Listserv: Pythagoras, not Prozac!

 

Pythagoras, not Prozac!

11/6/2002 1:15:12 AM

I have gotten a lot of flack from people who say that I don’t understand the validity of depression as a serious physiological illness for which drugs must be taken, and that I don’t have the expertise to say why anyone is suffering from it. This is not true.

I consider depression to be a real and serious psychological disorder, which is often caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Specifically, a disruption in the natural production of the neurotransmitters dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine (which are produced by the amino acid tryptophan) causes a break in the normal transmission and activation of brain sector that allows us to feel happy, sociable, excited and such.

Prozac and other anti-depressants sometimes are successful in restoring normal neurotransmitter production, though they are only temporary cures, and depression returns (sometimes much worse) when the drug is removed – unless seratonin production is restored in the meanwhile by the body itself.

For some people (I am not qualified to give numbers) Prozac (and like chemicals) is the only method available to restore normal brain function, and there is nothing wrong with using it for that purpose. However, my argument is not addressed towards those people. My argument concerns individuals who’s philosophies (remember, a philosophy includes a person’s entire approach to life) cause their brain to lock up and shut down and induce depression artificially. When Prozac is used by such people it is sometimes effective in creating a semi-permanent and addictive high, but the long run effects are extremely harmful, as I will explain.

First of all, the maintenance of the body’s psychologically relevant hormones and chemicals is related to many controllable physical factors, such as diet, exercise, and significantly, exercise of the mind. Studies show that both physical and mental workouts increase brain cell regeneration rates and dendrite growth, and the general efficiency of the brain. These are significant externally controllable “all-natural” factors that along with diet and rest can have a significant positive (or negative) impact on depression. However, my argument is not primarily about these alternatives to dangerous chemical anti-depressant.

The proper function of the brain is to allow the mind to function properly. The proper function of the mind involves taking raw sense-data inputs, processing them into shapes, objects, and sensations (the sensual level), converting the data into concepts (the perceptual level), then relating the concepts to one another(the conceptual level), so as to create a model of reality, create and apply value judgments to possible alternative actions, and then choose a course of action that has the best probability of achieving the individuals values. (Obviously, there is much more to this, and I will write a thesis on it some day, but for now, I’ll stick to the mind as it relates to depression.) So, the brain and body is the hardware, and the mind is the software – and the proper function of the software depends on the proper function of the hardware – and vice versa, since the hardware is wired to develop areas the mind focuses on and waste away the areas that are not used.

Where does depression and happiness come into the equation? The initial observation is that depression serves a valuable purpose – evolution has been such that a balance of sadness and happiness is present in most advanced mammals (including humans, of course) and serves a valuable purpose. What is that purpose? The purpose of happiness is to release neurotransmitters in response to successful actions (therefore the successful achievement of values) to enforce the brain paths (or whatever the specific mechanism is) that led us to the successful action in the first place. The purpose of sadness is to destroy the brain paths that led us to failures (and unachieved values.) This process is crucial to all advanced life forms that have the ability to learn in any way shape or form. (Humans have some unique abilities in this area, but this is another topic.)

What causes depression then? It is the failure of the process of serotonin (and other chemical) production in response to successful achievement of values. When this is not a natural chemical imbalance, it will be for one of two reasons: our methodology is incorrect (this can usually be auto-corrected) OR that our values are incorrect –that is, they do not meet the criteria for “good” values, as described in my previous email: they are unachievable, inevitable, contradictory, etc. Successful actions require that proper values and proper methodology (which are really aspects of the same thing) be accepted. “Good” values allow for self-correcting methodology – also known as virtues, examples of “basic” good values include rationality, integrity, self-honesty, and skepticism. These lead to good higher level values such as honesty, self-reliance, reason, and confidence. The specific values are not key to my theory other than that I believe that Objectivism is the philosophy that best maximizes good values – but whether you disagree or agree with me on that point does not affect the fact that certain values are superior in leading to self-corrective methodology (socially recognized as good and/or moral actions.)

