CORRESPONDENCE (E-MAIL) WITH ADAM REED

(see also obj-comm.wp for correspondence on some philosophical issues)

I will be totally swizzled if I can locate the source for the lying/leadership experiments. [This turned out to be in Forbes FYI for October (?) 1994, p. 200, an article by William F. Allman.] I've been trying to look back through every thing I read during the last couple of weeks, but no luck. But in any case my recollection is that the original journalistic source didn't say who had done the work or where.

I really ought to clip these things. Trouble is, I used to--but was regularly forced to throw out mountains of paper from my bulging files, so I broke myself of the habit. If only I could afford a scanner and software, I could feed stuff directly into the computer for future use.

On another subject, I've been thinking about investigation of the placebo effect. Here are some experiments I've come up with.

1. Take a standard drug vs. placebo test and split each arm into two parts. Take half the drug group, and half the placebo group, and hypnotize them. Tell them the drug is extremely effective. Does the placebo group show a better response if hypnotized? How about the drug group?

2. Take a large standard test group and divide them into four subgroups. In the first, 4/5 of the subgroup get the drug, and 1/5 get the placebo, and they are told that this is so (though not, of course, who is getting which). In the second subgroup, 3/5 get the drug; and so on. Is the placebo effect stronger in those who know they are more likely to be getting the drug?

3. Do an ordinary double-blind study, and again cut it in half. In one half of the group, (both drug and placebo) put in some shills. These are actors who pretend to be sick, then pretend to be cured (they, of course, are knowingly getting the placebo). Their job is to convince the participants that the drug is highly effective. Does this improve the placebo response? (This would be even more informative if you put shills in the other group to pretend that the drug *doesn't* work; but that would run into ethical problems.)

4. Is there a standard psychological test for gullibility? You might determine whether subjects believe in common superstitions or in astrology, whether they read tabloids, etc. This could then be correlated with placebo response.

What we also would like is a study of placebo response versus disease type. Difficult to get, unfortunately, as the necessary experiments would have to have arms in which people were not treated and were told they were not being treated, so that you'd have a control group.

Another difficulty arises in the case of most interest, viz, cancer. Because anti-cancer treatments are notorious for their unpleasant (not to mention dangerous) side-effects, it's very difficult to do double-blind experiments. The patients know, because the side-effects or their absence cannot be hidden (well, not ethically); and the doctors have to know, because of the toxicity of the treatment. Moreover, any experiment which involves giving the patient false optimism about the treatment violates informed consent. Tricky.

Best Regards--

Ron

Adam--

I've been reading de Jouvenel's *On Power*, and an idea struck me.

As I argue in *From the Embers of Objectivism*, only a small minority of the human species can be expected to break loose from the system of dominance-submission relationships. There will always be people who live for power, and always the vast majority of people will choose to submit to them. That does not mean that these people *like* being oppressed; but for them, anything is better than being totally free and having to make their own decisions.

How, then, can a stable liberal regime be structured? The American Founders tried establishing an explicit written constitution, combined with a shrewdly designed structure of separated powers. It was a brilliant effort--but it failed. For one thing, in a society with no formal class boundaries, members of the political elite often move from one branch of government to another. Thus they are inclined to tolerate and even favor increasing the power of the other branches, for they may themselves join one of those branches later.

Who will protect us from our protectors? Not a "scrap of paper". Not the courts or any branch of government. Not the masses. There is only one reliable source of opposition to State power: the small minority of individualists.

I suggest that we should aim at creating a social and political role for individualists as armed opponents of the State, who will protect the liberties of all. The public need not fear that this group will take over the State and become oppressive, for its very character is in its unwillingness to participate in power relationships. But, unlike other expedients, it could effectively control or at least minimize State power, because it would have direct recourse to the only effective means of opposition--viz, force.

By the way, nice posting to MDOP on law & causality. But I think the crucial issue is the final cause--ie, no responsibility without *intent*, broadly defined.

--Ron

Adam--

Lately I've been reading a lot of Roman history. I just finished the third volume of Colleen McCullough's massive fictionalization of early Rome (*Fortune's Favorites*). While I was in Oregon I read Taylor Caldwell's *Pillar of Iron*, a fictional biography of Cicero.

These authors focus on the breakdown of the Roman republic. What we see is a problem of political institutions that cannot handle changed conditions. Thus the Roman method of voting was fine for a little village on the Tiber, but hopeless for a state that ruled half the Mediterranean littoral and had a million or so people in the capital alone. Of course institutions evolved--but not successfully, for once the possibility of modifying the constitution was opened, power-seekers were drawn to exploit the process. Of course, we've now seen the same kind of breakdown occur in the American constitutional system.

