Disqus - Latest Comments for djlewis

Re: Private: Why Computer Scientists Consult Oracles

djlewis — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 22:11:17 -0000

Actually, the idea of "oracles" in the theory of computation goes back to well before the 1970s -- to Turing (1939), Post, Kleene (1940s) and other pioneers of mathematical logic. It wasn't always called that ("oracles"), but it was the same idea -- degrees of computability.

Re: Scientists Unpack How the Brain… | Trauma Research Foundation

djlewis — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 06:40:19 -0000

Wildly optimistic headline. Completely unaddressed -- especially since this was a study in mice that required killing the mice and analyzing their brains -- is how this brings us even one inch closer to diagnosis, prognosis or therapy for PTSD in people. To be more specific, there's no way of telling how the processes they found in these mice fit into a much larger picture of PTSD in the human brain -- even whether the phenomena are causes or effects of PTSD, or part of an imponderable network of mutual causes and effects.

The appropriately sober, scientifically accurate conclusion in the actual paper -- "To our knowledge, our study provides the first evidence that the disruption of protein synthesis in discrete IN subpopulations in the CeL impairs associative memories related to threat and safety, which may contribute to maladaptive behaviour in memory disorders such as PTSD."

Re: Here Is the Scientific Reason Yoga Is… | Trauma Research Foundation

djlewis — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 09:54:06 -0000

This was a pretty weak study. From the paper -- "Future studies would benefit from a larger sample size, a control group, the administration of a clinician-administered depression scale by a blinded rater." Also, GABA is only one among many such mechanisms that have been studies in work on neurotransmitters and depression. Finally, the authors have a significant financial and professional stake in the methods studied, particularly breath-control -- "Dr. Brown and Dr. Gerbarg teach pro bono and for-profit Breath-Body-Mind, a multicomponent program that includes coherent breathing and other mind–body practices coordinated with breathing. Several of their books include information about breathing and other mind–body practices. Dr. Streeter is certified to teach Breath-Body-Mind"

Perhaps most crucially, however, the conclusion suffers from the same issues as the entire neurotransmitter-depression hypothesis -- studies are correlational, not causal, and there seems to be no way to overcome that limitation. The problems with that hypothesis are well-documented in the literature.

Therefore, it is scientifically unwarranted on several grounds to say that "a recent study may have found the scientific reason why". Yoga may be "a beneficial activity for improving mental health". Of course, if you hedge everything, with "may have found", "been considered", etc, on top of the hedging in the paper itself, then you may have covered your ass, scientifically speaking, but the public is not going to detect those subtleties and think the promotional conclusions are meaningful. At least say "one possible reason why" rather than "the reason why". Of course, that tips off the readers to the weakness of the entire case!

Re: How to Change Your Brain | Magazine | The Harvard Crimson

djlewis — Sat, 20 Apr 2019 11:20:16 -0000

Why does the headline say "brain" when it appears that Underwood does not mention the brain in her work? What's wrong with "just" changing your mind?

Re: The Experience of Mindfulness

djlewis — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 20:31:05 -0000

I think it is worth identifying the Mahayana as the traditional nexus of compassion, while not in any way denigrating the strands that have come down to us in the form of the Theravada. But the fact of the matter is, in the Mahayana, especially its Tibetan form, concern for the welfare of others above ones own is enjoined from the get-go. That does not deny the irreplaceable need to develop oneself, but places it in a context of radical altruism. Every teaching, every prayer, every practice, every text begins with some version of -- May I attain the state of a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. That's what enlightenment is for! That's what it *is*!

It is understandable that the contemporary practices that Joiner is critiquing focus on self-development because that's really where pretty much everybody has to start. What is missing from his targets, however, is that pervasive background of radical compassion and altruism that informs self-development and turns it into something vastly larger that bears fruit with every advance in one's own state.

That point of view, in my opinion, more than meets Joiner's call.

Re: A Couple of Random Thoughts on Zen and the Science of Consciousness

djlewis — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 07:51:22 -0000

This stuff -- Austin, Farb, etc -- makes me wonder if neuroscience might play, for the modern zeitgeist, the same role that myth and cosmology play in "traditional" contexts -- a realm that we really know nothing about, but to which we attribute causal and/or explanatory power because... well... we gotta have an explanation, a cause for things beyond our ken.

Of course, that characterization entails acknowledging how little neuroscience actually knows about the mind (not to mention the brain), that it's mostly if not all either fabrication or parroting what we do know by non-technological means.

Re: Functional Connectivity Between Surgically Disconnected Brain Regions?

djlewis — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 11:58:57 -0000

The term "functional connectivity" has always been somewhat of a scam, meant to imply that there is structural connectivity despite lack of
evidence for that. Current (or foreseeable) technology is simply unable
to measure structural connectivity on any but the most primitive level,
and that mostly in animals. So someone (who was it?) came up with the
clever ploy to rename what is actually synchronization to create the impression of what the technology simply cannot do.

