Correcting Congress

   Insanity is part of socialization.  When a parent tells a child to not look at a person with a deformity, that is telling the child to destroy information. That ignoring, or destroying, of information is psychosis.  When a child asks why not look, the child is really asking whether the parent wants the child to be psychotic.  The answer is of course yes.  That need to be psychotic is why children have such difficulty with social rules.  The sane process is to look at anything that is different, to check for threats or useful information.  Instead the child is told to do something unnatural.  The reason is that staring is what people do preparing to attack, to judge what the other person is doing and to gage the distance for a strike.  Staring risks creating a threat, so to avoid conflict, people psychotically ignore information such as deformities.Consider walking with a group of people and seeing another group to the side, each of whom is carrying a large rock or tree branch.  "Don't stare at them, it's rude."  Looking at the unusual is the first step in defense.
   The difficulty is when necessary information is suppressed.  This is what happens in social situations where one does not attack one's friends and associates.  In democratic elections, people suppress information about the candidates they favor.  Studies have shown that republicans ignore contradictions and hypocrisies of republican candidates but immediately notice them from democratic candidates, democrats do the opposite.  What everyone misses is that most of the people they are voting for are poorly socialized schizophrenics, they are psychotic.  It is fairly easy to spot, it involves looking for signs that the politician's brain is skipping.  It can be used in all social situations, as probably 10% of all people have diagnosable schizophrenia, but it provides no benefit by knowing, since the social situation remains the same.  But when electing people who decide taxes and wars it is a good idea to be a little rude.
    The signs of a brain skipping include: stiffness, woodenly responding to questions; needing to fall back to talking points, being unable to have fluid conversations; difficulty in maintaining eye contact or rigidly maintaining eye contact, both reflect a lack of feedback; attacking others to avoid answering questions; being unable to take personal responsibility, always blaming others or claiming that an intervening actor caused them to make an error;  the list goes on and it involves the typical behavior seen in politicians.
   The biggest problem is the lack of socialization, which causes the politicians to be disruptive and cause chaos.  Since people are too polite to deal with it directly, other means must be found to force politicians into socialization.  For Congress, the most direct way of doing that is to divide them into fifths and force them to stab each other in the back.  Back-stabbing is, generally, poor socialization, but having some way of showing discontent against people who act badly, is necessary to bring people into socialization.
  By forcing the house and senate to divide into fifths, the majority and minority are eliminated.  With majority rule, there is only one way to achieve a majority if members engage in party-line voting.  When divided into fifths, there are ten ways to achieve a majority, using numbers for groups:

1. 1 2 3
2. 1 2    4
3. 1 2       5
4. 1    3 4
5. 1    3    5
6. 1       4 5 
7.    2 3 4 
8.    2 3    5 
9.    2    4 5
10.       3 4 5

   Those ten combinations make it necessary to form negotiated coalitions and allows for shifting alliances.  If one group, such as the tea party, refuses to participate, thee are still four ways to achieve a majority.
   The stabbing in the back involves each member of the house or senate rating every other member on a scale of zero to ten.  This allows each member to show a sliding scale of disrespect for any members viewed as being unwilling to compromise or negotiate.
   The next step is punishment and reward.  The worst rated members would be excluded form participation in floor debates, submitting bills or participating in committees. The single highest rated member would run the chamber.  All other members would assign themselves to committees based upon their ranking, so they are rewarded for good behavior.  Committees would be formed with even numbers of people form each group, so they would have 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 members.  This would hold down to the point if one of the groups has a disproportionate number of excluded members, in which case the remaining groups would have equal additional members.  For each committee, the highest rated member of the committee would be the chair.  This means that for each chamber, and for committee, there are no guaranteed winners and no permanent losers, anyone, of any party affiliation can advance independent of any majority held by any party.  If anyone is abusive in running a committee, that person will be downrated at the next evaluation, it forces socialization, it forces all members to act well to advance.  The evaluation could be done annually.  In addition, each group could, by majority vote, expel a member from that group.
   The line for exclusion could be done by the statistical device of the standard deviation.  For 1 standard deviation, one would expect about 16% of all members would be excluded, that might be a little high.  In addition, at 1 standard deviation some members would have to excluded no matter how good everyone's conduct is.  At 1.5 deviations, about 7% would be expected to be excluded nad there is the possibility of no one being excluded.
   So far, these steps could be taken by congressional rules without a constitutional amendment.
   A further step, of rating the houses of congress by the public, to punish them into compliance would most likely require a constitutional amendment.  People would rate the house and senate separately from zero to ten.  That vote would decide the point of exclusion of members.  One method would be to do it based on half the members; so if the average rating was zero, everyone rates that house as zero, 50% of the members would have full rights; if the average rating is 5, then 75% would have full rights.  The president could also be rated to decide hiss veto point, currently it is 2/3, but if the rating is used then the rating as a percentage of ten would be used; in most situations where 0 - 10 ratings are used the average rating is about 6.5, people want to be nice and give others the benefit of the doubt, which is socialization, so the average is 6.5 instead of 5.  Under that, the presidential veto would be 65% instead of 66.7%, close enough.  But people might be nastier in politics and so rate the president lower.  Obviously, the minimum veto override in both houses would be 50%, regardless of the rating.

Economics

   If you armed a jackass with a Ph.D. you would probably get an economist.  It is not money that ultimately matters, it is choice.  What is choice?  Well, it's choice if you choose it.  More correctly, it is choice if someone chooses it.  People want he freedom to do stuff , money is only intermediary; it is the stuff that matters.   People do not say "I'm going to spend a thousand dollars this weekend", they say "I'm going to Cape Cod."  Effectively, the thousand dollars will be spent, but the point is to take the trip.
   It has been noted that people  report increasing happiness up to an annual income of $75 000.  Above that there does not seem to be more happiness but people report somewhat higher life satisfaction.  The reason for these results is that boredom is unhappiness.  At around $75 000/year people have enough money to do something interesting, something they enjoy, whenever they want.  Below that level they have time but not enough ready cash to stay amused, above that point they have no additional time so they must try to improve the quality of how they spend their time:  instead of a $20 lunch, they have a $100 lunch; instead of a $100 lunch, they have a $500 lunch, and then what?  A $1 000 lunch?   Similarly; instead of skiing in the Catskills, they ski in Vail; instead of skiing in Vail, they ski in St. Moritz;  instead of skiing in St. Moritz, they hire a helicopter to drop them on an unskied mountain slope; but I will repeat my question, then what?
   The need to improve the quality of time becomes increasing expensive and leads to conspicuous consumption, McMansions and trophy wives.  People feel the need to enjoy their money even if they have run out of ideas on how to spend it.
   Look at it another way, what would be the cost of making the next choice, how much money would it take to have another choice.  If someone is earning $50 000/yr, $50 could represent a choice, a pair of discount shoes, a nylon jacket, going out to dinner.   At $500 000/yr a choice would be on the order of $20 000, buying a new car.   At $5 000 000/yr the choice would have to be $1 000 000 buying a beach front house,  all the less expensive choices would have already been made.

