We can re-build him

I mentioned recently having listened to one of the episodes of the CBC podcast Brainwashed, about the CIA and psychiatrists' attempts to learn how to control peoples minds, in the 50's and 60's.

I went back to listen to another episode, and it was a very incredible reminder about how top psychiatrists got away with just ridiculously unethical experiments on the basis of fanciful theories of how they might work.

Those of us of a certain age (as the idea has been dead for quite a long time) might remember cheesy ads for pillow speakers that would play (say) a foreign language while you slept, and hey presto, it would help you learn with no effort at all.   I didn't know that this basis idea - which even as a child I thought sounded dubious - was in fact given a serious workout by at least one highly regarded psychiatrist working in Canada in the 1950's.  His name: Donald Ewen Cameron, and the experiments he did were called "psychic driving".  Wikipedia explains:

His "psychic driving" experiments consisted of putting a subject into a drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple statements. These experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the Institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postnatal depression; many suffered permanent debilitation after these treatments.^[27] Such consequences included incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.^[28] His work was inspired and paralleled by the psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved with the intelligence services and experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.^[29]

The Brainwashed episode indicated that the patients slept 23 hours a day, and although awoken to go to the toilet, the ideal result was considered a reversion to early childhood incontinence, as that indicated their mind had reverted to a childlike malleable state, into which positive messages on the tape would be absorbed by the subconscious, and replace those bad thoughts.

The podcast episode paints a much worse picture of how the experiments were done - if I recall correctly, Cameron first tried just playing the tape in the undrugged patient's bed 24 hours a day, which the patient found absolutely unbearable, so it was drugged sleep for weeks at a time, to get around that problem! 

There's a very good and lengthy article about Cameron here, which explains that for many people, Cameron exuded much charm, and his obituaries in 1967 were full of praise.  He apparently was very fond of gadgets and technology, and loved science fiction.   There is a detailed description of "psychic driving", although I would say inadequate attention given to this obvious problem (the failure of successful "rebuilds"):

Cameron reported that once the patient’s resistance had been conquered, the result was therapeutic. Depatterning then proceeded to a final level of “disorganzation” in which the patient experienced utter “loss of orientation as to space and time,” near-total amnesia for his or her identity, often double incontinence, and (relatedly) childlike dependency on care staff. 56 The goal now was to rebuild, to retrain the patient to pursue healthy behaviors and leave behind the unhealthy behavior patterns that had previously vexed him or her. Despite the labor-intensive tasks it generated for nursing staff, the method at its core served to put the whole process at a distance by automating it: “this method of activating psychotherapeutic mechanisms not only created a great deal of time saving for the therapist but also appears to operate much more rapidly than ordinary psychotherapeutic procedures and hence constitutes a time-saving for the patient,” Cameron and his assistant asserted.57 Cameron’s method was at heart an efficient device.

It all turned out after his death that money had flowed to him from the CIA, although it is not clear whether he knew that was the true source.  Somehow, it would seem, he managed to convince himself this was a genuinely successful treatment enough of the time to take the risk of ruining other patients who were permanently broken by it.  In fact, I haven't yet read about that aspect - I mean, it's kind of hard to be believe it was ever a clear success, in anyone.  

The article I linked to talks a lot about the connection of his ideas to behavourism, which has generally fallen from grace. I must admit, I have long found it frustrating that the present popular thoughts on psychology and personality are rarely seen in light of how previous "fashions" for how we think of ourselves have come and gone.   The idea that every person's true goal and only way to happiness is to be "true to yourself"* that now completely dominates much of the western world makes it is well worth reading about other ideas that have come and gone.

 

* What is the best term for that?  Personality - or identity - essentialism?  Someone has probably named it, I should go looking...

Cue Arnold "It's not a tumour"

So, how's my Covid going, asked no one.  Coming up to a week since I first thought I was coming down with something.  I'm still feeling like the tail end of a cold now - still a little bit of post nasal drip, but not much, but twinges of sinus pain, and an actually throbbing head if I have to cough (which I don't need to, often.)  I'm still putting down the head throbs to sinus pain, and I have actually had this at other times over perhaps the last year (periods where I have no blocked nose, but mild pains at various points around the face where I assume my sinuses are, but if I cough, forehead throbs badly.)

