Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity
alphagalileo.org
alphagalileo.org
If you are reading these comments please try and be aware of this fact and the possibility that anyone, yourself included, could fall into this trap and remember to take all of the amazing possibilities being suggested and conclusions reached herein with a grain of salt.
Another time I've done a routine blood test and PhD liver specialist with decades of experience thought my liver is damaged looking at the result. She didn't know that liver markers are elevated by strength training (which I mentioned to her) and the way to test for that is to test CK levels as well. She wanted to put me on meds as well.
"Studies" mean very little. You can learn a lot from people who took time to read a literature and are good at critical thinking or you can easily be fooled by a confident educated moron with a PhD. I've learnt more about my issues from random internet forums than I've learnt from doctors and I really tried it with doctors.
GP likely means expertise. Basically: the armchair general problem but for any topic.
This is a bit of a non-sequitur based on what you said before.
Being competent or a talented software engineer is correlated with being an intelligent person, which in turn is correlated with the ability to understand the nuances of [insert topic here].
That doesn't mean that being a talented software engineer necessarily gives you the ability to understand the nuances of neurochemistry, but it is suggestive that it does, if the engineer has an interest in neurochemistry.
Also, being an intelligent person doesn't necessarily mean that you are competent or have expertise in a certain area, sure, but that is not a "logical fallacy" as the GP was saying, nor has much to do with intelligence as he seemed to be arguing (or at least, "fluid intelligence", as it is often understood).
If he simply meant "being competent or an expert in a certain area" doesn't automatically mean that you are competent or an expert in another area, then sure, I agree, and it's true that many comments on Hacker News exhibit this pattern, and this observation is often justified.
But let's not also conveniently ignore the opposite pattern, where a (presumably intelligent) person that doesn't work in a certain field can also provide much better insights than many people with many years of expertise in that same field (especially in things like, say, interpreting scientific papers, which can be legitimately hard to do correctly, for many reasons).
I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but a significant percentage of people of almost every field, even with many years of expertise, is pretty damn incompetent... you just have to step outside your bubble if you don't think so.
This includes software engineering, BTW. There are many software engineers with years of experience who don't even know what a bug tracking system or what a source code management tool are (although, not all of them are incompetent, strictly speaking). That should tell you something.
You talk/listen to this seemingly intelligent person who seems to be so confident in his field. Or rather in one of the fields. And then this person starts talking about something completely different and he can't be more wrong.
The question stands now how much doesn't he know about his own field which he also seems to be so confident about.
E.g. some philosopher psychiatrists starts to give some dietary advices of only eating raw meat. You would think and overall intelligent person should not be giving such advices. So can we just ignore him as dietitian or should we also start questioning his views as a psychiatrist.
Nobel disease is a thing[0]; Linus Pauling is possibly the most famous example and the cause of people taking too much vitamin C until this day.
I completely disagree. Imo, a truly intelligent person understands well that they cannot carry the world upon their shoulders, and from that realization they are humbled.
Of course that doesn't mean they know everything. It means that either they are smart and know a lot about a field OR can become knowledgeable a lot about a field in relatively little time.
This does also mean the reverse: expertise in a field does not actually require intelligence. It just works a lot faster if you have it. But being "dumb" does not place an upper limit on how capable you can be in a field, you'll just have to work longer to get there.
If we were unable to do this as a species we would have been wiped out long ago. Specialization is a modern mindset.
> I would say your intelligence is incredibly low if you think this.
This coming from the person who resorts to belittling comments in an otherwise very mild conversation. Got it.
Your mindset is how we ended up with the lie that COVID came from bats and ended up vaccinating children with a dangerous untested vaccine. Never question thou holiest of holy "experts".
you don't need to share your personal backstory, everyone knows someone with mental health or cancer or alzheimer's, your idea that DNA is like compiled code makes me think you should go read a book, and your self-medication is probably not scientifically founded
They are of the same quality on other topics. You just know less about those other topics.
People also read all kinds of shit, watch cat and celeb videos, or doomscroll and hate themselves for wasting that time. People read stuff just to laugh at the ignorance, or in the off chance they'll find a good nugget. People also watch train wrecks.