So, the point of describing the process above is to point out that certain values need to be present consciously, and subconsciously (as integrated into your basic thought-process) in order for the mind to function properly, and the balance of neurotransmitter production to be maintained. The great danger of anti-depressants and other stimulants is that they stimulate the mind completely arbitrarily, without regard to whether the pathways they are encouraging are those that lead to good or bad actions and values. The general effect of prolonged use is to diminish our ability to think — to reason and evaluate actions in the process described above. For a well known example of this, take drug use. Pot heads and alcoholics feel good all day long, but (unless your daddy is president) that usually leads them to lose all ambition and generally stop caring about their life. Not that there is necessarily something inherently wrong with enjoying yourself every now and then, but habitual use destroys our mind’s ability to function. Bad values (and bad philosophies that lead to those values) do the same thing.

What is a “bad philosophy”? The most common example is the person who gets his values randomly, absorbing fragments from his parents, his church, his peers, media, etc – without ever integrating it all in any way. To some degree, this describes the great majority of people alive today. They live their lives in a daze, unable to choose the course of their live by consistently working towards self-chosen goals. They are apt to follow any leader with a message like sheep because they cannot make any independent values of their own and would rather have someone else think for them. They cannot enjoy their successes because contradictory values tell them that it’s both good and bad to achieve something on their, that it’s both good and bad to make money, that love should be unconditional, yet we love some more than others, than logic is useless, yet some actions seem to be logical and some don’t, that all values are relative, when certain values inherently “feel” better than others.

This mindset often leads people to give up on values entirely and become nihilists (usually implicitly, without even knowing what the word “nihilism” means.) Of course, nihilism is just another value to the mind, which tries, unsuccessfully, to integrate it into your trash pit of conflicting values and ends up locking up, the cogs hopelessly unable to decide on a course of action because thinking itself becomes feared. Such a person is unable to maintain proper levels of serotonin production (not to mention many other chemicals we do and don’t know of) and subsequently becomes depressed. I have seen this happen in many people – some who I have known well, some who I have not. I myself went through a period of depression just once in my life — during my junior year of high school and can affirm to this process.

Thus, proper function of the mind is dependent on proper values. The most important condition of values is that they are consistent. This means that they must be integrated so that that are non-contradictory and directly related to real-life experience. If values are not integrated, we will be unable to fully enjoy the pleasure that comes from successful actions, and if the values are not tied in reality, they will never be achieved, since we do not know what it takes to care them out in daily life. Unlike animals, who’s values are entirely integrated and consists of the single command “SURVIVE!”, human values are self-chosen and often oppose our physical survival (not always bad) and our rational mental function (always bad.) Implicit rejection of the function of the mind (as in most people) is bad enough, but the “post-modern” explicit rejection of the mind (aka “materialist behaviorism” in psychology) in favor of a robotic, chaotic animal is a betrayal of the worst kind, because it destroys our own ability to reason and correct improper values. It is what Ayn Rand called the “blank out” – the refusal to focus, and fundamentally, the refusal to think. When it becomes a way of life, it is no wonder that depression is the result in so many people.

–David

Damn Voting!

So I tried to go vote yesterday and today but the whole world seems to be determined not to let me. First, I found out that early voting ends four days before the elections, so a trip in the rain to the MSC was wasted. Today, I went to the MSC to have the officials tell me that all off-campus voters must go elsewhere, so I look at the precinct map and go to the City Hall (3 miles away) on my skates. I finally get there to find out that they do not have my name on the roll, and my precinct is actually right next to where I live. So I go 3 miles back, find the other voting location, and they tell me that they do not have my name either, so I get them to call election headquarters, which is finally able to tell me that I am supposed to vote at the MSC!