 I've actually looked up on the web recently, and I see that headache relating to coughing is described as follows:

Cough headaches are fairly uncommon. There are two types: primary cough headaches and secondary cough headaches. Primary cough headaches are usually harmless, are caused only by coughing and get better quickly without treatment. A primary cough headache is diagnosed only when a provider has ruled out possible causes other than coughing.

A secondary cough headache may be triggered by a cough, but it is caused by problems with the brain or structures near the brain and spine. Secondary cough headaches can be more serious and may require treatment with surgery.       

Primary cough headaches

The cause of primary cough headaches is unknown.

Secondary cough headaches

Secondary cough headaches may be caused by:

• A defect in the shape of the skull.
• A defect in the part of the brain that controls balance (cerebellum). This can happen when part of the brain is forced through the opening at the base of the skull (foramen magnum), where only the spinal cord should be. Some of these types of defects are called Chiari malformations.
• A weakness in one of the blood vessels in the brain (cerebral aneurysm).
• A brain tumor.
• A spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak.

So, this sounds like a condition ripe for hypochondria!  And one where a GP is likely to be uninterested, especially if the pain I am complaining about only lasts - I don't know, 30 to 60 seconds?

Sinuses (which I would say are still my most likely issue) are a real example of one of the body bits which are poorly designed and fixing them becomes guesswork.  Like backs when they go bad.

Anyway, all pretty minor, and I can't say I am feeling any "brain fog" from Covid, which is something I would find annoying.  Am sleeping very well at night, and kind of enjoying that aspect, actually.

 

 

Simple, but amusing

It's probably Covid...

 

Covid at home, continued

Yeah, I didn't even need to sleep during the day yesterday (Sunday).  Throat feels pretty normal again, but a bout this morning of serious cleaning of my bedroom (not physically demanding, just moving around a lot more than I have for several days) made me feel briefly unwell.  Still, the progress is generally in the right direction.   

I saw that Samantha Maiden tweeted yesterday:

and it was interesting to read the comments following, of some noting a similar very mild effect, and others how it was much worse for them, and some with lingering serious issues.   

As I have been saying virtually from the start, it seems a disease that's perfect for making life extremely complicated for public health officials and government:   the wide variety of responses mean that people will extrapolate from their own experience in a way that they shouldn't.  The unvaxed getting a mild response are particularly likely to feel vindicated, ignoring all detailed research on the benefits of vaccination at the community level.   And on the side of "panic", some people can point to legit studies indicating that even an apparently mild case might be causing lingering harm that is so not immediately apparent. But the seriousness of the harm is still up in the air.

It may not have made me very sick, but it's still a terrible disease...

Seems true, and yet...

....I didn't have the impression that Bertrand Russell himself was "full of doubt":

Oh, now that I check again, he actually labelled himself agnostic, not atheist.  Interesting article at The Guardian about the finer details of his thoughts on religion here.

Covid day 4 - and back to Graham Greene

Happy to report that very sore throat has abated considerably.  Was still bad last evening, but after a few hours sleep I medicated at midnight with a couple of old cold and flu tablets I found lying on the bedside table, then started one of the dusty novels* near them, followed by a good sleep, and woke up with throat feeling much better.

Nose still not blocked, just annoying post nasal drip continuing, but I have had worse cases of that from a normal cold.  

Speaking of sleeping habits, this seems an enforced way of getting into a biphasic nighttime sleep pattern.  I currently don't mind it, too, and the midnight reading seemed pleasantly free of distraction.  But I still think it's an anti-social pattern, suitable mainly for hermits.

* Graham Greene's The Power and The Glory.  I was admiring again, in the first chapter, how good he is at scene setting, and wondering how authors get the knack for doing it well.  Because it seems to me quite a talent as to how to slip in details of the physical environment intermittently, at just the right level of detail, so as to not find it intrusive to narrative, but instead letting it build up the mind's picture in a gradual but convincing way.

