BELIEF: a bug or a feature?

How do people start believing in stuff? 

 

My seven-year-old grandson Solomon recently said, ‘Grandpa, did you know that if you stare at a hummingbird for five minutes, it brings good luck?’

‘How do you know this?’ I asked.

‘I stared at a hummingbird for five minutes and after that my friend at school had something good happen to him. I forget what it was.’

‘Okay, I’ll try that sometime.’

 

Solomon had experienced one thing and observed something totally unrelated, put the two together and voila!, he believed that one had caused the other. This belief could stay with him a long time. Good thing something horrible hadn’t happened to his friend or he might have believed he caused it.

 

And so it goes. The human mind links cause and effect in astonishing ways. Have a positive attitude and the sun shines all day (unless it’s rain you want). Think bad thoughts and a tree falls on your car, not your neighbor’s car. Pray for a white Christmas and poof, there’s two feet of snow in the morning. Pray every night to Jesus or Saint fill-in-the-blank and you’ll live forever in heaven or whatever after you’re dead. No proof of concept necessary.

 

Here is the reason: Beliefs are possible entirely because of the abstract thinking capability of the human brain. Belief is a neurological process, an interpretation of one event in relationship to another (cause and effect). Dogs, horses and reptiles don’t do this (that we know). Animals learn to recognize threats and can be trained, but belief and superstition are uniquely human. 

 

Belief often starts with a powerful personality (parent, priest, rabbi, imam) who instills the notions by repeatedly preaching what terrible or wonderful things will happen if we behave a certain way or have certain thoughts.

 

So, is belief good for us? In computer jargon, ‘is belief a bug or a feature of being human?’ After roughly 200,000 years of modern Homo sapiens on earth, the answer remains controversial.

 

And after all those thousands of years of high-level thinking, the neurological origins of belief are not understood at the cellular level. We know where language and ocular vision arise in the brain. In what lobe of the brain does belief originate?  There are mappable neural signals in several lobes that have the potential for shaping beliefs. One personality trait for 'openness', associated with creativity and beliefs, has been mapped to several anatomical structures in the brain. 

It is good there is progress, but much more research is needed before we understand the origin of belief. In the meantime, in the absence of indisputable factual evidence, it might be best to have doubts about even your most cherished beliefs.

Hamassacre

 HAMASSACRE

Definition

noun. any massacre resembling the October 7, 2023 attack and massacre of 1400 people in Israel by terrorist group Hamas based in Gaza section of Israel.

verb. to carry out such a terrorist, non-military attack explicitly designed to kill civilians and take hostages, esp. one conducted by an organization without statehood by choice, thereby avoiding having to take responsibility or suffer international consequences of launching such an attack, and is financed and supplied by a separate country so as to avoid having to declare war against the attacked country and risk retaliatory consequences. 

Wine, beer or cocktails? Depends on the HEAT!

                                 

  

 

Wine consumption is down in the United States. Millennials and GenZ’ers have switched to cocktails and beer, and the marketplace has happily catered to their tastes. Media sources report that those 60 and under are less interested in buying wine and have a lower share of consumption than a decade ago. 

 

How did this come about?

 

Recently I stumbled onto a possible scientific explanation when I dined at one of San Francisco’s hippest and most expensive restaurants. I came armed with a fabulous Russian River Pinot Noir. We sampled the bottle, a big Burgundian-style Pinot with a long finish. Scrumptious. Then the food started arriving.  And it was delicious beyond belief. But every course was fused with either Asian or Mexican flavors, each dish with serious heat from pickled hot peppers of one variety or another. The wine was a total flop. The Capsicum dancing over my tongue overpowered the wine. Beer or cocktails would have paired much better.

 

So that’s the reason! And it makes perfect sense. Fine wines pair better with the subtle flavors of French or Italian food. Wine has never been a big thing in the Middle East, India, Asia or Mexico. And now all cuisine is fusion. 

 

And there might be another reason: A physiology professor in graduate school once announced to our class that he’d lived in Indonesia for a few years and it took him six months after returning to North America to get his taste buds back. Perhaps that’s also what we’re talking about: hot peppers temporarily knock out the nerves of our taste buds so the nuanced flavors of wine are lost. Apropos to that, Capsicum in creams applied to the skin effectively reduces pain and itch by exhausting the nerve endings.

 

French and Italian wines rightfully boast a thousand-year reputation, but here in California, upper echelon food trends with international spice and heat seem to have won out. We old geezers just didn’t get on the Sriracha bandwagon to the degree millennials and GenZ’ers did. 

 

Wine makers are busy weighing how they can appeal to a new generation of consumers.

Let’s hope ‘bitter’ is not their solution, as it was for coffee and beer in the younger set. While they are figuring it out, as a boomer, maybe I can hope to see a reduction in wine prices.

