(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best behavioral sciences books

As others have mentioned, most Asian people are lactose intolerant. From a western perspective this seems odd, but is actually the "normal" human condition. Everything that follows is from Marvin Harris's book Our Kind, which I'm trying to simplify into ELI5 style.

Lactose is the sugar in milk. Your body can't use lactose, and has to break it down into simpler sugars. This is done by the enzyme lactase. "Naturally" mammals produce lactase while they are nursing from their mothers, but then stop producing it as they grow older because "naturally" they won't ever consume milk again.

I say "naturally" and "normal" because humans are different, we developed agriculture and domesticated other animals. This takes us out of the natural cycle a bit, allows us to do things our biology wasn't really intended for. However, natural selection still applies - if we do something that increases our survival rate and success at reproducing, that trait will be selected and pass on to the next generation, propagate and become "normal". These traits can be genetic (genes, like being strong or fast) or cultural (memes, like wearing makeup).

When we started domesticating milk-producing animals such as goats or cows, we gained the option to consume milk as adults. Our natural state does not allow us to do that, but some individuals would be different and possess a mutation wherein they would continue producing lactase as adults, allowing them to consume milk. In some cultures that trait was very valuable, resulting in increased survival and reproduction, thus the trait became very common and eventually the "normal". In other cultures the trait had no net gain and therefore does not propagate, and so not the "normal".

So what's the difference in the cultures? What makes adult lactase production a big win for those of Northern European descent, but pretty worthless for East Asians? It has to do with geography and available sources of calcium and vitamin D.

You need calcium in your diet. You can get that calcium a few different ways - milk being one, leafy green vegetables being another. To make use of calcium your body also needs either vitamin D or lactose. You can get vitamin D from seafood, or your body can make it when exposed to sunlight. Without vitamin D, lactose assists with the use of calcium. So, cultures with easy access to leafy greens plus sunlight or fish, calcium is taken care of and milk has no advantage. Cultures without access to leafy greens - or without access to sunlight or seafood - need dairy either as a source of calcium, or a source of lactose to use the calcium, or both.

This leads to the difference between dairy that's fermented (yogurt or most cheese) or unfermented (straight up milk). Fermented dairy products still have the calcium, but the lactose is broken down into simpler sugars, so lactase is not necessary to digest it. Therefore a culture with access to fish or sunlight but not leafy greens would benefit greatly from keeping dairy animals, but don't benefit from still creating lactase as adults - they consume the milk as yogurt or cheese to get all the calcium they need and make use of that calcium thanks to vitamin D.

So now finally, enter the Northern Europeans - the people that would eventually become western society as we know it today - developed in a climate that required them to bundle up most of the time due to extreme cold, so no sunlight to make vitamin D. They also had very little seafood in their diets at the time (~12,000 years ago), and limited access to leafy green vegetables. Calcium and vitamin D are lacking. So, those individuals who possessed the ability to consume unfermented dairy as adults had an advantage. They survived and bred more frequently, thus passing the trait on and making it "normal". Within 5000 years after the domestication of dairy animals, 90% of northern Europeans possessed the ability to produce lactase into adulthood and dairy of all types was commonplace.

Meanwhile let's consider China ~12,000 years ago. Leafy greens were a major part of the diet, so calcium is not an issue. Those in coastal areas developed fishing techniques much earlier than Europeans, as well as a trade infrastructure to transport that seafood pretty far into the mainland, so vitamin D is not an issue. Thus no advantage to unfermented dairy consumption among the bulk of Chinese. Only those far inland and to the north would have an issue - those peoples who became the Mongols, who did consume dairy. Furthermore even fermented dairy never took hold in Chinese culture because of their trade networks - the Chinese were able to obtain their labor animals from other cultures (tibetans, mongols, etc) - therefore did not breed their own cows or goats. Pigs were the primary meat animal raised. With no need for dairy, and without really having it around in the first place, they developed into a culture with virtually zero dairy of any type. And much like the Northern Europeans went on to culturally dominate western civilization, Chinese culture influenced many others in Asia.

So... in summary (TL;DR): Dairy consumption has 2 extremes produced by geography and available diets: Lots of dairy including raw milk driven by Northern Europeans, and virtually zero dairy of any kind driven by the Chinese. Between those extremes are everybody else, who for the most part made use of fermented dairy for its calcium, but remain lactose intolerant.

And now I've taken so long to write this wall of text that no one will see it. Oh well. Clearly I was wrong!

Edits for clarity and grammar.

Edit 2: I'm getting a lot of follow up questions on specific cultures - this isn't a complete history of the world, it doesn't cover everyone. I am not an anthropologist, as I said in the first paragraph this is an attempt to simplify the work of Marvin Harris, specifically his book Our Kind. I'd say that book is like the Cosmos of anthropology - it's an excellent read, very approachable, and great at chaining together complex history, geography, and biology to tell the story of modern human evolution. If you want more detail on what I wrote, I highly recommend starting there.

Well this thread title drew me like a hunk of iron to the world's biggest magnet.

The short answer to the title question is "no, except maybe in some very trivial sense." The longer answer is, well, complicated. Before I ramble a little bit, let me say that we should distinguish between the rhetorical and (for lack of a better word) "metaphysical" interpretations of this question. In many cases, the language used to describe some theory, problem, proposal, or whatever is indeed unnecessarily complicated in a way that makes it difficult to communicate (some parts of the humanities and social sciences are particularly bad offenders here). That is indeed a problem, and we should strive to communicate our ideas in the simplest language that's appropriate for the audience we're talking to. I take your friend's thesis to be a bit more substantive than that, though: he's claiming something like "all big messy systems are really just lots of small simple systems, and we can learn everything we need to know about the world by looking at the small simple systems." That's the viewpoint that I think is mistaken.

I think it's really important to distinguish between complicated and complex, both in the context of this discussion and in general. Lots of things are complicated in the sense of being big, having lots of moving parts, difficult to understand, or exhibiting nuanced behavior. A box of air at thermodynamic equilibrium is complicated: it has lots of parts, and they're all moving around with respect to one another. Not all complicated systems are also complex systems, though, and understanding what "complex" means turns out to be really tricky.

Here are some comparisons that seem intuitively true: a dog’s brain is more complex than an ant’s brain, and a human’s brain is more complex still. The Earth’s ecosystem is complex, and rapidly became significantly more complex during and after the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. The Internet as it exists today is more complex than ARPANET—the Internet’s progenitor—was when it was first constructed. A Mozart violin concerto is more complex than a folk tune like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The shape of Ireland’s coastline is more complex than the shape described by the equation x2 + y2 = 1. The economy of the United States in 2016 is more complex than the economy of pre-Industrial Europe. All these cases are relatively uncontroversial. What quantity is actually being tracked here, though? Is it the same quantity in all these cases? That is, is the sense in which a human brain is more complex than an ant brain the same sense in which a Mozart concerto is more complex than a folk tune?

These questions are extremely non-trivial to answer, and a very large number of whole books have been written on the subject already; so far, there's no universally accepted consensus of what makes complex systems special, or how to measure complexity in the natural world. There is, however, a growing consensus that P.W. Anderson was correct when he wrote in 1972 that "more is different": in many cases, systems consisting of a large number of relatively simple components interacting in relatively simple ways can display surprising, novel behavior. That's characteristic of complex systems: they behave in ways that we wouldn't expect them to (or even be able to deduce) based on an examination of their constituent parts in isolation from one another.

Complex systems often show interesting patterns of behavior that cut across scales of analysis, with their dynamics at one scale constraining the dynamics at other scales (and vice-versa). This sort of "multiscale variety" has been used to develop a mathematical theory of strong emergence, demonstrating how it can be the case that more is different. I've called this quality "dynamical complexity," and defined it as a measure of the "pattern richness" of a particular physical system: one system is more dynamically complex than another if (and only if) it occupies a point in configuration space that is at the intersection of regions of interest to more special sciences. For instance, a system for which the patterns of economics, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics are predictively useful is more dynamically complex than one for which only the patterns of chemistry and physics are predictively useful.