   Consider a car that costs $25 000.  A person drives it 500 hours per year, has a usage rate of 500 hours per year.  The person owns it for 10 years, a total of 5 000 hours of usage or $25 000/5000 = $5/hr.  To that must be added gas, maintenance and finance costs,for a total of maybe $15/hr.  Someone buys a yacht for $50 000 000, he sells it 20 years later for $20 000 000.  In the interim, he uses it 60 days each year, since he is sleeping for 8 hours each night, he uses it for 16 hours each day or 60 X 16 = 1 000 hours each year;  for 20 years  = 20 000 hours; $50 000 000 - $20 000 000 / 20 000  = $1 500/hour plus financing fuel and maintenance, at least $2 000/ hour.   Between the two  people  $2 000 / $15 = 130 times the cost of choice for each hour, one unit of choice.  If the person who buys the yacht earns $20 000 000 /yr and the car owner earns $50 000 /yr, the number of 130 gives a relative scale of the difference of the cost of choice between them.

   The curve of choice illustrates this process.  The point C represents $75 000/ yr above that the curve bends and begins to continuously flatten towards the horizontal.  At the toe end, 0-0 , it is also flatter since the purchases made at very low incomes; soap, laundry detergent, toilet paper, do not represent a lot of choice.  Once income rises above that minimal level choice begins to rise rapidly until $75 000/ yr, at which point the person saturates on time and must begin spending more money to improve the quality of time, with increasing expenditure and decreasing rise in choice.  The ordinate, vertical axis needs a label and so a name must be chosen for the unit of choice.  Since George Washington is on the dollar bill, I will call the unit of choice the george, G.
   It has been reported that people of moderate incomes give a higher percentage of their money to charity than people of higher incomes, A versus B on the graph,  The most reasonable explanation for this is that generosity is a function of the ability to change one's level of choice.  At A, the choice rises rapidly with an increase of income, at B it rises more slowly requiring a greater increase to have an equal percentage increase in choice.
   To completely make up an example, let us say at A choice rises evenly with dollars up to $80 000 /year, $1 for each G and that then it increases at one fourth that rate, it takes $4 for each G.  At $50 000 /yr, $5 000 would represent a 10% increase in both dollars and george.  In a normal economy, that $5 000 would be relatively easily obtainable by working overtime or obtaining a part time second job.  At $200 000 /year, the startind george would be 80 000 george for the first $80 000 and then an additional $120 000 / 4 = 30 000 george for a total of 110 000 george to increase that 10% would require 11 000 george or $44 000.  That would be non-obtainable in most circumstances.  That inability to change the level of choice is why so many people earning $200 000 fell under stress and even under more stress than people earning $50 000, because they cannot change their condition and, consequently, feel trapped.
   Europeans tend to donate to charity at lower rates than Americans.  This can be explained through choice.  For an increment of pay, european taxes tend to be higher.  Therefore the choice to the wage earner is lower.  In addition it is more difficult to work second jobs and so the total ability to change choice is lower than in the United States. and, therefore, on would predict lower rates of charitable giving.
   The prediction from this is that a tight job market, where people cannot change choice, will reduce charitable giving, even if the total economic activity is not reduced.
   Economists claim they have an anomaly as to whether raising taxes or cutting services will have a greater negative effect on the economy.  This is because the idiots are using the wrong variable. The argument of economists that if taxes are raised , people will spend down savings to hold their total spending constant, so raising taxes should not cause much of a negative effect on total economic spending, but cutting services results in their loss and would have an immediate negative effect.
   Consider choice, instead.  If someone is taxed $1 000 that person loses the entire choice value of that
 $1 000.  Money removed from savings is another loss of choice, people have savings to have choice to be able to make necessary or opportune purchases.  If government services are cut, people do not lose the full choice.  If one half of all parks are closed, the others are still open, they may be more crowded and less convenient but not all of the choice is lost.  Taxes reduce choice and reduce economic activity.
   Economists say that $=f($), that money flow is a function of money.  The correct answer is $=f(G), money flow is a function of choice.  To increase the flow of money, gross product, increase choice.  Economists are using the wrong variable and are getting the wrong answer.
   Choice is a function of having money and having available product, both must exist for the choice to exist.
If someone is willing to pay $1 000 for a leather jacket, one wants the right one.  If one store does not have the right style, the money will not be spent.  If another store does not have the right size, again, there will be no purchase.  If another does not have the right color there will also be no sale.  The more time it takes for the right product to be found the longer the money does not go into circulation, the money is not active in the economy.  By having more choice the money is spent more quickly and the rate of economic activity increases.
   Transferring money form past point C, such as B, to a point on the lower side, such as A would tend to increase choice, but there are some complications.  If point A is $50 000 and $5 000 is added, a significant amount of the increase will go to higher housing prices.  Most people choose to live in areas with saturated housing markets, thee are always active bids for any available housing.  In the U.S., cities with large populations have increasing population, smaller cities have decreasing populations as people prefer to live with there is a high level of activity.  The consequence of this is that any increase in income will drive up housing prices as someone will increase their bid for available housing to obtain preferred housing.  This does not increase choice.  Paying $300 000 instead of $250 000 for a house does not increase the choice of that house, the owner obtains the same choice at higher cost, this is true in general of inflation.
   So, if there is an increase of $5 000, some fraction, maybe half goes to higher housing prices without an increase in choice.  That means that the increase in choice is the remainder of the money, in this example, one half or $2 500.
   If $50 000 is transferred from B to A, in this example, $25 000 goes to an increase in choice.  If, at B, the choice per dollar G/$ is one half the rate at A the choice will be constant.  But again it is more complicated.
The $50 000 transferred from B, will lower housing prices for that purchase class, just as it raised it at A, the reduction in available money will eventually reduce the bids on available housing.  So, the dollars that reduce choice will be less than $50 000 in the long run.  In the short run, people will have to pay current rates for housing with less money, it is only after the next transfer, or contract period for rent,  that the prices will begin to fall.
   For taxes, the amount of income above C, all of the people with income below C plus the income at C,
 $75 000/yr subtracted form everyone who earns above C, is about 30% of all personal income.  Personal income is about 80% of the gross product, therefore, 30%X80% = 24% of the gross product is above the most efficient point of choice, everyone is happy for the minimal amount of money.  That is the money that can be safely taxed without grossly affecting choice.  If the tax rate is set at 60%, there is a maximum rate of taxation above which people just stop earning money, then the maximum rate of taxes that does not severely handicap the economy is about 14% of gross product,  Total government spending is about 30% of gross product, it is necessary to have damaging taxes applied to the highest point of choice versus money to fund the government, in the first analysis taxes must directly hurt choice and the economy.
