The case against reality + How old & new make the mind ebb & flow

[C C]

CC Is Scientific American a respected magazine or too full of pseudo-science to be respected?

Yes, SciAm is alright and science news from places like Science Daily, Physics.org, etc. They may feature controversial theories and ideas sometimes but that actually provides people with something to talk about.

This is a serious question because things were so unpleasant in another forum and I really want to avoid that unpleasantness, but I do not know how well-educated people judge such matter. [...] I really don't want to annoy anyone, but I pursue this line of questioning because of a personal experience and speculation that gives me a burning desire to know who I should ignore and what is good information. I mean, I have a need to know of such matters.

I didn't mean to give the impression that this place is as strict as the one you came from. It's a "casual" science board, after all, that will be heavy with "pop-science" stuff. I just meant that if a hypothesis has been discredited or is considered really fringe then you may not get much mileage out of the topic beyond a passerby pointing that out.

Also take note that there are categories like Alternative Theories, Junk Science, Weird & Beyond in which even very questionable affairs can be posted in to avoid their being out of place in the "mainstream" science section. But again, controversial items are possible even with the latter if it comes from a legit science or "third-culture" site (again, that's the very thing people might want to wrangle over in a discussion). And of course for metaphysics there is this philosophy subforum. ["Third-culture" indirectly refers to scientists engaging in matters that really have one foot in philosophy, as well as being speculative activity.]

Is this man well respected or a quack? [...] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue...r-learned/

The broad territory of ideas which Darold Treffert seems to be working in is that a brain comes equipped with a kind of operating system (OS) or functional template for processing acquired information. Similar to how a computer would be a useless empty box if it was really an electronic blank slate.

The idea of a preset conceptual structure that enables understanding goes back at least to Immanuel Kant (though he dealt with "mind" in a generic & transcendent context rather than a particular empirical instantiation of it like the brain). Arguably the neuroscience version would have its origin grounded in genetics and epigenetics much as the body does (IOW, from whence else could it come?). And the "OS" of some children could accordingly be predisposed and specialized for certain tasks and learning better than others.

[Carol]

CC Is Scientific American a respected magazine or too full of pseudo-science to be respected?

Yes, SciAm is alright and science news from places like Science Daily, Physics.org, etc. They may feature controversial theories and ideas sometimes but that actually provides people with something to talk about.

This is a serious question because things were so unpleasant in another forum and I really want to avoid that unpleasantness, but I do not know how well-educated people judge such matter. [...] I really don't want to annoy anyone, but I pursue this line of questioning because of a personal experience and speculation that gives me a burning desire to know who I should ignore and what is good information.  I mean, I have a need to know of such matters.

I didn't mean to give the impression that this place is as strict as the one you came from. It's a "casual" science board, after all, that will be heavy with "pop-science" stuff. I just meant that if a hypothesis has been discredited or is considered really fringe then you may not get much mileage out of the topic beyond a passerby pointing that out.

Also take note that there are categories like Alternative Theories, Junk Science, Weird & Beyond in which even very questionable affairs can be posted in to avoid their being out of place in the "mainstream" science section. But again, controversial items are possible even with the latter if it comes from a legit science or "third-culture" site (again, that's the very thing people might want to wrangle over in a discussion). And of course for metaphysics there is this philosophy subforum. ["Third-culture" indirectly refers to scientists engaging in matters that really have one foot in philosophy, as well as being speculative activity.]

Is this man well respected or a quack? [...] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue...r-learned/

The broad territory of ideas which Darold Treffert seems to be working in is that a brain comes equipped with a kind of operating system (OS) or functional template for processing acquired information. Similar to how a computer would be a useless empty box if it was really an electronic blank slate.

The idea of a preset conceptual structure that enables understanding goes back at least to Immanuel Kant (though he dealt with "mind" in a generic & transcendent context rather than a particular empirical instantiation of it like the brain). Arguably the neuroscience version would have its origin grounded in genetics and epigenetics much as the body does (IOW, from whence else could it come?). And the "OS" of some children could accordingly be predisposed and specialized for certain tasks and learning better than others.