 

 (https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/wine-report)

 

 

 

 

 

 

42 ways to combat obesity (some more feasible than others)

1. Quit pretending that food is the culprit. That's like saying women are the cause of population overgrowth. 

2. Recognize that eating the food is the problem. 

3. Eat less food and drink less alcohol.

4. Now that trans-fat is passé, don't worry about what kind of fat you eat. There are nine calories of fat in every gram, no matter what kind of fat (oil, butter, lard, etc.) When it comes to obesity, it's the quantity of fat, not the type of fat. A dozen cookies made with oil have just as many calories as a dozen cookies made with butter; they just don't taste quite as good. Have one cookie instead of six, and do it only every few days. Too harsh? 

5. Stop thinking that fast food restaurants are the problem. They are just trying to make a gazillion-dollar living. 

6. Recognize that all fast food restaurants basically serve junk food because that's what people like. 

7. Don't eat fast food or junk food. 

8. Do you even know what junk food is? It’s more than candy. Anything processed (now called ultra-processed), almost all packaged food, anything from a convenience store or fast food restaurant, single portion items, all sweet drinks, all candy, gum, and most anything from a vending machine (ah, the old days when one could buy an apple from a vending machine!). 

9. Set a good example for your children: don't turn your home into a warehouse of junk food. 

10. Eliminate all sugar drinks, including fruit juices. Drink water or milk instead. Skim milk is best—good protein, no fat. At least limit soda pop to one per week (No, I'm not kidding). I suppose diet pop is ok. 

11. Teach the kids early so they can carry on healthy practices. Parents dropped the ball a long time ago when it came to nutrition, and society has written parents off as solutions to the problem. 

12. Institute weight limits for people, not luggage, on air planes. Or charge by the pound.

13. Be creative: eat rice, and with the leftovers, make rice pudding. Milk, cinnamon, raisins, sugar, vanilla, some cardamom if you have it, and cook until soft. Good with cream and a splash of brandy, but we're getting off track here. 

14. Exercise all the time. 

15. Sleep with fewer blankets: lose weight through shivering. 

16. Choose your parents. 

17. Quit eating between meals. 

18. Eliminate entire meals occasionally. 

19. If you do eat between meals, make it an apple, carrot, or some nuts. 

20. On the other hand, consider a candy bar as your entire lunch now and then. It satisfies the junk food thing without the other calories. 

21. Eat lentils. Cook them in water or chicken broth. Enhance them with some bacon, or butter, or sautéed onions and carrots. Cheap. Healthy. A little salt and pepper.

22. Eat a plum or apricot and keep the pit in your mouth like a hard candy for an hour or two. 

23. Learn to make everything from scratch. One time I asked some visiting children if they would like waffles for breakfast, they were dumbfounded, saying "but we don't have any!" They only knew ultra-processed packaged waffles. I was talking about waffles from flour, baking powder, soda, eggs, salt, milk, and cooking oil, or something thereabouts. 

24. Become French. They're all skinny. Or maybe they just don’t like junk food. 

25. Create a new industry: the household food consultant. North America needs you! 

26. Then sell the company to an international food chain for millions of dollars. They will take it worldwide the way the tobacco industry ostensibly teaches about the bad effects of smoking. 

27. Quit thinking that someone else is going to change your eating habits for you. It's you and your own family who must kick-start this effort and keep it going. 

28. Don't cater to the kids. They only want sweets. Or they call themselves vegetarians but don't eat much other than noodles and junk food. If they are hungry enough though, they'll eat healthy food and over time learn to like it. You will too. 

29. Be a concerned, knowledgeable parent, in charge of what food gets served in your home to your younger kids. The older kids, about 12 and up, are already lost causes. 

30. Make lunches for your kids to take to school. They won't eat them but in time they'll remember your good example when they try it on their own kids. 

31. Make your spouse a lunch to take to work. He/she won't eat it either but it may lead to fewer double martini lunches followed by sex. 

32. Eat with someone when you can. You might eat less if someone's watching. 

33. Eliminate desserts entirely until you have lost the weight you want, and then minimize them indefinitely forever. 

34. Breast feed your baby. 

35. Quit going to fast food restaurants entirely. Eat at home. 

36. Quit watching television altogether. Except for the World Series. 

37. Ban all food advertising, except public service educational ads. 

38. Always do the right thing if you know what it is. 

39. Don't eat low-fat versions of any processed food—they just double the sugar content to disguise the lower fat content. 

40. Learn about food. There's healthy cheap food out there: fresh produce and grains—they're inexpensive and healthy: rice, barley, carrots, cabbage, sweet potatoes. For protein: ground beef, nuts, dried beans. Eggs! 

41. Buy fresh, buy small. 

42. _________________ (for you to add one).