Plutonia - Have been wanting to thank you...

[Nordic]

Isn't the drug dealer thing something of a myth? We've all seen too many movies about the incredibly cunning and perceptive drug dealers. Ha.

The drug dealers I've known have been some real dumbasses. Which brings me to what seems to be another myth -- that if you sell, you don't use. The drug dealers I've known have also been heavy users, in some cases really bad addicts. Not that I've known that many -- only a few, but they've all been heavy users.

Anyway, it's probably not that hard to sense a narc -- because the narc is the one who isn't a fucking desperate pathetic addict kissing their ass and consumed with fear that he/she's not gonna get their fix courtesy of the drug dealer.

But I've known drug dealers who have been busted through incredibly stupid stupid actions on their parts.

This is a fascinating thread.

I've always been astounded at how people get together romantically, in ways mentioned above.

I have a very good friend, who for years would meet wonderful women who had always just gotten out of a long, serious relationship, met him, got serious with him, then suddenly realized they wanted to go back to the guy they'd broken up with, often because the guy had real problems and the women wanted to continue to "help" the guy. I mean, it was WEIRD how often this happened, over and over for a period of years.

For myself, I realized some time ago that I was apparently only extremely attractive to women with rogue fathers and crazy moms. I mean seriously rogue, and seriously crazy. I just had to accept it after a while. And for some reason, it was reciprocated. I liked those women, also, was drawn to them deeply and inexplicably. Yes, my wife is one of them.

It's to the point where if I meet a woman and there's some sort of attraction, I like to find out in subtle ways about her crazy mom and rogue father because it's always the case.

I've never known if I was weird insofar as a label could be attached to me -- such as Aspergers or whatever -- but I've always been profoundly sensitive to people's vibes. It's almost like a cloud around them that I can literally feel. Almost as strong as a smell. It helps me out when the feelings are malevolent toward me. I just stay the hell away. This happens to me on an almost daily basis -- that I pick up strongly on the vibe-field of a complete stranger. I was on a job not too long ago where I got a terribly aggressive and hateful vibe, toward me, from a particular fellow. I mentioned it very subtly to a couple of friends and they both raved about what a great guy he was. Then one night he basically assaulted me right in front of everybody. Long story, but he actually physically hurt me, and then tried to laugh it off like it was some kind of an accident. But it wasn't, it was actually physically impossible for it to have been an accident, but nobody seemed to have actually had eyes on it as it happened, even though it was in a crowded space. I was furious and called him on it, and people started to get mad at me! I almost quit the job because of it. I was like "can't you feel that horrible hateful vibe coming out of this guy?" But they couldn't.

Later, when we were working in the out of doors, and he didn't have to do his regular duties, it was like he was a completely different person. I realized at one point that he was standing right next to me and that feeling simply wasn't there. It's like being outside in the big outdoors, where he didn't have to do this one particular job (that he apparently hated), he was fine. All that pent up aggression and hostility just wasn't there.

I've also been able to tell when someone has died. If I come over a rise, and there's an accident, and there's a fatality, I know it immediately, before I even see anything. I just feel it, it's like a loud noise almost, as long as I'm in a direct line of sight (for lack of a better term) of the dead person. I'm pretty sure I can also tell when someone has killed someone else, I have felt that VERY strongly from a few guys, and it's really fucking awful and strong, and I have actually not been able to prove it, but it's something I just pretty much know.

But I want to ask of Plutonia -- has she ever been tricked? Conned? Completely fooled by somebody? Because I have! Which really annoys me because I have been able to tell simply by watching the fingers of someone writing, that what they were writing was a lie. So how can I be fooled? I'd like to know.

[Plutonia]

But I want to ask of Plutonia -- has she ever been tricked? Conned? Completely fooled by somebody? Because I have! Which really annoys me because I have been able to tell simply by watching the fingers of someone writing, that what they were writing was a lie. So how can I be fooled? I'd like to know.

Sure. There are lots of variables, including my own blindspots, triggers, stress level, interference from strong feelings like anger etc but it's not like "reading people", it's like being aware of what you are perceiving without trying to perceive. You know that from your own unusual perceptions is my guess.

[Nordic]

But I want to ask of Plutonia -- has she ever been tricked? Conned? Completely fooled by somebody? Because I have! Which really annoys me because I have been able to tell simply by watching the fingers of someone writing, that what they were writing was a lie. So how can I be fooled? I'd like to know.

Sure. There are lots of variables, including my own blindspots, triggers, stress level, interference from strong feelings like anger etc but it's not like "reading people", it's like being aware of what you are perceiving without trying to perceive. You know that from your own unusual perceptions is my guess.

Yeah .... sometimes it's based on some distracting beam of "vibeness" that the person is sending out, that distracts me from paying attention to the other things that are there. Or, of course, they remind me of someone else in some way ...... someone from my past, or my childhood ....

I was thinking today about Bill Clinton, and how damn likeable he is, almost to everyone. Today he came out and said something about how he thinks what the OWS movement is doing is Great!! I also know people who have worked with him (on shoots, for commercials and interviews and whatever) who say his charisma is palpable. And I'm thinking now that a guy like that has learned, and has the talent to, project the vibe that he wants. He can turn on the beams like a damn glow-worm and project his own positive energy, charm, whatever you want to call it, in a way that drowns out whatever else might be lurking there.

