scientists are researching the brain scan differences between republicans and democrats, and they've found some interesting differences.

[S]ome differences appeared between the brain activity of Democrats and Republicans. Take empathy: One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of Kerry "with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset," Freedman said. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back."

And when voters were shown a Bush ad that included images of the Sept. 11 attacks, the amygdala region of the brain — which lights up for most of us when we see snakes — illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: At a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming.

that doesn't seem quite fair. democrats may be more empathetic, but that republicans' amygdalas, the center for emotional fear, didn't react when watching clips about 9/11 as dems did doesn't imply that they aren't upset by what they see. republicans may feel more disgust or anger, not thought to be found in the amygdala.

Labels: ideology, neuroscience, political

it may not actually change the outcome of an election, but voting has interesting positive health benefits. long ago psychologists learned that monkeys who felt they were in control of their circumstances had much better health. so voting, by providing the illusion of control, actually has health benefits. the article also mentions that voting encourages people (kids, esp.) to think critically about political issues. and most surprising... even if your candidate doesn't win, you still derive benefits from casting that ballot:

Zimmerman agrees and says that even if you don't end up with the outcome you wanted, having an opportunity to make your opinion known by voting is beneficial for people psychologically.

"We find people are happier with the outcome and they feel more in control of their lives, if they voted," says Zimmerman. "That is better for their psychological functioning than feeling that whatever they do doesn't matter anyway."

researchers say that in the end, the outcome of any election won't really influence anyone's mood in the long term. although activists may make it seem as if it's the end of the world if bush, or kerry, slips fill the ballot box this year, "it usually takes more than who gets elected president to affect our mood in an enduring way." how reassuring.

on a personal note, i've been taking great pleasure in upsetting activists as they hand out information about their candidates. "oh no thanks, i'm not voting." i love it. they all get this look on their faces, as if i've just insulted their mother while stepping on my own foot. one guy said "oh, wow. oh my! gosh!" HA.

this new technology might make some sense:

The device is intended to deliver a quick yes or no verdict on whether a person is in a fit state to drive and works by assessing the driver's behaviour, rather than testing for particular substances.

although this behavior detector is still a form of preemption, it would be a large improvement on current strategies. it's a more direct measure of what the law is trying to get at: those people who are cognitively impaired. one major drawback, however, is that it has very vague prescriptions. it would be much more difficult to judge just how much one could drink, smoke, etc.

but preemptive anything, including efforts to prevent accidents, don't make a lot of sense to me. preemption says that there are actions that are highly correlated with certain outcomes, and that if the correlation is high enough and the outcome undesirable enough, those actions should be outlawed. i'm not comfortable with this broad-brush approach. laws based on this philosophy punish citizens for crimes they didn't commit, aren't trying to commit, and might not have ever committed. it’s true that many car crashes involve alcohol or drugs, but i'd wager that a very small percentage of "drunken" drivers, defined as those over the .0000000000001 limit, cause accidents.

so for some reason i've been particularly interested in the american league playoffs, yankees vs. red sox. people over here are really into the game, and are usually passionate about "their team." almost everyone i've talked to is pro-sox, and i've always for some reason favored the yankees.

one of the most common reasons folks like the sox is because they're they "underdog" (nevermind that they're favored to win). as the yankees proceeded to stomp the poor sox, i admit i began to root for them a little in spite of myself. however, now that the sox are back on top, i've lost any shred of good will i had towards them.

which made me wonder - what is it, exactly, about the underdog that attracts us? why do we hate goliath, and root for david? why is it so bad to be so good, so prepared, so skilled, etc.? it could be sympathy for the less fortunate. it could be that the underdog poses less of a threat. the psychological reward for an unlikely outcome could be great. cafe hayek has a great neurological explanation - dopamine (a feel-good drug) is released something good but unexpected happens, so rooting for an underdog is like an investment in that great Da payoff.

in my ever-so-extensive google search, i found an interesting theology of the underdog that, wrongly, claims that most central Biblical characters had nothing going for them. otherwise it's an interesting read.

i subscribe to vegetarian times magazine. although it's annoying at times, (it would probably award a "stick" to the great org. nature conservancy), it has tasty recipes, great vegetarian advice, and interesting herbal remedies (that actually sometimes work!). all their recipes call for organic, pesticide-free foods, which i take great pleasure in substituting for cheap, genetically-modified foods.

this month they have an article on "smart breeding," which smells all too similar to a low-tech version of genetic engineering (which the magazine calls "scary"). "smart breeding" is a complicated and seemingly-slow process: by cross-breeding, genes are transferred from one plant to another, making it "taste better... more resistant to disease and harsh weather... more nutritious." it seems that this is one very, very small - or non-existent - step from GMO foods.

the technique is much less "scary." one scientist says "sometimes all I need to do is place two beets in a cage and smack the side with a stick."

although it sounds primitive, they do use some genetics. by examining the DNA strand, they find out "which plants to mate so they produce... whatever trait we want to encourage." so, this is anaolgous to genetic engineering. but, for heaven's sake, don't do it in a lab!

and if you aren't convinced that it's tampering with nature just as much as GMO, listen to this:

He actually figured out how to switch off one gene, making the beet gold. Switching genes on and off, he bred a striped beet with a bull's-eye appearance.

okay, now they're just showing off.

the article emphasizes how crucial this new technique could be for less developed countries (LDCs), as it can produce higher-yield plants. however, the article notes that "few smart-bred crops are available" now. so, let's let the folks starve a little longer until there's a less "scary" way to grow food (now most LDCs are pressured to refuse GMO crops, and cannot use many good pesticides and fertilizers).

