visceral

****, that is scary and horrible.

I would rather be dead...

Wow! Interesting. I wonder how far their brains can recreate other people's sensations? Would they, for example, feel the sensation of touching a surface with complex patterns if they saw someone else do it...

I'd like to know more...I'm gonna do a few searches.

I know it's more than merely neurological. I would just like to know where it comes from. Ostensibly, it's an instinct in most people. I'd like to know if there is something in common neurologically between people who don't want them.

Is it a circuit in the brain? Is it the effect of a high estrogen level? Could you do a brain scan on a group of women who had children or wanted them in the future, then one of women who had chosen not to have children, and pinpoint something that the first group had and the second one didn't?

My BMI is 18.9.

I recommend eating frequent small meals instead of less frequent large ones. Oh, and ingest a LOT of caffeine. :D

You can learn exercises to elongate your spine. Try the Alexander technique.

Suspected Aspergian girl here.

39.

About as revelatory as telling me I have black hair.

Empathy is the ability to understand other's feelings, so I would think critical thinking is required for that to happen.

In a more removed and mechanistic context, it is, but when I said empathy, I meant the intuitive ability most people have to detect others' emotions without having to be told what someone is feeling.

ASD people lack the ability to detect others' emotions, but they don't tend to lack critical thinking. It's more that they cannot instinctively sense how someone is feeling, by unconsciously noticing nuances of facial expression, tone of voice, etc.

I'm one of those. I am a raging danger junkie.

The problem with physical punishment of the young is that the young think that this is the way to solve their own problems in life.

As for soft forms of punishment (time-out) having a co-relation to the rise in ADD? I think you might want to firstly look at the rise in the eagerness of clinicians to diagnose what constitutes ADD firstly. The hot headed kids of yesterday would probably be classified as ADD today.

 

 

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-24076787_ITM

 

"Predictors of aggression across three generations among sons of alcoholics: relationships involving grandparental and parental alcoholism, child aggression, marital aggression and parenting practices"

Agreed. I actually have a lot of the effects of ADD/ADHD, but I know I don't actually have either of those, I'm just still not yet mature. Modern life is way too narrow-minded. Anyone outside a certain norm seems to get diagnosed with a disorder.

I know the idea that a high systemic/low empathic mind is a male one while the high empathic/low systemic end of the continuum is female domain, is a huge oversimplification, I just called it that so people would get the idea...

Is there such a disorder? Could there be such a thing as 'system blindness', where though someone would be extremely empathic and do very well at sensing people's emotions, they would have low to no ability to use reductive or systemic thinking?

Is this even a legitimate concept? Are "systemic" and "empathic" really opposites?

One theory is that the condition exists, but it isn't a problem because it's not maladaptive:

Taken from Simon Baron Cohen's The Essential Difference

All scientists know about the extreme female brain is that it is predicted to arise ... Scientists have never got up close to these individuals. It is a bit like positing the existence of a new animal on theoretical grounds, and then setting out to discover if it is really found in nature.

...

[W]hat would such people look like?

 

... Their empathizing ability would be average or significantly better than that of other people in the general population, but their systemizing would be impaired. So these would be people who have difficulty understanding math or physics or machines or chemistry, as systems. But they could be extremely accurate at tuning in to others' feelings and thoughts.

 

Would such a profile carry any necessary disability? Hyperempathizing could be a great asset, and poor systemizing may not be too crippling. It is possible that the extreme female brain is not seen in clinics because it is not maladaptive.

 

We saw that those with the extreme male brain do experience a disability, but only when the person is expected to be socially able. Remove this expectation, and the person can flourish. Unfortunately, in our society this social expectation is pervasive: at school, in the workplace and in the home. So it is hard to avoid.

 

But for those with the extreme female brain, the disability might only show up in circumstances where the person is expected to be systematic or technical. The person with the extreme female brain would be system-blind. Fortunately, in our society there is considerable tolerance for such individuals. For example, if you were a child who was systemblind, your teachers might simply allow you to drop mathematics and science at the earliest possible stage, and encourage you to pursue your stronger subjects. If you were a systemblind adult and your car didn't work, you could just call the mechanic (who is likely to be at least a Type S). If your computer needs putting together, and you can't work out which lead goes into which socket, there are phone numbers that you can ring for technical support. And in evolutionary terms, there were likely equivalent people that a systemblind person could turn to for help when that person's home was destroyed in strong winds, or when their spear broke.

