WRT Maslow's hierarchy, let me ask: does the typical pyramidal visual model seem to you to lead casual observers to think that the hierarchy is pointing toward human perfection? That there is a sort of implied moral valuation, with the needs at the top being the most important?
I first encountered this theory back in college, during the late Pliocene, in a Beginning Psychology class that was an elective. I think that most of the students perceived the lecture and readings in the hierarchy as moral instruction towards a better world. But as I got older, I found that I perceived the elements of the hierarchy in order of necessity, from bottom to top. This made the lowest level of the hierarchy essential to individual survival--the *most* important--with each succeeding level less important, to the point that they become figurative luxuries that can be afforded by the most secure. I would agree that the architecture of a pyramid implies the necessity of the lower levels, but very often a pyramid is used to visualize valuation, with the capstone as supreme.
Truly, in my view, with the most important at the bottom, it exposes human motivations as a dog-eat-dog contest with those who can gain the first three levels of security able to "afford" the subsequent higher levels.
This is of course my own interpretation and don't expect others to accept it. I've been playing around for a while with the idea that the wealthier a nation is, in terms of substantial surpluses of all goods/services that are readily available to very large parts of the general society, the easier it is for members of that society to hold impractical, and perhaps even self-destructive belief systems because the general distributed wealth of the nation insulates them from the consequences of their beliefs.
One last question that really has me baffled...
How do you get the lobsters to help you split wood for the winter? ;^)
I would not be surprised if this was most prevalent among black women. Heightened proclivity to PTSD, schizophrenia (usually goes undiagnosed in black communities) and other mental illness seem to be more present. It’s difficult to accurately ascertain if this is due to external conditions of biological causes completely (many such cases) but that being said not surprise e they are more likely to suffer rumination, but this this relates to greater OCD likelyhood as well.
"everybody online with an IQ over 105 knows correlation does not equal causation" Well now!.....for very many years I used to wake up to the morning BBC flagship 'news' hour. There would barely be a day go by without some "research has shown that X causes Y....." report - confusing correlation with causation. So does being a BBC journalist 'cause' your IQ to drop below 105 I wonder?
This is just a tiny subset of the long-standing empirical finding that higher cognitive capacity is associated with less belief in conspiratorial views of the world.
That's why "conspiracy theory" as a slander always sounded so defensive and dumb.
A theory isn't something you believe in, it's something you test. If it's a conspiracy theory the key word is "theory." So, test it. But this is exactly what those who engage in conspiracies don't want you to do. Hence their need to slander. But in doing so they come off as dumbbells who don't know what a theory is and what you're supposed to do with it.
I noticed that nowhere do they define or even verify "racial discrimination". It is a nebulous non-term, as unscientific as you can get. Even a "perceived" in front would have added some validity to the study. If you look for boogeymen everywhere, you will find them; even a look can be perceived as "discrimination" by the doggedly victimized "oppressed". The body responds to the mind - think negative thoughts all day, feel rage and hatred all the time - this is the result. Acid is caustic, even mental acid. This is why the Bible instructs us to be meditating on God's word; not to be pious, but to protect our mind and hearts. Jesus spoke of the Word and its power, John 6: "63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." And in verse 68 "Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life". An abundant life. Romans 12:2 " Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." God's perfect will is for us to be sound in mind and body. A life spent wallowing in hatred results in a sick mind; physically and mentally. The Woke Mind Virus is death.
> people who are always perceiving themselves being discriminated against tend to have defective brains
At first glance, I can see three ways to frame the Grady Trauma Project's data on the neurological status of black women. (Maybe a closer read will rule out some of them.)
1. Experiencing anti-black racial discrimination causes negative changes to the brain (leading to increased vulnerability to stress-related disorders and neurodegenerative disease).
2. Perceiving a given set of life experiences through the lens of being a victim of anti-black discrimination causes negative changes to the brain.
3. Individuals who are pre-disposed to see themselves as victims of discrimination are also more likely to undergo negative changes to the brain.
The public policy implications of the three interpretations are quite different from one another. Only #1 (preferred by Grady authors and JAMA editors) is fully aligned with consensus elite opinion.
.
