The table shows that, compared to permit holders, permitless individuals are 2.4 times more likely to drive drunk. They are 34.1 times more likely to drive under the influence of a controlled substance, and 10.6 times more likely to drive recklessly. Across these three types of driving violations, non-permit holders were 12.2 times more likely to be violating the law.
Restraint is amygdala. This called to my mind this discovery about those infected with T. gondii:
The subjects with latent toxoplasmosis have significantly increased risk of traffic accidents than the noninfected subjects. Relative risk of traffic accidents decreases with the duration of infection. These results suggest that ‘asymptomatic’ acquired toxoplasmosis might in fact represent a serious and highly underestimated public health problem, as well as an economic problem.
Obviously, T. gondii infects the amygdala preferentially, and fills it with cysts, likely degrading its functioning, at least for a while until the brain adapts to its debility to whatever degree it can.
You can learn to feel your amygdala when you drive. Notice how it flags everything you focus on. Little bursts of stress pop up on everything, and you almost feel a tension in your scalp and brain, almost like a tingly muscle spanning the back of your skull between your ears pulling tight suddenly, causing strain and pulling your eyes open. Watch for the moments when something unexpected happens, and then replay what you felt in your skull at the moment your attention was triggered.
If you imagine it in massive amounts, it is what you would feel as the Alien from the movies pinned you up against a wall and extended its slime-covered teeth toward your face. But in small amounts, it just draws attention, triggers an alert, and focuses it.
Try to imagine driving without it, or if it were barely noticeable. Use that realization of how valuable it is to learn to welcome the sensation.
You can see how if you weaken the amygdala it will both affect driving, which is very dependent on a forward focus that predicts threat of accident, and diminish the ability to plan for criminal threats you might encounter in the future.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because your amygdala functions well
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Yeah, about Toxoplasma…
This is logical from an evolutionary perspective: when toxo infects a mouse, it “wants” the mouse to be eaten by a cat so it can infect the cat, then multiply in the cat’s gut cells so the cat now poops landmines full of infectious oocysts. So the microbe removes the mouse’s fear of the cat by messing up its amygdala. If you told me it adds chemicals to the cat poop to make it smell delicious to the mice I wouldn’t even be surprised. These parasites are clever!
I know this because last year I got toxo, so I was very tired for 6 months and figured I might as well use the down time to read and learn about it. When I reached that part, I was “OMG I’m gonna catch Liberal Brain Damage!”, seriously that would be a scary perspective, so I went on a splurge of reading conservative and red pill stuff.
The antidote seems to have worked: I am even more conservative and K than before! (and I was a pretty hardass K to begin with). Phew, feels like I dodged a bullet.
Warning for readers: in “Toxoplasmosis: A Comprehensive Clinical Guide” (Cambridge University Press) the authors mention that the symptoms for toxo are the same as lymphoma, some other cancers, and a ton of random diseases few people heard about (but they all kill or cripple you)… so get a blood test first, it’s cheaper than a MRI, and a lot less painful than getting a lymph node dissection for no reason at all…