Obama is the same way. I remember watching him give some speech, and the camera moved over the faces of the ENRAPTURED audience, many with tears in their eyes, their faces slack, their mouths even open, and I thought to myself "wow, that guy has some serious power and I hope to GOD he's not abusing it". Well, look how that turned out. It's still difficult, just looking at the guy, to hate him. And I've never been in his presence, but it must be a similar thing to Clinton.

Anyway, just sorta rambling here late at night ....

These people, when they do this to cover up what is basically an evil soul, are probably the most deadly people on the planet.

Maybe this belongs in the sociopatholigarchy thread .... (which is an awesome thread, in large part thanks to you, Plutonia).

[82_28]

You could always contract yourself a case of harm OCD.

Fear of Causing Harm

Fears about harm, whether physical, sexual or mental, often are accompanied by morbid obsessions about causing harm, such as:

Concerns about being careless and possibly causing harm to another or self, including in the preparation of food; providing care for children, medical care or elder care
Fear of not doing enough to help another
Concerns that words or acts will be misinterpreted as hurtful (or sexual)
Involuntary thoughts of violent behavior or of willfully causing harm to another individual, child, pets or self
Unwanted vivid imagery of violence or of a harmful sexual nature
Fears of possibly having committed such acts in the past
Sudden frightening thoughts about carrying out such acts
Magical thinking – the belief that a thought can cause an event to happen or not happen

OCD compulsions that may be used to ease the anxiety created by these obsessions include:

Repeatedly checking to make sure appliances are turned off or that doors to a home, garage or office are locked
Avoiding being around certain people or children (or not being alone with them)
Repeatedly checking on children (or someone in your care) to see if they are OK
Repeatedly washing food, examining food for spoilage
Mentally arguing with thoughts of harmful actions
Conducting physical or mental rituals, such as repeating words, phrases, prayers; counting, saying or avoiding saying certain words or phrases at all costs to keep bad things from happening or harm coming to self or others
Spending time analyzing harmful thoughts and looking for signs of agreement with the thoughts

This is what I have. It is debilitating and scary. I compensate with using the word "fuck" a lot in text and DEFINITELY in real life -- when you read something I've said here that uses the "fuckity fucks", it's not that I'm being angry or a cocksucker -- my brain is constantly saying fuck. I've tried through my friends and "frenemies" here at RI to temper it a bit. But I type as I talk. When I say "fucking", "fuck", "fuck this shit" etc, I say it through my OCD which, incidentally is very much so tied to Tourette's. I have a mild case. The OCD, not so much, my OCD has almost ended my life numerous times -- it makes you somewhat suicidal once you get into a good obsession spree. You just have to drop the fear of your OCD and distract the fuck out of it. I can fight it and have become somewhat good at fighting it. Stalling my brain for a second in order to not sound so "retarded". But I stutter. Not like a motherfucker do I. But in certain situations I do. It's like you wanna say 95 things at once but only have 10 seconds to do so. It's a constant battle that you cannot ever fight. When I use more "fucks", I can speak better. Also, like smoking cigs -- taking a drag, taking a break, going outside. It gives you time to gather your thoughts that you WANT to think about -- not what you're obsessing over.

I most certainly do not equate OCD with anything else anybody else has going on, but I have it. It's a constant battle against one's self.

I am perpetually concerned with others, to the point of stupidity -- and always afraid I will hurt them. OCD with the main symptoms being harm, is an awful, awful thing and like on the OCD boards and whatnot I used to ply, according to others, is not something you would even wish on your worst enemy. OCD is awful. It's like you're two people in one. One you want and one you do not know what is capable of. It's just awful. The worst feeling in the universe.

[crikkett]

Like, depending on how well i know a person, or how comfortable I am with them, I can often tell the last person they were talking to. It's like an influence that is present in them for a while, or something like that.

That's fascinating. I've noticed that my pronunciation changes according to who I speak to, or what I'm reading or listening to.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Anyway, in the case of good or bad faith, all you have to do is stop listening to what someone is saying (spoken words tend to confound more subtle perceptions) and just observe. Over a bit of time, the self contradictions of a bad faith actor become legible.[/size][/color]

Great thread.

I absolutely DESPISE talking on the phone, and Plutonia's sentence above pinpoints exactly why.

Thanks!

[Plutonia]

Like, depending on how well i know a person, or how comfortable I am with them, I can often tell the last person they were talking to. It's like an influence that is present in them for a while, or something like that.

That's fascinating. I've noticed that my pronunciation changes according to who I speak to, or what I'm reading or listening to.

Yes crickett, I do the same. Brain-states are contagious.

Again, this article explains in detail:
http://www.realitysandwich.com/skywriters_hades_1
http://www.realitysandwich.com/skywriters_hades_2

But Nordic, you remind me that heightened perception may be a feature of babies and Autistic brains, but it's also a feature of the less neotic creatures among us. I bet your survival wasn't assured when you were a wee un.