   The only way to justify that is if government spending increases the net choice of those people.  Historically, the biggest contribution the government made to increasing choice was free public education.  The opportunity it provided was the single most important factor in improving economic productivity and the availability and affordability of goods and services.  The national highway system was probably the second biggest contributor.  After that was most likely various college programs.
   For a person at A, if government spending cannot be shown to increase choice it is hurting the economy, that is why government waste and incompetence is so intolerable.  It is also why having some government payment to private schools is worth considering, people in that range paying school fees are hurt by taxes for public schools since they are not using the choice form the public schools.
   There is the topic of protective, or police functions,  they are hard to evaluate.  They include; police, courts, prosecutors, prisons, coast guard military and others.  There point is not to increase choice but to prevent the loss of existing choice.  The minimal amount that provides acceptable protection is the correct economic answer, but evaluating either acceptable protection or determining the minimum service necessary to provide it   has no ready answers.
   Some people, as a criticism, say that social democracies slow economic activities.  I would question that, but it is irrelevant; the purpose of social democracy is not to maximize national economic activity, it is to maximize national choice, and I think that it does raise economic activity unless it is done really stupidly.
   There is then the question of what are the measuring units of product or service choice.  It is time, hours, times a quality factor.
    There was a guy who got a Noble prize for arguing that there is a total transactional cost that determines purchase decisions.  If a pair of shoes is available two blocks away from a potential purchaser for $200 and the same exact pair is available twenty miles away for $150, assuming the purchaser is aware of both, the location of the purchase depends on the customers evaluation of the value of his time in travel to buy the cheaper pair.  It is a choice decision.  The limiting value of someone's life is time, so time is the measure of decisions.  How much time will be gotten out of a new stove?  If the purchaser does a lot of entertaining, that could be 3 hours each time for 200 days in a year or 600 hours a year. Most people drive cars for less than 500 hours per year, so the stove could give higher choice.
   There is a quality question.  What was the quality of the time?  20 hours fishing for catfish in a local lake might not provide the same quality as fishing for marlin  for 20 hours off of the Bahamas.  Some people might prefer the catfishing, but the catfishing might cost $200 and the marlin fishing $5 000.  Unless the quality is 25 times as high for the marlin, the cost per choice, george, is higher.
  The same two factors, time and quality, can be applied to all possessions; blenders, Rolex watches, second homes, mistresses.  In all cases, thee is a rapid rise in the cost for each unit of choice with income above
$75 000/yr.
  All choice is equatable, going to a religious service, going to the opera, going to a political rally or going to a rock concert can all represent the same value of choice.  The fact that one is expensive,another is free and another has a voluntary contribution is irrelevant.  Different people may prefer different choices, but it can not be said that one is higher choice than the others.  Free speech has economic value just like a new car.  The Chinese government, in limiting speech, is also limiting choice and is, to some extent, hurting its own economy and limiting economic growth,  The effect might be small or large but it will have some effect.
   The reductions in freedom by the Chinese government means that all choice must be purchased, instead of having free choice available and people only spending money on high choice items.  The selective purchase of choice available with freedom makes money more flexible and more efficient.
   Determining quality factors to quantify choice would not be easy and there would be, inevitably, a fair amount of approximation in any such numbers.
   Trade between areas ad countries will be strongest,and most aggressive, for high choice products.
    The distribution of income, which leads to the distribution of choice, is determined by two factors; the total size of the gross product and the individuals negotiating strength.  The gross product can be local, national or international.  The negotiating strength is a double factor for most people, the employers negotiating strength and the individuals strength with the employer.  If the employer manages to negotiate $10 000 000 in income an employee might negotiate $1 000 000 of that.  If the employer negotiates $1 000 000, the employee would have to settle for less.  The negotiating strength is based, in most cases, entirely on perception, ability, competence and efficiency are only what the person paying imagines.
   The king of Bhutan announced that he was going to track gross national happiness instead of product.  I think he was very close to the right idea, but I would say the correct formulation is gross national choice.
  Republican voting is higher between incomes of roughly $40 000 to $120 000, this is explainable through choice.  Between D and E the curve of choice rises fastest, meaning that taxation also produces the fastest decline in choice, these are the people most susceptible to taxes.  Below D people view government, and the choice it provides as a benefit.  Above E the removal of money through taxation does not effect them that much in their total choice because their choice rises slowly with income and falls slowly with taxes.  But between D and E people do not see themselves, whether rightly or wrongly, as receiving much choice form government but do fell the loss form taxes.  Similarly, Republican votes are maximal for bachelor's degrees, people with graduate degrees tend to vote Democratic as do people with only a high school education.  The income form bachelor's degrees falls in this wage range.
   People above E don give to charity because they do not feel they have the freedom to do so, yet they do not mind taxes as much, it might seem like a paradox but it is actually the difference between prospective and retrospective.  Similar to going to a dentist, it might seem awful to contemplate, it is not so bad when it is over.
Similarly, the thought of giving up money is difficult, but when taxes are taken it does not affect lives that much.
   To construct the curve of choice, a first approximation is to assume the rate of change of the curve is proportional to the rate of charitable contributions and then use G0=$0 and choose another point, say $75 000 and then choose an amount, which could be G75 000 as a normalization point.  It is only proportionalities that are of interest so the specific value is unimportant, but equating G75 000 = $ 75 000 makes it easier to see the effects of choice.
   Executive bonuses are completely useless, the pay for executives is so far out to the right of the curve that increasing that pay through a bonus can produce little change in choice; the choice cannot be changed through paying the bonus, so the executive cannot be motivated by the bonus, increasing choice is motivation.  The bonuses payed do not work to increase executive response and cannot work, they are a waste of money which would be better spent an middle income employees where the money would increase choice and motivation.
   Choice has a strong communal component.  If Bob goes fishing with Bill, then if Bill loses his job he cannot afford to go fishing and Bob loses his choice of fishing, fishing is no fun alone.  Bob does not have his choice restored until Bill gets a job, repays his debts and rebuilds his savings account.  Any money Bob would spend on fishing is unspent and the economy slows.  This is why recovery from recessions take so long, the choice must be collectively restored and therefore the slowest rate of restoration ultimately determines the time to regain previous economic positions.
   There is a similar effect with inventory.  If there are no sales, items will not be reordered.  When people start buying products again, they may not find what they want and spending will be delayed.
   Jobs with inherent choice are viewed as high status jobs.  These are jobs that allow for some autonomy and individual decision making and scheduling.

