Do People Determine Their Own Genes?

What if people are able to determine their own genes? If these three statements are true, then it suggests that people can!

1) Can some people make reasonably correct inferences about another person's personality just by looking at their facial features?

2) Can people change their personalities and behaviors?

3) Are facial features coded by genes?

What do you think?

Short Book on How to Write Short Books

If you have ever wondered how do I write a short book and you've read many short books but none of the short books are about how to write a short book then this is the book for you. First, to write a short book about writing short books you will need some sort of idea on how to write a short book. Then you have to take your idea and implement it. You can always type your short book on a computer and then print it or you can find an empty short book and write in that. Either way, when you're done, you will have finished your short book!

New Band

Hello to people who follow blog,

Dear listeners who follow blog, I would like to inform you about our new band, the Lavendar Shadowfish. This is a pop sensation. While the new music from our excellent band has not yet been recorded or written we invite you to listen to it at that time.

Thank you for your loyal listening,

International Lavendar Shadowfish Observer

Another problem with statistics

Okay no one comments on my posts about statistics probably because they're boring and they may or may not make sense.

My issue with statistics today is that they don't make generalizations about how certain types of characteristics interact, but rather how the characteristics themselves correlate.

For example, a common study will compare a certain trait like happiness to another trait like optimism. They may or may not find a correlation. The problem is that even if they do find a correlation, we cannot draw any other conclusions without doing further studies. Even with further studies, we cannot agree or disagree with any sort of general conclusion based on the collection of studies because they're all telling us that something is probably the case (not definitely the case). We just know that some things are more likely to be related to other things and we're not necessarily sure what any of these things are. This is because the focus point of the study is misdirected.

A well directed study would focus on a general axiom. An example is that characteristics that are similar will amplify the similar characteristics in an interactive context. The focus point is not on any specific characteristic, but rather on an axiom or principle that can be tested using multiple characteristics. An axiom provides the formerly lacking meaning to the characteristic constructs because we can see how things are related and what affects constructs will have on each other and other constructs. Carefully hypothesized axioms should help to identify many constructs according to a certain criteria and then provide a way to test these criteria.

The advantage of an approach that focuses on axioms is that it ties in various characteristic constructs into categories based on those axioms. We can then relate characteristic constructs in a meaningful way. Another advantage is that not only do we have information that connects characteristics, but we can also test and find exceptions to a hypothesized axiom. Exceptions can lead to other distinctions and axioms that can also be used to categorize characteristic constructs in a meaningful way. We can also tell which axioms divide characteristic constructs in the most clear cut and influential way.

Statistics what do you think

There are also even more problems involved in using statistics for psychology research. Psychology does not draw enough basic distinctions between separate entities, or consider the nature of different sorts of entities that would delimit the research in such a way to make the outcomes of studies understandable. The point of what I am writing is to make two such distinctions and show how they can improve statistical research.

The first distinction is between dynamics and objects. These are two basic differences that are also important to grammar, in the sense of verbs and nouns. My proposal is that verbs are not effectively described by adjectives in themselves, while nouns can be used as signals when described by adjectives in the context of those verbs to make meaningful discoveries. Here is an example:

We know that the weather in England is warmer than the weather in Labrador, Canada. These two places are on the same latitude of the globe. Here, England and Labrador, Canada are nouns. The temperature is an adjective. The latitude is a system of measurement that roughly corresponds to the construct of temperature (it is colder at the poles than the equator).

The dynamic in this example is the rotating jet streams, which sends warmer weather down to England, and colder weather to Labrador. On the other side of the globe, it sends warmer weather to Alaska, and colder weather to Russia, colder weather to California, and warmer weather to Australia. The problem is that if one wanted to describe this dynamic (verb) with an adjective construct (the weather), it would by itself be ambiguous, confusing and meaningless to us when using abstract constructs whose relationship we are unsure of to begin with (as is the case with psychology).

What we do find, however, is that there are quantitative signals or clues embedded in the study of measurements and nouns, that signal the presence of a dynamic.

In the last example, there are two relevant quantitative features. One is the measurement of latitude, which proposes a system by which an entire object can be measured (the globe), and the measurement of heat, which roughly corresponds with the measurement of latitude.

