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HomePosts tagged 'Asperger's'
Can Autism be Cured via a Gluten Free Diet?
May 10, 2019 May 1, 2019 evolutiontheorist Disease	anemia, ASD, Asperger's, autism, celiac disease, diet, disease, fecal transplant, gastrointestinal disorders, psychosis
I'd like to share a story from a friend and her son–let's call them Heidi and Sven.
Sven was always a sickly child, delicate and underweight. (Heidi did not seem neglectful.) Once Sven started school, Heidi started receiving concerned notes from his teachers. He wasn't paying attention in class. He wasn't doing his work. They reported repetitious behavior like walking slowly around the room and tapping all of the books. Conversation didn't quite work with Sven. He was friendly, but rarely responded when spoken to and often completely ignored people. He moved slowly.
Sven's teachers suggested autism. Several doctors later, he'd been diagnosed.
Heidi began researching everything she could about autism. Thankfully she didn't fall down any of the weirder rabbit holes, but when Sven's started complaining that his stomach hurt, she decided to try a gluten-free diet.
And it worked. Not only did Sven's stomach stop hurting, but his school performance improved. He stopped laying his head down on his desk every afternoon. He started doing his work and responding to classmates.
Had a gluten free diet cured his autism?
A gluten free diet cured his celiac disease (aka coeliac disease). Sven's troublesome behavior was most likely caused by anemia, caused by long-term inflammation, caused by gluten intolerance.
When we are sick, our bodies sequester iron to prevent whatever pathogen is infecting us from using it. This is a sensible response to short-term pathogens that we can easily defeat, but in long-term sicknesses, leads to anemia. Since Sven was sick with undiagnosed celiac disease for years, his intestines were inflamed for years–and his body responded by sequestering iron for years, leaving him continually tired, spacey, and unable to concentrate in school.
The removal of gluten from his diet allowed his intestines to heal and his body to finally start releasing iron.
Whether or not Sven had (or has) autism is a matter of debate. What is autism? It's generally defined by a list of symptoms/behaviors, not a list of causes. So very different causes could nonetheless trigger similar symptoms in different people.
Saying that Sven's autism was "cured" by this diet is somewhat misleading, since gluten-free diets clearly won't work for the majority of people with autism–those folks don't have celiac disease. But by the same token, Sven was diagnosed with autism and his diet certainly did work for him, just as it might for other people with similar symptoms. We just don't have the ability right now to easily distinguish between the many potential causes for the symptoms lumped together under "autism," so parents are left trying to figure out what might work for their kid.
Interestingly, the overlap between "autism" and feeding problems /gastrointestinal disorders is huge. Now, when I say things like this, I often notice that people are confused about the scale of problems. Nearly every parent swears, at some point, that their child is terribly picky. This is normal pickiness that goes away with time and isn't a real problem. The problems autistic children face are not normal.
Parent of normal child: "My kid is so picky! She won't eat peas!"
Parent of autistic child: "My kid only eats peas."
See the difference?
Let's cut to Wikipedia, which has a nice summary:
Gastrointestinal problems are one of the most commonly associated medical disorders in people with autism.[80] These are linked to greater social impairment, irritability, behavior and sleep problems, language impairments and mood changes, so the theory that they are an overlap syndrome has been postulated.[80][81] Studies indicate that gastrointestinalinflammation, immunoglobulin E-mediated or cell-mediated food allergies, gluten-related disorders (celiac disease, wheat allergy, non-celiac gluten sensitivity), visceral hypersensitivity, dysautonomia and gastroesophageal reflux are the mechanisms that possibly link both.[81]
A 2016 review concludes that enteric nervous system abnormalities might play a role in several neurological disorders, including autism. Neural connections and the immune system are a pathway that may allow diseases originated in the intestine to spread to the brain.[82] A 2018 review suggests that the frequent association of gastrointestinal disorders and autism is due to abnormalities of the gut–brain axis.[80]
The "leaky gut" hypothesis is popular among parents of children with autism. It is based on the idea that defects in the intestinal barrier produce an excessive increase of the intestinal permeability, allowing substances present in the intestine, including bacteria, environmental toxins and food antigens, to pass into the blood. The data supporting this theory are limited and contradictory, since both increased intestinal permeability and normal permeability have been documented in people with autism. Studies with mice provide some support to this theory and suggest the importance of intestinal flora, demonstrating that the normalization of the intestinal barrier was associated with an improvement in some of the ASD-like behaviours.[82] Studies on subgroups of people with ASD showed the presence of high plasma levels of zonulin, a protein that regulates permeability opening the "pores" of the intestinal wall, as well as intestinal dysbiosis (reduced levels of Bifidobacteria and increased abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila, Escherichia coli, Clostridia and Candida fungi) that promotes the production of proinflammatory cytokines, all of which produces excessive intestinal permeability.[83] This allows passage of bacterial endotoxins from the gut into the bloodstream, stimulating liver cells to secrete tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), which modulates blood–brain barrier permeability. Studies on ASD people showed that TNFα cascades produce proinflammatory cytokines, leading to peripheral inflammation and activation of microglia in the brain, which indicates neuroinflammation.[83] In addition, neuroactive opioid peptides from digested foods have been shown to leak into the bloodstream and permeate the blood–brain barrier, influencing neural cells and causing autistic symptoms.[83] (See Endogenous opiate precursor theory)
Here is an interesting case report of psychosis caused by gluten sensitivity:
In May 2012, after a febrile episode, she became increasingly irritable and reported daily headache and concentration difficulties. One month after, her symptoms worsened presenting with severe headache, sleep problems, and behavior alterations, with several unmotivated crying spells and apathy. Her school performance deteriorated… The patient was referred to a local neuropsychiatric outpatient clinic, where a conversion somatic disorder was diagnosed and a benzodiazepine treatment (i.e., bromazepam) was started. In June 2012, during the final school examinations, psychiatric symptoms, occurring sporadically in the previous two months, worsened. Indeed, she began to have complex hallucinations. The types of these hallucinations varied and were reported as indistinguishable from reality. The hallucinations involved vivid scenes either with family members (she heard her sister and her boyfriend having bad discussions) or without (she saw people coming off the television to follow and scare her)… She also presented weight loss (about 5% of her weight) and gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal distension and severe constipation.
So she's hospitalized and they do a bunch of tests. Eventually she's put on steroids, which helps a little.
Her mother recalled that she did not return a "normal girl". In September 2012, shortly after eating pasta, she presented crying spells, relevant confusion, ataxia, severe anxiety and paranoid delirium. Then she was again referred to the psychiatric unit. A relapse of autoimmune encephalitis was suspected and treatment with endovenous steroid and immunoglobulins was started. During the following months, several hospitalizations were done, for recurrence of psychotic symptoms.
Again, more testing.
In September 2013, she presented with severe abdominal pain, associated with asthenia, slowed speech, depression, distorted and paranoid thinking and suicidal ideation up to a state of pre-coma. The clinical suspicion was moving towards a fluctuating psychotic disorder. Treatment with a second-generation anti-psychotic (i.e., olanzapine) was started, but psychotic symptoms persisted. In November 2013, due to gastro-intestinal symptoms and further weight loss (about 15% of her weight in the last year), a nutritionist was consulted, and a gluten-free diet (GFD) was recommended for symptomatic treatment of the intestinal complaints; unexpectedly, within a week of gluten-free diet, the symptoms (both gastro-intestinal and psychiatric) dramatically improved … Despite her efforts, she occasionally experienced inadvertent gluten exposures, which triggered the recurrence of her psychotic symptoms within about four hours. Symptoms took two to three days to subside again.
Note: she has non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
One month after [beginning the gluten free diet] AGA IgG and calprotectin resulted negative, as well as the EEG, and ferritin levels improved.
Note: those are tests of inflammation and anemia–that means she no longer has inflammation and her iron levels are returning to normal.
She returned to the same neuro-psychiatric specialists that now reported a "normal behavior" and progressively stopped the olanzapine therapy without any problem. Her mother finally recalled that she was returned a "normal girl". Nine months after definitely starting the GFD, she is still symptoms-free.
This case is absolutely crazy. That poor girl. Here she was in constant pain, had constant constipation, was losing weight (at an age when children should be growing,) and the idiot adults thought she had a psychiatric problem.
This is not the only case of gastro-intestinal disorder I have heard of that presented as psychosis.
Speaking of stomach pain, did you know Curt Cobain suffered frequent stomach pain that was so severe it made him vomit and want to commit suicide, and he started self-medicating with heroin just to stop the pain? And then he died.
Back to autism and gastrointestinal issues other than gluten, here is a fascinating new study on fecal transplants (h/t WrathofGnon):
Many studies have reported abnormal gut microbiota in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), suggesting a link between gut microbiome and autism-like behaviors. Modifying the gut microbiome is a potential route to improve gastrointestinal (GI) and behavioral symptoms in children with ASD, and fecal microbiota transplant could transform the dysbiotic gut microbiome toward a healthy one by delivering a large number of commensal microbes from a healthy donor. We previously performed an open-label trial of Microbiota Transfer Therapy (MTT) that combined antibiotics, a bowel cleanse, a stomach-acid suppressant, and fecal microbiota transplant, and observed significant improvements in GI symptoms, autism-related symptoms, and gut microbiota. Here, we report on a follow-up with the same 18 participants two years after treatment was completed. Notably, most improvements in GI symptoms were maintained, and autism-related symptoms improved even more after the end of treatment.
Fecal transplant is exactly what it sounds like. The doctors clear out a person's intestines as best they can, then put in new feces, from a donor, via a tube (up the butt or through the stomach; either direction works.)