Subordinate review

The basic rules of management are:

1. You can fool your superiors, you cannot fool your subordinates.
2. Never put someone in a position where he must exercise authority unless you are willing to give him that authority.
3. Never put someone in a position where he must exercise authority unless he is capable of exercising that authority intelligently.
4. If you make someone responsible for everything , that person will be accountable for nothing.

   The first rule of management is the most important and can be used to improve all organizations of moderate or larger size.  Supervisors spend little time with each employee and have little idea what they are doing, subordinates constantly deal with supervisors and certainly know when they are screwing up.
   All that needs to be done to improve management is to have at least an annual rating of management by employees.  Each employee would be given a card with two strings of numbers from zero through ten.  The first would be to rate the employee's immediate supervisor, the other is to rate management overall.  The overall rating would be used to trace management upwards to failure points.  The managers would receive an average rating of employees, an overall average of the organization would be developed form the general management rating.
   Ideally, a low, or unusual, rating would result in an audit of employees to determine if something is going wrong and then decisions to demote or remove management would be made.  The reason for that is because there is a none zero chance that a bad group of malicious employees might be clustered, they might deliberately try to disrupt competent management.  The danger of that is that the follow up audits might not be done or the results of those audits might be simply ignored.
   The simpler method is to directly demote and promote managers based upon their ratings.  One basis for doing that is the standard deviation, which is a statistical attribute which will cause about one sixth of all ratings to fall below it at one standard deviation.  That is probably not a bad rate of demotion, if the demotions are at too high a rate, the management will be unstable,if the rate of removal is too low there will not be enough pressure to effect change and a continuing improvement in management.  One sixth is probably a good compromise number.
   The overall rating would first be averaged for the organization, let us say it is 6.5.  Each unit of employees would be clustered and averaged, so, if a group of fifty employees averaged 5.2 that could be bad.  If the next groups over in the branching management chart rated 5.1 and 5.4 that would tend to show that the management failure is above the single group and represents failure at a higher level of management, it is that higher level of management that would be removed.
   The system works well for organizations with more that one hundred employees.  It is the fastest way to improve corporate performance as well as government agencies and the military.  A law requiring it would make corporations more profitable, protect shareholders form incompetence and improve the economy.   Outside boards of directors which are currently populated mostly by psychotics, poorly socialized schizophrenia who promote each other and are unaware of their most basic levels of incompetence, could be improved by rating them by senior managers who are in turn rated by subordinates, the system would progressively and systematically improve.  It would alos be a good idea to psychologically screen candidates for boards of directors for socialization, to prevent people entering the syste who can do enormous damage.  The current system of board members nominating people whom they meet at parties and like guarantees in-bred selecting of the insane and incapable.  If anyone wants to improve corporations and hold them more accountable, this is the way to do it.
    In government service, these changes might require rewriting constitutions and charters but it would be well worth doing.  For government, just using it for information should not require constitutional changes but it might have the salutary effect of embarrassing governments into change by highlighting incompetence and failed political appointees.  In industry, as well, using them only for informational value and requiring the results be made available to shareholders could still have a strong corrective effect, particularly if the information is made legally non-proprietary and the individual share holders would have the right to release it for general distribution.  In both government and business the public release of the information would have the greatest effect on change.
   In the military it could have the strong effect of removing officers who are promotion climbers and would instead  select for officers who actually try to lead their personnel.