The notion of dynamical complexity is supposed to correspond with (and give a physical interpretation for) the formalism of effective complexity, which is an information-theoretic concept developed by Murray Gell-Mann at the Santa Fe Institute. Effective complexity is grounded in the notion of algorithmic information content, and tracks the "amount of randomness" in a string, and how any non-randomness--information--was produced. A key feature of dynamical complexity is that the total "information content" of a physical system--the total number of interesting patterns in its behavior--may be perspectival, and thus depend on how we choose to individuate systems from their environment, and how we demarcate collections of microstates of the system into "relevantly similar" macrostates. Those choices are pragmatic, value-driven, and lack clear and uncontroversial "best answers" in many cases, contributing to the challenge of studying complex systems.

As an example, consider the task of predicting the future of the global climate. What are the criteria by which we divide the possible futures of the global climate into macrostates such that those macrostates are relevant for the kinds of decisions we need to make? That is, how might we individuate the global climate system so that we can notice the patterns that might help us predict the outcome of various climate policies? The answer to this question depends in part upon what we consider valuable; if we want to maximize long-term economic growth for human society, for instance, our set of macrostates will likely look very different than it would if we wanted to simply ensure that the average global temperature remained below a particular value. Both of those in turn may differ significantly from a set of macrostates informed by a desire to maximize available agricultural land. These different ways of carving possible future states up into distinctive macrostates do not involve changes to the underlying equations of motion describing how the system moves through its state space, nor does the microstructure of the system provide an obvious and uncontroversial answer to the question of which individuation we should choose. There is no clearly "best way" to go about answering this question.

Compare that project to modeling the box of gas I mentioned earlier and you can start to see why modeling complex systems is so difficult, and why complex systems are fundamentally different. In the case of the gas, there are a relatively small number of ways to individuate the system such that the state space we end up with is dynamically interesting (e.g. Newtonian air molecules, thermodynamic states, quantum mechanical fluctuations). In the case of the global climate, there are a tremendous number of potentially interesting individuations, each associated with its own collection of models. The difference between the two systems is not merely one of degree; they are difference in kind, and must be approached with that in mind.

In some cases, this may involve rather large changes in the way we think about the practice of science. As /u/Bonitatis notes below, many of the big unsolved problems in science are those which appear to "transcend" traditional disciplines; they involve drawing conclusions from our knowledge of economics, physics, psychology, political science, biology, and so on. This is because many of the big unsolved problems we're concerned with now involve the study of systems which are highly dynamically complex: things like the global economy, the climate, the brain, and so on. The view that we should (or even can) approach them as mere aggregates of simple systems is, I think, naive and deeply mistaken; moreover, it's likely to actually stymie scientific progress, since insisting on "tractability" or analytically closed models will often lead us to neglect important features of the natural world for the sake of defending those intuitive values.

> What?

My point was that by holding First Nations to treaties that were signed under duress, you are upholding the actions of colonialists as legitimate and the consequences of these treaties disproportionately affect First Nation people in negative ways. It's an old problem but it has never really been "solved," the burden has simply been moved onto First Nation people.

>But boy are they loud, and naturally don't consider themselves fringe feminists.

Thankfully TERFs have been written off by most feminists as a hate group. They are loud and their views are deplorable, but they also have no power nowadays.

>Who maintains the structure of the Patriarchy?

Not who, but what. Economic inequality between men and women is at the historical root of patriarchy. Hunter-gatherer societies were gender-egalitarian and some times included 3 or more genders. All food, tools and land were held in common, with all having an equal share regardless of gender. Women were gatherers and tended home, men were hunters and tended livestock and small farms (generally), and these roles balanced in power because women and men created the same amount of food, clothing, etc. for the community. This changed with the rise of larger-scale agriculture, when livestock and farming became increasingly important economically. This meant that suddenly men's work role put them in control of the vast majority of production and surplus in society, thus edging women out of social and political life and confining them to the domestic sphere. This power differential created patriarchy and continues to perpetuate it to this day, with women as a group having less wealth and therefore having less power in society.

(I know there are a lot of claims here and they aren't cited, but all of the information is from the book Men's Lives. It goes into the issue in greater detail than I presented here and of course with lots of handy citations. It's a great book and it deals extensively with the relationship between men and feminism if that topic interests you.)

>If privilege is invisible to the people who have it, who is distributing this privilege?

The short answer is that privilege and power are not "handed out" in a conscious way, but that existing structures of power are reproduced automatically by people who see these structures as natural, good or inevitable. For example, almost all countries have longer maternity leave than paternity leave. Men are expected to get back to work and women are expected to take care of the baby on their own. These laws are based on preconceptions of what men's role in society is and what women's role is. The people who passed these laws didn't create patriarchy or privilege, they are merely reproducing a power differential that they grew up learning was the right and just way to organize a society. And it's not just politicians, everyday people act in ways that privilege some and not others. People watching men and women do the same job tend to rate the man more favorably even when performance is the exact same. They are not consciously "distributing" privilege to the men, they simply have a more positive attitude to seeing men in a work role because that is the default outlook in our society.

>What explains the high number of homeless men?

Not 100% knowledgeable on this topic but I'll try to give an answer to my best knowledge. Many homeless folks are combat veterans and/or have disabilities. By and large most veterans are men. Two of the most common disabilities among the homeless are schizophrenia and addiction, both of which disproportionately affect men over women. This could be at least a partial explanation of why men are more likely to be homeless.

Of course, these are also examples of men's issues which are generally overlooked in society. Despite the existence of patriarchy, not all men are equally privileged (Men's Lives does a great job of covering this topic). Lower income men tend to be the largest casualties of war. Men overwhelmingly die by suicide compared to women, showing the vulnerability of disabled men in our society. Men make up an overwhelming majority of the prison population, especially men of color. All of these are serious issues that can be understood and addressed by using feminism to understand men's roles in society, but also touching on the intersectional issues of class, disability, race and so on.

"Feminist advocates collude in the pain of men wounded by patriarchy when they falsely represent men as always and only powerful, as always and only gaining privileges from their blind obedience to patriarchy." -- bell hooks (famous intersectional feminist)

Patriarchy can and DOES hurt men. Any feminist who claims that all men are equally privileged by patriarchy is incorrect. Any feminist who claims that men are only empowered by patriarchy does not understand the nature of patriarchy.

>Feminism discovered the Patriarchy, but can't explain its structure, can't influence its output, and can't dissipate its effect [etc.]

The structure of patriarchy has been explained, by many different feminists. I already mentioned the historical development of patriarchy. I can get into the social-psychological aspects of patriarchy more w/ you if you want. I like this conversation but I'm tired and need to go to bed soon. But yeah, my point is that feminists can explain the structure of patriarchy. Any feminists have definitely influenced patriarchy for the better-- everything from voting rights to abortion rights reflect this.

>they can see the effect (which men cannot)

Men can see the effects if they study women's issues, listen to women's lived experiences, consider feminist theories, etc. Many women understand these issues based on their own life stories, but men have to approach it from a perspective of not knowing what it means to be a woman in this society.

>I have a substantially different theory regarding these difficulties.

What would those be?

>What about the men that like being aggressive, competitive, industrial, and stoic? Will they be welcome in this new women's paradise?

In a society that has accomplished the goals of feminism, those traits would no longer be "men's traits." Anyone could be as aggressive or competitive or stoic as long as their aggression doesn't hurt anyone. It would be a society where someone's gender is never a barrier to what they want to do or who they can be. And it's not just for women. Women and non-binary people will benefit most from the goals of feminism, but men will benefit too.