 We now speak of artificial intelligence and of computers learning and of robots learning and replicating themselves.   How is this different from the biological process?   To clarify my question, I think Darold Treffert has said if someone learns to play the piano this operating system can be passed on to one's children and grandchildren.  Obviously, a robot can not pass on an operating system it has not developed.   Can humans pass on operating systems in the genes?

This is vitally important when considering education.  Liberal education focused on the individual assuming individuals are as different as the gods, with their unique talents and interest, children having very different potentials.  Education for technology assumes we are all born with blank brains, and anything can be written on them if the right technique is used, and this comes with IQ testing to select out those best suited for higher education.  Both the education and IQ test covering a narrow span of IQ.  And this goes with the opinion that teachers should not have to waste their time on poor students.  What we are doing deprives millions of children of the educations they need to actualize their potential. 

There are terrible social, economic and political ramifications to this change in education.   We might want to investigate how we come to have our operating systems, and if the education for technology today is best for humanity and best for our civilization.  That could be getting off topic, but I only mean to stress the importance of what we believe about how our brains function and why.

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How the old and new make the mind ebb and flow
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-old-and-t...b-and-flow

EXCERPT: For some 2,500 years, humans have located the mind in the brain inside our heads. But we ought to consider the origin of mind with an open mind. Is the mind truly within the brain? Or is this an illusion? [...] The mind is both embodied and relational. In our communications with one another, we often send linguistic packets of top-down words with narratives and explanations that are already constructing the reality we are sharing with another. Even when we try our best to use words to describe what we are experiencing, rather than explain what is going on, we are still using the construction of linguistic forms. And in our brain? Energy and information flow within us as well as between us. The nervous system, including its brain, plays a major role in shaping our embodied energy-flow patterns. This is how brain research illuminates, though not with totality, what the mind is and who we are....

What of our heart and gut?  I do not believe all thinking goes on in our brains.   
This link is calling our heart the little brain
https://www.heartmath.org/our-heart-brain/
This is a good explanation of the growing scientific stand on the effect of heart transplants on those who receive hearts from donors.   
http://hubpages.com/education/your-secon...your-heart

[C C]

[...] To clarify my question, I think Darold Treffert has said if someone learns to play the piano this operating system can be passed on to one's children and grandchildren. Obviously, a robot can not pass on an operating system it has not developed. Can humans pass on operating systems in the genes?

I'm skeptical that knowledge as specific as that or carried to the extreme of the parent's own memories being passed on would be possible. At best it would be a general aptitude for musical ability (or whatever) that a family might exhibit in their ancestry. IOW, inheriting a neural (brain) and sensorimotor structure or scheme that makes apprehension easier / quicker for assimilating a particular skill-set and its regulating principles. With savants, some kind of narrow eidetic memory capacity might also be at work that quickly enables a child to precisely remember what they've seen and heard in regard to observing others playing an instrument.

These types of essays are what I referred to as "third culture" stuff, where scientists are straying beyond what they've rigorously tested (so far) and are creatively extrapolating with proto-hypotheses and speculative ideations. Such is not pseudoscience, though should be treated cautiously in the sense that an _x_ view hasn't become mainstream "gospel" yet.

But these loose treatises fit well with the relaxed atmosphere of a "casual science" board (like SciVillage), where displaying the imaginative and inferential processes prior to outputting a "fact" (via lab testing) isn't treated as taboo as elsewhere. [Which is to say, posturings like: "We prim and ideologue-like robots of science fandom here on this forum only deal with established and validated information; not precursor affairs prior to that final stage!".]

What of our heart and gut?  I do not believe all thinking goes on in our brains.

The enteric nervous system can contribute to feelings and moods. But it would be a vast stretch to consider it engaging in thought, unless we expanded the meaning of thought beyond language and the pictures which Temple Grandin claims to think with. Which would thereby render the terms [thought, thinking] uselessly embracing too much of everything rather than denoting a practical distinction that implies heavy regulation by a syntactic / semantic organization.