Men

   It has been noted that men rate good liars as having leadership.  What they are actually measuring is controlled schizophrenia.  In a fight schizophrenia can be an asset, the ability to turn off one's brain and fight without regard to personal safety or injury increases the chance of winning the confrontation.  The ability to lie well requires shutting off the brain ad creating a false world  in which one can simulate belief.  It takes control to lie well as well as disconnecting unnecessary parts of the brain dealing with guilt or fear.  There is a similarity to fighting skills.  The controlled nature of lying becomes a substitute for the controlled aggression of fighting.
    It is not particularly accurate in determining the ability to fight well.  It does not show the ability to think quickly when in anger or the ability to focus on  goals, nor does it show innate fighting skills.  It is an expedient shorthand which is fairly inadequate.  It tells something when the total of information is nothing.  Unfortunately, in realms such as politics it is often all the information available and leas to dreadful voting decisions.
   In war, when in battle, soldiers are probably almost all psychotic, it is necessary to survive.  A battle requires focusing on one enemy to kill while ignoring others who are trying to kill the soldier.  That deliberate ignoring of information is psychosis.  The only way to survive is to ill the enemy, but thah means sequentially killing aggressors while exposing oneself to getting killed, insanity is an aide in those circumstances.
   What also happens to soldiers is the lack of patterning to the battle around them.  The brain functions by having a pattern to the world which it updates.  In a battle, that complete lack of pattern causes the brain to doubt its model while producing no alternative model.  The brain begins a process of distrusting its own function,it looses the feedback loop of making small changes and adjusting progressively to new information.  The soldier develops the thousand yard stare of unfocused eyes when the brain cannot make the continuous adjustments needed to bring the eyes into focus.  Thee is also a tendency to be aggressively defensive and hyper vigilant since the brain can no longer tell the seriousness of any threat and it assumes any contact is a dangerous threat.
   Schizophrenia is an asset in most sports, it enables the brain to have a more fluid flow of complex information.  When dealing with a complex sport, like hockey, the brain must be fluid and flexible.  A player will have to track the movement of players on both teams, the goalie and the puck.  Derailed thinking is the only way to do that in the short time allowed for decisions.  The brain must track the different variables in parallel and then mix and match them quickly to develop a pattern of the play and then determine how to influence it.  Professional athletes have high rates of schizophrenia to allow for that fluid processing.  They also tend to be schizophrenic because schizophrenia produces the mind set of the importance to succeed and be known, when other people say the work and pain are not worth it, schizophrenics will continue because they need to be famous to determine they are n control, the brain is testing for its own sanity.
   This is true also of explorers and participants on extreme events, they need to do something to succeed to prove they are functioning.
 

Face to face

   The mind's check for faults, its internal sanity check, is talking to other people.  If the interaction goes smoothly the brain is reassured that there are no conflicts to its own functioning.  This is a further use of mirror imaging, seeing if the brain receives the feedback it expects form its own internal model.  This will produce strongly reinforcing behavior in a group.  It is also the  reason why dealing with disruptive people is so stressful.
   The reinforcing nature of social interaction is used by dictatorships to control societies.  When people at the end of the nazi era in Germany said they must have all been insane they were not kidding.  People were convinced to say "heil hitler" instead of "good morning."   It was successful because everyone else was doing it.  Once a social norm is induced it is strengthened by conformity.  In North Korea, probably close to one hundred percent of the people are psychotic, a combination of fear of punishment initiates the insanity and it is reinforced by the conduct of others.  Psychosis is the inability to recognize, properly characterize or reach a rational conclusion from information available.  In North Korea people really do believe that Kim Jong Il is the world's greatest political leader.  Starvation, failed policies and gross incompetence are put into an "other" file of the brain, information that is ignored because it is unnecessary.  The brains of the people actively shunt aside information that is unfavorable to the regime, it has become an automatic reflex.
   The process of modern society has been to lower levels of psychosis.  In the Middle Ages people did not question teachings and doctrine, their brains actively prevented it.  Fear of being burned alive as a heretic induced the entire society coming to believe in the rightness of the doctrine.  It may well have started with the demand from a central authority for compliance to insure control, but eventually the people self reinforced the doctrine by attacking and alienating anyone who would question it.  People did not question divinity or virgin birth, it really had become unthinkable.  What the nazis showed was how quickly it could be achieved, which is what makes the process so scary.
   The use of reflection from another person to confirm the functioning of a brain is why therapy was eventually developed.  The brain does not fully trust itself, so it wants to be reinforced.  A person who can recognize and articulate mental dysfunction will still be stressed by it, talking to someone else and receiving confirmation and reinforcement can actually get the brain to relax.  This is really the whole theory behind cognitive therapy.
   The need for visually reinforcing  and confirming mental pathways is prevalent among psychotics, they have a constant need for meetings.  An employee submits a report estimating costs at $300 000, the supervisor calls the employee to his office and asks what the estimate for the cost is, he is told, $300 000, now he is satisfied because he has seen the report writer say it.   Everyone's time has been wasted and nothing has been accomplished since it was already in the report, but the manager needed to be reassured and have his hand held.
   Among adults, there appears to be a dense set of connections in the brain, to introduce new information, the new fact must be introduced and placed into a holding center of the brain, the existing connections must relax and the new item introduced into the structures and then new connections made to it.  If the brain is panicking, it constantly checks the new item, being unsure of it, and rejecting its introduction.  Even at best, it will take the brain a long time to absorb the information.  It takes a long time to introduce information so it takes a long time to make decisions.  People who are poorly socialized are slow to make decisions because their brains panic and yet they are the ones promoted to senior positions, guaranteeing chaos and incompetence.
   They also produce the endless demands to go to meetings over long distances to fulfill their need for reassurance.  It is all pointless, because their brains are very poor at mirror imaging, they are not good at holding conversations with other people  and are poor at judging others intentions.  All the reasons for having a meeting are defeated by their own brain's inability to follow the actions of others and yet they still have the need to do actions from which they cannot profit.
   They also are limited to judging people by simple, external characteristics; a nice suit means an impressive person, being tall says the person has high status, if a person gives slow thoughtful answers he is not good at his job, if a person does not seem fully confident in his answers or is nervous he is lying.  That makes the person who has been put in charge a useless brainless moron who bothers people.
   This also produces reporters asinine fixation with interviews, if the person is seen saying it that must confirm what he said.  The wretched refuse of journalism schools do not understand and cannot seem to comprehend the importance of checking facts, there brains skip at complex comparisons and, so, they do interviews and pretend that that is news.  The wanting to be a reporter tends to come from the mind's  inability to do mrror-imaging with others, the mind cannot be sure of other people's motives because it cannot conform to trying to think like that other person, the mind's response is to dig into other people's lives, be a gossip and busybody.  There is a nice version of this where people with similar disruption take an active interest in other people and genuinely try to help them.
   This also affects business.  If someone wants a relatively small loan, as for a house, obtaining it is open to all people.  But for major financing, say a business loan of $10 000 000, the poorly socialized will be advantaged because banks, like all other institutions tend to be run by the poorly socialized.  That means that the person screening and approving major loans will tend to trust people like himself, the poorly socialized over all others. The problem with that is that the poorly socialized  are unscrupulous and are more likely to cheat on bank loans, or anything else.  Their brains make excuses for failing and they will blithely walk away form non-payment.  Once again, poor socialization benefits the least qualified.
   Major funding sources are controlled by the poorly socialized because the people who run them, and who can acquire large amounts of capital are advanced by others who are poorly socialized.
   Henry Ford was a poorly socialized schizophrenic.  He was also fully psychotic.  Schizophrenia refers to the amount of skipping, derailment that the brain undergoes in its workings, psychosis refers to a disruption in the ability to organize information and make decisions, they are related but not the same.  Being schizophrenic, or even psychotic does not preclude a person's ability to perform useful work or make original contributions, they are not the same as incompetent or incapable, although they inevitably entail some inability, some areas where decision making will be disrupted.
  Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before he finally made money making cars.  Notice that after two bankruptcies he was not deterred from asking for more money, many people after a single bankruptcy are nearly suicidal, feeling that they had completely failed in not living up to an obligation to repay the money.  Also notice that he was given more money, the lenders were dysfunctional.  Now, the Model T was a brilliant idea, a simple car with high ground clearance for poor roads.  Building it on an assembly line after a few years was also a worthy achievement,  But Henry Ford was nuts.  He refused to have an accounting department, and dismantled the accounting department  his son, Edsel, started.  When Ford died, in 1945, no manager of a Ford factory knew how many right front fenders, or how many rear axles, he had in stock.  It was a lunatic way to run a business.  When the Model T was in production,  Ford refused to build any other type of car under the Ford name, although he did buy Lincoln and built cars under that nameplate.  When the Model T stopped production Ford closed his factories and produced no Ford cars for six months until the Model A was ready for production.  It was insane, but he got his chances for business because he was insane.  A sane well-adjusted person would probably  not have been able to raise the money he needed.
   Owing to who controls money, gambling risks are rewarded rather than competent management risks.  Someone poorly socialized will more easily raise money for a venture with little chance of success than a fully sane person who has a project with manageable risk.
 

