Seth's Blog

I have always stopped self-experimenting when I travel because so much changes. Surely I will sleep differently, etc., far from home. However, it is not so obvious my arithmetic speed (how fast I do arithmetic problems such as 6 + 3) will change. I am measuring arithmetic speed as part of my study of omega-3 (directory).

I recently spent a week in Los Angeles. For the first time I continued self-experimentation while traveling. When I arrived I bought a bottle of flaxseed oil. I continued to take 4 T/day and did the same mental-function tests I do at home: arithmetic, memory-scanning, and balance. I have described these tests in other posts.

My balance was much worse in Los Angeles, apparently because what I see during the test changed (because the floor and other surroundings are different). I hadn’t realized how much that mattered. My arithmetic and memory-scanning results were roughly the same as the results at home — that is, until the last day. This graph shows arithmetic speeds:

This graph shows memory-scanning results:

The sudden improvement on the last day — also clear in the balance test — was a big surprise. It was too large to be due to practice, nor could it be due to being in LA — the previous 5 measurements were also in LA. It did, however, have a ready explanation: The previous night I had gotten back late and had forgotten to take the oil. So instead of taking 4 T at 11 pm I took it at 7 am. I did the tests at about noon. Instead of 8 or 9 hours between oil ingestion and test, in this case the difference was 5 hours.

If this explanation is correct, there is a short-lived effect of flaxseed oil on brain function — present 5 hours after ingestion but absent or weaker 8 hours later. Which, as a scientist, makes me say “Wow!” If this effect exists, it’s a new tool, the most precious and powerful thing in science. I can use it to compare amounts of flaxseed oil, oils (e.g., fish oil), and foods (e.g., salmon).

My current way of measuring omega-3 effects requires one/day tests repeated for weeks. When I reduced the amount of flaxseed oil I was taking from 4 T/day to nothing, it took more than a day with the lower dose before performance even went down, and many more days before performance stabilized. This meant that experiments had to last several weeks. If the new effect exists, it will allow much faster experiments.

An article in this week’s BMJ about problems with clinical trials makes some of the points I made in a recent post. The article is based on a London conference held last week. In my post, I said the evaluation of the Shangri-La Diet going on at the SLD forums was in many ways better than a clinical trial.

At the conference, a speaker complained that

key groups of participants were often excluded from clinical studies

I pointed out that anyone could post at the SLD forums.

Doug Altman, professor of statistics in medicine at Oxford University, said that the presentation of statistical results of clinical trials “lacked transparency and precluded any further analysis.”

I said that the forums are more transparent.

Paul Glasziou, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, warned that many clinical trials described treatments that were difficult to replicate in normal clinical settings.

I said that the forums were more realistic — meaning that the treatments being tested were closer to what actually could happen.

Sicko is a great movie, one of the most emotion-evoking films I have ever seen. In this interview

Moore says something that is at the heart of Sicko:

They [HMOs] are required by law . . . to maximize profits for their shareholders. That’s what the law requires them to do. The way they can maximize profits is to deny care, is to not pay out claims. The more claims they pay, the less profit they make. You should never have the idea of profit enter into a health decision. We wouldn’t allow it for the fire department or the police department. We wouldn’t say, well, you know, we’ve got to be sure the fire department posts a profit. We wouldn’t turn it over to a private company, have investors invest in it, say, well, some people are going to get fire protection and other people aren’t. We wouldn’t allow that, would we? It would be immoral.

This is what Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs is all about. Jacobs argued that there are two sets of “moral” rules — one appropriate for “guardians” (such as firemen, police and doctors), the other appropriate for “traders” (business people) — and that the two should not be mixed. When guardians follow commercial rules or when traders follow guardian rules, bad things happen. Sicko is about the bad things that happen when doctors follow commercial rules and how these bad things are avoided when (in other countries) doctors follow guardian rules.

“Religion is extremely important to the Tibetans,” says Wikipedia, but what does that mean? The Tibetan Buddhism entry is no help. Last night at dinner, however, I did learn what it means, at least in part. Tibetans spend a vast amount of time on religious observances — what the observer (Bryan Ng, a Berkeley engineer) called a “religion tax.” One example was a well-observed month-long annual religious festival. Another was a sensationally slow method of travel: Take a step or two, bow down, lie down on the ground, get up, take another step, bow down, and so on. This method is used to cover long distances, such as 20 miles or more. The extremely devout do this along highways.

The Chinese government wants to reduce the influence of religion, he said. Goods imported into Tibet from China via the new railway should increase commerce, for example. The power of the Chinese government makes it likely they will succeed.