Being "somewhat valuable for them" doesn't imply anything further about it's overall value, or about its objective benefit for them.
Undoubtedly, but it forces cynics to concede value.
The thing I generally find the least valuable is the “I’ll be downvoted for this” comments. Don’t prime people to be defensive!
When someone makes such a statement in a coversation, that should be the implicit charitable interpretation, so much so, that your kind of statement is uncharitable/disingenuous.
Neat side topic though
But, the small signal to noise (maybe 1/10 or 1/20) that I often find on HN makes it worth it. I for one appreciate attempts!
You're not wrong, but I think this goes against the hacker spirit on which HN is based. People who are curious, like to think, and like to make having a discussion. The theories may be unscientific, but the journey is worth something too. People should definitely maintain a huge dose of humility and socratic ignorance, but I think we'd lose something if we weren't able to throw out potentially dumb ideas and have other smart people shoot them down and tell us why we're wrong. The process in itself can be deeply intellectually satisfying.
I think of it much the way I do when I read philosophy. Go on this thought journey with somebody. Try to understand their position/arguments, try to refute them, then read the refutations of others and repeat.
The issue you'll run into here is there aren't enough professionals in field X on HN to adequately do this, so it just turns into software engineers throwing a bunch of ideas around, and probably bad ones!
>I think of it much the way I do when I read philosophy. Go on this thought journey with somebody. Try to understand their position/arguments, try to refute them, then read the refutations of others and repeat.
I think to really understand something you need to engage with an actual living human on the matter.
At the same time, when there is a science- or tech-based promise of a miraculous cure, the same skepticism turns off. Partly as there is a real chance that something works; partly, it is wishful thinking or exaggeration.
For example, Less Wrong circles are (in principle) on scientific methodology and skepticism. But when the topic of brain freezing comes up, all skepticism disappears.
That's exactly what it means. Or rather, not that they're "qualified (period)" to "make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own", but "more qualified than someone not as intelligent".
And that's exactly what's the case in a general discussion, when expertise is not a prerequirement. But general discussions are still interesting - and can reach some ideas that actual experts missed or see some systematic expert bias (the way outsiders to a field often can see better than insiders). Of course a lot of it will be garbage still
Of course, if you want only experts on X talking, or people just reciting experts on X, then go to an X conference.
And, last not least, people discussing on an HN thread (or anywhere else) aren't gonna "reach conclusions" in the sense that thet will alter the expert consensus on the field. They aren't going to publish papers or give legal or expert advice on the matter. They're just discussing.
At best, as is their right, they'll follow themselves some misguided medical (or dietary or whatever) idea, or pass it on to someone else (who should, and will, still understand they're not their doctor, just another bro).
Domain knowledge is more important than intelligence almost everywhere.
Yes, and a technologist, I assure you that they often make very valid points, can often see things tech people miss, and even when they're wrong, they should have the right to discuss. Unless you want to shut them up, what over purpose does such a protestation serve?
>Domain knowledge is more important than intelligence almost everywhere.
Domain knowledge built by stupid people (or by ideology, or for profit, etc) will be stupid domain knowledge, that intelligence can often see right through. Homeopathy also has its "domain knowledge", for example.
As for domain knowledge built by smart people, it can still have its blind spots, if not for anything else, because of professional bias or some accepted wisdom few dare to contest.
There are of course trans-disciplinary efforts done right but those take orders of magnitude more time than your typical VCs or zealous ladder-climbers allow in development timelines.
Software developers have been bailed out from having to confront this situation up to now because those who ask for software tend to ask for extremely simple workflow-helper type stuff rather than domain-expert-amplifier type stuff (see: pretty much every SaaS webapp ever). But the low-hanging fruit are getting pretty sparse by this point in the bubble.
I was a HS English teacher for about ten years before moving into tech, and this reality was a source of frequent frustration with (most/almost all) new ed-tech offerings. There are enough practical constraints on instruction quality that amplification tools would be welcome; however, improving educational quality through improving instrumental performance does not appear to be a notable focus.
FWIW: I believe the low hanging fruit begins with assessment.