This link is calling our heart the little brain
https://www.heartmath.org/our-heart-brain/

This is a good explanation of the growing scientific stand on the effect of heart transplants on those who receive hearts from donors.
http://hubpages.com/education/your-secon...your-heart

The cellular memory conjecture is controversial. I guess this converges with a larger issue of scientists becoming increasingly sloppy and compromised by industry bias and "publish or perish" concerns (the latter particularly relevant in biomedical research).

"The article relies on anecdotal evidence and a couple of very small retrospective studies of heart transplant patients. The first of the studies, published in a journal called the Journal of Near-Death Studies only had ten participants, including a patient only 7 months old at the time of their surgery. The study draws whopping conclusions from incredibly scant evidence, but a close reading provides plenty of hints to the array of possible confounding factors." --Don't Be Taken in by The Nonsense Science of "Cell Memory Theory"

[Zinjanthropos]

To speak of other realities is difficult. Pure speculation with no empirical evidence makes it kind of tough to prove. A few thoughts I've had over the years......

Where do we draw the line between the elements, how do the the same particles that comprise a living organism differ from those that don't? Is this the basis for multiple reality thinking? 

If there are multiple realities at work, then how is it we only sense one and believe in others? 3.3 billions of years of life on this planet may pale in comparison to other planets in the universe and in all that time extra realities are only being recognized because one specific animal evolved in the last million years (approx)? No doubt if multiple realities exist(ed) that nature has had plenty of time to incorporate some or all of them into the evolution of life here and everywhere else. My question is if more than one reality is necessary for life to begin?

[Carol]

I'm skeptical that knowledge as specific as that or carried to the extreme of the parent's own memories being passed on would be possible.

Skepticism is a good thing, and I am at a huge disadvantage in judging what is good science and what is not, so I hope you don't mind teacher better judgment.    
To be clear, Darold Treffert specifically studied  savants and based his argument on the fact these people began doing their specialty at such a young age, there could have been no previous learning.   That disagrees with what you hold to be possible?

Your argument is he gets published because the folks who publish his articles and books are sloppy and only care about making a profit, right?  

Okay, let us move to another source.  This says the mice didn't just inherit a normal fear reaction, but an unusual and specific fear reaction caused by the conditioning of parents.

 http://themindunleashed.com/2014/01/scie...s-dna.html
New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.

How is the study different from what Darold Treffert said?  Is there something sloppy about this research, or is it questionable because of monetary reasons?  

[C C]

My question is if more than one reality is necessary for life to begin?

As an alternative to, say, intelligent design... Multiverse scenarios are appealed to as a natural explanation for a Fine-tuned Universe. When the latter settings of fundamental constants are taken to be necessary for cosmic conditions which allow and facilitate the emergence of life.

---

Okay, let us move to another source.  This says the mice didn't just inherit a normal fear reaction, but an unusual and specific fear reaction caused by the conditioning of parents.

http://themindunleashed.com/2014/01/scie...s-dna.html
New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.

How is the study different from what Darold Treffert said?

Here's the original source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/...stors.html

EXCERPT: Professor Wolf Reik, head of epigenetics at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, said, however, further work was needed before such results could be applied to humans.

Here's an overview of such related studies: http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-...your-genes

Those are based on appeals to epigenetics. Treffert, OTOH, offers a variety of observations which he proposes should be conceived of as instances of "genetic memory", without clarification as to what that means in terms of biological mechanisms. The latter is a speculative recommendation rather than the other's announcement of research project results.

Again, the epigenetic claims revolve around a general disposition or medical condition being passed down. Not the literal inheritance of personal memories. As an illustrative example:

Timmy may have obtained a fear of snakes from his ancestors. His recoiling in horror at the sight of a snake is a behavioral response. When this happens he does not experience a first-person POV memory of his father being bitten by a cottonmouth along Possum Creek three decades ago. Or a vivid memory of his grandmother being bitten by a copperhead in her garden a few years before Timmy's father was born. He just reacts and what he feels is the stress and dread of the ophidian nearby. Not the resurrection of a specific memory from his forebears.

Is there something sloppy about this research, or is it questionable because of monetary reasons?