*i was unsuccessful in locating the "beet generation" article by don baker on the vegetarian times website. it's in the nov/dec 04 issue.*

update: found the article while searching for something else!

Labels: ideology, misc. science

i never thought i'd hear health experts encourage patients to gamble and discourage them from keeping journals.

on the first count, it's a shame that gambling is so heavily regulated in the us.

on the second, researchers think that journal keeping is unhealthy because diarists ruminate over traumatic events. an alternitive is just to erase those memories, which now is nearly possible.

a book i'm reading now, the wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few uses the iowa electronic market (iem) as an example of how a diverse group can predict the outcome of an event relatively accurately, even more accurately than any one individual in the group. the book talks about how the iem has been relatively successful in predicting the winner of most elections, so i thought i'd check out what it had to say about this one...

the iem kind of works like wall street, where individuals buy "shares" of a candidate and, if theirs wins, they receive money, and if s/he doesn't, they don't. although the market is open to everyone, very few participate, and a majority of them are males from iowa.

right now bush is ahead in the winner-takes-all category:

although who knows what will happen in the next few weeks, esp. since the popular vote market is so close. but one thing's for sure, i'm going to keep an eye on it. although, since i can't vote, i kind of feel like a poor kid at a candy store window...

update: well, futures markets were pretty worthless at predicting that the yankees would loose this one. look at tradeports.com's market and notice that earlier today they were favored to win. however, to be fair to the wisdom of crowds theory, i don't know anything about the demographics of tradingsports.com's folks.

update: just made the picture smaller.

Labels: political

psychologists, although typically against corporate welfare and for easy access to mental health services, are lobbying for their own kind of protectionism in the form of stricter licensing laws. this is frustrating because licensing just raises the price of receiving treatment (by reducing the number of those practicing). one psychologist has a good point about the petition.
not only does the petition stifle competition, it proposes unrealistic and unnecessary requirements. for example, it states that all psychologists must have "diversity training," something many likely don’t need due to their own varied experiences, or will not need in practice. it also suggests that all psychologists receive training in the "full range of psychopathology and how neurobiological processes," which, again, seems impractical and unnecessary. a general therapist should have little need for such knowledge. these stipulations would just be annoying and silly if there weren’t real stakes – but there are. people don’t get treatment - people are forced to stay sick when they wish to be well - because of special interests like this one forcing states to create unnecessary protections over “public’s right to have competent mental health care.”

Labels: misc. psych

via world of psychology:

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University and Princeton University found two areas of the brain that appear to compete for control over behavior when a person attempts to balance near-term rewards with long-term goals. The research involved imaging people’s brains as they made choices between small but immediate rewards or larger rewards that they would receive later.

after reading further, this once again becomes a struggle between emotion and rationality:

"Our emotional brain has a hard time imagining the future, even though our logical brain clearly sees the future consequences of our current actions," Laibson said. "Our emotional brain wants to max out the credit card, order dessert and smoke a cigarette. Our logical brain knows we should save for retirement, go for a jog and quit smoking. To understand why we feel internally conflicted, it will help to know how myopic and forward-looking brain systems value rewards and how these systems talk to one another."

first, discounting the future can be seen as quite rational, and really makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. back in the day, we were trained to take every opportunity as it presented itself. the future is uncertain, and nature holds no promise of $11 tomorrow instead of $10 today. in addition, in a modern sense discounting the future is rational again because we still don't know what that future will bring. if i choose one scoop of ice cream today instead of two tomorrow, it makes sense. not only am i not sure if tomorrow will provide an even better opportunity - maybe i'll get three scoops for some reason tomorrow, but i am also not sure if i'll even be around to take that opportunity. i could have a massive coronary (unrelated to my massive ice cream consumption, of course) and die, therefore not not ever enjoying any ice cream at all.

scientifically speaking:

The study showed that decisions involving the possibility of immediate reward activated parts of the brain influenced heavily by brain systems that are associated with emotion. In contrast, all the decisions the students made — whether short- or long-term — activated brain systems that are associated with abstract reasoning.

those choosing the delayed reward showed stronger activation in their abstract reasoning systems. i'm assuming they're speaking of the insular cortex, which has been implicated in that role before. i've also noted before that the insular cortex is related to more than just emotion.

