Self-help gurus: the modern day faeries

I pilfered this from a facebook post that a friend made. The article talks about why we still have crazy beliefs, as in gods, witches, faeries, supernatural powers, and other paranormal phenomena. For the charlatans and hustlers, they promote these for personal financial gains. What about for the rest of us? Why do we still have these beliefs?

This story reminds me of another recent article about how optical illusions work and because our brains predict the future in order to compensate for the delay in the arrival of immediate visual information. I wonder if a similar explanation on how we fill in gaps within our knowledge by appealing to something magical. This might also explain why many people like to interpret their dreams. The consensus among cognitive scientists and biologists is that dreaming is important in solidifying memories and for our survival; but there is no good explanation for why and what we dream about, and even the basics of how we dream!

I think the price for having the neocortex to facilitate higher order cognitive functions, one defect is our constant need to fill in gaps within our knowledge base. If we don't get enough information or at the speed required for survival, our brain naturally projects ahead and fills in gaps in order for the world to make sense. What we fill in the gap is often ruled by emotions with deeper psychological origins.

As alluded to by a commenter here, in a society where we have turned not only material goods, but our hopes and dreams, ideas, and even our very own happiness into a commodity, we think we can buy and sell them at a price. Not only have we relinquished our reasoning ability, but we are becoming dependent on others to satisfy our own needs. Back in the early days of the industrial revolution, the cure for depression (and unhappiness) was "industry," as in working harder. With the advent of computers, especially with many IT guys sitting around surfing the net all day without the pressure to produce or physical demands, we have more time to indulge in silly hobbies and preoccupy our minds with ideas bombarded into us by marketeers. I thought this might be a uniquely American phenomenon, but I think with more people sitting around instead of doing physical labor, we have become physically, intellectually, and socially lazy.

We now buy into the whole self-hype movement. What I have noticed recently, and I'm not sure if this is unique to the seduction community, have you noticed how many Jews are in the pickup business? Now, before anyone accused me of being Hitler for outting those gays and incarcerate them into concentration camps, just count how many of them are among the top self-hype gurus: Style, RJ, David D, Thunderfag, Swingcat, Sinn, David X, (half-breed) Savoy,... I don't think that there's any Illuminati-type conspiracy going on, but it is interesting to note that such a disproportionately high number of one ethnic group within a particular community. They become such experts at selling dreams and fantasies to guys. What's your explanation for these faeries?

Your life is already over before you live it

There's a huge uproar recently over some comments by Dr. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix model of DNA, regarding the genetic basis of intelligence. For those who don't know much of him, he is a Nobel-laureate, unlike his other co-discoverer however, Francis Crick, many consider Watson as a one-trick pony. He hasn't broken new ground in science since his discovery back in 1953. With that aside, is there a genetic basis of intelligence?!

Oh, one more thing, this is my blog, i.e. a place for me to rant and rave, definitely not a place for any legitimate scientific discussion nor a place for me to give my professional opinion. With all those caveats, we start with the premise that our genes determine much of our physical characteristics. What about the something where the result is the interaction of nature and nurture, such as our longevity. As that turns out, the best predictor of how long we live is also based on how long our parents lived, so again, something heritable, and most likely, genes.

I personally think those who are so politically correct to say that there are more variations between individuals of the same race than differences between races are morons. If genes can determine our skin color, and countless other physical characteristics, I can only guess that our genes also determine our intelligence capacity. Note that I'm not saying one race is smarter than another, because we can bias tests to get the result we want. All I'm saying is that we are different, and our differences are determined mainly by our genes.

How is this related to pickup/seduction? Genetics can play a major role from our looks, intelligence, to our behaviors. Sure, we can learn, but I would contend that our genes already set the upper and lower bounds on our capacity to learn. Consequently, how well we do is pretty much set in advance... Some people are destined to be stars and for many, their lives serve as warnings to others.

This constant need/drive for self-improvement doesn't benefit those who seek it; perhaps a few people do improve, but for the rest, they serve to enrich scammers: dating coaches, teachers of seduction workshops/classes, forum leaders, and in many cases, gurus. Step back and ask ourselves a simple question, if they are sooooooooo successful at what they do, do they need to hype themselves that much in order to sell their service to us?! I'm not even that successful in my real profession (outside of this fun social activity), but I don't feel the need to whore myself out on my own blog.

If we truly want to change our lives, the best way to do it to commit ourselves to do it, be that alone or otherwise. We should learn from those who have proven themselves. And finally, surround ourselves with those who are successful, not those who are still in the same place as they have been in years... which means, avoid forums and those who have been there forever, the longer they are there, they are more detrimental to our success. Those who are truly successful are recognized, they don't need to give themselves titles: PUA, top 10 PUA, ambassador of their tribes, lair president, forum guru, dating coach,... if only they would just admit what they really are: losers. And yes, they will forever be that way, because of their genes.

Trichotillomania interruptus v. forme fruste

Awhile back I blogged a bit about cell death as the body's way of policing itself, to protect itself, sacrificing one or a few cells to isolate damage to the rest of the body. Those are pathological forms of cell death, mostly in response to injuries. There are also physiological forms of cell death; examples include cells between digits dying so that we don't born with web hands, like ducks, or later in life, where hair follicles degenerate under the influence of testosterones, commit quiet suicide, little bits, dying slowly.