>Can we also admit that men's IQ tends to wrap around women? Meaning that at the very far ends of the Gaussian, there are more men, meaning that there are more retarded men but also more genius men? When you get to something like professorship, you are selecting for the best of the best of the best, so you are going to start to see that far end of the Gaussian matter.

I honestly don't know why people put so much importance on IQ tests and SAT scores when neither are perfect measures. In fact, a construct like IQ is not a concrete domain and to treat it like it is, is pretty silly. On top of which, there is no CAUSAL link to IQ and success, it is all correlational. I would suggest reading up more on what IQ is, confidence intervals, regression to the mean, how well any test captures the top and bottom 1%, and what an IQ test or an SAT actually measures. To assume that an IQ of 158 versus 165 is going to make ANY difference to your creative ideas or chance at professorship/getting grants is a gross misunderstanding of the skills required in a scientific job. While you are at it, read this article to put "scores" in more perspective: https://qz.com/441905/men-are-both-dumber-and-smarter-than-women/. I would also suggest buying and reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Inferior-Science-Wrong-Research-Rewriting/dp/0807071706

That is true to an extent but the other way applies too: atheism tends to create an environment where it tries to insist that religions don't have a monopoly on morality.

As you demonstrated, true morality comes from reason but what if circular reasoning is in itself a part of reason?

This can seem irrational until you get immersed in some idea of heuristics.

This can be from reading articles like this:

> A heuristic technique (/hjʊəˈrɪstɪk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, logical, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples that employ heuristics include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, a guesstimate, stereotyping, profiling, or common sense.

or buying books such as these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

or even better less layman books as these:

https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases-ebook/dp/B00D2WQFP2

Each can be a rabbit hole in itself that may be too vast for this topic but as the general idea goes:

When people suffer a breaking point, they can't afford to debate whether morality comes from God or not.

They simply end up reverting to what data and narratives they can pick up under duress.

This doesn't mean religion is superior to atheism. It just means that when people grow up immersed in a religion they are more likely to do things related to those religions.

Support it (this can involve joining the group or leaving the group to join a sub-related group that aligns with the beliefs of that group but slightly goes against it in a safer environment)

or they join the next easiest route with plenty enough people in it:

This being the next fast food concept competing with the previous fast food restaurant. Atheism.

This doesn't debunk either group, it just means that when a group grows large enough in size - they can make a country worse because large groups tend to become large because there are plenty of people within both groups to hold a sheltered opinion where they can afford to bicker on this.

Of course this doesn't mean that poor people cannot adopt such a stance. It just means someone whether they are poor or not can afford to isolate their opinions and infringe upon the other groups in such a way that it's the minorities or temporary minorities caught between those groups that are least likely to be helped and more likely to found themselves being turned into an outcast where neither group helps them.

It is like an expanded version of this tale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

An atheist can be more biased towards being the Samaritan. A theist can be more biased towards being the person hearing the tale of the Samaritan and seeing their religion as the good one.

This can be problematic for those oppressed in a country because the larger group will always indoctrinate you first and then the group that associates itself with being a Samaritan would more likely debate this group then help you during an emergency once it becomes morally uncomfortable for them.

Hence we end up with a basic case of Large group -> I go there for help. Second largest group that is a rebel for the large group -> I join that one because I got hurt by the large group

This produces a false morality where the bigger group is tactically establishing their foothold and the rebel group is too busy fighting the big group that rather than "true" morality blossoming - sometimes something as basic as just helping someone can fall towards minorities within those groups.

A delusional zealot for example would more likely risk being shot to save people while a passionate atheist with plenty of information would more likely protest the heinous acts rather than working on building a tax-free shelter that is so profitable it isn't just a place where the homeless live. It can be a comfortable air-conditioned building with a beautiful set of rituals that give you free food every Sunday.

I strongly suggest that you read The Victory Lab. The book goes into great detail how elections work and how the money is spent.

One thing that Obama showed was that TV ad buys don't mean all that much but instead micro targeted voter outreach is far more effective. By figuring out exactly who is more likely to vote for you and then contacting them in face to face canvassing efforts you are far more likely to get them to turn out. The volunteer canvassers will inform these likely supporters how to register if they are unregistered, where and when they can vote, what they need to bring to vote, help organize transportation if necessary, and motivate them to vote.

One thing that is also extremely important is that general elections aren't primaries. Primaries are largely persuasion games rather than voters outreach, and that is where Trump succeeded. The general election is filled with lots of people who are already decided as our country is so polarized, so increasing voter turnout among those who like you is extremely important.

http://ironshrink.com/2007/12/what-is-relational-frame-theory-part-one/ is probably the best 'simple' introduction on the web today. the link at the bottom of the page for part two is broken so use this instead: http://ironshrink.com/2008/02/what-is-relational-frame-theory-part-two/

Most of the rest of it is highly academic. http://www.amazon.com/Relational-Frame-Theory-Post-Skinnerian-Cognition/dp/0306466007 is the original statement of the theory intended for professional researchers and clinicians. Very dense with jargon and assumes a high level of familiarity with existing learning theory concepts, much of which is derived from Skinner. http://www.amazon.com/Learning-RFT-Introduction-Relational-Application/dp/1572249064/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CFS9M89Y6BZG10DGT36 is intended to be more of an introduction to RFT, but having read it, I think it is still dense. being translated from Swedish into English doesn't help.

the core idea in RFT is the observation that while both a dog and a human can learn that "cookie" refers to those delicious little things you put in your mouth, only humans will also learn that those delicious things are named "cookie". If you show a cookie to a human, she will say "that's a cookie" before trying to eat it, while a dog will just try to eat it. This is not just a problem with dog's speech production mechanics. they simply do not make the backwards association.

the backwards association, called a derived relation if I remember correctly, is important, because it underlies the ability of symbols - mere noise and sensation in our heads - to take on the rewarding and punishing properties of actual experience with the world. This sort of learning underlies how a thought concerning a possible danger in the future can get us acting afraid right now. Of course it's more complicated than that but I think that is the central idea.

The thing that is most cool about this is that there is a great deal of research supporting the explanatory power of RFT - from rat labs up to human beings. RFT marks the first time I'm aware of that we have a wholistic theory of learning that is useful for explaining both animal behavior and the human sense of self; not in terms of where it comes from, but in terms of how it behaves.

So . . . you waded into a question about the nature of norms (standards of correctness), and, since many philosophers think they pervade almost every aspect of our lives (not just our social conventions and moral laws, but our language and thoughts as well), the question goes very deep.

If you're interested in how deep it goes, you might want to try taking a look at Wittgenstein's rule following considerations. On (one reading of) the Wittgensteinian account, understanding a language (and thus, having the requisite concepts for thought at all) cannot be taken apart from immersion in social practice and conformity to social norms. If you dive into the secondary literature (which, if you want to really get a handle on the issue, I suggest you do) I'd warn against reading Kripke's account until you have a good grasp of the issue at hand, and (the few interpretations of) Wittgenstein's solution. The overall best secondary source I've come across is Meredith Williams' book *Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning.

Extending the scope of normativity, Robert Brandom's book Making it Explicit takes one of it's starting points from Wittgenstein, and puts forward a theory of how our explicit normative understanding takes it's root from social practices which are implicitly normative. This is probably one of the most important books in the past 50 years, and will provide you with a very deep understanding of the questions you are concerned with. However, it's 700 pages of really dense writing, so I suggest, if you're interested, taking a look at Jeremy Wanderer's book on Brandom.