Unfortunately, it wasn't a double-blind study, but the authors are hopeful that they can get funding for a double-blind placebo controlled study soon.
I'd like to quote a little more from this study:
Two years after the MTT was completed, we invited the 18 original subjects in our treatment group to participate in a follow-up study … Two years after treatment, most participants reported GI symptoms remaining improved compared to baseline … The improvement was on average 58% reduction in Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) and 26% reduction in % days of abnormal stools… The improvement in GI symptoms was observed for all sub-categories of GSRS (abdominal pain, indigestion, diarrhea, and constipation, Supplementary Fig. S2a) as well as for all sub-categories of DSR (no stool, hard stool, and soft/liquid stool, Supplementary Fig. S2b), although the degree of improvement on indigestion symptom (a sub-category of GSRS) was reduced after 2 years compared with weeks 10 and 18. This achievement is notable, because all 18 participants reported that they had had chronic GI problems (chronic constipation and/or diarrhea) since infancy, without any period of normal GI health.
Note that these children were chosen because they had both autism and lifelong gastrointestinal problems. This treatment may do nothing at all for people who don't have gastrointestinal problems.
The families generally reported that ASD-related symptoms had slowly, steadily improved since week 18 of the Phase 1 trial… Based on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) rated by a professional evaluator, the severity of ASD at the two-year follow-up was 47% lower than baseline (Fig. 1b), compared to 23% lower at the end of week 10. At the beginning of the open-label trial, 83% of participants rated in the severe ASD diagnosis per the CARS (Fig. 2a). At the two-year follow-up, only 17% were rated as severe, 39% were in the mild to moderate range, and 44% of participants were below the ASD diagnostic cut-off scores (Fig. 2a). … The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (VABS) equivalent age continued to improve (Fig. 1f), although not as quickly as during the treatment, resulting in an increase of 2.5 years over 2 years, which is much faster than typical for the ASD population, whose developmental age was only 49% of their physical age at the start of this study.
Important point: their behavior matured faster than it normally does in autistic children.
This is a really interesting study, and I hope the authors can follow it up with a solid double-blind.
Of course, not all autists suffer from gastrointestinal complaints. Many eat and digest without difficulty. But the connection between physical complaints and mental disruption across a variety of conditions is fascinating. How many conditions that we currently believe are psychological might actually be caused a by an untreated biological illness?
The Big Bang Theory is not "My People": aspies, tribalism, and the development of nerd politics
January 13, 2016 December 16, 2015 evolutiontheorist Neuropolitics, Metapolitics	ASD, Asperger's, autism, culture, My Little Pony, nerds, pop culture, The Big Bang Theory, tribalism
As you've probably guessed, I don't watch much TV, other than the odd documentary and some children's programs. So while I've heard of The Big Bang Theory, I've only actually seen a couple of episodes. An acquaintance recently expressed surprise at this fact, asserting that TBBT depicts "[my] people."
Curiosity got the better of me, so I attempted to watch some episodes on YouTube. Unfortunately, I could only find highlight reels; curse the zealous and effective enforcement of copyright laws. Regardless, I have watched a couple hours of highlights and read the relevant Wikipedia pages.
And these are not "my people."
To be fair, I laughed. I'm not going to go on a rant claiming that a popular, successful show that lots of people enjoy is actually bad for reasons particular to my own taste in TV. Neither is this going to be an in-depth deconstruction of the good or bad points of a show I've barely seen. I'm content to say that it's funny and I see what other people like in it.
I just don't see myself in it.
"My people" is a bit of a fuzzy concept. Certainly plenty of "my people" like video games or comic books or have OCD or autism. But this is not what defines us; this is not what separates us from the rest of you.
If anything, video games, Star Trek, comic books, etc., are the things that connect us to normal people. Video games are immensely popular–Farmville2 had, as of 2013, 40 million regular players, which is about the same as the total number of copies of Super Mario Bros. (1985) sold. Then there's The Sims, which sold over 125 million copies between 2000 and 2010 and has probably kept on selling.
"The success of The Sims resulted in Guinness World Records awarding the series five world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. These records include "World's Biggest-Selling Simulation Series" and "Best Selling PC Game of All Time" for the original The Sims game, which sold 16 million units…" (Wikipedia)
There's nothing wrong with videogames. I like them; lots of people like them. The same goes for the rest of the list. Are nerds more into Star Wars or Star Trek than the average Joe? I think so, but the vast quantities of Star Wars merchandise available at Target certainly isn't being driven by my tiny demographic; I own more things (books) on P. A. M. Dirac's contributions to quantum physics than Star Wars and Star Trek-related things combined.
Maybe TBBT is what "my people" look like from the outside, but it's not what we look like from the inside.
Let's start with the clothes:
This show is set in southern California. It is hot there all the time. They have no winter. WHY ARE THEY WEARING JACKETS AND SWEATERS?
While nerds do occasionally dress nicely–especially for SCA events–most of the time, we wear clothes to cover our fleshy meat sacks. We do not (generally) have colorful, curated wardrobes. Most of us don't really think about clothing. I have seen nerds walking in the snow wearing less clothing than these guys are wearing for the simple reason that they were thinking about something else and had not thought to put on clothes.
If Sheldon were really an autistic (or OCD,) quantum physicist with an IQ around 178 or whatever, he'd look more like the guy on the left:
From left to right: Dirac, youngest Nobel prize winner in physics; Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan; and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Caltech, Calif., May 28, 1935.
(Say what you will, Dirac clearly did not notice that he put on a vest that's too small for himself this morning.)
Or maybe this guy:
Blatantly cramming Niels Bohr into post
Of course, the modern style of Caltech Physicists is a little less formal–they appear to have ditched the jackets–but still a far cry from curated colors.
But clothes are a triviality. They are not my real objection; they're just the easiest to express objection.
According to the Wikipedia's summary of TBBT, the show revolves around the characters' pop-culture obsessions and failures at dating:
One of the recurring plot lines is the relationship between Leonard and Penny. Leonard becomes attracted to Penny in the pilot episode and his need to do favors for her is a frequent point of humor in the first season. Their first long term relationship begins when Leonard returns from a three-month expedition to the North Pole in the season 3 premiere. However, when Leonard tells Penny that he loves her, she realizes she cannot say it back. Both Leonard and Penny go on to date other people; most notably with Leonard dating Raj's sister Priya for much of season 4. This relationship is jeopardized when Leonard comes to falsely believe that Raj has slept with Penny, and ultimately ends when Priya sleeps with a former boyfriend in "The Good Guy Fluctuation".
Penny, who admits to missing Leonard in "The Roommate Transmogrification", accepts his request to renew their relationship in "The Beta Test Initiation". After Penny suggests having sex in "The Launch Acceleration", Leonard breaks the mood by proposing to her. Penny says "no" but does not break up with him. She stops a proposal a second time in "The Tangible Affection Proof". In the sixth season episode, "The 43 Peculiarity", Penny finally tells Leonard that she loves him. Although they both feel jealousy when the other receives significant attention from the opposite sex, Penny is secure enough in their relationship to send him off on an exciting four-month expedition without worrying in "The Bon Voyage Reaction". After Leonard returns, their relationship blossoms over the seventh season. In the penultimate episode "The Gorilla Dissolution", Penny admits that they should marry and when Leonard realizes that she is serious, he proposes with a ring that he had been saving for years.
Jeez. Who goes through that much crap for a relationship? Here's what a normal relationship looks like:
Day 1: meet; ask other person out. Yes => date. No => meet someone else and ask them out.
Within a month or two: if you're in love, keep dating. If not, break up.
Within a few years: get married or break up.
I feel like I am harping on something trivially mundane and totally obvious, except that a lot of people watch TBBT, and I honestly think that plotlines like this (which serve to draw back viewers for subsequent episodes with their constant "will they or won't they finally get together?" rather than depict reality,) actually give some people (mostly beta males) the wrong impression about how to go about their relationships. Anime is also guilty of this. DO NOT SPEND YEARS OF YOUR LIFE WAITING FOR THE GIRL YOU LIKE TO FINALLY NOTICE YOU. If you don't ask her out, she will not date you. If she says no, she's probably not interested and you should go ask someone else out. Doing the "nice guy" beta-male best friend thing for years in the hope that someday she will notice you does not work and tends to work out badly for everyone involved.
Here's what my life revolves around: personal relationships (kids, husband, friends, relatives, job, etc.,) and my ideas.
I have a lot of ideas, hence this blog and a few other projects I've got going.
The ideas permeate everything. Picking the kids up from school? Thinking about the evolution of social structures. Conversing with mom-friend on the playground while watching the kids? Calculating estimated total fertility rate for the neighborhood. Trying to fall asleep? Narrating the French Revolution in my head.
Sometimes the ideas are so intense, it's agony to do anything else. I can't sleep, can't converse, can't be still until I write them down.
It's ideas, all the way down.
I wouldn't care a whit about the colorful t-shirts and weird relationships if the show just focused on Sheldon's ideas! Admittedly, each episode would be Sheldon wrangling his friends into the apartment and then 2o minutes of enthusiastic physics lecture, which might not go over so well with the intended audience. But real life tends not to be all that TV-worthy.
I am now going to break an unstated rule of this blog and talk about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
No, I don't watch MLP. I have kids; my kids watch MLP. (But I admit that MLP is one of the kids' shows that doesn't make me want to light the TV on fire and defenestrate it.)
Anyway, if I were a pony, I'd be Maud Pie:
She likes rocks. (I like rocks.)