I see that, as I would have expected, Greene did visit Mexico before writing the novel (and hated it), so  the physical details of locality are not all invented.  Science fiction writers have a harder time, I guess, since they first need to make up something to describe, and it's not as if they can look at anyone else's photos to help. 

Abe reviewed

It's always a shock when a nutter in Japan kills someone, and yesterday's death of Shinzo Abe was a particularly dire example.

To be honest, I had not been certain of his political legacy, but Noah Smith's very positive assessment of him is well worth reading.  

Covid update

This is day 3 of not feeling well, although day one was very mild.  

The worst effect by far is a very sore throat that is only relieved by aspirin or paracetamol every 5 or 6 hours.  I always find aspirin more effective, but I am a bit reluctant to take it for too long.  Mind you, with most illnesses I'm rarely taking anything for more than a day.

But yeah, I don't remember the last time I had a sore throat that meant I had to take something in the middle of the night.  It's been a long, long time.

Apart from that, post nasal drip is a bit worse, but at least I can breathe through my nose.   It's affecting my digestion too: lots of gas and a bit crampy.  

Still don't think I have been running a temperature, but body is a bit achy sometimes.   Or that might just be from lying down so much?   

Anyway, could be worse, but could be better too.  😬

She is awful

I mean, nearly every word that comes out of her mouth is offensive, but this takes some beating...

Feeling positive

The bars, the bars...

I don't feel so bad, though.  Sore throat this morning, nose runs sometimes.  Not running any fever.

Maybe I can post more often!

Feeling unwell

I see that it was July last year that I had a cold, or something, which didn't turn out to be COVID.   Same thing happening now, perhaps: mainly just a thick head with a bit of post nasal drip; throat feels a little sore but not dire; coughing really can hurt the sinuses in the forehead, but fortunately, I don't have to cough often.  Oh, and I did feel not warm enough in bed on a night of sufficient covers that I should have been OK, but I don't think I have felt feverish today.   Lets see how I feel tomorrow...

The tritium problem

I saw mention of this somewhere else - perhaps on a Youtube video I never linked to? - but there's an article in Science which makes it clear that it is a very serious problem for the prospects of fusion as a viable energy source:

A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank

 Fusion advocates often boast that the fuel for their reactors will be cheap and plentiful. That is certainly true for deuterium: Roughly one in every 5000 hydrogen atoms in the oceans is deuterium, and it sells for about $13 per gram. But tritium, with a half-life of 12.3 years, exists naturally only in trace amounts in the upper atmosphere, the product of cosmic ray bombardment. Nuclear reactors also produce tiny amounts, but few harvest it.

Most fusion scientists shrug off the problem, arguing that future reactors can breed the tritium they need. The high-energy neutrons released in fusion reactions can split lithium into helium and tritium if the reactor wall is lined with the metal. Despite demand for it in electric car batteries, lithium is relatively plentiful.

But there’s a catch: In order to breed tritium you need a working fusion reactor, and there may not be enough tritium to jump-start the first generation of power plants. The world’s only commercial sources are the 19 Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) nuclear reactors, which each produce about 0.5 kilograms a year as a waste product, and half are due to retire this decade. The available tritium stockpile—thought to be about 25 kilograms today—will peak before the end of the decade and begin a steady decline as it is sold off and decays, according to projections in ITER’s 2018 research plan.

The article does mention that there are other fusion fuels theoretically possible, but require something like ten (ok, seven) times the heat to work:

TAE Technologies, a California startup, plans to use plain hydrogen and boron, whereas Washington state startup Helion will fuse deuterium and helium-3, a rare helium isotope. These reactions require higher temperatures than D-T, but the companies think that’s a price worth paying to avoid tritium hassles. “Our company’s existence owes itself to the fact that tritium is scarce and a nuisance,” says TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer.