8/11/24 edit: Per Steve Sailer comment,
4. Living with a deteriorating brain causes a person to see herself or himself as the victim of racial discrimination (real or imagined).
Thus, Grady data might show that: 1. Real bigotry causes bad brain health; 2. Perception of bigotry causes bad brain health; 3. Perception of bigotry correlates with bad brain health; 4. Bad brain health causes perception of bigotry.
Wanna get published in a high-impact journal (and give your career a boost)? Pick door #1.
I wondered the same thing--"what, exactly, are we talking about? Does the subject discriminate against other races? Does she herself experience racial discrimination? If so, what are specific examples? Or does she interpret negative life experiences as the result of discrimination against herself, real or perceived?"
That way the abstract is worded makes it seem like the study is hopelessly vague. Maybe a full read would indicate otherwise, but...
(Leaving the Edit feature open for days -- weeks? -- is an invitation to bad-faith actors. Within an hour of submission, Substack should close the window for editing.)
I’ve observed that those quick to perceive “racism” are dumb as stones. There can’t be “deterioration” of intelligence that wasn’t present in the first place.
Needed even more: A study on the brain of white, liberal women. All joking aside... there is something very different in reasoning and functioning with them.
I think the "reasoning" difference in them is that it's not there. They seem to be creatures of mere feeling. A commercial on TV or a video on their Facebook feed could tell them "since the sky is blue and a foot is 12 inches long, therefore White Men Are Evil and you must vote Kamala", they'd find that perfectly reasonable if it were said via text over images of starving Africans with sad music playing. And they'll go apeshit on you if you point out that it doesn't make a bit of sense.
They were able to convince these women that kids sometimes need sex changes. They will agree with anything as long as a Democrat says it and frames it as compassionate.
"This cohort study was conducted between January 1, 2012, and February 28, 2015... Data analysis was conducted between January 10 and October 30, 2023."
That eight year gap is fairly unusual. There are anodyne explanations: Lots of other projects to work on 2016-2022; long-running turf war finally reaches a conclusion in 2022; key Analytics researcher joins the team in 2022.
But there is also the Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone") precedent. Collected data unexpectedly seems to support a story that runs counter to The Narrative. Delay the final workup until you can come up with more palatable insights.
"Racists macro- and micro- aggress against innocent Black ladies. The actions of these latter-day persecutors of Emmitt Till inevitably cause their victims to feel victimized. Poor health outcomes follow, whitey to blame."
In the Current Year, these are highly publishable findings.
As you say, corelation does not imply causation but the corelation is noteworthy. Just remember thar bigotry is based on xenophobia, an evolutionarily positive trait that is retained in all human bloodlines and can only be overcome slightly by conscious effort.
If I’m reading this correctly, the correlation is between racial discrimination and brain activity in regions associated with rumination. No data (even correlations) to epigenetic aging or deterioration of brain functioning per se. Just speculation on that possible connection. Haters are likely to be ruminators, but that doesn’t mean they will have early aging or dementia.
To make explicit what you are pointing at, he authors don't distinguish between higher self-reported racial discrimination and actual experiencer with racial discrimination so their evidence does nor actually demonstrate what they claim their study shows. That is, higher self-reported racial discrimination may be the result of brains going on the fritz rather than the cause of it. This is agenda-driven "science".
WRT Maslow's hierarchy, let me ask: does the typical pyramidal visual model seem to you to lead casual observers to think that the hierarchy is pointing toward human perfection? That there is a sort of implied moral valuation, with the needs at the top being the most important?
I first encountered this theory back in college, during the late Pliocene, in a Beginning Psychology class that was an elective. I think that most of the students perceived the lecture and readings in the hierarchy as moral instruction towards a better world. But as I got older, I found that I perceived the elements of the hierarchy in order of necessity, from bottom to top. This made the lowest level of the hierarchy essential to individual survival--the *most* important--with each succeeding level less important, to the point that they become figurative luxuries that can be afforded by the most secure. I would agree that the architecture of a pyramid implies the necessity of the lower levels, but very often a pyramid is used to visualize valuation, with the capstone as supreme.
Truly, in my view, with the most important at the bottom, it exposes human motivations as a dog-eat-dog contest with those who can gain the first three levels of security able to "afford" the subsequent higher levels.
