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Comment by rippercushions | Hacker News Reader

First I'd heard of this, but there is some preliminary evidence that saffron has positive effects on depressive symptoms:

https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/77/8/557/5...

But if this was really significant, you'd expect saffron-producing/eating countries to stand out. Iran is #1, are they really all 1,000,000x happy geniuses?

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Actually it is very expensive. I am talking about consuming a lot of grams every day, 50 to 100 grams, which is not a lot given it is roughly 1/1000 of the weight of a normal human, but it is the luxury of a millionaire for the moment. It is true that we most probably don't see any statistical correlation between saffron consumption and intelligence, especially in a country level, but i would argue, that the dosage makes the genius.

Some of the virtues of the article, are a state of mind anyway, that's why i mention saffron. Many people are eating too much, only to feel better. Food has certainly the ability to alter our state of mind, which in some cases ends up in obesity.

Virtues in the article, like apatheia, ataraxia, eudaimonia include in their meaning, not indulging in every pleasure in excess, and food is one of them. Well, that can be automated by producing more saffron and lowering it's price.

> [take 50 to 100 grams of saffron]

The dose is the poison - take care with spices.

My friend died young of liver failure due to eating comfrey as a vegetable.

> 50 to 100 grams

Saffron is toxic at that dose, very likely lethal. Please stay safe.

I haven't seen anywhere mentioning any toxicity to the spice. Everywhere i looked no side effects. That costs too much money for me anyway, to eat a lot of it, and i guess for most people. A millionaire who values his brain too much, may try it. Someone like PG or Marc Andersen.

[edit]I would love to see PG coming back, programming a new Common Lisp by hand, and writing a 1000 page manual just by himself, if he gets a supercharged brain. GPT and Artificial intelligence will be left back in the dust.

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