Becoming an effective programmer trains one's strict logical and causal reasoning skills, since we're always building or debugging large and complex systems from simpler components. We see all kinds of crazy emergent behaviours all of the time, and learn to understand how such things can happen. There are few other disciplines that exercise such skills so intensely (probably math and physics).
I would love to see a study on how effective various experts are at making predictions about something outside of their domain knowledge. I suspect computer scientists and physicists would fare better than most.
I'm being facetious here, because I'm on a forum dominated by coders and it's a cheap thrill to troll a little bit. So to restate my opinion with less snark, I don't believe software engineers are any more rational or intelligent than other folks in the tech field. Most of the smartest tech people I've encountered have been product folks, designers, researchers, or engineering managers who don't touch so much code any more.
The reason? All those people acknowledge that all the important problems can only be solved collaboratively. They're also less likely to have come in through the comp sci funnel, and they have a more well rounded set of life experiences. Tunnel vision is exactly the problem being discussed. It's like if you're really good at crossword puzzles and you think that would make you a good English Lit Professor. That's coders thinking that their puzzle solving abilities yield philosophical insights.
All the best software engineers are the ones with an intellectual life beyond coding.
I think "rational" and "intelligent" are imprecise words that have different meanings to different people. I think if we restrict ourselves to the questions like, would a computer scientist or an English Lit professor be able to speak more intelligently about genetics, or psychology, or botany, we have a more well-defined question.
> Tunnel vision is exactly the problem being discussed. It's like if you're really good at crossword puzzles and you think that would make you a good English Lit Professor.
Crossword skills aren't transferrable to English lit, so the analogy fails. Computer science and programming are training in deductive and inductive reasoning, which are general cognitive skills.
It's just self-evident that someone who's experienced and adept at deductive and inductive reasoning would also be adept at solving problems and inferring facts in other domains. They are for sure hampered by a lack of domain knowledge, but my point was that, all else being equal (like their knowledgebase), someone who has this training and experience would simply be more effective at inferring facts about a topic they know little about.
I don't think any point you raised contradicts this argument. Yes, people with more life experience or more varied interests have more knowledge to draw upon from which they can infer tangential facts.
But if said person were also a programmer, they would perform even better at such a challenge. And so, in aggregate, such people would perform better overall at such challenges than other professions.
Edit: there could of course be other mitigating factors that overwhelm this argument, for instance, maybe programmers are less inclined to have varied experiences (hyperfocus on computers, say) and so they just have a smaller knowledgebase from which to argue from, and so they appear less effective at such a challenge. But then not all else is equal.
For starters, is the kind of problem solving that goes into coding trivially applicable to other problem spaces? That's why I used the crossword metaphor. To me, coding often feels like a puzzle where the reward in terms of serotonin boost far outweighs the effort put in. Now, if we're talking about higher order problems like system design, that I agree is the kind of complex reasoning that can be used in other contexts. However, that kind of thinking is far more similar to problem solving in other fields as compared to coding, and thus is not unique.
And in response to your edit, I do feel that programmers are less inclined to have varied experiences because, as I said earlier, the field has been placed on a pedestal due to our current economy. So even if the reasoning that goes into being a good coder was applicable to other kinds of problems in a unique way, engineers are stunted by their own prestige (and by other psychological factors we don't need to go into here).
To make good predictions, you need to make good estimates AND understand what your confidence in your estimate should be.
C'mon; I'm a programmer too, but this is just rank arrogance.
I then have the thought, "Am I doing this in areas where I don't have much experience?".
I can only assume there are some pretty stupid thoughts bouncing around my brain.
Just in the last week I've seen posts where:
STEM people -> arguing about Psychology.
STEM, Psychologist -> argue about History
STEM, Psychologist, Historians, -> argue about Finance.
STEM, Psychologist, Historians, Financiers, -> argue about Evolution.
Everyone one on the internet has different levels of knowledge and are being exposed to ideas for the first time at all different times in their own development. All discussions on all subjects is chaos.
Queue
STEM, Psychologist, Historians, Financiers, Biologist -> argue about Chaos.
