I have been actually reading about long-term sleep deprivation and it is me. It really explains a lot, not just the acute problems in the last few years.
Sleep deprivation is often not unpleasant and that might effect whether or not an individual chooses to do anything about me. Anyone who knows me like from my college or even sleepover days knows that I liked to stay up all night. I used to thrive on it as a way to get extra hours of productivity during the day. Slade used to have me drive all day and night when we went on trips because it seemed to not affect me.
But that is because of the difference in some individuals' response to sleep loss. Some people get more tired some people get LESS tired. Slade used to beg me to try to sleep after a while because I didn't think there was anything wrong with it and I didn't seem to need it. I definitely didn't get more tired.
But those who claim that they need sleep are the ones that have the proper sleep-tiredness relationship. I definitely have the opposite one in which I get less tired and even less inhibited and I actually felt good. There are some studies in which sleep deprivation is used to cure depression because it tends to make people manic.
So I got the reputation of not needing sleep but the thing was I needed it all along, just as much as the people who get tired. So I used to not even care until the last few years where I obviously passed some sort of tolerance threshold.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
How far you can trust social scientists
Linguistics is one of the social sciences but not typically one of the ones that makes important sociological observations. Well actually it turns out that no one makes important sociological observations, because most of the observations that end up getting made are 100 percent wrong. The latest one is the theory of dysgenics. Actually that is a loaded term.
Dysgenics means doing something that is contrary to the benefit of the gene pool. And there were not that many things in that category. One of the very few of them was that women who are uneducated have more children than the women that aren't, as noted by the precipitous drop in world fertility rates.
Oh yeah, did all of you know that fertility rates are dropping? For them to drop in the first place was itself not predicted by social scientists, who all subscribed to a population bomb theory that the world is destroying itself because human beings are having too many offspring. Well, that might not be how everyone looks at it because often human beings are not viewed as part of the planet but part only of what is destroying the planet by its offensive behaviors like aresol cans and children. In the 1960's Paul Erlich of Stanford popularized the "one child" ethos because he made a bunch of predictions that human beings would either destoy themselves or the planet (whatever came first) by having too many children.
The problem with Erlich in particular and social science (my opinion) in general is that they do not make accurate predictions. And in my opinion there is no need for any predictions at all if they don't come true. It is interesting that all of these dire doomsday environmentalist theories have not come true but have still ended up causing major changes in human reproductive behavior. Well that is the theory anyway, even if it isn't an accurate one. It seems to me that all of this money and effort poured into the environmentalist movement is a waste of time because it has been geared toward averting a disaster that wasn't really going to happen anyway.
Back to why the population theory is wrong. Well no one knows, really. They just know that it hasn't been right. They don't even know to what extent it can be disproven. It is just obvious that it isn't all happening like Erlich et all said it would. He predicted that we were eating and throwing garbage away so fast that we would destroy the planet, but he wasn't even right about either how fast we are reproducing or its effect on the environment.
Because even though Erlich UNDERESTIMATED the number of human beings there would be at the end of the century, he OVERESTIMATED the amount of damage they would cause to the ecosystem. Meaning that there are even more people around right now but that it isn't cauing environmental catastrophe. That is because on of the original social scientists (in his day he was an economist but there is not must distinction anymore) Thomas Malthus predicted a linear relationshp between an organism and its environment.
The thing that Malthus got wrong, among others, was that the relationship between human beings and their environment can be manipulated. We are not like grazing cattle who will only limit their own voraciousness when we have eaten it all and we begin to starve to death. We can avoid eating up our entire environment and we can also create more of it. We don't just move on to other pastures, we can create greener ones that sustain more of us. Also not only can we avoid having a bad consequence on the environment we can have a beneficial environment, UNLIKE ANY OTHER ORGANISM ON THE PLANET. This is leaving Malthus now.
We are probably the only organism that is capable of developing a technology that will be able to actually avert an environmental catastrophe a la ones caused by bacteria pre-Cambrian explosion. Meaning that also the degree to which we reproduce can actually be beneficial to the environment, and the riskiest thing is that we not reproduuce fast enough to evolve a solution that will save the planet from eventual destruction, such as being obliterated by a meteorite.
Dysgenics means doing something that is contrary to the benefit of the gene pool. And there were not that many things in that category. One of the very few of them was that women who are uneducated have more children than the women that aren't, as noted by the precipitous drop in world fertility rates.
Oh yeah, did all of you know that fertility rates are dropping? For them to drop in the first place was itself not predicted by social scientists, who all subscribed to a population bomb theory that the world is destroying itself because human beings are having too many offspring. Well, that might not be how everyone looks at it because often human beings are not viewed as part of the planet but part only of what is destroying the planet by its offensive behaviors like aresol cans and children. In the 1960's Paul Erlich of Stanford popularized the "one child" ethos because he made a bunch of predictions that human beings would either destoy themselves or the planet (whatever came first) by having too many children.