More insanity

   A schizophrenic mind which is panicking cannot negotiate the process of self-reflection, comparing oneself to oneself while considering what one's actual goals are.  The response is to be avoidant, to close off all possibility of self-reflection. Because of this , the following traits are typical of poorly-socialized, panicking schizophrenics:

• Denial
• Distance
• Dismissal
• Evasion
• Minimization

Denial:  You came in fifteen minutes late this morning.  No, I wasn't.
Distance (The intervening actor): You came in fifteen minutes late this morning.  What happened was I went into the deli to get a cup of coffee and there was a long line.  But you came in fifteen minutes late.  I just explained it, you're not listening to what I'm saying.
Dismissal (Not just of the criticism, but of the person making it.): You came in fifteen minutes late.  You're going to worry about fifteen minutes?
Evasion:  You came in fifteen minutes late.  Well, I don't look at the clock when I come in, so how would I know what time it is.
Minimization:  You came in fifteen minutes late.   I come in late once and you want to make a big deal about it.

   All such avoidance comes from an inability to self-reflect, which is also to reconsider.  Such people have no error box, they do not record or learn from their own mistakes.  If you have ever had a co-worker whose work you have had to frequently correct turn to you and say, "I never make mistakes," you  have encountered the phenomenon.  These people never correct so they never fell the need to apologize, but then. again, they do not have to apologize because they never make mistakes.  At least, in their own minds that is true.
   The denial is the failure to record an error so the brain erases all trace of it.  Distance is the brain trying to work around the error in an attempt to overwrite it as a non-error.  Dismissal is a more obnoxious form of denial, actually attacking and belittling the interlocutor.  Evasion is a somewhat politer form of the brain trying to work away from looking at the facts.  Minimization is the brain back-tracking from the events, rather than looking at them.
   Researchers have found that if people make eye contact there is almost no danger of people walking on a sidewalk colliding.  They are not quite sure how it works, but by making eye contact people can actually signal their intentions and directions on even a crowded sidewalk.  A similar effect occurs between poorly socialized schizophrenics, they recognize each other by minimal eye contact and will frequently support each other accordingly.  This mutual support can be a disaster for anyone else, whom they may treat as garbage.
   Their inability to correct, or take corrections, means that they would like to install themselves in positions where they give rather than receive orders.  They want to be in places where they can make denial decisions on others.  This gives rise to some nasty receptionists and self-important mail room employees who can make themselves ignore their own inability to correct into correcting, denying, others.  They also become abusive police officers and out-of-control security guards.  I am not saying that all people who hold these jobs act in this manner, what I am saying is that there are people who try to force themselves into these positions who are a disaster if they get them.
   They also try to fill positions in management.  They will statistically succeed in taking aver any management structure unless there is a strong external force maintaining socialization.  They cannot self-reflect and they will respond violently to anything that might make them self-reflect, their brains are panicking and become defensive.  This means that employment inteviews, particularly for senior positions, select for poor socialization, through unspoken signs they recognize each other and mutually avoid any reflection.
   In a job interview, the person interviewing is usually a poorly socialized schizophrenic.  Again, this puts the interviewer in a position to deny and the interviewer is selected for her ability to be as poorly socialized as her employers, guaranteeing them their happy world of self-satisfied incompetence.
   The glass ceiling for women is that women are, on average, better socialized than men, they have better manners.  Because they are not signalling that they are rude and obnoxious, they are signalling that they might make other management show introspection, which would make their brains explode.  This is why most women are not promoted and why the ones who are have such charming personalities.
    This is why idiot management puts such high emphasis on aggressive management.  Aggressive managers do not get more work done, they just bother people more.  But, in the backwards world of poor socialization this is mistaken for effectiveness,  The employees suffer and the business is less efficient but the members on the outside board of directors are also , once more, trying to place themselves in positions of denial, are poorly socialized, are incompetent jackasses and do not realize it when it is their fault that a business is destroyed.  A happy valley of self-satisfied self-destruction,.management and the board, incompetent together.
     The upward selection mechanism in almost all organizations is poor socialization.
   In a job interview, the goal is to make the interviewer feel special, that shows that you are one of them.  You will have a much better chance of being hired.
   The human brain works on models.  Over time the brain has a rolling model of the world around itself which it upgrades and modifies over time.  Most people pause if the model is violated.  The brain stops reflects, and then either incorporates new information or decides that the original model was correct and that an anomaly has occurred.  The poorly-socialized  instead react violently.
    So, if the model is one of chaos, chaos must be maintained; no organizational charts, no transcripts of meetings, constant retooling of management structures, constant reworking of timelines and individual work assignments.  If the model is one of order; than thee must be an exact heading on each report, thee must be constant meetings to reinforce the organization, there must be a meeting before any work is started, every desk must be arranged as ordered.  It seems to depend on the home environment with which the manager was raised; yelling, screaming parents produce a demand for chaos, strict over-controlling parents the anal need for order.
   Another characterization of the behaviors is the shuns:  inclusion, exclusion, intrusion, confusion, implosion, explosion, delusion, and self-promotion.
   It comes down to forming protective groups that self reinforce and prevent outsiders from forcing change.  The problem is that they have succeeded.  Politicians are defined by denial, distance, dismissal, evasion, minimization.  Corporate executives live in a nether world of incompetent fog    And most judges are psychotic.  Walk into almost any courtroom and you will witness a freak show.  If oyu are ever in court, look at he judge, dodging eyes, outbursts, passivity, overt favoritism towards certain lawyers, the demand he be taken seriously,  most, at least in the United States, are nuts.  Do not mention it to anyone or you will be held in contempt by  the psychotic judge.
   In gaming theory, it is a blocked position.  Corporations can abuse, judges will not intervene and politians are disinterested all because of their mutual poor-socialization.  And forget the news media they are also the intrusive , interview obsessed incompetents who want ot bee part of the inside club of insanity.  You are truly screwed.
   If you have ever had a conversation like the following:
I'm trying to activate my account.
Then you have to send in the form.
I did send in the form.
Then you have to send in a different form.
Well, which form activates my account?
Well, if one doesn't then the other should.
But how do you know which one?
Well. if the first didn't then the second should.

