The Phenomenologically Distributed Human Parasite M0 (1998)

So the dullness of the daily grind is a memetic parasite? This feels like haha-only-serious quasi-satire.

I think the mechanistic argument that this paper tries to make about dopamine unfortunately falls into the trap that much of popular science writing dealing with neurotransmitters makes, by using hand-waving, oversimplified explanations of how our brain works to somehow justify its sociological or cultural thesis as being based on "science". I will probably get downvoted for saying this, but Jordan Peterson's writings on serotonin comes to mind here.

This piece can somewhat be forgiven, because it takes the view on dopamine that almost all pop-sci writing takes, which is that it's "the pleasure chemical", i.e "The level of the neuroinhibitor dopamine in the human's brain rises. This induces a subjective experience of self-absorbed well being, while rendering the human quiescent". A more accurate view of dopamine's function is that it controls incentive salience or "wanting", and that wanting vs. liking are distinct attributes of our reward system [1][2]. Dopamine causes the seeking of pleasure. Pleasure itself is caused by something else. This view that the high dopamine state is associated with quiescence and satiety are in direct contradiction with observations. It is well known that amphetamines raise extracellular dopamine in the brain. Folks who take amphetamines become highly motivated, active, aroused, excited, etc. Conversely, there is a class of drugs (dopamine antagonists) which block the action of dopamine. Side effects of these include sedation and lack of sex drive.

I would have to agree with the authors in the conclusion section that "this reinterpretation hangs on the specific assertions as to the function of dopamine..", and unfortunately, these assertions don't seem to be evidence based.

I feel bad for ragging on this paper so harshly, but it struck me that their starting point was that "hackers" in the HN sense, and a select few other small groups of folks on Earth, are special, different, and enlightened, and that the vast majority of other humans are defective and afflicted with a sort of mind-virus. This is such a dark worldview, and it reeks of the kind of silicon valley exceptionalism that is spoken about on this site often.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivational_salience [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5171207/

I had some memory of this from slashdot, a long time ago. It became a curious little online mini-cult.

Found it:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/09/29/0914253/the-program...

https://news.slashdot.org/story/99/10/26/137207/beyond-the-p...

M0 = laziness, dejection, lack of motivation etc.