Rachel’s Musings

In a recent talk by Barbara Oakley, she summarized some of her findings from her book Evil Genes. Essentially, she wanted to talk about people who have difficulty getting in touch with themselves. Similar to a Point of Inquiry interview with her, Oakley started with the story of how her sister stole their mother’s boyfriend long enough to go to Paris with him, which had been their mother’s life-long dream, and then dump the guy. As Oakley was traveling in Europe, Milosevic was on trial in Den Haag. When he was asked about mass graves, he replied “I can’t hear you. My earpiece is not working.” That struck Oakley as something poignant in the behavior of people like Milosevic, Hitler, or her sister: They cannot hear what they don’t want to hear. To find out more, and especially to answer the question of motivation, Oakley started to research malignant narcissism, the personality disorder that seemed to describe these people best. Narcissists are known for their lack of empathy and their self-centeredness. To her surprise, despite all the talk about narcissism there was “no science there.” However, there are two personality disorders that are well researched: Psychopathy, which is also called antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

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During my exchange with Pat Frank in the comments to my post on the climate crisis, he raised a question about CO₂’s pollutant status. When I researched the question, I found a write up by Weather Underground that recounted the history of that question: It stems from a campaign founded by Exxon. An article on the Doubt Makers by Michelle Nijhuis describes how industries, starting with tobacco, use a similar tactic to create doubt: The climate science models are just too unreliable, therefore we don’t really have to do anything.

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A post over at the Feminist Philosophers’ blog talks about an amazing woman, Alia Sabur, who is the world’s youngest professor in the history of academia. She also happens to be a Muslim. JJ ends her post stating that

in many Muslim countries women are a strong presence in science classrooms, as students and teachers.

This reminded me of an article I read in Free Inquiry about the dismal state of science in Muslim countries, written by a professor in Pakistan, which seemed to call into question any celebration of strong female presence. Either way, I was intrigued and tried to find information on women in science. I was looking for an international comparison of scientists in academia by gender. So far, I haven’t found much. In the process of looking I stumbled on a debate that took place in 2005: The Science of Gender and Science, a topic that I briefly mentioned earlier this year. As behooves the label dilettante, although I prefer the second definition, I abandoned my search for statistics and read the debate instead, which took me forever. This post has been a week or so in the making.

Both [Harvard psychology professors Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke] presented scientific evidence with the realization and understanding that there was nothing obvious about how the data was to be interpreted. Their sharp scientific debate informed rather than detracted. And it showed how a leading University can still fulfill its role of providing a forum for free and open discussion on controversial subjects in a fair-minded way. It also had the added benefit that the participants knew what they were talking about.

As you may recall, in 2005, the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, caused a loud out-cry by remarking that maybe women are underrepresented in science because of innate ability differences. The Pinker-Spelke debate was intended to see what the science really says.

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The Pew Forum on Religion breaks out religious affiliation by marital status. According to their detail table, the highest percentage of never marrieds are amongst atheists (37%), almost twice the rate as in the total population (19%). This might be at least in part due to the younger age of atheists (37% are between 18 and 29 years old compared to 20% in the total population). 30% of secular unaffiliated/atheist/agnostic are never marrieds; 45% are currently married. 29% of this group is above 50 years old, so not all these singles are young adults.

I think the high presence of singles, especially never married people, underscores the need to discuss alternatives to marriage, as well as singlism, amongst secular humanists.

It seems a bit strange to blog about an article about what blogging does to our brains. It feels like attending a BA - Blogger’s Anonymous - meeting: “Hello, my name is Rachel and I blog.” Scientific American recently wrote about writing in blogs. As Timothy Wilson in Strangers to Ourselves observed, writing about our experience can have therapeutic effects. Blogging, of course, is a form of writing, a way to express our thoughts and emotions about what is going on in our lives (some of us try to tie this all in with the world at large but it’s still our own subjective rambling).

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As I have pointed out before, I have hypothyroidism and am having symptoms that may or may not be related to it. In my quest to be an informed patient, I have been looking for a lot of research. It is rather tedious, especially since I have to get through a lot of misinformation that is on the Internet. Fortunately, I have found a site that looks like it’s done the work for me: MyThyroid.com. It confirms a lot of what I have learned in easy to read summaries of current research with links to the original papers.  The FAQs reference the most recent research, at least on the optimal treatment page.

The research confirms my suspicion: I am tired because I didn’t get enough sleep, not because my thyroid is out of whack (for example). If I am cold, I just get some tea to warm me up. Adding T3 might not be a good idea, especially since there isn’t a lot of benefit (the body produces primarily T4 and converts that to T3 as needed; T3 is very potent and thus can cause hyper symptoms very quickly).

It might be frustrating to accept that there isn’t an easy solution to the many symptoms we might experience. It would be so much easier if they’d just disappear with one small pill rather than a life-style overhaul because they’re not really caused by hypothyroidism (because the blood tests are normal).  Of course, there might be some fine-tuning that’s necessary but once the blood levels of the hormone are normal, the thyroid is very likely not to blame.