These features are at first subjective measurements, but there is a measure of objectivity in these measurements when we see the presence of organized paradoxes; in the past example, we see how places on the same latitude (measurement) have different temperatures, and how this theme repeats along the distinction of continents and oceans, with Alaska being at the same latitude but colder than Asia, and England being warmer than Labrador.

Organized paradoxes (results which contradict the understanding of past correlations, such as latitude and temperature) are signals or hints of dynamics, which regulate adjectival constructs (temperature), and are therefore not well described by them. In a sense, dynamics include or contain the range of an adjectival construct within the boundaries imposed by the object (in this example, the cold air from the poles and the warm air from the equator, within the boundary of the earth's temperatures).

Objects may also be measured in terms of ranges. For example, the temperature of England varies in the summer and the winter. Accordingly, England could be confused for a dynamic. However, the relatively limited range of England, Antarctica or Venezuela, as compared to the range of the dynamic of rotational weather patterns, should classify it quantitatively as an object. This is because the range of any certain place does not include all possible temperatures of the whole set (the globe). This shows another shortcoming of modern statistics; extreme responses (very cold or very hot) are blurred by averaging. The extreme measurements of a construct are essential in determining its locale on a measurement scale, and even determining the merit of any certain choice of measurement. The confusion caused by choosing arbitrary constructs, and being unable to distinguish between meaningless results and the possibility of having chosen a meaningless construct, is resolved by crosschecking the extreme results of objects according to a certain measurement with the disparities of averages in similar locations (places on the measurement scale), in the context of a dynamic, and the dynamic's predictable interference of similar objects based on their similar placements on the locale measurement.

To clarify, the measurement of latitude makes England the same as Labrador, and Northeast Asia the same as Alaska. We can tell that our constructs of measurement are meaningful because there are two paradoxes according to the averages (Asia is in the same place and colder, Labrador is in the same place and colder). The dynamic (jet winds) can be differentiated from the locales, because its range of extremes includes the range of extremes of locales, including, importantly, both the terms of hot and cold. Furthermore, there ought to be reflective paradoxes in the southern hemisphere (which can be understood according to a measurement of latitude), by which two locales on the same latitude differ in average temperatures, but in the opposite direction (the west is warmer than the east). This is because the dynamic in question is rotational, and the presence of inverse paradoxes may or may not be an abstract principle of dynamics, or a specific case of a certain dynamic.

The last issue is how one can distinguish the measurement of latitudes from the construct of a dynamic, since the construct of latitude is also inclusive of the range of temperatures. If we begin with the construct of global jet streams, we can tell it is a dynamic because it is inclusive of the range of temperatures. Thus, there are actually two questions; how can one determine that a dynamic is not a measurement of locales, and that a measurement of locales is not a dynamic?

This requires a consideration of the characteristics of a measurement. They should be both qualitative and quantitative. A duck is not a good standard of measurement, because it includes no obvious feature by which we could compare one duck to another duck. A group of ducks could be a measurement, because we could compare how many ducks a group of ducks has compared to another group of ducks.

The utility of this measurement is still questionable, however. Any measurement that is both quantitative or qualitative can still be considered a sterile or arbitrary measurement (insofar as it leads to conclusions that cannot be appreciated).

For a construct of measurement to be useful, it has to be selected in view of its strategic utility. This requires two things: First, that it is an inclusive measurement, such that it does lend potential meaning to a broad context. Second, it has to generate correlations with a second construct that are reflective at the extremes when compared to the original measurement construct (latitude), such as temperature, which shows extreme (cold) weather at the poles.

Thus a useful construct of measurement is a construct combined with another construct that produces a full range of data, with the data having similar measurements at its extremes.

This allows a researcher to be certain that his study will be meaningful in describing a full range of a given contextual construct, and to be able to hypothesize the locales and relative placements of object constructs according to what measures we have for them (that England is not close to the equator, based on its extreme and average temperatures, or based on its latitude). Researchers can also deduce expected responses according to locale and temperature, and inconsistent data can be tested to see whether it is in fact an organized paradox (that the data is inconsistent in an organized way on both the high and low ends of the measurement). This solves the problem of trading reliability for validity and vice versa, since there are now testable features that can be cross checked to determine the utility of a construct.

