Reddit mentions: The best books about neuropsychology

Just a few things that come to mind:

Self-Awareness> There are a lot of ways to work on this and most of them are worth trying. An effective goal might be to find some things that work for awhile, and prepare yourself to seek out other options when those don’t offer the same effectiveness. I’m pretty sure that when we dedicate the time to it, we provide ourselves with information that empowers us to make the decisions that bring about our idea of success.

Expectations> Most of us don’t want to fail. A lot of us feel like if we don’t meet the expectations that we’ve set for ourselves then we’re failures. This often causes some of us to avoid things that we feel we won’t “succeed” at. Hey, I’m not saying we shouldn’t set high goals for ourselves... but when we don't meet our expectations, maybe we could slowly get better at treating ourselves with the kind of love and encouragement that we would extend to our most loved of loved ones when they "fail."

Exercise> God damn it I hate exercise. I wore a button in fifth grade that said: I’m too out of shape to exercise. I’m thirty-nine now and I’ve still never had a consistent workout regimen. For a lot of us, this shit is probably harder than everything else we’ll consider in this thread. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that when the rest of our body is functioning at a more optimal level that we have more tools to work with, and that our tools are more effective. I hate exercise.

Group Discussion> Last year I attended an intensive outpatient group therapy program. This was my first experience with group therapy and I freaking love that shit. I learned that the gems to mine from this experience have very little to do with whoever is leading the group or which organization is providing the facility... as long as you feel like everyone is given the opportunity to share without reproach. Empathy is what it’s all about. The more courageous you are about sharing your struggles, the more empowered your fellow group members will be to do the same. When empathy is flowing freely most people are able to recognize some of their own cognitive distortions, AND help others find their own. Not every group is going to function well, but I think it’s well worth the effort to find on that does. You might start with looking into a DBSA group near you. My advice would be to look for one with 10-15 attendees. If you've got insurance that will cover it, you might check into an Intensive Outpatient Group Therapy program offered by a local hospital.

Books> These are just a few that have offered me some help—and a few that I just acquired but haven’t read yet.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy



Also, this is me patting you on the back lovingly and then turning it into a hug:



Did you feel it?



Disclaimer: I’m currently doing pretty poorly at all of these things.

> Most common religions that use this term are buddhism and hinduism. To put it simply, for those who dont know much about it, its a state where you dont suffer anymore and you are outside of what they call as samsara. In this state, you dont cling to emotions, people, material objects and you are egoless. Its a state of mind.

Saṃsāra: ([wiki] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra)) Saṃsāra is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" or "world", with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. It also refers to the theory of rebirth and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", a fundamental assumption of all Indian religions. Saṃsāra is sometimes referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence".

OP, from the context of the quote - are you sure that the term you wanted is "samsara/Saṃsāra"?

If "samsara/Saṃsāra" is the term you wanted then to address your questions:

> Assuming that you meet such as person in your life, you feel its the real deal, but there is no scientific evidence to present to verify it. Would it affect you in any way or are you going to dismiss him?

I am going to dismiss the claim(s) of "samsara/Saṃsāra," transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence", some form of continuation of the "I" past body death, as this claim is not supported by a threshold level of significance/level of reliability and confidence sufficient to support or justify belief or acceptance. My threshold is that the level of significance must be better than a conceptual possibility, an appeal to emotion, an argument from ignorance/incredulity, the ego-conceit of self-affirmation of a highly-subjective mind-dependent qualia-experience as claimed as having a mind-independent fact or truth value.

----

However, if the term you actually meant was "Satori," where

Satori: (wiki) Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding". It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō, "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature" or "essence." Satori and kenshō are commonly translated as enlightenment.

Satori is a meditation state in which a sense of transcendent bliss along with a feeling of timelessness and infinity, as if they were a deeply interwoven part of all of reality, as if the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses, is obtained. This state has also been called the "God feeling/being in the presence of God" by those mediators that have a cognitive bias towards the existence of some transcendental God(s).

OP, is "satori" the term you meant? "Satori" is a better fit for the context of your statement.

If "satori" is the term you wanted then to address your questions:

> Assuming that you meet such as person in your life, you feel its the real deal, but there is no scientific evidence to present to verify it. Would it affect you in any way or are you going to dismiss him?

I would accept the claim of reaching a state of satori. And I would accept this claim because there is actual credible evidence in which multiple subjects, under mediation, have reached a non-nominal physiological state to lend actual credibility to the feeling. See:

Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. Newberg, Andrew and D’Aquili, Eugene, Ballantine, 2001. (Amazon) (meh-quality PDF scan)

What Newberg and D’Aquili found, via SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) when volunteers (Zen Buddhists) reached the state of satori, that, as expected, the brain regions responsible for concentration were highly active. However, there was one other consistent result that stood out. In all of the volunteers, a particular region of the brain, the superior parietal lobe, showed a sharp reduction in activity.

The role of this brain region was already known. The superior parietal lobe is the brain’s “where” system. Its job is to orient a person in three-dimensional space and help them move through the world; as part of this task, it must draw a clear distinction between “self” and “not-self”. For this reason, Newberg and D’Aquili call it the “orientation association area”, or OAA for short. In all of the volunteers that self-reported reaching the satori state, the OAA had been inhibited by their deep meditative state, deprived of the sensory information it needs to build a coherent picture of the world.

What would be the result of this? Without the OAA, the brain is unable to perceive the physical limits of the self – unable to tell where the body ends and the world begins. And “inn that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real” (Newberg and D’Aquili 2001, p. 6).

Intrigued by the possibility of a biological basis for religious experience, Newberg and D’Aquili broadened their study to include Franciscan nuns who claimed they felt a sense of closeness with God while deep in prayer. The experiment was repeated, and the results were the same: both the Franciscans and the Buddhists experienced similar drops in activity in the OAA, producing a sense of infinite self which both groups then interpreted through the milieu of their own religious beliefs.

> Would it affect you in any way or are you going to dismiss him? If it's going to affect you, in what way?

While it would be cool to experience this qualia-experience, the claim (and supportable fact) that someone else can reach such a meditative state will not affect me, nor my lack of belief/non-belief of the existence of Gods, nor many other positions/beliefs related to the supernatural.

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> In christianity, there is something alike that condition, which i believe its called epiphany. Essentially you become one with god and you are considered to be a saint (in orthodox tradition at least). I will not comment any further for christians beliefs as i dont know much more than that.

Another physiological brain state called temporal lobe epilepsy has been associated/correlated with, for example, seeing cosmic significance in trivial everyday events, and they may believe they were visited by God or in God’s presence, or that they have been “chosen.” (Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, Ramachandran, Vilayanur and Sandra Blakeslee, HarperCollins, 1998.)

Does this mean that "satori" and a supernatural "epiphany" are not real? Nope. Merely that there is significant evidence to support a good correlation between these reported non-nominal qualia-experiences with specific physiological brain conditions. To have one attempt to have challenge another to prove that these qualia-experiences are not experiences of the supernatural is a fallacy of reverse burden of proof. Rather, it is the claimants that claim/assert that these qualia-experiences are supernatural occurrences that have the burden of proof.

Please note that I borrowed/plagiarized/adapted some of my response from the essay "A Ghost in the Machine," by Ebon Musings.

While the idea that the Great Link can create a planetary scale warp field is undeniably a cool one, I'm not sure that it's supported by on-screen evidence. That being said, there's nothing that explicitly says they can't do something like that, but like the other commenters in this thread, I think that if they had the ability they would have used it at some point during the Dominion War.

I don't think, however, that the Founders rest on any delusion that they are gods. Unlike say, Apollo from TOS or the Ori from Stargate, they don't present themselves as gods to those they encounter. They certainly take advantage of the perception that they are gods to the Jem'hadar and the Vorta, but those are species which they have had a direct hand in genetically manipulating.

The question then becomes, where does the perception that they are gods from those species come from? Sure, there could have been a grand demonstration of their divinity as OP posits, but the problem which such grand displays that they need re-enacting every generation or couple of generations or else they just vanish into myth and eventually somebody is going to start questioning.

So it comes back to the inference that if they had this grand power of planetary scale warp travel, they would have used it. Or even if they had some kind of epic god-like power, they would have used it.

So how do they maintain that iron-clad grip of certainty on the part of the Jem'hadar and the Vorta that they are gods? Maybe the answer lies in the fact that both the Jem'hadar and the Vorta are genetically engineered. Can it be that the belief in the Founders' divinity is hard-wired into the genetic code of their servitor species?

Odo suggests this to the defecting Weyoun 6 in "Treachery, Faith and the Great River":

> ODO: Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you believe the Founders are gods is because that's what they want you to believe? That they built that into your genetic code?


> WEYOUN: Of course they did. That's what gods do. After all, why be a god if there's no one to worship you?

Did Odo know this for a fact from his contact with the Great Link or was this just a dig? And was Weyoun 6 being snarky back?

But even if Odo was guessing, perhaps Weyoun 6 wasn't being facetious in his retort. In a 2002 book, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili talk about studies on brain activity during moments of religious experience. The studies used single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to image regions of the brains of Tibetan Buddhists and Franciscan nuns which responded to altered states of consciousness during prayer and deep meditation.

They found that the human brain is genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs and to have spiritual and mystical experiences. During deep meditation, there is an increased activity in the frontal lobe area of the brain — it lights up at the peak of meditation. This was seen in an image of the brain taken during a transcendent experience.

The idea that there is a region of the human brain devoted to spirituality is not new. A few years before that, neuroscientists at UCSD identified such a "God Spot". The question is, I suppose, did God create our brains or did our brains create God? Is evolution predisposed to the idea of spiritual realms as an advantage or is the development of such a center pure chance?

That aside, maybe Odo's remark to Weyoun 6 really is correct: that the Founders, in creating the Jem'hadar and uplifting the Vorta into humanoids, inserted code that made them view the Founders as gods - they would literally have no choice in the matter, even in the face of contradictory thoughts or evidence (unless a chance mutation or defect took away or muted that genetic predisposition, like it did for Weyoun 6 in "Treachery"). This would also explain Weyoun 5's certainty about the divinity of the Founders even when, at the same time, he scoffed at the Prophets and Pagh-wraiths ("Tears of the Prophets"), and Weyoun 6's reaction to the suggestion of genetic manipulation as above.

There are lots of great techniques (like these) to help you remember specific things, but if you want to train your brain to remember things better, you have to work daily on this effort. I've been using Lumosity for the last few months for this reason. I'm not sure yet whether it's actually improving my memory, but at the very least it's a nice way to get your brain going in the morning and brush up on a few basic skills.

There are different games focused on various "brain skills" (memory, focus, spatial recognition, etc...) - I love the games that help you remember names and faces. Thus far the only research about this was sponsored by the company- hopefully others will dig into this interesting topic soon. Still, everything I've read about brain plasticity suggests these kinds of activities do improve your thinking skills.

I signed up for the 30 day free trial and set a calendar reminder to cancel it by the end of the trial, but after 15 days of using it I was hooked. I get to work and do this for the first half hour or so instead of obsessively checking Facebook and it wakes up my brain and makes me feel productive without having to do real work before the coffee kicks in. There's at least one other website doing the same kind of thing called Posit Science, but I haven't tried it.

You could get a similar result by playing free games that use your memory every day, like matching games, but I like that Lumosity training programs give you different games to play each day so you don't burn out. I just click "Start Training" and it will give me 5 games to play. I also like the ability to track my progress.

If you join, add me- I have the same screenname on there. :)

</theyshouldpayme>

So this got a bit long, sorry for that but I didn't want to work. When I get home, I'll try to add some sources for what I said about the human brain and maybe some stuff about neural networks Who's in Charge and Incognito are really great popular science introductions from well-known neuroscience researchers. There's also a BBC documentary which I found very fascinating. For neural networks, I'd recommend coursera.org or any odd intro book.

The rest is basically what I think about the whole issue extrapolating the above, and I have neither good data nor yet found good sources which deal with it. I simply have some objections concerning the ease of creating intelligence.

Feel free to criticise and update my views!

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That's still not enough. The problem lies within what I call robustness and the fact that by relying solely on correlation, you lack the 'theoretical' part of science, i.e. you cannot postulate general principles before observing them. Let me explain:

1. Robustness.
   
   I'll use an example. Let's say we have a machine which we want to use to increase the efficiency of air ventilation in one of our tube (BE for subway) stations. It is equipped with several sensors: temparature, visuals of the tube station, the amounts of gases at any one point, etc.
   
   Now let's say this machine is only based on correlation, as really all things are up to now. This means that they get data on which preprogrammed software finds patterns, and more meta-software decides - after a few cycles of attempting the task - which is the best strategy to reach a preset goal. This works sufficiently well in sufficiently many cases, and at one point a human decides a treshhold at which an increase in efficiency makes a strategy viable for actual use (maybe test it for bugs, etc.).
   
   So this machine runs well for several years, until one day a whole group of passengers suffocates because the air conditioning is not turned on as they leave the tube wagon. How did it happen? The machine, after all, did its job marvellously beforehand. The problem is that external conditions changed in a manner not predicted by the engineers, and that in fact we only engineered the machine's behaviour indirectly without really knowing how it operated.
   
   The problem was, interestingly enough, that the machine learned that the most efficient way of predicting when tubes arrived was to correlate the arrival of trains with the time on the big clock in the main entrance. It's fairly reasonable, if our tube system is usually on time (So maybe we are in Switzerland, not the UK). However, during the night before, the clock broke and stood still. Since the machine didn't understand what it was doing, it didn't go "Hey, the clock's standing still but I know the concept of "being broken", hence I'd best alarm someone/switch to a different strategy and I don't want humans to die in any case .. " etc. It has no concept of death, or killing, or humans. It might not even know how to correlate anything beyond time and arrival, because it has worked so well beforehand, discarded everything else and was unable to re-train itself quickly enough. Even worse, from the POV of the machine nothing was wrong in the first place.
   
   Sure, you can fix it. But then, are you really confindent you are able to eliminate all possibilites for such bugs in the future? Same goes for testing beforehand. All in all, it doesn't sound very 'autonomous'.
   
   The problem is that by only using correlation to understand even simple problems in a very complex environment, even minute changes in said environment can render your whole correlation strategy useless. In other words, the strategy is not robust under changes in our environment. This is something which is acceptable in a very specialised environment that can be controlled by beings which think more robustly (such as humans or strong AIs) and grant the required oversight, and it is also where AFAIK all of the examples in the video came from. But this means that the machines can never be truly general purpose and act autonomously.
   
   Getting more machines only gives more strategies which work, and if done correctly can indeed increase robustness of a system. Though it is not clear by any means that this is always or even often the case! Bigger systems might just attract themselves to more narrow strategies as one strategy becomes dominant in a sufficiently large minority of the systems' members. You need a lot more than just a system - you need a way of controlling the precious tension between homogeneity and heterogenity of strategies.
   
   Quick side remark: there's one hypothesis in neurology that this is exactly why our consciousness gives an evolutionary edge; it acts as an arbiter between competing strategies and solves dilemmas which would otherwise lead to infinte loops or other bad stuff. Do not be angry at boredom. It's your brain going "we are stuck in a loop, change strategies or re-evaluate goals".
   
   That's where the second point comes in.
   
   
2. Postulating, or creating a model of the universe in your mind.
   
   What do you think is the reasons that it takes a decade or two for a human being to be able to act intelligently on most occasions? It's because it takes that long for us to use the hard-wired architecture of the brain and the given data from our senses to create a reasonably well functioning model of our environment in our minds.
   
   Our brains not only correlate, we postulate.
   
   The best way to see this is our eyes. You see only a fraction of what you perceive to be seeing. The rest? Your brain postulates it from the given data. This makes us quick, but also faulty. Such heuristics drastically diminish our processing requirements to survive in a very complex and ever changing environment. And they're everywhere, our whole architecture runs on it.
   
   But that's only the first part.
   
   Even when we close our eyes, our mind has learned to create a model of the entire environment we live in. Guess why you can "go through" situations in your head. You, consciously or not, simulate engagements that might happen in your head to react better when they do occur. But that's still not the best part. The best part, to me at least, is that we can take this physical model and add abstract notions to it.
   
   If I gave a reasonable intelligent human being the task of our machine in the first example, he or she would have been far worse in regulating the air ventilation. But, unless they slept, were unconscious or actively wanted to kill people, they would understand that the reason for air ventilation is to allow other humans to breathe, ergo they would always activate the ventilation when a train arrives.
   
   But this requires them to understand the concept of an arriving train, of human beings, why you do not want to kill them (very complex reasoning here, I'm serious), that not giving them air will kill them, etc. This can all be, somehow, encoded in a machine as well, but it must all be done before the machine is trained. A human can do so because they're a very well trained machines that postulates on its own all the time.
   
   But this is impossible, by definition, for a "correlation only" machine which resides in an environment which changes in a way the engineers didn't postulate themselves. The reason your brain simulates? So that that margin is relatively small for you. And even if it does, our brain somehow reflects upon itself and knows when it's outside its own comfort zone. That's where consciousness sets in and we mysteriously manage to quickly adapt and develop new strategies on the fly.
   
   And what I just said is so fucking incredible I'm in awe just writing this. From my own experience, I've learned stuff which I just shouldn't be able to ever learn, from an evolutionary point of view. For example, there is no reason my brain should be able to understand infinity. This doesn't occur in nature, and it only occurs within the context of civlisation. But I can, and we all have no idea how. We are so damn adaptable that you can throw us into any environment on this planet and we thrive. We change our own environment, and we still thrive.
   
   So in short:
   
   People shitting over human brains don't realize that our greatest strength are robustness and heuristics, combined by postulating (i.e. model building) and, as ultima ratio, our conscioussness as an arbiter between conflicting strategies and a "self-programmer" when we're out of our comfort zone (which we somehow are able to detect, meaning that we have in fact a model of our own mental abilites, and maybe a model of that, and ... ).
   
