[From Bill Powers (931031.0750 MST)]
Rick Marken, Gary Cziko, Greg Williams (931029xx) --
Nasrudin found a window broken on the second story of his house.
When he went up his ladder to fix it he found that the ladder was
too short. He knew that his neighbor had a longer ladder, so he
put his own ladder away again, thinking he would borrow the
neighbor's ladder.
While he was putting his ladder away, however, Nasrudin noticed a
pair of hedge shears hanging on the wall that he recognized as
belonging to the neighbor. "Oh-oh," he thought, "I forgot to
return those last spring -- I'll bet he's been looking everywhere
for them." Suddenly he felt embarrassed about asking for the
ladder -- he'd have to return the shears and apologize for
keeping them so long. The neighbor, Nasrudin thought, had
probably been pretty annoyed at not being able to use them. The
neighbor was sometimes a little touchy; he might scold Nasrudin
and demand a little suffering before he'd be satisfied about the
shears. And of course then Nasrudin would have to explain that he
needed to borrow the ladder. Since Nasrudin hadn't returned the
shears, the neighbor, being a somewhat unreasonable person, might
go through a long song and dance about whether Nasrudin would
keep the ladder for half a year, too, and probably wouldn't agree
to let Nasrudin borrow the ladder without making a lot of abject
apologies and promises to return the ladder without fail. He
might even make Nasrudin swear on his mother's grave to return
the ladder, which in Nasrudin's opinion would be a severe insult
to his mother, as it was only a ladder he was borrowing. In fact,
this particular neighbor was pretty stingy in general, and could
even ask Nasrudin to leave some money as a deposit; that would be
just like him, actually. And if Nasrudin was even five minutes
late in returning the ladder, it would be typical of this
neighbor to insist on the letter of the agreement and keep the
deposit.
When the neighbor came to his front door and opened it, he saw
Nasrudin standing there. Nasrudin grabbed the door and pulled it
all the way open. He yelled "All I have to say to you is that you
can keep your God-damned ladder!" And he slammed the door shut
and left.
···
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I don't know if this is really a Nasrudin story, but it's a
Nasrudin-like story. My mother told it to me when I was quite
small. It's about holding imaginary conversations with people and
basing your opinions on them instead of having a real
conversation and finding out what the neighbor really thinks and
says. Maybe the neighbor is just as nasty as you imagine, but
maybe the imagination is putting words into the neighbor's mouth
to let you turn guilt or fear into righteous anger, or something
like that.
Greg, your approach is the right one. You are at least going to
hold a real conversation with our neighbors in the life sciences.
You won't have to decide what they would "probably" say or what
they "probably" believe. And some of them might turn out to be
quite different from what we imagine.
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David Goldstein (931030) --
RE: Depression
1. What is "it"? From the viewpoint of neuroscience, it is
the result of the right hemisphere, especially the frontal
lobes, being overexcited and/or the left hemisphere being
underexcited. When there is damage to the right hemisphere,
elation occurs. When there is damage to the left hemisphere,
depression results.
If this is true, a bipolar or manic/depressive disorder
results from the sequencing of left and right hemisphere
dysfunctioning.
That would explain that damage leads to depression, but it still
doesn't explain what function was damaged or what depression is,
or what is doing this "sequencing" when there is a manic-
depressive disorder.
And anyway, is this fact a fact? The next time I see a depressed
person, can I assume that there has been damage to the left
frontal hemisphere? If I feel elated one morning, should I rush
to a hospital and get a CAT scan? Is it always true that damage
to a region of the brain lowers the level of activity in that
part of the brain?
I would like to know more about this purported fact. How was it
discovered? In the studies that led to this fact, how many
depressed people actually had damage to the left hemisphere or a
lower level of excitation, and how many people with left
hemisphere damage or lower excitation were actually depressed?
And how many people with left hemisphere damage or low excitation
were NOT depressed, and how many WERE depressed with no left
hemisphere damage and normal or elevated excitation? And ditto
for "elation." I would really like to see the data, if you would
be so kind as to track it down. The facts you cite are
conclusions drawn from data; I would like to see the data so I
can draw my own conclusions.
I'm also curious about this concept of under/overexcitation of
the hemispheres. Is "excitation" a measure of what the brain is
doing? Where does the "excitation" come from? To avoid depression
about, say, the loss of one's job and medical insurance when one
has a child with leukemia, would it be sufficient to have the
level of excitation of one's left frontal hemisphere increased
and/or the level of excitation of one's right frontal hemisphere
decreased? If the left hemisphere's level of excitation were
sufficiently increased, would one become elated about this
situation?
Are these real facts you're talking about? It will be easy to
allay my doubts: just display the data.
Actually, if I suffered a severe right frontal blow to the head,
it seems doubtful that my reaction would be elation.
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Best to all,
Bill P.