The morphological hallmark of physiological cell death is the quiet disappearance of these cells without triggering inflammation; which I will blog about in the future (I know, don't get too excited). There are also frustrated forms of physiological cell death. By that, I mean the process is interrupted. The best example would be skin cells. Technically, they have committed suicide, yet the cell soma is still here, serving as a barrier to prevent the hostile environment outside from invading the sterile environment inside. Another would be red blood cells, they are so specialized, so well trained, in their mission in life, in sustaining life, that they don't even have the heart and soul of a cell, the nucleus. In the case of keratinocytes (skin cells), they are dead; but that's not the case with red blood cells, they don't die until they are gobbled up by other cells in the liver. Yeah, don't get me started on how you swallow, eat, and digest your own cells and proteins on a daily basis. So all these cells are what we called terminally differentiated. They don't become anything else, their fates have been determined. At an earlier point in their lives, they could have the potential to become anything, as we are currently trying to coax stem cells to do, but these cells at this stage, however, are fated to serve a limited set of functions then die. They have, in essence, petered out.

Yes, I know I'm anthropomorphosizing the process. This is how we all relate to the world, using what we know in order to acquire, incorporate, and organize information. One can only imagine the frustration if a normal process is disrupted, or in this case, interrupted. How does this frustration manifests itself? In the case of keratinocytes, they just slough off and become the dust in our house, as waste. In the case of erythrocytes (red blood cells), their content, such as hemoglobin, is recycled.

The distinction of whether something is useful or not is difficult. It's almost as bad as trying to figure out the cause and effect. For example, if you see someone who is bald, does s/he have trichotillomania (and possibly trichophagia, a "zebra") or just another case of alopecia areata (the horse)? Sure, there are clinical signs that we can look for, but to a lay person, who is reading online medical books without training, how would that person figure out without clinical experience? It's almost like trying to figure out what I am saying in my blog without knowing who I really am and what I'm really saying. What inspired all this? Subcommunication.

Something I leave you with, you know the expression about people who are frustrated, they pull their hairs out. What happens to those who are already bald? Where do they find an outlet for their frustration?

Baby don't hurt me...

Leaving ethical and philosophical argument aside, for the greater good of the body/person, each cell within us is capable of committing suicide. There's an elaborate system of cellular machinery within each and every cell that will quietly kill the cell, if sensors of that cell-death machinery are triggered. The rationalization is that if something bad happens to or within that cell, it would rather die than to mutate or act in ways that would hurt the rest of the body.

Failure of such system can be one potential cause of cancer. For example, DNA modified by radiation that mutated the gene to either nonfunctional form (in the case of an anti-tumorigenic gene) or to an overactive form (gain of function in a proto-oncogene), that cell undergoing multiple mutations will lead to a "cancerous" state. Usually, self-check or by immune cell surveillance would detect this change and the cell is either self-induced to die (by apoptosis) or to be killed by immune cells. This way, the irradiation damage is limited, contained within that one dead cell and not be spread, or to affect other nearby cells.

In fact, most cells in the body are "programmed" to die by default without the proper growth factors and other environmental factors. This self-induced death is quiet in the sense that nearby cells or local immune cells will clear the debris without causing inflammation; i.e., the death is quiet but not silent. The same molecular machinery within cells that are used to die, as it turns out, I discover that they can be used for functions other than cell death. There's a growing corpus of literature that shows these cell death enzymes are used for both physiologic and pathologic functions without leading to cell death.

The importance of this discovery can be categorized at multiple levels. At the epistemological level, there is a distinct connection between form and function. Cell lives and dies by changing its form. At the scientific level, this provides a novel insight into mechanisms of cellular differentation, fusion, fission, chemotaxis, apoptosis, proliferation and growth. At the medical level, we can deduce how the body regulates both normal (physiologic) and in response to disease/injury/harm (pathologic) activities using the same set of enzymes. This would provide a list of candidate targets for drug development.

More than meets the eye

Complexity in life lies in the juxtaposition of simple blocks. Back when DNA was discovered, and finally identified to be contain only 4 bases, i.e. alphabet, we struggled to figure out how that could encode for the magic of life. Then we discovered that every 3 bases code for 1 amino acid, one word, and there are only 20 different atomic units of proteins. A string of many amino acids together make up a functional protein, as in a sentence, the basis of many biological machines. By the simple mapping of arrangement of DNA, we can translate to sequences of amino acids, and finally identifying proteins, thus, the sentences that describe life.

Through the hardwork of many, we discovered that there are domains within proteins, as in phrases of our sentences. Of course, there were also multiple level of controls of how DNA is organized, transcription of DNA into RNA, processing, storage, and translation of RNA into proteins. Proteins themselves are further post-translationally modified, delivered, assembled with other proteins to form complexes, as in paragraphs. (I’m trying to see how far I can carry the analogy of life and linguistic before that breaks down).