It suggests to me that there's a sort of Goedel-like problem in political theory. It seems likely that *no political system can be revised to meet changing conditions by means of processes included within the system*. All successful constitutions and revisions thereof are created extra-legally. Note, for instance, that the U.S. constitution was written by a "run-away convention." The British constitution, which was highly successful up until the 20th century, was established by the (bloodless) Revolution of 1688. And so on.

Ron

[10/16/94]

I finished *The Bell Curve*. I can't agree with those who are saying it will be as important as *The Origin of Species*, but it certainly will make a stir! Definitely a must-read.

The big fuss, of course, will come over the intelligence-race relationships. Their comparative histograms of black and white IQ distributions are stunning. Having done this much, however, their courage seems to fail. For one thing, they flinch from the question of white vs. yellow intelligence. The evidence that East Asians are significantly more intelligent (on average) than whites appears to me just about as strong as their data on blacks vs. whites.

Herrnstein & Murray also chicken out on the issue of whether racial differences in IQ are genetic. They assert that it wouldn't make any practical difference if a genetic cause were proved. Boooolsheet! The implications would be very profound indeed. Having established beyond any doubt that there *are* major differences in IQ among ethnic groups, there is a logical obligation to research the genetic origins question. This could be done by correlating IQ with reliable racial markers such as blood types and other specific genes (eg, sickle-cell anemia and lactose intolerance). Of course, anyone who tried to do such a study would probably get lynched.

I'd like to see a response on this issue from Thomas Sowell. He points out that American blacks of West Indian origin have intelligence equal to or slightly superior to whites. H&M note this but make no attempt to explain it. Certainly a cultural explanation appears a very viable alternative to genetics. The correlation of mean IQ in ethnic groups with the value placed on intelligence and learning is quite apparent. The question is, which is cause and which is effect?

To my mind, a couple of the most interesting implications arise from data that H&M consider more or less peripheral.

In looking at IQ correlations with parenting, H&M find an odd phenomenon. Problems with children--low birth weight, behavioral problems, poor motor and social development--correlate with IQ of the mother, as expected . . . *except* that the very most intelligent mothers produce children with higher-than-average problems. H&M merely note this as a statistical oddity. They do not mention the obvious explanation: That mothers of the highest intelligence are so wrapped up in intellectual activities that they neglect their children.

H&M also present, sort of by the way, some time series which, taken together, ought to have immense impact on how we think about the recent history of this country. There is an absolute discontinuity in social pathologies in the U.S. occurring in the mid- to late-Sixties. For instance, percentage of families below the poverty line dropped linearly from 1940 to 1968; then there is a sudden kink, and progress stopped; the line is flat thereafter. High-school graduation rates rose linearly from 1900-1965; then a sudden kink, and the line begins to drop. The divorce rate, between 1920 and 1960, rose linearly (with a blip after WWII) from 7% to 9%; then, about 1965, it suddenly started to skyrocket. Illegitimacy, same thing--almost flat for decade after decade, then a sudden shift to rapid growth in 1964. Welfare caseload, same thing, in 1966. These graphs, especially taken together, are so striking, so obvious, so blatant, that they compel one to wonder: What went wrong in the Sixties?

*Enfin*, H&M have done a terrific job of pulling together this mass of data and explaining it clearly. On the race issue, they're very gutsy about presenting facts nobody else wants to speak about. But they wimp out when it comes to drawing conclusions.

---Ron

From: ronmerrill@BIX.com

Date: Tue, 1 Nov 94 08:34:21 EST

To: adam_v_reed@att.com

Subject: The Trouble with an Active Mind . . .

. . . is that it causes insomnia. I was thinking about *The Bell Curve* and some other books I've been reading lately. There's a point regarding the heritability of IQ that doesn't seem to have been properly addressed either by Herrnstein & Murray or by their critics.

When we say that twin studies have established that, say, 60% of IQ variation is due to genes and the rest to environment, just what do we mean by "environment"? Mathematically, the term here refers to *everything* other than genetic factors. Of course in practical terms everyone working in the area has in mind things like nutrition, education, parental attention, and so on.

Now, the problem arises because (as I understand it) siblings, who to a very great extent share "environment", are not nearly as similar in IQ (once genetic factors are controlled for) as they ought to be. Particularly notable is that children who are adopted in show virtually no IQ correlation with their adopted siblings. Surely adopting parents do not treat adopted vs. natural children so differently in the way they feed them, the schools to which they send them, and so on. Furthermore, if the parents *did* treat adopted children very differently, their IQs would be biased in one direction; whereas children adopted in may be either more or less intelligent than their siblings.

Then I was reading about the influence of sex hormones in utero on brain organization and intellectual capabilities (in *Eve's Rib, by Robert Pool). This makes me wonder if perhaps *the* major factor in "environmental" influence on IQ is the uterine environment. If so, estimates of IQ heritability from twin studies would be biased, for twins share the same uterine environment.

