You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

jennypenny wrote:Women are given anti-depressants instead of hormone replacement therapy now that doctors no longer recommend it for most women.
How does it jive with 7w's point that women are happier than men? Are they giving antidepressants to happy menopausal women because.... they've got to prescribe something and can't give 'em hrt? That's crazy.

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jennypenny
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by jennypenny »

I think because most women become more emotional as they approach menopause and as she said, society presumes more emotional = less happy. Women make the same assumption and request the meds so they can feel like their old selves again. (which I personally think is a mistake--I think you're supposed to feel differently after menopause)

7Wannabe5
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Well, it is also natural to eventually die, so age at menopause appears to be a significant factor in longevity.


lhttp://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/25/us/he ... evity.html


One clear physiological symptom shared frequently by people suffering from depression and sometimes by women going through menopause is the early-wake-up form of insomnia. I think the first things a doctor should be prescribing would be regular exercise, frequent sex and less alcohol (if taken in excess.) and not being too fat or too skinny. Because I believe in keeping things on the up and up, I have informed both of my paramours that I am using their "services" in order to keep my sexual activity level high enough to delay menopause for another few years, and thereby buy myself a not insignificant increase in longevity. Even though they have very different personality types, they both responded with "trying not to laugh", so ...

Anyways, I think one mechanism through which the traits transfer is through some factors like shame, competitiveness, envy, etc. Both of my lovers and my sister with whom I live are very fit for their ages. Me, not so much. Everybody on this forum is very good at saving money. Me not so much (although due to top line fail rather than much more common bottom line fail.) Now, my sister will say mean things or abandon me alone on a scary strip of zombie-apocalypse Detroit if I can't keep up with her on a bike ride, even though she knows that my bike is cruddier than hers, but men with whom I am in relationship often have more mixed motivations regarding the pros and cons, benefits or expenses of choosing to associate with those lacking the shoulder-to-hip ratio that would most expedite a trip up Mt. Everest (the practices of Spartan society being an obvious example of exception that proves the rule.) Therefore, it is up to me to decide how irksome I would find it to be left tucked in a chair next to a fire at some base camp lodge, etc. etc. etc. Goals and boundaries in alignment with self-aware, self-care. Prime directive.

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GandK
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by GandK »

This is completely anecdotal, but I find that I can accurately guess more than 90% of the time upon meeting someone whether they get regular cardiovascular exercise or not. Not by their physique, but by their attitude and the level of happiness/satisfaction with life that I perceive. Barring being in the middle of some negative life-changing event like death in the family or a divorce, people I know that are happy get heart-related exercise regularly, and people I know that are unhappy do not.

7Wannabe5
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@GandK: Completely concur. The funny thing I've noticed is that even a lot of work won't give the effect, but very moderate but consistent exercise will. For instance, intermittently lifting very heavy boxes all afternoon vs. randomly dancing around the kitchen with my headphones on for an hour.

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jennypenny
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by jennypenny »

WaPo: Why Smart People are Better Off with Fewer Friends

I actually think the author misunderstood the implications of the research a little, but it's still an interesting read.

Here's the abstract from the paper (emphasis mine):
We propose the savanna theory of happiness, which suggests that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation but also its ancestral consequences that affect individuals' life satisfaction and explains why such influences of ancestral consequences might interact with intelligence. We choose two varied factors that characterize basic differences between ancestral and modern life - population density and frequency of socialization with friends - as empirical test cases. As predicted by the theory, population density is negatively, and frequency of socialization with friends is positively, associated with life satisfaction. More importantly, the main associations of life satisfaction with population density and socialization with friends significantly interact with intelligence, and, in the latter case, the main association is reversed among the extremely intelligent. More intelligent individuals experience lower life satisfaction with more frequent socialization with friends. This study highlights the utility of incorporating evolutionary perspectives in the study of subjective well-being.

I'm tempted to pay for a copy of the full paper.

enigmaT120
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by enigmaT120 »

I didn't see a really good explanation of "Why?" I think it's because most other people are annoying. My best friend (see him a couple times a year) is smarter than I am, but some of his deliberate stupidities annoy me. I don't think mine annoy him so much. He seems to be much more tolerant of other people. Maybe because he's an extrovert and I'm an introvert.

1taskaday
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by 1taskaday »

Thanks Jennypenny,now I have a great excuse as to why I avoid people so much,my "intelligence".
Wonder how that will go down with my DH...

BRUTE
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by BRUTE »

enigmaT120 wrote:My best friend (see him a couple times a year) is smarter than I am, but some of his deliberate stupidities annoy me.
brute would argue that "intelligence", if it can even be defined, is highly specialized and localized. while there seem many humans who are extremely adapt in one specialized skill, and a few humans that are generally good with many skills, there seem to be almost no humans that are extremely good even at several skills (not to speak of many). brute has met one, maybe two people in his life that he would describe as "extremely intelligent". just being really good at math or some other specialized skill usually says nothing about how a human will perform at other tasks.

akratic
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by akratic »

1) social isolation is really bad (source: Ego's article)
2) FI correlates with social isolation (source: my opinion)

1 + 2) Hmm...

enigmaT120
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by enigmaT120 »

BRUTE wrote: brute would argue that "intelligence", if it can even be defined, is highly specialized and localized. while there seem many humans who are extremely adapt in one specialized skill, and a few humans that are generally good with many skills, there seem to be almost no humans that are extremely good even at several skills (not to speak of many).
A slightly different topic, but a fun one. I think if it is highly specialized and localized, it's not what I call intelligence. I don't consider intelligence to be a scalpel or rapier, but more like a blunt instrument. It works for everything.