But now it appears that neuroscientists have been fooled by their own scam into thinking that synchronization actually entails structural connection. Or maybe they are just shocked, shocked to find the truth!

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

And by the way, there's nothing more wrong with studying synchronization of brain blobs apart from actual neural activity than there is in unsynchronized fMRI. The former is just second-order statistical pattern detection and correlation, a natural progression from the original first-order patterns.

But let's be clear -- it's ALL about statistical activity patterns of large-scale proxy phenomena, not neural activity per se, abut which we have only the faintest and most rudimentary knowledge, and that (again) from animal and lesion studies and the extremely rare cases where limited neurosurgical experiments on humans are ethically feasible.

Re: What Can fMRI Tell Us About Mental Illness?

djlewis — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 23:50:31 -0000

On top of this study -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... -- which says that neuroimaging cannot characterize depression, it seems that neuroscience has cast exactly zero light on mental disorder and there is no meaningful field we could call "neuropsychiatry".

Worse, after 20 intensive years of trying, it appears there is no scientific basis for optimism that neuroscience will succeed soon -- or ever!

Radical conclusion? Yes, but where is the evidence for the contrary?

Re: Two Manifestos for Better Science

djlewis — Sat, 14 Jan 2017 12:12:13 -0000

The deeper problem, of course, is that efforts toward better processes and studies will simply eliminate a lot of the weaker ones -- there just won't be as many positive results. And in the neuroscience of higher order mental phenomena -- cognition, affect, etc -- there may be very little left; the whole field could evaporate, or at least shrink back to a small fraction of its current weed-like growth.

Poldrack would survive that because he is at the top of the heap. He understands the issues -- for example invalid reverse inference, explicit or insinuated -- and has made a specialty to see wha can be done to overcome them. But most researchers in this area are thriving on the bad science and would be out of jobs.

Re: “I Just Don’t Believe Those Results”

djlewis — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 02:44:01 -0000

Of course. But what kind of evidence -- how much -- etc? My point is that scientific "theories" are *all* actually provisional until further evidence appears that falsifies them and maybe leads to a new theory (but maybe not). That is the nature of science.

What distinguishes so-called "true" theories from speculative ones is the weight of evidence for the "true" one. For evolution that weight is enormous, presenting a very high barrier to falsification, but not an absolute one.

Hey, there was a helluva lot of evidence for Newtonian mechanics until it was falsified by relativistic mechanics, first with the Michelson-Morely measurements, then as a new theory by Einstein and others (yeah, others), and then with lot of new observations to validate it.

So what distinguishes pseudo-science theories from "real" science theories is not two different meanings of "theory" but the possibility of falsification in the zeitgeist in which the theory is embedded. But actually, today the zeitgeist surrounding science itself is sceinTISM, which is not only NOT science, it is anti-scientific, that is, admits no falsification of its own!

Re: “I Just Don’t Believe Those Results”

djlewis — Sun, 07 Aug 2016 17:39:01 -0000

Was Nye asked that question? ;)

Re: Can Trauma Be Passed From Parent to Child?

djlewis — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:48:35 -0000

This is a deeply dishonest article!

For example, the second paragraph juxtaposes the well-known intergenerational transmission of trauma with the highly speculative mechanisms of epigenetics, which, without a disclaimer, invites the reader to conclude that the latter is the cause of the former. In fact, there is zero evidence for that assertion. All known intergenerational transmission of trauma is behavioral/psychological -- a traumatized mother pig transmits trauma to her offspring by her inability to care for them properly, not by epigenetics. Nobody can yet even imagine an epigenetic mechanism for the transmission of trauma to offspring. Epigenetics is about how gene expression works, not about how phenotypes are inherited.

See, for example -- http://www.wiringthebrain.c...

Re: Just Read that Article on Texas Seceding, and It Sparked a Whole Cascade of Thoughts

djlewis — Tue, 17 May 2016 08:54:14 -0000

Not (totally) trying to be political here, but isn't there a deep clash of both meaning and tone between: "My friends on the left are allowing themselves fantasies of a
seventy-five year old Socialist Jew sweeping into office at the head of a
youth revolt" and "We need, desperately, need a new song, a true seeing of how we are all of us connected, we are all of us interdependent, and not caring for
each other will in the end doom us all".

Why do I say that? Because IMHO the latter is exactly the subtext of what that "seventy-five year old Socialist Jew" is saying. At least, that's what I have been hearing.