"Sloppy science" is when published research prematurely promoted or treated as supporting / validating something fails to have its results replicated by further experiments conducted by other teams and institutions. Or fatal flaws are discovered in the work or its interpretations, or those conceptions fail to be substantiated over time.

It takes more research and peer review to either justify an _X_ or discredit it. Those very prolonged qualifications themselves are a reflection of warranted / cautious skepticism, in that a science community isn't gullibly accepting a conclusion about _X_ on the basis of a single study / examination or two.

[Carol]

CC said-

Timmy may have obtained a fear of snakes from his ancestors. His recoiling in horror at the sight of a snake is a behavioral response. When this happens he does not experience a first-person POV memory of his father being bitten by a cottonmouth along Possum Creek three decades ago. Or a vivid memory of his grandmother being bitten by a copperhead in her garden a few years before Timmy's father was born. He just reacts and what he feels is the stress and dread of the ophidian nearby. Not the resurrection of a specific memory from his forebears.

 I never meant to imply that the memory was like a mental movie of the event that caused the memory.   Knowing music is not like that, but like birds knowing the song their species sings.  Some species of birds are born knowing the song they will sing, and others must learn the song and have a very small window of time for this learning.  I think Darold Treffert was implying  savants are like the birds born knowing the song, but this is not the memories of the parents or grandparents learning the songs.  

The mice afraid of the smell of cherry blossom is unlikely to be a memory of how the parents learned to fear the smell of cherry blossoms.  
As I have been digging around for more precise information I found some interesting links to IQ and experiments concluding IQ can be inherited.  Identical twins will have the same IQ but twins started from different eggs being fertilized at the same time, are statistically less apt to have the same IQ.  So what gives the DNA qualities of IQ?  Was it always there from the beginning of the line of inheritance, or was it possibly developed over time, as the mice learning to fear the smell of cherry blossoms?

Someone said he finds it easy to read things that are upside down, and he saw the possible connection with his grandfather learning to do when he was a typesetter and had to check his work with a mirror. That would be the mice learning to fear the smell of cherry blossoms wouldn't it?

I know I am gullible and I am sloppy and having fun. I suspect I also have a very low IQ and I struggle to understand your post and to write post. I really don't remember anything, and to repeatedly looked things up. I hope it is okay for me to participate?

[C C]

I hope it is okay for me to participate?

Since you're on the positive side of the fence in rep points, this persistent concern seems needless. Somewhere in "Site Related" I read or vaguely recollect that it may take a good number of negative points for a member to get banished to the "Empty Room". Which is to say, just being lightly on that side wouldn't even clinch it.

[Zinjanthropos]

I hope it is okay for me to participate?

Since you're on the positive side of the fence in rep points, this persistent concern seems needless. Somewhere in "Site Related" I read or vaguely recollect that it may take a good number of negative points for a member to get banished to the "Empty Room". Which is to say, just being lightly on that side wouldn't even clinch it.

I didn't read up on this forum before or after joining. So is the word casual defined? Is it lack of formality, a relaxed atmosphere, thoughts off the top of one's head, unpremeditated, unfocused, opinions not subject to critique, what exactly does it mean here. I guess I might as well include changing the subject mid thread. 

I welcome Carol's comments, whether she ends up in Van Dieman's Land or whatever. I find it odd that expressing an unsolicited thought during casual discussion might conclude with the commenter either in or in line for forum exile or prison based on the opinions of faceless disembodied keypunchers. 

The reality of this situation should be dealt with first.

[C C]

I welcome Carol's comments, whether she ends up in Van Dieman's Land or whatever. I find it odd that expressing an unsolicited thought during casual discussion might conclude with the commenter either in or in line for forum exile or prison based on the opinions of faceless disembodied keypunchers. 

This board has been around for over two years and so far there are zero human individuals that have been banished to the empty room (the bots and blatant spammers wouldn't qualify, anyway). I dare say that on another science forum which I'm familiar with -- during some of its past phases -- at least a third of the registered members (minimum) would have been banned during that same amount of time by the mods (a good percentage probably permanently banned). Without it having anything like the Empty Room where banned members could still communicate.