   We can do so because we benefit from billions of years of evolution, thousands of years of history which gives us an environment that teaches us (this is so important and is entirely overlooked in AI research AFAIK) and - for an adult - roughly two decades of 'real time learning' within that environment which allowed our brain to create a model of the physical world for itself which is constantly updated and for which we constantly predict outcomes. We have language, which allows us to do our own version of "networking", and it is so important that the ability for language it is hard-wired in our brain.
   
   You want to brute force all that? It might work. But I think we need, at least as our first step, to emulate all of the above and make thinking machines that are similar to us. Then we can abstract away from this. The correlation machines we are developing now are the first step to it, and they are marvellous. But they're just that, a first step.
   
   Edit: You only know more than 3 numbers because our civilisation developed it. Some tribes do not have higher numbers. Intelligence might be inseparately linked to access to communication with other intelligent beings.
   
   Edit2: Finally got hold of the books I thought about when writing this. I should mention that the example I used is actually taken directly from Peter Watts Drifter trilogy, a hard science story very well rooted in actual science with lots of references at the end of each book.

I would go with Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". It can be rather tedious at times, but it's such a great summary of recent work in social and cognitive psychology that it's worth it.

Oliver Sacks, as mentioned before, is another great author. Very approachable, very interesting, yet quite informative.

I have heard that Dan Ariely is a great author. Predictably Irrational might be a great read.

Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works is also great, but I would recommend Kahneman over him.

Finally, I would recommend a classic: William James - The Principles of Psychology. It's old, and some stuff is dated, but the guy had amazing insight nonetheless. It'd be a great intro reading just to see where psychology came from.

I would stay away from Jonah Lehrer, since he was accused of academic dishonesty. His book "How we Decide" was an extremely easy read, and a bit watered down. On that tangent, I would also avoid Malcolm Gladwell. Sacks does a better job at explaining psychology and neuroscience to a general audience.

Hope that helps!

Rambling musings it is!

All perception is hallucination, not in the sense that it has no grounding in sensory input, but in that it is a creation of the brain (I visited this in the last paragraph of my 4th response). To illustrate this, my favorite is Adelson's illusion – something that you simply cannot experience as it truly is, precisely because your brain creates the image incorrectly (in 3D, for one thing). The dots are the same color, as are the squares beneath them, but you cannot see that – even though you can prove it to be true. For a better, and more amusing exploration of this, watch the first 7-8 minutes of this presentation by Donald Hoffman. Continue to around the 15 minute mark to get his user interface theory of perception and finish the video to hear his theory of consciousness. Now, I've followed Hoffman for a long time, but I don't buy his grand theory. Still, I do appreciate the rigor of his approach (you can find other videos that dig deeper into the mathematics), and he's always had a good handle on visual perception – his book, Visual Intelligence is a delightful read.

What's the alternative to claiming that the brain creates the illusion of an experiencer? Are we to assume there actually is an experiencer? If so, how does that experiencer experience? Such an assumption just leads us to an infinite regress.

Be very careful about extrapolating function from the functional impact of damage to specific brain regions. There is a distinct difference between being involved in a function and being 'responsible' for that function. We also know that certain drugs can send consciousness on a holiday – general anesthesia comes to mind. Hell, we bid it a good night when we go to sleep.

When you understand what Rama stated in that video, you will understand what I am stating, because they are almost identical.

You're missing the point of the narrative. Creating a narrative for cleaning out the chicken coup is no different from the Capgras patient who rationalizes that the man who looks exactly like his father is an impostor because he doesn't get that feeling when he sees him. The linguistic mind is trying to make sense of the situation and creates the most reasonable story it can. That narrative defines who we are.

Eh, I think Jill is somewhat 'out there' – led by a priori beliefs to reify this 'soul' from the experience created by the brain – a damaged brain (changed hardware brought about a change of experience, by the way). She does, however, get a number of things correct in her talk. I agree with her general assessment of the right hemisphere as being about nothing more than now (although that now is actually a little in the past). It is in the richly linguistic hemisphere on the left side that we have a past and a future – that narrative (some might call it a soul).

I don't mean to imply that's what consciousness is, although I don't think there actually is such a thing. I think it's as Rama described – consciousness is an emergent property of interacting neural modules. It's not located anywhere in the brain, nor is it some mystical thing occupying the body – it's not a thing, at all, but our symbolic brains find that assumption hard not to make. It's just an illusion created by recursive symbolic representation – experience and its integration with the narrative.

It's clear that I need to make another point more clear. It is impossible to describe an experience, and nobody ever does it. We describe our memory of our experiences. That's all it is possible to do. This is a point I've tried to make less directly, but I think it needs to be asserted, with emphasis! This yanks us right back to that pesky narrative and the obvious reason why the 'unity' you mention isn't fractured in the cases thus explored, but I'm certain that you are aware of schizophrenia (at its root, probably a problem with time perception) and multiple personality disorder (multiple narratives), which do fracture that sense of unity.

There are also cases in which stroke patients will state that a paralyzed arm isn't actually hers, but belongs to her sister. There are cases in which a patient will desire an amputation at a precise location of a limb because, he will say, it doesn't belong. There's even Cotard's syndrome, in which the afflicted individual will believe himself to be dead. In every case, something has gone wrong with the underlying hardware of the brain.

So, getting back to my point about what we actually describe, Jill's left hemisphere has created a story about her experience. It's part of the narrative of Jill Taylor, but it isn't the experience. It's her memory of the experience or, more accurately, it's her current memory (has been through numerous edits) of the experience.

I'm firmly a materialist. I'm also very comfortable with not knowing, with absolute certainty, how the brain works its magic. Any good scientist ought to be comfortable with saying, “I don't know.” Not knowing is half the fun – gives us a mystery to solve, and humans love mysteries. Unfortunately, system one thinks it can solve all of them as quickly as I can snap my fingers.

I may not really know how the nuts and bolts create what they do, but I have no doubt that they do. I see no reason to inject another mystery in an attempt to solve this one. The human brain is incredibly complex and we're still in the early stages of exploring it.

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

You might want to check out Khan Academy, which provides entirely free online courses on a huge range of subjects.

On evolution, Stated Clearly is an outstanding series of videos that break it down very simply and straightforwardly (and they're made by an ex-Christian whose education about evolution was part of his reason for leaving the religion). If you're interested in a book, the best I've seen -- and in fact maybe the best popular science book I've ever read -- is Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. It would certainly be enough to help you decide if you'd like to read more.

If you're interested in neuroscience and the brain you might want to read How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker or The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran, both of which are wide-ranging and accessibly written.

Finally, you can just search for "best science books" (or similar phrases) -- you'll find plenty of lists out there of the best books of all time, the past year, the past decade and so on. You can't go wrong just reading the top few, or if there's an area you find yourself more drawn to you can focus on that.

Above all, focus on the positive and enjoy the process of learning about these things, because it's an absolutely fascinating world out there. Have fun!

The other commenters have already explained this very well, but I'm going to try putting it in my own words anyway.

There are two things to talk about: sex and gender. Sex is the biological aspect while gender is the behavioral aspect. But wait, can't behavior have a biological influence? Everything points out that yes, it can, but it can also have environmental influences such as culture.

So how did sex arise? Some animals have only one sex, and some are even able to make babies with themselves. The reason some animals evolved away from this suggests an advantage to having multiple sexes in multiple people. The multiple people part is easy, genetic variability. If you only make sex with yourself, you're going to have very little change in your genes, and any new hazard, like viruses and changes in temperature could wipe your genome out.

What about different sexes? In this case, it is all about specialization. Having someone specialize in nurturing and someone specialize in proliferating might have given advantage to our predecessors. This specialization starts in our germ cells, with one producing small, motile, and ever proliferating spermatozoan and the other producing large, immobile, once in a lifetime eggs. Males make millions of spermatozoan during most of their lifetime while females make eggs only in an early age.

Now, what does that have to do with gender? It is possible that the different costs on the different types of sex cells could have led animals to behave differently. The female invests a lot on a single egg, so maybe she needs to be really picky about whom she mates with; the male can just throw his stuff around. It would also be dangerous if males started mating with males instead of females. That would be just wasted energy that could have been used in effective reproduction.

Note that this behavior isn't always observed in animals. The ultimate goal is gene survival, and there are many factors that help genes survive. Maybe a male fish will find that having a male lover while procreating with a female will cause this lover to protect his offspring for some reason. This would reinforce the behavior of keeping male lovers in this species.

Now, to humans. What makes humans complex is the hypothesis that we have this consciouness that can govern our lower impulses and perhaps even act against them. This area is still growing, and there are many theories. One could say that gene influence is still what matters most. Maybe by choosing not to have children and instead focusing on my career, I am helping my genes survive through other people (all humans have some similar genes, and if my career helps the world, it also helps my genes). On the other hand, I could argue that there is something in humans that really allows them to outrule their survival insticts, or that there are new powerful forces such as culture that can govern our actions more than our genes and our own will together.

So, is there such a thing as gender? Yes, but in humans it could go much beyond simple inherited "instincts". I recommend you read the chapter on sex of this book and maybe take a look at the selfish gene.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.

Small talk may seem like a pointless waste of time, but it's not. Someone with asd brains work differently to most neurotypicals, the way we interpret and understand words and social interaction are naturally different, but that doesn't mean we're ever more or less correct in how we approach a conversation. That's an important thing to accept.

​

Small talk is important because it shows respect for the person you're speaking to. When someone starts a conversation with someone no one can accurately know what mood they're in, what they're comfortable talking about in the moment and if it's a stranger there's even more to learn. Their built up beliefs of certain concepts or words may trigger negative responses. People see things in different ways, some people will tolerate different things to others. Small talk enables people to naturally learn what role they should play in a conversation, a deep monologue in some situations just isn't appropriate, even if it's what's going through your head.

​

It's certainly tough to develop a filter between your brain and what you communicate, without feeling like you're being artificial or not true to yourself. There will be many people you meet in life that will notice your personal issues, offer support, will sit and talk to you. It shouldn't be expected of however. Some people lack the patience or skills and talking about such things, it can make them feel uncomfortable, or can give them the impression (like you said) , that the person is "self absorbed" or overly "negative".

​

For me it's definitely a struggle interacting with strangers in real life situations. I have to be tactile in what I say, but at the same time not be too quiet that the conversation dies in a one on one situation. But it's very important not to drown out the other person. I think it's best to see it all as a skill that is worth learning. I'm sure you are capable, I think it's more that you've got to see the importance of it. The fact you wrote this post shows your self awareness, and that you care about it. Which implies you don't have malicious intent when and if you upset people.

​

This is a good book. It may help.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Field-Guide-Earthlings-autistic-neurotypical-ebook/dp/B004EPYUV2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540844926&sr=8-1&keywords=field+guide+to+earthlings

​

Just remember, being careful about how you talk about depression doesn't trivialise how important it is and to what extent it affects your life. A lot of people are aware of that, and by taking a more tactile approach, you may find more support and reassurance than the alternative, which is to let it become your outward personality also.

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Hint! They are all men. Men who learned to write stylish, flowing, neat letters. Beautiful script and prose. A time when both men and women (educated) were expected to have exemplary writing skills. That is not to say that there wasn't people with bad writing...but these men are not going against the cultural grain...they are with the cultural expectations of that time period.

> but I think most people would understand what's being talked about and be able to picture it in their heads.

Would a man from India have the same image? A woman from rural China? A boy from Russia? A girl from Peru? The image in your head of what is "girls writing" is culturally derived. Other cultures will have other ideas of what constitutes a male or female writing style...or perhaps none at all (e.g. there is no gender/sex divide).

> Children usually display "boyish" or "girlish" behavior from a very young age (e.g. favoring toy trucks over dolls) independently of parenting style.

You forget that parents only form a part of what influences a child as they grow. Media, culture, friends, family, teachers are all avenues for promoting cultural stereotypes.

> I think the simplest explanation here is that young girls are more likely to be concerned with having attractive handwriting and so they make an effort to improve it, typically by borrowing from the writing style of other girls, who happen to favor neat, round, and pretty shapes.

Where is that concern derived from? Do all girls inherently want neat writing? What would be the biological mechanism - a specific gene, neurotransmitter? Is it simply because girls develop fine-motor skills earlier on? Are those early years really that formative, we can't teach a dog new tricks?


I really recommend the book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine as an introduction this topic. "Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender."

I recommend reading: The User Illusion by Tor Norretranders, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and I Am a Strange Loop also by Douglas R. Hofstadter for some interesting reading on the subject (Warning: Gödel, Escher, Bach isn't for everyone- it's a bit strange, but I love it). I read a lot of books on science in general and, based on that, it seems like many believe consciousness and also free will is just an illusion. In fact, just a few days ago, physicist Brian Greene sorta-kinda said as much in his AMA - granted, he's talking specifically about free will and not consciousness per se, but I think the two must be very related.

I, too, believe in God and also have a very strong belief in and enthusiasm for science, so this is an especially fascinating question for me.

BTW: if you're interested in the way the brain works in general, I highly recommend How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker.

I second the reading idea! Ask your history or science teachers for suggestions of accessible books. I'm going to list some that I found interesting or want to read, and add more as I think of them.

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. Title explains it all. It is very beginner friendly, and has some very entertaining stories. Bryson is very heavy on the history and it's rather long but you should definitely make every effort to finish it.

Lies my teacher told me

The greatest stories never told (This is a whole series, there are books on Presidents, science, and war as well).

There's a series by Edward Rutherfurd that tells history stories that are loosely based on fact. There are books on London and ancient England, Ireland, Russia, and one on New York

I read this book a while ago and loved it- Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk It's about a monk who was imprisoned for 30 years by the Chinese.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Les Misérables. I linked to the unabridged one on purpose. It's SO WORTH IT. One of my favorite books of all time, and there's a lot of French history in it. It's also the first book that made me bawl at the end.

You'll also want the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Federalist Papers.

I'm not sure what you have covered in history, but you'll definitely want to find stuff on all the major wars, slavery, the Bubonic Plague, the French Revolution, & ancient Greek and Roman history.

As for science, find these two if you have any interest in how the brain works (and they're pretty approachable).
Phantoms in the brain
The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Alex and Me The story of a scientist and the incredibly intelligent parrot she studied.

For a background in evolution, you could go with The ancestor's tale

A biography of Marie Curie

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston is a quick and easy read, and very heavy on the adventure. You'll also want to read his other book The Hot Zone about Ebola. Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put this one down.

The Devil's Teeth About sharks and the scientists who study them. What's not to like?

• Most people that have never heard of lucid dreaming, and are taught what it is, have a lucid dream that night.
  
  
• The best way to lucid dream is to become more conscious of your surroundings in real life. If you teach yourself to always be looking around you and wondering "am I dreaming? Is this a dream?" eventually you will start to ask those questions while dreaming, allowing you to notice you're dreaming.
  
  
• A big help are reality checks. When you're awake and you're wondering if you're dreaming, you can do a reality check. One good reality check is holding your nose and trying to breath in through it. If you're awake you'll be unable to breathe in, if you're asleep you'll still be able to breathe even though you've held your nose. As in the previous point though, you have to keep doing these reality checks in real life, until they're so imprinted into your routine (and subconscious) that you'll do them in a dream too.
  
  
• Are you dreaming right now? Possibly. But here's another reality check for you. Read this paragraph again, is it any different? In dreams you can't read the same piece of writing twice, it changes.
  
  
• Once you realise you're in a dream, don't stop and think. You'll wake up. Dreams are narratives that you follow through forward momentum. If the narrative stops, then you stop dreaming. One tip is when you realise you're dreaming, start running (or spin around really quickly) and this keeps the dream going. For reals.
  
  
• Lucid dreaming is different for different people. Personally I can't suddenly create a number of lesbians in front of me, because to do this I have to stop and concentrate, which breaks the narrative and makes me wake up. Instead I've learnt to use expectations to create something. For example, I may expect something to happen if I run around the corner. So I run around the corner and there it is. So I can't create lesbians, but I can expect them to be somewhere, and when I get there, they're already there. Hard to explain really.
  
  
• If you want more information on lucid dreaming, the best book to read is anything by Stephen LaBerge, who is considered a lucid dream expert. This one in particular is good: Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming
  
  
• If you want a great, easy to read book about the different stages of human consciousness and cool things our mind can do, then I suggest reading The Head Trip which contains a huge chapter on lucid dreaming.

> The hard problem of consciousness alludes to the fact that we don't know how the brain produces consciousness, but we already know that it does.

Wrong. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (a peer-reviewed academic resource) states in the entry on the hard problem of consciousness: "In more detail, the challenge arises because it does not seem that the qualitative and subjective aspects of conscious experience—how consciousness “feels” and the fact that it is directly “for me”—fit into a physicalist ontology, one consisting of just the basic elements of physics plus structural, dynamical, and functional combinations of those basic elements. "

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/

David Chalmers introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness and if you go to his PhilPapers profile you'll see his answers to various questions in a survey he actually helped create. Here's the question: Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? and here's his answer: Accept: non-physicalism

Source: http://philpapers.org/profile/2/myview.html

So yeah, if you can solve this hard problem of consciousness and save physicalism then maybe you'll be the guy getting the Nobel Prize eh? This is a big problem that's been plaguing us and stands in the way of the greatest mysteries mankind is aware of: consciousness and the brain. So if you think you're Nobel Prize material then go ahead and get crackin on solving that hard problem of consciousness there.

> Physical and material aren't vacuous terms at all. Somebodies' say so doesn't make it so.

This is either a blatant straw man or you clearly didn't check out the link from Chomsky. Chomsky gave an argument, check out the link again without the straw man.

> You should check out the argument from authority fallacy in good times, since your pretentious and pompous drivel is always chock full of it.

Do you even know what that fallacy even is? Me citing scholarly sources is not fallacious, its just research and an avoidance of plagiarism. I follow academic publications, I keep up with the scholars as much as I can. That's what a person who wants to be informed on this matter does my friend.

> I could also cite tons of philosophers who subscribe to physicalism, many of whom have actually done real work in that regard instead of scholastic mental masturbation.

