Epiphenom

Hi Michael, thanks for the feedback! Hopefully my ...

2009-11-11T22:15:52.969Z

Hi Michael, thanks for the feedback! Hopefully my non-religious perspective doesn't biase what I write too much - good science should challenge your preconceptions!

Yeah I agree totally! Sorry if that wasn't clear. ...

2009-11-11T14:35:46.019Z

Yeah I agree totally! Sorry if that wasn't clear.

The problem is that evolutionary theory is at odds with the findings from psychology studies. This paper suggests that the reason for this is that the people psychologists are studying are WEIRD. That is, they've learned new behaviour to adapt to their unnatural, modern environment.

If you accept this (and I guess not all psychologists would), then you don't need to turn to group theory to explain the apparent irrational altruism shown in psychology studies.

I don't see how the study undermines evolutionary ...

2009-11-11T13:54:09.553Z

I don't see how the study undermines evolutionary psychology in particular. In fact, the authors (1) say they concur evolutionary explanations of behavior are important, and (2) explicitly praise evolutionary psychologists for doing more cross-cultural work than most.

Also... 'for the good of the group'? That is practically heresy among evolutionary psychologists.

Hi Tom, I just wanted to tell you that I will reco...

2009-11-11T09:11:13.620Z

Hi Tom, I just wanted to tell you that I will recommend your blog to students of an upcoming seminary at Jena University. Although you are taking a declared, anti-religious stand, you are able to question your own arguments, thoroughly testing conflicting hypotheses, acknowledging facts and debates in the process. Thereby, you are sure contributing to higher levels of (scientifically based) works and debates! And I think, that's a lot!

Thanks for your good work!

Disgusting is an interesting choice of words.

2009-11-10T20:16:21.587Z

Disgusting is an interesting choice of words.

You're such disrespectful disgusting people, and p...

2009-11-09T22:14:21.167Z

You're such disrespectful disgusting people, and probably worse than half the readers of the 'daily mail', why do you have to go around spewing absolute rubbish. You people are wacky. We muslim WOMEN want to cover ourselves and not dress like prostitutes, that is our choice, so stop trying to be such foulmouthed bullies!!!!!!!
one thing you said which made sense is that there's not much evidence for the policy, the spread of MRSA and C dif is due to antibiotics overuse and people not being bothered to wash their hands ever. But why do you have to fill the rest of your speech with such hatred and offence?!?!!?

It would be interesting to see what conservatism l...

2009-11-09T01:55:58.143Z

It would be interesting to see what conservatism looks like in post-communist countries. I guess it would be linked to rejection of inequality!

Hmm. Why? Conservatism with respect to the good old days of Stalin? I doubt it, but it's worthwhile a study.

First off I think the link is indirect. Inequality...

2009-11-08T22:02:45.990Z

First off I think the link is indirect. Inequality seems to be linked to a whole host of social problems that lead to personal insecuarity. It's probably these that lead to the increase in religion.

Also, insecurity tends to generate support for strong government (e.g. see here). Now, that doesn't necessarily mean goverment redistribution, but when it doesn't it's because the strong government has a highly religious flavour (think Spanish Fascism).

It would be interesting to see what conservatism looks like in post-communist countries. I guess it would be linked to rejection of inequality!

Or could it be that religion and inequality aren't...

2009-11-08T05:30:58.811Z

Or could it be that religion and inequality aren't directly causally related at all?

How about fear causing religion, and fear causing conservatism, and conservatism causing acceptance of inequality?

Totally agree with the above comment and very nice...

2009-11-06T09:44:23.551Z

Totally agree with the above comment and very nice article...!

The high life expectancy is true, I'm a costarican...

2009-11-05T23:39:26.423Z

The high life expectancy is true, I'm a costarican and I can say that our socialist health care system... founded by the unholy alliance of the church, the elite and the local communist party, are responsible of that.
And with the happy thing it's easy, we are a chauvinist group of people who never leave the country, so we think we're the best in the world... and we don't have army, so we have a lot of money to be happy.

Well, as I said in the post the correlation is wea...

2009-11-05T15:54:20.865Z

Well, as I said in the post the correlation is weak and there's an ecological problem that means any kind of causality has to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

This clearly isn't an academic exercise, just a quick and dirty exploratory analysis.

Having said that, there is good reason to suppose (based on what been found in published analyses) that atheism is linked with life expectancy. Basically, people who live in countries that have good healthcare provision and low infant mortality are less religious.

There is also good evidence that, within a given cultural environ, religious people tend to be happier (well, maybe not compared with atheists, but certainly compared with less religious believers).

What makes you think there's a true correlation be...

2009-11-05T14:17:54.680Z

What makes you think there's a true correlation between the two factors? I'm not a religious person either, but I can't see that your conclusion is anything other than the usual crunching of numbers. Have you controlled for other possibilities, or did you just plot the two variables against each other. I'm always doubtful when I see statistics like this, they just seem like someone played around, but not like serious scientific calculation. And I'm even more doubtful when someone transforms a small statistical significance (how high is it?) into a result that sounds like yours. That is just plain unethical.

Cista Rica does have a high life expectancy, accor...