The issue of mistaking dynamics for the measurements themselves can be solved by inverting this procedure. Latitude correlates with extremes and averages in temperature, and locales have their own identifying averages, and identifying extremes. A dynamic, like a jet stream, should contrast and deviate with local measurements in a more complex and unpredictable way (why it is not a good choice to use dynamics as a starting point for research). However, there should be extreme temperatures in related locales that are shown when studying a dynamic in the correct context of organized locales and temperature measurements. Studying dynamics themselves may not be useful, as they are too complex, but determining what is too complex to be studied, by measuring both averages and extremes, and selecting constructs according to inclusive and reflexive polarity criteria, allows the researcher to make this determination. The researcher can figure out what data is too complex and what data can be organized, and organize it.

To summarize, the distinctions of nouns, adjectives and verbs can be useful to statistics and how statistics can identify each based on: a) variation consistency b) extreme scores c) variation and extreme scores

Nouns should have a variation that is included within an adjective of a defined system. There can be many nouns within an adjective construct. Different nouns should have different variation schemes in terms of a qualitative measurement (location/heat or cold). They should be consistent. The two polar averages (hot or cold) should define the locale possibilities.

Ajdectives should include all variations; it is the defined system for a given qualitative measurement (location or heat/cold). An adjective construct should include all extremes. A pair of adjective constructs should include all measurements and should be able to list the averages in an organized, linear way from either perspective.

Verbs do not have a consistent variation. They usually do not include all extremes.

To summarize how to deduce the presence of a system or of useful constructs:

A system should have paradoxical measurements based on nouns acting inconsistently, or against expectations on the same quality constructs within an adjective construct. However, they should be consistently inconsistent in a symmetrical way across all quadrants of two combined adjective constructs.

A noun can be acknowledged to be acting inconsistently based on odd averages of half a measure (an unusual hot average compared to other locales with similar cold averages). It can also be acknowledged if its score on one of the two combined adjectival constructs is known with certainty. There is one interior and one exterior signal to tell whether a noun is out of place: Internally: half of its internal average score when the qualitative adjective measure is dissected into its polar opposites. Externally: A priori knowledge of the exact location of the noun on one of two adjectival measurements that are defining relations

The Mystery of the Dual Use Conifer

The conifer had presented much of the puzzle to the team of scientists who were studying the aspect of the squirrel and the acorn. The question had begun with the study of the squirrel; where did the squirrel go when it was raining, where did it go when it was cold, where did they appear from first? This line of inquiry had led to the extremely tall conifer, and the result was that the team of scientists were sitting on a balcony in Montana watching this conifer with a happy bemusement. Their happiness was not so much due to the conifer as it was due to the clement weather and the light breeze and the glasses of ice and the bottle of scotch that sat on the ledge of the balcony.

There was another side to this story, however. A graduate assistant was sitting across from the research expert staring at the glass ash tray intently. But the research expert had noticed this glance and was alarmed; was the graduate assistant intent on stealing his ash tray? He looked back and forth between the ash tray and the research assistant, and indeed it seemed that the assistant had an interest in the ash tray, but the expert was worried about thinking of such an accusation against the assistant; but he was also worried about his ash tray.

Suddenly his phone rang. It was inside the house. This created a dilemma for the expert; should he answer the phone or should he watch the ash tray? He could not do both at the same time, and the phone rang again. "Research assistant, go bring me the phone," said the expert craftily; this was why he was the expert. The research assistant went into the house and the ringing suddenly stopped.

"Hello?" said the research assistant. "Yes one moment." He brought the cordless phone over to the expert, who put it to his ear, all the while looking at his ash tray. "It's the physicist."

"Hello," said the expert.

"Hello," said the physicist on the other side of the phone. "Are you still researching the quantum particle we placed in the conifer, in addition to your study on the squirrel?" asked the researcher who worked at the same university as the expert. In fact, they were working on the same cross-discipline grant at this very time and taking turns leaving the university to take measurements for a month and then switching to teach class. But the expert hesitated; he had completely forgotten that he was in charge of a cross-discipline task force.

"Maybe," he said, carefully avoiding answering the question. This is why he was the expert.

"Maybe? What do you mean?" asked the physicist. The expert looked into space, thinking, and then quickly returned his gaze to his ash tray, which was fortunately still on the ledge. He tried to hand the phone to the assistant.