The difference between you and me is that I'm giving arguments and not just throwing books at you like you tried to do. Chalmers is no fringe quack, he's a leading expert in his field and the hard problem of consciousness is unraveling this physicalist paradigm.

> the majority of professional philosophers subscribes to naturalism.

Yes it is the majority but the numbers aren't as impressive as you'd make them out to be. Only 50% are naturalists. And as I've noted, with research to back me up, this paradigm of the majority is being contradicted more and more.

> Also: material is usually understood to be space, time, fundamental particles, fields, energy, laws of nature.

Again, check out that video from Chomsky without the strawman and you'll see this doesn't help.

> A theory is not an example. Can you actually provide a counterexample? Because nobody can.

First off, you can't even meet your own example. As noted in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (a peer-reviewed academic resource), a physicalist ontology with qualia/subjectivity doesn't seem to make sense. Think about it for a bit: if all is objective or 3rd person then what room is there for a first person? There is none. There would be no qualia or subjectivity, only objectivity since reality=objective. But the idealist posits what's right before them: consciousness. To them reality is consciousness and they actually have some pretty good arguments for this as even Godehard Bruentrup notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDR5i6z4L8c

> What the hell. Prove that and collect your Nobel Prize.

LOL wow you are waaaay behind on your research. Here, let me catch you up to date. One source on this is Jeffrey M. Schwartz MD a Research Psychiatrist at UCLA School of Medicine and one of the world’s leading experts in neuroplasticity, and he showed the mind alone can and does influences the brain and change brain structures in his work with OCD patients: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Mental/dp/0060988479

Here's some other stuff as well: http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~ochsner/pdf/Ochsner_Reapp.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11549754

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811902000307

This is old news my friend. Brain effects mind and mind effects brain.

> More argument from authority.

Wow do you even know what I was saying there? You were trying to say all of this stuff comes from theistic motivations about life after death when the main scholars I've been citing are both atheists (Chalmers and Nagel) who haven't said anything about life after death as far as I'm concerned.

> Chalmers' arguments are so dumb that they actually lead even more philosophers towards mind physicalism. Pigliucci calls his views The Chalmers Delusion.

There is no "Chalmers Delusion" outside o the imagination of this guy you're citing who is not even a philosopher of mind. He's speaking outside of his field of expertise. And every source that's actually on this topic by experts in the relevant field suggest this hard problem is a serious problem for physicalism.

> The mind doesn't have causal powers.

The mind as you conceive of as these current scientists do, yes it certainly does and I just provided several scholarly sources demonstrating this to you. You're out of date my friend, way out of date. We've known this for awhile now. We know the brain effects the mind and the mind effects the brain.

> The only causal effects so far discovered are force interactions in physics.

That's a very hefty claim there and I don't know how you could actually go about proving this to be true. But I'd also like to know what causality even is in your view. Keep in mind, we're not talking about mere physics here we're talking about metaphysics and ontology and such. You can't retreat to physics and close off philosophy here without sawing off the branch you sit on. If you want to close it off at physics you're going to end up refuting yourself.

> You've also just unintentionally revealed a trick. You (non physicalists) love to define minds and consciousness as something which doesn't actually exist, and then ask the question how the physical brain can produce that.

???

When did I say mind and consciousness doesn't exist? And I never said I was a non-physicalist but I never said I was a physicalist either. I reject this dichotomy altogether as these terms are essentially vacuous.

> Of course. Exactly like in the case of all other fictional characters.

Wrong, this is not the case with fictional characters. You can conceive of mickey mouse and what he's like with all the properties that make him mickey mouse, but God's essence is not identifiable with anything.

Pretty much all historical civilizations were sexist, since women were denied fundamental rights in them based on gender. Even if one were to agree with everything else you've written, your final conclusion/suggestion does not follow. I can't think of any significant, historical civilization that might be called non-sexist.

Biology is a fact of nature; you cannot "fight biology". That would be like fighting physics. No matter what you did, the laws of physics would still apply. What you are talking about, such as "scholarships for women only, to get them into areas of technology, engineering", and "specialized programs for boys only to help them in reading & writing" do not in any way fight biology, they leave biology just as it is. However, they do change society. Scholarships are societal creations designed to redistribute access to education, which is another societal creation. Education doesn't grow on trees; human beings artificially created the system of education. Hence, the educational system is an aspect of society, not biology.

The fact that there are some gender differences in the brain, statistically speaking, should be no big surprise. But many popularized studies tend to exaggerate or misinterpret these differences. I would suggest you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, or Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences for a deeper look at these topics. Broadly, a study that shows no differences in how men and womens' brains, on average, perceive a topic won't make a good headline or blog post, so it will be unlikely to be reported compared to one that finds a difference.

Secondly, it's not clear what these differences have to do with social roles. For example, what does the fact that men have more spatial reasoning, on average, mean for social roles exactly? Since there are many intelligent and successful women in programming and engineering fields, and many men who suck in these areas, it does not follow that there is a casual relation between gender and STEM fields. On the other hand, engineering is clearly coded as a masculine profession in society, and girls may be turned away from studying engineering for fear of being seen as unfeminine. Scholarships that seek to counteract that would then be playing a positive role.

Finally, I see an assumption through your post that what is "nature" is automatically good and must be accepted by society. However, the whole point of civilization and society is go beyond nature itself to build something for ourselves, as humans. Is medicine natural? We are programmed to die from birth, yet we still use the medical system to prolong life. Since men are physically stronger than women, should men then dominate women and impose our wishes on them? No, we created a system of laws where all citizens are equal before it because we recognize the equal moral worth of each person. Freedom is the fundamental issue. Humanity as a whole, and individual people for their own lives, must have the freedom to define its own path and create its own society without being told that a certain path is required due to unnecessary extrapolations from natural facts.

No, it's not that unusual. But it's not in the average, "HAY GUISE!" category. I do think it is weird, tho--imo, it's more fuck-with-your-mind than just a normal [crazy] dream.

And I don't know what reality-testing you're doing, but it sounds, to me, like you're doing it wrong? I mean, I can't imagine how I would ever be able to materialise a sandwich in front of me in my waking life. Unless you're saying you can't materialise sandwiches in your dreams because of this, I guess--I can see how that would be possible. What about reading written material, then looking away, then re-reading it? Does it stay consistent? That would be highly impressive to the point of nigh-unbelievable [to me personally] if you said you could do that in a dream.

Tbh, if you want to know more about it, you should read some books or even talk to people in /r/LucidDreaming; I'm not an expert. What I can say from my personal observations is that there do seem to be correlations between different personalities and the kinds of dreams people have.

The best example I can come up with off the top of my head that I didn't just make up: Researches have found memory & dreaming are somehow related. I've read it hypothesised that dreaming might be a mechanism which assists in memory storage. Also, psychopaths are known to both have poor memories as well as, for the most part, actually not experience dreams, or have very weak/pale ones. This is highly unusual, as you may already know, since even though many people can't remember their dreams this is not an indication of them not having dreams; everyone dreams, so it is said. However, psychopaths aren't considered to have the most normal personalities, anyway. (Iirc, these tidbits were cherry-picked from The Head Trip & The Psychopath Test.)

So anyway, as a lay person, I make wild personal speculations about how whatever it is that gives rise to personality also gives rise to types of dreams & dream experiences, but it's just for my own amusement & I haven't looked into it deeply enough to make some kind of insightful statement to you about this kind of "uncanny valley of waking consciousness" dream. But I guess usually that kind of thing seems to pop up when one's life is highly routine..? So perhaps trying something new & breaking out of your comfort zone could be in order?

I mean, if you like.

That's called "biotruths", friend, and those are fairly strongly debunked by science. A decent basis in psychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences will lead you to notice that nearly all differences in men and women are based in social conditions and the society they are raised in than based on physical differences or hormones. Men are not naturally prone to violence, this is based upon cultural assumptions of gender normatives which forces the penchant for violence upon the child, regardless of the personal family environment of the child.

Remember that there are far greater differences between individuals within a single gender than there are between individuals in separate genders. A good way of thinking of this is to imagine that we have put numerical differences upon the traits and men score around 1 - 85 and women score around 15 - 100. Sure, there are differences, but there's so much variety within the genders that the differences are basically irrelevant. Most people are a smattering of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

You should engage the social sciences, friend. There's a lot of interesting and exciting data coming out of the field of gender studies!

Suggested Reading:

Hyde (2009) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Cordelia Fine (2011) Delusions of Gender

Peterson and Hyde (1997 - 2007) A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality

Article: There really is no difference in men and women's math abilities

Article: Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

EDIT: A good place to learn and discuss Trans issues is /r/SRSDiscussion. There's a large variety of different users on there with deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I highly suggest you post any questions you have regarding Trans issues there with them. If you think that "some kind of cis-sexism may be based in biological reality, not culture", then I'm sorry friend, but you have very little understanding of what Cissexism is and have a lot to learn about gender. Start there and read more into the topic. It's a fascinating topic. I think you'll enjoy it!

>Well, what is this evidence? Can you link me to it?

Certainly! Some of it is in book-form, some can be found online. I can sympathize with not wanting to buy any book, at least not right away, but the reviews should be helpful at any rate. I will start you out with a variety of entry-points.

Here is a good introduction to the predicament of the situation, and why you probably never heard of this before in a serious discussion.

Here is the best book on the subject that summarizes the evidence and comments on the skeptical objections.

Here is a book jam-packed with raw data that supports this hypothesis.

Here is a good book that discusses other types of experiences (that relatives close to the dying experience either by the bedside of the dying or miles apart).

Here is the best documentary on the subject, that analyses the skeptical position as well.

Here is a mention of another type of phenomenon called Terminal Lucidity.

Here is the best prospective study on the subject to date.

Here is the best skeptical source on the topic, which was published and discussed over 4 issues in the Journal of Near-Death Studies (JNDS) back in 2007-2008.

That should get you started, to say the least!

(page 2)



Question (BigRedHair):

> First - wow. You're pretty damn lucky to be alive - and I was so glad you were wearing a helmet!
> Did you recognize your ex-step mother when she came in? Did you know that the people visiting were family/friends?
> I may have missed this, but how long is this guy's jail sentence?
>

Answer (PRTetu):

> I think he got six months.
>
> I recognized my ex-stepmother, but that didn't change the fact that it felt like my first memory. I don't remember anyone else visiting besides my dad's wife who came to grab me when I was released.



Question (chiro_throw):

> Please take your own medical care seriously: http://www.skepdic.com/chiro.html
>
> Chiropractic services are not based on science. At worst they can leave dead, or paralyzed for life. Don't take my word for it; educate yourself on any treatment you are looking to or currently receiving.
>
> Rather than read the link above, which is quite lengthy - I will admit, wikipedia has a good section on the risk-benift of chiro here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Risk-benefit

Answer (PRTetu):

> What is the alternative?



Question (qazplu33):

> >The second time, I had to take the stand and testify against him. I once again refused to look at the evidence photos and was asked things like what I thought his punishment should be.
>
> What did you say? I'm not here to criticise anything you say, I'm just curious what you thought. I know I'd want to do... illegal things to him, especially after he half-assed his apology. What a dick.

Answer (PRTetu):

> There was a lot I really wanted to say. He should be castrated without anesthesia so as not to continue to pollute the gene pool and in a very painful way. He should pay me every cent he ever makes. His children should be taken away. He should have to spend all six months of his sentence in solitary confinement with the nyan cat looping on a small speaker barely audibly. I should get to hit him on my bicycle with his truck.
>
> What I ended up saying was that he should never drive again and probably spend some time in jail.



Question (jwolf227):

> The driver did turn himself in an hour later. His thoughts were probably oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I just killed a guy. And often when you get in that highly panicked mindset, the first thing you think is to return to routine, something familiar. He probably went home, calmed down, and realized he needed to account for what he had done.

Answer (PRTetu):

> From the biking blog I linked:
>
> "In a sign of the sheer stupidity demonstrated by some drivers — especially those foolish enough to flee the scene of a collision — Travers called police to report he may have been in a collision, after apparently seeing the story on the news. But swore he wasn’t the one who hit the cyclist.
>
> Needless to say, police investigators found evidence connecting him to the crime. Which they may never have found if Travers hadn’t attempted to craft a case of implausible deniability."



Question (I_LOVE_ASPARTAME):

> I was attacked in my neighborhood before and don't remember anything from that day and two days before. My body is probably doing me a favor by blocking everything out, but it has been crazy hard dealing with the curiosity of trying to bring the memory forward. i've now come to terms with it and let my defenses shut it out. Yay ptsd

Answer (PRTetu):

> lol yaaaayyyy.



Question (whodafukisethanembry):

> Do you see yourself, someday, returning to biking as a means of transportation?

Answer (PRTetu):

> To this point, I had thought absolutely not. There are some exceptions, but absolutely not on public streets with vehicle access. At least not anytime soon.



Question (jewcebox95):

> I remember hearing about this on the news, I live in Dena. Glad you're doing better and hope everything turns out alright.

Answer (PRTetu):

> Thank you for that.



Question (iheartfirefly):

> Be healthy, physically and mentally. Do good things for yourself. I had some head trauma after an accident a few years ago and the first 18 months was hard...I couldn't remember words, anxiety was BAD, lots of hermit-y stuff but it got easier as I settled into the meds and started living how I envisioned my life (even tho it wasn't comfortable to do.) Good luck, don't be a hero and suffer through the pain - talk to people about it, get help, let your friends be friends, ya know?

Answer (PRTetu):

> Good advice. Thank you.



Question (badluckgod13):

> Holy shit man this sucks. I live right off of foothill boulevard in la Canada I'm so sorry this happened.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I went to LCHS. My father teaches there/coaches golf.



Question (P1h3r1e3d13):

> You may be interested in Phantoms in the Brain. It covers some of that weird, mind-body disconnect stuff.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I will definitely check that out.



Question (yummyfrenchfry):

> glad your ok my friend unfortunately was killed on thursday - http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=8736771

Answer (PRTetu):

> It breaks my heart every time I read another one of those.
>
> The "Why me?" question as to why I was either hit or survived is kinda out of my head now, but it does come up when I see something like that.
>
> Stay strong.



Question (cukabara7047):

> I was struck by a driver last fall who left me with some pretty bad hand injuries, (as my right arm went through his left headlight) but nothing too lasting. He sped off the second I hit the ground, too, but unfortunately there were no witnesses so there were no repercussions.
> Glad to hear your feelin better man, stay safe out there

Answer (PRTetu):

> Glad to hear you weren't more seriously injured.
>
> Thanks for the positive vibes.



Question (GimmieMore):

> It went from bad to worse... But there were a lot of factors involved...
>
> She actually ended up threatening me with violence for very minimal reasons... regularly.
>
> Head injuries are a bitch.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I'm assuming the relationship ended not long after the accident?



Question (antisocialmedic):

> Yeesh. I am sorry to hear that happened to you my friend. Here is hoping to a fast and thorough recovery!
>
> Also, do you find the road rash to be as awful as I do? I got hit by a car and dragged for a bit when I was a kid, no broken bones but a ton of road rash. It was pretty awful. I can't imagine having to go through what you did.

Answer (PRTetu):

> To be honest, the road rash wasn't as bad as the joint pain and rampant bruising.
>
> Had it just been road rash, I'm sure it would've sucked pretty hard itself. I had some (slight understatement) experience with road rashes as a young care-free skateboarder.



Question (Juliet2yourRomeo):

> Did you have a Significant other at the time of the accident? If so did the dynamic of the relationship change? Have any of your relationships changed in regards to u feeling like a totally new person? Do u have new interests than before ? Haha sorry for the million questions but this is interesting and I'm very glad you survived and I wish you the best in your recovery :)

Answer (PRTetu):

> I did not have a significant other and wasn't dating anyone... that I can recall.
>
> I can't really speak to how much relationships have changed as I can't really remember what they were like before. I'm sure if I got a couple friends to hop on here, they could be a little more insightful as far as that goes. As far as the interests, just being interested in social activity is definitely new and not having any interest in MMO's is also a polar shift. I also have an affinity for old movies from the 40s-60s now which I can't ever recall having a remote interest in.



(continued below)

I'm 35years old and have recently been diagnosed with mild sleep apnea ~10 AHI. I've bought an auto CPAP and have been on treatment for around one week. I feel better so far although I'll need months to quantify the improvement.

Prior to this I was on a 1 month trial where I couldn't identify how crucial CPAP was until the trial ended (which I've been told is common for mild sufferers). It was around 2 months without treatment between the end of the trial and when I bought the machine a week ago.

Like you I suffered from chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, memory issues, brain fog etc. After treatment it was clear to me that many of the fears I had were based on cognitive patterns developed while under the effect of a physiological anxiety and depression.

So in plain english, things aren't likely to be as bad as you perceive them to be. I'm not trying to downplay the potential need for rehabilitation because now that I'm on CPAP I intend to create a brain rehabilitation plan that includes the items below.

For you in particular I would do the following:

• Read a few books on Neuroplasticity. (Eg The Brain that Changes Itself, The Power of Neuroplasticity)
  
  
• Get therapy to fix any maladaptive cognitive behaviours you've developed while under the influence of apnea created anxiety. You want a therapist specialised or familiar in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. If you can't afford a therapist, get a self-help book like Feeling Good. Frankly, I think everyone should undertake some CBT sometime in early adulthood anyway, but I think you could use it in particular.
  
  
• Fix your habits now that your mind is working again. Create good sleep hygiene by cutting out blue light (f.lux app for computers/phones) and turning off electroncs an hour before you sleep (which should be ~10-10:30pm). Eat a balanced diet and supplement with Omega 3 fish oil for healthy brain function. Exercise ~ 3 times a week (preferably weights, but otherwise cardio/sport). Consider cutting down or eliminating alcohol and other drugs that may cause cognitive impairment.
  
  
• Take up Meditation which has been shown to improve executive function. 20 minutes per day concentrating on your breathing, nothing fancy. There are guides to simple forms of breath meditation all over the place.
  