This is of course my own interpretation and don't expect others to accept it. I've been playing around for a while with the idea that the wealthier a nation is, in terms of substantial surpluses of all goods/services that are readily available to very large parts of the general society, the easier it is for members of that society to hold impractical, and perhaps even self-destructive belief systems because the general distributed wealth of the nation insulates them from the consequences of their beliefs.
One last question that really has me baffled...
How do you get the lobsters to help you split wood for the winter? ;^)
Indeed. The Grady Trauma Project employs a half dozen or so exceptionally attractive young ladies with high academic credentials.
https://www.gradytraumaproject.com/people
They look like prostitutes with tattoos to me.
Wasting their youth and beauty on a PHD
I would not be surprised if this was most prevalent among black women. Heightened proclivity to PTSD, schizophrenia (usually goes undiagnosed in black communities) and other mental illness seem to be more present. It’s difficult to accurately ascertain if this is due to external conditions of biological causes completely (many such cases) but that being said not surprise e they are more likely to suffer rumination, but this this relates to greater OCD likelyhood as well.
The problem is too much rumination
Yep. And not enough thought.
Or, as I like to put it, No Self-Reflection = Automatic Projection.
And too much rum.
And hair touching.
"everybody online with an IQ over 105 knows correlation does not equal causation" Well now!.....for very many years I used to wake up to the morning BBC flagship 'news' hour. There would barely be a day go by without some "research has shown that X causes Y....." report - confusing correlation with causation. So does being a BBC journalist 'cause' your IQ to drop below 105 I wonder?
> "does being a BBC journalist 'cause' your IQ to drop below 105"
Why do you assume they start above 105?
😂
This is just a tiny subset of the long-standing empirical finding that higher cognitive capacity is associated with less belief in conspiratorial views of the world.
Less belief, and more accuracy.
That's why "conspiracy theory" as a slander always sounded so defensive and dumb.
A theory isn't something you believe in, it's something you test. If it's a conspiracy theory the key word is "theory." So, test it. But this is exactly what those who engage in conspiracies don't want you to do. Hence their need to slander. But in doing so they come off as dumbbells who don't know what a theory is and what you're supposed to do with it.
I noticed that nowhere do they define or even verify "racial discrimination". It is a nebulous non-term, as unscientific as you can get. Even a "perceived" in front would have added some validity to the study. If you look for boogeymen everywhere, you will find them; even a look can be perceived as "discrimination" by the doggedly victimized "oppressed". The body responds to the mind - think negative thoughts all day, feel rage and hatred all the time - this is the result. Acid is caustic, even mental acid. This is why the Bible instructs us to be meditating on God's word; not to be pious, but to protect our mind and hearts. Jesus spoke of the Word and its power, John 6: "63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." And in verse 68 "Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life". An abundant life. Romans 12:2 " Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." God's perfect will is for us to be sound in mind and body. A life spent wallowing in hatred results in a sick mind; physically and mentally. The Woke Mind Virus is death.
> "I noticed that nowhere do they define or even verify "racial discrimination"."
They did say "self-reported", which more or less means "perceived", as you suggest.
But that's kind of the point: people who are always perceiving themselves being discriminated against tend to have defective brains.
> people who are always perceiving themselves being discriminated against tend to have defective brains
At first glance, I can see three ways to frame the Grady Trauma Project's data on the neurological status of black women. (Maybe a closer read will rule out some of them.)
1. Experiencing anti-black racial discrimination causes negative changes to the brain (leading to increased vulnerability to stress-related disorders and neurodegenerative disease).
2. Perceiving a given set of life experiences through the lens of being a victim of anti-black discrimination causes negative changes to the brain.
3. Individuals who are pre-disposed to see themselves as victims of discrimination are also more likely to undergo negative changes to the brain.
The public policy implications of the three interpretations are quite different from one another. Only #1 (preferred by Grady authors and JAMA editors) is fully aligned with consensus elite opinion.
.
8/11/24 edit: Per Steve Sailer comment,
4. Living with a deteriorating brain causes a person to see herself or himself as the victim of racial discrimination (real or imagined).