The alternative fusion reactions have the added appeal of producing fewer or even no neutrons, which avoids the material damage and radioactivity that the D-T approach threatens. Binderbauer says the absence of neutrons should allow TAE’s reactors—which stabilize spinning rings of plasma with particle beams—to last 40 years. The challenge is temperature: Whereas D-T will fuse at 150 million degrees Celsius, hydrogen and boron require 1 billion degrees.

I know it is risky to ever bet against technological advances - but on the other hand, someone in the 1940's who pooh-poohed a science fiction magazine's cover showing flying car highways in the sky in the 21st century  would be looking prescient.  

Hence, I'm strongly tempted to bet against fusion ever being a viable energy source, in any century.

Told you so

I complained a lot about the 2011 Brisbane flood investigation that gave many people the impression that the flood was solely caused by improper operation of Wivenhoe Dam.   Having personally driven around the dam a couple of days before the flood, in remarkable rain, I never believed it.    (We tried to have a day out, and drove up to Mount Glorious for lunch.  The rain started again on the return trip, and it was intense and long lasting.)  What I thought could come out is that lots of houses which were flooded to a certain height may have had the height reduced, but still have been extensively flooded regardless of how the difficult decisions the dam operators were making were made.  Why should those people get any compensation at all?

And it turns out that this is exactly what has happened.   People who thought they were going to get money are getting none, or trivial amounts, and they are  not happy that Maurice Blackburn either  didn't explain (or explain clearly enough is probably more likely?) that winning the case may not mean that everyone who was affected and joined the action would get money.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn said the payouts were determined by the flood adjustment factor, which is essentially how badly a property would have been affected if the dams had been handled properly.

"The case was run on the basis that there would have been some flooding in Brisbane, no matter what, even if the dams had been operated properly," principal lawyer Rebecca Gilsenan said.

"The difference, or the degree of difference, literally differs for every single property.

"About half of the claims in the case wouldn't have flooded at all on the model that the court ultimately upheld.

"People are finding out now and in some really unfortunate cases, they're finding out that the flooding would not have been a whole lot different.

Ms Gilsenan said they were not able to tell individual people what would have happened to their property along the way.

"Because we didn't have a model yet that had been upheld by the court," she said.

"People were told in theory that this would be an issue and damages would need to be adjusted but people didn't know individually what would happen to them."

One high profile guy sums it up like this:

He had to split his interim payment with his ex-wife and received $797.67, despite his Goodna home sustaining $556,000 worth of damage.

"The less you got damaged, the more you're going to get," he said.

"I mean it's laughable.

"We were not told that we may get nothing, even if we won the case.

"[Maurice Blackburn] advertises 'We fight for fair'. Is this fair?"

Well, it is, actually. If your house had 3 m of water through it, and different dam operation could have lowered it to 2 m, you don't deserve compensation.

 

Something to be thankful for

I just found the pair of reading glasses I keep at home, after misplacing them for about a month.

I might write a post soon about the annoying stage my eyes are currently at...

A remarkably cold winter

I've been meaning to post this for weeks now, but this is easily that coldest Brisbane winter that I can recall, probably for decades.

A week or two ago it was waking up to 3 degrees on a Saturday and Sunday, and although it was sunny and clear it still seemed to take to midday to start feeling warmth from it.  Yesterday and today it's like living in a Melbourne (or Tasmanian) winter:  grey, wet and while the minimums are not as bad as under clear skies, never warming up more than 2 or 3 degrees all day.  14 degrees yesterday, and my weather app says that now (1.40pm) it's 12 degrees.  

Remarkable.

American pessimism and optimism

It's pretty remarkable, isn't it, that a mass shooting at a 4 July parade in a well off part of the US comes in at news story number 5 or 6 in Australia this morning (and only a short time devoted to it), because we are so used to such news.  (Yeah, there are local floods crowding it out, but still, it does seem a case of "oh, another outrageously violent event in a nation that is too stupidly in love with guns.  Meh.")    

By the way, I see that the prime suspect sounds like a disturbed young man who has imagined the crime for a long time - just the sort of person who doesn't get to live out his violent fantasies in other countries where it is much, much harder to get the tool necessary to make it a reality.