  
• Non-electronic based brain teasers. Get a big book of puzzles and fit it into your routine. I recommend non-electronic because the semi-dissociative state induced by videogames doesn't activate all areas of your mind.
  
  
• Find a good memory training program. I don't have much experience with this yet, but I've heard there are some good books on this.
  
  
• If you have easy access to medical care, consider getting a referral to a neurologist for an MRI and talk your concerns over with him. Maybe there is little to no atrophy of your brain. You can't really tell from the inside except for poor memory/brain fog. Try getting another MRI in 6 months to a years time on your recovery regime to see how things have changed.
  
  Beyond all this I think its important to just do the best you can with the resources and knowledge you have available and not beat yourself up for what might have been and things beyond your control.
  
  Good luck.
  
  edit: broken links the bane of my life

I was born into the church, and stayed for 35 years. I always thought of myself as christian, though many other christian sects have differing views. I served a mission, and got married in the temple. I had very deep, fulfilling spiritual experiences, visions, and prophetic dreams. The only problem? The mormon church not only no longer practices what they used to say is mandatory, they often deny it was ever said.

A good friend of mine was never in any church, so it was quite easy for him to identify as an atheist from the beginning. I did not go immediately for atheism because of all the spiritual experiences I have had. There is something almost tangible to all this spirit stuff. There is a reason that religions get formed and followed. There is a real power there.

I joined a Kriya meditation group, and learned a lot about the Bhagavad Gita and hindu spiritual beliefs. The meditation was quite useful, and it also charged my spiritual feelings and gave me visions at times. cool stuff!

I continued my studies of everything I could get my hands on. What is this stuff I am feeling? Why does the spirit feel like a sexual release? Here is one of the books that was very interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/034544034X

I don't need to pursue organized religion now, or meditation. Life is experienced within my brain, and can manifest as the many things that people claim are "true." The simplest explanation is that there is no god, but that does not stop people from interpreting their feelings and experiences to believe so.

Are christians any better than the mormons that think they are christian? Are followers of Jesus better than those that read the Koran, or buddhists? I think we are all simply human, with feelings that easily lightup with spiritual drives, and that has created a religion industry for tens of thousands of years.

TLDR; I gave up on God completely, but not right away. You don't have to leave your Christianity now or ever... but I challenge you to consider why you believe and what evidence holds you to your own personal beliefs. You can be as good as you wish to be with or without god.

I don't think there will ever be a perfect rule that can be applied across all possibilities without fail, but for me one of the major things I look for is whether the author is a respected scientist actively working in the field (or, if they're retired, had an active history in the field).

So your Gazzaniga and Brown books I wouldn't even hesitate to recommend to others, without even having read them. It helps that I've read other books by those authors and their research, but their names alone are enough for me to give them a tick. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they're good books, but if you're asking for a rule on how to judge a book before reading it, then that's probably going to result in more success than failure.

The second thing I look for is whether the author has a history of writing polemics and intentionally controversial books in order to increase sales (a sort of "clickbait" approach to books), and whether their names are associated with criticism for misrepresenting basic issues in the areas they discuss. As such, people like Gladwell and Pinker would be ruled out by this.

>I'd also love to hear /r/skeptic 's suggestions for reading specifically about learning, drive, motivation, discipline...

My personal suggestions would be:

Understanding Behaviorism - William Baum (touches a little more on rigorous academic work rather than being a purely pop work, but still has some good pop chapters).

The Science of Self-Control - Howard Rachlin

Breakdown of Will - George Ainslie

Some related books but not directly on those topics:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks (It's a cliche suggestion but still a good book).

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience - Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld (More methodological issues with neuroscience research and reporting).

Delusion of Gender - Cordelia Fine (Critical look at some of the research on gender differences).

I don't know about personalities, but for memories/experiences we know that one thing that happens is the connection between certain neurons gets stronger. This is called long-term potentiation. We also know that certain areas of the brain are incredibly important for memory. The hippocampus is especially important for formation of episodic memories (ie new memories). We know this because of rare cases where people have had these areas of the brain [injured](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC_(patient) or removed.

If you are interested in some of the theoretical aspects, there are some very interesting books on the subject. Phantoms in the Brain is a favorite that addresses the subject of the human brain and consciousness. Highly recommended reading!

Edited to add: The same author has recently come out with another book that addresses the same issue. I haven't read it yet, but it definitely seems like it could answer some of your questions.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but just as an alternative view, I don't have much respect for the 'forefathers' of psychology, especially Psychoanalysts.. In fact, I think that they are responsible for leading psychology down the pseudo-scientific path that has been hard to shed for so many years (despite meticulous efforts by Skinner, James, etc.)

What someone called "unified theories" were not unified in the sense of all-encompassing, but were rather shoddy attempts to synthesize rote observations and philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Other sciences were way more advanced than psychology because they were inventing new technologies and methods (Cajal, Darwin, Mendel, to name a few) several years before Freud and Co. came along. Therefore, I don't think they deserve any sympathy. Rather, they were willfully ignorant.

As for OP's question, I think as broad areas of research, there are TONNES of good books to read in case you are (rightfully) moving forward from the dark ages of psychology. For example, Cognition is quite a fantastic coverage of brilliant scientific research in psychology, so is Psychological Science. There is also Choices, Values, Frames which is a bit more applied, and How the Mind Works, which may be a bit more speculative, but fascinating.

Seems to be fake - the profile ID doesn't come up, nor does the name. There's no proof of this anywhere else, is there?

Even if so - who cares? This is the reason this sub gets a bad reputation, because of garbage posts like this.

I mainly lurk here (and get criticized for subscribing, which I find hilarious) but felt compelled enough to comment on this, considering I see it so often.

When you want to claim you're a man going his own way, and that you want nothing to do with women, you only show just how much you still care about them by harping on the bullshit they do all the time. It's a circle-jerk, and anyone who doesn't see that is deluded in the fog of pack mentality.

Take a step back and think for a moment, because this isn't meant to be an attack on the user who posted the thread, or any individual. It's about the general atmosphere of this subreddit, this community, this brotherhood, whatever the fuck we decide to label ourselves as (except a fucking movement, christ).

Don't give them the cerebral real estate by dwelling on how they can be, on their nature; it only weighs you down. The point of being "MGTOW" at its core is doing your own thing. Turn this sub into a discussion about interesting things that you do with your time, see who has the same hobbies as you, motivate one another in your endeavors, in your pursuits which have a positive impact on your wellbeing.

In other words - take care of yourselves. Focus on the good things. Positive psychology is a thing. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term and wants something good to read in the layman tongue (popscience books), check out:

Learned Optimism

Other books that I believe could help encourage or inspire people in this thread are:

Mindfulness In Plain English

Flow

The Brain That Changes Itself

I just reread my last post to you, and I apologize for any of the stuff that doesn't make sense. 3 hours of sleep + nightshift/dayshift + not proofing = pwnmyownface

Knowing (not believing) that all things happen because of some causality is the only way the natural universe makes sense. And I'm not trying to make an argument that what you experienced was not genuine. And while I have had a couple of mystical/spiritual experiences, I know that those experiences are only possible due to natural processes, such as the "neurocircuitry" we have in our heads. We have the neural machinery to experience spiritual type feelings, of all kinds. I'm taking this from books like Why God Won't Go Away.

Now, while I don't believe in all of the opinions of the authors, I do believe in the neuroscience of it all. Other creatures whose brains are relatively simple like lizards or flies probably are unable to experience something as nuanced as that. Fear, and anger though, probably (not sure about the fly actually, didn't study those in school)).

I've had a couple of different kinds of experiences, and I also know there are a couple that I haven't had before. For example, I've had friends say they actually felt god, or a godlike entity. I don't think he was religious, so that was very interesting and I wonder how I would react to the same experience.

If you are comfortable with telling me, what were those experiences? Mine were pretty benign, like say one of my friends who thinks he is going to die in another year or so. I don't think it'll happen, and I hope it doesn't. It just "can't".

I'd say there are a lot of different types of heroes. I don't have a book of classification on them. The hero in that book is a non hero type of hero. He's not an anti-hero, but the author seems to intentionally make him the least hero hero that could've heroed. Other than the fact he's somewhat of a decent guy, he's a waste of life (at least to those who don't care about him).

The kind of hero you're talking about is a kind of transformative hero. It sounds like it might be the kind of hero you'd like to or are working to be.

I do have a question about a concept, though. Why is it if something exists, that it shouldn't suffer pain?

I agree with you that I don't want to be defined by my pain, though what demons I do have, I'd rather get them on my side, and laugh together. There would be no demons after that.

No...my psych guy I just see once a month. So I've seen him 3 times now, and he's screwed up a few times in that short time (one time put me in the E.R). I don't know if its the meds, but there are some things I feel like he could be doing better as a doc. I don't know what he goes through to provide service for me, but I really don't see it.

I'm not on anything that could do that, I'm starting out on new meds.

The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness - By Jeff Warren

At first is sounds like some kind of new-agey spiritual garbage. It's actually a science book about the human brain. I bought it in a clearance bin and LOVED it.

It's a non-fiction, soft science book. I say "soft science" because it's not concerned with presenting detailed figures, or numbers. It's a lot like "A Brief History of Time" in the way that it represents complicated scientific ideas in really understandable ways.

It's about the human brain, and the various "states" it can be in. Stuff like your normaal alert state. Stuff like REM state while sleeping. Stuff like hypnagogia when you're on the verge of falling asleep and start having weird disjointed thoughts.

Or that dreamy state when you naturally wake up in the middle of the night.

Or when you "zone out" after driving on the highway for 4 hours.

Or lucid dreaming.

Really, really interesting stuff. I think the title of the book caused people to misunderstand what it is so nobody bought it. It's really enlightening and interesting stuff.

But I feel like everyone is going to list the usual classics here and this will get buried. Ah well. If one person reads this book I'd be overjoyed.

Amazon Link

>I too thought it was normal, up until I found out that some people actually think about little to nothing sometimes..

Ha! Exactly! It was hard for me to grasp this for the longest time. I would get almost annoyed when I asked my wife what she was thinking about and she would say "nothing really". I'd be like... WHAT?... what do you mean?

I think it was hard too because I have a strong sense of empathy. So when I absolutely could not understand the concept of not thinking, it was very confusing. I could NOT relate, at all. Sad? Angry? Happy? I get all that. Not thinking though..... is that even possible?!?!?

The only reason I understand now is because I looked into ADHD, then it smacked me in the face, hard. What a realization after all of these years. WOW!

>Is distracting yourself the healthy thing to do?

If you are able to replace a negative thought that you don't want in the first place, then yes. If you neglect something that actually needs attention, then that's bad.

I read about the strategy in a book about the brain. Long story short, it's been successful in treating OCD. When someone has an urge to wash their hands, they instead FORCE themselves to go garden etc. Eventually the desire to wash will go away (if successful, duh).

The book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Mental/dp/0060988479

If you are interested in the subject overall, this book was actually better imo: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426110863&sr=1-1&keywords=the+brain+that+changes+itself

>How do you do it?

I'm definitely not a pro, but when I actually do have success, it usually starts with talking to someone close to me and comparing thought processes. Or sometimes I imagine a friend coming to me and asking for help, but I pretend they are using the same arguments I use in my own head. When I do this, I realize that if a friend came to me speaking like I do, I would instantly realize they are being irrational.

Those two things sometimes allow me enough wiggle room to focus on another subject. And if you get this wiggle room, you might have more luck doing something physical that requires attention. I've found that my brain can start acting up very easily if I just explore my own thoughts.

>And don't you get extra fidgety? I get so restless if I try to ignore it.

Sometimes, yes. When it doesn't work, I get very restless. It feels like there is a bunch of energy that wants to release. Very uncomfortable.

Yes, some interesting stuff happens in the brain when we have a spiritual experience or are in a part of group worship, or when we pray.

The article cites Andrew Newberg. He's written many books on the subject, and this is where your argument against your friend comes from - by actually looking at who is making the claim, and what they're actually saying. I'm quoting from a short review found on amazon.co.uk (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-God-Wont-Go-away/dp/0345440331/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Why+God+Won%27t+Go+Away%3A+Brain+Science&qid=1564099866&s=books&sr=1-1)

​

\>>Researchers Newberg and D'Aquili used high-tech imaging devices to peer into the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns. As the data and brain photographs flowed in, the researchers began to find solid evidence that the mystical experiences of the subjects "were not the result of some fabrication, or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with a series of observable neurological events,"

​

If this is proof of "God", then this should only be happening in those who are believing in the correct one. It certainly shouldn't happen in both Buddishits *and* a group of Catholics (as the Franciscan nuns apparently are) if the origin is some supernatural being, because they don't believe in the same supernatural beings. Their beliefs are, from what I understand, pretty much mutually exclusive.

​

To put this in simpler terms: Your friend has essentially bought a computer, opened the CD/DVD drive, noticed the size of the hole in the drive tray fits cups from his local fast food joint perfectly, and has decided that this is proof of some link between the computer maker and the fast food restaurant.... Even though the fast food joint acrros the road from that one also has cups that fit.

While nothing will give you all the answers you seek, this book is really interesting.

Explains all about testosterone levels at different ages and why males behave the way they do. I'm not 100% subscribed to it of course but it was a fascinating read. I do agree with your body doing what it's supposed to do provided you have a reasonably healthy lifestyle. i.e. you're supposed to have testosterone decline as you age and testosterone injections aren't necessarily a good idea to fix that.

Unless you have dreams of being Mr. Olympia in your middle age, I think you'll be ok.

Also, the hormonal changes can come with obesity and other health issues that affect more and more men these days - studies like to focus on one thing and ignore so many other factors, the news likes to scare people. In short, you know what to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle, keep that up and it's the best preventive medicine ever!

There are not enough research papers specifically on gaming addiction because gaming addiction together with social media and pornography falls under the umbrella of internet addiction - Like you said a rather new field. Some breakthroughs are being made in the last years to have it recognized as an addiction per se (at least in Europe) the problem with conducting enough research is that there are no funds and insurance companies have no wish having another area of responsibility to potentially give away money to people suffering from it. If gaming addiction become completely recognized by international bodies of medicine then insurance companies might have to pay preexisting clients for passed and current treatments ---> something they definitely do not want to do.
Nonetheless here are some videos of legit men of science (not some random ex gamer) that research the field.

"Here is a short interview with Dr. David Greenfield talking about some of the mental and physical applications of gaming and internet addiction"


There are also longer talks on his channel like this one.
Dr. Greenfield has been researching Internet addiction since the 90's.


"Dr. Klaus Woelfling, from the University of Mainz. Germany is taking steps in treating Internet addiction and especially gaming addiction" - this one is a difficult watch primarily because the speaker is very uncharismatic (try watching with the speed setting on 1.5).

Last but definitely not least is "Your Brain on Porn"
Yes, yes I know, you might not want to hear that another of your favorite pastimes is bad for you, but this video covers on a very scientific basis the damages that watching excessive pornography causes to the brain, and no this is not some kind of NoFap cult propaganda, it speaks only on the subject of internet porn. Like I said before, porn together with gaming fall under the umbrella of internet addiction because the reaction we receive from these negative habits has the same structure. If you actually watch the Your Brain on Porn video you will hear him mention numerous times that the damages caused to dopamine receptors is similar to the ones cause from gaming and extensive internet use.

This is just some of the evidence done by men of medicine and science from the top of my head. If you want to go deeper I'd recommend The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner (for that book), witch contains truly numerous examples of scientific studies and references you might want in the bibliography.


Also The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge M.D that talks mainly about brain plasticity and how different behaviors and habits cause the brain to form new cells , create new neural pathways etc etc . He also gives lots of examples how positive and negative behaviors causes various changes IN THE BRAIN, Internet addiction stuff included.

If you really want proof and not just searching for a reason to dismiss things you dont like the sound of then I hope this comment will serve you. If you do nothing less at least watch the first interview with Dr. David Greenfield. It is only 6 minutes long.

Hope this post that took me 50 minutes to put together and find all the links, will be of service to somebody.
Peace.

Edit: Grammar and formatting

Your life isn't pointless. Right now you may be at a low point, even the lowest point you have been in. I believe that struggling in some way, or being sad/depressed/angry/hurt/etc means that you care about something. Something feels like it's not right to you and you want it to be better. Even if it's a vague feeling, or you are struggling because you actually feel nothing at all, this says something. I'm not sure what you are going through since you didn't post many details (which is totally fine), but I wanted to let you know that there have been many times that I have struggled greatly. Due to my past trauma I've had terrible physical problems, emotional problems, dissociation, anxiety, depression, difficulty making and maintaining friendship and connection with others....and on and on. There were times when I was in so much pain (either mentally, emotionally or physically) that I couldn't get out of bed or even barely move for long periods of time. That is a very desperate feeling. I have felt utterly and completely alone in this world, as if I had nothing and no one, and that I would be broken forever.

One thing that really helps me is reading. It was a long journey for me to learn to recognize my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. There are still some areas where I can struggle with this, but I have made so, so much progress it's almost unbelievable to me when I think back to the person I once was. I couldn't identify my own emotions or thoughts, but when I read about scenarios and other peoples emotions/thoughts in certain situations, I could tell when it felt right. Like, "Yes! That is how I felt when _____ happened to me." A few books that really helped me are The Body Keeps Score, and Running On Empty. Other resources that have helped me immensely are hypnosis (one in particular was Michael Mahoney's IBS Audio Program 100 (this cured the IBS I had had for ~25 years, since I was a child)), and Annie Hopper's Dynamic Neural Retraining System. The very first book that I read that gave me hope that I could change my life was The Brain that Changes Itself. I read that book 9 years ago and it set me on a path of real change. It gave me inspiration and hope and the belief that I could really change and improve my life. If you want any other book recommendations let me know, I've read a lot of books and I have even more favorites that have helped me.