Labels: decision making, neuroscience

according to my workplace's, ihs's, politopia political quiz, it turns out that authoritarians will be voting for kerry, as will liberals, and those in-between liberal and authoritarian. even centrists will be voting for kerry, as will those between libertarian and liberal. i'm willing to bet that those turning up as liberal, conservative, or authoritarian will tend to vote more often than the rest, as being authoritarian means following the rules, being obedient, etc, and likely also means playing your part in the system, whatever system that is, and doing whatever society tells you is best to do - for example, voting. so, i'm predicting that kerry will win, because the authoritarians will likely come out in higher numbers than those voting for bush (only the conservatives, libertarians, and those between authoritarian and conservative).
granted, this is not a scientific quiz, but it has got some recent press, bringing it to a wider subset of people.

Labels: ideology

the folks behind the $10 million dollar x-prize that spurred private space exploration will create new contests and prizes. they will "launch a series of technology prizes seeking to meet the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century." this seems to be the future of scientific discovery that can sustain itself without government money. those who create innovative solutions and have results will win money, and those who don't, won't. it encourages entrepreneurial people to work for a better world on their own terms and reward results, not politics or grant-writing skills.

suggest ideas for future competitions on the wtn x-prize website.

now that the x-prize has been won, the optimists among us envisioned a very jetson's-like future. and, it could be possible someday. however, it turns out the limits of space travel exist in the law books, not the science books. a bill allowing many types of this travel has sputtered and died in congress.
the bill is filled with sentimental fluff. of course space travel is "inherently risky." common sense, not a bill, can tell us that. glenn reynolds points out that no one needs to ensure the "highest levels of safety" for passengers and crew of these spacecraft- that isn't even required of the much more common high-risk operations such as roller coasters. the burgeoning industry will suffer for its novelty - congress is afraid of the new and unknown. roller coasters and other high-risk endeavors may have gotten off easy because they were around long before the gov't got its hand into protecting our safety in high-risk endeavors.

i just received this email from arlington county:

We have no record of you registered in Arlington County. It appears, unfortunately, that your application never made it to us. Do you perhaps recall if you mailed it separately from your tax return? In any case, at this point the registration deadline has passed (it was Oct. 4) and there is nothing we can do.

I would suggest you download the voter registration application from our website now and return it to us so you will be all set for future elections. We will be able to process it after the election when the registration books re-open.

For more information about elections in Arlington, please visit our web page at www.arlingtonva.us.

Linda Lindberg, General Registrar
Arlington County Government
2100 Clarendon Blvd., Suite 320
Arlington, VA 22201
703-228-3462
703-228-4611 tty
703-228-3659 fax
llindberg@arlingtonva.us
www.arlingtonva.us

so... how can i possibly go through the trouble of registering to vote, and then not be registered? i was fully hoping to wage my blank protest vote. oh well, although my individual vote doesn't count, i was at least hoping to participate. i feel somehow left out of this whole election thing now - it will be the first major election i'm out of the loop on since i became eligible to vote. somehow i care less now - i wonder if the ability to and act of voting promotes more active interest and participation?

update: yes, it does.

from the ap:

Thousands of tourists spent hours gazing at Mount St. Helens, packing buildings, crowding parking lots and watching from roadsides to see what the rumbling mountain would do next.
While scientists kept a watchful eye on the volcano, throngs of curious onlookers filled the mountain's visitor centers. Others sat outside in lawn chairs, sipping coffee, determined to witness the next eruption.

so... what's going on here? a volcano, whose last major eruption killed nearly sixty people, is spewing ash and smoke. instead of running for their lives, people are flocking to the site. these strange tourists could value the emotional high they get from being on the precipice of a major catastrophe more than their safety. i'd wager a lot of them have the "thrill seeking gene" and a lot more are ego-driven, wanting that “i was there when...” trophy.
more on risk and choice

update: watch mt. st. helen's from the safety of your home.

Labels: decision making, social

check out the new trend in trend spotting. i can’t write it any better than wired did. the questions they ask at the end are most interesting - what does it mean to be cool? why do we like cool things? food and drugs have their own physical reward, but what makes that beat-up thrift store shirt rewarding? and another neat thought – those really “in the know” aren’t those who can identify cool things best – they can identify uncool things best. it ends, however, with an important cautionary note on ad hoc science. fantastic article.
i’ll add my own cautionary note. i must insert my typical skepticism about brain imaging. there are still serious flaws with the technology and even the theory behind its use that make me quite hesitant to accept many arguments based solely on scan results. however, the scientific community has seemed to forget all their hesitations and are plowing forward full-force. it’s just so exciting to see a brain area “lit up.” it’s so clear, so unquestionable. certainly some of the results are interesting, but i just wish folks were more cautious. i’m not going to go so far as to call brain imaging “the new phrenology,” but nonetheless while reading these reports it’s important to keep in mind their inherent flaws and take the results with not a grain, but perhaps a large chunk, of salt.

Labels: neuroscience