Of course the "nurture" partisans would still howl, for on this hypothesis people are almost born with a certain IQ capability--partly due to having the right genes, partly due to developing in the right womb--with not much room for social control.

The problem I see is that this hypothesis would predict that IQ would correlate more strongly between half-siblings sharing the same mother than half-siblings sharing the same father. Could such an effect have been missed?

Anyway, now that I've got that off my chest, maybe I can sleep . . .

Ron

Dear Adam--

I passed on your comments on mysticism to Branden.

My own acquaintance with mysticism is pretty much limited to Zen, which I learned about while practicing Tae Kwon Do. Of course, on one level Zen is history's longest-running in-group joke. (Do you remember Insanity, the game you had to master to become a key-holding member of MITSFS?) But there's also practical merit to some of the "mystical" techniques.

You mention training of automatic physical responses. This is indeed of value; I still use "a mind like still water" for driving when I am tired. The "mysticism" here is that the technique of entering these psychological states cannot, it seems, be described or taught in any explicit ("rational") way. Have you seen those books of 3D images that are popular recently? The picture is just meaningless fuzz; but then if you look at it in just the right way it "pops out." Yet it's impossible to tell somebody how to do it! Another good example is an actor's ability to "think himself into" a role. You'll recall in *Judgment Day* Branden describes Patrecia Wynand doing this in front of Rand--who found it disturbing to see this unaccountable (ie, "mystical") phenomenon occur right before her eyes.

I think you are wrong in implying that Zen seeks to liberate the spirit from the body or from the physical. It is more a matter of finding the spirit in the physical. The idea is to get away from intellectualizing, to avoid "floating abstractions". Thus the famous koan:

Student: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Master: [slaps the student's face]

When I was learning Tae Kwon Do, I found it amazing how my psychological state could influence the physical. I was never a master, of course. But board-breaking can be the most incredible experience. If you do it right--not just with the right physical technique, but with a certain sort of psychological concentration--you almost don't feel the impact. Your hand goes through the wood almost as if it weren't there.

On a more conceptual level, I think Zen mysticism attempts to deal with the issue of concept formation. When we face the problem of developing a particularly subtle or novel new abstraction, how can we handle it? This is precisely where the usual tools of reasoning break down, because we are pushing out beyond the limits of our conceptual base. We cannot think in words or symbols effectively, at least not in the usual manner, because we have no words or symbols with which to characterize this new concept. Perhaps this explains the attraction Zen has had for people who are trying to work at the edge of the envelope in physics, artificial intelligence (cf. Hofstadter), and so on.

Best Regards--

Ron

Have you read Korzybski? (Incidentally, does it perhaps say something about the guy that he styled himself "Count Alfred Korzybski"? I have the impression that being a Count in Poland is about as distinctive as being a WASP in the U.S.)

Years ago I looked into *Science and Sanity* and found it gobbledygook. Yesterday I was reading van Vogt's essay on General Semantics in an anthology and it was still gobbledygook. And yet some fairly sensible people, including Heinlein and Hayakawa, are said to have been Korzybski fans. Is there anything in it at all?

I sent the manuscript of *Zen Entrepreneur* off to a couple of publishers who have asked to see it. However, I seriously doubt that it's commercial. It's the intersect of two sets of in-group jokes--those understandable to entrepreneurs, and those understandable to those familiar with Japanese culture. Small market . . .

With *On Moral Dilemmas* off, I'm able to turn my attention to planning the next big project. I'm assembling ideas for a short treatise on Libertarian/Objectivist political theory. I also have three good concepts for business books.

So, as you can see, I'm feeling strong at the moment. Hope it keeps up. Best wishes to you and yours for the holidays.

---Ron

Was reading a volume of Victorian poetry last night and was reminded again of something I noticed long ago: The poetic muses, like lightning, never come twice to the same place. Just about everywhere I look, I find one really solid poem by an author; the rest of his work is mediocre at best.

It is, of course, no surprise that, beyond *Invictus*, Henley's work is eminently forgettable. But the same principle holds with major poets. Let's face it, when you've read *Ozymandias*, you've read Shelley. Once you've travelled in the realms of gold, Keats has nothing much more to say. Did Yeats write anything to compare with *The Second Coming*?

And so on. Of course, I'm not a real poetry-lover, so maybe this is my personal idiosyncracy.

Today during dialysis I was reading a magazine called *Military History*, which had an interesting article on the war between the USSR and Poland. I had only a vague awareness of this conflict. It's interesting that large masses of cavalry were employed effectively, something that really surprised veterans of WW I. It puts a different perspective on the famous Polish cavalry charge against the Panzers.

Today's note on the Left-Hander's Calendar points out that in the former Communist countries being left-handed was actually prohibited in the schools. What tyranny!