There are still areas of my life that I am working to improve, but I am nowhere near the person I was before I started reading and learning. Working through this stuff, and figuring out how to even do it, are very challenging and difficult tasks. But it is so, so worth it. I wish I could really show you and explain to you the profound changes we can make as people. Every epiphany I've had about myself and my life has been amazing and life changing. To me it almost feels like the essence of what it means to be human. I'm not sure if people who don't go through trauma get the chance to experience such profound epiphanies, realization, and change. Maybe I'm just rambling now, but I want you to know that there is hope. You may not have it, but I have it for both of us right now. Read. See a therapist. Learn. Practice. Journal. Seek support. Seek out ways to make a change. It doesn't have to be profound or monumental. Go at your own pace, just be sure that you are going.

Honestly, as convenient as it is to point to studies showing brain differences and claim its a biological difference, there are also studies that indicate there isn't much brain difference between men and women to begin with. I don't believe that being trans is determined solely by biology, even if that does turn out to be a factor for some people.

The real truth is that no one is 100% sure why some people are trans and some people who present and act almost the same way are not. There's no way to tell who will be trans and who won't.

Think about a quiet person, who is sitting on their own in a busy coffee shop. They could identify themself any number of ways - maybe they are shy and anxious and wish they could reach out to people. Maybe they are introverted and enjoy being there on their own. Maybe they are just waiting for someone. But their behaviour looks the same to an outsider regardless of their internal identity. Only they know the truth of the matter.

Gender identity is a combination of many factors. It can be related to sex, sexual orientation, or behaviour for some people, and for some people it has nothing to do with any of those things. Gender identity is the personal relationship that you have to your body (i.e. to your biology), your relationship to the way other people view your body as a gendered body (i.e. to society's ideas about your assigned gender), and your relationship to your own thoughts and feelings about gender (i.e. how you have incorporated ideas about gender from society). If you grow up and all of these things align in a positive way, you are cisgender - you feel that your internal thoughts and feelings about your gender, the way society sees your gender, and how your body looks to you all match up. If one or more of these things don't gel with you, you might be trans or you might just play around with gender.

It's really something that most people have to explore for themselves to figure out - while there are some trans people who just inherently know they are actually a different gender than people say they are from a young age, there are also many trans people who have to experiment until they find out what works best with them and then base their identity off that. There are cisgender (non-trans) people who experiment with gender presentation but still feel most comfortable identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Basically, what it means when someone says they are 'male' or 'a man' means that they identify as and are a man. Just think about the immense amount of difference between cisgender men. There are feminine cisgender men, masculine cisgender men, androgynous cisgender men, cisgender stay at home dads, cisgender businessmen, every possible variation under the sun. Almost half our population is made up of cis men. What does it mean to belong to such a huge population? Well, it's dependent on what that man's culture says being a man is, and how that man relates to that, and how that man relates to himself. It's entirely determined by us, whether we are cisgender or transgender.

(edited to add links to an article about Cordelia Fine's research and the amazon page for her book, Delusions of Gender)

> I appreciate your interest but I have had these conversations with my community numerous times. It wasn't a quick change or simple decision.

I didn't assume it was a quick change or a simple decision.

I am genuinely interested in your answer to those questions, not to try and convince you to become a Baha'i.


> I have a BSc Archaeology with Chemistry

The reason I ask about your science background is I also have a science background. In my opinion Ulrich Mohrhoff has convincingly demonstrated that the foundations of physics implies God. See:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.6708v1.pdf

and

http://ujm.thisquantumworld.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/TS-Paris-Tale.pdf

for starters.

It is by far the best explanation for quantum mechanics I have ever read, and the first one that makes complete sense to me.

There are plenty of other aspects of reality that point towards "God" in my view: this book is well worth reading:

http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-Toward-Psychology-Century/dp/1442202068

First, with your statement about the biological gender distinctions:

>So your statement "there are only two sexes because for time beyond time, humans have said there are only two sexes", could be true with gender, but is not true with our definition on sex.

I would debunk this, but it's been done better by trans women before me, an easy-to-digest and sited example of with can be found here.

The study you refer to in particular by Simon Baron-Cohen was actually the subject of some controversy. It was strongly panned in Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender a book about the bad science behind the neuroscience of sexual dimorphism. Simon Baron Cohen responded and they had a bit of a back and forth about it in The Psychologist from which I will pull this:

>This study departed from the best standards of methodology for this kind of work in a number of ways. One concern was that, since attention is very fluid in the first days of life, it is usual to present the two stimuli simultaneously. Baron-Cohen dismisses this on the grounds that stimulus order was counter-balanced. However, the published report refers only to stimulus order being “randomized”. There was a drop-out rate of about a third, and no information is provided to reassure that stimulus order was not a confounding variable. ... inadequate measures were made to blind the experimenter (who was also the first author) to the babies’ sex, so as to avoid experimenter-expectancy effects. (For example, the mobile might have been unintentionally moved more for boys.)

As for the Trond Diseth play test: I sat through a crummy documentary which was the only place I could find any indication of his discussion of the play test, which actually ended up being quite useful in understanding the task and immediately seeing issues. The toys are in gendered colors. Regardless of a baby's understanding of language, a baby whose toys are pink is probably going to quickly develop a "pink" preference. Furthermore, I cannot find a peer-reviewed publication by Dr. Diseth that addresses the this test. Please tell me if you can find it on his list of publications. One of his papers sites an actual study of a play test with the findings you attribute to Dr. Diseth. Authors of this study? First, second, third, fourth, AND final author? All female scientists, by the way. Their study is of CAH children 1-10. Still no support for the test being appropriate for infants, or the statement Dr. Diseth made in Hjernevask (the documentary which is the place where I assume you pull this claim "one study done by a Professor Trond Diseth, found differences between what toys boys and girls choose to play with at nine months of age"). This statement made by Dr. Diseth seems to only be referenced on MRA websites… curious.

You follow with "This is before children have developed a comprehension of speech (so the cultural gender influence is still very low)." I don't know where you pull this supposition parental that influence on sex-typed toy play behavior in infants is purely verbal. Infant behavior is affected by parental interaction from birth, verbal or not. This reinforces again my theory (equally as unsupported by evidence as yours is) that IF a sex-typed toy preference exists (which there is no evidence for) there is an equally viable explanation that toy preference is caused by the gendered toys already in the infant's possession.

Are you starting to see now that you can basically make up any explanation you want with the evidence that is currently available to us?

You say these differences, which may or may not exist but for which there is no empirical evidence, come from hormonal differences in pre-natal development, but provide no direct evidence of this link between pre-natal hormones and gender role behavior. Nor does anybody else. If you would like to provide a source for this statement, I would gladly review it because whoever is currently providing your sources lacks the ability to put things in context for you as a non-scientist.

It is true that we do not have all the information empirically about gender role behavior developmental differences. This means that the evidence we do have can be and is interpreted wildly. Throughout your response, you conflate "gender role behavior" and "gender identity," (amusingly you use sex and gender interchangeably until this post where you use this as the thing that makes your opponent wrong) mis-attribute and de-contextualize "studies," and make an incredible amount of completely and entirely unsupported statements. Yet you somehow feel comfortable in claiming that you have scientific evidence that states that feminist claims are "over the top." Your claims that somehow the unsupported preference of nine-month-old infants to play with dolls or action figures are different because of prenatal hormones can be generalized to "some gender stereotypes may come from nature and should not always be labelled sexist or harmful" is over the top. You're the one being silly here.

Well, if you can sink as much time into Wikipedia as I can, that's a good start. And don't skip the references and links at the bottom; that's 90% of the fun!

There are a lot of good, popular-audience books on these topics. I don't know any about BCI in particular, but check out The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (and other stuff by Oliver Sacks) and Phantoms in the Brain. Those are the ones we read in COGS 1 and they're great. Right now I'm reading Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist; How We Decide was also good. Also, don't shy away from academic literature. It's not really so hard to read if you're interested.

Are you or could you be in college? Check my advice here. If you at least live near a college, sit in on some classes. Write to a professor and see if there's lab work to do, maybe as a volunteer. That could get your foot in the door.

>I used to hear God's voice speaking to me, but it said things that were based in my childhood mistaken understanding of the teachings, so I think that's pretty good evidence that it was all in my head.

That sounds like something else though, perhaps more related to aspects of the psyche currently pathologised? (not saying this is what was happening to you), not the kinds of mysticism or mystical experience and insight I'm referring to. Distinctions can be made, even if they all exist in a spectrum of 'altered states' say or the 'parapsychological'. There appears to be considerable overlap, albeit highly distorted in some cases, between states of the brain-mind-body interface called 'mental illness' or 'creativity' and those states designated 'spiritual' or 'mystical'.

Yes, to all you said. But Products of the brain are not necessarily reducible to the brain. Similarly as mind or consciousness not being able to be reduced to mere physical correlates or processes, though inclusive of them. There is equally other kinds of evidence in this domain as referenced in texts such as Why God Won't Go Away or Dimensions of Mystical Experience: Empirical Studies and Pyshcological Links. Perhaps then it is more related to how ones own mind interprets such evidence or assessment? Its a qualitative distinction, and that is relative, as well as nuanced.

>The claims of religious founders that people accept and the claims of those they dismiss as cult leaders are pretty similar, though.

Similarly, its qualitative, but also able to be discerned by 'fruits' of actions and the effect on the people who embrace such teachings.
I've read writings by so-called 'cult' leaders, gurus, other kinds of spiritual teachers, and the writings of Baha'u'llah. They don't compare. But that is a personal assessment and distinction.

In Baha'i Abdu'l Baha says it is the 'Holy Spirit', designated as an actual force, that activates, that 'touches' and interacts with the human consciousness that lends authenticity to these possible states and stages, in terms of an envisaged evolutionary process, as also being that which aligns human consciousness with a greater alleged 'objective' reality, beyond the subtleties of the 'confirmation bias' of the senses and the limits of reason (not that this is seen as an irrational operation, but something that is transpersonal, transrational, inclusive of it).

Read the newly released "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" by Dr. Cordelia Fine for an introduction to this topic. It's very entertaining and easy to read, and also very informative - about the last 50 pages are notes and citations of the studies she mentions that you can investigate further if you wish.

>“Goodbye, beliefs in sex differences disguised as evolutionary facts. Welcome the dragon slayer: Cordelia Fine wittily but meticulously lays bare the irrational arguments that we use to justify gender politics.”―Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development, University College London

>Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures?women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.

>In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

>Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.

Her previous book "Delusions of Gender" is also quite good.

i love that story he/she made, and have read almost all of the source material he/she cited! I liked the fact that the story was almost entirely free of speculation of society/culture (beyond augmented employers wanting augmented employees). By sticking to the philosophical quandary itself, it was very believable and understandable as a "how we get there" story. To know more about human "consciousness" and what we call free will, I'd suggest reading Incognito, by David Eagleman.

Another quote about the singularity I enjoy is by Justin B. Rye:

>"As I see it, the main problem in designing a plausible 23rd century these days isn't lack of grandeur, it's the imminence of changes so fundamental and unpredictable they're likely to make the dramas of 2298 as unintelligible to us as the Microsoft Anti-Trust Suit would be to Joan of Arc."

And just to keep away the near-religious fervor that begins to brew up inside of my optimistic brain, i tend to either imagine scenarios of how the Singularity could be a bad thing (I love drawing and writing), and watch Bruce Sterling's "Your Future as a Black Hole".

Remember to keep your cautiously optimistic wits about you on this subject!

I've read some of them. Those that I read are indeed good.

However, in the context of deciding to be better, I'd recommend to drop Pinker's "Blank Slate". It's a good book, but it's mostly about an academic and political debate. If you already accept that genes affect the mind, there's a better way to spend your time.

I'd also recommend to replace Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow", and Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" with "The invisible Gorilla" by Charbis and Simmons. The latter book covers a similar ground to the first two, but it does so with less personal anecdotes.

I'd also recommend to replace the books from Oliver Sacks with Eagleman's "Incognito. The Secret Lives of the Brain." Eagleman is also funny, he covers similar ground, but his book is a bit more systematic.

Sure, but Meyers Briggs types don't describe the kinds of things you're interested in or how good of a person you are. You can have an INTJ that loves fantasy novels and an INTJ that will only read non-fiction. You can have an INTJ that is totally Machiavellian and an INTJ whose first principles are kindness and compassion.

Meyers Briggs just describes (or lumps people into categories with common discriptions) how you primarily perceive information and process that information. There has been limited research into how Meyers Briggs types manifest neurologically. Correlation is not causation, but as soon as you start having basic physical phenotypes (straight, brown hair) it makes sense to look for a born-that-way reason. The equivalent of curling or dying your hair would be developing your lower functions (Fi, Se), but you'd still be dominantly Ni, Te.

I'm not interested in getting into a debate on the internet, but if you're curious about a different perspective I highly recommend this book. The author can get a bit ranty at times, but she does an excellent job of explaining how a lot of the conclusions we draw are based on faulty logic, and she talks about a bunch of theories and studies that don't get a lot of media attention but make perfect sense to me and help explain things that otherwise seemed out of place.

Yeah, the experiment was neat, but our brain is good at adapting to a lot more impressive stuff. For further reading The Brain That Changes Itself is great.

It can be helpful to sit down and try to draw a photorealistic image. Seriously. I suggest doing it right now. Draw your desk and everything on it exactly as they are, without using grids, measurements, perspective lines, or other "cheats" that Renaissance artists developed. Just draw precisely what you see.

You may have perfect penmanship and eye-hand coordination, but you'll probably still discover that what you've drawn doesn't match what you see in real life. You will almost certainly get angles and proportions incorrect (even artists who've be practicing mindfully for years get these wrong if they aren't careful or don't use aforesaid "cheats").

What's going on there? Interpretation. Your brain looks at all the shapes and colors presented to it by your eyes. Then it identifies the objects you're seeing, and it retrieves data it knows about them. For example, it knows what your desk would look like from any angle. It can guess the hardness and texture of your desk. It knows where the desk ends and the object on it begins. It know what those objects look like from different angles. What they likely feel like, how heavy they likely are, where their centers of mass likely are, etc. It's making assumptions about what color everything would appear under bright daylight, under artificial light, or in shadow.

All of this information is noise. It distracts you from drawing only what you see. Instead of blindly copying what your eyes have gathered, you find yourself influenced by your brain's interpretations. It's very, very hard to bypass this; Even when you know you're being fooled (such as in the case of optical illusions), it can be very hard to ignore your brain's faulty assumptions. Our brain's visual system is marvellously intelligent and advanced, and it stick its fingers in everything we see.

Artists have to overcome all that, and that takes a lot of practice and a certain amount of cheating—like using rulers, blocking in with abstract shapes, drawing silhouettes, sometimes even drawing upside down!

If you want to learn more, research in the field of computer vision provides some fascinating insights into the way human visual intelligence works. A good book on the subject is Visual Intelligence by Donald Hoffman.

Yes, I've worked with both and understand the black box problem well.

> upload your neural information into a silicone based robot and you’ll still be the same person.

I strongly disagree with this. IMO the singularity folks overvalue the contents of thought and undervalue the physicality of consciousness.

Consider something like phantom limb syndrome. It has a profound impact on one's experience, and that's just with an appendage.

Now ask, what if the phantom limb is not a limb but is actually a part of the brain that you're not even aware of? You might feel like something is not quite right. But is that the "real" you? What is the self? The content of your thoughts, or the more abstract feeling of experience? How do you know if your thoughts are authentic?

I actually experienced something like that a few years ago and it was very disturbing. For about three weeks I felt as if part of my consciousness had switched off. I could still navigate the world and express myself verbally, but I couldn't help but feel like it wasn't the "real" me. I told people that I felt like a piece of me was missing, but I couldn't pinpoint it. It was kind of like the feeling of a missing tooth. Your tongue is drawn to the hole. It made me seriously doubt my executive function.

Eventually it went away but I never figured out why.

Now look at schizophrenics. They don't think they're insane. They perceive a world that you and I don't perceive, and in their minds they are 100% exercising free will. That's why it's so difficult to get them to take their medication -- it makes them feel less authentic.

A more common experience is lifelong depressives who find a treatment that works. Many of them describe the medicated self as "the real me." Really? All that neurological activity doesn't feel real, but 50 mg of Zoloft snaps it into place?

Oliver Sachs has documented even more bizarre neurological conditions. Combine that with the "competitive selves" theory outlined in Incognito and it really leads me to question how much "I" am in control.

These two pathologies have been documented and defined along with many others. But there are potentially infinite pathologies that have not yet been defined. How do you know that you're not suffering from some form of psychosis? One that makes you feel like you exercise free will?

On a therapeutic level, you might want to check out voice dialogue. (I'm not suggesting you need therapy, it's just an interesting view of behavior.) In going through it myself I discovered over a dozen distinct voices in my head, which my therapist said is common. The more I untangle those voices, the less I believe in free will.

This is a very detailed working out of a kind of stoicism/epicureanism. I appreciate the thought you've put into this. Some books I've enjoyed on stoicism and philosophy of life:

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
  
• Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions
  
• The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
  
  Thought-provoking books that challenge naturalism from a secular perspective:
  
  
• Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century
  
• Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
  
• Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

I’m minoring in neuroscience but my major is biochemistry. If you’re like me and are interested in more of the cellular/molecular aspect, the textbook we use is brilliant! I’ve never seen such complex topics discussed in a more accessible way. And the images are dope. Highly recommend this textbook.

Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain Fourth, North Americ Edition by Bear PhD, Mark F., Connors PhD, Barry W., Paradiso PhD, Mich (2015) Hardcover https://www.amazon.com/dp/0781778174/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DLbLDbZZR5MFN

So many! Dissociative Identity disorder (more commonly know as Multiple Personality Disorder); Psychopathy (especially because we know so little about it.) ; Phantom limbs ; Capgras syndrom ( delusion that a close friend or family member has been replaced by aliens) ; Hyprocondriasis; Narcolepsy; sleep paralysis; Dissociative Fugue ; The case of H.M. (a very well known case study on memory loss. He was a man who suffered retrograde amnesia, but whose working memory was still intact. taught us a lot about different types of memory and their corresponding brain redgions...