Thank you. I read your first article and thought you might like this book:

Philosophy in the Flesh

This may sound like word salad, but I can expand anything if you're interested. I'm someone who is trying to explain philosophy itself. One thing I conjecture is that evolutionary mechanisms operating on thermodynamically-driven self-organizing structures will eventually "carry up" the fundamental logical properties inherent in the Universe to the neurological level - where they can then manifest in our awareness as logic and math as we know them. That is, as structure evolves through biological complexity - some fundamental logic of the Universe must be there somehow. Our neurological architecture then allows extrapolation from these fundamentally embodied aspects to the symbolically represented and conceptualized "ideals" we have like perfect circles and real numbers and so on, which are entities that don't really exist as upsetting as this idea is to most mathematicians.

The book I linked makes a very cool, but hard to convey point, but once you realize the implications it's pretty amazing. Our thinking is based on the senses we have. We basically have models of the world in our heads that are the same as the way we experience the world - the neurology of experience is the same as thinking, essentially (e.g. you can get better at piano by practicing in your mind because you can "re-experience" it).

Language, then, is a metaphorical way of expressing our sense-based models of the world, which is why language is filled with metaphors of time, spacial orientation/relationships, sequences, and so on. I really can't do justice to the idea quickly, but it's a quite profound realization to have in your toolbox.

I'll give you some books to use as a starting point. You want to start out as generally as possible and then follow what interests you. Someone can give you a list of top books, but if they don't fascinate you enough to really dig in deep and reflect on them to sate your own curiosity, you'll just be scratching the surface. I don't care what it is, you can make money anywhere in the markets. So starting generally will help you find out what direction to go.

So, that said, these are the ones I'd recommend starting out with
https://www.amazon.com/Market-Wizards-Updated-Interviews-Traders/dp/1118273052
https://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin-Lef%C3%A8vre/dp/0471770884
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400063515/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684840073/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809045990/

Some less conventional ones I really liked
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578645018/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1422121038/

Chaos theory describes some properties that pop up again and again in markets. I really liked this one.
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Simplicity-Bringing-Order-Complexity/dp/140006256X

I also highly recommend finding a few good books on behavioral investing, just to get acquainted with the common mistakes investors make (how you can avoid them, and how you can exploit them). I don't have a lot here because the books I read are outdated and you can find better. So one example:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470067373/

But in general reading about psychology will help you understand the world better, and that's always a good thing.
https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202

Also: opening up space and providing methodological instruments to allow for the academic study of men and masculinities - something that wasn't even on the horizon until early 3rd wavers rolled onto the scene.

If you're a dude looking for what the 3rd wave has done for men, I'd say that's a pretty big check mark right there.

Here are some resources for you to look at, if you're interested:

1. Masculinities, by R.W. Connell
   
2. The Men and the Boys, by R.W. Connell
   
3. Men's Lives, edited by Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner
   
4. Men and Masculinities, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted entirely to the examination of men and men's lives.
   
5. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree. Features a whole lot of discussion about men and masculinities
   
   This is just the tip of the iceberg of academic research on men and men's lives, and the overwhelming majority of it is a direct result of the revolutions in feminist thought brought forth by what we now think of as 3rd wave feminists.
   
   Now bear in mind that this is all academic stuff, but think about what that means for a moment: each semester, tens of thousands of students from all over the world, are asked to think critically and sociologically (or anthropologically or psychologically, whatever your preferred brand happens to be) about men, men's lives, and the issues facing men and boys today. The textbook I'm currently working on has a whole chapter that focuses on the challenges young men and boys face in North American schools, and the textbook I'm using to teach a sociology of gender course this year devotes about half of its space to examinations of men of all shapes, sizes, orientations, and expressions. That's huge. That's really huge. It's huge because action - and activism - need to be grounded in knowledge, and that's what 3rd wave feminists have helped to provide; knowledge of the unique and often serious challenges facing men and boys today.
   
   So that's what 3rd wave feminism has done for men and boys in academia. I'm sure there are resources around online that can help expand on this.

If evolution has an agenda, it is to get the next generation to breeding age and to accomplish that successfully over and over.

To that end evolution has supplied humans with the ability to comprehend reality sufficiently to accomplish the above. Anything we are able to do beyond that is gravy. Evolution does not care if we comprehend reality perfectly. It is okay with understandings and perceptions that do not coincide with what is real as long as this doesn't interfere with the agenda in an entire population.

I understand that people have experiences in perception and feeling that they label as "spiritual". I've had such experiences myself. But that doesn't mean that these experiences correspond to anything real beyond what ever the bodymind is physically doing to produce them. It should be clear by now to educated people that reality is not as clear cut as we'd like to think.

With much labor and suffering humans have invented the scientific method to help over come this difficulty we have with grokking reality.

Personally I don't think that the scientific method will triumph over the emotion expressed in this poem any time soon if ever. The method is too counter intuitive to be applied to day to day living. Longings like the above will persist and need to be accommodated. That does not mean that it really is about anything beyond science which cannot be studied.

I’d suggest that perhaps the belief that women are very different, personality and other-wise, than men may be contributing to your lack of rapport with them. Most researchers in the field of personality and gender difference have noted very few actual significant differences between men and women, despite there being strong perceived differences. See for instance this article.

A good book and overview of research on the neurological basis is: Gender and our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds By Gina Rippon

In my experience, once you start approaching women based on your shared humanity and typical, everyday fears, desires, hopes and dreams, you’ll also establish better rapport. And in that regard you already have a great reference: yourself and your own experiences. I promise you there are many many women who feel exactly like you do right now.

Hope this helps! Good luck with your challenge.

Yes. They do. If you want some good resources that get sciency with it:


Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process: Dr. Irene Pepperberg's studies on language and cognitive theory with African Greys. Alex could do complex abstract conversions with things like number and counting, for instance he knew what "5" is as a symbol and could equate it to a representation for a number of objects like x, x, x, x, x means there are "five" "x"s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoTaZotdHg


Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot University of Georgia PHD who shares her life with her CAG, and has created a language for conversing with him she calls "Cosmish" which incluses tenses (future, past, future possible, etc.) and an number of other advanced linguistic constructs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyWYzuV6WYk


Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans: A fascinating and highly entertaining book about cognition in corvid populations. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE AUDIOBOOK if you've got a 6-hour road trip, it is GREAT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0OAWFn02Lg


I've seen my birds pick up spontaneous conversational associations. The original Dr. Doolittle was fabled to "talk with animals" because he kept an African Grey and for grey owners, it's just accepted as "the norm" and taken for granted. It wasn't until I got Ollie, my "new" bird after losing "Smokey" the bird I'd had for most of my life that I saw the process develop again.


One striking example was "whoops". The second day Ollie was home, he broke a toe. He temporarily became clumsy as a result, so if I dropped or startled anything near him or he stumbled, I was very careful to say "Whoops, you're all right." Over time, it just became "Whoops". His toe healed and he regained his footing and I'd long since forgotten about it. At about 9 months old, he had his first molt of flight feathers. When I'd gotten him he had a HORRIBLE clipping, so his wings were useless. After his flight feathers came back in and he began fledging, I noticed him using "Whoops" whenever he had a shaky landing.


He was doing this on his own. Additionally, any time anything is dropped in his vicinity, he exclaims "whoops", if he's on me and I do something he's not expected "Whoops". The cat falls off the couch "Whoops". So I'm pretty certain, he knows that there are appropriate contexts for saying "Whoops" and he in those contexts he predictably says "whoops"...


This is one of probably dozens of examples, but, yes, based on both reading and practical experience with greys, I fully believe that they both TALK and cognitively use language.

> What is consciousness?

"Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind... In the majority of experiments that are specifically about consciousness, the subjects are human, and the criterion that is used is verbal report: in other words, subjects are asked to describe their experiences, and their descriptions are treated as observations of the contents of consciousness." These methods are obviously heavily biased towards humans, we can't just ask a chimpanzee if it self aware, we must infer it from their behaviours and how they interact with their physical and social worlds. Easier said than done.