Unlike Sheldon, Maud was not written for the audience to connect with. Maud is the pony the other ponies cannot connect with; the one they cannot be friends with. (This is aside from her sister, Pinkie Pie, who loves her unconditionally because she's family.) The point of Maud's episode is that there are some people in this world who, though they are not bad or evil people, are simply interested in things you aren't, and you don't have any connection to them.
Maud is interested in rocks, rocks, and nothing but rocks. She writes poetry about rocks. She has a pet rock. Her special magic abilities have to do with rocks. Her cutie mark is probably a rock. She doesn't really have interests outside of rocks.
The audience, like the main cast, is supposed to find Maud boring. You are supposed to connect with their total lack of anything in common with someone like Maud.
Of course, since I like rocks, I spent the episode going, "Why don't they just learn to love rocks like Maud does? Why don't they try connecting with her by finding out what she finds so fascinating about rocks?"
But the idea that one might try to connect with someone by being willing to discuss their passion did not occur to the show's creators. This is why physics and ideas can never be the focus of TBBT–the viewers have no real interest in what makes Sheldon passionate about physics.
While researching this post, I happened into a conversation on whether or not Maud has Asperger's. All but one of the folks in the thread who actually have Asperger's agreed that Maud comes across as Aspie. All but one of the folks saying that Maud was not Aspie were neurotypicals.
Their arguments tended to go like this: "Maud is not Aspie. There is nothing wrong with her, and Aspies have something wrong with them because Asperger's is a disorder. She is just very passionate about rocks."
Yes, well, fuck you.
Let's get something straight. We can call Maud "Aspie" without saying that there is anything "wrong" with her.
I don't think the show's creators intended to create an Aspie pony. I think they wanted to create a pony none of the other ponies could connect with because she was boring, uninterested in the other ponies, and only talked about one boring thing.
Which is basically the colloquial definition of "Aspie."
Here I need to pause and clarify the difference between a formal diagnosis of Autism or Asperger's with the colloquial usage of "Aspie."
Autism and Asperger's were never all that well defined to begin with, with a tremendous overlap between there. Asperger's is thought of as the less severe of the two diagnoses, but there are "low functioning aspies" who are much worse off than many "high functioning autistics." My suspicion is that the distinction drawn between the two (language delay and IQ,) wasn't really the correct distinction, and the whole business should have been determined via degree of impairment in the first place.
Which I suppose is what they are trying to do, now that they've formally removed Asperger's from the DSM.
A formal diagnosis of autism means that there probably is, in fact, something "wrong" with you. As Slate Star Codex notes, formally diagnosed, institutionalized autistics do a lot of things that are definitely problematic, like try to chew off their hands.
I do not have a formal diagnosis of autism, Asperger's, or anything of the like.
According to the Wikipedia, "Asperger syndrome is characterized by impairment in social interaction accompanied by restricted and repetitive interests and behavior; it differs from the other ASDs by having no general delay in language or cognitive development." Autism, "is distinguished not by a single symptom, but by a characteristic triad of symptoms: impairments in social interaction; impairments in communication; and restricted interests and repetitive behavior."
Unlike the stereotype of autistics as "idiot savants," most of them are intellectually impaired across the board, cannot work, and will be dependent on others for their entire lives. Many of them cannot talk, put on their own clothes, use the toilet unassisted, or communicate their needs to others.
A recent study of people with actual, diagnosed Autism found a bunch of de novo mutations. These kids can't talk because there is actually something genetically wrong with them:
By comparing affected to unaffected siblings, we show that 13% of de novo missense mutations and 43% of de novo likely gene-disrupting (LGD) mutations contribute to 12% and 9% of diagnoses, respectively. Including copy number variants, coding de novo mutations contribute to about 30% of all simplex and 45% of female diagnoses.
The colloquial definition of "Aspie" is someone who's interested in stuff you're not interested in and who has trouble interacting with normal people. This definition has nothing to do with functionality; it's really just a matter of whether or not you "fit in" with dumbs. So, a teenage girl who talks endlessly about boys and makeup is considered "normal" by most people, but a teenage girl who talks passionately about quantum physics is "aspie" because other teenage girls don't want to hear about quantum physics. A man who is obsessed with motorcycles is "normal" because only an idiot risks getting punched in the face, but a man who is passionate about trains is "aspie."
"Aspie" is the new "faggot," now that you're not supposed to make fun of gay people. (Is it mere coincidence that the actor picked to play Sheldon is, in fact, flamingly gay?)
There's a major problem here that anyone who is exceptionally intelligent is probably going to have ideas floating around in their head that normal people can't understand and is going to learn far more about any subject they're interested in than the average person. If I am trying to express the idea that different environments favor mitochondrial or viral memes, and you're trying to express the idea that a popular actor is very attractive, we are not going to socialize terribly well together.
But I have no difficulty socializing with other people like myself.
A recent study of "autism-spectrum-quotient" traits found that men do, indeed, rate higher than women on autism surveys, and people in STEM professions score higher than folks in non-STEM professions, true to stereotypes:
We examine correlations between the AQ and age, sex, occupation, and UK geographic region in 450,394 individuals. We predicted that age and geography would not be correlated with AQ, whilst sex and occupation would have a correlation. Mean AQ for the total sample score was m = 19.83 (SD = 8.71), slightly higher than a previous systematic review of 6,900 individuals in a non-clinical sample (mean of means = 16.94) This likely reflects that this big-data sample includes individuals with autism who in the systematic review score much higher (mean of means = 35.19). As predicted, sex and occupation differences were observed: on average, males (m = 21.55, SD = 8.82) scored higher than females (m = 18.95; SD = 8.52), and individuals working in a STEM career (m = 21.92, SD = 8.92) scored higher than individuals non-STEM careers (m = 18.92, SD = 8.48). Also as predicted, age and geographic region were not meaningfully correlated with AQ.
Hold on a second and look at that last sentence again: age was not meaningfully correlated with AQ. The number of autism diagnoses has been skyrocketing over the past couple of days, accompanied by a great deal of debate on why. Here we have evidence–from nearly half a million people–that the overall "AQ" of the British population has not increased (or decreased) significantly over the years. Either the increase in "autism" diagnoses is entirely an artifact of some other process–like kids who would previously have been diagnosed as just "retarded" getting diagnosed as "autisitic"–or the distribution of "Aspie" traits in the general population has nothing to do with autistics.
At any rate, I see no reason to assume that people in STEM fields are retarded; their aspieness strikes me as far more of the colloquial, "normal people just aren't into this," variety. Whereby "normal" I mean "people who talk about their emotions all the damn time."
Stupid emotions.
Now, I have no idea whether or not Sheldon is really autistic. At this point, I'm not even comfortable with the colloquial use of "Aspie." And I'm not saying that nerds never act like the guys on TBBT. I'm just saying that this isn't really "my people," at least as I see them.
A show about people like me would have one programmer guy who starts out libertarian in season one and then starts reading Moldbug in season two. The main character would be a prominent rationalist blogger/physicist, whose ex-girlfriend is in a bi-poly open relationship with an SJW Asian bio-major, who gets in frequent fights with the programmer. Their room would be full of computers, disassembled computers, computer parts, and robots. (TBBT has one Jewish and one Indian character, which I would obviously retain.)
It's getting late, so I'm going to continue this tomorrow.
Tesla, Edison, Genius, and Loneliness (part 2/2)
October 27, 2015 October 27, 2015 evolutiontheorist Psychology and Evolution	ASD, Asperger's, autism, Edison, evolution, genetics, HBD, IQ, isolation, mental illness, pattern matching, schizophrenia, short sleepers, Slate Star Codex, Tesla, theories, wild speculations
Part 1 is here.
"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself." — Confucius
This quote is one of my personal mottoes, but I have added a corollary: "If I am walking with only one man, I still have two teachers, for I may learn to achieve goodness from a man's good side, and to avoid evil from a man's bad side."
At any rate, Edison is a man whose goodness instructs us on how to take brilliant ideas and build the structures necessary for them to benefit humanity. Edison is a man who literally built civilization and deserves credit for both seeing how the structures needed to fit together to work, and for having the skills necessary to actually bring people together and build those structures.
Tesla is a lesson on how society should not manage its creative geniuses, (and I don't mean the dumb pay dispute with Edison.)
Tesla is an interesting character. He appears to have been one of the world's exceedingly rare true short sleepers, which appears to be a genetic condition:
"Ying-Hui Fu … studies the genetics and other characteristics of short sleepers at her neurogenetics lab.
"Currently, Fu knows of three types of genetic mutations that are related to the ability to function well on minimal amounts of sleep, which often runs in the family. In a 2009 paper published in the journal Science, she described a mother and a daughter who shared the same genetic mutation of the gene DEC2 that allowed them to thrive on six hours of sleep per night. So far Fu has identified about 50 families of short sleepers.
"This group of short sleepers is unique," Fu said, describing them as optimistic and energetic, often holding more than one job. …
"Interestingly, these high energy levels typical of short sleepers can sometimes reach behavioral extremes. For instance, a 2001 study published in the Journal of Sleep Research that examined the sleep patterns and personality of 12 short sleepers, researchers found some evidence of subclinical hypomania — a milder form of manic behavior, characterized by euphoria, disinhibition and, in fact, a decreased need for sleep."