I have class, so I run home to get my books, and since I am running late, I take my bike. After class, I head to the MSC, but as I am riding by Beutel (the infirmary), I slip and fly headfirst into a metal pole. A very sweet girl half-carries my bloodied, limp body into Beutel, where eight stitches, lots of antibiotic, and a big credit card bill later, I hop on one foot (no kidding) to the MSC. FINALLY, I get there and do my thing for democracy. Then, I hobble back the mile it takes me to get home.

What a day! (The stitches come out in 10-14 days, and no, I did not get the girl’s number, though I could have sworn she would have given it to me if my hands weren’t all bloody.)

LTE: "Recapturing the Lost Art of Gracious Victorian Living", by Linda S. Lichter

Ms. Lichter makes several good points in her nostalgic ode to Victorian morality as she shreds the “chaotic muddle” which goes for morality these days. However, before jumping on the “traditional family values” bandwagon, it is worthwhile to examine the particular differences between Victorian morality and what passes for morality today.

Victorian ideals stressed a rigid code of values that came from God himself. Being Good was the sole purpose of these values, regardless of whether they brought happiness and success or required the sacrifice of one’s dreams and desires to preserve an image of “true nobility and god deeds.”

Unfortunately, Queen Victoria’s morality died with her. Men who had been enjoying sex with whores suddenly felt free to enjoy sex with their own wives. They concluded that the Victorian morality was too “idealistic” and adopted a pragmatic approach to life. If morality is a set of rules to govern one’s actions, the first rule of today’s morality is that there are no rules!

For example, take sex. Where Victorian ethics preached sexual decency (no sex until marriage, and then only on the Sabbath.and don’t even think about enjoying it!) today’s moralists tell us to “Have sex whenever you want…with two or more people/sexes at a time.in public!” Consequences of actions are divorced from their causes: “If you get AIDS, take some protease inhibitors and lobby the government for more research to “solve the AIDS crisis.” If you find yourself unable to have meaningful relationships with the strangers you wake up next to, take Prozac!

Clearly, Victorian morality is just as “impractical” as today’s anti-morality — if living successful, happy lives is our goal. Victorian ethics divorce morals from their fundamental purpose (to serve as a guide for a happy and productive life) and today’s anti-morals divorce actions from their consequences by claiming that following whims and urges is sufficient guidance for achieving all of one’s goals without suffering the consequences of self-destructive and contradictory actions.

Ms. Lichter is correct in arguing that society has abandoned the very idea of morality as a principled guide to one’s actions. However, the foundation of morality is not to discard individual happiness and pursue self-sacrifice, but on the contrary, to seek individual happiness by means of a moral code. While the Victorian era’s morality may be an improvement over the modern-day wholesale rejection of morals, it lacks the logical foundation of morality, based not on an idealized concept of God, but on the idealized concept of principled man.

On Voting..

Today’s blog comes from my post on the ASC forum

Voting by definition is a process that involves forcing your will on others. Some actions of government (or its agents) are clearly coercive in that they limit your liberty directly, while others don’t involve initiating force, but rather define just what the initiation of force involves. Either way, voting is a process of forcefully restricting the actions of other people. If it weren’t forceful, they we could just ask, pay, or convince them to do whatever without going through the hassle of elections.

Statists think voting is a legitimate way to coerce anyone into doing anything, or in other words, that there is no higher, independent moral authority other than the “voice of the people.” Classical liberals (and their variants) on the other hand think that man has rights which are due to his nature as man (either because God said so, or that’s just how man is.)

Voting is not of course “the most important right” as some statists claim. Elections are only one of many safeguards used to protect the real rights, which are life, liberty, and property. Unfortunately, without constitutional safeguards on liberty, “voting” is just another word for “mob rule.” (Incidentally, so is anarcho-capitalism, where votes are replaced by ballots made of guns and money.) Now, many people who (correctly) think that the government of the US initiates force on a regular basis choose not to vote because they do not want to implicitly legitimize the system even when they vote for less force.