Within the past decade, a whole new world of genetics developed, based on the discovery of “non-coding” RNA. What we thought was junk DNA, that was not coding for meaning for RNA and consequently, proteins, turns out to encode for meaningful control sequences to determine whether coding RNAs become proteins. I will go more in-depth in the future.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. — JFK

We probably heard/read different variations of that same quote by JFK. I submit my own: The winner has a thousand proud parents, and all losers are just lonely orphans. When I read reports (for both work & fun), I’m rather skeptical because everyone is craving to be that winner, who wants to be a lonely orphan? Almost everyone is guilty of only publishing their best results (at best), however, many are also guilty of falsifying their works in general.

Here I am, working, doing my usual readings and in my mailbox is a confidential email about our colleague whose dissertation work has been discovered (by journalists and experts will verify) to be false, and not only that, she also published the same “result” for multiple works by simple manipulations of images. I’m sure there are many people out there falsifying their works, but at least be smart enough to make multiple falsifications instead of repeating the same fake data! Are they that stupid and/or lazy?!This brings me to a recent discussion with a dear friend. We have been re-reading some FR’s by a self-proclaimed “Jedi knight” of PUA. The conversation flow in his FR is simply poetic. We all have talked with our share of women; yes, we are a bit awkward, and I’m sure we are not that smooth, even then, we have never encountered girls so compliant or eager. Of course, these same FR/LR’s are posted in multiple seduction boards (no, they were not peer-reviewed), and they also serve as advertisements.

If they are fake, how can we tell? Other than by our intuition, and thus, what about the false hopes they give to their readers? When these “reports” are just fantasies of someone trying to seduce these needy, socially inept, awkward dudes into giving up their hard-earned cash. A few of us have started our new seduction forum, we still haven’t formulate and agree on policies for dealing with people posting ads, and even more importantly, how do we review reports? Do we allow only reports of failures? Should we focus our attention on dissecting only reports of successes? At the very least, how do we flag reports to warn ea other? You are welcome to post your suggestions here in comments or in General Discussion.

Cracking open the blackbox

This past St. Patties’ day was probably the best one I’ve had as someone who is becoming more social. Although I have much to learn, I wonder if I am making progress at the right direction and at the right pace. Throughout the night at only one venue, I opened around 20-some sets. I would say almost every set opened and had I plowed, I would have progressed in my game.

There was a long drawn out discussion on naturals vs. us. The debate got quite personal at times. Hopefully someone will recount here in Seattle lair and describe what he saw. I agree that naturals don’t really run our version of the game. I would even contend that the game we run isn’t natural; not because the game isn’t natural, as it was built from the ground up based on what many deconstructed of their observations of naturals, published peer-reviewed works in evolutionary psycho-biology, and their in-field experience. Our “game” isn’t natural is the result of our incongruence; rather than blaming the game or the community as I have described before about other “gurus”, I should bear the responsibility of practicing and improving my game.

The next part was more difficult so I will start with an analogy. Medicine, as it was practiced in the Roman empire, was horrendous. Their physicians harmed more than they helped their patients. Then Galen came along and used his opportunity of treating wounded gladiators to understand human anatomy. So I do see a value in observing naturals in field; however, until we use the scientific process of deconstructing their behaviors and interactions, how do we model someone without even being able to describe his/her looks, presentation, behaviors,…?! Or in the case of Galen, he can’t start treating his men until he can describe the basic anatomy.

Perhaps my professional training automatically kicks in when I encounter a difficult problem, like the blackbox of how naturals doing PU. The first step is to collect data, that means making observations, of not just one interaction, but many of multiple naturals. Second, we deconstruct their interactions to similarities and differences, and formulate a hypothesis that consists of a series of simple yes-no questions that we go out in-field and test. Finally, we reconstruct a model that we can use to apply in future to see if we get the same result. Yes, the process is tedious and unless we are meticulous in this process, we would never “get” naturals.

We spent nearly 2 hours arguing about the merit of the community and trying to find ways to reject commonly held beliefs within the community. Sure, I can always find a few anecdotes that go against the community teachings. This tantamounts to finding a zebra among a herd of horses. Sure, there are always exception to the rules; which is the point, those few exceptions prove that the rules are correct most of the time. Most guys coming into this are from the computer industry, so they see almost everything in terms of black and white, and the second they see something gray or a zebra, they become nihilists and decide to reject everything wholesale. They do the proverbial throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Perhaps it’s my personal philosophy, I find that it’s easier to build on the works of others than to tear everything down and claim that I’m the second-coming of Christ, so my teaching is correct. This PU skillset is frustratingly difficult to learn & master without any guidance as we are all blind leading the blind here. But to take this frustration out and blame on others are not the best way of solving this blackbox. Yes, there are limitations to any PU method, that doesn’t mean we should reject it outright, many ppl have succeeded in using it. The lack of progress and/or success lies with the practitioner, whether that is due his lack of mastery, intelligence, whatever,…

Rather than throwing our hands up and admit defeat, or to say this-or-that is wrong, we need to solve this puzzle. Until we have faith in our ability and we dedicate our energy to solving it, we can sit around a bicker all day and trash any other method. The more productive way of spending our time and energy is to systematically finding solutions.