Anyway, it was good to hear from you again. Take care--

---Ron

I've been reading a book I think you would find interesting: *Descarte's Error*, by Antonio R. Damasio. The author's topic is "the neurobiology of rationality."

Damasio takes off from the cases of people with certain types of brain damage to argue that, at least in a sense, free will resides in specific parts of the brain, especially the ventromedial prefrontal cortices. If I understand him correctly, his idea is that this area is crucial to the formation of "secondary" emotions, ie, emotions generated by imagination rather than reality.

Persons with brain damage in this area show an inability to make effective decisions in life, even though they have no measurable cognitive deficiency. Their memory and IQ are normal. When questioned, they can understand and foresee the consequences of their actions just as well as other people. But they cannot actually *make* good decisions.

Damasio also cites the behavior of patients whose paralysis is accompanied by anosognosia. Intellectually, they know they are paralyzed. But because they don't "feel" the paralysis, they have no emotional reaction to it. They are not upset by what has happened to them.

I have a problem, however, with Damasio's explanation, which he calls the "somatic marker hypothesis." As I understand it, he argues that emotional responses assist reasoning by reducing the number of options that need to be considered. For instance, if one option (or class of options) results in high risk of serious loss, it is ruled out emotionally. The problem I see is that there is no inherent reason why this mechanism has to involve emotional reaction. Thus, as a chess player, I do exactly this sort of thing: Certain types of moves, such as exposing the king in the opening, moving the queen too early, etc., I avoid automatically based on prior experience. Yet this is not emotional; it's merely an internalized rule.

The difficulty arises, I think, in Damasio's overly mechanistic conception of rationality: Sense data arrive, are interpreted, and generate a list of alternatives, from which the mind chooses on the basis of some evaluative algorithm. Now, I'm not sure I have any better model; yet I think reasoning is much more *synthetic*. Let me return to the analogy of chess playing. Computer chess programs indeed work the way Damasio projects: They generate a list of move sequences, evaluate the positions resulting from them, and make a move decision based on the outcome. Human players simply do not operate this way. Instead, we will think something like, "I will attack his backward Queen Pawn, and once I've won it I'll convert my Queenside pawn majority to a passed pawn and cash it." Then the tactical implementation is worked out: "I'll stack rooks on the Queen file and move my knight to KB5. If he responds N-N2 I'll . . ."

The standard model of volition is that we are confronted with alternatives and we choose among them. The more I learn, the more I think Rand was on the right track: Our volition is the choice to think; once I decide, "I will think about this game of chess and make the best move," I no longer have any "choice." The reasoning process generates my best estimate of the next move. Or it fails to do so, and I "choose" by, eg, flipping a coin, but that's not a volitional choice.

Anyway, I think the portrayal of the effects of these kinds of brain damage in the book evokes Rand's argument of the "indestructible robot." She saw the principle, but she couldn't explain it. Damasio sees the same principle from an entirely orthogonal perspective; but he can't explain it either. Nor can I explain it; can you?

Ron

I was thinking about another subject tonight, came up with some thoughts I wanted to get down, and in my usual rude and tactless manner decided to waste your time with this long essay . . .

If you've been following the debate over Sciabarra's book on MDOP you know that, after my initial review and a couple of responses, I've dropped out. The reason? (For you know that I seldom can resist a nice scrumptious argument!) It was clear from Sciabarra's comments--not just to me but to Cook and Ross and so on--that his academic training has totally unfitted him to consider any idea that he cannot fit into a "dialectical"--ie, Marxist--framework. He can't address his critics' arguments for the simple reason that he cannot even perceive them.

(You'll recall the account Branden gives of Peikoff's problems when he was studying philosophy. He kept drifting into Kantian positions, and Rand had to work on him for hours to get him straightened out. The impact of the academic mindset is so powerful that only the strongest mind can resist it. Even Tibor Machan shows a similar tendency, by the way.)

It's interesting. On my way back from France I was sitting in the plane next to a young lady who was just completing a stint in that country as a Mormon missionary. We had a long discussion of theology and ethics. Neither of us, of course, made the slightest dent in the convictions of the other. Nonetheless, we were both able to benefit from the debate, able to get a fresh viewpoint from the other's perspective. She may have been a religious fanatic--but she'd been *educated*, not indoctrinated. I don't mean she had a lot of knowledge--she didn't, just a couple of years of college--but she knew how to think objectively. Very ironic.

I think this issue is of no small importance to Objectivism. First, because (as we well know) the tendency to turn the philosophy into a doctrine is a constant danger. How many Randroids have we met who, like Sciabarra, cannot understand any idea until they can somehow force-fit it into a standard conceptual mold? (Objectivist or Marxist, as the case may be.) Second, the ability to truly *understand* what one's opponent is talking about is no bad thing in a missionary--as the Mormons seem to have discovered, and Objectivists ought to.

Anyway, best regards.

---Ron