> Are single celled organisms like bacteria, conscious?

No.

> How much up the evolutionary ladder do we have to go to start finding consciousness?

Evolution is not a ladder, there is no best species at the top of this ladder. Its more like a tree. In evolution, there can be many solutions to one problem. Take flight for example, insects, birds, and bats have all solved the problem of flight in different ways, with different combinations of traits, with different kinds of genes. The same is very likely true for consciousness and higher cognitive intelligence. We may very well find the exact gene(s) that make use conscious that does not mean that other species need those exact genes in order to be conscious too. Other species may solve the problem of consciousness in a different way than we have. If we look for species with characteristics that are exactly our own, well its like just looking for species with feathers and assuming they are the only ones that fly - you miss the bats and insects.

> How are humans able to make another conscious being?

We are not born conscious, it is a series of skills, traits, and abilities that develop during infancy and early childhood that lead to our conscious abilities. For example, children learn between the ages of 3-5 how to lie. Before this time period their brains are not developed enough to make the connection that their thoughts are distinct and different from other individuals thoughts. They think everyone knows what they are thinking, they can't lie. Some humans never develop the ability to be fully conscious, like severely autistic individuals. "Deficits occur in people with autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as neurotoxicity due to alcohol abuse."

Other animals can lie, and deceive if they want to. Are they conscious? its really hard to say. We have a couple of tests that give us a pretty good idea that other species exhibit consciousness. For example, the mirror test. You place an individual in front of a mirror with a dot on their body that they can only see looking through the mirror. If they touch the dot or look for the dot on their own bodies then they are making the link that the image in the mirror is themselves. Infants older than 18 months usually pass the mirror test, infants under 18 months don't. Other higher cognitive skills that have been observed in some species include object manipulation, tool making, multi-step problem solving, lying, sense of fairness, morals, ethics, and mourning the dead.

These animals in no particular order are: elephants, dolphins, birds like crows, ravens, or pigeons, pigs, all of the great apes, and some monkeys. Obviously we are talking about a really diverse group of species, species from many different and distinct evolutionary paths that are able to solve complex problems, communicate in complex ways, form complex social bonds, and importantly show signs of theory of mind, or consciousness. Generally speaking these animals function at a cognitive level similar to a 3-5 year old child.

The ethical question then becomes, if a chimpanzee can pass a mirror test, can be shown to have higher cognitive functions why do we deny them the basic rights we give to humans, when some humans including infants lack these skills? Should we keep these animals for our own amusement or instrument, we don't with ourselves but why is it ok with them? I won't comment on my opinion, but these are important ethical questions worth thinking about.

I recommend:

• The bonobo and the atheist.
  
  
• Age of empathy
  
  
• Beyond the brain.

Not really. There's really great evidence that our basic morality is a condition of evolution - certain attitudes, such as disliking cheating and liking kindness, are good for the species in the long run, so our brains are wired for some basic kindness, even if it's selfish kindness (I help you because you'll probably help me later).

This kind of moral framework is completely supportable in the absence of any god, and it's objective across all humanity because we all share in that same evolution. Granted, the duties and morals imposed by God are on a different and stricter level, but we are more or less programmed to be kind to those who are like us. You can see this book if you're in any way interested.

Beyond an objective (if basic) morality, you've got objective things like math and science and history and pretty much anything we can study. 2+2=4 isn't up for debate, although "is patricide wrong" might be.

What country are you in? I'm guessing the states, so I'm not of too much use sorry.

If you've got a strong constitution, doing it yourself can be amazing.

This book is rather helpful, but having a professional at hand can make everything much much easier.

Early intervention can be very powerful.

Oh please no...

A good book on the matter (if you go through smile it gives to a charity): https://smile.amazon.com/Inferior-Science-Wrong-Research-Rewriting/dp/0807071706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502665895&sr=8-1&keywords=inferior+how+science+got+women+wrong

Also a great summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu1b54RtSE8

What's amazing is dudes not even understanding to use, I don't know, tact? To have, I don't know some sensitivity, when literally discussing whether science backs up women being less able to do all the stuff we judge the most admirable in our society and therefore implying that women are inferior to men?

Also I've been doing jiu-jitsu for twelve years and studied astrophysics (and in fact many of the most important discoveries in my field were done by women). Fuck off.

This is a good book, though a bit old now. If you're interested in agent-based simulations, a lot of great work has been done since then -- I'd suggest starting with something like Growing Artificial Societies, or reading up in general on Sugarscape and the models that have followed it.

Both these and The Limits to Growth lead to "systems thinking," which Meadows wrote about in Thinking in Systems. That book in turn (along with many others) was a big influence on my game designs, and on my book about game design and systems thinking. Understanding how systems and games work together is vital, IMO, for building virtual worlds.

William Lycan's Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction is very helpful and comprehensive as an overview.

As for really famous primary works in the field, you might want to check these out:


Truth and Meaning

Tarski's The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics

Quine's Two Dogma's of Empiricism

Davidson's Truth and Meaning

Pragmatics

Austin's How to Do Things with Words

Grice's Logic and Conversation


Reference

Donellen's Reference and Definite Descriptions

Kripke's Naming and Necessity

Wittgenstein

Primary Lit:

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Tractatus (obviously)

Secondary Lit (I'm only well versed on the secondary lit for the later Wittgenstein, so I'll give you that):

Marie McGinn's Routledge Guide

John McDowell's Wittgenstein on Following a Rule

Meredith Williams' Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning

----

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Added a lot

Here is a short reading list that should give you the essentials:

Some of these will read like stories, others are more academic in nature. There is both Canadian and American material included. overall, you should get a pretty good impression of how political campaigns are planned and how they actually roll out.

1. Burton, M.J. & Shea, D.M. (2010). Campaign craft: The strategies, tactics, and art of political campaign management (4th ed.). Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers. https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Craft-Strategies-Political-Management/dp/031338343X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479856930&sr=8-2&keywords=campaign+craft
   
   
2. Green, D.P. & Gerber, A.S. (2015). Get out the vote: How to increase voter turnout (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Vote-Increase-Turnout/dp/081572568X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857921&sr=1-1&keywords=get+out+the+vote+how+to+increase+voter+turnout
   
   
3. Thurber, J.A. & Nelson, C.J. (Eds.) (2014). Campaigns and elections American style: Transforming American politics (4th ed.). Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. https://www.amazon.com/Campaigns-Elections-American-Transforming-Politics/dp/0813348358/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857939&sr=1-1&keywords=Campaign+And+Elections+American
   
   
4. Faucheux, R.A. (Ed.) (2003). Winning elections: Political campaign management, strategy, and tactics. New York: M. Evans & Company. https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Elections-Political-Campaign-Management/dp/1590770269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479857978&sr=1-1&keywords=Winning+elections%3A+Political+campaign+management%2C+strategy%2C+and+tactics
   
   
5. Issenberg, S. (2012). The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. New York: Broadway Books. https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Lab-Science-Winning-Campaigns/dp/0307954803/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858008&sr=1-1&keywords=the+victory+lab+the+secret+science+of+winning+campaigns
   
   
6. Laschinger, J. (2016). Campaign Confessions: Tales from the War Rooms of Politics. Toronto: Dundurn. https://www.amazon.com/Campaign-Confessions-Tales-Rooms-Politics/dp/1459736532/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858025&sr=1-1&keywords=campaign+confessions
   
   
7. Delacourt, S. (2013). Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose us and we Choose them. Madeira Park, BC: Douglas and McIntyre. https://www.amazon.com/Shopping-Votes-Politicians-Choose-Them/dp/1771621095/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479858059&sr=1-1&keywords=Shopping+for+votes

I actually disagree completely with your central objection here. You object that OP conflates emotions and morals, and state that you don't need one to have the other. I think that you absolutely do need emotions to have morals, and Vulcan's as a hypothetical aren't even a good imaginary test case for an example of people who have no emotions who do have morals for exactly the reason that they DO have emotions. Very strong emotions, in fact so strong that their entire planet turned to suppressing their emotions in a last ditch effort to achieve any kind of lasting culture.