 then you have encountered the wall of psychosis, the person you were speaking to was a psychotic hired by another psychotic who wrote the psychotic rules  There is nothing you can do.. .

Thermodynamic life

   The best definition of life is probably that it must meet two conditions; it must be capable of self-replication and it must be capable of controlling energy.  This is the thermodynamic definition of life.  It means that any orgaism, no matter how complex, exists solely to keep its mitochondria, energy sources, warm.
   The initial form of life would have been proto-mitochondria.  This has to be true because it is the only thing that makes sense.  The initial self-replicating forms produce energy in the form of heat which raises the local temperature and increases the stability and efficiency of reproduction of the forms.  As they multiply, they produces more heat which locally heats up the water they are in and this raise in temperature stabilizes the chemical process of their synthesis.  There is no other form or proto-form for which this is true, so the  mitochondria win,  they are the only tissue type which aids its own reproduction by altering the local conditions to be more favorable for that reproduction.
   Eventually they form a loose, porous covering that probably looked roughly like soda straws tied and formed into a ball.  That covering allowed water, food and oxidant to enter for contact with the mitochondria while slowing that flow enough to allow for a local heat rise by slowing convective cooling. Eventually that covering formed a cell wall to further keep the inside warm.
   At the same time, some forms began to cluster for mutual warmth, forming biofilms and globules.  Bu those clusters had to remain porous enough to allow food and oxidant to reach the central cell while allowing waste products to flow out.
   When the cell forms use food to produce energy, they do no necessarily remain stable, often, they will flex during the process.  That flexing can produce some movement, even if spasmodically directed.  By moving, they do not risk depleting the local food source but move, instead to a fresh area of food.
   The energy causes it to flex and bend, but that means just adding energy, as in sunlight, will also cause that flexing and some movement.  If the flexing causes movement towards the light, the cells will move upward in the water column to warmer water heated by the sun.  But this extra warmth will again help the chemical processes of reproduction,  so cells that move to the light will be preferred in reproduction.  That process is the basis for both eyes and photosynthesis.
   With the preferred movement, occasionally the mitochondria or an off-shoot of them form  chemical product, perhaps as part of the flexing.  Those products formed from available chemicals and sunlight become available as additional food for the cell.  With greater elaboration this process turns into photosynthesis.
   Eyes come from accumulations of cells trying to stay warm.  Moving to the surface again warms them, so they need to find the surface by moving to the light.  If they have formed into something of a worm shape, having designated cells at a front end would make their movement more efficient, as opposed to having all the cells record the light and an erratic, sideways, snake sliding along the ground movement would result.  Preferred cells at one end allows for a more efficient, eel-like swim.
   But all the cells in the worm would need ot be told to produce a swimming motion, so, the brain grows back from the eyes as booster for the signal from the eyes.  The brain's original only function was to be an amplifier.  There was also a need to transmit the signal.  Passing it from cell to cell was slow and inefficient, causing a central core of signal transmitting cells, an early spinal cord, to form to allow for clearer signal transmission.
   The process was; eyes to brain, brain through spinal cord, then final signal to cells causing them to use energy and move.  But an interesting thing happens, when the cells are pressed they produce a back signal to  the spinal cord that returns to the brain.
   The movement to the light was to stay warmer and find food once photosynthesis was begun.  But the back signals in some individuals produced brain reactions causing additional signals to be sent to the cells causing additional movement.  The movement was random and erratic, it was the primitive panic response.   It came in useful if the worm was caught  on a rock by a wave or tide, remaining exposed would mean death by the sun drying the worm; random, erratic wiggling would mean the chance of the worm falling back into the water and living.  Panic, with random, erratic brain signals,  is the basis for schizophrenia.   If you ever see a worm wriggling and twisting to try to fall off a rock, you are seeing the basis for schizophrenia.  The panic and random signalling was carried forward at all levels of neural development and produced the basis for both thought and schizophrenia.  The random signals were the basis for derailed thinking.
   As the worms grew and diversified, they developed into different varieties and sizes.  The bigger ones discovered that the best source of concentrated food, the best source of calories, were the smaller worms.
to avoid being eaten the smaller worms began feeling for water movement, their bodies picked up vibrations and developed a generalized sense of touch.  Further development from that sense of touch and vibration developed int o specific hearing.  Smells are actually heard.  The sense of smell is analyzing the vibrations of the smell molecules, if two molecules vibrate similarly, they will smell similarly, that is actually hearing.  The sense of smell developed from hearing.  Finally, the sense of taste might have developed directly from the sense of touch, its purpose would have been to screen out poisons by their harsh feel to certain cells.
    The panic followed by random movement is an effective hunting, or food locating strategy.  A bee will go over an entire bush of flowers looking for pollen and nectar, if the bush does not have any, the bee does a panic response and does not fly to the next nearest bush but will fly twenty yards to half a mile before trying another bush.  The reason that makes sense, is that there are micro-climates, locally specific conditions for plant growth.  The next bush over probably is exposed to the same micro-climate, so any conditions that limit nectar and pollen in one; too much water, too little water, not enough sun, too much wind exposure, would effect both bushes, travelling a longer distance increases the chance that a different set of growing conditions would exist, giving a better chance for success.  The process is derailed, it is schizophrenic, but it is useful.
     Sharks hunt in a similar manner, they intensively search an area for prey and, if they do not find any , they swim a long distance in a random direction before slowing and slowly, and intensively, searching a a smaller area again.
   Both sharks and bees, when locally hunting use a randomly erratic path of short distances and abrupt turns into different directions.   In addition, prey animals also use randomly erratic behavior for protection, film of a bobcat chasing a rabbit in snow shows the rabbit turning, changing speeds and shifting directions.  If the rabbit is healthy those random erratic movements give it a good chance of escape .
     The derailed thinking and hunting processes is evident in many animals.   I was once on Riverside Drive in Manhattan,  I was on the sidewalk along Riverside Park.  There is a sidewalk and then a three foot high stone wall forming the boundary of Riverside Park, on the park side, there is a ten foot drop off and then a slope running down hill.  Fifteen feet from the wall thee was a tree growing on the slope.  On a branch of that tree, ten feet above the sidewalk, a Red-tailed Hawk was perched.  Three hundred feet down the sidewalk a group of pigeons was feeding.  The hawk saw the pigeons.  It flew off the branch on the outer side of the wall before coming within fifty feet of the pigeons, when it flew over the wall and attacked. I think it got one but it was too far away to see clearly.
   Consider the spatial reasoning that requires.  It did not fly directly over the wall at the pigeons, which they would have seen and had time to fly off, but used the wall as a blind to approach within striking distance.  That is derailed thinking.  Railed thinking would be to fly straight at them.  Realizing the wall was a hide takes a lot of peculiar thinking from a bird with a brain the size of an almond.
   Some people talk of the competitiveness of race horses.  Actually, they are psychotic.
   I was walking on upper Broadway in Manhattan once.  I walked passed an older man.  As soon as I did, he walked faster in a shambling gate until he was thirty feet ahead of me, but my walking pace was faster thqan his and in a block I had passed him again.  Once more he shambled thirty feet ahead and once more, in another block , I passed him again.  This time he broke into a sort of stumbling run and ran across the next street before turning to stare at me with a wild-eyed psychotic gaze.
   It was a back formation.  The forward formation is that I am panicked, therefore I run.  The back formation is, I am running therefore I must be panicked and anything that comes near is a threat.
   This happened one more time on Broadway on the upper west side.  I walked past a woman carrying two bags and she immediately walked faster.  This time I wanted to know if I was right about what I was seeing. I had to hurry up to catch up with her, it was not my natural walking pace.  But when I walked past her the second time, she fairly exploded.  She almost ran and ran directly into the path of another woman.  They both had to stop, the other woman had the classic, what are you doing look on her face   If I was an actual experimenter that would probably an unethical experiment. I did not come within six feet of her, I did not look at her but , still, deliberately making someone panic is fairly stupid.
   But this is what happens with race horses, they are panicked, one step short of a stroke.  They have no idea of winning they just view threats for other horses, they are bred to be paranoid schizophrenics.  This is also true of dogs bred to be aggressive.  Doberman, of pinscher fame, allegedly had dogs so unruly they could not be handled , they had to be bred down in aggressiveness.  Aggressive dogs have the same unfocused eyes as psychotic people, and for the same reason, the brain has a disrupted feedback loop so it cannot focus the eyes properly.  That lack of feedback is paranoid schizophrenia in both cases.  Normally the brain guesses a focus, sees if it produces the desired acuity, then readjusts as necessary until the focus is correct.  If the brain is skipping around at random it cannot perform that fine control and the eyes drift in miss-focus.