There are plenty of others that I cannot think of off the top of my head. But if you are looking for some interesting cases, here are two great books about really strange and interesting psychological phenomenons are "The Man Who Mistook His for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" by Oliver Sacks , and " Phantoms in the Brain" by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee

The first one includes several cases of patients with inexplicably strange neurological disorders. For example, a man who is no longer able to recognize people and common objects. There is an other story about a man who sometimes wakes suddenly at night, thoroughly convinced that his leg is actually a corpse's leg that somebody has placed in bed with him.

The second book was the text book for my cognitive psych class in second year. Like the first book contains many stories of fantastically strange cases that the author has encountered as a neuroscientist. This book contains more of the psychological and neurological basis for the disorders, and shows how they helped us understand different aspects of behaviour and structures of the brain.

I don't know. Floksy talked about Lumosity. She knows that lumosity is fake, and she aims to succeed where lumosity fails. Her company consults real neuroscientists, reads published papers on neurology and psychology, and even reads books on neuroplasticity in order to design mini-games that have a real cognitive benefit. I mentioned the book "The Brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge as a book filled with neuroplasticity research that she could incorporate into Cerevrum and she told me that she could teach that book, not only has she read it, she loves that book.

On the other hand if a cognitive benefit cannot be proven at least she is giving the software away for free. If a person can try it and they have nothing to lose, financially speaking, from using the app.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Brain-That-Changes-Itself/dp/0143113100

I read this book 2-3 years ago "The Brain That Changes itself Self" super fascinating all about neuroplasticity and how the brain can re-wire itself. One chapter talked about porn regarding people losing their jobs, relationships, social life etc. Because of porn, it can also lead to impotence. I will just take some quotes:

> [A 2001study] found that 80 percent felt they were spending so much time on pornographic sites that they were putting their relationships or jobs at risk.

>When I asked if this phenomenon had any relationship to viewing pornography, they answered that it initially helped them get more excited during sex but over time had the opposite effect. Now, instead of using their senses to enjoy being in bed, in the present, with their partners, lovemaking increasingly required them to fantasize that they were part of a porn script.

I can't suggest this book enough. My recommendation would be to combine through that chapter if you are interested.

EDIT: This book is on amazon and is well worth the cash side note I realized when I ordered it was in 2012....time is strange

>It's a conclusion based on a complete lack of counterexamples, a lack of any supported theories that would allow for such behavior, and the existence of well-verified theories that fundamentally disallow such behavior. As such, the conclusion that people can't meditate their way across space and time constitutes well-established knowledge.

There are plenty of examples, and plenty of theory that would allow "Mind" to travel through space and time; but of course, it's not even accepted to "talk" about these things, by the majority of the scientific establishment so you're not going to see the kind of controlled examples that you are looking for. It is taboo. Some would say, it is professional suicide. Outside of a physicalist materialist perspective of the universe, these things are very possible. Inside it? Of course not.

If you want a proper scientific look at this stuff, I suggest you read Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century.

Modern science cannot even begin to explain how relatively low-level (not "enlightened") meditators can do things like burn themselves while alive without twitching a muscle, slow their pulse-rate or breathing down to virtually nothing for extended periods of time, generate intense body heat in sub-zero climates, etc. And these are just physiological phenomena, much more easily observed and analyzed than anything from the psychological domain.

>The difference is that we have strong evidence and theory on the one side, and none on the other. There is not an equal probability that either are true.

Read the book. You'll maybe find that there's plenty of evidence which suggests that the scientific community's base assumptions that physicalist materialism is true is a false one.

I definitely think in these terms. In fact, my favorite explanation of magic in Doctor Strange was this same notion of programming experience. A book you might enjoy regarding the nature of experience is called Visual Intelligence by Donald Hoffman (linked below) which is about how the brain constructs reality according to rules, not facts. There's also a few good interviews with him on this subject (also linked below).

I find myself circling around a couple of ideas about magic from the standpoint of being locked in my brain in a programmed universe. The first is that I can learn to operate outside of my brain ( instead of relying on my input sensory devices like eyes/ears etc) and work perhaps astrally or I can put a lot of hard work into inferring what the rules of experience are and looking for the source code while only having access to the gui, so to speak.

In any case, I can't figure out where the basis for ritual fits in here. I could actually go on and on with this subject. I kind of have this notion (very rough) that I wish I could work on with others, that cultures around the world were given keys of knowledge and a basic truth and when combined, they form a complete practice of sorts. The Magicians sort of touched on this in the books regarding the Five Tertiary Circumstances, that to correctly execute a spell you had to know the phase of the moon, nearest body of water etc. But I would venture to say that my list of Circumstances would be more like: Astronomical position, local mineral composition, state of your inner energy channels, correct use of mudras (or similar channeling tool) etc.

I haven't learned a lot about sigils but I am interested in them after reading how they work for you.

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Intelligence-How-Create-What/dp/0393319679/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=5PQZVRDXP99B4MXR4D9T

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

You have to practice. Communication is a subconscious skill. You can't consciously plan your way through an entire conversation because there isn't enough time. It's possible to think of a few things that are good conversation starters, but that's about it.

In order to train any subconscious skill, you have to practice. When you practice your brain starts by trying to make the neural connections necessary to create the movement you want. At first the brain uses a lot of neurons. After more practice the brain finds more efficient ways of creating the movement and uses less neurons. That's how musicians look like they can effortlessly play an instrument the more they practice.

The biggest mistake people make about communication is that they don't approach learning it like they would approach learning a new sport or musical instrument. That's why nerds who like to be analytical about everything suck at communicating, because you have to learn communication by practice; the same way you learn a sport, which is another thing nerds suck at. You can't ride a bike by thinking every time before you move the pedals or handles. You can't make your way through a conversation that way either for the same reason - there's no time.

Practice keeping eye contact and saying what's on your mind without any hesitation. You'll find that after a few conversations you'll be able to do this more easily because your brain has gotten used to the skills. A good rule of thumb is to be yourself, but if you happen to be an asshole, you'll have to change.

If you can't find the courage to talk to random people right away, then start small. Talk to people you've been avoiding, like neighbors, coworkers, or classmates. Come up with a few prepared conversations and see what happens. If things don't go too well, know that you won't be that nervous and awkward during the next talk.

The neuroscience in this comment comes from The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

It should be noted that not every study about gender is accurate or trustworthy. According to this book on neurological studies, often the studies without any rigourous methodologies get a lot of press because they promote existing ideas about the gender binary, while studies that do not conform to our existing idea of gender will get no press whatsoever, no matter how well executed the study was. It's worth examining the methodologies behind a study before believing that it holds water! (I highly recommend the book, if studies on gender interest you! It is so engrossing and well written, good for laypeople and more scientific folks alike!)

keep fighting for your recovery and dont be easily satisfied. get second opinions, get more MRI's, hassle the docta.

I know you are not a research monkey in a cage, but theres some stuff in the mind and the brain that may be helpful to you. and its a good read.

as for your actual question I know in KY having one good arm is all you need to fulfil your CCW requirements but it could be different in FL, but you should be good.

Actually, I can help if you would like to know the for some reason. This is a neuroscience book that explains in great detail why your cheek makes your "hand" feel.

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453512080&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Plastic+Brain

The short answer is that it's because the neurons in your brain that were wired to your hand still need to do something, so they remap in other parts of your brain that are nearby. It actually may mean that you can feel more detail on your cheek than most people in that area.

For a long time "phantom" pains were thought to be purely physiological, This science says otherwise. You may want to check it out. It's a good read.

Also, I'm an audio engineer and musician in Louisiana, primarily in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I say this to say that I have the privilege of working with some top notch guys. One of the keyboard players I see gigging all the time down here only has one hand. He's got one hand, and one nub. He uses the damn nub. I don't know how he makes this keyboard sound this way, but he does.

With the advent of MIDI technology, there is so much you can do. And with the advent of the Arduino platform, you could even make something yourself. There are so many alternative controllers available for you to express yourself in different and creative ways...don't give up playing and making music. Maybe get a MIDI controller and some simple software?

Yes. Dario Nardi, a professor at UCLA did/has been doing personality research with EEGs. He has a book where he published his methodology, sample size, and findings, but there are also readily available YouTube videos, PDFs, and even a Reddit AMA where his findings are presented. I should mention that he uses Jung's model of functions, but the four-lettered MBTI types.

I did Google the Pittenger study since it wasn't on your list, but it seems like he didn't take functions into consideration as he says, "MBTI theory states that each of the four preference dimensions stands alone," which is contrary to Jung's idea that each MBTI preference is either introverted or extroverted in nature in the function stack. It also doesn't seem like any imaging technology was used, so at the very least I don't think it contradicts Nardi's findings.

I'm not trying to pick a fight and obviously you've done more research into the psychological aspects of personality, but I don't think we can fully discount MBTI/Jung's functions as adequately predicting how people will react or what they might be good at. I think there is variance based on individuals, context, culture, and circumstances, but there are certainly correlations. Furthermore, I don't think it can be used to predict what career you'll excel in or what your hobbies are or if you like your coffee black or not (as some people try to use it for).

Also, I'm not expecting you do research Nardi's findings in any depth but if you do and you happen to find holes, please do let me know. I'm always open to being wrong.

Yes, there are lots of studies about the addiction patterns in the brains of video game players. I don't think he is implying that massive amounts of video gaming is healthy either. But 303030... is right. It is an addiction that affects a lot of things about you. If you want to read a layman's explanation by great neuroscientists, read The Brain That Changes Itself (there's a section specifically about porn) or The Compass of Pleasure (touches on masturbation, orgasm and I think porn).

Do you count body brain mapping as real? Do you think it possible that some cross wiring happens? Do you accept that scientists draw conclusions between such things?

Are you happy with such a theory until we create a 400 billion truman show like experiment which breaks all ethical rules?

Atoms probably don't look like that but our model is dann useful and that's important. Until we have real evidence we go with that model.

Here: http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172

Ironicly, there is a book about this. A Field Guide for Humans is meant for autistics, but it really breaks down why people do what they do. There is a lot more to learn however. Small talk? It establishes a baseline (emotional mostly) with which to evaluate the following conversation. Negotiation? How do you establish trust where there is none. But the best advice I can give is to say as little as you can and make what you say mean something. I love the wikipedia page on Laconic Phrase for its examples. Also, read up on some unknown but important historical characters. Edward Bernays and [Diogenes_of_Sinope](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes of Sinope). Also, did you know about the Sky Pirates of WW2 or the Department of War Math?

Or you could just get a degree in pure mathematics and people will assume you are smart. Or learn Unix, grow a beard and nod knowingly and quietly chuckle whenever you are asked a question.

Drawing is good - my daughter's daycare (oh sorry - "learning center") has the kids draw alternating circles (as a precursor to actual writing) and dots (to keep the kids entertained). The teacher makes the motions in the air so the kids can follow - I don't know how easily you can do this with just the one child, though, since I think a big part of it is the kids mimicking each other.

Other than that - simply by interacting with him you're doing the best thing you can for his development. As far as language, I highly recommend that you read Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct" - it radically changed my "common sense" notions about teaching kids language. The super-simplified TL;DR version is that talking specifically to infants makes no appreciable difference - language is learned first and foremost by hearing conversations between adults. Do read it if you're at all interested in the subject - it's really remarkable once you get past the tedious chapters on grammatical structures.

about those books recommendations: i have some

Neuroscience: exploring the brain is a very good textbook about the "circuitry" of the brain

Memory: From mind to molecules is interesting because it tries to "draw the line" between the laws which dictate how atoms and molecules work and abstract concept of "memory"

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning is a very layman directed read and is more about "how to remember more things when studying" but it have some good explanations on why some memories are "clear", some are "diffuse" and some memories fade out

The Neurobiology of Learning and Memory offers an integration between the neuroscience of memory and some behavorial analisys, it also have some very interesting topics on the plasticity of our mind

V.S. Ramachandran's The Tell-Tale Brain goes into detail regarding synesthesia, among other curious neurological topics. See also: Phantoms in the Brain.

Both books are very easy to read and deliver amazing insight into how the brain actually works. Ramachandran addresses synesthesia (along with mirror neurons and empathy, which are fascinating as shit) more in The Tell-Tale Brain.

Agreed. Having a reliable test would be nice (and a requirement for further study to be sure), but the real meat of the issue that many seem to be concerned about is the validity of the personality classification theory itself.

I believe what the parent is referring to with the EEG correlations to cognitive functions is Dario Nardi's research on the Neuroscience Of Personality. He has a talk about it here with some interesting evidence, but I have not yet had a chance to read over the book. He also did an interesting AMA over on /r/mbti a while back that's probably worth a read as well.

I think there are lots of interesting lines of thought behind the whole topic. I am greatly frustrated by how often people fall back on 'its biological'. I'm currently reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine which seems to share my frustration but is reassuring that the science is not at all cut and dry in that area. That most people grossly overestimate the data on 'hard wired' differences.

I think we also need to remember, that while kids do go to the gendered toys, kids can also be little gender police.

I bet most people here, during their childhood, had another kid tell them they could or couldn't do something based on their sex.

During an early stage of child development, kids learn rules, and try to fit the world into that. Some little kids literally think 'girls wear dresses, if I wear a dress then I am a girl' .

They just make assumptions very easily. No matter how many trucks you give them, your daughter is going to come across some girls's stereotypes, make the link (she's a girl - I'm a girl - this is how I be a girl!).

I think the most important thing is to early on teach your kids to be critical, and accepting of variation.

• You can like princess dresses, but you can like superheroes too! Anyone who says you have to choose toys for girls is silly. You can pick either!*
  
  I think the most important thing though is to not segregate kids. In a gender egalitarian society, men and women need to see each others as equals and stop placing rules on the basis of gender. People who grow up without positive experiences with the opposite sex (friends, parents, siblings) often have a harder time relating to them.
  

First, read the wiki on Glossollaia that TheRedTeam posted. Then, if you're still interested, check out one or both of these books: Why We Believe What We Believe and Why God Won't Go Away. Both are written by a neurologist and deal with the neurology of religious belief. They don't go far enough in debunking woo and pseudoscience, but they do give a pretty detailed explanation of what is physically happening in the brain when people experience what they report as 'spiritual experience'. Both are definitely worth a read.

The best online resource I can think of for brain function and organization is http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/

For each subject you can adjust the how complex the explaination is from beginner to advanced and the level of organization from molecular up to social.

Some good non-fiction books if you're interested in learning: The Brain That Changes Itself (neuroplasticity), The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog (brain development and how its changed by early experience), Phantoms in the Brain (brain function and expression; theres also a BBC doc on youtube)

This seems to have accessible stuff on neural pruning in learning and development: http://www.brainbasics.org/home/neural-pruning

This Wikipedia page Biological Basis of Personality and Googling 'neural substrates personality' gives a lot of information as well, though its a mixed bag of whether its relevent or accessible.

You might have better luck in /r/askscience, and your question is rather vague so I'm not 100% sure if you're asking about just smartphones or actual technological advancements. I read an interesting book called "The Brain That Changes Itself" and one of the chapters focused on the research done by Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist that focused on neuroplasticity and sensory substitution. The case in the book, if I remember correctly, was about a woman that was unable to stand due to her vestibular system being unable to relay messages to the brain. Bach-y-Rita solves this by attaching a tactile devile to her tongue that "replaces" the function of the vestibular appartus and, with training, her brain is able to reorganize to recognize her tongue as the center of balance rather than the faulty vestibular apparatus.

In a separate article he notes this phenomenon: "Persons who become deaf or are without balance usually lose only the peripheral structures relating to sound transduction (the cochlea) or positional orientation (the vestibular apparatus). The input from a sensory substitution system can reach many brain structures including those anatomically and physiologically related to the lost sensory modality. Providing information from artificial receptors offers an opportunity to restore function" (taken from the abstract).

I hope that helped somewhat! I'm not very educated on the topic but could probably look up more articles if you're interested in this example.

May I recommend the full Ted Talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k

V. S. Ramachandran is awesome, also he is funny! I recommend his books:

http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Tale-Brain-Neuroscientists-Quest-Makes/dp/0393340627/ref=la_B001IGHMGU_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371890926&sr=1-2


http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172/ref=la_B001IGHMGU_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371890926&sr=1-1

okay mister echo chamber :) . Have you then also read one of the many books that claim otherwise, like this: http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244

I'd also recommend you read the top amazon review on your link. Check for dissenting opinions before agreeing with someone in the future.

I came across those experiments in The User Illusion, which (I think, IANAN) was a great book, and explains the nuts and bolts of consciousness well.

Daniel Dennett's Compatibilism is pretty nifty. Eliezer Yudkowsky's short essay Thou Art Physics is my favorite version of it; it really brings everything into intuitively graspable focus for me.

i recently finished reading "the greatest show on earth" by richard dawkins, it is a book about the evidence, beauty and elegance of evolution. it really was an amazing and informative read, yet still accessible to the layman.

i am currently reading "incognito:secret lives of the brain" by david eagleman. i originally heard about this from a talk he had done on npr a couple months ago. the basic gist of it is something like this: the vast majority of what goes on in your brain is controlled by your subconscious and goes on just fine without your consciousnesses ever needing involvement. occasionally a conflict arises that cannot be resolved by your subconscious, and a request is sent to the conscious to solve the issue. i'm probably butchering this explanation, and as i have only started the book, i can't give a good review one way or the other on it, but so far it seems interesting.

sure! I took a women's studies course my last semester of college so I'll go ahead and use the books I read for that class as a starting point since they were a great introduction to feminist lit for me:

• Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine (a hilarious and REALLY great read that challenges the notion that men and women are intrinsically a certain way; debunks a lot of famous studies and cites a lot more to make her point)
  
  
• Girlfighting by Lyn Mikel Brown (challenges the whole "girls are nasty" stigma)
  
  
• Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp (absolutely incredible memoir that recounts the author's struggle with an eating disorder while also making SUCH smart insights about women's relationship with food, shopping, and sex amongst other desires - I can't recommend this one enough!)
  