Please note that drinking 10 5-hour-energy drinks in a row is not the same as having a genetic mutation that lets you get by on less sleep. Chances are extremely likely that you, my friend, are already not getting as much sleep as you need for optimum health. Also, since very few short sleepers have actually been studied, what we think we know about them may not be entirely accurate; they may suffer long-term consequences that have not yet been documented, for example. I do wonder if chronic lack of sleep eventually got to Tesla, reducing him to a state of waking-dreaming toward the end of his life, when he began going obviously loopy.
Tesla's rigidity of personality, behavior, and dress are reminiscent of the compulsive, repetitive, and restrictive behaviors associated with autism/Asperger's Syndrome (now just another part of "autism" in the DSM,) eg,
"People with Asperger syndrome display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused. They may stick to inflexible routines, move in stereotyped and repetitive ways, or preoccupy themselves with parts of objects.
"Pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest is one of the most striking features of AS.[1] Individuals with AS may collect volumes of detailed information on a relatively narrow topic such as weather data or star names, without necessarily having a genuine understanding of the broader topic." (Wikipedia.)
I've long thought it a problem that these definitions/descriptions make no effort to distinguish between "Aspies" and genuinely intelligent people, who simply have more ability to memorize facts of any sort and will learn about any subject in more depth than someone of ordinary intelligence. If we want to define high IQ as a mental disorder, then, well, I guess we can, but it seems like a bad idea to me.
Autistic children apparently also have difficulty sleeping, which is why many of them are being prescribed melatonin as a sleep aid (as I discussed back in Melanin, Sexuality, and Aggression.) However, these autistic kids appear to actually need more sleep than they're getting; they just seem to have trouble turning off their brains and keeping them off long enough for a proper sleep.
Anyway, to get extremely speculative: Much like Fu's short sleepers, the autistic people I have worked with personally (N=small) seemed like they had brains on overdrive. Imagine that a normal brain is an Amish buggy, going along at a nice, reasonable clip, and their brains are Formula One race cars. Brain speed in this case may have nothing to do with IQ, per say, or may in fact be detrimental to it–autistics are far more likely than the general population to test as mentally retarded–but I favor a theory that having a small quantity of autistic-like traits may be useful for people in fields or occupations that require high IQ, but large quantities of autistic-like traits cause too many negative side effects, resulting in full-blown autism. In Tesla's case, he got the benefits of the massively high-powered, sped-up brain, with a side effect that he couldn't turn it off long enough to get more than a few hours of sleep and lacked the normal social instincts that lead people to marry, have children, and generally form stable relationships with other people.
There's a certain irony to Tesla advocating for sterilization of the unfit and hanging out with Nazi propagandist George Sylvester Viereck at the same time as the Nazis were ignoring Hans Asperger's plea that his subjects be employed as codebreakers and executing them as mental defectives instead. But then, the Nazis are kind of a great big case of how not to treat your smart people.
To be fair, this is not evidence that Tesla actually supported the Nazis or their policies.
Back in Is Genius Fragile?, I discussed a recent paper in Molecular Psychology that claimed to have studied 1,400 students with IQs of 170 or above, and found no rare genetic alleles that were more common in them than people of normal or low IQ, but did find rare, deleterious alleles in regular/dumb people.
Edit: I just realized that for scheduling reasons, "Is Genius Fragile" actually got moved to mid-November. The Molecular Psychology paper is here.
But are such alleles actually deleterious? Tesla never married and had no children; neither did Isaac Newton. Einstein had three children, but one of them seems to have died in infancy and one was institutionalized for schizophrenia.
In other words, perhaps some of these alleles they've noticed aren't deleterious, but actually helpful in some way. Perhaps, for example, there is an allele that codes for processes that help you turn off your brain at night and transition to certain sleep states. Without that allele, your brain is more "on" all the time, you feel more alert and can think more clearly than others without getting tired, but ultimately there are some bad side effects to not sleeping. Or perhaps the brain's ability to see patterns is normally regulated by another mechanism that helps you distinguish between real patterns and false matches, which might malfunction in people like John Nash, resulting both in increased pattern-matching ability and in schizophrenia. By the way, I am totally speculating and might be completely wrong.
Please note that from the evolutionary POV, traits–like IQ–are not inherently valuable. A trait is adaptive if it leads to the continuation of your DNA into future generations, and is deleterious or maladaptive if it hinders the continuation of your DNA. If high IQ people do not have children, the high IQ is maladaptive and being selected out of the population. (Please note, also, that different environments, both physical and cultural, select for different traits. Had Tesla remained near his family back in Croatia, they might have helped arrange a marriage for him, leading eventually to children and romantic entanglements with someone who wasn't a pigeon.)
However, even if high-IQ people never reproduced under any circumstances, their existence in a population might still be advantageous to the population as a whole–you probably enjoy having lightbulbs, electricity, cell phones, and other such things, for example. The development of vaccines, industrial agriculture, and modern theories about nutrition and hygiene have vastly expanded the Earth's human population over the past hundred years, and would have done so even if the people involved had not had any children at all.
This is a somewhat complicated issue that depends on the interaction of a lot of variables, like whether society can consistently produce high-IQ people even if the high-IQ people themselves do not have many children, and whether the innovations of modernity will actually help us survive (the Amish, after all, have more children than your average person with a cell phone.) See: "How–and why–genius is group selected–massive cultural amplification" for some more discussion on the subject.
Regardless, I am operating under the assumption that society benefits from the existence of people like Tesla (and, of course, Edison.)
Anyway, back to Tesla and his job difficulties.
In "The Improperly Excluded," Micheal Ferguson theorizes that there exists a maximum IQ difference between two people beyond which they cannot effectively communicate, which he places around 20 IQ points. (I think I discussed it here and here.) So a person with an average IQ of 100 can understand and communicate with someone with a 120 IQ, and someone with a 120 can understand a 140, but the 100 and 140 are essentially speaking Greek to each other; the 100 IQ person cannot make heads or tails of the 140's thoughts, nor distinguish their claims from those of a crazy person or charlatan. If the 100 trusts the 120, the 120 can take advice from the 140 and recommend it to the 100, but beyond that, people of, say, 160 IQ are just too far removed from the average population to even get their ideas effectively communicated. Extremely high IQ people, therefore, may be improperly excluded from positions where they could actually do important work just because average people have no way to understand what they're saying. Additionally, since extremely high IQ people are very rare, they may have to cope with a world in which almost no one they meet is within their comfortable conversation zone.
Note: see Hollingworth Fan's comment below for some very interesting quotes on this subject.
Tesla, a guy who could do integer calculus in his head, was undoubtedly brilliant far beyond the common walks of man, and so seems to have faced the constant frustration of being surrounded by idiots like Edison. Upon Edison's death, Tesla opined in the NY Times about his former boss:
"He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene … His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense."
That idiot Edison, by the way, had six children, none of whom seem to have died in infancy or gone crazy. Three went into science/inventing, two were women, and I don't know what happened to the fourth boy. Edison was undoubtedly helped in life by living in the same country as his family, but he also seems to have just been a more stable person who successfully managed to balance his work and social life. Edison: better adapted to his environment than Tesla.
Tesla's genius was undoubtedly under-utilized. Tesla could not manage his own affairs, and so needed, at the very least, the strong structural support of a family that would prevent him from doing stupid things like gambling away his tuition money and dropping out of college, as well as a sound employer or university that would manage the business end of Tesla's laboratory expenses and design implementation. Immigration to the US left Tesla without the support of his family, and his own stubbornness lead him to quit what would otherwise have been a productive career.
Additionally, Tesla's ideas may truly have been too far ahead of their time for even other smart people to appreciate and understand. There were few people in the world at his level, and he must have spent much of his life completely isolated from anyone who could understand him. Even an employer willing to finance his schemes might not have been able to understand (and thus implement) some of them.
Isolation, I suspect, leads eventually to madness. Not because (or just because) isolation makes people lonely, which makes them depressed. But because the human animal is not designed to work in isolation.
In the extreme example, we know from observing people in solitary confinement that it breaks their brains and drives them insane.
In everyday life, our brains require regular feedback from others to make sure our ideas and impulses are correct. To give a trivial example, suppose I mention to my husband that a friend of mine did something today that really annoyed me, and he responds that I am misinterpreting things, that he heard from my friend's husband that morning about some extenuating circumstances that explain her behavior and that I should not be annoyed with her. Likewise, he might come to me with a story about a co-worker who seems to be stealing his ideas, and I could help figure out if the guy really is.
Isolation removes this feedback, leading to more and more incorrect ideas.
In his recent post, "Mysticism and Pattern-Matching," Scott Alexander writes:
"Think of top-down processing as taking noise and organizing it to fit a pattern. Normally, you'll only fit it to the patterns that are actually there. But if your pattern-matching system is broken, you'll fit it to patterns that aren't in the data at all. …
"So hallucinations are when your top-down processing/pattern-matching ability becomes so dysfunctional that it can generate people and objects out of random visual noise. Why it chooses some people and objects over others I don't know, but it's hardly surprising – it does the same thing every night in your dreams.
"Many of the same people who have hallucinations also have paranoia. Paranoia seems to me to be overfunctioning of social pattern-matching. … When a paranoiac hears a stray word here, or sees a sideways glance there, they turn it into this vast social edifice of connected plots."