[Project Willow]

I have watched the ways in which I parrot others since I was a child. Because my development was so radically interfered with and manipulated, I never formed a cohesive functioning personality. I also maintain a strong ability to sustain a dissociated observational view of my own behavior, in minute detail. Parroting (mirroring, mimicry), I suppose it should go without saying, is an essential form of learning and central to healthy development. Parroting is also a part of how we signal our place in hierarchical arrangements, to over simplify, generally submissives parrot alphas. It's too complicated to fully explore here, but this has led to some very confusing and awkward exchanges in my life as my gestures and style of speech often mismatch my content and my acknowledged role in any given exchange. Social activity is always a challenge, is never dull, and sometimes is terrifying.

As a result I do have a fascination with patterns of communication, most especially non-verbal and body movement.

This is from the PR for my last art show:

“The way we move our bodies, our limbs, is loaded with subtle communication. You can see the product of love in the movement of a hand; you can detect it by a lack of hesitation, unselfconscious spontaneity, and the degree of celebrated idiosyncrasy. Likewise, subtly hesitant or restricted movement can denote weakness, fear, or insecure beginnings.”

The following excerpts are from an article focusing on body movement communication, including Laban/Bartenieff analysis, and speculation on how another (social) species interprets our movements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_Movement_Analysis

Breathing
even and deeply—rather than holding
your breath—can mean the difference
between defusing a tense situation and
igniting it. “I think they are looking at
our eyes and where our eyes are looking,
and what our eyes look like,” the ethologist
Patricia McConnell, who teaches at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
says. “A rounded eye with a dilated pupil
is a sign of high arousal and aggression in
a dog. I believe they pay a tremendous
amount of attention to how relaxed our
face is and how relaxed our facial muscles
are, because that’s a big cue for them
with each other. Is the jaw relaxed? Is the
mouth slightly open? And then the arms.
They pay a tremendous amount of attention
to where our arms go.”

To us, it’s about one
dog sizing up another. To her, it’s about
two dogs sizing up each other after first
sizing up their respective owners. The
owners “are often anxious about how well
the dogs will get along,” she writes, “and
if you watch them instead of the dogs,
you’ll often notice that the humans will
hold their breath and round their eyes
and mouths in an ‘on alert’ expression.
Since these behaviors are expressions of
offensive aggression in canine culture, I
suspect that the humans are unwittingly
signalling tension. If you exaggerate this
by tightening the leash, as many owners
do, you can actually cause the dogs to attack
each other. Think of it: the dogs are
in a tense social encounter, surrounded
by support from their own pack, with the
humans forming a tense, staring, breathless
circle around them. I don’t know
how many times I’ve seen dogs shift their
eyes toward their owner’s frozen faces,
and then launch growling at the other
dog.
...
Karen Bradley,
who heads the graduate dance program
at the University of Maryland, said
when she first saw tapes of Cesar in action.
“That lower-unit organization—I
wonder whether he was a soccer player.”
Movement experts like Bradley use something
called Laban Movement Analysis to
make sense of movement, describing, for
instance, how people shift their weight, or
how fluid and symmetrical they are when
they move, or what kind of “effort” it involves.
Is it direct or indirect—that is,
what kind of attention does the movement
convey? Is it quick or slow? Is it
strong or light—that is, what is its intention?
Is it bound or free—that is, how
much precision is involved? If you want to
emphasize a point, you might bring your
hand down across your body in a single,
smooth motion. But how you make that
motion greatly affects how your point will
be interpreted by your audience. Ideally,
your hand would come down in an explosive,
bound movement—that is, with accelerating
force, ending abruptly and precisely—and your head and shoulders
would descend simultaneously, so posture
and gesture would be in harmony. Suppose,
though, that your head and shoulders
moved upward as your hand came
down, or your hand came down in a free,
implosive manner—that is, with a kind
of a vague, decelerating force. Now your
movement suggests that you are making a
point on which we all agree, which is the
opposite of your intention. Combinations
of posture and gesture are called phrasing,
and the great communicators are those
who match their phrasing with their communicative
intentions—who understand,
for instance, that emphasis requires them
to be bound and explosive.
....
Movement analysts tend to like watching,
say, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan;
they had great phrasing. George W. Bush
does not. During this year’s State of the
Union address, Bush spent the entire
speech swaying metronomically, straight
down through his lower torso, a movement
underscored, unfortunately, by the
presence of a large vertical banner behind
him. “Each shift ended with this focus
that channels toward a particular place in
the audience,” Bradley said. She mimed,
perfectly, the Bush gaze—the squinty,
fixated look he reserves for moments of
great solemnity—and gently swayed back
and forth. “It’s a little primitive, a little regressed.”
The combination of the look,
the sway, and the gaze was, to her mind,
distinctly adolescent. When people say of
Bush that he seems eternally boyish, this
is in part what they’re referring to. He
moves like a boy, which is fine, except that,
unlike such movement masters as Reagan
and Clinton, he can’t stop moving like a
boy when the occasion demands a more
grown-up response.
“Mostly what we see in the normal
population is undifferentiated phrasing,”
...
She laughed. “When we meet someone
like this”—she nodded at Cesar, on the
television screen—“what do we do? We
give them their own TV series. Seriously.
We reward them. We are drawn to them,
because we can trust that we can get the
message. It’s not going to be hidden. It
contributes to a feeling of authenticity.”