I don't see how you're drawing a line between desire and emotion. What is desire if not an emotion? What is it to say you desire something if there is no emotion driving it? In my view, the nature of desire/emotion/value judgement is not nearly so clear cut.

You're right that Data has desires, and he also clearly has things he values. In my view, these behaviors constitute emotional states, although his outward expression of these emotions and his subjective experience of them are clearly very different from a human beings. That isn't to say he is flawed or broken, only that he is different. He is mistaken when he says he has no emotions, when what he really means is that he doesn't have the subjective experience of emotions that humans have. The emotion chip provides him with that subjective experience, but this is a change in how he experiences emotions, not the create of emotion ex nihilo.

For more about emotions and morals, I would refer you to The Emotional Construction of Morals by Jesse Prinz. No need to read it if you have no interest in the subject, but if it sparks your interest I found it to be a really great read on moral sentimentalism/emotionism.

Understanding How We Learn
https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-How-We-Learn-Visual/dp/113856172X

This should be required reading for every teacher. I recommend it to every teacher I can.
It uses research on cognitive psych to debunk old myths and gives easy to apply concepts of how to help students learn, and develop their study strategies.
It's also a really easy, engaging read.

Awesome! I take it you're not seeing clients yet. I'm applying to internship this year (ugh!). I'm going to give you a reading list because I'm super biased about all this stuff. You have no obligation to read anything I suggest. I'm a contemporary behavior therapy person myself. (ACT, DBT, BA, FAP, MI).

Randomized trial of behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, and antidepressant medication in the acute treatment of adults with major depression. Lead author is Sona Dimidjian (2006) That builds off a Jacobson study (http://tinyurl.com/lb82qhj).

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Functional-Analytic-Psychotherapy-Behaviorism/dp/0387097864 (this form of therapy could use any uncomfortable situations about your hand to become a therapeutic tool.)

http://www.amazon.com/ACT-Made-Simple-Easy---Read/dp/1572247053/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377316771&sr=1-1&keywords=act+made+simple This is the biggest modern behavior therapy. It's based of relational frame theory (http://www.amazon.com/Learning-RFT-Introduction-Relational-Application/dp/1572249064/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377316825&sr=1-1&keywords=learning+rft)

Last book I'll recommend is the main DBT book. (http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Treatment-Borderline-Personality-Disorder/dp/0898621836)

For sure read the first two articles. They're super important. The rest is just the stuff I'm interested in because I'm biased. Let me know if you ever want to nerd out about the behavioral side of CBT.

Kind of depends on what kind of vegan he is and what he already has.

Good book for ethical vegan:

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Words-What-Animals-Think/dp/1250094593

Good book for health vegan:

https://nutritionfacts.org/cookbook/

most philosophers of mind are physicalists:

Accept or lean toward: physicalism 526 / 931 (56.4%)
Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 252 / 931 (27%)
Other 153 / 931 (16.4%)

Most continental philosophers of mind are non-physicalists.

For reductive physicalism, the strongest work is typically taken to be Kim's, which the following monograph by him lays out well: http://www.amazon.com/Physicalism-Something-Princeton-Monographs-Philosophy/dp/0691113750

Against reductionism, the strongest work is typically taken to be on Multiple Realizability, which started with Putnam. You may want to check out his Representation and Reality.

I’m a teacher and I love learning about how to help my students learn. Schools these days don’t have any budget so I buy my own books. I’d love a copy of Yana Weinstein’s “Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide “ [link](Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/113856172X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6xlkDbYQ654VG)

I picked up Smithsonian's [Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises] (https://www.dk.com/us/9780789489906-smithsonian-handbooks-whales--dolphins/) yesterday, along with The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, but I'll be sure to check this out, too. Thanks for your help!

You should read The Sum of Small Things. It does a good job at explaining how consumer habits are dictated by the truly wealthy and uses a lot of examples. Essentially the whole mantra of wealth being a quiet influencer...

I think it can be, and there is a rich history in psychological philosophy of declaring behavior a subject matter in its own right.

But, the psychological sciences are unique in that they are "loopy;" scientists, who behave, seek to understand the behavior of others. And this understanding reflects back on society, giving us new ways to view behavior, which in turn changes our behavior. So, yeah, there is always going to be bias. (This is not my idea, but Louise Barrett's, who wrote this book.

But, we have to remember that there has always been this bias, and we have progressed greatly anyway.

If you're interested in the study of behavior through a very pragmatic way, "behavior is a subject matter in its own right," I suggest you check out [radical behaviorism] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_behaviorism#Natural_science), just to give you an idea about how behavior can be viewed as a natural science. (Note: no, the behaviorists aren't dead, and every day the view is given more and more credence).

Thanks for the link, it was very interesting. If you haven't already, I would suggest that you read Gifts of the Crow. Great book on the subject.

google is your friend. Here you go. These should be enlightening. Welcome to the new world.

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468

https://qz.com/1057494/the-biggest-myth-about-our-brains-is-that-theyre-male-or-female/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/male-female-brains-biologically-different/563702/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-100-how-neuroscience-is-exploding-the-myth-of-male-and-female-brains/

https://www.amazon.com/Gendered-Brain-neuroscience-shatters-female-ebook/dp/B07HMDQGC1

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1524747025/?coliid=I2KGHYWISV5VO&colid=FS53FQ4NBELE&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316534617/?coliid=I2S4L8XMUQZW4T&colid=FS53FQ4NBELE&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Was just looking at Corvidae books, there's also "Gifts of the Crow", haven't read yet but 4.5 stars on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Gifts-Crow-Perception-Emotion-Thought/dp/1439198748/

Also Noah Strycker's "The Thing With Feathers" has a good chapter on Clark's Nutcracker memory, also corvids; they can remember thousands of cache locations, allowing them to breed in January in the mountains. That was the only corvid bit I think, but that whole book was good. https://www.amazon.com/Thing-Feathers-Surprising-Lives-Reveal/dp/159463341X/

so how can you not know about bayes theroem, or different reasoning skills? i'm quite happy to say that its a personal interest of mine. i enjoy reading articles and books on psychology, i'm far from an expert in the field... but i know enough not to go around screaming about biases and balance in a public forum where it promises to have none of those.

And yes there are people who have done research into this kind of thing...

https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases-ebook/dp/B00D2WQFP2?ie=UTF8&keywords=judgment%20under%20uncertainty%20heuristics%20and%20biases&qid=1374586297&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Anyone read The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class? It's about how people consume, and how that might have changed recently with a group of people she calls "the aspirational class" -- a group more focused on knowledge and the application of such to their daily lives as opposed to pure materialistic consumption. Anyway, I'm only 20 pages in so don't put too much into my summary (or assume that I agree or disagree with the author), but curious if others have read it and what they thought. Might have some interesting overlap with people who pursue FIRE, but again, just started the book myself so we'll see. I find studies of people's consumption, or lack thereof, typically pretty interesting.

> wouldn't pure logic be the goal of rational thought?

What do you mean by "pure logic"?

It's not true that brain function consists of two distinct parts, one that is based on emotion and the other that is based on pure logic. On the one hand, emotion plays a larger role in thought that is usually recognised. Descarte's Error, by
Antonio Damasio talks about this.

On the other hand, the "non-emotional" aspects of brain function are hardly operating by "pure logic". For one thing, so much of our reasoning is subconscious (See Philosophy in the Flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson), and even when we explicitly reason through some argument, that's still sitting on top of a lot of subconsicous evaluation of the correctness of the points, using processing that isn't based on logic. A lot of reasoning seems to be pattern matching, making analogies, manipulating mental models, etc.