Where insanity is

  To begin with a definition of psychosis;  psychosis is the inability to properly understand information, collate and organize information or reach logical results from that information.   Specifically, I am, for the most part, going to discuss poorly socialized schizophrenia.
   Schizophrenia is a timing disorder, the brain has difficulty cuing and sequencing tasks.  Poor socialization is a panic reaction, the brain does not know how to respond, so it responds aggressively, obnoxiously.
   The difficulty with schizophrenia is that people who study it have it backwards.  A common diagnostic trait of schizophrenia is derailed thinking.  Derailed thinking is the linking of unrelated traits and facts.  So, for instance someone saying that because another person is wearing a yellow shirt, that yellow shirt will cause a thunderstorm.  The problem with this is that everything labeled as thinking is actually derailed thinking.
   Problem solving, thinking, involves bringing discordant themes together and using the differences to solve problems.  If someone is trying to glue paper butterflies onto another sheet of paper it might be difficult to prevent them form sticking and being misplaced.  A possible solution is to take a Post-it note, stick it to the back of the butterfly and use it as a handle to place the butterfly.  When the glue is dry, the note can be peeled off the butterfly.  Some might view that as a clever solution, but it is derailed thinking. Instead of working on placing the butterfly, an extraneous object is introduced that has nothing to do with the butterfly, glue or attachment surface, introducing ti is derailed thinking., but it is derailed thinking within boundaries.
   Maintaining boundaries around the derailment is important.  Without boundaries, yellow shirts cause thunderstorms.
   All abstract thinking is derailment, that is what makes it abstract. People freely as sign values that do not  exist. That is both abstract thinking and derailment.  In Chinese, there are counter words, similar to head of cattle.  The head is a counter word, when one says ten head of cattle rather than ten cattle.  In Chinese, there is a counter word that applies to both sheets of paper and of roads.  It is used for both because they are both connected by being flat.  If you say that you can see that, you are insane because it makes no sense. Neither a road or a sheet of paper is flat.  In fact paper is only approximately flat if it is placed on a flat object.  Yet, most people are willing to go along with the connection.  The reason for that is that people can coordinate  their derailed thinking.  The basis for agreeing to something is not whether it is irrational, it is whether it is useful.  The concept of flatness is useful no matter how little sense it actually makes.   Sheets of paper and roads have nothing in common but the human brain creates abstract groupings because of its derailment.
  It is a strange and peculiar hobby of the mind to search for and create groupings.  People will say that a cloud looks like a sheep, or that someone's head is shaped like a potato.  It gives the brain great flexibility and suppleness of thought but it also leads to howling madness.
   All culture and achievements of thinking are actually fairly kooky.  Let us go back to the days of primitive men and cave dwellers and consider Ogg and Thog:
-Why are you sticking the antelope meat in the fire, Ogg?
-Well, when we killed it, it was warm.  So I thought that if I put it in the fire it would be warm again.
-Fire destroys things.
-But I thought a little bit of fire.
-You're an idiot, Ogg.
   If you think that is not nutty enough:
-Why are you rubbing leaves on the meat, Ogg?
-Well, the leaves have kind of an interesting smell, and I thought that if I rubbed them on the meat and then stuck it in the fire the smell would go into the meat.
-You need serious help, Ogg.
   Another variation:
-Why are you putting those grass seeds on a rock and then rubbing them with another rock on top, Thog?
-I thought I could break them up and make them finer.
-Why don't you just boil them in water and eat them?
-I thought this would make them smoother.
-You sure no how to waste time, Thog.
   The entire idea of cooking is a rational waste of time, there are no more calories and there is no more nutrition if food is just roasted or boiled rather than being prepared or seasoned.
   Consider another example; you are reading this.  Do you realize how peculiar that is?  Think of what an alphabet is, it is making marks to represent puffs of air.  So, "b" represents the "buh" sound.  But different people pronounce it differently, so  how can it mean anything.  Or tell me what  the mark is for a gust of wind that blows off your hat.  As a rational exercise, it is at least highly questionable.  But people can coordinate their derailment and everyone can agree on the "b" sound.  By mutually assigning a value it becomes useful, even though it does not make a lot of sense, seeing the symbols and hearing the coordinated sounds makes it useful through recognition but trying to explain it is actually an exercise in futility.
   Pictorial symbols make sense, they can be justified and explained, but they are far less flexible and useful.
  Consider ropes.  The obvious conclusion is that ropes originated from vines. Someone saw a vine wrapping itself around another object and said to himself, that that could be useful.  Or he saw the vine wrapping around stalks and got the idea of wrapping the vine around bundles to be carried.  There is a huge gap in that story, The person is mentally insert another object into what is being wrapped by the vine.  Why would he do that?  He sees grass stalks but he thinks of kindling twigs?  That is derailed thinking, one step short of yellow shirts causing thunderstorms.  The human brain does that nonsense all the time.
    Consider the zero.  A mark is made to represent nothing, why not just leave the space blank?
   Counting by strokes makes sense; ll for two, lll for three, lllll lllll lllll lllll lllll lllll for thirty.  It is simple, clear, conveys the meaning and represents the scale, 30 does none of those things.  Looking at 30, it is impossible to know the scale of the number.  Only by constantly using it do people acquire some familiarity with its meaning.  The number 15 000 000 000 000, 15 trillion, almost no one can understand, it has no scale or magnitude  to which it can be compered and is only an abstraction.   It is about the size, in dollars, of the U.S. debt.  But that is the effect of using zeros as placeholders, all numbers become vague abstractions.  But by people coordinating their derailment and agreeing to that vague structure of numbers they can be manipulated more readily and used with far greater flexibility.
   The discussion of schizophrenia is the discussion of the degree of derailment.  Though requires two processes, derailment and bringing in disparate elements and then structuring those elements to produce a useful result.  Increasing derailed processes make the mind more flexible, but if the derailment exceeds some level the pieces cannot be gathered and used.  People dealing with more concrete reasoning such as scientists and mathematicians have to be able to fully structure  outlandish  ideas, artists can leave the pieces scattered.  Artists can be crazier than scientists.
   Producing ideas requires new perspectives and new associations of data, it requires derailment. In bad science-fiction there are absolutely rational societies who are far advanced.  Actually, if they were absolutely rational they would be running around naked, eating small furry animals raw for dinner.  Anything else requires irrationality, derailment, derangement.  The possibility of thought requires the possibility of insanity.  The only way thought can occur is with parallel processing of thoughts  with some skipping, derailment , between the lines of thought.  This produces the possibility of new thoughts and structures.  And that, is the definition of thought.
   I  cannot say that I have much direct contact with autism, although I, and everyone else, whether or not they realize it, have a had a lot of contact with  schizophrenia.  However, from what I do know, it seems that autism is a deficit in derailed processes.  The brain cannot skip so it remains fixed and inflexible.
  On a 0 to 100 scale for derailed processes, with 100 representing standing naked on a street corner screaming at people, maybe 0-5 would be autism and 30 would represent diagnosable schizophrenia.
   Computers do not think because they are essentially autistic.  If thinking were to be simulated, parallel processing would need to become randomly erratic.   The good news it would be flexible and could solve problems, the bad news is that it would occasionally do something completely insane.  So, it could autonamously run a nuclear reactor, but it might occasionally melt the reactor down just because it felt like doing it.  (Yes, this is HAL in 2001.)
   Reviewing on's actions is very difficult, it requires being oneself while looking at oneself.  One must remember what one did, then consider what wanted to do, while at the same time considering larger goals that might have existed and comparing it to what other people did as benchmarks.  It requires the brain to skip around without loosing track of where it is   This is allowed by derailment, but too much derailment, diagnosable schizophrenia, causes the brain to skip too violently, which tends to produce a panic reaction as a warning that the brain is overloading, and causing the brain to be avoidant of the process.
   Consider two mirrors set parallel and opposite to each other.  In between them place a statue representing a person.  The image will reflect back and forth creating an endless series of images.  In schizophrenia the brain has trouble processing which is the original object and which are the reflections and cannot keep track of the orde of reflections.  There tends to be one of two responses;  cover the mirrors and ignore them, or draw a cartoon drawing of what the person wants to believe about himself and hang that cartoon on a wall and claim that it is a mirror image.  Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, is quoted as saying about another politician, "He is a legend in his own mind."  He is referring to someone hanging the cartoon drawing on the wall and claiming that that is a mirror image of the owner.
    The reason why schizophrenia is so badly handled is that most psychiatrists are schizophrenic.  That strange and peculiar tone psychiatrists use to speak is an avoidance of the mirror images.  If they directly engage with schizophrenia they have to look at their own schizophrenia, so to avoid the endless mirror images, they avoid it by creating an external image point, a false focus, that allows them to avoid looking at themselves.  They create endless categories to avoid placing themselves in a category of dysfunction.
   Poor socialization, parents abusing belittling or constantly interfering with their children induces a panic reaction.  Going back to the 0-100 scale, someone might be 20, normal range, but with panic go up to 40, schizophrenia, with panic making the brain skip more aggressively.  The child exposed to bad parenting is constantly told to not do, to correct, to do something else and this induces panic from a need to constantly adjust to avoid the parental idiocy.
   Unfortunately, promotion within most organizations and social advancement is decided by poor socialization, the upward selective mechanism is to for poor socialization.  The reason is because the poorly socialized run everything and cannot tolerate anyone showing them their own insanity.  They form protective groups to defend their insanity.
   Let us look at a management model, i will use the alphabet to show the movement of people through management, lower letters first higher letters in the alphabet following.   Let us say that there are five vice-presidents.  Well socialized people will be shown as lower case letters, the poorly socialized by capital letters.I will say ten percent of management is poorly socialized to begin.  The well socialized promote one poorly socialized person, he is a total jackass but he works hard and does good work. So, to start the vice-presidents look like this:
  a  b  c  d  E
  E, the poorly socialized removes anyone in his command who is not poor socialized so no one will challenge his insanity.  Now, under E 20% of all management is poorly socialized under the other four 10% of 80% or 8% are poorly socialized or a total of 28% of all management.  For the next promotion there is a 72% chance that a non poorly socialized person would be chosen   But for two promotions it is only 50%, there is an even chance that another poorly socialized is chosen.
    c  d  E  f  G
  Now, two have 40% plus
 10% of 60% = 46%, nearly a 50% chance of another poorly socialized.
  E  f  G  h  I
   Now, three have 60% poorly socialized and 10% of 40% = 64%.
  f  G  h  I  J
   Then
  G  h  I  J  K
   After not too long a time 100% of the candidates for promotion are poorly socialized.  And if the president is chosen from the poorly socialized  then 100% would be immediately poorly socialized.. Well socialized people say, to be fair we should promote him even if he does act like an idiot, poorly socialized feel no need to be fair, that is almost the definition of poor socialization.  
    That is the glass ceiling for women, women tend to have better manners than men, so are excluded from promotion.  That is also why the women who are promoted have such charming personalities.  It is also why you can have a coherent conversation with someone in middle management but need a translator of the bizarre to speak with senior management.
   The people who study psychology tend to be schizophrenic.  There is a process of mirror imaging that the brain does where it looks at itself, so if a person is asked about swimming that person tends to visualize watching himself swim.  The reason people ask questions about brain function is that their own brains are telling them something is wrong.  It makes them interested but prevents them from looking directly at themselves, they are avoidant and consequently inefficient in their studies.
  There was a psychiatrist who estimated that ten percent of all people have diagnosable schizophrenia, he was propably about right.  But all people have derailed processes and so are on the schizophrenic spectrum.
    Humor has been shown to be something that surprises the audience, it is derailed thinking: A man walks into an elevator and finds that there is an elephant inside.  The elephant turns to him and says, " You take up a lot of space."  Elephants really do not talk.  People who can create derailed situations are funny, people who need to be famous are poorly socialized, that is why so many stand up comics have toxic personalities.