilizing the pool of let's say -high scorers- here or letting them languish? Maybe no one will ever be convinced that genius has any relation to some list of questions. However we believe, it can be possible as an initial order of magnitude to talk about genius and IQ. Potential is a seed which has fallen on the ground. If we stick them all on a dessert we will get no green shoots. We may not have to provide well tended moist soil but we can at least see how these seeds are doing. We might also wonder if we would have genius well represented in our culture if we leave this particular group completely on parched ground. For me genius is both the seed and the future product of the flower that will have bloomed. The seeds don't need a cutoff IQ. But a study may. Can you guess the percent in America and then the percent in England who are able to be upwardly mobile from poverty to the middle class? More math here. Make me look this up.

What? Really? Maybe that explains things as diverse as calcium channel blockers and economic collapse. Ah, it is a must to decide a hardcore objective just pat yourself on the back for being decisive? Damn the torpedos- full speed ahead. Who here has not gone through an iterative process where you realize that won't quite work then tweak it or back to the drawing board to begin again? There is not a cradle-to-grave objective today if there ever was one. A good model for behavior might be based on the two sides of the brain itself. If more people listened to a kind of gestalt regarding their gut feelings and analytical sense they wouldn't have handed Matloff billions. If TI is Texas Instruments, sell. You heard it here first. Now to the actual inquiry: If Computer Engineering gives you a good dose of undergraduate general engineering courses you will be well rounded in science just from that. You will have a much better chance then on working on your dreams after a simple BS degree as opposed to the world of post-doc slavery. If the only way is to continue at university it would be trivial to do Physics gradwork with some makeup on fun physics and perhaps math undergrad stuff. Your undergrad return should lead you to interact enough with grad students to understand college politics. I think you will find many are primarily motivated by their Visa status which prevents them from enjoying work in industry. With money comes power. Better to pull down cash at 25 and sock it away. Right there you then have the luxury to pick and choose who and where you will land for further work,education. Now here we already have two clashing objectives. The best place in the world to actually do what you want to do is Silicon Valley. Clashing with a high cost for a studio apartment restraining the savings thing. Oh,oh. If you haven't secured a significant other in time to move there it has to have a male/female ratio close to Alaska. That may be another objective? Thinking there are now 3 and counting. Life. Doesn't lend itself well to programming. Alas.

I had a dog tied to the front porch (jumped, tunneled otherwise) Humans walking by were probably convinced that the interior environment was more enriching. I am not even sure if life indoors is all that enriching for humans. But I noted that for him every passing smell, movement was of interest. I was wondering since we share so much if Chimpanzees had more going for them in an olfactory sense. I do so love Pubmed yet those darn genetic studies abstracts seem especially obtuse: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15687286 So perhaps we did very recently give away some nuance of a sweet flower smell and presumably our brain uses that for something else. Like a name. As I recall Shakespeare had a few lines lamenting that . . .

You also mentioned wanting to wait to be economically better off. The data show that even among the wealthy upper 17% 46% got there from two earner families. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_States The people who have married under 35 right now are better off. So a 35 year old woman has had some men taken off the market. I think I am also discounting because I haven't met any young American male with a bank account. So he finds he needs the toys he has or is in the vast majority who don't have college degrees and don't have the bucks. When they say shrinking middle class, this recession has destroyed middle class wages for skilled workers. So, he feels he can't support himself in the style he is used to very well already. Right now 60% of college students are female. People used to want to be useful to others. They were able to see a certain truth that there can be a utility to interacting. Now they see singleness as just fun. It is branded that way in this culture. So a significant other would be some kind of drag then. Whatever happened to people wanting to go through life struggles together supporting each other? If one met a realistic honest person is that off-putting because then the truth and reality of life rears its ugly head?

I still want mathspeak. Odd there is only one web reference (which makes it suspect not that I looked hard) so the validity is in question. Because IQ is not a true gaussian function there are more people over 160 IQ than that would estimate. Thank goodness. So for one in a thousand that comes to 300,000 in the USA. Many are children. I imagine few are incarcerated. So from that and various intense occupations could we guess how many are out among us doing great stuff? I don't think it is just gumption but can also be a measure of the level of meritocracy. And diversity. I love the TV show Big Bang Theory.

It is a double bind. They hate to be shown the fallacy of their logic. They hate it when something nonsensical like emotion is brought in. But alas as logical as a computer is, a human isn't. And if a human doesn't at least mention art, beauty and emotion then it is a cold argument. Also a fallacious one. So in a horrible economic collapse all the smart logical ones do themselves in while the sainted fanatics sail along. That would seem to be eminently logical to you?

The truth is that most people who convince themselves they are reasoning in a logical fashion about this have- guess what? A brain with a deficit in neurotransmitters. The intense research has I suppose created some level of cognitive dissonance that goes against a certain amount of male centered self determinism. It is really a kind of narcissism to believe that control is to be worshiped? It also shows a bit of immaturity. People who believe they are being logical about this then turn out to hold polar opposite views regarding other things. They couch their personal knee jerk reactions with this kind of rhetoric. Medical expenditures are nontrivial. Costs are not unimportant but if this obsessively targets your thinking then consider other spending. Tell me in an exacting deliberate fashion all the ways a glass is half empty. Convince others. You have lied. No matter how logical you consider yourself. Stockbrokers love to get a hold of doctors. Just because one is brilliant in one field it doesn't mean you cannot be a sucker in everything else. In fact you will have a chance to be blinded by your past success. Don't males hate it when females say something out of left field? So here goes it. I asked a philosophy professor this question once. Instead of stepping through all those freaking terms they have let's use an example. It all comes down to pondering something seemingly nonsensical like this: "Is it OK to go to the moon for the view?"