Re: Meta-Neuroscience: Studying the Brains of Neuroscientists

djlewis — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 18:01:26 -0000

Only nucleus accumbens data reported?! Sorry, but *no* type or amount of biological data with current technology can tell us *anything* substantial or valuable about human feelings or pleasure, or cognition.

Worse, there is no prospect of or credible path to that goal. It's all arbitrary 25- to 50- to 100-year "predictions" (except Thomas Insel's 10-year prediction -- and that's probably because he has pushed us into a 10-year project that he has to hope will produce results or his name is mud, since he has pretty much halted behavioral and outcome studies at NIMH in its favor.)

Re: Meta-Neuroscience: Studying the Brains of Neuroscientists

djlewis — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 14:12:18 -0000

Gee, I thought your eponymous mission was discussing not just problematic technical methodology but also overhype of neuroscience. OK, I'll do the latter myself for this paper.

Like a vast number of so-called neuroscientific studies, this was actually a behavioral study with a piggy-backed fMRI component. As is essentially always the case with such studies, the scientifically meaningful conclusions about behavior were *entirely* due to the behavioral component. Yet your quote from the article implies that the neuroscience is the explanatory component.

For example, your quote said:

“From a neuroscience perspective, this study offers novel insights by providing first empirical evidence that the Journal Impact Factor and the authorship position do actually influence human behavior and neural response patterns.”

The first clause of that implies that the neuroscience provides some, if not all of the evidence for the behavioral effect, which is false – that’s not how the study was constructed. The neuroscience was just adjunct.

In fact, I don’t believe there are *any* studies where neuroscience data reliably predicts significant cognitive or emotional behavior. There are plenty in the opposite direction: behavior influences fMRI results, but that is entirely different. This is the infamous “reverse inference” issue, which I am sure you are familiar with. To conflate those two types of inference is to commit fallacious, circular reasoning. Unfortunately, that is exactly what this article is doing, though slyly, and it’s really common in the field.

Here’s another example of neurosophistry, from the abstract (emphasis added).

“Using functional neuroimaging we examined *how* the JIF, as a powerful incentive in academia, has shaped the behavior of scientists and the reward signal in the striatum.”

The word “how” is slyly ambiguous here. Does it mean “the fact that” or “the mechanism by which” – “how” serves both purposes in English. Unfortunately, the science only supports the neutral, correlational reading, but probably many if not most people will take it as a causal explanation. Worse, by lumping the behavioral and the neurobiological aspects, this sentence, like your quote, invites the reader to assume they were of equal significance, when again, that’s far from true.

Of course, we might attribute all this to sloppy writing. But I’ve seen so much of it, and I’ve seen so much exquisitely calculated and hedged language to produce these sophist effects, that I simply can’t assume innocence here.

So, should neuroscientists be expected to explain clearly what is really going on with these kinds of studies? Should they say the truth, this was a behavioral study with some “interesting” neural correlates, but we really can’t say what the role of the biology is here? Unfortunately, if they did, then the popular press, like you, might not pick up their stuff. And the world at large might get the idea that there is, so far, actually very little of substance that can be said about the relationship of higher-order behavior and neurobiology.

Re: Meta-Neuroscience: Studying the Brains of Neuroscientists

djlewis — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 22:58:20 -0000

But Neuroskeptic -- you failed on your primary mission, as embodied in your name. This paper is a perfect example of neurosophistry -- https://theconversation.com... ;)

Re: Influence and Originality in the Buddhist tradition

djlewis — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 01:30:19 -0000

If you meet the Buddha on the road to the trash bin... ;-)))

Re: Influence and Originality in the Buddhist tradition

djlewis — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 19:14:00 -0000

You are correct. The line I was following is about emptiness, not impermanence -- and they are not the same. It seems that conversation began about "an essential and permanent aspect or quality of human beings (that) allows for awakening.", and I assumed we were really talking about the "essential part", but somehow the "permanent" part became more prominent.

Re: Influence and Originality in the Buddhist tradition

djlewis — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 11:53:06 -0000

Really, what part of *un-* don't you understand? ;-)))

If one can interpret unborn, uncompounded, etc as eternal/permanent in *any* sense, then they are simply insisting that there *must* be *something* not empty, even if they can't say exactly *what* that might be -- a perfectly reasonable conclusion given where we are -- it just doesn't hold up under analysis. But that said, we gotta start where we are, which is in conventional reality, with a teacher, with a word, with a body.

Re: Influence and Originality in the Buddhist tradition

djlewis — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 08:41:50 -0000

"Buddha nature doctrine put forth the idea of an essential and permanent
aspect or quality of human beings; and it is this very quality which
allows for awakening." -- Ummm... isn't that *exactly* what Buddhadharma denies? The way out, according to the Tsong Khapa tradition -- Buddha nature *is* the very emptiness of mind, its lack of any essence whatsoever.

