Parasites Are The Space Aliens You've Been Worried About
Parasites can -- and do -- control our behavior. I've read some papers on this in Ev Psych -- on "moral emotions," for example, changing in response to disease.
Robert Sapolsky talks about parasites from this angle -- and especially Toxoplasmosis in cats (and spreading from there) in a fascinating video from Edge TV.
There's a fascinating thing he points out about 13 or so minutes in -- that rabies "knows more" about about aggression than neuroscientists -- because it makes you aggressive so you'll bite someone and pass it to a new host.
Sapolsky says at the start of the tape that he basically doesn't think we have free will -- I'm guessing, at least in part, because he sees the ways neurochemicals and toxins drive us. I guess I would say that we have "compromised will." You?
No, you're responsible or you aren't.
You are.
(This is like the drinking-while-pregnant thing, where the uptight yuppie later wonders if that one sip of Beaujolais in the second month is the reason her darling Chloe only made Salutatorian instead of the Big One. In the highest likelihood, it isn't.)
Read this.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 31, 2015 9:24 PM
I ain't saying that feminism and tumblr/twitter aren't predictable outcomes of a toxoplasmosis breakout that spread globally after WWII, however, name one social movement and two websites more conducive to cats and their protozoan friends than feminism and tumblr/twitter.
jerry at March 31, 2015 9:25 PM
Spinsterhood, Salon & LOLcats.
(I didn't follow the link yet.)
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 31, 2015 9:34 PM
Feminism is Spinsterhood weaponized by toxoplasmosis gondii to press its agenda.
Similarly, tumblr/twitter is weaponized lolcats.
(And Salon is a weapon of feminism.)
jerry at March 31, 2015 9:39 PM
> Feminism is Spinsterhood weaponized
> by toxoplasmosis gondii to press
> its agenda.
☑
It oughta be pressing my shirts.
Har!
Get it?
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at March 31, 2015 10:22 PM
Scanning electron microscopy of toxoplasmosis gondii's reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=345uegSj-zQ
jerry at March 31, 2015 10:35 PM
We're chemistry and biology all the way down. Chemistry doesn't have free will, it just creates that illusion.
That doesn't mean that we aren't responsible for our actions, and it doesn't mean we don't make decisions. It just means that if you rewound the tape then our brains and our environment would be in the same state every time, and we'd make the exact same decisions every time.
Andrew at April 1, 2015 12:24 AM
No, you're responsible or you aren't.
Cordyceps hijack insects brains to propagate the fungus
There is a flatworm that drives slugs and snails into to light high up on plants so birds can rip out their infected eye stalks so the thing can lay its eggs in the birds shit
There is a worm (nematodes) that does the same to ants
Sacculina turn crabs into mindlessly obedient meat puppets for the rest of their lives, and overloads the males hormones to the point they have been observed to preform the females mating rituals
Then there is Wolbachia, which some scientis estimate to have infected nearly 70% of the worlds insects, others say 10%-25%.
It has been know to kill off its males hosts at the larval stage as infection is spread only from females. It has been observed to feminize male adult insects, and has been identified as the cause of parthenogenesis.
Given toxoplasmosis and rabies well documented effects on human mentality it is quite possible that none of us have a truly "free" will.
And even if we do, it seems well within the realm of possibility that the right kind of infection could obliterate it. After all syphilis if left untreated can result in dementia or psychosis.
lujlp at April 1, 2015 12:32 AM
Love this guy! Read almost all his books. I recommend anyone listen to his lecture on schizophrenia and how he almost got choked to death by a psychotic Maori woman with a bloody goat in her mouth.
His lecture on depression is amazing as well.
Ppen at April 1, 2015 2:55 AM
Evolution at work.
Bob in Texas at April 1, 2015 5:47 AM
Hmmm...I wonder if this parasite has led to this phallophobia we're seeing in society?
It just means that if you rewound the tape then our brains and our environment would be in the same state every time, and we'd make the exact same decisions every time.
Eh, I'm not sold on that. Humans are even less deterministic than computers are, and computers are not deterministic.
One never knows when a cosmic ray is splitting the atoms in one's head.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 1, 2015 7:37 AM
> We're chemistry and biology all
> the way down. Chemistry doesn't
> have free will, it just creates
> that illusion.
Yeah?
Well then... Fuck your chemistry… In particular.
You're a blithering idiot. Your father was trash, and your mother was a foaming savage. No one in your family, even your extended family, ever amounted to anything in the world... Never found meaning to their own lives or brought any to those around them... And none ever will. Your children are listless and lumbering, your hobbies are mundane, your books are worse than want ads, and your political beliefs are the shallow caterwauls of some underfed, unloved invertebrate descending into frostbitten overnight death in some nearby valley. Across the whole of your lifetime, you've never left a room where the mood didn't improve the instant you crossed the threshold. You're a torpid, coarse, and cowardly homunculus of man, a formless shadow of doubt on the dignity of the human form.
But why take it personally? After all, chemicals, right? Merely that. It's nothing personal.
(Hydrogen!)
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 1, 2015 10:41 AM
From here:
"When scientists chase down the source of why humans do what we do, no “free will” is ever discovered in the mechanism."
Of course, you have to figure out that a) nothing in our experience is actually random because the universe operates under a set of observable laws; b) that you can make a decision of no consequence (iota) which takes you every bit as much effort as an important one; and c) your ability to make decisions is both limited by physical laws external to yourself as well as your limited skill set.
But this is not an indication of responsibility. Whatever risk you pose, the rest of us must hold you accountable for it.
Radwaste at April 1, 2015 2:10 PM
> Whatever risk you pose, the
> rest of us must hold you
> accountable for it.
Exactly. ☑
There used to be leper colonies; given the understanding of the time, it's hard to imagine how that would have gone better.
By the way... Steve? That whole "homunculous" thing? Just kidding! We all love the work that you've been doing, seriously… We talk about it a lot. Good going! Really, best to the missus. We especially admire your contributions to the United Way... Mad Props.
Rhetoric… All the way down.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 1, 2015 5:47 PM
Every thought, every decision or choice; every opinion, belief, value, moral; every emotion or mood; everything seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled, every behavior... is a function of the interaction of electrical impulses, neurotransmitters, chemicals, electrolytes, and structures in the brain.
Or are they supernatural?
Ken R at April 1, 2015 10:21 PM
They needn't be works of Christian affectation to be held accountable.
(Seriously good question, though. The electrolytes thing was maybe a little specific, rubbing up against "structures in the brain" that way.)
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at April 1, 2015 10:40 PM
Transcript here:
https://edge.org/conversation/toxo
Amy Alkon at May 20, 2015 11:44 AM
Neurotransmitters aren't external or separate from us. They are us. As much a part of what we are as anything possibly can be. The elements in our brain machinery do not preclude our free will, they are it.
Edward Clint at June 30, 2016 12:26 PM
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