Tesla's claims to have been working on a "Death Ray" that turned out to be an old battery, his romantic entanglement with a pigeon, claims that "thieves" had broken into his hotel room in search of his "Death Ray" but not been able to find, and the Mythbusters' thorough busting of his claims to have built an oscillator that nearly brought down the building and had to be destroyed with a sledgehammer all sound a lot like what Scott's describing. As a guy who could do calculus in his head, Tesla had an extreme talent for pattern matching–perhaps too extreme. Scott continues:
"So to skip to the point: I think all of this is about strengthening the pattern-matching faculty. You're exercising it uselessly but impressively, the same way as the body-builder who lifts the same weight a thousand times until their arms are the size of tree trunks. Once the pattern-matching faculty is way way way overactive, it (spuriously) hallucinates a top-down abstract pattern in the whole universe. This is the experience that mystics describe as "everything is connected" or "all is one", or "everything makes sense" or "everything in the universe is good and there for a purpose". The discovery of a beautiful all-encompassing pattern in the universe is understandably associated with "seeing God"."
Recovered schizophrenics I've talked to report the exact same thing: both a mystical sense of the union of all things, and joy at the experience (though they also report that schizophrenia can be absolutely terrifying, because sometimes the voices are evil.)
And finally (at least for the quoting):
"I think other methods of inducing weird states of consciousness, like drugs and meditation, probably do the same thing by some roundabout route. Meditation seems like reducing stimuli, which is known to lead to hallucinations in eg sensory deprivation tanks or solitary confinement cells in jail. I think the general principle is that a low level of external stimuli makes your brain adjust its threshold for stimulus detection up until anything including random noise satisfies the threshold."
Isolation/ lack of stimulus has a direct effect of lowering the brain's threshold for identifying patterns until random background noise gets interpreted as conversation. (The general correlation between schizophrenia and low IQ could be partially an effect of smarter people being better at avoiding severe isolation, and dumber people being more likely to end up in situations where literally no one has a real conversation with them for years at a time.
Tesla seems to have been isolated in his own way, both by being far more intelligent than the vast majority of people, and so unable to converse properly with them, and also by having none of his family, kin, or fellow countrymen around. He even had to communicate primarily in a language that was hardly his first.
Long term, I suspect such isolation had a negative effect on Tesla's sanity and ability to wisely conduct his own affairs.
Tesla is a difficult case, because he willingly walked away from what were probably excellent career opportunities, and there's hardly anything anyone could do about his family being back in Croatia. However, since most people do live in the same country as their families, we can still draw some general conclusions:
Some really smart people may require significant support from society and/or their families/employers in order to properly function and fully realize their potential. Their families should probably step in and help them get married if they can't do it themselves, at the very least to help keep them happy and stable.
The Wikipedia quotes physicist Y. S. Kim on the subject of P. A. M. Dirac (one of my favorite scientists)'s marriage to Margit Wigner, sister of Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner:
"It is quite fortunate for the physics community that Manci took good care of our respected Paul A. M. Dirac. Dirac published eleven papers during the period 1939–46…. Dirac was able to maintain his normal research productivity only because Manci was in charge of everything else."
Dirac and Manci in Kopenhagen
Alas, the Wikipedia does not give the details of how an autist like Dirac managed to marry Manci.
Really smart people may have some ideas that are astounding brilliant, and also have a lot of ideas that don't work at all, because that is just the nature of creativity, but the average person probably can't tell the difference. They need other people like themselves to bounce ideas off of and generally converse with. Their eccentricities are generally harmless, and the community is better off tolerating them.
Above all, try not to abandon them. Humans are not built to be alone.
Bi-modal brains?
September 24, 2015 October 3, 2015 evolutiontheorist Psychology and Evolution	ASD, Asperger's, autism, brains, emotions, feelings, HBD Chick, logic, math, people, rationality
But… the second equation makes sense.
So I have this co-woker–we'll call her Delta. (Certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of the innocent.) Delta is an obviously competent, skilled worker who has succeeded at her job in a somewhat technical field for many years. She has multiple non-humanities degrees or accredidations. And yet, she frequently says things that are mind-numbingly dumb and make me want to bang my head on my desk.
To be fair, everybody makes mistakes and says incorrect things sometimes; maybe she thinks the exact same thing about me. Also, I have no real perspective on how dumb people think, because I haven't spent much of my life talking to them. Even the formerly homeless people I know can carry on a layman's discussion of quantum physics.
At any rate, I don't actually think Delta is dumb. Instead, I think she has, essentially, two brain modes: Feeling Mode and Logic Mode.
Feeling Mode happens to be her default; she can do Logic Mode perfectly well, but she has to concentrate to activate it. If Logic Mode isn't on, then things just get automatically processed through Feelings Mode and, as a result, don't always make sense.
When Logic Mode is on, she does quite fine–her career, after all, is dependent on her rational, logical abilities, above-average math skills, etc. But her job is just that, not a passion, not something she'd do if it didn't put food on the table. When she is in default mode, her brain just doesn't make logical connections, notice patterns (especially meta-patterns), or otherwise understand a lot of the stuff going on around her. And her inability to judge distances/estimate sizes just makes me cringe.
My conversation topics typically go over like lead balloons.
In a recent Stanford Magazine article, Content to Code? in which Marissa Messina discusses her decision to major in computer science:
"BEFORE STANFORD, I'd never heard the term "CS." When my pre-Orientation mates used it repeatedly during our technology-free week of hiking in Yosemite prior to the start of freshman year, I had to ask them what it stood for. But their matter-of-fact response—"computer science"—was still a foreign concept to me. …
"Nonetheless, I celebrate my decision to develop my technical side. Although it does not come naturally to me, in Bay Area culture, knowing how to code feels like a prerequisite to existing. …
"I quickly learned through get-to-know-you conversations that being a "techie" was inherently cooler than being a "fuzzie," and that social standard plus rumors of superior job prospects for engineers began to make me question my plan to major in psychology.
"Three years later, here I am, close to graduating and capable of coding. Now what?
"I certainly don't imagine myself thriving as a professional programmer, because thinking in syntactically flawless computer-speak remains a wearisome process for me. … "
How on Earth does anyone arrive at Stanford without knowing that computer science exists?
Messina illustrates my theory rather well. She can go into logic mode, she can write code well enough to major in CS at Stanford, but it does not come naturally to her and she finds it rather unpleasant. She is only doing it because, back in freshman year, someone said her job prospects would be better with a CS degree. Now she realizes that she doesn't actually want to do CS for a full-time job.
I suspect that most people operate primarily in Feelings Mode, and may be even worse than my co-worker at activating Logic Mode. Some may not have an operative Logic Mode at all; a few people may not have a Feeling Mode, but that seems less common. Feelings are instinctual, irrational, and messy. They exist because they are useful, but that does not mean they make logical sense.
For example, let's suppose an out-of-control train is racing toward a group of schoolchildren who've been tied to the railroad tracks, but if you push a 9-foot tall man in heavy plate mail in front of the train, his death will save the children.
People operating in Logic Mode start debating the virtues of Kant's Categorical Imperative verses Mill's Utilitarianism.
People operating in Feelings Mode want to know what kind of psycho came up with a fucked up question like that. Children tied to the train tracks? Murdering an innocent bystander by pushing him in front of the train? Why are you fuckers debating this? Are you all sick in the head?
When Feeling people switch over into Logic Mode, I suspect it exerts some cost on them: that is, they can do it, but they don't really like it. It's uncomfortable, unpleasant, and sometimes exhausting. So most of the time, they prefer to be in default mode.
So there are things that they can understand in Logic Mode, but since they find the whole business unpleasant, they prefer to ignore such conclusions if they possibly can. This probably makes it very difficult to get people to make any kind of decisions involving unpleasant scenarios + data. The unpleasantness itself of the scenario breaks them out of Logic Mode and into Feeling Mode, and then the whole business is flushed down the toilet because someone goes into a screaming fit because you hurt their feelings with your data.
Earlier this morning, I happened across this "Systematizing Quotient" Quiz that HBD Chick linked to. Obviously the quiz has certain drawbacks, like user bias and the difficulty of comparing oneself to others (do I know more or less about car engines than other people? I probably know less about them than most men, but since I can diagram how an engine works and explain it, do I know more than the average woman? Where do I fall on a population scale? And what if I wouldn't research something before buying it because I already know all about it, or because I think the brands available on the market are similar enough that the time spent resourcing would not be cost-effective?) but I thought I'd try it, anyway.
I scored in the 61-80 range, which is not terribly surprising. What's weird is just how low everyone else scores, since the averages are 24 and 30 for women and men, respectively, and it's not like the scale goes down to -50 or anything.
At any rate, when Delta started talking about how much she hates the Common Core math, well, I was curious. I did some digging and came up with problems like the one at the top of the screen, generally accompanied by a bunch of comments from parents like, "What are they even doing?" and "I have no idea what that is!" and "That makes no sense!" And I just look at them all like, Wow, you can't figure out that 5+2+10+10+10=37?
Sure, math is a recently evolved trait and all, but those sorts of comments still vaguely surprise me.
IQ probably intersects the two modes via a separate axis. That is, a high-IQ Feelings Person might be able to concentrate enough of their mental resources to out-math a low-IQ Logic person, and vice versa, a high-IQ Logic Person might be able to concentrate enough mental resources to out-feel a Feeling Person. (For example, by reading a book about what various facial expressions mean and then using that knowledge in real life.) Delta, for example, could probably figure out the problem after a while, but would still say it's a terrible problem.
There was a conversation around here somewhere about a recent paper that came out claiming that the discrepancy between the number of men and women in high-end mathematics was due to not enough girls taking rigorous math courses in middle school. Well, I don't know about the middle schools where the paper was published, but my middle school only had one math class, and we all took it, so I don't think that's exactly the problem. More likely, cognitive differences just happen to be manifesting themselves in Middle School, and the math geniuses are starting to outshine people who are smart and hard working but not geniuses.