Thus, Grady data might show that: 1. Real bigotry causes bad brain health; 2. Perception of bigotry causes bad brain health; 3. Perception of bigotry correlates with bad brain health; 4. Bad brain health causes perception of bigotry.
Wanna get published in a high-impact journal (and give your career a boost)? Pick door #1.
I wondered the same thing--"what, exactly, are we talking about? Does the subject discriminate against other races? Does she herself experience racial discrimination? If so, what are specific examples? Or does she interpret negative life experiences as the result of discrimination against herself, real or perceived?"
That way the abstract is worded makes it seem like the study is hopelessly vague. Maybe a full read would indicate otherwise, but...
Or people who have deteriorating brains are less likely to be treated as having fully functioning brains than people with non-deteriorating brains.
[Comment replaced by Edit to original comment.]
(Leaving the Edit feature open for days -- weeks? -- is an invitation to bad-faith actors. Within an hour of submission, Substack should close the window for editing.)
They become more bitter not better
I agree, but those clever "researchers" certainly did not couch their findings that way.
The best revenge is living well
I’ve observed that those quick to perceive “racism” are dumb as stones. There can’t be “deterioration” of intelligence that wasn’t present in the first place.
Needed even more: A study on the brain of white, liberal women. All joking aside... there is something very different in reasoning and functioning with them.
I think the "reasoning" difference in them is that it's not there. They seem to be creatures of mere feeling. A commercial on TV or a video on their Facebook feed could tell them "since the sky is blue and a foot is 12 inches long, therefore White Men Are Evil and you must vote Kamala", they'd find that perfectly reasonable if it were said via text over images of starving Africans with sad music playing. And they'll go apeshit on you if you point out that it doesn't make a bit of sense.
They were able to convince these women that kids sometimes need sex changes. They will agree with anything as long as a Democrat says it and frames it as compassionate.
"This cohort study was conducted between January 1, 2012, and February 28, 2015... Data analysis was conducted between January 10 and October 30, 2023."
That eight year gap is fairly unusual. There are anodyne explanations: Lots of other projects to work on 2016-2022; long-running turf war finally reaches a conclusion in 2022; key Analytics researcher joins the team in 2022.
But there is also the Robert Putnam ("Bowling Alone") precedent. Collected data unexpectedly seems to support a story that runs counter to The Narrative. Delay the final workup until you can come up with more palatable insights.
what is the more-palatable story in this case?
> what is the more-palatable story?
"Racists macro- and micro- aggress against innocent Black ladies. The actions of these latter-day persecutors of Emmitt Till inevitably cause their victims to feel victimized. Poor health outcomes follow, whitey to blame."
In the Current Year, these are highly publishable findings.
As you say, corelation does not imply causation but the corelation is noteworthy. Just remember thar bigotry is based on xenophobia, an evolutionarily positive trait that is retained in all human bloodlines and can only be overcome slightly by conscious effort.
If I’m reading this correctly, the correlation is between racial discrimination and brain activity in regions associated with rumination. No data (even correlations) to epigenetic aging or deterioration of brain functioning per se. Just speculation on that possible connection. Haters are likely to be ruminators, but that doesn’t mean they will have early aging or dementia.
Causation or correlation?
I just quickly skimmed the study, but these appear to be the evaluation tools used in the study:
Experiences of Discrimination Scale
https://communitycommons.s3.amazonaws.com/images/experiences-of-discrimination-instrument-measure.png
Traumatic Events Inventory
An Interview for Children:
Traumatic Events Screening Inventory (TESI-C)
https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/assessment/documents/TESI-C.pdf
PTSD Symptom Scale
http://www.advanced-counseling.com/dl/PSSI-5.pdf
Fill them out yourself and see how sadly oppressed you are by the world.
Whatever happened to Improvise, Adapt, Overcome as a way of making it through this vale of tears?
Or simply don't let the bastards get you down?
To make explicit what you are pointing at, he authors don't distinguish between higher self-reported racial discrimination and actual experiencer with racial discrimination so their evidence does nor actually demonstrate what they claim their study shows. That is, higher self-reported racial discrimination may be the result of brains going on the fritz rather than the cause of it. This is agenda-driven "science".
I believe Richard Pryor said this best.
https://infogalactic.com/info/That_Nigger%27s_Crazy