  
• Flirting with Danger by Lynn Phillips (also loved this one - talks about women's relationships with men and the various discourses surrounding women's sexuality as well as how women make sense of their negative sexual encounters)
  
  the links aren't necessarily for the least expensive versions you can find, so I'd suggest doing some digging :-)

The Female Brain
and The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine was a really good book that I didn't feel like it really needed much knowledge of neuroscience to understand.

I read that in high school because it was in the library, and I was interested in the brain. I might have been 14 or 15 the time, and both books kept my ADD teenage brain interested long enough to read it before I got distracted by another book, video, or something else on history, biology, chemistry, astronomy, science fiction, eta.

It is about gender differences in the brain, behavior, and psychology.
It is has both psychology and neuroscience in it. This is something that might be more interesting
then a general book about the brain.
By reading it, I definitely learned about at least the macro level of the brain. You have to talk about the general in order to explain the differences well. If I read a book about the differences between red wolves and gray wolves, I will learn a lot about wolves in general, too.

Summed it up perfectly. Wish I had something to add other than I plan to watch a bunch of YouTube videos tonight on this stuff. You'd be interested in this book - https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Power-Mental/dp/0060988479

All in all I'd say consciousness has to play a role in influencing the material world. We can't deny the evidence. We just have to do the complex work of figuring out how that maps across a body.

> No, that's just the choice you made.

So you're one of those religious types that don't accept evolution and scientific things like neuroscience, it sounds like. I didn't make the choice - I have never even as a child, accepted religion. Even when I was 3 and 4 years old. It just made no sense to me. That is how my brain is wired. There is no way for me to make myself believe. No way. Unless I tried to lie about it, which makes no sense, because your god/allah/shiva/kali/zeus would know it as they can read minds.

> You don't have to investigate literally every other mythology in order to negate it before accepting one as the truth, only the converse is required.

OK, so I'll go with Mithra, I guess. Good enough.

>If in the 80 odd years you are probably given to live on average and you didn't devote any time to investigating a threat as serious as "hell," then that's your fault, not that of any notion of predestination.


Oh, don't get me wrong. I've investigated way more than 95% of the entire human population, for sure.

It is not my fault. It is the way my brain is wired. I know my brain better than you. I've lived with it for a long time. But I think you need to read up on neurology. I wish more people would do that, rather than read their "holy" books. Try to read some books on neurology - try. Although they would probably fry your mind.

David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

V. S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

I know that you will never be able to accept what the books write, or what I write. It would mess up your most basic beliefs. But I'll just give you those books, just in case you are brave. Remember, they are doing science, not beliefs. Science.

I had to pull out my copy to look this up. I recalled “Types” was first published in 1921, but Jung published different editions and refined his theory in later editions, the last of which is 1949. In the first Swiss edition’s foreword, 1921, Jung remarks that the work and theory are grounded in his psychiatry work over the last twenty years. The printing I have is from 1976 and purchased at a remarkable price of $.25.

Jung references Friedrich Schiller as the earliest known (to Jung) person to start systematically typing people according to their external behaviors.

---

Dario Nardi did some interesting work on trying to map-link Jungian cognitive functions (and sadly, MBTI) to brain areas using Electroencephalography. You can find him on YouTube or here’s a book he wrote about it: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Personality-Brain-Insights-People/dp/0979868475

I tagged multiple people because they might be interested and I wasn’t exactly sure how to reply to all that posted underneath this comment and its children.

/u/AkiyamaShinichi3

/u/Ayianna

/u/A_Very_Curious_Camel

/u/DarkMoon99

/u/margoquinn

/u/Whyevenlive88

Yes it does, because doing NoFap rewires your brain to remove sex (and therefore fetishes) as a major object of your life. And if you constrain yourself (at a later date) to only sex with real women and masturbation with no fantasy (proceed with caution) then you will weaken the connection between sex and your fetish.

If you want some solid reading on the plasticity of the brain and how porn rewires it (often to things we wouldn't expect ourselves to be into) buy The Brain That Changes Itself or find it in a library and read the chapter on sexuality and pornography. It's very interesting and is a relief if you are struggling with fetishes you really dislike.

The very best of luck to you, my friend!

At this point, some kind of somatic sensory-motor education may make more of a difference to her. Whatever damage to nerve tissue that occurred is probably permanent, but the brain has an amazing ability to adapt (c.f. Norman Doidge The Brain That Changes Itself) given the right conditions.

I've had personal experience with several stroke patients who have improved their lives dramatically through such methods.

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.

Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.

Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
   
3. Einstein: His Life and Universe
   
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
   
5. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
   
6. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
   
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
   
8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
   
9. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
   
10. Cosmos
    
11. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
    
12. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    
13. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
    
14. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
    
15. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    
16. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    
17. Chaos: Making a New Science
    
18. Isaac Newton
    
19. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
    
20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
    
    And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.

> men continued to out-earn their female counterparts, by about 7%, even when graduating from the same school, choosing the same major and working in the same occupation. Source

1/1.07 = 93%.

> Where do women in universities get less pasty for the same qualifications/job title? I am honestly asking, never seen this before - I would be interested to find out.

It was a hypothetical based on information like this, however you might find the data on this page or on Google.

There was more I could have clipped, but I felt bad taking the whole chapter. Maybe you should buy the book if you want to find out more. :)

> But these things are sort of slow reaching changes that stem from social attitudes that evolve over time.

I agree, and I think that we aren't even near halfway to equality in terms of how much time it will take, even though many great strides were made in the last century. Part of the reason is people assuming that the problem is already solved because they haven't looked very closely. That's why I'm so active in this thread. :)

If you liked this article, might I suggest a couple books. They literally changed how I see myself and other people. I know people brag about books "changing their life", but these books force you to realize how little control you actually have over your mind, and assess whether that control is actually productive. The subconscious is a fascinating subject.

The User Illusion

Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less

You gotta read Dario Nardi's book. This is kind of what he researches and he actually does show how different areas correspond to different functions! (Or, how a bunch of different areas correspond - Ne is described as a "christmas light" brain, with a lot of disparate parts lighting up at once).

https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Personality-Brain-Insights-People/dp/0979868475

As I remember, it focuses on type & functions as linked with fMRI data from his research.

Fascinating stuff that it sounds like you will absolutely love.

Good point. Thanks for the pointer, the book looks pretty interesting.

Regarding research, you may want to check out a book called The Male Brain (or pirate it, I'm not the police). It's only a couple hundred novel sized pages but it's an amazing primer into brain, hormones, and anything you want to know about the male brain. It covers the topic in an easy-to-understand fashion and I know there's a specific section on testosterone and its effect on the male sex drive. I'd recommend it to anyone but it seems particularly good for your partner's situation (and it also has a great companion book called The Female Brain if you end up liking it).

The reason I disregard testosterone is that if he has doctors regularly checking his blood and he has erection problems, that'd be one of the first things they'd already have checked. Low T is a common side effect of chemo therapy so it's not unusual to them and it's a relatively inexpensive test ($100 maybe) that's straightforward to fix with drugs. Hard to imagine them missing it.



Realistically, the most likely thing I can think of would be having a history of sexual abuse. After 8 months together I'd assume he'd be comfortable having sex with you by now. If a woman displayed those signs like extreme anxiety because of their partner of 8 months was acting sexy with her, or a panic attack when receiving oral sex, or needing to have sex sneak up or she gets extremely anxious... one of the default assumptions would be past sexual abuse. Just because he's a guy doesn't make it any less likely.

Have you talked to him about that and do you think he'd answer you truthfully if you asked? (Also /r/relationships would probably be better able to cover this topic.)

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143113100/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ieCWCb4N9CXJP

This book will probably bring you more hope that her life will be normal than any comment here could. It's very scientific, and has a lot of reassuring information for you.

Please check it out!

I don't think we make choices. I read a book called Incognito that made me wonder if maybe we're all just caught up in a flow of brain chemicals and societal influences. We're all affected by each other's "choices" from yesterday, last week, last year, a hundred years ago, moral rules established two thousand years ago, the universe exploding into existence, and so on and so on. This mostly includes our family and friends, but strangers and ghosts - people long gone - influence our "choices" as well. (I love this question! I can't wait to read all the responses.)

I read this in The Mind & the Brain. Great frisson accompanying a good book is always sexy.

Some excellent popular book options are:

The Tell Tale Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Phantoms in the Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Synaptic Self - Joseph LeDoux


Also mentioned by other posters, Norman Doidge and Oliver Sacks.

All of these are really approachable for beginners and I enjoyed them all greatly as an undergrad way back when.

You need to read this and understand that if this was a very powerful feeling, and your friends noticed a change in you, it's almost certain that you had a small stroke. There is a known and measurable area in the brain that, when damaged, causes religious feelings - specifically the attachment of religious significance to certain things.

https://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172

If you're interested, check out these books. They're easy but very interesting reads, and I was astonished by some of the differences between men and women.

The Male Brain: http://www.amazon.com/The-Male-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767927540/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373722766&sr=8-1&keywords=the+male+brain

The Female Brain:http://www.amazon.com/The-Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767920104/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Huxley's The Doors of Perception is a great read. So are the autobiographical sections of PiHKAL and TiHKAL by Alexander Shulgin. And back in my stoner days, I used to really enjoy reading books about neuroscience like Phantoms in the Brain by V S Ramachandran and discussing them while high.

What exactly are you asking for here?

V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain is an easy, interesting, read that covers a lot of basic brain functions in a general way using colorful stories from Ramachandran's clinical experiences. The Purves book was my first neurobio text in undergrad, but without a biology & chem background Ramachandran's book might be easier to swallow, especially since it is peppered with interesting cases of neurological disorders (i.e. Capgras syndrom, phantom limbs)

Idk what's "wild" about it, but sure, here you go.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22208110
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21319910

Covers the, "men fall faster and harder" claim

http://www.amazon.com/The-Male-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767927540

Covers the brain development claims

As far as men being pressured to hide their emotions and not go blurting out that they're in love 2 weeks in...I really don't feel the need to source that.

And I flat out admitted that I didn't know what it was like for women, and was only guessing.

Crazy! I'm reading a book right now on brain plasticity and it's amazing how the brain can be re-taught how to us that hand (through repetitious exercises like stacking blocks for 8 hours a day)

The book is The brain that changes itself. It's really good and anyone will understand it. Check it out!

This is my second attempt at quitting this month. The first time I lasted a couple weeks then I honestly think I was afraid of things getting better. Life was improving, I impulsed on a bag. I saw the difference after I resumed right where I left off. When I'm wrapped up in trees I'm in my cacoon. I'm less social, more hungry, more in my head blah blah you know the deal.

After 5 years of heavy trees, cigarettes, heavy alcohol, even fap I need a change. I doubted this subreddit existed, but you guys proved me wrong and I'm glad it does. We all need a support network. I think it will be hardest to cut out butts and booze, then again I tried nofap and could only make it six days. Try, try again.

I'm reading this, its really helpful. The dude from yourbrainonporn.com recommended this book.

I believe I remember reading that V.S. Ramachandran had an insight to this when he was dealing with phantom limb patients. The area of the brain that maps foot and toe sensations is right next to areas which are involved with sexual stimulation. When an area of the brain (especially involved with perception and sensation) lose their means of input and become disused (as in someone losing a limb), those neurons are gradually recruited by nearby brain regions to supplement their functioning. So, in some cases of people losing their lower limbs, those foot-sensation areas became cross-linked with the sexual stimulation areas causing the people to have a sexual reaction when imagining their phantom toes being sucked on.

This may be a neurological explanation for foot-fetishism, but I don't know off the top of my head if this has been followed up with concrete study; it only suggests an avenue for further experimentation. This also does little to explain some of the other, less common fetishes (tickling, scatalogical). It also doesn't concretely answer the question as far as genetic/environmental. We have genetic dispositions for particular brain areas being more interconnected than others, but environmental factors play a huge role in this as well, especially as far as deviations from normal development during childhood. As such, though I don't necessarily agree with them, I also can't 100% discount ideas like sexual imprinting.

tl;dr: This, like most other neurological questions, is really complex and the answer lies somewhere on the continuum between genetics and environmental factors.


edit: Looked it up to be sure. For those that are interested, this was discussed in Phantoms In The Brain.

If you're really interested in the evolution of the human brain and how evolution has shaped our psychology, I suggest reading Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works." It's not a light read, but it's incredibly fascinating.

For a more general look at recent human evolution, I enjoyed "The 10,000 Year Explosion." The authors argue that genetic changes have led to higher than average IQs among European Jews.

>How does the human brain almost seemingly hardwire recognizing our own names (which happens even in incredibly noisy situations)?

The cocktail party effect. Let me nerd-out: the brain doesn't "almost seemingly" hardwire to recognize our names; it literally actually hard-wires to recognize our name. We learn our name—a sound (which can sometime be represented by a visual shape, made of letters)—through practice and experience. People make the sound when they want our attention. They make the sound when pointing to you. They make the sound when telling other people about you. So...wait... that sound... it represents you! Just like all those other sounds represent other things! That's basic language. A sound represents a physical object.

And language is hard-wired into the human brain. Link to further reading/a book full of evidence.

Our names are important, so when the brain is stimulated by a sound that is similar to our name, it triggers an emotional/attentional change—we look. Our experiences hearing our name hard-wire that into dedicated neural circuits.

I once had the pleasure of hearing the feminist biologist, Marlene Zuk, speak. She was fantastic and I think you should check out her book [Sex on Six Legs] (https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Six-Legs-Lessons-Language/dp/015101373X)

Also, if you're not afraid of delving into psychology and neuroscience. I'd also recommend Cordelia Fine's [Delusions of Gender] (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494261794&sr=1-1&keywords=delusions+of+gender)

How to Think About God: A guide for the 20th Century Pagan

Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief

Biblical Games: Game Theory and the Hebrew Bible

The Probability of God: A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth

The Abolition of Man

Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith


Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally

I plugged a few books a month ago over at our subreddit.

Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey – he is the one who introduce temperament theory (SP/SJ/NF/NT) and very easy to read, providing a good starting point to MBTI.

Personality Type: An Owner’s Manual by Lenore Thomson - Instead of going by the 16 sets of letters, this is a pure Jungian book to the MBTI. It is noted to take a few stabs at Keirsey and for filling itself with pop culture references known for its time.

Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery, by Riso and Hudson – While I am not as much of a fan of the Enneagram as I am the MBTI, I still pull this book out on occasion. It is a nice, complete overview of it. What I like about it the most though is it breaks down the 9 types into 9 levels of mental health. When you go from peak to valley, it is like reading a personal psychological horror story. For that reason, I often use it when discussing psychological and personality disorders as it relates to personality typing. Speaking of which…

The New Personality Self-Portrait, by Oldham and Morris – If you have any interest whatsoever in the DSM-IV personality disorders, but don’t want to read the whole thing (of which the PDs are a very small portion), GET THIS BOOK. It is not just a brief summary of each, its main focus is to go in the opposite direction of my previous recommendation. It views each personality disorder as an (unhealthy) subset of a larger personality style – of which one might have several – and then ask the question, “What will _____ be like if they were more mentally healthy?” It turns each disorder on its head by doing that.

Neuroscience of Personality, by Dario Nardi – I just finished this book. It takes each of the cognitive functions and explains what exactly your brain is doing when using them. From that it shows how each personality type’s noggin works. And despite being a book on neurology, it is very easy and quick read compared to all the above books. But the price tag IMHO is a bit steep. There is a 90 minute YouTube video out there of the author giving a lecture if you search for it.

Did you even bother to read the articles you posted?

1. Examination of developing brains - differences in white matter.
   
2. This works slightly in your case - but only shows that there might be size differences in different areas of the brain.
   
3. Again, an analysis of developing brains
   
4. This is from 1991.
   
5. From the abstract - "we did not find any significant difference in global WM volume between males and females."
   
6. This study is on rats.
   
7. "Our study demonstrates that, although
   there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not
   belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain."
   
8. This really doesn't include any research but rather attempts to persuade for further investigation in brain sex research.
   
   Conventional research suggests that although there are small differences in some areas of the brain between males and females, these differences are not very large and there is a ton of overlap between. There is not a distinguishable "male" or "female" brain that we can definitely identify. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to say that transgender have a brain of the opposite sex. Some recent studies have shown that people with gender dysphoria may instead have disconnectivity within networks involved in body perception.
   
   If you want to read a great book that examines the history of brain sex studies and debunks the male/female brain hypothesis, read Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender.

One of the books on your list that looks promising is Sexing The Body. While it may not provide an in depth overview of human biology it will likely provide the appropriate background information. Many other books under the gender studies umbrella do explore and explain biological sex (male, female, intersex), prominent scientific studies, and current areas of research. One book not on the list is Delusions of Gender and it is just one book to explore these issues.

At the end of the day that's a reading list to get the PhD student started. By the end of their PhD they will have ready 3-4x that many articles and books. Those of their choosing will focus in on areas of research that they are interested in. That may include basic research on human anatomy, biology, and sex.

I guess the question is what do you think is missing from these books that discuss gender and sex from a biological perspective that can only be gained from human biology textbooks?

Check out this book it's a good read:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/0345440331

Interesting brain activity happens when people pray especially in the area that helps us distinguish ourselves from our environment.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tell-Tale-Brain-Neuroscientists-Quest/dp/0393340627

This book is pretty good :)

You might want to check out Oliver Sacks too

"Can you walk?"

"Sure I can walk." Mrs. Dodds had been lying in her bed or sitting propped up in a wheelchair for the past two weeks. She had not taken a single step since her fall in the bathroom.

"What about your hands? Hold out your hands. Can you move them?"

Mrs. Dodds seemed mildly annoyed by my questions. "Of course I can use my hands," she said.

"Can you use your right hand?"

"Yes."

"Can you use your left hand."

"Yes, I can use my left hand."

"Are both hands equally strong?"

"Yes, they are both equally strong."