It's a very real chilling effect that's happened a couple times in different communities I've been part of. Typically the dilution of quality discussion comes after a sharp influx of what could be crudely labeled 'normies' (those entering a hype cycle anew from the outside with no prior experience) who have their own under-developed ideas and can't discern between experts and bullshitters in flattened discussion spaces.
What complicates the discussions so much is those normies' insistence on engaging in high school debate club tactics which are really just rhetorical devices designed (consciously or otherwise) to disguise logical fallacies as 140-character truth bombs.
Discounting an entire field of science like this, based on a second-hand observations, is exactly the kind of hubris the parent comment was talking about: There’s something about psychiatry and neuroscience that makes a lot of people who are good at engineering/software think that they are qualified to also be experts on the field of psychiatry.
You’re right that psychiatry and medication is a lot of trial and error, but that’s the most efficient and accurate way to determine which medications work with a patient. In a hypothetical perfect world we’d have more tools to predict ahead of time and this is an active field of study. However, nothing comes close to the speed and efficiency of just trying medications based on what has worked for many other patients with similar conditions.
Note they practitioners aren’t just guessing and hoping for the best. They are using a large body of research, clinical experience, and shared knowledge of their peers.
> Note they practitioners aren’t just guessing and hoping for the best.
Soooo, which is it? You can't have it both ways, either trial and error or "educated guess".
Sure you can -- trial and error doesn't mean the things you're trying have to be picked out of a hat at random. You can choose a starting point based on existing research and iterate from there based on the results experienced by the patient.
Sure, science progresses. As well it should. But psychiatry occupies a particular corner of a square with self-certainty on one axis and "how much could you really know about that topic" on the other.
I think most folks expectation is that since we know so much about so many things that our level of understanding about the brain and psychiatric treatment is more advanced than it is, who are then surprised to find out that some (all?) treatments are basically just modifying the behavior of a messenger chemical across the whole of the brain.
If a psychiatrist prescribes a placebo instead of a kick to the groin they are "......using a large body of research, clinical experience, and shared knowledge of their peers" that show kicks to the groins are bad for patients, and placebos cause them to report improvements. You can defend anything with this sort of language, it's posturing.
This isn't always hypocrisy: There's a self-consistent idea here that you're missing: we recognize that psychology (and by extension psychiatry) is extremely hard. Human brains may be the most complex systems in the entire universe. I didn't get the feeling GP was claiming to be an expert, but rather he was claiming "there are no experts in psychology yet". I don't think that's as strong a claim as you seem to think. In fact I think most Ph.D.-level psychology researchers agree with just how tremendously difficult the subject is, and how little progress anyone is able to make.
It's consistent and defensible to believe both that it's absolutely critical for humanity to study its own brains, and also that we haven't done a good job at it yet. It's consistent and defensible to believe both that psychology researchers are smart, dedicated people doing admirable, important work, and also that they have really not made anywhere near the kind of progress to justify the level of confidence that pop-sci magazines, non-fiction writers, and podcasters exude. You don't need to be an expert in psychology to believe these things, either. You simply need to understand how deeply, fundamentally difficult the subject is.
Take lithium for example. We have now over 100 years of evidence that lithium is effective for treating bipolar disorder. Do we understand the action mechanism? Not really. And yet it's helped countless people live a better life.
This is just how technology works. Often, the tech precedes the science. Humans are very good at experimenting. There are huge gaps in modern psychiatric science, but also, there are loads of trials being run and evidence being collected about what generally works and doesn't work. But human brains are too different from each other for the same thing to work in every case.
So here we are. It's flawed, but we're getting somewhere, and we have to keep moving forward because mental illness is no joke and people need care. Same is true with experimental cancer treatments.
The idea that everyone's arguments are wrong or should be scrutinized because they're not an authority on the subject is avoiding the actual argument.
you're describing 99.99% of hackernews, lol (and I'm not even sure people here are that intelligent in the first place) (in case anyone is reading this thinking I'm saying I'm intelligent, rest assured I'm not)
The lurkers on the other hand are humbler and smarter than us, they prefer reading instead of voicing their misinformed opinion, aware of their ignorance.