The problem with Erlich in particular and social science (my opinion) in general is that they do not make accurate predictions. And in my opinion there is no need for any predictions at all if they don't come true. It is interesting that all of these dire doomsday environmentalist theories have not come true but have still ended up causing major changes in human reproductive behavior. Well that is the theory anyway, even if it isn't an accurate one. It seems to me that all of this money and effort poured into the environmentalist movement is a waste of time because it has been geared toward averting a disaster that wasn't really going to happen anyway.
Back to why the population theory is wrong. Well no one knows, really. They just know that it hasn't been right. They don't even know to what extent it can be disproven. It is just obvious that it isn't all happening like Erlich et all said it would. He predicted that we were eating and throwing garbage away so fast that we would destroy the planet, but he wasn't even right about either how fast we are reproducing or its effect on the environment.
Because even though Erlich UNDERESTIMATED the number of human beings there would be at the end of the century, he OVERESTIMATED the amount of damage they would cause to the ecosystem. Meaning that there are even more people around right now but that it isn't cauing environmental catastrophe. That is because on of the original social scientists (in his day he was an economist but there is not must distinction anymore) Thomas Malthus predicted a linear relationshp between an organism and its environment.
The thing that Malthus got wrong, among others, was that the relationship between human beings and their environment can be manipulated. We are not like grazing cattle who will only limit their own voraciousness when we have eaten it all and we begin to starve to death. We can avoid eating up our entire environment and we can also create more of it. We don't just move on to other pastures, we can create greener ones that sustain more of us. Also not only can we avoid having a bad consequence on the environment we can have a beneficial environment, UNLIKE ANY OTHER ORGANISM ON THE PLANET. This is leaving Malthus now.
We are probably the only organism that is capable of developing a technology that will be able to actually avert an environmental catastrophe a la ones caused by bacteria pre-Cambrian explosion. Meaning that also the degree to which we reproduce can actually be beneficial to the environment, and the riskiest thing is that we not reproduuce fast enough to evolve a solution that will save the planet from eventual destruction, such as being obliterated by a meteorite.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Exercise for weight GAIN???
Recently I have been meaning to try to implement some sort of exercise routine, but for completely the opposite reason that most people do it. I hate exercise, but I think that is because mainly I have few reasons to think I need to. Mainly I haven't really seen the point, but I have to remind myself that that is only because of the reputation that exercise has nowadays as being a cure for whatever ails ANYONE.
Longevity is not an issue for me, nor is cardio-vascular health, as I normally outdo those I know that are exercisers in terms of wearing out. I went to New York with a friend that is up every day at 6 jogging for an hour, among other people who exercise much more than I do, and I noticed right away that they wore out much faster in the day than I did (in fact they all complained LOUDLY about my sightseeing pace), which was funny to me as an avid partaker of stationery activities primarily.
Anyway, as I have not really ever thought of needing to use exercise to loose weight, and in our culture that is primarily what it is associated with. In fact I have exercised even LESS in the last few years because I haven't felt well in other ways and I have not had any appetite, dropping 20 lbs. When your back kills you you don't FEEL like exercising even though you aren't any less comfortable running than sitting. But the irony is that I think the less active I have become the less I feel like eating, and it tends to be a vicious cycle that way to where I literally have no energy because I don't eat. Today for instance I ate two pieces of fish in addition to my prenatal vitamins, probably loosing some more fat today meaning I will eventually have to force feed myself something like ice cream which I do eventually.
It makes me wonder what exercise does to those that try it as a primary method of weight loss. It is obvious to me that those who rely on exercise without also attempting to modify their diet usually fail. I think that traditionally people blame this on overestimating how many calories that exercise actually burns, which turns out to not be a great amount over what is needed for just primary respiratory purposes.
This makes a lot of sense evolutionarily. More active people probably adjust to how active they are without needing significantly more food intake, or else it would be a lot harder to simply stay alive if you are active, and it turns out that evolution favors active people usually rather than punishing them. Also this can be explained in mathematical terms. I think a lot of people consider non-exercise like sleep or lying there as 0 and jogging as 100 in terms of rate of burning calories but it is probably more like 70 to 100, with simply maintaining bodily functions being a significant percentage of what is necessary, depending on physiology. I have a very high muscle tone naturally without exercise, seriously my muscles are rock hard like a man's so that is probably some part of why I seem to have a high metabolism, and why I probably dropped weight so fast after being unable to support it with eating a lot.
It also is an interesting theory for anyone needing to loose weight. Most people take to the gym or put on jogging shoes this time of year when they have resolved to loose a few, but a lot more effective method in my experience would be mimicking my lifestyle over the past five years. Try to be really really still without doing anything for two weeks, and I swear you won't feel like eating a bite. And since it is really food intake that counts, and exercising not that much more of a burden on the body than simply lying their immobile, I think it would do the trick.