In the conversation, someone remarked that while women (or in this case, girls,) they've known can do math perfectly well, they tend not to enjoy it, and prefer doing other things, whereas the men they know are more or less forced to do it because their brains just happen to automatically look for patterns. This was the original inspiration for this post; the idea that someone might be able to switch back and forth between two modes, but would generally prefer one, while someone else might generally prefer the other. I might call it "Logic Mode" and The Guardian might call it "Systematizing Mode", but they're both basically the same.
If this is true, most people may not operate in Feeling Mode, but most women do. On the other hand, it may be that only a small sub-set of men operate primarily in Logic Mode, either, but they happen to be a larger sub-set than the sub-set of women who operate primarily in Logic Mode. Since I don't talk to most people (no one possibly could,) and my real-life conversations are largely limited to other women, I am curious about your personal observations.
In 6th Grade, I Prayed Every Day for God to Turn me into a Mexican
June 15, 2015 October 3, 2015 evolutiontheorist Political Critiques	ASD, Asperger's, childhood, culture, ethnic identity, nationalism, race, Rachel Dolezal, transracial, white privilege, whites
Then, I thought, I would have friends.
In retrospect, if god had turned me into an Indian, I think I would have just about died of joy. I fucking loved Indians. Alas, scouring my family tree didn't reveal even one great-grandparent who could conceivably have been a Cherokee princess.*
For irrelevant reasons, I got sent to a ghetto school for sixth grade. I had no friends at this place. The whites wanted nothing to do with me. The blacks were openly hostile. A few of the Mexicans were friendly, but when it came to recess, they played with each other, not me. And besides, they didn't speak English, and I didn't know much Spanish.
If only I were Mexican, I thought. If only I woke up tomorrow with beautiful black hair and brown skin, then I could have friends and my classmates wouldn't hit me.
Sadly, god was not forthcoming. I was stuck with whiteness, pale, useless, disgusting. Maggots are white, I thought.
For some reason my parents tacked up on the wall a portrait I drew of myself in art class. The portrait was supposed to express my misery. Every time I walked past it, I thought, Why do they have that thing on the wall? They never understood.
By middle school, I'd latched onto an identity that I could reasonably fake. It wasn't really mine, but it was close. I at least had the right facial features, and was legally related (through adoption) to some people from that part of the world, if you went back enough generations. This became my obsession. I studied the language. I saved up my allowance to purchase traditional costumes. I read histories and novels; devoured the music. I talked endlessly about my heritage, no doubt annoying the everliving shit out of everyone around me. (No wonder no one liked me.) I even dyed my hair to look more like my ethnic ideal and lied about my eye color.
In retrospect, that was pretty dumb. But I was a kid, lonely and desperate. The people around me had culture, community, history, identity, pride. And I wanted that. I wanted something to call my own–my own music, my own history, my own country.
The place where I grew up was, obviously, not terribly pleasant or special to me. "Whiteness" is not a trait whites are taught to be proud of; "white music" or "white history" are not things that I was aware of as part of my heritage. On top of that, I came from a part of the country with a reputation for backwardness and bigotry, also not things I was proud of. Ethnically, I do not really have a particular European country I can claim as my own–I am not a majority English or French or German or Hungarian or anything.
As a statistical outlier in many ways, I don't fit in terribly well with most people, except with other outliers like myself. (Finding such outliers is, I suppose, one of the purposes of this blog.) Not fitting in and what that does to your psyche is a thing I understand.
I have known other people like myself–other people who, at some point in their lives, desperately wanted to be part of an ethnic group they weren't born in to, leading to what an outside observer would call, "talking all the damn time about it." I suspect Dolezal experienced something similar. I suspect she just wanted to fit in with the people she loved being with and an identity to claim as her own. Our politics may differ, but I still feel really sorry for her.
Scratch a dozen whites, and I bet six of them secretly wish they could be something they aren't. That's why so many of them lie about being Irish, twisting one possibly Catholic grandparent or great-grandparent into a claim that they practically hopped off the land o' blarney yesterday. No one wants to admit to being mostly English or German, even if they are.
I am struggling to come up with a neat and tidy conclusion to this post. I have obviously come to a point where I am comfortable admitting actual reality, and enough distance from the loneliness to think I was once kind of funny. I have some positive thoughts associated with various accomplishments of groups I have some kinship with. And I am an adult, busy with the everyday concerns of work, friends, family, etc.
But I look at my kids and wonder what sort of identity would make them happy.
*According to 23 and Me, I may actually have a sliver of Indian ancestry, but it's pretty far back.
Autism Exists Because Math is a Recently Evolved Ability
May 29, 2015 October 3, 2015 evolutiontheorist Psychology and Evolution	ASD, Asperger's, autism, evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, IQ, math
This is a theory.
We know mathematics is a recently evolved ability–all human groups can talk and compose stories, (even groups without written language,) but many groups do not even have words for numbers over three.
Out of the 200,000 years or so that anatomically modern humans have been around, no one bothered to invent written numbers until about 6,000 years ago; algebra didn't really take off until about 1,000 years ago; calculus was invented about 400 years ago.
The ability to do any kind of abstract mathematics beyond the four basic operations is most likely a very newly acquired human skill–selection for higher math ability would have been virtually impossible prior to the invention of math, after all.
The thing about newly acquired skills is that evolution tends not to have worked out all of the kinks, yet. Things your ancestors have done consistently (including your parents) for the last 100,000 years will probably involve some decent genetic code. Things your ancestors did for millions of years will involve even better code. Things humans have been doing for only 400 years will probably involve some very kludgey code that might have some shitty side effects. Avoiding malaria comes immediately to mind–sickle cell anemia might help you avoid malaria, but it's a pretty crappy adaptation overall. By contrast, animals have had circulatory systems for a long time; the code that builds circulatory systems is pretty solid.
Since math is a recently acquired skill, we'd expect at least some of the genes that makes people better at math to be a little, well, wonky.
It is probably no coincidence that people with extremely high math abilities have a reputation for being total weirdos, while people with very high verbal abilities–say, published authors–are regarded as pretty normal.
There are a few obvious ways to make people better at a particular task. You could take some neural real estate away from other tasks and assign it to the one you want. We know we can do this "environmentally," (Phantom Limb Syndrome appears to be caused by the missing limb's brain area being re-purposed for other tasks, such that when you do those other tasks, your brain simultaneously registers the activity as information coming from the limb); it seems reasonable that some sort of coding could do it genetically. Alternatively, you could increase neural speed or density or something. Or perhaps the overall size of the brain.
Each of these possibilities could also have some negative side effects–bigger brains kill mothers; re-purposing mental real estate could leave you unable to do some other function, like fine-motor control or talking.
Autism appears to basically do some set of these things (it seems to increase neural density, at least.) People with a small amount of autistic traits end up better at math than they would be otherwise. People with too many, though, suffer negative side effects–like struggling with verbal tasks. (It's no particular surprise that autistic people tend to come from families with high math ability.) Autism is probably another mental trait that makes sense in a Sickle Cell Anemia sense.
Study: Aspies don't lack empathy; they have too much
April 29, 2015 October 2, 2015 evolutiontheorist Psychology and Evolution	ASD, Asperger's, empathy, neurotypicals, psychology, studies
Theory claims that individuals with Asperger's Syndrome don't lack empathy – in fact if anything they empathize too much
A couple of quotes:
"Children are asked to watch two puppets, Sally and Anne. Sally takes a marble and places it in a basket, then leaves the stage. While she's gone, Anne takes the marble out and puts it in a box. The children are then asked: Where will Sally look first for her marble when she returns?
Most 4-year-olds know Sally didn't see Anne move the marble, so they get it right. By 10 or 11, children with developmental disabilities who have verbal IQs equivalent to 3-year-olds also get it right. But 80 per cent of autistic children age 10 to 11 guess that Sally will look in the box, because they know that's where the marble is and they don't realize other people don't share all of their knowledge."
"When it comes to not understanding the inner state of minds too different from our own, most people also do a lousy job, Schwarz says. "But the non-autistic majority gets a free pass because, if they assume that the other person's mind works like their own, they have a much better chance of being right." "
You know, I've been saying that. I've been saying.
Aspie != Sociopath
April 29, 2015 October 2, 2015 evolutiontheorist Psychology and Evolution	ASD, Asperger's, liberals, neurotypicals, psychology, PUAs, sociopathy
I hope that goes without saying. But I've been reading lately about sociopathy (okay, I've been reading fiction on the subject,) and it struck me that the POV of trying get through life by reducing socialization to a set of rules is, more or less, common to both groups. Sociopaths do it because they don't have normal human emotions and see humans as objects to use if they're useful, whereas Aspies do it because they simply lack a normal instinct for copying other people and have to have social norms explained to them in a rule-like fashion or else they tend to screw up.
There's a big difference here that Aspie people generally mean no one any harm and genuinely want to be nice to others or at least not harm them and want friends for all of the totally normal reasons that everyone else does. (Note: Aspies may differ in the number of friends they desire, but the vast majority probably do want friends). Unfortunately, Aspies seem to process emotions a little more slowly than others and don't always come up right away with the correct emotional (or verbal or physical) response. This leads to social awkwardness.
Normal people (neurotypicals, if you prefer,) process emotions (and more generally, the world,) in very different ways from Aspies. For example, normal people seem to use words as functional stand-ins for emotions they feel about things. Normal people expect others to respond with the same emotions as they do, in the same ways, mimicking their facial expressions and so on. Without the underlying instincts, Aspie people can end up completely lost.
