Organized Mess, Certified Weirdo

(*go out to the cornfield in the middle of the night and try to get abducted by aliens)

(*go out to the cornfield in the middle of the night and try to get abducted by aliens)

Okay, so: there's a part of the human brain called the "prefrontal cortex" which is, among other things, responsible for executive function and impulse control. Like most parts of the brain, it undergoes active "rewiring" over time (i.e., pruning unused neural connections and establishing new ones), and in the case of the prefrontal cortex in particular, this rewiring sharply accelerates during puberty.

Because the pace of rewiring in the prefrontal cortex is linked to specific developmental milestones, it was hypothesised that it would slow down and eventually stop in adulthood. However, the process can't be directly observed; the only way to tell how much neural rewiring is taking place in a particular part of the brain is to compare multiple brain scans of the same individual performed over a period of time.

Thus, something called a "longitudinal study" was commissioned: the same individuals would undergo regular brain scans over a period of mayn years, beginning in early childhood, so that their prefrontal development could accurately be tracked.

The longitudinal study was originally planned to follow its subjects up to age 21. However, when the predicted cessation of prefrontal rewiring was not observed by age 21, additional funding was obtained, and the study period was extended to age 25. The predicted cessation of prefrontal development wasn't observed by age 25, either, at which point the study was terminated.

When the mainstream press got hold of these results, the conclusion that prefrontal rewiring continues at least until age 25 was reported as prefrontal development finishing at age 25. Critically, this is the exact opposite of what the study actually concluded. The study was unable to identify a stopping point for prefrontal development because no such stopping point was observed for any subject during the study period. The only significance of the age 25 is that no subjects were tracked beyond this age because the study ran out of funding!

Specifically, Articles 13 and 14 are concerned with the freedom of expression, the freedom to seek out, receive, and impart information, and the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Article 17 concerns access to mass media of both national and international origin. Article 19 concerns protecting children from abuse and neglect. Article 24 concerns access to healthcare. Article 28 concerns access to education, and Article 29 further stipulates that education should promote tolerance and respect of other people and cultures. Article 32 protects children from economic exploitation.

In the USA, the land of the free, we can't have any of that! If a parent believes the outside world is evil and wants to keep their kids from reading books that aren't about how God will send them to Hell for speaking out of turn, they have that freedom! If a parent believes that medicine is evil and wants to keep their kid from being vaccinated or put their kid on a raw meat diet or use homeopathy to treat an inflamed appendix, they have that freedom! If a parent wants to teach their kid that white people are the master race and that it is their duty to massacre everyone else, they have that freedom! And if a parent wants to take their kids out of school to work on the farm or get into the acting business, they have that freedom!

Remember when the media said “greedflation” was a fringe theory?