That a person can learn to avoid so-called logical fallacies (or cognitive biases) does not mean that the (fallacy-free) reasoning they are performing is a matter of "pure logic".

.

> By "more complex", I'm inferring that from the programmers perspective, logic may seem an easier puzzle to solve than decision making based on modifiers like superstition, hatred and passion and that you could infer that it is a more evolved form of problem solving.

There's never any reason to assume that anything that was in fact more complex would be better at a stated goal.

I would recommend reading Our Kind, by Marvin Harris. It is an entertaining and well-written overview of the history of humanity and explains many of our quirks.

After you've finished it, you can get into more Anthropological theory. Cultural Materialism, also by Marvin Harris, is a great book for that.

Most importantly, Anthropology is a very fluid discipline, encompassing everything from forensics to rolling in ditches with shamans. Every anthropologist has a different worldview, which falls somewhere between humanism and materialism. Just as there is no one, single human culture, there is no one source for learning anthropology, nor one way to do it.

see: philosophy in the flesh by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Also, mind the gap by Kievet et al -- one of the best papers I've ever seen to tackle the problem of how to test the so-called "reduction problem" - specifically identity and supervenience theories - by using structural equation modeling.

edit: yes, this guy is certainly "obscenely silly"...

As someone who's gotten a BA in philosophy and is now on track for a PhD in neuroscience, I'd like to suggest to some of you the Lakoff/Johnson book linked above; it blows the western philosophy tradition out of the water completely. Supervenience theory is the only worthwhile thing to come out of philosophical works in a long time, IMO...

See also : Carl Safina's book Beyond Words : What Animals Think And Feel.

A really good book with sections following elephants, wolves, and orcas and doing the best he can to evaluate the observed behaviors from a mostly skeptical perspective.

These creatures are all incredibly intelligent and exhibit social behaviors well beyond what we would assume animals were capable of.

The worst story that always stuck out to me was about the elephants. Researchers had recordings of the call of an elephant that had died and played it through speakers near that elephant's own herd.

The herd spent days searching the area looking for their dead friend.

The researchers, heartbroken, didn't repeat this experiment.

You can't equate one-to-one the behaviors of animals to the emotions of humans but it is absolutely clear that they do have complex emotions and social structures and are capable of feeling some sorts of emotions that are similar to what we'd call love/hate/sadness/joy/etc.

I took a number of women's studies courses. When I worked on my 2nd bachelors, I completed almost all of the requirements for the degree with women's studies classes.

If that is out of your price range (I had a lot of needed pre-reqs for a masters degree I had to hammer out anyway), perhaps they have some advice for a reading list.

Some books you may find interesting to read (your local library may have them):

Being Boys; Being Girls. This one is about how boys and girls learn masculinity and femininity as various ages.

Men's Lives. I had an earlier edition in one of my sociology courses. This one is about the construction of masculinity - how boys become men.

Gender Trouble. I had an earlier edition of this book in my gender courses. Butler's argument is basically that gender is a performance. We're all copying something of which there is no original. Could be confusing to read.

Whipping Girl. I recommend this one because it is a very readable book about becoming a transwoman. One way to understand how our society treats men and women differently is to see how things change as someone changes gender. It is the same person, but now how we treat them based on what is/isn't between their legs.

Ain't I A Woman. One of the influential works on Black Feminism. Some black feminists feel that the feminist movement is a bit too much focused on white women. The word "intersectionality" is frequently used to describe situation where racism and sexism collide - and that things get more complicated than just sexism or just racism happen.

As others have mentioned, I would recommend staying away from most blogs/tumblrs and sticking to published books and papers.

Sure, since blog posts don't count I suggest you head on over to Amazon or your local university bookstore and pick up a copy of the 9th edition of Michael Kimmel's Men's Lives. It's a good introduction to actual gender studies focused on men's issues.

Loving the feedback--thank you! I've also found a couple of highly rated books regarding observations on cetacean intelligence and social structure:

Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226503410/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Za1YxbZZHJTBV

The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins https://www.amazon.com/dp/022632592X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Kf1YxbNSC7VFD

>In many cases, there's no particular object that you're thinking about, unless we classify concepts or ideas as 'objects'.

In those cases, we are referring to patterns that we can detect.

All that means is that we have a "circle detector", which just means we have neurons that can detect a circle.

Same as how I have "dog detector" neurons. Its the same thing.

>But concepts and ideas appear to be abstract objects, not concrete physical things.

Not as far as I can tell.

It seems we can describe this stuff physically.

>I'm not talking about neurons when I talk in the abstract about cars. This is just obvious.

"this is just obvious" is not an argument.

>If you want to learn more about the prospects for reducing the semantic to the neurophysiological, you should read Putnam's Representation and Reality. I think it'll do a lot to bring you up to speed; I remember finding it helpful, at least.

You're welcome to present whatever is relevant from that in your own words.

We are about to kick start ABA and I will provide feedback if and when we reach or not reach any milestones. Our son also apparently has HFA and is very smart when it comes to 'doing stuff' (helping us dress him, figuring out puzzles, stacking toys, navigating ipad, opening doors etc) but does not speak a single word other than "gooo" (we think he says this for 'good' as we keep telling him good boy a lot) and does not interact much with other kids.

There were two books that were recommended to us and I got them but scared to even touch them because they are like medical school textbooks:

http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Intervention-Young-Children-Autism/dp/0890796831/ref=la_B000APO1H8_1_1/190-0240050-6614975?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450133376&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0966526600?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

It's conspicuous vs inconspicuous consumption. The aspirational class (people who are culturally sophisticated, vs just wealthy) used to buy what they thought rich people had. The things they can see. Fancy cars, expensive clothes, $1000 purses.

Now they spend their money in ways you can't necessarily see. Good schools for their kids, expensive gym memberships, organic foods, retirement.

The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

You may enjoy the book Beyond Words, in which the author, Carl Safina, spends time with researchers studying wolves in Yellowstone. He also spends time with elephant and orca researchers. All three are species are incredibly intelligent and highly social.

eta: link

Good on you!

You can't become a "registered behavior technician" and work with your own child but you can absolutely get the 40 hour training and have a consulting BCBA that trains, supervises, and updates the program for you.

Some other useful resources for implementing your own program are the classic Maurice and Green book and Mary Barbera's book and courses for "gung ho parents."

I was trying to remember another book title (it's hard when they all have "whales" in it), and stumbled across this, which looks reeeeeally interesting. I haven't read it, but the summary looks really good.

The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins

Responding publicly to: "Any recommendations for stuff to read about agent based modeling?"

One of the best resources for agent based modeling is the modeling tool, NetLogo. It's developed by Northwestern:

https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

It has TONS of sample models in quite a few different disciplines to see how things work.

Railsback and Grimm have a nice textbook style book on agent based modeling (http://www.amazon.com/Agent-Based-Individual-Based-Modeling-Practical-Introduction/dp/0691136742)

Mitchel and Resnick have a smaller book focused on the concepts of ABM called Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. (http://www.amazon.com/Turtles-Termites-Traffic-Jams-Explorations/dp/0262680939)

Lastly Growing Artificial Societies by Epstien (http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Artificial-Societies-Science-Adaptive/dp/0262550253). He developed generative models of economics using an environment he called "Sugarscape".