Re: King v. Burwell Isn’t About Obamacare

djlewis — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 18:02:07 -0000

Hey, where ya been for 7 years? ;) For example -- http://news.yahoo.com/racis....

Yeah, the Repub leadership would never admit to such leanings personally, but they know where their base lives, and it ain't a pretty place... and I don't hear them repudiating it!

But I dunno why I bother in a place like this -- where that base hangs out -- not pretty.

Re: King v. Burwell Isn’t About Obamacare

djlewis — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 09:44:43 -0000

This analysis is flawed. The Right cries "states rights" when it suits their purposes, but has no hesitation about overriding the states when that achives their aims. This case is about plutocracy, politics and race -- destroying a (very modestly) populist benefit, a party and a black president. Funny thing is, however, if the SC rules for the challenge, it may very well backfire on the Right. That's why Roberts will probably save the Right's bacon (again) and rule to preserve Obamacare.

Re: Brain Theory

djlewis — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 15:35:52 -0000

So, neuroscience, which is where radical behaviorism went after being discredited, turns out to need for its success -- guess what -- behaviorism. Good luck!

Re: Each scar is different

djlewis — Sat, 24 May 2014 09:05:01 -0000

I'm not sure if you are denigrating 'labeling' here, but I'm sure you'll agree that understanding what is wrong is important in helping -- you don't want to apply heat to a burn. As for accounting for individual circumstances, of course -- connect someone with supportive resources appropriate to them. But immediately after a traumatic event, we now understand that it can actually interfere with normal, natural recovery to begin explicitly eliciting personal details of what happened to the victim and their reactions.

Re: Each scar is different

djlewis — Thu, 22 May 2014 09:37:58 -0000

It's hard to know where to begin to address the multitude of misconceptions in this article. So let me be constructive and offer a crucial piece of information that will enable all readers -- and the author, should she be open to it -- to critically reappraise the piece.

You simply cannot diagnose PTSD in the days and even weeks after a traumatic event -- it is only present if symptoms persists past the first few weeks (a month in the official definition, but obviously that threshold will vary from case to case). In fact, most people will naturally recover from the initial symptoms -- estimated overall at 85% of people exposed to traumatic events (but varying from 50 to 90% depending on many factors about the situation and person). It's the 15% who do not naturally recover who "have" PTSD, and whose lives may be damaged far beyond the initial impact.

And when the symptoms do persist, when they become self-sustaining, then
they begin to damage life in further ways -- relationships deteriorate,
the sufferer "self-medicates" with alcohol or other drugs, long-term
despair and depression set in and many others.

In other words, inherent in the definition of PTSD -- and why it is so damaging to lives
of sufferers -- is that it is a chronic condition. Or more precisely, ONLY when the symptoms do persist and lock in can you say someone "HAS" PTSD. And then and only then do you need extreme measures such as psychotherapy or drugs. In fact, as the problems with immediate post-truama processing -- Critical Incident Debriefing -- show, immediate "treatment" can not only fail, it can make things worse by interfering with the natural recovery process. Based on experience, what is now prescribed immediately after a traumatic event is gentle, supportive help, but not active processing of the event with a helper.

So, did Mrs Babic have PTSD? Well, she displayed several classical symptoms -- she was agitated and depressed, could not sleep, and had stopped enjoying her friends and usual pursuits. But you simply could not say at that point that she "had" PTSD, especially since her natural recovery was likely inhibited by a hodgepodge of drugs. In fact, since she seemed to recover her joy of life later, it is quite likely that the natural recovery process did kick in when given the chance. And family support was probably an important factor in that.

There are many other explicit and implicit misconceptions in this article. For example, the author does not seem to appreciate how long-term post-traumatic symptoms can masquerade as other mental health problems. For example, a large fraction of treatment-resistant major depression is now thought to be due to PTSD, often undiagnosed. Experienced trauma therapists all have stories of chronically depressed clients with years of fruitless psychotherapy or drugs that they were able to help by identifying and addressing previously unacknowledged trauma, often dating to childhood.

in fact, we now understand that abuse in childhood can not only lead to PTSD in adults, it can induce much higher vulnerability to PTSD following other traumatic events. And the childhood abuse need not be explicit violence or sexual molestation, though there is plenty of that. It can be the abuse of neglect, of parents or other caregivers not being present or, even if present, not attending to a child's natural need for positive support and nurturing relationship.

But perhaps the biggest misconception in the article is the implication that there is somehow a tension between addressing the horrible social and political ills that can traumatize a whole community -- especially war -- and trying to help the individuals who suffer from it. Clearly we need to do both. But to help people who do suffer, we need accurate understanding of how trauma and PTSD operate, and that is so sadly lacking in this article that I fear it will do still more damage to those in need.