• Diversity in Learning (article)
• How Economics Shaped Human Nature (talk)
• A Theory of Human Evolution and Application to Education (short article)
• How Economics Shaped Human Nature: A Theory of Evolution (book chapter)

posts

• Christmas rituals and gifts
• American Idol side-by-side comparison
• scrapbooking art and artists
• business book specialization
• music video side-by-side comparison
• diet sodas side-by-side comparison
• omiyage rituals and gifts
• blogs and fan clubs spread of technical knowledge
• red stained glass early art = material science
• fancy chocolates connoisseurship and gift rituals support material science
• computer chips art = material science
• amazon.com gift wrapping and material science
• Planet Earth relation to the Aquatic Ape theory
• guitars/do animals like music? enjoyment of music supports material science
• art and quasi-reinforcement art and quasi-reinforcement act as ramps
• the pleasure of crafts
• language
• early value system artisanal values
• intricate art desire for intricacy advances technology
• Henry Rosenthal Pennant Collection collectors support skilled artisans
• Make magazine the hobby instinct
• osechi holidays support artisans
• Easter tradition holidays support artisans
• gift cards gifts support artisans
• frugal materials love of art –> material-science research
• the cellphone effect the first words facilitated trade
• micropygmies hunter-gatherers with trade different from those without trade
• autism autistic “obsessions” reveal a universal tendency toward expertise
• Fourth of July holidays increase demand for finely-made stuff
• Chinese birthday gift gifts support artisans in a different culture
• fixing bike pumps single words help traders find each other
• the curious case of to have to have is different from other verbs, which supports the idea that language was first used to tell who has what
• bells figured heavily in the beginning of metallurgy
• Beijing furniture shopping illustrates points about taste, decoration, and the attractiveness of matching stuff
• good-luck charms help skilled craftsmen make a living
• aniline dyes were the first industrial chemicals — an example of art as stepping stone
• a baseball-park collector/connoisseur
• caganers are a traditional part of Barcelona nativity scenes

This clever and attractive music video creates images out of repetition of dice numbers — pictures of dice showing 1, 2, etc. It illustrates the general point that we like to see identical or nearly-identical things side by side. A vast amount of decoration (wallpaper, rugs, packages, posters, architectural details) takes advantage of this.

It’s a curious propensity because we don’t see this pattern in nature: we don’t see identical things side by side, neatly lined up. So the propensity did not evolve so that people will prefer Place X to Place Y. It’s a propensity that causes us to place similar things side by side — if we have a doll collection, for example, to put our dolls side by side rather than far apart.

When we put things side by side it is far easier to notice small differences. Noticing small differences is the first step toward caring about small differences, deriving pleasure and displeasure from them — becoming a connoisseur, in other words. Connoisseurs pay more for “fine” stuff than the rest of us — wine connoisseurs pay more for wine, for example. In human prehistory, I theorize, connoisseurs supported artists and artisans, who were the first material scientists.

The pleasure we take from identical things side by side evolved because it increased connoisseurship. Supermarkets should do more side-by-side sampling of different products in the same category — different balsamic vinegars, for example.

Directory for this series.

The education improvement program — merit pay for teachers as part of a larger package — promoted by the Milken Family Foundation received a big public boost last week with this NY Times article about a similar program in Minnesota.

A consensus is building across the political spectrum that rewarding teachers with bonuses or raises for improving student achievement, working in lower income schools or teaching subjects that are hard to staff can energize veteran teachers and attract bright rookies to the profession. . . Minnesota’s experience shows . . . that an incentive plan created with union input can draw teacher support.

The plan that is gaining support was devised by Lowell Milken, according to Jana Rausch, who works for the Milken Family Foundation on this initiative. Before he started the foundation, Lowell Milken was a lawyer. As far as education goes, he is self-taught. Yet the program he devised seems to be working better than other programs. Of course many people have proposed merit pay for teachers; but it is the Milken Family Foundation that has managed to make it work. We need engineers to build a better plane. But we do not need education experts, apparently, to build better schools.

1. foreign-aid experts
2. medical doctors
3. book writers
4. clinical trials
5. psychotherapists
6. psychotherapists again
7. education experts
8. spiritual experts
9. clinical trials again
10. book reviewers
11. journalists
12. expert vs math models
13. ICU doctors
14. fugu processors
15. surgeons
16. opticians
17. medical doctors again
18. psoriasis treatment
19. mothers (parenting advice)

Among the community of psychotherapists, according to Dr. Marion Arom, a psychotherapist friend of mine, “it is common knowledge that in many traditional therapies, if the therapy fails — if the desired change doesn’t occur — it’s due to client resistance or lack of motivation to change or unconscious motivation. The role or skill of the therapist is not examined, ever.”

Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs has a chapter about the failure of highly-respected professions to police themselves.

Directory of Twilight of Expertise posts.

I heard about [the Shangri-La] diet from someone on a discussion group I’m part of and it sounded like total bunk. . . . This person pushes my buttons, so I decided I would test the diet. If it worked, I’d lose some unhealthy weight (three pregnancies combined with the stress of recent years left me 40 pounds overweight for my height), and if it didn’t work, I’d have the satisfaction of proving her wrong. It was a win/win.

I chuckle every time I read this. It continues:

I eliminated my two daily Cokes . . . from my diet and replaced them with the equivalent amount of liquid and calories from sugar water. I’ve been less hungry and losing weight ever since. Damn her!

Speaking of SLD and blogs and good writing. This has nothing to do with SLD.