BRUTE
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by BRUTE »

then, in brute's opinion, it doesn't exist. brute hasn't met someone that had a skill that worked for everything.

7Wannabe5
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What enigmaT120 said. IQ doesn't measure highest skill attainment level. It measures the ability to do just about anything more competently than average. For instance, you can very quickly train somebody with a high IQ to be your new night janitor. They might get bored with it and quit after a week, but for a few days they will be super-competent. It is very easy to spot the kids with higher IQs in a group of 6 year olds all attempting to master basic skills. Even if they are badly behaved, they are like bing-bing-bing on any new concepts, sometimes jumping two connections ahead of most of the rest of the group.

BRUTE
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by BRUTE »

conversely, brute believes high IQ simply measures being very good at a given IQ test (and there are many). brute knew a human who practiced IQ tests for fun, until he could generally attain the maximum score (which varies from test to test, some only go to 140, other 160, or higher) in a fraction of the given time.

this person is certainly clever, but outside of a few competencies, this amazing IQ doesn't seem to mean anything.

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

Friends 'better than morphine': Larger social networks release more pain-killing endorphin

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-04-f ... works.html

People with more friends have higher pain tolerance, Oxford University researchers have found.

Katerina Johnson, a doctoral student in the University's Department of Experimental Psychology, was studying whether differences in our neurobiology may help explain why some of us have larger social networks than others.

She said: "I was particularly interested in a chemical in the brain called endorphin. Endorphins are part of our pain and pleasure circuitry—they're our body's natural painkillers and also give us feelings of pleasure. Previous studies have suggested that endorphins promote social bonding in both humans and other animals. One theory, known as 'the brain opioid theory of social attachment", is that social interactions trigger positive emotions when endorphin binds to opioid receptors in the brain. This gives us that feel-good factor that we get from seeing our friends.

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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by jacob »

http://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowl ... 067976867X

Thought this book would be of interest and 1/5 of it specifically deals with epigenetics and to what degree it determines human culture.

Wilson has a background in ants and if there's anything that determines the behaviour of an ant, it's the five ants around it.

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

Stress Tolerance: A Heuristic for Aging
Nutrigenomics, Epigenetics, and Stress Tolerance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvNLNl7oJnM

She touches on many topics we discuss here.
-Why you might want to do 23andme genetic testing.
-Intermittent fasting.
-Autophagy.
-Epigenetics and DNA repair.
-The heat stress induced during exercise may be responsible for much of the benefits of exercise
-Neurogenesis
-Importance of Vitamin D and Omega 3
-Meditation and telomerase
-Interesting idea that blind people have half the cancer incidence of sighted people because melatonin production is inhibited by visual light so they have higher levels of melatonin.
-The glymphatic system which cleanses the brain during sleep.

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

Holocaust Exposure Induced Intergenerational Trauma

http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal. ... 6/abstract

This is the first demonstration of an association of preconception parental trauma with epigenetic alterations that is evident in both exposed parent and offspring, providing potential insight into how severe psychophysiological trauma can have intergenerational effects.


https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/ ... nerations/

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

The Stoic Dear Abby answers an interesting question:

D. writes: “How would a Stoic react to our modern concept of IQ and genetics? In societies where high-IQ is correlated with achieving academic accomplishment in high-level subjects, and the corollary benefits conferred to them by society, what would a Stoic do in the face of this genetic determinism? What would a Stoic tell someone who had low intelligence, but desperately wanted to achieve competence in a high-level skill? A life pursuing your dream, even in inevitable and constant failure is more meaningful than a life where a dream is given up? Or, would he be advised to live a more practical life? Did the Stoics have a concept of innate talent?”

Very good question, and — if I may be a bit immodest — you asked the right person, since I’m not just a practitioner of Stoicism, I’m a biologist whose specialty happens to be gene-environment interactions.......


Full answer here> https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/201 ... ur-dreams/

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Ego
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Re: You are the average of the five people you spend the most...

Post by Ego »

A new view on evolution (extended evolutionary synthesis, EES) seeks to incorporate new finding on epigenetics and the influence of ones culture on evolution.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170105 ... evolution/

The modern synthesis developed in the 1930s and 1940s and basically had finished by the 1950s. At that time, little was known about the molecular biology of development — how what’s going on in the development process itself influences what can happen to the evolutionary trajectory of cells and organisms. Although some of its originators were interested in behavior, many were steeped in the eugenics tradition. They would have thought that the majority of behaviors were determined by genes. The inclusion of other forms of inheritance totally changes evolutionary dynamics.

How can these epigenetic changes affect the traits that natural selection can act on — and therefore the future course of evolution?

We’ve just submitted a paper on epigenetic contributions to longevity in hunter-gatherers. There is increasing evidence of important associations between the level of methylation [which affects how strongly your genes are expressed] and features of your environment such as diet, stress and poverty.

If those things are culturally transmitted, those effects on evolution are going to be longer term. Simple notions of the ways in which traits are formed are going to be thrown out the window.

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