"I think it is the wrong number," said the expert, trying to look highly concerned, and facing the receiving end of the phone away from his face so the physicist would not hear him.

"No, it's the physicist," said the research assistant. The expert suddenly remembered that the research assistant had answered the phone first, but he did not know if the physicist had said he was the specific physicist they were working with, or if he was just a physicist. This was crucial information, because depending on what the physicist had said, he could reasonably tell his assistant that this was the wrong physicist.

"Who is this?" he demanded, putting the phone back to his ear.

"Dr. Hiford of OU's cross-discipline grant study," said the physicist, "is this Dr. Bozon with?-" The expert interrupted him.

"Did you introduce yourself to the assistant in a general or specific way?" he asked crossly.

"Why do you ask that?" asked Dr. Hiford, who was also an expert. Dr. Bozon hesitated; this was not going well at all. He looked back at his ash tray, which was still on the ledge. The research assistant whispered at him, 'tell him we'll call him back'. This was good advice, and the expert suddenly remembered why he had hired this assistant instead of some of the other assistants, and suddenly felt bad for thinking the assistant wanted to steal his ash tray, even though it was still certainly possible that he had that intention.

"Let me call you back," said Dr. Bozon, and hung up the phone abruptly. He looked over at the research assistant. "I think that is the physicist with whom we are supposed to be doing the cross-discipline grant study," observed Dr. Bozon neutrally.

"Yes that was him," said the assistant.

"Hmm," said the expert. "Well for a moment I thought I had an adversarial relationship with the physicist, because we took none of the measurements, and I was preoccupied with - eh - with something else, but I fear that we may have made him suspicious," said the expert bluntly.

"Yes it would have been better if you had not made him suspicious," agreed the research assistant.

"I am glad you agree," said the expert congenially, remembering why he had hired this assistant, and then looked over at his ash tray compulsively.

"Why do you keep on looking at the ash tray?" asked the assistant.

"Oh! I thought it was you who was looking at the ash tray," said the expert.

"Well because you keep on staring at it every three seconds," rejoined the assistant. The expert wasn't sure if he believed the assistant's explanation. Then suddenly occurred to him that from an objective perspective, it could just as well be he himself that wanted to steal the ash tray. But this depended on whose ash tray the ash tray was exactly.

"Whose ash tray is this?" asked the expert after a few moments.

"I think it came with the laboratory," said the assistant.

"Well that solves nothing," answered the expert unhappily. The assistant was confused; sometimes it was difficult to tell what the expert was thinking. It started raining a bit and the expert started smoking again, sitting back under the cover of the balcony. He stared at a nearby conifer and looked to see if there were any squirrels in it. There seemed to always be more squirrels in the nearby oak tree, but this was odd because although acorns came from oak trees, the conifer should have more squirrels because the conifer was much bigger than the oak tree. Suddenly the phone rang again.

"Don't answer it!" warned the expert.

"It's probably the physicist," said the assistant, who was finishing a second glass of scotch.

"I know," said the expert. "We need to figure out what to do with all the data we didn't collect for his weird quantum experiment. Do you think he's an important physicist? Will the school be mad if we don't do his study?" asked the expert.

"I don't know, I'm never in the physics building," said the assistant diplomatically.

"Okay, well go bring over the papers that detail the measurements we're supposed to be taking," decided the expert. A moment later the expert was sifting through the papers, infuriated.

"This could be ruining my experiment! All their equipment is in my conifer!" shouted the expert angrily, jumping out of his seat. "How am I supposed to see the conifer squirrel interaction with these confounded variables!" he threw all the papers on the ground and stomped them into the wet wooden floor boards of the balcony.

"Wasn't someone supposed to check that the experiments were mutually possible before you agreed to the grant," asked the assistant, cautiously.

"Yes, someone, exactly!" said the expert. "We need to find that someone. That someone that ruined my hypothesis!"

"Well you must have signed the grant yourself at some point, right?" asked the concerned the assistant. The expert sat back down resignedly. "But what are the odds of that? This conifer is an extremely rare, obscure tree. Out of all the experiments a physicist would do, why would it involve a tree? And why would it involve precisely this certain type of rare tree? And beyond that, why would he choose to use this exact tree, right in front of the laboratory? The odds are beyond small!"

"Well maybe that is how the school chose this mutual cross-discipline study," said the assistant.