“Look at the tension and aggression in
his face,” Tortora said, when the camera
turned to Scott. It was true. Scott had
a long and craggy face, with high, wide
cheekbones and pronounced lips, and
his movements were taut and twitchy.
“There’s a bombardment of actions,
quickness combined with tension, a quality
in how he is using his eyes and focus—
a darting,” Tortora said. “He gesticulates
in a way that is complex. There is a lot
going on. So many different qualities of
movement happening at the same time.
It leads those who watch him to get distracted.”
Scott is a character actor, with
a list of credits going back thirty years.
The tension and aggression in his manner

Now to the mechanism underlying all of this analysis, conscious and unconscious...
On The Mirror Neuron Discovery
Its ascension to a kind of GUT of human behavioral evolution, but that always happens, doesn't it? Scientists get all over excited, especially behavioral scientists, and claim, "This is the one, I have it right here! This is the thing that explains everything!"
(This is the thinnest and quickest of reviews, it would be interesting to flesh all of this out in this thread.)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mimicry.aspx
How Mimicry Begat Culture
Researchers from varied disciplines look to mirror neurons to explain many aspects of human evolution.
By BETH AZAR
October 2005, Vol 36, No. 9
That link between imitation and humanity is at the crux of a new trend in evolutionary science: theories claiming that a class of nerve cells, dubbed "mirror neurons" for their ability to mirror the actions of others, were the spark that allowed our hominid ancestors to branch off from apes. Monkeys and apes also have these neurons (see page 49) but, claim the theories, the humanoid brain capitalized on them in new ways that allowed them to move beyond simple imitation to more complex imitation, and that in turn blossomed into language, music, art, tool-making and even empathy.
University of California, San Diego, neuroscientist and mirror-neuron proponent Vilayanur Ramachandran, MD, PhD, gives these cells credit for causing the big bang of human development, otherwise known as the "great leap forward." That leap occurred somewhere around 50,000 years ago, when human culture experienced a sudden explosion of technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings and the like.
While many researchers think Ramachandran goes too far with his claims, a large and growing group is intrigued enough by mirror neurons that more researchers have begun to investigate their potential role in human evolution.
...
"I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology," wrote Ramachandran. "They will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."

Mirror Neurons and Austism

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/autism.aspx
Autism & MIrror Neurons
Unexplained symptoms

While many researchers agree that mirror-system dysfunction may underpin the social isolation of autism, Théoret breaks ranks and posits that the neurons' malfunction has more extensive effects: He makes the controversial claim that the repetitious behaviors characteristic of autism may arise from an unregulated mirror system.

Ouch, that hurts, now wait a minute, my autistic kid can empathize!

http://www.autismandempathy.com/?p=793
Much Ado about Mirror Neurons: Empathy, Autism, and Bias (Part 1)
By Anne Corwin on November 21st, 2011
This discussion will attempt to explain the actual findings in monkey and human research associated with mirror neurons, and pose the argument that the mirror neuron studies being performed on human subjects do not necessarily imply for autism what much of contemporary popular science literature claims.  That is, while mirror neuron studies may indeed offer valuable information about brain differences and the various ways in which minds process and react to certain stimuli, these studies do not actually prove that the observed differences between autistic and nonautistic behavior and cognition are explained by a “dysfunctional” mirror neuron system.
....
As expected, mu wave suppression was recorded in the control subjects both when they moved and when they watched another human move. In other words, their mirror neuron systems acted normally. The mirror neurons of the subjects with autism spectrum disorders, however, responded anomalously—only to their own movement.
Upon first reading, the description of this experiment probably sounds fairly straightforward.  But examining it for a moment from a more critical perspective, all this experiment really tells us is that autistic brains seem to respond differently to a particular kind of stimulus (in a particular environment).  It does not actually prove that autistic brains are actually “dysfunctional” to begin with; it merely demonstrates an observation of difference in functionality between autistic and nonautistic cognition.  Nor is any attempt made to explain why mu waves might not be suppressed in autistics when those subjects viewed the moving hand—it could be that the autistic subjects were simply processing the data in their environment differently.  Of course, there is certainly nothing unscientific (or unethical) about noting these differences in reaction pattern and functionality between autistic and nonautistic brains, however, there is plenty to scrutinize when conclusions such as the following (from the same Science Daily article as quoted above) are drawn:
...

[Plutonia]

Thanks for all that Willow.

I've got some things to add but I haven't been feeling well today so it'll have to wait.


82, do you know the novel Motherless Brooklyn - it's in the style of a classic hard-boiled detective story but the protagonist is Toutettic and it's kind of deep - I really enjoyed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherless_Brooklyn

[vanlose kid]

that´s a great book.

so's Fortress of Solitude.

[Hammer of Los]

...

Magical thinking – the belief that a thought can cause an event to happen or not happen.

... Heaven sought order. But the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven and the moisture of Earth, the powers of the sun and the moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. And it became magically fertile. The first egg was named "Thought". Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, "With our thoughts, we make the world."

Magical thinking is not a mental illness, you know.




...

[Elvis]

So much to think about here.

Right before reading this thread, I heard this radio play:

Lucy

Series: L.A. Theatre Works
Length: 01:57:58

Is autism a disability...or an evolutionary adaptation?

In a thought-provoking new play, 13 year old Lucy, who suffers from autism, moves in with her estranged, misanthropic mother. Having lived her entire life with her father, Lucy, as well as her mom, struggle with all the difficulties of such an arrangement.

Starring Lucy DeVito, Roxanne Hart, Geoffrey Lower, Sarah Rafferty, and Raphael Sbarge. Written by Damien Atkins. Directed by Michael Hackett. The program includes an interview with UCLA autism expert Dr. Daniel Geschwind.

You can listen to it here: http://www.prx.org/pieces/72216-lucy

I didn't plan to listen to it, it just came on and grabbed me. If anyone checks it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

[Plutonia]

Okay, I made it back finally. Sorry to keep you waiting Willow.

I have watched the ways in which I parrot others since I was a child. Because my development was so radically interfered with and manipulated, I never formed a cohesive functioning personality. I also maintain a strong ability to sustain a dissociated observational view of my own behavior, in minute detail. Parroting (mirroring, mimicry), I suppose it should go without saying, is an essential form of learning and central to healthy development. Parroting is also a part of how we signal our place in hierarchical arrangements, to over simplify, generally submissives parrot alphas. It's too complicated to fully explore here, but this has led to some very confusing and awkward exchanges in my life as my gestures and style of speech often mismatch my content and my acknowledged role in any given exchange. Social activity is always a challenge, is never dull, and sometimes is terrifying.

I was a pretty classic case – language delay, withdrawn, unresponsive, rocking, head-bumping, hand flapping, crying baby, chronic headaches, soothed by squeezing. At five, my grandparents were pressuring my parents to have me institutionalized. Instead we moved to the country – yeah!

Some interesting corollaries from my own struggles with “self”, Willow:

It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I realized that I didn't have a sense of self separate from my siblings when I was a child. I still think of my “self' back then as a “we” and I still have to consciously insert an “I” into my memories. Using Alison Gopnik's language, I think that it's because my autistic brain was stuck in “Lantern” mode overly long. According to my mother, I was 14 when I sort of emerged.

I also learned to get by by learning acceptable verbal responses by rote (parroting) and then mixing them up as needed, as a consequence I was completely lost when it came to formulating questions about things that I was genuinely curious about. It also caused a lot of social anxiety as you can imagine. In my early twenties, when I was first really tested out in the world I lost language almost entirely for a few months and I had to rely on guesses, mimicry and rote responses – I channeled my mother a lot. It wasn't until I was about thirty that I started to find my “voice”.

As a result I do have a fascination with patterns of communication, most especially non-verbal and body movement.
This is from the PR for my last art show:

“The way we move our bodies, our limbs, is loaded with subtle communication. You can see the product of love in the movement of a hand; you can detect it by a lack of hesitation, unselfconscious spontaneity, and the degree of celebrated idiosyncrasy. Likewise, subtly hesitant or restricted movement can denote weakness, fear, or insecure beginnings.”

It's like music coming off people. I always think of Nina Simone in that song where she says “Y'all are pushing it. Just relax. It'll go up by itself. Don't put nothing in it unless you feel it.”

This one – love it!

The following excerpts are from an article focusing on body movement communication, including Laban/Bartenieff analysis, and speculation on how another (social) species interprets our movements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_Movement_Analysis

Breathing
even and deeply—rather than holding
your breath—can mean the difference
between defusing a tense situation and
igniting it. “I think they are looking at
our eyes and where our eyes are looking,
and what our eyes look like,” the ethologist
Patricia McConnell, who teaches at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
says. “A rounded eye with a dilated pupil
is a sign of high arousal and aggression in
a dog. I believe they pay a tremendous
amount of attention to how relaxed our
face is and how relaxed our facial muscles
are, because that’s a big cue for them
with each other. Is the jaw relaxed? Is the
mouth slightly open? And then the arms.
They pay a tremendous amount of attention
to where our arms go.”

I saw a video recently where test subjects were shown clips of women walking down a hall (from behind) and were asked to identify which one was a rape victim and they guessed something like 80% correctly. Couldn't tell you where I saw it though. Bleh.

Also, it reminds me of connecting:

How feeling socially connected can make strangers' hearts beat together
Research has even shown how the sight of a loved one in pain triggers a kind of simulation of their agony in the pain network of our own brain. A new study builds on this, showing that superficial feelings of connectedness with a stranger are enough to lead to a mirroring of their emotions and even their heart rate.

http://www.bps.org.uk/news/how-feeling- ... t-together

Basically what Auties fail at. Except with other Auties, perhaps.

[url]
... mirror-neuron proponent Vilayanur Ramachandran, MD, PhD, gives these cells credit for causing the big bang of human development, otherwise known as the "great leap forward." That leap occurred somewhere around 50,000 years ago, when human culture experienced a sudden explosion of technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings and the like.

Ramachandran's original article was in Edge and is totally worth reading. It's a convincing argument for how culture is transmitted:

MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution
[V.S. RAMACHANDRAN:] The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution — which I speculate on in this essay — is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.
There are many puzzling questions about the evolution of the human mind and brain:
1) The hominid brain reached almost its present size — and perhaps even its present intellectual capacity about 250,000 years ago . Yet many of the attributes we regard as uniquely human appeared only much later. Why? What was the brain doing during the long "incubation "period? Why did it have all this latent potential for tool use, fire, art music and perhaps even language- that blossomed only considerably later? How did these latent abilities emerge, given that natural selection can only select expressed abilities, not latent ones? I shall call this "Wallace's problem", after the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace who first proposed it.
2) Crude "Oldawan" tools — made by just a few blows to a core stone to create an irregular edge — emerged 2.4 million ago and were probably made by Homo Habilis whose brain size was half way (700cc) between modern humans (1300) and chimps (400). After another million years of evolutionary stasis aesthetically pleasing "symmetrical" tools began to appear associated with a standardization of production technique and artifact form. These required switching from a hard hammer to a soft (wooden?) hammer while the tool was being made, in order to ensure a smooth rather than jagged, irregular edge. And lastly, the invention of stereotyped "assembly line" tools (sophisticated symmetrical bifacial tools) that were hafted to a handle, took place only 200,000 years ago. Why was the evolution of the human mind "punctuated" by these relatively sudden upheavals of technological change?
3) Why the sudden explosion (often called the "great leap" ) in technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, stereotyped dwellings, etc. around 40 thousand years ago, even though the brain had achieved its present "modern" size almost a million years earlier?
4) Did language appear completely out of the blue as suggested by Chomsky? Or did it evolve from a more primitive gestural language that was already in place?
5) Humans are often called the "Machiavellian Primate" referring to our ability to "read minds" in order to predict other peoples' behavior and outsmart them. Why are apes and humans so good at reading other individuals' intentions? Do higher primates have a specialized brain center or module for generating a "theory of other minds" as proposed by Nick Humphrey and Simon Baron-Cohen? If so, where is this circuit and how and when did it evolve?
The solution to many of these riddles comes from an unlikely source.. the study of single neurons in the brains of monkeys. I suggest that the questions become less puzzling when you consider Giaccamo Rizzollati's recent discovery of "mirror neurons' in the ventral premotor area of monkeys. This cluster of neurons, I argue, holds the key to understanding many enigmatic aspects of human evolution. Rizzollati and Arbib have already pointed out the relevance of their discovery to language evolution . But I believe the significance of their findings for understanding other equally important aspects of human evolution has been largely overlooked. This, in my view, is the most important unreported "story" in the last decade.
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http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramacha ... index.html

And his follow-up, which may be more to the point but is rather more disturbing:

MIRROR NEURONS AND THE BRAIN IN THE VAT
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Researchers at UCLA [1] found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle ("pain neurons"), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked. The mirror neurons, it would seem, dissolve the barrier between self and others. I call them "empathy neurons" or "Dalai Lama neurons". (I wonder how the mirror neurons of a masochist or sadist will respond to another person being poked.) Dissolving the "self vs. other" barrier is the basis of many ethical systems, especially eastern philosophical and mystical traditions. This research implies that mirror neurons can be used to provide rational rather than religious grounds for ethics (although we must be careful not to commit the is/ought fallacy).

I previously suggested in my earlier piece — "Mirror Neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution" [2] — that the emergence of a sophisticated mirror neuron system set the stage for the emergence, in early hominids, of a number of uniquely human abilities such as proto-language (facilitated by mapping phonemes on to lip and tongue movements), empathy, "theory of other minds", and the ability to "adopt another's point of view".

This resulted in the ability to engage in goal-directed imitation, which was a crucial step in imitation learning. Once imitation learning was in place it allowed the rapid horizontal and vertical propagation of "accidental" one-of-a-kind inventions, which provided the basis for culture, the most human of all traits. Evolution, you could say, became Lamarckian rather than purely Darwinian. (In using the phrase "accidental innovation" I do not mean to belittle those flashes of inspiration, insight and genius that arise all too rarely when the right combination of genetic and environmental circumstances fortuitously prevail in a single brain.

My point is only that such innovations would be lost from the meme pool were it not for mirror neuron-based abilities such as imitation and language). Even that most quintessentially human trait, our propensity for metaphor, may be partly based on the kinds of cross domain abstraction that mirror neurons mediate; the left hemisphere for action metaphors ("get a grip") and the right for embodied and spatial metaphor. This would explain why any monkey could reach for a peanut but only a human, with an adequately developed mirror neuron system, can reach for the stars. This "co-opting" of the mirror neuron system for other more sophisticated functions may have been but a short step in hominid brain evolution but it was a giant leap for mankind. I suggest this crucial step emerged 100 to 200 thousand years ago in the inferior parietal lobule.

Of course, we must avoid the temptation of attributing too much to mirror neurons — monkeys have them but they are not capable of sophisticated culture. There are two possible reasons for this. First, mirror neurons may be necessary but not sufficient. Other functions such as long working memory may have co-evolved through parallel selection pressures. Second, the system may need to reach a certain minimum level of sophistication before primate cognition can really get off the ground (or down from the trees!)

Intriguingly, in 2000, Eric Altschuller, Jamie Pineda and I were able to show (using EEG recordings) that autistic children lack the mirror neuron system and we pointed out that this deficit may help explain the very symptoms that are unique to autism: lack of empathy, theory of other minds, language skills, and imitation. [3] Although initially contested, this discovery — of the neural basis of autism — has now been confirmed by several groups including our own (spearheaded, in part, by Lindsey Oberman in my lab).

Mirror neurons also deal a deathblow to the "nature vs. nurture " debate (I like Matt Ridley's suggested replacement "Nature via Nurture") for it shows how human nature depends crucially on learnability that is partly facilitated by these very circuits. They are also an effective antidote to sociobiology and pop evolutionary psychology; the assertion that the human brain is a bundle of instincts selected and fine-tuned by natural selection when our ape-like ancestors roamed the savannahs. Even if you admit some truth to this view I have never understood why the savannah is such a big deal. Why stop there? We spent a much longer time as fish in the Devonian seas 500 million years ago. One could argue that the reason we enjoy going to aquaria is that our piscine ancestors spent millions of year's time looking at and enjoying other fishes. If you think this idea is silly, you should see some of the others that have made it into print and clutter the literature. Yes, genes profoundly influence behavior. No ape, even if educated at Eton or Harrow, will ever speak with a proper public school accent. But, the notion that human talents and follies are governed mainly by instincts hard-wired by genes is ludicrous.

Thanks to mirror neurons the human brain became specialized for culture, it became the organ of cultural diversity par excellence. It is for this reason (rather than moral reasons or political correctness) that we need to cherish and celebrate cultural diversity. To be culturally diverse is to be human and that's a good enough reason to celebrate. Indeed, mirror neurons may help bridge the huge gap between the "the two cultures", the sciences and the humanities, which CP Snow claimed could never be bridged. Based on all these ideas, I stand behind my pronouncement that "mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology", a prophesy already starting to come true. In fact when I saw Rizzollati at a meeting recently he complained, jokingly, that my off-the-wall remark is now quoted more often than all his original papers!

One could, I suppose, simulate mirror neuron-like activity in the brain in the vat — even simulate "culture" in a culture medium. There is nothing that logically forbids this but it would be virtually impossible in practice because of the contingent nature of culture; the fact that it depends crucially on the rapid spread of unique innovations, or "memes".
Who could program the "culture" into the brains in the vats without first having themselves discovered culture? One could also make a strong case for the idea that you cannot program innovation given its highly contingent nature and dependence on rare combinations of fortuitous circumstances. It is conceivable, though, that one could achieve a reasonable approximation of culture. Even if we could generate "fake" culture and create a reasonable simulacrum in the vat, the question arises: Would we ever want to? I confess I have a sentimental attachment to my "real " brain even though I can't defend my choice rationally. It may just be pure narcissism. But, under some circumstances to which people are subjected, whether a starving peasant in Bangladesh or a torture victim in a secret jail, I might easily be swayed to choose the brain in the vat!

I will conclude with a metaphysical question that cannot be answered by science. I cannot decide whether the question is utterly trivial or profound. I call it the "vantage point" problem foreshadowed by the Upanishads, ancient Indian philosophical texts composed in the second millennium BC, and by Erwin Schrödinger. I am referring to the fundamental asymmetry in the universe between the "subjective" private worldview vs. the objective world of physics.
Physics depends on the elimination of the subjective: there are no colors, only wavelengths; no frequency, only pitch; no warmth or cold, only kinetic activity of molecules; no subjective "self" or I, only neural activity. Physics doesn't need, and indeed doesn't acknowledge, the subjective "here and now", or the "I" who experiences the world. Yet to me, my "I" is everything. It's as if only one tiny corner of the space-time manifold is "illuminated" by the searchlight of my consciousness. Humankind, it would seem, is forever condemned to accept this schizophrenic view of reality; the "first person" account and the third person account.
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http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramacha ... index.html

[url] He makes the controversial claim that the repetitious behaviors characteristic of autism may arise from an unregulated mirror system.

Ouch, that hurts, now wait a minute, my autistic kid can empathize!

I can tell you that rocking and head-bumping are incredibly soothing, Willow. Like ... well better than anything I can think of. Maybe morphine. Or swimming in a quiet lake.

http://www.autismandempathy.com/?p=793
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As expected, mu wave suppression was recorded in the control subjects both when they moved and when they watched another human move. In other words, their mirror neuron systems acted normally. The mirror neurons of the subjects with autism spectrum disorders, however, responded anomalously—only to their own movement.

Actually, this is how I think it works: Mu waves (a subset of Alpha waves) have to do with perception. Stimming activates Mirror Neurons which in turn suppress Mu waves, so the overwhelming flood of perceptions stop. And so the melt-down is averted. Or attention can be focused to formulate language or whatever's at hand. Most people's Mirror Neurons are firing all the time, seeing people doing stuff, even on TV, so they aren't perceiving much. It makes sense in terms of adaptive physiology for either predator or prey – first perceive in great detail, then act with focus. That's Lantern/Spotlight attention again.

Of course, I haven't been able to find anyone saying that Mu waves have to do with perception, but I think it's a good hypothesis. Maybe someone here who knows more about brain function can give us more info.