Such non-voters are mistaken. Whether you believe that voting is not a sufficient means of protecting liberty (as a classical liberal) or voting is a completely illegitimate means (as an anarcho-capitalist, for example) the fact remains that voting is the best means you have of changing the actions of government. It is also arguably the only nonviolent means you have of limiting the actions of government (at least until your private army is big enough so that the US military gives up without a fight.) Whether you like it or not, unless our whole society decides unanimously to change to another social order, voting will remain the most effective non-violent means to limit the growth of government.

This is not to say that the anti-statists of the world will be able to vote themselves into freedom, or even shrink the size and power of government – as a philosophical change in the public’s view of the role of the State is the best and only way to achieve liberty in the long run (which is why the LP will never succeed without adopting a philosophy of liberty.) In the short run however, the freedom lovers of the world must use every practical means to stop, or at least slow the growth of the leviathan state NOW, and short of non-violent protest in the form of tax evasion and such, voting remains our most effective way of doing so.

Marxism and Quantum Physics

I can’t believe I haven’t head about this, but apparently, in 1996, Alan Sokal, a physicist at NYU, wrote an article titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity“, in which he parodied cultural studies, postmodernism, and so on, writing a paper full of gibberish using dozens of Marxist, Socialist and other “Post-Modern” writers. The hillarious thing is that he actually got the paper published in a peer-review journal, “Social Text” — which as you might imagine, is full of such postmodern crap.

What’s really hilarious is that the paper is full of complete gibberish, yet makes fun of all the “post-modern” crap that has been popularized in academia, and shows how “a liberatory postmodern science” leads to blatant nonsense when subjectivism is applied to scientific knowledge.

Scientists Shake Hands over Internet: Porn Industry Interested

As this Reuters story reports, scientists are developing a way to “recreate the sense of touch” over the Internet.
Says Reuters:

“Pushing on the pen sends data representing forces through the Internet that can be interpreted by a phantom and therefore felt on the other end,” said Mel Slater, Professor of Computer Science at University College London (UCL).
“You can not only feel the resulting force, but you can also get a sense of the quality of the object you’re feeling — whether it’s soft or hard, wood-like or fleshy.”

I don’t think I need to point out that as soon as this technology becomes viable, the porn industry is going to explode, and we’ll all become mindless cyber-sex addicts.

In other news, it seems that there was a slight miscalculation in the amount of gas that was injected into the Russian theatre to free the hostages, killing at least 120 of the hostages by the toxic gas, while only one person died from being shot during the raid. I’m no fan of the terrorists, but I think the Russian government showed gross incompetence on many levels by not calculating the effects of the gas, not providing medical attention shortly after the raid, and then not informing the doctors of what the toxic agent actually was, so that they could provide the proper antidote. Afterwards, the Russian government refused to reveal the status of the hostages, the number dead, or the nature of the gas that was used, and told the doctors involved to stay mum or else. I think the general problem can be characterized as a complete disregard from human life by the Russian government, Soviet-style incompetence, and a disregard for free speech.

Economic Freedom and Prosperity

For my econometrics class, I am comparing the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity, and I just got my first regression results for 2001 for 155 nations. The results are very preliminary, but the evidence is clear: there is an extremely high correlation between economic freedom and prosperity, explaining over 73% of the variation in wealth. This means that 73% of the difference between the wealth of nations is explained by the economic policies of their government, with only 27% accounting for differences in natural resources, location, climate, culture, other nations, etc.

This fact alone is not very surprising (unless you’re a socialist, in which case you’re probably ignoring these results), but it is interesting to see which specific factors affect per capita GDP the most. Not surprisingly, property rights and the fiscal burden (taxes) of government have the greatest effect, and significantly monetary policy (inflation) -which shows that (as Lenin said) the best way to destroy capitalism is to go after the currency. Factors which (to my surprise) do not affect prosperity individually are foreign investment and regulation – which may not be true if these variables are significant jointly -I’m not sure yet.