My own personal experience as an Aspieish person is that I tend to like people more than they seem to like me. In my constant quest to Make Friends and Be a Better Person, I've noticed that many of the resources that I find helpful, interesting, or useful get super-duper bad reactions from other people (principally liberals.) For example, Pick Up Artist materials–I have not spent much of my life trying to pick up women, being a heterosexual female, but I have read/watched a few books/episodes on the subject, and found that I could generalize the rules to regular social situations in helpful ways. And yet, most respectable people find PUA materials and people who read them utterly repugnant. Why?
Obviously, everyone loves shitting on losers, and people who need explicit help with dating are the definition of Capital L LOSERS. So are, I suppose, people who need help making friends. Luckily, people who enjoy shitting on the less fortunate for social status are not people I would even want to be friends with in the first place. (See how I inverted their negs on others into a neg on them? That raises my social status by indicating that I am not completely pathetic and can actually afford some standards.)
BUT. There is another, perhaps far more important reasons why people respond badly to PUAs: PUAs come across as sociopaths.
NOTE: I have no idea if any of these people are sociopaths, and I am not accusing anyone in particular, PUA or not, of sociopathy.
However, sociopaths, as mentioned above, do not "get" human emotions in a direct way, do not feel warmth and love for others, view other people as objects to be used, and conduct their socializing via a series of rules about the ways other people operate.
An Aspie and a sociopath trying to write out "rules for socializing with others" might produce very similar looking lists of rules, even though they have vastly different intentions. It would never even occur to Aspies to try to use the rules in ways that would hurt others, though they might have to out of necessity. Aspies are not naturally deceptive, and have to be explicitly taught to do the everyday lying that normal people do all the time without even realizing it.
In short, Aspies are using these rules because they don't want to get fucked by society. Sociopaths use them because they want to fuck society.
Good People do not want to be sociopaths, don't want anything to do with sociopaths, and try to stop sociopaths from hurting others. These kinds of Good People tend to be disproportionately Liberals.*
*More on this distinction later–too much to go into here.
Good People interpret PUAs as sociopaths. I do not know if they are correct–it is fairly immaterial to me, as I am neither a PUA nor do I have any friends or loved ones who are. But I think there is a problem that a particular approach to trying to understand humanity is widely denigrated, not because the approach itself is wrong, but because of assumptions about the intentions of the people involved.
This same set of responses starts up in response to virtually any attempt to understand humans or human behavior from a rigorous, testable, falsifiable, scientific angle. The approach is "cold" and "dry" and "impersonal" and "unemotional", and so must be done by people who are the same, and therefore bad.
This potentially cuts off many people from perfectly valid fields of inquiry and knowledge that could actually help them, without offering anything useful in return (eg, feminist websites are definitely not the place to go for tips on asking out a girl you know.)
Hatred of sociopaths is perfectly reasonable, but screwing over perfectly nice Aspie folks in the process (this is always rationalized under the "well, they're just LOSERS" doctrine,) is really shitty. And if the only people who are offering up rational explanations for all of the strange, irrational things people do are PUAs and their ilk, then that's where Aspies will have to go for explanations.
If urbanization leads to the smart people leaving the countryside, then the average IQ in the countryside will plummet. But that doesn't mean that every farmer is dumb, or that farming is a job for dumb people.


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Roberto Calara Mallari (* 27. März 1958 in Masantol, Pampanga) ist ein philippinischer Geistlicher und römisch-katholischer Bischof von San Jose.

Leben
Roberto Calara Mallari wurde am 15. März 1982 durch den Weihbischof in Manila, Gaudencio Rosales, zum Diakon geweiht. Er empfing am 27. November 1982 durch den Erzbischof von San Fernando, Oscar V. Cruz, das Sakrament der Priesterweihe für das Erzbistum San Fernando.

Am 14. Januar 2006 ernannte ihn Papst Benedikt XVI. zum Titularbischof von Erdonia und bestellte ihn zum Weihbischof in San Fernando. Der Erzbischof von Cebu, Ricardo Kardinal Vidal, spendete ihm am 27. März desselben Jahres die Bischofsweihe; Mitkonsekratoren waren der Bischof von Cubao, Honesto Ongtioco, und der Bischof von Balanga, Socrates Buenaventura Villegas. Papst Benedikt XVI. ernannte ihn am 15. Mai 2012 zum Bischof von San Jose.

Weblinks

Römisch-katholischer Bischof (21. Jahrhundert)
Römisch-katholischer Geistlicher (20. Jahrhundert)
Titularbischof
Weihbischof
Philippiner
Geboren 1958
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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ASPI suggests
31 Jul 2015|Natalie Sambhi
Headlining today is Mullah Omar's death in 2013—what does it mean? Mullah Akhtar Mansour, Omar's deputy, has now ascended to the top job but Pakistan, host to negotiations between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives, confirms talks are on hold. For in-depth analysis, Thomas Joscelyn argues that 'ISIS's supporters will have a field day'—the death is a blow for al Qaeda but a win for ISIS. Terrorism scholars Aaron Zelin and J.M. Berger discuss what one-eyed leader's demise means for the broader ISIS–al Qaeda war (podcast, 20mins), while Daveed Gartenstein-Ross noted:
The Afghan govt's announcement of Mullah Omar's death should be understood against the backdrop of these ongoing losses to the Taliban.
— Gartenstein-Ross (@DaveedGR) July 30, 2015
Turning to our region, RSIS has a stack of new papers on security and political developments. First, former independence fighters in Aceh are showing support for ISIS in Iraq and Syria; Jasminder Singh discusses the growing threat of jihadists in Southeast Asia. Second, with Malaysia's scandal that US$700m was allegedly transferred from state funds to the PM's personal bank accounts and the sacking of the country's deputy leader 'on health grounds', Yang Razali Kassim looks at the future of Malaysian politics. Meanwhile Stephanie Kam explores why Thailand shipped 100 illegal Uighur refugees back to China and how this could affect Southeast Asian security.
Last week, prominent US think tankers including CSIS' Dr Mira Rapp Hooper testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on the US role in the South China Sea. You can watch the testimonies or access full transcripts here. Of particular interest are the suggestions our American colleagues made on multilateral efforts like a 'maritime coalition of the willing' that would include Japan, Australia and India (see Patrick Cronin's presentation).
Before there was Google Maps, there was the Soviet Union. Described as one of the most ambitious cartographic enterprises ever, Soviet military mapmakers captured the entire Cold War globe in secret maps of incredible detail, including individual buildings, road widths and factories of cities like Berlin, London and San Francisco. Wired features an in-depth look at the cartographic goldmine and the scholars that study them (h/t Iain Henry), including John Davies whose website features many of the maps.
Speaking of the Cold War, if you're interested in the history of espionage, check out Stephen Grey's new book, The New Spymasters: inside the modern world of espionage from the Cold War to global terror. From the CIA to spooks inside ISIS, Grey traces the shift from utilising humans in gathering secrets to technology, arguing ultimately that this over-reliance has manifested in spectacular failures include the 9/11 attacks. For an in-depth look, Malcolm Forbes reviews New Spymasters over on The Journal of International Security Affairs.
Meanwhile, The Economist looks at how democracies could regulate espionage better.
In today's tech pick, DARPA is paying people to watch Alfred Hitchcock films in the name of conflict resolution and counterterrorism. According to researchers, observing how humans response neurally to narratives helps unlock what influences human behaviour and what impact that has on communication. Along with Hitchcock films, other movies included in the study were Alien (great choice, DARPA), Misery and Munich. Read more here.
When did it become an insult to run like a girl? This is a question explored by US Marine Corps officer Lieutenant Colonel Kate Germano in a draft article arguing that the Corps' tolerance for lower female physical standards and segregated training were entrenching bias throughout women's military careers. Tougher standards, she says, would encourage 'radical change' and greater respect between the sexes. She was controversially relieved of command last month, yet it remains unclear whether that was for issues relating to her leadership or her strident views on standards. Meanwhile, US SOCOM commanders, past and present, are still split on lifting combat exclusion policies for women.
Today's podcast pick is an entire series! The China in Africa Podcast produces a number of interesting discussions on topics including China, Africa and the Indian Ocean (25mins); China's expanding military presence in Africa (30mins); and China's new development bank and Africa (20mins).
Indonesia's capital Jakarta is a sprawling, crowded yet eclectic megacity. Forty-five years ago, things were more tranquil in the 'big durian' (the city's nickname), as depicted in this short documentary—an atmosphere that regular visitors to the capital would never imagine (8mins).
Canberra: Drs James Curran and John Blaxland discuss the 1970s and Australian foreign policy, including the impact of key figures like Whitlam and Nixon, Sir Roland Wilson Building at ANU on Thursday 6 August at 5.30pm. Register here.
Melbourne: the Australia–China Relations Institute is hosting a panel discussion on Malcolm Fraser and China, featuring Dr John Fitzgerald, Dr James Curran and ACRI director Bob Carr at Corrs Chambers Westgarth on Monday 17 August at 5.30pm. Register here.
Natalie Sambhi is an analyst at ASPI, managing editor of The Strategist and would happily rewatch Alien in the interests of science. Image courtesy of Flickr user Marines.
Mullah Omar
Sea, air and land updates
The 'sons—and daughters—of ANZAC'?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


roles in helping businesses to remain competitive, as well as to provide a technical foundation to appreciate the major and emerging technologies needed by business firms. It focuses on learning about the various kinds of information systems and technologies, and understanding how they are integrated in enterprise applications that can help business firms improve their organizational performances and decision making. This course adopts the viewpoint of a business professional, rather than a computing professional. Hence, students will learn how the work of managers is influenced by information technology (IT) and how to enhance the competitiveness of an organisation as an IT professional.