2009-11-04T22:39:36.789Z

Cista Rica does have a high life expectancy, according to the data at least. 78.5 years - not quite the highest, but nearly there.

But it also has very high life satisfactions score - 8.5. I think that's the highest of any country surveyed!

I forgot to put a link to the data in the post: http://www.worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_nat/findingreports/RankReport2009-2d.htm

I suspect that Costa Rica coming out on top is a s...

2009-11-04T15:17:41.749Z

I suspect that Costa Rica coming out on top is a statistical anomaly based on some questionable data published by a single person.

Google for Rosero-Bixby. He is a Costa-Rican demographer who has identified what he believes is a "Blue Zone", an area where life expectancy is unusually long, in part of Costa Rica.

It appears he has worked rather hard to control for the usual data problems that give the appearance of Blue Zones (the most common being that people are just lying about the age of village elders -- and maybe not even consciously lying, it is sometimes a cultural thing) but IANAS (I am not a statistician) so I have no idea whether his methodology is valid or not.

What sets off my skepticism detector, though, is that the only people who have published papers on unusually long life expectancy in Costa Rica are Rosero-Bixby and his team. Maybe it's just not a high visibility topic, but the lack of independent confirmation of his data makes me mighty suspicious.

So, if you are multiplying life expectancy by a happiness index, and you have an anomaly in your data on life expectancy...

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 11/4/...

2009-11-04T13:41:31.000Z

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 11/4/2009, at The Unreligious Right

Daedulus, hmm interesting but is there any evidenc...

2009-11-02T21:54:53.506Z

Daedulus, hmm interesting but is there any evidence that changing skin flora can affect systemic NOx levels? It's pretty labile stuff.

Proto Post - yes, I suspect it must be something l...

2009-11-02T21:51:51.995Z

Proto Post - yes, I suspect it must be something like that. I think for a lot of behaviour we have a thermostat that guides us so that we act appropriately overall - maximising the gain by cheating without going too far and incurring penalties from the people around them.

I have a different suggestion. I am working with ...

2009-11-01T22:34:15.492Z

I have a different suggestion. I am working with commensal skin bacteria, they oxidize ammonia in sweat into NO and nitrite which is promptly absorbed. Low NO is a stress response. Lowering the NO/NOx level by bathing will induce (slightly) a state of higher “stress”. Charity and giving others the benefit of the doubt are “luxury behaviors”. They are most likely to be exhibited under low stress conditions, when the subject has plenty of reserve whatever and so can afford to be generous.

Because all NO “sensors” only sense the sum of NO from all sources, removing one source by bathing has the same effects as lowering the NO level due to stress.

A scent in the air could influence the participants in multiple ways, either directly, or indirectly by allowing the inference of what the stress/generosity state of other actors in the vicinity. If everyone around you is highly stressed, adopting a low stress strategy might defuse the situation.

To deal with an infection, the immune system triggers a “respiratory burst”, which releases superoxide and acutely lowers the NO level in the vicinity of that respiratory burst.

My thought, from an evolutionary biology perspecti...

2009-11-01T15:59:38.283Z

My thought, from an evolutionary biology perspective, is this.

If you feel that you are morally righteous (or clean), then others also probably perceive you this way, so you can risk taking actions that will benefit you because it will improve your standard of living but not decrease your odds of breeding.

On the other hand, if you feel that your are not morally righteous (or unclean), then you might also believe others don't perceive you that way, so you wouldn't want to do anything morally questionable that would risk decreasing your odds of reproducing.

There are other examples of this phenomenon. Those that are lower on the social totem pole try to not to draw attention themselves so as not to risk incurring the wrath of those in power.

Perhaps doctors claiming to be religious are more ...

2009-10-27T17:46:08.256Z

Perhaps doctors claiming to be religious are more likely to lie about whether they have hastened death?

The wishes of the patient are paramount... but the...

2009-10-27T17:18:13.665Z

The wishes of the patient are paramount... but the tricky bit comes when the patient is in pain and distress, but isn't in a position to make a decision (because they're delirious). Or even if they are not in pain (they are unconscious) but it's clear they're not going to recover.

It's most often that "official" medical treatments...

2009-10-26T23:40:43.749Z

It's most often that "official" medical treatments are quacks. Especially chemotherapy and statins, that either kill or damage the patient. At the same time natural treatments work. I mean vitamins, organic food, excercise, and some herbs like cat's claw or astralagus.

About yesterday's post: yet another futile attempt...

2009-10-26T21:15:15.938Z

About yesterday's post: yet another futile attempt to make religious nonsense seem plausible.

"The reasons given for the withdrawal of therapies...

2009-10-26T13:32:36.690Z

"The reasons given for the withdrawal of therapies included the fact that the patient had pain, other symptoms, had no chance of improvement, that further treatment would have been futile and would have increased her suffering, and that the patient and relatives had asked for this."

I got a bit worried reading through that list until I reached the last part. "That the patient...had asked for this".

If I'm at the end of my life and suffering horribly, and ask the doctors to make it all end, I would really like to hope they'd do so.

The other reasons are whole worlds of significance away. They also seem to imply that while the sanctity of life is valued, the sanctity of choise barely gets tagged onto the end of the list.

Great post!