After my analysis of economic factors is complete, I am going to see what effect non-economic factors such as political freedom, government welfare, and population control have on prosperity.

(Note: while the black market correlation is highest, this is more a result of government regulation than a cause, which is why I don’t consider it a factor. Data comes from the 2001 CIA Factbook and 2001 Heritage Inst. Economic Freedom Index. The 2001 data was used because 2002 GDP’s are not available for all nations yet.)

Here is the regression output:

Model 3: OLS estimates using the 155 observations 1-155
Dependent variable: indGDP

VARIABLE COEFFICIENT STDERROR T STAT 2Prob(t>|T|)
           
const 20723.3 2201.61 9.413 <0.00001 ***
Trade -1186.36 434.009 -2.733 0.007042 ***
FiscalBu 1538.63 467.05 3.294 0.001238 ***
Governme 1003.78 583.324 1.721 0.087407 *
Monetary -627.609 326.967 -1.919 0.056873 *
BK -793.975 646.082 -1.229 0.221083  
Wagesand 1420.41 650.191 2.185 0.030513 **
Property -2108.96 663.036 -3.181 0.001794 ***
BlackMar -2899.29 522.668 -5.547 <0.00001 ***

Mean of dependent variable = 8854.32
Standard deviation of dep. var. = 9169.89
Sum of squared residuals = 3.43936e+009
Standard error of residuals = 4853.58
Unadjusted R-squared = 0.7344
Adjusted R-squared = 0.719847
F-statistic (8, 146) = 50.4624 (p-value < 0.00001)
Durbin-Watson statistic = 2.13614
First-order autocorrelation coeff. = -0.0694149

Excluding the constant, p-value was highest for variable 11 (BK)
(Variables are explained here: htp://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/2002/chapters/chap5.html)

UFO-Mania!

Reports MSNBC: “Calls for the U.S. government to be more forthcoming on what it knows about UFOs increased following the release of the poll results. That RoperASW study, sponsored by the SCI FI Channel, shows that 72% of Americans believe the government is not telling the public everything it knows about UFO activity.”

I’m inclined to believe that the majority of Americans actually think that little green men have come millions of light years just to give anal probes to hick farmers. Now, maybe I could see little green men coming millions of light years to give anal probes to VIP’s like politicians (heck, I’d be all for that!) but hicks?? And why do they always crash in the middle of nowhere? If aliens were going to come to earth, wouldn’t they want to check out developed and populated areas like NYC instead of the middle or the New Mexico-frikkin desert?

But seriously, the UFO-mania is indicative of a pervasive mysticism that comes from a today’s flawed philosophical view of the world. Unlike more primitive civilizations, the citizens of America and other industrial nations have witnessed the power of the human mind to create great things, but instead of embracing the creations that have increased the lifespan and prosperity of every man and woman, they have shrunk back in fear of technology and progress and reverted to what can only be called primitivism.

Most “experts” often say that technological progress is happening “too fast” for the average person, but this is utter nonsense. Technologically, I live light-years ahead of most people – not only because computers are my life, but because I eagerly look forward to all the technological innovations that promise to make life better and easier for all. Yet I suffer no techno-phobia, no “deep moral questions,” no desire to embrace environmentalism and yearn for a “simpler time” in which I would live a hard, short, brutal life, but remain “close to nature.” No, these are the acts not of a civilized human but of a caveman dancing around a fire and kneeling to his witch doctor, not someone who employs tools to shape the world to his desires, but a man who is at the mercy of whatever unknown and mystical forces affect his life.

The difference is of course philosophical. I have confidence that the reality I perceive is the only reality possible, that no other mystical realm exists, and that only by employing our minds, not divine (UFO or otherwise) intervention can we improve our well-being. And like me, the men of the mind in every age rejected the mysticism of their day in whatever format, whether it was witchcraft, quackery, environmentalism, or UFO-mania.