Sociobiology Just So Stories

The Times op-ed section published a peculiarly conflicted pop science account of sociobiology. Pinker's account reads like a blog posting someone should have read over or submitted to peer review. [The original article has been removed to the Times pay site, but it might be found at his Harvard promotion site.]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/


Sniffing Out the Gay Gene

By STEVEN PINKER

Published: May 17, 2005
Cambridge, Mass.

A team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around.

What is evolutionarily adaptive and what is morally justifiable have little to do with each other. Many laudable activities - being faithful to one's spouse, turning the other cheek, treating every child as precious, loving thy neighbor as thyself - are "biological errors" and are rare or unknown in the natural world.

Steven Pinker, a professor of cognitive science at Harvard, is the author of "How the Mind Works" and "The Blank Slate."

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BrooklynDodger(s) comment: Steven Pinker published a popular book on language and cognition, "The Language Instinct," when on the faculty at MIT. Now it appears he's moved west on Mass Ave to Harvard.

Linguistics at MIT was the fort from which Noam Chomsky launched a scientific revolution, and also his personal political campaign to remake thinking about first the Vietnam War, imperialism generally, and the middle east.

The "Language Instinct" was an interesting book, with a lot of computational stuff on language recognition which appeared convincing, perhaps because it was recondite and reflective of computer programming logic. Since then, Pinker has gone over to the dark side.

The paragraphs above are pretty bogus, an example of the arrogance of going beyond a technical range and trading on academic credentials.

First, the Dodger(s) wants to see some inter-rater variability data on these brain MRI's before even crediting the observation in the first place. The Dodger(s) doesn't(don't) doubt that female hormones lit up one of the straight guys, whose brain scan made the publication, and air balled a gay guy, whose picture also made it. What's the scoring system, how many were scanned, how were straight and gay determined, all of that stuff.

Second, the sociobiology of evaluating every trait in a phenotype as having to be adaptive is bogus, generating just-so stories. Some stuff is there as a by product of something else which does create a selection advantage.

Third, the second paragraph dumps the entire literature on re-iterated prisoner's dilemma. Cooperation benefits the species, exploitation diminishes the species. The mechanisms by which cooperation is enhanced and preserved are a subject of study. For people, it's not how many children a male can procreate, it's how many of them which prosper and procreate which enhances the penetration of some genetic trait in the male in the population. Men taking care of children rather than running out may be adaptive. Maybe more adaptive now than it was before agriculture was invented 10,00 years ago.

Both types of traits are also carried by females, and may be expressed in females [perhaps in a different way] and impact their reproductive success, and that of offspring. Likewise female traits.

Community Satisfaction - A Surrogate for Environmental Social Stress?

http://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/1134.pdf

Appendix A: The Community Satisfaction Scale
To measure community satisfaction, a scale was created based on respondents’ answers to nine survey questions.
Respondents were first asked whether they lived in a city, suburb, small town or rural area. Then they were
asked a question measuring their overall satisfaction with the specific type of place where they lived...


How would you rate each of the following in your local community?
a. Job opportunities
b. Cost of living
c. A place to raise children
d. Recreational and outdoor activities
e. Shopping
g. The climate
h. Cultural activities
j. Opportunities to meet people and make friends

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BrooklynDodger(s) Comment: Stress may cause adverse health effects by two pathways, one by the homormal mechanism, the Hypothalamic-Pituitary Axis, HPA, and also indirectly by triggering health risk behavior. The Dodger(s) innovative idea is that musculoskeletal pain is a source of stress and responsible for the association of bad backs and DUE MSD's with overweight, etc. However, social environment outside work can't be ignored. Dissatisfaction with living conditions is also a source of stress - low quality = stress. Above is the way the Pew center measures community satisfaction. The Dodger(s) wonder(s) where personal security, low crime enters into these 9 categories.

What's Up With Nathan's?