Another popular modeling system is Repast (written by people at Argonne National Labs) but I think it's not as easy for the non-programmer to get started with. If you happen to be near University of Oregon, they are having a complexity conference later this month that features a day-long seminar on Repast taught by some guys from Argonne.
http://calendar.uoregon.edu/event/exploring_complexity

While I'm parsing through this, I'll recommend Epstein and Axtell's "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up." The authors use adaptive agent-based computational simulations to model population dynamics, trade, conflict, and disease. The agents possess heterogeneous characteristics and although--for the case of trade--their actions can approach a statistical equilibrium, it need not be Pareto-optimal. Trade is carried out locally based on two agents' marginal rates of substitution for two commodities, so the Walrasian central auctioneer is thrown out. They use some pretty simple rules for individual behavior yet achieve some insightful emergent results.

Edit: Also, /r/ComputationalEcon exists if anyone is interested.

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These are all good books to start with ^^

> But we're talking about whether or not there's something nonphysical about me being able to read and listen, right? Different things can get me to think about the same object?

In many cases, there's no particular object that you're thinking about, unless we classify concepts or ideas as 'objects'. But concepts and ideas appear to be abstract objects, not concrete physical things.

> As far as I'm concerned, you're talking about something phsyical: neurons.

I'm not talking about neurons when I talk in the abstract about cars. This is just obvious.

If you want to learn more about the prospects for reducing the semantic to the neurophysiological, you should read Putnam's Representation and Reality. I think it'll do a lot to bring you up to speed; I remember finding it helpful, at least.

If you're truly open to learning more about this, there's TONS of good stuff on google scholar.

Most animal cognitive scientists are in consensus that (a) at the very least, animals are sentient and feel pain and can suffer and many additionally believe that they're (b) conscious too.

This is a great book on the topic that encompasses decades of research and fieldwork

OP, I think you might be interested in this book. It was a course text in one of my undergrad courses.

Lakoff & Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought

I recently finished the book The Emotional Construction Of Morals by Jesse Prinz Book and he has some interesting points about Evolution and Morality.
His points are definitely more for arguing against such a claim, one of his arguments specifically says that just because something is evolutionarily good or ensures survival does necessarily imply optimization but rather effectiveness (Two similar but different things). Therefore evolutionary processes are poor examples of moral optimization.

He definitely refers to some authors who argue that point though.

Thanks, you point out some good references showing science for sure can be biased. A similar problem existed, of course, for science based rationale for treatment of women as inferior
https://www.amazon.com/Inferior-Science-Wrong-Research-Rewriting/dp/0807071706

Is the right course of action to ignore the science and instead trust our instincts when something could be subject to bias?

I feel like there are not a lot of good ones for just parents, or at least those who are not in some kind of guided intervention with a professional. I'd give this a go, though: http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Intervention-Young-Children-Autism/dp/0890796831/ref=cm_lmf_tit_7

> There's close to no serious ethicists who defend it in modern day

Whoever told you that has not been paying attention to developments in ethics over the last 450 years, since the publication of work by Sextus Empiricus and Michel de Montaigne.

Here are some modern papers, books, and articles by or about serious ethicists who defend relativism:

• Moral Relativism, by Gilbert Harman, a prominent philosopher and ethicist at Princeton.
  
• The Emotional Construction of Morals, a book by Jesse Prinz, professor of philosophy at CUNY.
  
• Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response, an article about Jesse Prinz's position
  
• Foundations for Moral Relativism, a book by J. David Velleman, professor of philosophy at NYU.
  
• Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism, by David B. Wong, professor of philosophy at Duke University.
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

(just adding some books some may find interesting)

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Flesh-Embodied-Challenge-Western/dp/0465056741/

http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/0226468011/

Not OP, but I found inferior very illuminating

Here is a much more relevant and practical book.

I have an 18 year old son with autism. He is enrolled in community college, and practicing driving so that he can get his license.

I remember being terrified when I went down the path you are going down. He had no functional language at 3, and did a whole lot of stimming.

We ( by we, I mean I) put an ABA intensive intervention program in place, and he responded really well to it. This book really helped me put together a program.

https://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Intervention-Young-Children-Autism/dp/0890796831

If you ever need to talk, I am happy to do so.

The full NOVA episode from 2010, "A Murder of Crows", is free to stream at video.pbs.org.

There was a New York Times article about the UW research in 2008 that explains the research as well.

The UW professor, Dr. John Marzluff, wrote two books on the subject: Gifts of the Crow and In the Company of Crows and Ravens.

I read the book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, and it turns out Elephants are smart enough to differentiate between humans based on their clothing and language. When researchers played recordings of the indigenous Maasai people (known for poaching elephants) the elephants showed distress and became aggressive. Same thing occurred when researchers presented themselves in Maasai clothing/attire, although the elephants were even smart enough to understand they weren't a threat after investigating a bit longer.

It's really astonishing what they're capable of. They travel thousands of miles and stop to mourn when they pass places where family had died, years after the fact. So to me it's likely that the elephant knew exactly what they were doing.

Edit: Here's a source from National Geographic for the Maasai experiment I mentioned

> No one here has claimed it’s infallible ior sacred

Did....did you read the earlier posts?? There was a good deal of kowtowing to the all knowing BMI. I'm aware that research is not static an I hope that there's a better tool because this one is after all a couple centuries old and a lot of our understanding of how human beings work has changed since then.

Since you are a doctor and a statistician, have you by chance ever read Inferior? It's a book about how the personal biases of scientists influenced the assumptions made and the ways that they developed tools to enforce and confirm those assumptions. That specific book talks about gender, but I remember learning in the History of Science class I took to get out of my humanities requirement talking about Samuel Cartwright who developed tools to prove to others why specific people deserved to remain enslaved. There's a crazy sub on reddit that goes on and on about the correlation of skull shape and why they're not getting laid.

Before you call me a strawman again, I know I'm talking about extreme ways in which scientists are biased here. But when I read all of this I couldn't help but wonder what biases enforce how I look at data when I'm doing research and how the tools I use work within the context of other people. Science is not apolitical, no matter how much we try to pretend it does. Medicine isn't either, and I'm sure you can agree with me.

Granted in college, I didn't really work on anything involving people, I just ran markov models all day. But I love a lot of people who have different bodies who get told that they're just unhealthy, because their BMI is in one category or another and their doctors tell them that they're good and fine. The other people I talked to yesterday were certain that fat people were just unhealthy and I'm so deeply suspicious of people who go around saying that shit.

Edit: also you still haven't answered my question from before.

TL;DR Like us error theorists deny that slavery etc. is moral; they just have different reasons. For relativists, on the other hand, slavery is wrong relative to our moral framework, which is why we shouldn't do it; and yes, for them, we can still criticize slavers!

You raise an excellent question, which [moral relativists] (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/) like [Jesse Prinz] (https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Morality_is_a_Culturally_Conditioned_Response) have done a lot of work towards answering. In fact, your point is one of the biggest objections to relativism: if morality is merely relative, how can we justifiably criticize or object to slavery, misogyny, holocausts, etc? why shouldn't we just do what we want, whether or not it hurts anyone? After all, relative to our moral framework, such actions could be justified.

If you want, check out the Prinz paper linked above, or even better his book [The Emotional Construction of Morals] (http://www.amazon.ca/Emotional-Construction-Morals-Jesse-Prinz/dp/0199571546), as well as the SEP article for the relativists' answer: relative to our morality, slavery etc. is wrong, which is why we shouldn't reenact it. And even though morality's relative, that doesn't prevent us from criticizing others or defending our views - relativism doesn't imply 'anything goes'!

To answer your question, though, [error theorists] (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/) can oppose horribly immoral crimes like slavery just as much as anyone else; like us, it rejects that slavery is morally okay, just for different reasons (because moral judgments are errors). See Richard Joyce's [The Myth of Morality] (http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam031/2001025740.pdf), his paper [here] (http://personal.victoria.ac.nz/richard_joyce/acrobat/joyce_2007_morality.schmorality.pdf), and Ricahrd Garner's [Abolishing Morality] (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10677-007-9085-3#page-1) for a fuller explanation.