Why do the zones of the cortex have to differentiate?

I assumed they can't produce hormones properly unless they don't, but I seem to remember they're not differentiated at birth...?

Either very underweight or what Sam said, wasting disease.

That makes my ****ing blood boil.

So he had a lot of money with him? How does that make him a criminal? He could have just taken it out of the ****ing bank...

Don't they have massive amounts of wiring in one area which results in them having certain abilities, and not enough in other areas? Something like that...

Animals cannot help this as they don't have the ability for conscious thought to rise above it.

Humans like I described on the other hand, choose to behave like that.

Not quite, before conception you simply don't exist. After death you have a body but it doesn't have any functions.

Let's agree to disagree Mokele, I like you.

So because radiation damages rapidly dividing cells more readily than normal cells, how come infants and teenagers don't have the highest rate of cancer amongst all humans? If X-Rays and the like were so dangerous, you'd figure that infants and teenagers would be incredibly prone to getting cancer since their cells are dividing at an incredible rate. Yet we really don't see that. We see cancers developing more in eldery people than we do in the young. So I think there's something in relation to radiation and cancer that we

.

Don't know much about it, but I'll make an assumption. It could be that cells get less efficient at dividing properly as they get older.

No, people who terrorize everyone in the area because they can are unworthy of life.

How do you tell the difference between evolved traits and 'programmed' ones?

I'm thinking specifically of differences between the sexes here. For example I've read various things in 'science' books like The Female Brain (Louann Brizendine) like how women evolved to cry more easily, or that they find it much harder to keep their emotions to themselves.

How does anyone know these things are due to evolution? As a society we give females the right to cry but not males. We give females the right to be vulnerable, but not males. Girls and boys are treated differently while still wearing their amniotic membrane. Girls are mostly treated as just potential nurturers/encouraged to develop and interest in looking pretty. Boys are encouraged to develop visual-spatial skills ( as in using toy cars, building things, and the like.).

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p88566041u435g96

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/15/garden/parent-child.html?pagewanted=1

So how exactly do you determine what is environmental and what is written in their DNA?

What's the difference? Dead is dead. And are you seriously saying that some humans are worth less than mice, because of some arbitrary aspects of them?

 

You can either kill the 100 mice, or 100 humans. Pick one.

Yes some humans are worth less. If it were, say, 100 of those chav guys who do nothing except hang around intimidating everyone and sexually harassing women, sure, I'd kill them instead of the mice. If it were 100 war criminals or 100 drug dealers, I'd kill them instead of the mice.

Again, under what circumstances?

If both were in danger and I could only save the humans, I would probably do that, because humans are my kind.

If the 100 humans had a disease and I could choose to kill the mice to find a cure for said disease, no, I wouldn't.

So who would you rather kill: 100 lab mice, or 100 humans?

In what situation?

A choice between experimenting on them to cure human diseases? Or just a strict one-or-the-other choice between mouse or human?

Which 100 humans am I killing?

Yes. Sentient, as in conscious, something that can think or feel.

If you prevented animal testing, you would limit my access to medicines and technologys without my consent, depriving me of the ability to make my own moral decision on the subject.

 

 

 

Why not? If you had only two options, to kill 10 people or kill 1000, you would kill 1000?

 

Make no mistake, there is no 'zero death' option. Either you kill mice, or you kill humans. There is no middle ground, no third choice. You have to pick which are more important, humans or mice.

 

 

 

Because, in the case of mice, they have a brain the size of a pea, and can barely manage to do anything beyond screwing and eating.

Sure, I would kill only 10. What I take issue with is the assumption that the few who die should be animals. They owe us nothing.

So what if mice have a small brain and don't do much outside of basic behaviours? They're still sentient beings.

If a race existed who were massively superior to normal humans, would it be ok for them to experiment in humans because we are 'lower'?