Yes despite this, I am in a general sense still on side with Noah Smith's overall take on being (kinda) optimistic that the USA will get over its current problems, and the most dire predictions not come to pass.   He sums it well in this free post at his Substack.

 

Filipino style beef empanadas

Inspired about 6 weeks ago by a delicious Filipino style beef empanada bought at West End markets, I tried making them myself this weekend.

There are a lot of difference versions of how to make the dough in particular, and very often with non metric measurements.   For my future reference, this worked fine for a fried empanada (don't know how they would go baked, but frying does make for a more interesting texture, I reckon.  Basically, it's this recipe, although it took a bit more water:

3 cups plain flour

115 g unsalted butter (cold and cubed)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon sugar (although I only used one)

1 egg

3 (maybe more?) tablespoon ice water 

You can guess how this is made:  mix the dry ingredients, rub in the butter, beat the egg with water and add to made a pretty firm dough.  Wrap in cling wrap and put in fridge for 15 min before using.

As for the filling:  I just followed an amalgam of a few recipes, but yeah, using 500 g of mince makes more than you can use with that much pastry.   Fried one medium onion, about 4 or 5 garlic cloves, in with the small cubed potato and carrot, then mince.  A substantial amount of tomato paste.  Add raisins (I thought I was overdoing it with 1/3 cup, but no), about half a cup of beef stock, lots of pepper, a half cup of peas, let it simmer and liquid reduce, check seasoning.  Oh, I used a couple of tablespoons of soy too, and maybe a tablespoon of worcestershire sauce too. Sounds a lot of saltiness, if you included the tomato paste, but it was 500 g of mince.

I also put a baton of cheese in the middle of the filing in the empanadas, which doesn't appear in any recipe, but was in the ones I bought at the markets.

They were nice, but not as nice as the market ones.   I have to have another and examine its contents more carefully.

A joke as a sign of sentience?

He perhaps should be spending a bit more time walking rather than sitting and chatting to his ambiguously sentient AI buddy, but nonetheless, this interview with the Google guy who went public with his AI claims is really quite interesting, and makes me feel like we are at least close to living in a science fiction movie:

 

I particularly liked how it was an apparent AI joke that influenced his thinking.   And one about Jedi!

The guy does appear genuinely thoughtful, and not a complete nut.   

Big power project apparently can work

When I first heard about it, I thought that this project sounded fanciful, because I didn't imagine the power transmission over that long a distance (and via undersea cable) would be efficient enough.  But it would seem I was wrong:

SINGAPORE: The company behind a megaproject to deliver up to 15 per cent of Singapore’s energy requirements via a 4,200km undersea cable from northern Australia aims to start construction in 2024.

The project took a step closer to being realised last week, after being deemed investment-ready by Infrastructure Australia, a statutory body that advises the country’s government on key projects of national significance.

This potentially opens the US$20.7 billion intercontinental cable operation - called the Australia-Asia PowerLink - to investment that could include public funds.

Before construction can begin, all financing documents will need to be signed and prior conditions for the availability of financing will have to be fulfilled.

Sun Cable wants to build the largest solar farm and battery storage facility in the world in Australia’s Northern Territory and send clean power to the regional city of Darwin as well as Singapore.

Singapore is currently a gas burning nation, so it must be feeling the pinch at the moment:

It comes as Singapore looks to expand its renewable energy options and moves to import power as a solution to lowering its carbon emissions footprint - it currently generates about 95 per cent of its energy from burning natural gas, a fossil fuel that contributes to global warming.

Anyway, the undersea cable is HVDC, which is maybe the only way it could work?:

“We need that ability to transmit electricity on an intercontinental basis to get from where that resource is abundant to where those large loads are and where they're growing fast. And that's what the evolution of high-voltage direct current submarine cable technology allows,” he added.

This article talks about HVDC undersea cables.  Seems there are only relatively short ones around, so I hope the challenges of 4,000 km of such cable are not too much to overcome.