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Q: Does SQOOP support export for CLOB/BLOB data back to ORACLE / SQL Server I am newbie to SQOOP 1.4.5. I have gone through the sqoop documentation. I have successfully Imported / Exported the simple datatypes kinds of records to and from hdfs.
NEXT I TRIED FOR LOB DATA FOR EXAMPLE CLOB.
I have a simple CLOB table that Create Query is as following...
CREATE TABLE "SCOTT"."LARGEDATA" ("ID" VARCHAR2(20 BYTE), "IMG" CLOB ) SEGMENT CREATION DEFERRED PCTFREE 10 PCTUSED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 NOCOMPRESS LOGGING TABLESPACE "USERS" LOB ("IMG") STORE AS BASICFILE (TABLESPACE "USERS" ENABLE STORAGE IN ROW CHUNK 8192 RETENTION NOCACHE LOGGING );

I can successfully import data to hdsf
sqoop import –connect jdbc:oracle:thin:@:1522: –username –password –table 'LARGEDATA' -m 1 –target-dir /home/mydata/tej/LARGEDATA2 –fields-terminated-by , –escaped-by \\ –enclosed-by '\"'

But when I tried to export this data BACK to ORACLE using following command
sqoop export –connect jdbc:oracle:thin:@:1522: –username –password –table 'LARGEDATA' -m 1 –export-dir /home/mydata/tej/LARGEDATA2 –fields-terminated-by , –escaped-by \\ –enclosed-by '\"'

I got following exception
java.lang.CloneNotSupportedException: com.cloudera.sqoop.lib.ClobRef  at java.lang.Object.clone(Native Method)
java.io.IOException: Could not buffer record at org.apache.sqoop.mapreduce.AsyncSqlRecordWriter.write(AsyncSqlRecordWriter.java:218)

and the error metioned in this link  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30778340/sqoop-export-4000-characters-column-data-into-oracle-clob
I google about it and got following links that have mentioned that sqoop does not support export for BLOB and CLOB data. Out of that some are of Jul 2015 post. and some jira issue shown it is still opened. forum links are as following…
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SQOOP-991
Can sqoop export blob type from HDFS to Mysql?
http://sofb.developer-works.com/article/19310921/Can+sqoop+export+blob+type+from+HDFS+to+Mysql%3F
http://grokbase.com/t/sqoop/user/148te4tghg/sqoop-import-export-clob-datatype
Exporting sequence file to Oracle by Sqoop
Can anyone please let me know is SQOOP support export for LOB data? if yes then please guide me how can I do this?

A: Try creating a staging table in oracle and use --staging-table  --clear-staging-table.  Keep staging table column as varchar2(10000).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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a new battery takes off in a race to electric cars
Jason pontinmarch 11,2007 vrooroom!
Or, to be more precise, a little more gentle: brmmm.
A123 System, start-up-
In Watertown, the masses.
Said it created a strong, safe, long termlived battery.
If the battery achieves the manufacturer\'s ambition, the future of the car will be a softer sound. To date, all-
The electric car failed due to insufficient battery.
At the end of 1990, GM\'s future EV1 car was favored by drivers with a strong sense of environmental protection, who admired its innovative engineering, but since the car uses a large original nickel metal hydrogen battery, its range is limited, its acceleration will drop as the battery ages, and its two
Seat layout is not very comfortable for Big Corn
Fed North America.
\"The problem is availability,\" said Nick Zelenski. M.
Chief vehicle engineer.
\"When you are going to charge ev1, you have to plan your life. " G. M.
It makes only 1,117 of the experimental cars because it believes American drivers will not buy the ideal thing that offends the nation\'s open roads. Now, G. M.
Plan two plugs
Hybrid cars.
Like Toyota Prius and other hybrid cars. M.
The model will supplement their motor with the power of the internal combustion engine.
The difference is that most of the electricity for daily commuting will come from battery packs that can be charged from ordinary home sockets.
Without using a gas engine, the mileage of the new model is expected to be at least 40 miles.
Although it\'s smaller than all of them.
The hybrid features of the electric EV1, the new model will provide them with a larger total range. AdvertisementG. M.
Say the extra cost of the battery pack means the plug
The price of hybrid cars will be thousands of dollars higher than similar models.
Electric cars.
But if gasoline is $2 a gallon, drivers who travel an average of 40 miles a day can also save $450 a year.
Because the average daily mileage of American cars is 33 miles (
In the electric range of the new model)
Driving 155 miles per gallon, many drivers fill up with gas every few months. AdvertisementG. M.
Hope to start selling the first car, a plug
In the hybrid version of the Saturn Vue sport utility, the fastest is 2009.
The second is the Chevrolet Volt, which exists only as a concept.
There is an amazing difference from the traditional car design.
Volt\'s internal combustion engine is not connected to the drive system like the current hybrid.
In the case of Volt, it is only used to charge the battery of the vehicle.
In short, Volt will play a role as a real electric vehicle and cover the internal combustion engine
It is no coincidence that it has also been designed as a recognized traditional American compact seat five that can drive hundreds of miles to the mother\'s home on Thanksgiving Day.
\"The real breakthrough is the new battery that gives us energy density --
This in turn provides us with a reliable, high
A package that provides power in a relatively small space . \"Zelenski said. G. M.
Selected a123 System (
With partner Cobasys)
To develop batteries that could be used for Saturn\'s Vue, he said, it is considering awarding a123 systems a similar contract for the Volt concept car to take advantage of the company\'s compelling new rechargeable lithium battery.
Rechargeable lithium batteries have been used on laptops and mobile phones since the beginning of 1990. (
Their common name \"lithium ion batteries\" is repeated, as all batteries conduct current by allowing ions to pass through between the two electrodes. )
But despite the lightweight rechargeable lithium battery
Compounds with high activity of cobalt oxide are usually used
To date, it has been considered impractical for transportation because they are not strong enough to explode or catch fire if pierced, shaken or overheated.
A123 System battery is different. Yet-
Jiang Ming, professor of materials science and engineeringI. T. and a co-
Professor Jiang said the founders of a123 systems described their strengths: \"in hybrid cars, our batteries offer faster acceleration than any other battery of the same size.
\"The chemical stability of the cathode material greatly improves the safety and extends the battery life.
\"The history of the A123 System provides a lesson for the adaptability of entrepreneurs.
When Professor Jiang and two others founded the company in 2002, it worked on a radical business proposition: it wanted to develop a technology, \"Self-assembly\" of component materials into practical lithium batteries.
\"Imagine a stretchable battery that fits the shape of a device or appliance,\" said Professor Jiang . \".
\"They can also be deposited in very small volumes to power micro and nano devices. "But self-
Despite the great potential of assembling batteries, it turns out to be difficult to develop
Or, at least more expensive and uncertain than the direct commercial possibility of rechargeable lithium batteries with new applications.
\"It doesn\'t work,\" said another colleague, Bart Riley.
Founder, research and development of Vice President A123\'s. (The third co-
The founder is Ric Fulop, currently vice president of business development, who is also involved in starting a business
Of the five other companies)
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By the end of 2003, the company had abandoned itself.
Assembled for another technology that is not very chemical but still eye-catching.
It replaces cobalt oxide and uses a common substance-iron phosphate, but it is assembled in a new type of nano-material. structure —
The particles used are 100 times smaller than conventional oxides, and the conductive capacity is 8 orders of magnitude higher than that of conventional phosphate.
The new combination provides high power, stability and longevity.
Advertising to the new technology seems to be a smart decision, if hard.
Today, privately held A123Systems has raised $0. 102 billion from investors like Sequoia Capital, Motorola and GE.
The company has 250 employees in China, Taiwan, South Korea and the United States.
In addition to the development work with G. M.
It produces batteries that drive Black & Decker and DeWalt professional power tools.
According to David Vieau, chief executive of a123systems, the company enjoys \"hundreds of millions of dollars\" on its contract \".
Pre-commitment to self
The component is reserved only in the company\'s nerdy name, which comes from an equation called \"Hamaker force constant\" which is used to calculate nanometers
Size and start \"A123. . .
Although the a123 System still wants to return to itself
One day the battery was assembled and it still focused on the future of transportation.
At this point, the company\'s founders and senior managers combine business intelligence with the enthusiasm of millennials: they sincerely believe that their rechargeable lithium batteries can reduce the number of those that cause global warmingThese plug-
In hybrid vehicles, \"it will reduce gasoline demand for most drivers by more than 70% and carbon emissions by 50%, which will have a significant impact on the environment \". Vieau said. Driving a plug-
In hybrid cars powered by A123 batteries, most drivers rarely use gasoline engines.
Although the electricity charged to the battery is mainly from carbon dioxide
According to a study by Argonne National Laboratory 2005, burning gasoline is the most polluted transportation energy when producing power plants.
The goal of the A123 System is to apply new technologies born from primitive science to solve a difficult problem.
The chairman of the company is Gururaj Deshpande, who is also an entrepreneur
Founder and Chairman of Sycamore Networks.
As he explained: \"This company can play a role in reducing our dependence on oil and cleaning up the environment.
Any company, as long as they contribute to these efforts in any way, will do a good job in the world.
Jason Pontin is the editor-in-chief and publisher of M-owned magazine and website Technology ReviewI. T. E-
Mail: pontin @ nytimescom.
A version of the article appears on the New York version of the BU3 page with the title: a new battery takes off in a race against an electric car.
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