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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31724 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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I'm not going to give the case for HBD because it's been done to death here and I'm not the best person to do.

So let's talk about phrenology instead!

Phrenology, of course, is mostly wrong. But is it common sense? Not in the slightest. In fact, it's the furthest thing from common sense. Why would the bumps on someone's head make them evil. That's not common sense.

Phrenology is instead a pseudoscience, meaning that it uses the trappings of science without the actual scientific method. It's worth pointing out that a lot of modern research, especially in psychology, is so poor as to fall under the realm of pseudoscience as well. Remember "stereotype threat"?

But here's something a phrenologist might say which is common sense: "People with bigger brains are smarter". As it turns, out this is actually true. Brain volume has about a 0.3 correlation with intelligence, explaining about 10% of variance in intelligence. Note how bad the media reporting was on this topic as well.

https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/brain-size-and-intelligence-2022

Incidentally, just in: Century-Old Paradigm Overturned – Brain Shape Matters More Than Neural Connectivity

For over a hundred years, scientists have held the belief that our thoughts, feelings, and dreams are shaped by the way various brain regions interact via a vast network of trillions of cellular connections.

However, a recent study led by the team at Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health has examined more than 10,000 distinct maps of human brain activity and discovered that the overall shape of an individual’s brain has a much more substantial impact on our cognitive processes, emotions, and behavior than its intricate neuronal connectivity.

The study, recently published in the prestigious journal, Nature draws together approaches from physics, neuroscience, and psychology to overturn the century-old paradigm emphasizing the importance of complex brain connectivity, instead identifying a previously unappreciated relationship between brain shape and activity.

“We have long thought that specific thoughts or sensations elicit activity in specific parts of the brain, but this study reveals that structured patterns of activity are excited across nearly the entire brain, just like the way in which a musical note arises from vibrations occurring along the entire length of a violin string, and not just an isolated segment,” he said.

“We found that eigenmodes defined by brain geometry––its contours and curvature––represented the strongest anatomical constraint on brain function, much like the shape of a drum influences the sounds that it can make,” said Professor Fornito.

“Using mathematical models, we confirmed theoretical predictions that the close link between geometry and function is driven by wave-like activity propagating throughout the brain, just as the shape of a pond influences the wave ripples that are formed by a falling pebble,” he said.

Huh! The more you know! I guess phrenologists just had to sound it a little with some sticks or something, to tell the shape of the drum under the skull. Or maybe make some sacrifices… for science! They were so close…

Oh, those functional connectomics researchers with their contrived mathematical mumbo-jumbo must be getting real uncomfortable now, the silly geese!

Check this out @ShariaHeap @orca-covenant

(I haven't actually verified if the paper makes sense, but the writing is just hilarious with all those repeated metaphors, it reads like a GPT-generated shitpost for Sneerclub)

That's a wild concept, phrenology indeed, perhaps skull transplants or 'brain moulding' could be the way to go... The link up to phrenology is indeed quite hilarious given the recent discussions..! Everything in circles perhaps

That's a nice philosophic distinction and I actually think there is a common sense we can moor to. I don't know how people, scientists actually thought of phrenology, perhaps it was more in the not-obvious science can tell us realm. What tends to happen I would guess is that established ideas can become 'common sense' over time, even if wrong.

Why would the bumps on someone's head make them evil. That's not common sense.

It's not common sense now, because everyone now knows that phrenology is balderdash. But once you know that intelligence and personality reside in the brain, but don't know exactly what the anatomy and function of each part of the brain is, it seems quite natural to believe different personalities are due to different brains → differences in the physical shape of the brain correspond to differences in personality → differences in a particular area of the brain correspond to differences in a particular aspect of personality, e.g. time preference or empathy → differences in the shape of the brain correspond to visible differences in the shape of the braincase → observing the shape of the skull allows one to make specific inferences about its owner's personality.

Thinking you can predict someone's propensity to, say, alcoholism, by the shape of their skull is not inherently less commonsensical than thinking you can predict it from their genes. A priori, there's a perfectly plausible causal path either way. That's why you need to proceed with actual scientific research instead of stopping at common sense.

It sounds like we agree for the most part. Knowing that thought originates in the brain, common sense would indicate that statistical analysis of human brains would yield insights. And indeed it has! Larger brains are correlated with higher IQ.

But phrenology was not that! There was no rigor. There was no analysis. It was just making shit up, similar to astrology. It's not common sense to make wild conclusions based on tiny shreds of evidence.

It sounds like we agree for the most part.

Perhaps we do -- I'm starting to think we agree on the facts of the matter and were just using different definitions of "common sense".

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