Ever hear of the phrase "working up an appetite?" I think that the concept must be somewhere in folk wisdom even if popular culture has adjusted to the notion that skinny people exercise. Skinny people might, as it eventually becomes very difficult to be active if people are very overweight and usually healthy behavior clusters together, meaning that MOST of the time if someone has gone through the trouble of working out (at least for the purposes of loosing weight) they have also adjusted the amount they eat.
I would be interested if anyone tried it. I am going to be trying the opposite, that is if I can find a way to overcome my great inertia against exercise. People assume that I am not healthy because it is true I have been sick the last few years, but that doesn't mean I am easily fatigued or can't walk or run. Probably my inability to sleep (really my one and only health problem even though it is a serious one and hard to solve, well impossible actually) is related to the fact that I DON'T tire easily and need a whole heck of a lot of activity, more than I feel like performing, before my body feels worn out.
So I am cardio-vascular gold (my genes tend toward people whose tickers need to be stopped because everything else wears out first) and comfort-wise I swear I do even better running than I do just sitting or standing, and up until recently I thought that must be my imagination. But it really does make sense that I actually experience less pain when I am walking or running than when I am stationary. My chiropractor says that is because the muscles need to become rigid when holding the body in a sitting or standing position and they can become more relaxed when maintaining fluid motion.
Longevity is not an issue for me, nor is cardio-vascular health, as I normally outdo those I know that are exercisers in terms of wearing out. I went to New York with a friend that is up every day at 6 jogging for an hour, among other people who exercise much more than I do, and I noticed right away that they wore out much faster in the day than I did (in fact they all complained LOUDLY about my sightseeing pace), which was funny to me as an avid partaker of stationery activities primarily.
Anyway, as I have not really ever thought of needing to use exercise to loose weight, and in our culture that is primarily what it is associated with. In fact I have exercised even LESS in the last few years because I haven't felt well in other ways and I have not had any appetite, dropping 20 lbs. When your back kills you you don't FEEL like exercising even though you aren't any less comfortable running than sitting. But the irony is that I think the less active I have become the less I feel like eating, and it tends to be a vicious cycle that way to where I literally have no energy because I don't eat. Today for instance I ate two pieces of fish in addition to my prenatal vitamins, probably loosing some more fat today meaning I will eventually have to force feed myself something like ice cream which I do eventually.
It makes me wonder what exercise does to those that try it as a primary method of weight loss. It is obvious to me that those who rely on exercise without also attempting to modify their diet usually fail. I think that traditionally people blame this on overestimating how many calories that exercise actually burns, which turns out to not be a great amount over what is needed for just primary respiratory purposes.
This makes a lot of sense evolutionarily. More active people probably adjust to how active they are without needing significantly more food intake, or else it would be a lot harder to simply stay alive if you are active, and it turns out that evolution favors active people usually rather than punishing them. Also this can be explained in mathematical terms. I think a lot of people consider non-exercise like sleep or lying there as 0 and jogging as 100 in terms of rate of burning calories but it is probably more like 70 to 100, with simply maintaining bodily functions being a significant percentage of what is necessary, depending on physiology. I have a very high muscle tone naturally without exercise, seriously my muscles are rock hard like a man's so that is probably some part of why I seem to have a high metabolism, and why I probably dropped weight so fast after being unable to support it with eating a lot.
It also is an interesting theory for anyone needing to loose weight. Most people take to the gym or put on jogging shoes this time of year when they have resolved to loose a few, but a lot more effective method in my experience would be mimicking my lifestyle over the past five years. Try to be really really still without doing anything for two weeks, and I swear you won't feel like eating a bite. And since it is really food intake that counts, and exercising not that much more of a burden on the body than simply lying their immobile, I think it would do the trick.
Ever hear of the phrase "working up an appetite?" I think that the concept must be somewhere in folk wisdom even if popular culture has adjusted to the notion that skinny people exercise. Skinny people might, as it eventually becomes very difficult to be active if people are very overweight and usually healthy behavior clusters together, meaning that MOST of the time if someone has gone through the trouble of working out (at least for the purposes of loosing weight) they have also adjusted the amount they eat.
I would be interested if anyone tried it. I am going to be trying the opposite, that is if I can find a way to overcome my great inertia against exercise. People assume that I am not healthy because it is true I have been sick the last few years, but that doesn't mean I am easily fatigued or can't walk or run. Probably my inability to sleep (really my one and only health problem even though it is a serious one and hard to solve, well impossible actually) is related to the fact that I DON'T tire easily and need a whole heck of a lot of activity, more than I feel like performing, before my body feels worn out.
So I am cardio-vascular gold (my genes tend toward people whose tickers need to be stopped because everything else wears out first) and comfort-wise I swear I do even better running than I do just sitting or standing, and up until recently I thought that must be my imagination. But it really does make sense that I actually experience less pain when I am walking or running than when I am stationary. My chiropractor says that is because the muscles need to become rigid when holding the body in a sitting or standing position and they can become more relaxed when maintaining fluid motion.
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