Ah,Marat my sister is a doctor. A prescription is neither a philosophical treatise or in any way even a well reasoned argument. It is a mechanic ordering up some brake pads. May decide then to replace the spring. As sad as it is that car will end its days. The half empty/half full argument works. Submit yourself to an analysis of your Dopamine and Seratonin systems (ah yes well we may not be quite there yet) and suddenly logic evaporates. I just had someone posit that he was a computer and everyone should be. So, "When someone has the part of his brain regarding emotion damaged he just wants to sit. " I said. Why do you logically get up in the morning? Because you feel like it. Why do you logically brush your teeth- because you feel like it. As much as I adore math, logic must yield to a kind of philosophy at least. We are not computers. It is so great they have this term now PTSD but for health professionals, many used to call it burnout. Allthough aren't warzones and ER's rather similar? And well I was premed for two years and if I had a quarter for everytime I said "I am glad I'm not a doctor" Surely you were the kind of kid that understood that every day was a kind of denial. I always wondered how authors from New York and California coauthor. The book I am considering writing (generally I need to get a flu for nine days to write one) has this working title. Buzzkill "Why We Avoid Reality At All Costs" But I am still trying to answer the question. The original direction was to do something about the way scientists, engineers etc. are in a separate camp from the everyone else. The other group includes politicians and journalists. This is just too advanced and technological a society with almost every decision having a huge scientific component to be led by such ignorance. I tire of asking us to understand them. I want them up to speed to understand the elementary school version of us. I know someone who knows a tutor of a famous person. Now you heard it here first. It isn't like any of the handlers would let her contribute. Shhhh. Brittany Spears is good in math. So I wonder instead of my own feverish attempt (literally) to write, I might envision a group of ultra short essays by contributors. I just had this discussion with an astrophysicist where he told his class that science is the asking of how not of why. I let him know it was his experimental physicist bent. I didn't insult him further by telling him that I consider science as a tool much like one of an assortment of wrenches that I might use or not. The questions I will always ask are why? Using an economic argument from another post health cannot be done offshore. What underlying economics, logical difference is there between a person like Howard Hughes holding up in a hotel or a person in an ICU? Both are creating jobs and adding to the economy. I knew 20 year olds that had to be as high and disconnected as many in hospital beds. If one has ever felt anger at the morning alarm then getting to sleep in may have a different perspective. As bad a side effect as modern medicine has created with these issues there are some really good drugs. A line segment can be divided into small segments and then smaller still. There are an infinite number of line segments in a segment. Watching water boil may not only seem like an eternity but actually be one in those moments. Hard to believe when one is so active and vibrant but it may not be so bad to exist at that level for a certain number of albeit externally circumscribed moments. So instead of being a God one is relegated to a concierge. Even here the big picture might be that with all the costs here someone runs the cost benefit and decides to develop treatments for the disease. Have you ever met Dr. Bird? He seems fine with having invented the respirator. If you ask for an invite and fly out to Idaho, he might be better able to explain himself. Or not. He is 89 and very busy. So how about it? This is a very short popular vernacular style book and certainly do it anonymously. I can program better than write- but I just enjoy sailing along knocking out these things so am totally cool that I'm a hack. Although we both know you would be a poor second to Brittany Spears.

So Marat, I am wondering if you are more than one person or have easy access to an expert system. I keep trying to find ways to disagree and just find I am learning more and more. I am a big book reader and would love to have you reference something you have contributed to. I started school adamantly not wanting to teach or do nursing. So grabbing a PHD seemed like a nonproductive area as I still never wanted to teach. But I failed to assess the value to enjoying more of a university environment for the people that are there. So to punch in to stay on topic. Although a university environment has to provide human interaction, I am wondering if even there,there is a problem where we are addicted to the kind of conversation we all now have online. I don't see you checking your phone as soon as the conversation lulls, for instance. So minor distractions evaporate. Is this then like a glass of beer to socialize then the beer becomes the goal. I have been calling twenty somethings the loneliest generation. There is huge irony with this of course. The "always connected" may prevent true connecting with a significant other.

Didn't that always seem to be a rather unfortunate aspect in science fiction that people were forced to eat "pill food." Let's see if we could cost out your food substance. Any protein costs. It would be doable for the 1800 calories of a middle aged female but prohibitive for the 4800 calories of an active 15 year old. Parenteral nutrition today is very, very expensive. It is essentially some kind of canned product and would be subject to recalls that seem to happen from time to time. Those who go for "natural" need to consider the sprouts lesson from Germany. Fresh does have a danger that cooked does not. Pathogens are not nontrivial aspects of life. Food is a huge cost for the majority of people on the earth.