"Perhaps it's possible, I won't deny that, but remember, correlation- not causation!" said the expert circumspectly. He lit another match and began to smoke. He looked down at all the wet papers crumbled at his feet. They were thoroughly illegible. "Fax the physicist and have him send another copy of our project description. Tell him we have the original, we just want to make sure that we are in touch with the office of the real physicist to honor the confidentiality of the project," he decided cleverly. This was why he was the expert.

How Literature is Religious

Literature is a story where the plot, which describes or reflects reality, converges with transcendent meaning, as implicitly illustrated by characters, dialog or occurrences that have symbolic meaning. The plot is either taken directly from reality, and translated into words, or rearranged from reality. The notion that reality itself has transcendent meaning is a religious idea, and the extent to which a work of literature uses symbolic meaning to subtly but accurately express hidden ideas embedded in reality is often the standard by which good literature is separated from bad literature. 

The idea that reality has hidden meaning is based on the idea that reality itself is intelligent, and humans, as part of reality, interact, say and do things that can reveal a constant purpose above their individual intentions. Good literature takes situations from reality and aligns them in such a way that this transcendent meaning becomes manifest, through the reader's assumption of the author's own purpose in writing something. A person who does not believe in religion may think that any convergence between thought and reality is either coincidental, emerged by evolution, whereby man's thought process was formed by its environment, or that symbolic meaning is an amusing but misled invention of man. 

The American transcendentalists explicitly described the link between reality and literature. Walden's pond is not just a pond, but an intelligent idea in the mind of God. A mountain is a topographical feature, but it is also the place where water originates but immediately leaves, an arrogant pile of rocks reaching toward the sky, which does provide water, but where the water immediately leaves to humbler places, as soon as it becomes warm.  

A person who is not religious may hold these ideas to be primitive and anthropomorphic, yet these are the sort of ideas on which literature and especially poetry is established. Good literature and poetry can also endure over centuries, because the sensations and similarities between man's mind and the associated aspect of reality do not change. A mountain suggests the same ideas millennia ago as it does today, even if people focus on different aspects of a mountain, they are not contradicting the other aspects.  

The sensation of being near a mountain or a river or a beach is enriched by its divine aspects, that is what the thing projects in thought, rather than physicality. However, such introspection is considered to be primitive or pointless by anyone that holds that creation is random. If one purports this view, they must also hold that those insights in literature, formed by loyal description of reality, cannot be considered insights at all. 

One might disagree and say that these insights are insights and intelligent, but they are created by man selectively choosing aspects of reality that are not random to him or have special significance to him,  or in other words, that people see what they want to see, which is partially true. But then how does literature, by its primitive consideration of reality, tend to point out insights that were previously hidden to most people? How does reality teach lessons to the people perceptive to it? If reality was randomly formed, and a man is an inland of consciousness within it, wouldn't anything he tossed into that ocean get randomly swept away? 

The non-religious perspective has to rely on two fallacies in all such arguments: That if we don't know something to be true, it must be false (or we should hold it to be false); second, that if our perception is guided by our own minds, then everything else must be considered as only a figment of our minds*. These sort of arguments dominate the university and liberalism, but it must be recognized that these views require literature to be nonsense, or at least a primitive amusement man generates by himself.  These are both assumptions, and they diminish cultural life, and predispose people away from developing the literary and analytical aspects of their minds. All scientific developments are based on theories, which are essentially structured metaphors, and once these theories are developed and become institutionalized, the force that made the discoveries is hidden away. This shame of symbols can only lead to scientific bias and stagnation. 

*This fallacy can be exploited. A person who does not believe that the mind has any spiritual superiority will point out that when a person closes his eyes, a tree is still there in another's perspective. Then if countered with the existence of the physical universe including that tree, he has to admit that we cannot really prove that the tree is actually there, and that it is not only a mutual perception, or that that mutual person is actually a perception. 

Empirically, when he closes his eyes, he has to state the tree is not there when asked if he can see the tree. Thus if he is to lend any credence to empiricism, he has to acknowledge the superiority of other aspects of the mind over perception and empiricism, since empiricism causes him to make empirically incorrect observations. (He has to rely on the first view, that other people exist, and these people can see a tree when he can't, possibly including any sort of phenomena that the non-religious deny based on a request for empirical evidence.)