Stock Quote Security: NATH (Common Stock) 12.03

Over the last two decades, Nathan's fell from 9 per share to less than 3, plateaued at 6 for a long time, recently got back to 9 and is now at 12. What's up? Is someone pumping before dumping? or have the American public finally recognized the importance of a Brooklyn Hot Dog?

Indicting the Indicters

Terror trial prosecution in crosshairs

Special grand jury considers indicting 3 accused of holding back evidence in Metro case.

David Shepardson / The Detroit News
February 19, 2006

DETROIT -- A special federal grand jury is nearing the end of its probe into whether three government officials conspired to obstruct justice and induce perjury in the 2003 Detroit terrorism trial, officials familiar with the case told The Detroit News.

Under investigation is the former lead prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, along with the FBI Special Agent Michael Thomas and another witness in the trial, U.S. State Department security officer Harry Raymond Smith.

In June 2003, Convertino won a conviction against two Detroit men on terrorism charges. The case, which claimed four Arab immigrants were part of a sleeper cell, was the nation's first terror trial after the September 11 attacks.

The convictions were tossed out in 2004 after a Justice Department review found prosecutors suppressed evidence that might have bolstered the defendants' claims of innocence.

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BrooklynDodger(s) comments:

The article notes that "the special grand jury has heard from numerous witnesses in the last six months, ranging from prosecutors to an office paralegal, according to several people familiar with the proceedings. By law, grand jury deliberations are secret. The grand jury is also considering other charges."

All things considered, the Dodger(s) would like to know if there are any "sleeper cells" [agents of an international conspiracy] or even home grown cells of persons planning terrorist events. Certainly the invasion, occupation and exploitation of oil wealth of Iraq has increased the probablity of home grown cells seeking revenge. The Dodger(s) suspect that offshore agents have found that they can fight the US conveniently in Iraq and so don't have the make the effort to fight the US here.

The great fear about Patriot Act is that it would be used against progressive socila movements. The highest profile target would be the peace movement, which connects to many other movements.

These victims don't seem to be connected to any social movement. So the question is whether this fabricated prosecution arose from simple racism, self-aggrandizing by the prosecutor, an attempt to gain an upper hand politically by manufacturing a sleeper cell, or what.

Torture in the home country

Halt hooding?

The FBI's Detroit office has confirmed it was investigating three allegations of Macomb County law enforcement officers using hoods on people in custody. Should the process of 'hooding' be prohibited?

Yes	32.48%
No	67.52%
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The Detroit News cyberpoll has tapped into another hidden sentiment. The best you could say is that most readers, who support hooding, don't ever expect they or their friends and relatives will end up in a hood.

Technically Excellent News for the Pistons

BrooklynDodger(s) is temporarily in internet range for the Blog. But next week may be sparse again.

The Dodger(s) has been worrying about Rasheed's technicals, especially after he got T'd up for smiling at the ref [although who knows what he had said before.] The Dodger(s) has thought that there would be one game suspension for every T after 15, right down to the end and into the playoffs. ESPN gives us some good news:

Sheed is not nearly as volatile as he was in his Blazer days, when 40-something technicals were the norm, but the league didn't have a policy in place to suspend guys for racking up T's back then. The good news? Three of 'Sheed's 15 T's this season have been rescinded by the league, meaning he's four away from a one-game suspension instead of one away. (Don't forget that this is the first season in which players are suspended for one game after their 16th, 18th, 20th technicals and so on.)

...

His slate is wiped clean before the postseason, when players aren't suspended until the seventh technical. If 'Sheed accrues five T's in the playoffs, he'll get a warning letter.

On Hiatus

Going to somewhere with no high speed connection which blocks blogspot.

Sleeping With The Enemy

Firefox interacts with Blogger lots better than Internet Explorer. But Firefox is increasingly locking up in many applications, notably Blogger. When the Dodger(s) finally gives up and goes to the old reliable control-alt-delete, and puts the unresponsive Firefox out of its misery, Microsoft asks if the Dodger(s) want to send an error message.

The Dodger(s) doesn't. Figuring, it's only Microsoft figuring how to create expect errors rather than unexpeceted errors.