Nature VS Nurture

So... What is acceptable and what is respectable, is a highly arbitrary phenomenon in our society."




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inheriting trauma... epigenetics... Context is everything

"The findings, the authors concluded, supported an “epigenetic explanation.” The idea is that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes, which then is passed down to subsequent generations. The mark doesn’t directly damage the gene; there’s no mutation. Instead it alters the mechanism by which the gene is converted into functioning proteins, or expressed. The alteration isn’t genetic. It’s epigenetic."

Can We Really Inherit Trauma, Benedict Carey

The body keeps the score - Trauma inherited

Study finds PTSD effects may linger in body chemistry of next generation

About Rachel Yehuda

About Psychiatric Genomics Consortium

Freedom does not exist. It's either determinism or randomness.

The Rise of the Data Religion



"The word 'freedom' simply has no meaning in the life sciences of today."

"If an organism is just a collection of algorithms, and these algorithms are not free in any sense, this means that, at least potentially, an external system, an external entity, can understand me perfectly. It just needs to understand all the algorithms that come together to build this machine, this structure."

"Feelings are just biochemical algorithms calculating, either of two things: probabilities of survival and probabilities of reproduction. That's it."

"Sexual feelings are biochemical algorithms."

"The algorithms of your feelings have succeeded, for millions of years, to pass the most rigorous tests of natural selection."

"Liberalism is listening to your feelings. Going with your heart. It was a practical guidance. It was not just a theory. Now, we move to the next stage, where people say, 'don't listen to your feelings, what do they know?' Listen to Google, listen to Amazon or to Facebook or whatever. They understand how you feel, better than you know how you feel, because they have much more information and they have much better algorithms than what natural selection gave you. They have information, not only about your emails and your books and so forth."

"Does life really mean nothing more than just information processing? What about consciousness?"

"Maybe the life sciences have got it wrong. Maybe the humans and other animals are not reducible to algorithms. however, in historical terms it's not as important as you might think, because a religion or ideology does not have to be correct in what it says, in order to take over the world. We have many cases, previously in history, where religions and ideologies, which said, what we think today, to be completely erroneous things about the world, nevertheless managed to take it over. In scientific terms the story, for example, that Christianity tells about the world [...] it's not true. It's simply not true. At least according to science. But this did not prevent Christianity from taking over most of the world. So you don't need the truth to take over the world. Similarly with these new data religions, maybe, they're based on a misunderstanding of life, but this will not necessarily prevent them from taking over the world."

"For me, the most beautiful tension and connection is between biology and computer science. Very often, when people think about the ideas I raised in the last part of the lecture, they give all the importance to the advances in computer science, to our ability to create better and better algorithms and computer programs. But in my eyes the real revolution is actually from the life sciences. The really big revolution is when the life sciences are telling us that animals are basically biochemical algorithms. If they didn't tell us this, then you can have all the advances you want in computer science, it won't impinge on humanity. You will still have humans which is something completely different and all the advances in robotics and computers... ok, we'll have better computers, we'll have better robots, but it won't really make much of a difference to us. When it becomes really amazing and really frightening is, that once you realize (and this is a contribution of the life sciences) that humans actually work in the same way, then you can make the connections and this is the really frightening stuff. This is also why I think, more and more companies like Google, that started simply in the computer business, are moving more and more to the biotechnology business, and then the two industries are merging into one. The most fundamental idea in this respect comes from the life sciences, which says: organisms are algorithms. This is the most important insight of our age, and also the most important question, because we don't have any proof of it. Currently it's just dogma. We don't have any explanation of how any kind of algorithm can create subjective experiences. Indeed in the field of computers, we're not even close to creating subjective experiences in computers. It's just the dogma, the people say: yes, it's the same. To give another historical reference, back in the 19th Century, when they tried to understand humans and the human mind and the human soul or whatever you like to call it, one of the main theories was that humans were not algorithms, humans were steam engines. This is the basic metaphor that standed (?) the basis of Freudian psychology. Humans usually tried to explain themselves in terms of the most sophisticated technology of the day. In 1900 the most sophisticated machine, the most sophisticated technology which was the basis for all economy, was the steam engine. Even today, when we want to unload our angst, we pick up the telephone and we release some steam. The idea is that the human being is built like a steam engine, it has all these pressures inside, and if you block it here it goes there. And much of Freudian psychology is built on this. [...] Now we say human beings are not like steam engines, they are like computers. But at present, at least, this is just a dogma. We don't have the hard facts to actually prove it."

Na fase das perguntas e respostas, é muito interessante a reflexão que YH faz acerca de quando se terá iniciado o patriarcado [+/- ao minuto 1:00:00]. Apesar de fisicamente inferiores aos homens, as mulheres sempre tiveram melhores competências sociais. Não se compreende, então, por que razão o patriarcado se impôs. Isto fez-me lembrar uma das histórias do livro SUM, de David Eagleman, acerca de uma deusa, tão compassiva, tão compassiva, que não se conseguia decidir sobre quem enviar para o inferno.

E a propósito de questões levantadas na parte final das Q&A, lembrei-me desta palestra.

How Your Parent's Environment Can Affect Your DNA

Da epigenética.

on the invisible forces / the placebo effect

"Biological research is revealing that inheritance works in different ways from the standard DNA in inheritance pattern [epigenetics]."

Sobre Bruce Lipton


Darwinian medecine Richard Dawkins and Nicholas Humphreys: