a lot of scientists don’t act on scientific ideals; a lot of them are actually bad people, who in both their professional and private lives are trying to get whatever they can get away with.
This is something I haven’t mentioned even when writing or talking about something closely related, which is why you shouldn’t trust the conclusions of a scientific study. I mean, a single scientific study. Because, I say, a single scientific study is typically using a single model, or studying a single population; you don’t know if the results really generalize. Or there could have just been some honest mistake; my go-to example is the paper about the faster-than-light neutrino. One of my friends, when I broke the news (apparently he hadn’t heard) that this turned out to be an artifact, he was kind of angry at the authors. But, although I don’t know the details, I don’t think they did anything wrong; my understanding is they made the measurement and they reported it. What would have been wrong would be to not report the measurement because they know the conclusion is impossible. So, even when everyone is acting as they should, sometimes the conclusion of a paper is misleading. That’s why we have reviews and meta-analyses, which can cite hundreds of studies. That’s how we know what’s really a general principle, that’s how we can make statements about what’s happening in the real world instead of one laboratory or one population.
But it must also be remembered that everyone is not acting as they should, so you have even more false and misleading results than you would in the best case scenario. These people will happily publish results that do not meet the standards of evidence of their field, if no one is forcing them to meet the standards of evidence of their field, and reviewers usually do not catch everything.
the fact that placebos can work even when you know they’re placebos is so fucked up. what the hell is up with the brain
like some kind of fucked up wrinkled goblin that won’t unlock the chemical secrets if you just ask politely, you have to give it some kind of pill. you can tell it that the pill doesn’t do shit, but it doesn’t care, it just wants the pill
A few years ago I had the privilege of proof-reading a dissertation on drug addiction interventions which touched on the placebo effect (because it turns out successful addiction interventions share the basic elements of the placebo effect: a desire to get better, a change in one’s beliefs about one’s condition, and a positive relationship with a trusted authority figure).
How the placebo effect works, in terms of feedback between the brain and (presumably) the inflammatory system, is still unknown. But the logic of why the placebo effect should happen is not that mysterious. There are two basic principles.
One, pain is protective. A lot of the conditions we take medicines for are in fact interim defence mechanisms. Pain stops us doing things that damage our bodies. Fever kills pathogens. Vomiting gets rid of poisons. Fainting cuts the work-load on the heart.
Two, healing takes resources. Before the body commits to expending those resources fully it needs to be certain they’re not needed for something else, like fighting off a secondary bacterial infection. And of course the circumstances in which we get sick in the first place are the same circumstances in which we might want to hold resources in reserve for dealing with further assaults on the body.
This means that our healing systems will stay in the interim condition until they get a signal of some kind to let them know that our circumstances have changed and full healing is a good investment now. What part of our body processes that kind of complex information? The brain, that’s what.
The information basically needs to take the form: “Something external has changed and we have confirmation that as a result we are going to recover from this condition.” Apparently our healing systems can tell when we’re just making it up to jolly them along.
The logic is presumably the same in most species, but in humans, being language-users, that external change can take the form of someone whom we trust to know what they’re talking about saying “These pills will do the trick. Drop into the pharmacy on your way home and hand them this bit of paper.”
Most likely the signal from the brain takes the form of some kind of hormone, triggered by a new emotional state.
The word for the subjective experience of that emotional state? Hope.
one of the most important things ive learned from upper level biology education so far is that dna isnt the god-like all-powerful beacon of similarity between all living beings on the face of the earth as high school science textbooks will lead u to believe but actually is, in fact, the molecular equivalent of a smoldering dumpster fire that’s in a constant state of chaos and cellular scandal like some highlights:
-the parts of dna that just casually detach on a physical level from the main strand, do some sick skateboard tricks in the cytoplasm, and land somewhere else with 43552342 copies
-the parts that would do A Thing if they wern’t physically spooled up so tightly that the Make Thing Happen machinery couldnt get to them
-the dna thats in ur mitochondria bc the mitochondria used to be a bacteria that our bigger, buffer cellular ancestors just vored in the primordial ooze
-the dna that’s in chloroplasts in plants for the same reason
-rna….bitches be crazy like what is she gonna do next?? o she gonna act like a protein now and do shit?? im on the edge of my seat
-sometimes u just gotta make more chromosomes man like sometimes u just be hanging out and u gotta make ur genome 64 sizes larger and then change ur mind only 100,000 years later and delete half of it and thats just how it is on this bitch of an earth
-random shit from like 5 BCE is just casually left over everywhere like no susan i told u to leave that gene alone we might need it to fight dinosaurs again u just never know!!!!!
dna is earth’s biggest and brightest train wreck and honestly i wouldnt trust a dna molecule to water my plants let alone run my body but here we fucking are
This is how the solar system is actually moving as it traverses the galaxy.
omfg
So beAutiful
Wait
Yeah it’s not circular as you’ve been taught. It does revolve around the sun, but like every other star, the sun travels, and pulls us too. Fih-boe-nah-chi
and just where the fuck are we going
ask the sun
Sun *yall don’t contribute to gas money so don’t ask me shit*
my thesis involves this principle! in fluids, viscosity (the thickness/stickiness of the fluid) and inertia (the tendency of something to stay in motion when a force is exerted) are in competition. glycerin is incredibly viscous, so the viscosity beats the inertia and the dye doesn’t shift beyond where it is immediately pushed–so exerting an equal and opposite force on the dye just puts it back to its exactly original position.
Laziness: I’d rather sit here than pick up those clothes
Executive Dysfunction: I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes why am I still watching this thing on Netflix while sitting down c’mon stand up I need to pick up those clothes I need to pick up those clothes I need to-
The Kind Of Actual Pathology-of-Motivation Associated With Major Depressive Disorder*: I know I need to pick up those clothes, and if I don’t pick up those clothes my quality of life will continue to decline, and theoretically the consequences of picking up those clothes are ones I don’t want, and if I don’t pick up those clothes they will get wrinkled and dirty again and I won’t have clean clothes to wear, but my life is an undifferentiated mass of grey and despite knowing all of these things I cannot actually make myself fucking care I will just stay here and stare at the clothes while Netflix plays until it stops. And tell myself how fucking lazy, stupid and useless I am because if I weren’t I would realize that I need to pick up those clothes and make myself do it. This is totally fine.
[yes, this is actually separate from executive dysfunction; it’s also a symptom of illness, a potentially really serious one, and tends to spring from complications due to anhedonia, or lack of the ability to experience positive stimuli] [it is also often COMORBID – that is, happening at the same time – with executive dysfunction]
Can you expand on how “i just can’t care” is different from “lazy”? Is it the internal ability to care, that it’s just lacking, whereas with laziness you have the capacity to do the thing, you just choose not to. I’m having trouble with cementing the actual explanation. Laziness is a values thing and the rest is a base-functionality thing?
In terms of what I meant, the crux there is cannot make myself.
Say I’m being lazy with my afternoon, and someone I know comes in and says, “You need to stop being lazy and do the thing, or Bad Consequence will happen.” And the consequence is genuinely bad.
For instance, say I’m Not Cleaning the Kitchen and someone comes to me and says, “You need to clean the kitchen or you’re going to get ants”. And they’re even right.
If I’m being lazy, and I agree that now that I think about it, ants aren’t good, I don’t want ants, I kick my own ass, get up and clean the kitchen. This is based on the ability of my brain to literally experience a Reward, a Positive State, from having a cleaner kitchen and not having ants.
If I’m having catastrophic anhedonic motivation failure? That doesn’t work. It’s not that I want to stay on the couch more than I don’t want to have ants. It’s that I can’t make myself care about EITHER state because it’s all fucking horrible. Nothing gets better. I might as well fucking have ants. I deserve ants. Look at me I can’t even fucking keep my kitchen clean I don’t even WANT my kitchen clean obviously since I’m still lying here so fuck it, I’ll just lie here and have ants. Oh look now I have ants. Isn’t that fantastic proof of how fucking awful I am.
Of course the entire thing is usually not that articulated in the brain, you know? This whole thing is an example. Usually it’s more like:
Laziness: … meh put away clothes later. Executive Dysfunction: *want to put away clothes* *constantly stall on the initial cognitive step of How To Put Away Clothes* *get more and more distressed/stressed about not putting away clothes* *keep stalling* *cry* Anhedonic Lack of Motivation: *lie there. stare at clothes. know clothes should probably go away. can even think of whole set of steps to put away clothes.* *cannot fucking feel anything about putting away clothes* *stalls out forever in pit of ‘why do i even fucking bother i should lie here and rot’* *uses fact that clothes have not been put away as evidence*
But the original form is pithier and has better rhythm.
So, it looks the same to a third party, but it feels/behaves differently on the inside
Well yes. They ALL look the same to a third party, at least casually – that’s the point.
If you know the person it’s pretty easy to see the difference (the general aura of misery and disinterest in anything else in the universe is a big hint).
This is something I wish was more widely understood. Executive dysfunction has become known about in my irl circles and while there’s definitely one or two for which this a problem most of the rest seem to use it as an explanation for the symptoms of unmanaged depression. As a society we are really bad at recognising the flat, empty, grey gaping maw that eats time and quietly lets us ruin our lives through neglectful apathy. Because that’s laziness, right? So I can understand wanting an explanation that doesn’t relegate blame. The problem is the most easily accessible, without further stigma (eg. depression as a moral failing) is an incorrect one, and genuinely unhelpful. Not the same strategies to address, plus depression can use more brain broken to feed to ifs narrative of I Hate You.
I mean: executive dysfunction is also a symptom of depression, and like I noted they’re often very much comorbid. I have had whole periods where what made my life fall apart was the total demise of my executive function.
But yes, executive dysfunction and anhedonic lack of motivation are actually different things, and they also require different things to fix.
And gods yeah, I think that the way that anhedonia – the actual impairment or destruction of your ability to experience positive emotions and stimulus – is something that needs way, way more attention, w/r/t how it works and how it affects your ability to function.
i wonder if theres such a thing as a disconnect between the action and the reward–as in you do feel a reward from doing something, it’s just that while you’re not doing it you sort of can’t believe in or don’t care about the reward? and so it doesn’t seem worth doing, but then if you do somehow get forced or just do it in a random fit of motivation the reward does happen, it’s not gone.
Fuck yeah! The brain reward system is a major problem in most disorders of motivation and executive function. Sciency links:
Forest fires are so weird. On what other planet do you just suddenly have such a violent chemical reaction? Idk probably none cause on what other planet do you have a bunch of carbon-carbon bonds sitting immersed in a bunch of oxygen? It’s not a stable situation, and after the fire has to be restored with solar power
Venus!
Fun Venus fact: it has fewer craters on its surface than you’d expect, and they all look suspiciously young. As far as we can tell, the whole surface of Venus is not that much more than a half billion years old. So what makes this so?
It is Earth-sized, which is theoretically enough to sustain tectonic activity. But we don’t see traditional plates there. Remember that Earth’s tectonic plates come in two flavors: continental plates, which are long-lived and low density, floating high in the mantle, and oceanic plates, which are heavier, younger, and are continually refreshed, spreading out from the center of the oceans and being subducted back in to the mantle where they collide with the continents.
As an incidental consequence, this means that a lot of ocean water gets sucked up in to the mantle during the subduction process. Water is very much unstable at tectonic pressures and temperatures, so it usually finds its way back out to the surface as a volcanic gas or something, but in the meantime there’s enough of it down there to lubricate the movement of the plates. Basically on the same principle that makes wastewater injection cause small earthquakes during the fracking process.
Now, Venus is likely to have had liquid water oceans at some point, but the runaway greenhouse effect has long since boiled them off. This means that a)the weight of the oceans doesn’t land disproportionately on a subsets of the plates, and b)there’s no water being pulled down there to keep the plates well-greased. So nowadays on Venus, subduction just… doesn’t happen. The plates are too rigid and dry, too homogeneous. So they stay locked in place relative to one another.
That means Venus has volcanoes but not really earthquakes. The energy that would be released in the motion of plates just builds, and builds, and builds. Until it doesn’t any more. Every [n] hundred million years or so, Venus has its one earthquake, which carries all the accumulated energy of all the earthquakes that ever happened on Earth between now and the Cambrian era, all at once.
This is enough to melt the entire surface and then some. The whole crust, all the mountains and valley networks and continents and basins and everything that floats on the fluid mantle, is subducted all at once, falling back in the planet’s interior. Then, with the whole planet molten, the surface can cool enough to form a new crust.
Anyway, that’s why global warming is bad.
Holy fuck
The whole crust
Melts
All at once????
#amazing
alarming for my Venusian real estate portfolio if true
The fact that the location of the world’s oldest tree has to be kept secret encapsulates everything that’s bad about humanity.
There’s a story about that, actually.
According to the smithsonianmag.com, the world’s oldest bristlecone pine was a nearly 5,000 year old tree later named Prometheus. In 1964, a man named Donald Rusk Currey decided to use an increment borer to determine its age (a process that cuts a small hole into the center of the tree trunk, and is not intended to kill the tree). Unfortunately, the borer got stuck. He and a park ranger cut the tree down to remove the equipment, and when they counted the tree rings, they realized their mistake. Oops. This incident lead to better protection of the remaining bristlecone pines.
There’s some wiggle room about what can be called “the world’s oldest living tree.” The world’s oldest living single tree is the tree that the OP is referring to. Its name is Methuselah,and it is also around 5,000 years old. Since its location is unknown, nobody knows what it looks like. But it might be this tree here:
But technically, it isn’t the oldest living tree. Let me explain.
It turns out that root systems of trees can send up genetically identical saplings (aka clones) via their root systems. Like so:
Which means the original trunk can die, but since the root system is attached to other trees which give it nutrients, it lives on. The root system can theoretically do this indefinitely. So the tree trunks could be fairly young, but the roots could be large and very, very, very old. So the oldest “tree” isn’t a small grove, it’s a logic-defyingforest.
I’d like you to meet Pando.
This male quaking aspen covers 106 acres and is ancient. I’m talking an estimate of 80,000 years. The trees you can see are just “shoots” he sent up, and their average age is 130 years old. He is his own forest. If trees could talk, I’d love to hear what he had to say.
He might be dying, due to insects and drought (hmm, wonder what could have happened to cause that). A section of Pando is being studied in an attempt to find a solution. But in the meantime, we can enjoy him for his beauty.
By looking at the layers beneath our feet, geologists have been able to identify and describe crucial episodes in life’s history. These key events frame the chapters in the story of life on earth and the system we use to bind all these chapters together is the Geologic Time Scale.
oh cool. i hadn’t actually grasped the different measurements.
why do jellyfish only sting when theres physical contact
why doesnt the electricity just surge throughout the entire ocean
why dont jellyfish rule the world
Fun fact! Jellyfish don’t use electricity to sting you. Whenever they feel pressure against their tentacles, it causes its cells to rapidly send out these stingers into your skin that then release its venom. Like this:
They are called nematocysts. They are what make box jellies and other fun lil critters so dangerous, because without these wee little daggers, the venom would have no way to get into your skin.
And yet something as thin as nylon stockings or pantyhose is enough to protect you, they are so small.
So if you’re scared of jellyfish? Wear sexy sheer undergarments into the sea like the regal creature you are.
I’m going to reblog this again because that is some of the best advice I have ever gotten on this blog.
just moving along like everyone else 