Mu waves have been studied since the 1930s, and are referred to as the wicket rhythm because the rounded EEG waves resemble croquet wickets. In the 1950s, Gian Emilio Chatrian showed that the amplitude of mu waves could be suppressed by physical movements. Later studies showed that the simple intent to move, or certain other visual or mental tasks also can suppress mu wave amplitude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_wave

Here are the main two yea and nay studies re: mirror neuron dysfunction and autism:

Oberman, Lindsay M.; Edward M. Hubbarda; Joseph P. McCleery; Eric L. Altschulera; Vilayanur S. Ramachandran; Jaime A. Pineda (July 2005). "EEG evidence for mirror neuron dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders". Cognitive Brain Research 24 (2): 190-198.

Churchland, Patricia S. (2011). Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. Princeton University Press. pp. 156. ISBN 9780691137032.

[Plutonia]

Lucy

Series: L.A. Theatre Works
Length: 01:57:58

Is autism a disability...or an evolutionary adaptation?

In a thought-provoking new play, 13 year old Lucy, who suffers from autism, moves in with her estranged, misanthropic mother. Having lived her entire life with her father, Lucy, as well as her mom, struggle with all the difficulties of such an arrangement.

You can listen to it here: http://www.prx.org/pieces/72216-lucy

I didn't plan to listen to it, it just came on and grabbed me. If anyone checks it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

Hey, Elvis. I tried to listen to it a couple of times but couldn't get through it. Vivien's voice put my teeth on edge - is that the expression? Did you catch that she was sposed to be Apergerian, a la Temple Grandin? There's a difference between "hard" and "loud" that the actress didn't seem to grok.

And that word up there ^^^ "misanthropic"? What's that about?

My impression was that they worked really hard on the surfacey details but missed the subtle understory. Is it possible to describe a radio play about an autistic family cliche?

The main thing is that autistic quirks can be deeply odd, like they don't fit into any rational explanation, not even a rational mysticism and I didn't detect that sort of irrationality, just the usual story about "the difficulties" with the usual semi-mystical mystification.

I guess my point is the play represents Auties as "NT's with difficulties" and *something twinkly more*, but we are different. And surprising.

For example, spectrum folks seem to have an unusual sense of proportion, like Michelle Dawson who can't cook for herself but inserted herself into the Auton Case and blew it away with her astonishing lucid refutation of the petitioners case. She kicked their asses.
That's here if you want to have a look: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_fac.html

There's a great little program done by Alex Plank of Wrong Planet and a couple of Spectrum friends that I enjoy. If you haven't seen an Autie in action before (though I guess they are technically Aspies), you might want to have a look:



They make me chuckle the whole way through! I wonder if anyone else has the same response?

[Elvis]

Elvis wrote:
Quote:
Lucy

Series: L.A. Theatre Works (....)

(...) My impression was that they worked really hard on the surfacey details but missed the subtle understory. Is it possible to describe a radio play about an autistic family cliche?

The play did 'grab' me but I do share your criticisms above, based on my experience. And the play seems to flitter lightly around autism topics without bolstering its conclusion (if you can call it that) that autism is an evolutionary advance. I can't recall if I've mentioned that in the '90s I was the A/V coordinator for a national Autism Society convention; I was able to hear many of the presentations and learned a helluva lot. Along with the experts and professionals, many people from 'across the spectrum' were there, all very good-natured and often funny, displaying keen but quirky senses of humor. I later did some videotaping of panel discussions for the state Society.

An autistic boy in a family who my family was good friends with was a regular playmate of my brother's; it was through his mother that, years later, I got the Autism Society gig.

A close friend of mine was, for most of a year, the foster parent of a teenager with Asperger's. My friend was good with kids, and they (Catholic Community Services) sent him the "toughest cases"---the kids no one else wanted to deal with any more. That kid was a delight! My friend described him as "a teenage Tesla" and the first thing he did after moving in was crawl under the house and "fix the wiring." He was very good with electronics and could fix things, and had an elaborate component stereo setup in his room. His main focus was cars; at age 16 he completely rebuilt an old car and he could turn any conversation to cars. He had a clever sense of humor and would grin slyly when he made a joke at the expense of his foster father.

(They were doing really well, the boy was getting along fine, when the CCS "system" arbitrarily pulled him away to be sent to some other home. The kid begged not to be separated from my friend, who also advised against it. Frustrating. The bureaucracy made no sense whatever.)

And that word up there ^^^ "misanthropic"? What's that about?

Just some LATW copywriter's surfacey synopsis, I reckon.

Did you catch that she was sposed to be Apergerian, a la Temple Grandin? There's a difference between "hard" and "loud" that the actress didn't seem to grok.

I did catch that, but the hard/loud subtlety is over my head. I pictured her as Joan Crawford.

spectrum folks seem to have an unusual sense of proportion, like Michelle Dawson who can't cook for herself but inserted herself into the Auton Case and blew it away with her astonishing lucid refutation of the petitioners case.

I'm not familiar with that case, but a quick look shows a solid presentation.

There's a great little program done by Alex Plank of Wrong Planet and a couple of Spectrum friends that I enjoy.

Deee-lighted! I'm reminded of my friend's young foster-care ward.

BTW, autism came up, if you didn't see it, in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33849