Now this raises an interesting question: How far can you push this line of questioning in these patients? Physicians are generally reluctant to keep on prodding for fear of precipitating what the neurologist Kurt Goldstein called a "catastrophic reaction," which is simply medical jargon for "the patient starts sobbing" because her defences crumble. But I thought, if I took her gently, one step at a time, before actually confronting her with her paralysis, perhaps I could prevent such a reaction.

"Can you touch my nose with your left hand?"

Her hand lay paralyzed in front of her.

"Mrs. Dodds, are you touching my nose?"

"Yes, of course I'm touching your nose."

"Can you actually see yourself touching my nose?"

"Yes, I can see it. It's less than an inch from your face."

At this point Mrs. Dodds produced a frank confabulation, almost a haullicnation, that her finger was nearly touching my nose. Her vision was fine. She could see her arm perfectly clearly, yeet she was insisting that she could see the arm move.

I decided to ask just one more question, "Mrs. Dodds, can you clap?"

With resigned patience she said, "Of course I can clap."

"Will you clap for me?"

Mrs. Dodds glanced up at me and proceeded to make clapping movements with her right hand, as if clapping with an imaginary hand near the midline.

"Are you clapping?"

"Yes, I'm clapping," she replied.

I didn't have the heart to ask her whether she actually heard herself clapping, but, had I done so, we might have found the answer to the Zen master's eternal koan or riddle - what is the sound of one hand clapping?

___

from Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

my thoughts: mere curiosities

Anything from Oliver Sacks always worth reading imo.

• Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain!
  
  
• The Compassionate Brain: A Revolutionary Guide to Developing Your Intelligence to Its Full Potential: How Empathy Creates Intelligence!
  
  
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain!
  
  
• Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions!
  
  
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind!
  
  
• The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound!
  
  not really neuroscience, but interesting imho:
  
  
• How the Mind Works!
  
  
  *(hopes formatting works)

As a guitar player (but not one who's experienced a stroke), I came here to propose this book exactly. Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. He has a more recent book out as well. I've also read My stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor and This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer is also a fascinating read about the evolution of language and memory (the author himself eventually became the 2006 U.S.A. Memory Champion).

The reason I propose any or all of these and more, is that it will leave you encouraged of what is possible with retraining your brain compared to the old school attitudes surrounding brain injury and more specifically to you and your desire to return to guitar playing.

Irreducible Mind. It's truly fantastic, and basically providing evidence in support of FHW Myers' "Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death".

Radical feminism is an actual movement that has a history and certain parameters for ideology (the Wikipedia entry is extremely vague and does not do it justice). I'm sorry for being rude in my previous comment, but it just ticks me off when people on the internet think "radical feminism" means being feminist and angry, or feminist and extreme. Radical feminists tend to be all of those things, but simply being angry or extreme doesn't make someone a radfem. Words have meanings.

I took a look at the thread you linked. Apart from the academic jargon that means nothing in the real world (there was a lot of this), they're basically saying that although gender is socially made up/imposed, it also has real world consequences. Well, yes, every radfem in the world would agree with that. That doesn't mean that sex-reassignment surgery is the best way to go.

If a born-female wants to be masculine, she can; if a born-male wants to be feminine, he can. Why take hormones and change one's body? If you think about it, it's actually reinforcing really negative, sexist stereotypes ("I have a wee-wee but I like dresses and pink; I must be a girl because only girls can like dresses and pink").

The trans "argument" usually relies on the de-bunked idea that people are born with "male" or "female" brains. Putting aside the obvious sexism of this argument, it's actually not scientifically valid (link to an awesome feminist book on neurology that shows how our brains adapt to our environments via something called neuroplasticity, and we are not born with inherently "masculine" or "feminine" brains): http://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/

And finally, yes, radfems hate the word "cis". It's an insulting world that implies women are privileged for a) being born female and b) being socialized into femininity (gender role), which is just ritualized submission.

For the science lovers:

Gender

• Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Lecture here.
  
  
• Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders by Alice Eagly and Linda Carli
  
  
• Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men by Anne Fausto-Sterling
  
  
• Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by Anne Fausto-Sterling
  
  
• A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men: Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences by Wendy Wood and Alice Eagly
  
  Race
  
  
• The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould

I think you'd really enjoy this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Head-Trip-Adventures-Wheel-Consciousness/dp/1400064848

After reading the chapter on lucid dreaming I had a lucid dream that night. Now it only happens rarely but the book does give you some tricks that help make it happen more often. Way interesting stuff even if you don't lucid dream.

Yeah it's pretty amazing. The doctor who discovered phantom pain wrote a book about it, if you're interested:

https://www.amazon.ca/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172/ref=nodl_

It's from 1998 so the science has probably progressed a fair amount, but I think it would still be an interesting read.

If you like this, you should definitely check out his book, Phantoms in the Brain. It's one of the most fascinating things I've ever read.

This was discussed in detail in a really great book called "Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness." Recommended!

>Conciousness can be emergent from human beings for the simple reason that we are conscious.

Sounds like circular reasoning to me.

>You made the nonsense claim that physicalists are committed to believing that consciousness is either everywhere or nowhere. You have provided no evidence or argument for this.

Physicalists by definition don't really believe in consciousness as it's own thing. Therefore, either they think it is nowhere or, if it is something that can emerge from a complex system, potentially anywhere. I am arguing that any definitions that require certain levels or consciousness to be called "conscious" are arbitarty as it is really a sliding scale.

>What are your good reasons? That evolution produces complex things? You are still sticking with that?

Well, I have a lot of reasons. In this particular thread I am pointing out the absurdity of only allowing for certain systems to be associated with consciousness.
>Of course not. I am a physical being just like every other human is. Are you trying to claim that you yourself are not a physical being? Am I typing to a ghost?

I am not ONLY a physical being and have direct experience of that. But I realize my own experience isn't going to really matter to anyone else.

>Good questions. I recommend you look into the study that is going on in this area. [2] Here is one pretty good attempt and [3] here is a whole paper on it. You will notice that degrees of consciousness are dicussed in the second link without leading to the nonsense conclusion that everything is conscious including mindless, physical processes like evolution by natural selection.

I enjoy reading about the study in this area and do so regularly. I find it very curious that you can agree with a paper like the second paper that suggests even a virus has a basic level of consciousness and yet you think it is nonsense to suggest that a much larger system such as an evolutionary process (or a planet or galaxy and so on) has any trace at all. Remember, I'm not claiming it is the same type of consciousness. It's doesn't have to be human-like.

Also, you have to take into account that if you start with false premises anything that follows is going to be flawed. Most research and papers involving consciousness still follow the flawed assumption that it is a purely physical phenomenon. I originally wasn't going to go there in this thread, but I guess I have to. Evidence for physical only consciousness is based on assumptions and models. Evidence against includes solid counter-examples. The science says consciousness cannot be purely physical. Have you read this book?

I'm familiar with the claims made in these books - it's amazing how neatly her "findings" fit into stereotypes out of a 1950s sexist's diatribe about 'wimmins'.

For a review of the neuroscience of gender that isn't based on one person's marketing strategy research, I highly suggest this book. It specifically addresses most of the stereotypes presented in Dr. Brenzadine's work and shows exactly how much (or, in most cases, how little) evidence there is for the claims.

How to Read a Book. No joke. Just getting into reading. Only read most of the Harry Potter books as a kid and just sparknoted everything I've had to read for school. So I need to learn the basics.

After that, I plan on reading What Liberal media by Eric Alterman. I torrented all episodes of The Daily Show a few weeks ago and in one of the earlier episodes Eric came in for an interview to plug the book. It's basically about how our "liberal" media is just establishment media.

After that I'm not sure, but there's a million books I want to read and I need more time on my hands...

EDIT: Actually no, after HTRAB I'll be reading Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee as it's a much easier read than What Liberal Media. Already read some of it, it's very fascinating.

[Edit to add item at bottom]

Wow. Really, I'm stunned. I have friends who are Jain (the religion) and many of them are incredibly . . . different from most Americans, including me -- non-violent at a very deep level, compassionate in a way that seems more connected and real than typical, and so on. Most are vegetarian and can't stand to watch violence in movies or TV -- including minor violence that most people barely notice. They're not timid in the least; it's something very different and much healthier. So, I don't know (and you might not either) what the deepest reasons are for what you're doing, but I feel impressed and uplifted knowing that there are human beings willing endure pain and danger to help others, even a stranger, in such a dramatic fashion.

Checked out your blog and wanted to pass along something I'm currently reading that you might find of interest: The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, MD. It's a great read and describes amazing (and mostly still ignored/denied/unknown) advances in dealing with brain trauma and other CNS problems, including cerebral palsy.

> But what is happening when I am given two choices, and I struggle to make a decision

But you didn't choose to be given the two choices.

There's an unimaginably long causal stream of events leading to your choice which was never under your control, so at the very least it seems that even if we could call that free will, it's not nearly as significant/powerful an ability as we normally think.

In the criminal examples, even if a stereotypical "bad guy" can be said conclusively to have "chosen" an antisocial action, they didn't choose the genetics or environmental effects that lead their brain to prefer the antisocial option.

EDIT: In my mind, I think the Free Will Debate, is pretty similar to the God Debate. To quote Neil DeGrasse Tyson "If that's how you wanna invoke your evidence for god, then god is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance, thats getting smaller, smaller and smaller as time goes moves on." Similarly, it would seem that almost every single finding in the fields of neuroscience and psychology and psychiatry have gone to show just how little we're in control of our own actions. To just observe the general trend, we seem to be accumulating an abundance of evidence to support one side of this argument, and the other side has to continue to point to the "ever receding" dark corner of ignorance in the room to try to support their side. David Eagleman has a chapter in his book Incognito about this where he talks about the "dethronement of man" as a general trend in scientific discovery.

Anyone who enjoyed this talk will be delighted to hear that Cordelia has a book out called Delusions of Gender, which is excellent and, redundantly, has made a lot of men very upset.

Your lame website is inaccurate--Steven Pinker addresses this criticism in The Language Instinct, pg. 390, in a chapter addressing the concept of one true "correct" version of English and criticizing the so-called language mavens who make such claims.

>A tin ear for prosody (stress and intonation) and obliviousness to the principles of discourse and rhetoric are important tools of the trade for the language maven. Consider an alleged atrocity committed by today's youth: the expression I could care less. ...
Listen to how the two versions are pronounced: The melodies and stresses are completely different, and for good reason. The second version is not illogical, it's sarcastic. The point of sarcasm is that by making an assertion that is manifestly false or accompanied by ostentatiously mannered intonation, one deliberately implies its opposite. A good paraphrase is, "Oh yeah, as if there as something in the world I could care less about."

The book actually has a diagram showing where the stress occurs in the phrase, which I have not been able to reproduce.

Relevant Ted Talk on Curing Phantom Limb

According to VS Ramachandran, you can cure phantom limb by yourself for very little money, just need a couple of mirrors put together correctly.

VS Ramachandran cured phantom pain by using mirrors to retrain the brain. He talks extensively on phantom limb in his 2011 book The Tell-Tale Brain. You can even use audible to get one free download and get that book for free. This may be useful info to /u/Forlum as well as /u/Funsizeanthony and more.

After coming across this interesting article in Skeptic summarizing the evidence surrounding sex differences in cognitive ability I decided to pick up a book on the same subject by the author (Diane Halpern), Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, which I haven't read through yet but I noticed it did have the following discussion of Baron-Cohen's hypothesis:

>Numerous researchers have offered stern criticisms of the idea that female and male brains are "essentially different," especially in ways that Baron-Cohen has suggested (e.g., Eliot, 2009; Spelke & Grace, 2007). According to Baron-Cohen, it is high levels of prenatal testosterone that make the male brain good at systemizing. But males who are exposed to very high levels of testosterone while still in the womb (i.e., CAH males) are not more masculine or better at male-typical tasks than males who are exposed to normal levels of prenatal testosterone. In fact, the idea that high levels of prenatal testosterone cause autism, which might be expected from this theory, has not been supported. In addition, one prediction from this hypothesis is that autistic boys would be "hypermasculine," which is not supported with any research (Eliot, 2009). The experiment with newborns that Baron-Cohen frequently cites as evidence that girls are born with an interest in faces and boys are born with an interest in objects has been criticized on methodological grounds, including experimenter bias, small sample size, and failures to replicate (Spelke, 2005). ... In addition, numerous studies have found no sex differences in aptitude for science or mathematics in young children (Fine, 2010).

There's little dispute that women are better at giving birth and men are better at growing mustaches, but almost everything else is, to a certain extent, a social construct rather than a biological truth. The notion that men are better at mathematics has to do with generations of girls being discouraged from pursuing higher education. The notion that women are better caregivers comes from generations of (almost) every career save motherhood being closed to women.

Most studies that have sought to "prove" that one gender is better than the other at whatever have been deeply flawed, and carried out by researchers more interesting in confirming their own beliefs than in gathering actual data. There are a ton of examples in this book.

It's also interesting to note that people who are stereotyped as being bad at something perform worse when reminded of those stereotypes, even indirectly. For example, female students and black students perform worse on math tests when required to fill out demographic information beforehand. Food for thought.

I really liked Incognito by David Eagleman. It is similar in style to Freakonomics and does a great job of simplifying the science and applying it to things we do every day.

I have to upvote you because I think it would really help her. However, given that she is initially refusing to go to counseling with him... that she would approach that book and read with with even the smallest open mind is a very, very remote possibility.


An easier book to read might be Why God Won't Go Away which has quite a bit of detail on the inner workings of the brain, and then relates that to spiritual experiences. It takes a very neutral view. At the very least it will introduce doubt into the mind of the most staunch atheist or theist (a 1 or 7 on Dawkins' scale.) It's a very good read, if a little heavy on the physiology of the brain in the first few chapters. It could help her understand at least a little of the other side, even if she doesn't agree with it - I came from the complete inverse and it helped me in the same way.

Fellow English major/amateur linguist here. (Don't be sad, literature is cool too!) Geoff Pullum and Mark Liberman write an incredible blog, Language Log, which has taught me at least as much about the subject as any particular university class.

Also recommend Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct for a basic, high level overview of the different fields--syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, morphology, etc. Pinker has a bias toward his particular school of psycholinguistics and he has some not-so-nice things to say about English (the discipline), but he is nonetheless a highly entertaining read.

"Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain" by David Eagleman is more neuroscience-focused but overlaps a lot with core psychology. Really great read. https://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307389928

http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172

I suggest Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran (and his subsequent TED.com talks) to anyone dealing with this issue.

While I am not an amputee I was facinated by Dr. Ramachandran's work with 'phantom limb' syndrome and other areas of neurological facination.

I'm unaware of how common these types of issues are for such patients, but I hope this read may help some people here if needed.

If you have any interest in the science and strategies behind these kinds of recoveries, this book is amazing.

The Brain That Changes Itself

Fascinating book on this topic. Haven't finished it yet, but I'd definitely recommend it.

The Brain That Changes Itself is all about Neuroplasticity and how while your brain can get messed up on everything from addictions to seizures, it is plastic. Meaning, it can reform itself. The 90day milestone is encouraged to let this process happen.

I recommend the book to any NoFapper interested in the brain and porn as well as general neuroscience. Its stories have given hope to someone with a crushing near daily habit for 10-12 years. I found out about nofap in 2012 and my longest streaks are 7-14 days. Haven't had one over 5 in months, and the relapses are now daily. This willpower thing really isn't working for me.

The author of this article wrote an excellent book that goes in depth on these stories and others called Incognito. The whole book examines our limited ability to process perceptions and was a thoroughly engaging and heady read.

Yeah, it's lingering in your subconscious. But you can definitely rewire the aspects of your brain to get over it. Don't lose hope, dude.

https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1486588708&sr=8-2&keywords=brain+neuroplasticity

Just continue to educate yourself and treat your mind and body right.

Here's the book... not that anyone here really cares haha.

>This is not necessarily true. There are plenty studies that suggest it really matters how you test/educate people, and depending on that either girls or boys perform better.

You are right and you're making and important point. Thank you. In fact I knew this and might have recalled it if it were about the US, but somehow forgot all about it when the context is Turkish. Hmm. It may be because we're not constantly fussing about why females don't do well here at least as far as well-known schools go. You know why we're not fussing.

Anyway, I found out about those -- very interesting -- studies in some of the books that got published in response to Louann Brizendine's books such as Delusions of Gender.

Anyone interested in phantom limbs should check out Phantoms in the Brain. Really fascinating case studies in there. Including the story of the first phantom limb amputation.

A Field Guide to Earthlings: An autistic/Asperger view of neurotypical behavior https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EPYUV2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_NFAXBbFYHDK61

This is cheap, accurate, well-written, and comprehensive. A little dull, by moments, but a great bedtime read.

From what you are saying, I think you'd like the book Incognito as it kind of touches on that topic. I have to say, you pulled it off wonderfully in your video.

There is a whole chapter devoted to it in The Brain that Changes Itself.

Really cool book, I think a lot of you would enjoy it. Talks alot about how plastic your brain is, and about a lot of cool technology for repairing damaged brain function (walking after strokes, helping the blind to see, the deaf to hear, etc).

I think I read about this in "Incognito: The Secret life of the brain" was an amazing read I recommend you guys should look it up.

Or better yet, read V. S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain. He has been working on solving this problem since the 90's and created the mirror technique.

Wouldn't a link to purchase it do better than a link to an image of the cover?

Amazon link

Barnes and Noble link

Phantoms in the Brain

Great book, read it for a class in college in addition to Sacks' book. Foreword for the book is from Sacks as well.

What kind of paper? Don't you have access to most of the journals through your university?
I can browse many journals at home with VPN-Access, provided by my university.
For books, try these:
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kandel/dp/0071390111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452278840&sr=8-1&keywords=principles+of+neural+science
OR (less detailed)
http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-Mark-F-Bear/dp/0781778174/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452278819&sr=8-1&keywords=neuroscience

I heard some rumours that at least the Kandel is available as a free PDF in the internet, just use google with the proper terms ;)