Comment sections like this one highlight the risks of mistaking comments that look intelligent and polite for authority. The number of confident, polite posts in this comment section that are giving out factually incorrect information is incredible. Someone down below was speculating about this drug’s cardiotoxicity in ways that could be dismissed within 15 seconds of reading the Wikipedia page, but they presented their speculation as if it had an air of scientific authority.
The number of commenters trying to suggest that psychedelics, which do not interact with the 5-HT4 receptor studied in this article, are a substitute for this drug or otherwise should be used for this indication is astounding.
Still a lot of noise and little signal even if the noise is not emotional like 4chan or Twitter
A peculiar phenomenon plays out under the hushed light of device screens—a grand theater where the lines between jesters and scholars blur. Filled with words mimicking wisdom, these digital performers garner attention and agreement, even when their insights are more a reflection of someone else's knowledge. It's a dance of self-deception where individuals flaunt expertise in various disciplines, leaving the audience to disentangle fact from illusion.
Yet, amidst this tumult, some oasis of genuine discourse exists. There are those who engage in meaningful, respectful conversation, offering a refreshing contrast to the often convoluted discourse. However, even this refuge isn't devoid of potential pitfalls as seemingly intelligent and polite conversation may house misinformation and misinterpretation.
Digital interlocutors, fueled by a heightened sense of self-importance, often propagate misinformation convincingly. Their illusion of authority can be shattered by the discerning who dare to look beyond the performance and expose the reality underneath.
This leads us to an intriguing hypothesis: Are these digital scribes uncannily similar to artificial intelligence language models, mimicking not only the language but also the decision-making processes of humans? This analogy paints a rather abstract picture. Have we, in our quest for dialogue and connection, birthed a race of digital echo chambers that speak with the voice of authority but may lack the depth of true understanding?
As this digital spectacle unfolds, we're left to ponder the performances we've witnessed. It is an ongoing show where the actors might be unaware of their roles and the audience might not discern the plot. The landscape of online forums seems to mirror our inherent struggle to separate truth from fiction, leaving us to navigate the often blurry line between the two.
Once he steps outside of his domain and starts talking about dopamine this and dopamine that, his podcast will make neuroscientists roll their eyes. Yet he speaks so confidently that his audience is convinced they, too, are now experts on all things neuroscience.
Is there a list?
There was one episode where Huberman had a guy on talking about how young men should drink milk to maximize free testosterone and thus maximize “health” outcomes like height. There is a fairly substantial amount of research suggesting this isn’t actually a great idea more generally speaking because maximizing body size doesn’t have inherent benefits and could even have long term disadvantages for health outcomes. Further, drinking a lot of milk appears to be correlated with increased likelihood of developing cancer. And worse still, there are other foods which deliver the benefits of milk without the same disadvantages. Yet this odd little bit was accepted freely and without any criticality. Finally, maximizing height is kind of a culturally motivated desire in my mind. If you’re happy and healthy, who cares if you didn’t milk your growth spurts to the utmost degree? Is being 5’10” a shameful thing? Or even 5’6”? It struck me as so bizarre to hear someone in health still bent on growing kids larger. We’re not cattle. If we eat enough, we’ll grow enough. Let it be.
Attia has been slowly shifting over, but he’s been very pro animal-based foods in a field of research where the greater body of work indicates that these foods should be more limited or emphasized quite a bit less than he has. Or maybe this has changed quite recently. I know in the last few years he has begun to mention more often that eating plants appears to be critical to health and performance, but when I’ve listened in, he still heavily encourages eating more meat than seems necessary. It seems weird given he has a book about longevity now (I’m only half way through so maybe he’ll surprise me still) yet he doesn’t seem to be on the cutting edge of this research in regards to diet.
They’re very smart (smarter than I am by a wide margin) and probably very current in their research but I suppose it seems like they ignore certain areas of research. They seem a little “old fashioned” at times when it comes to diet in particular.
I’m not saying people should never eat meat. It’s about moderation. Attia also emphasizes consuming protein in ways that a lot of research doesn’t support, but I’m not in the field so what the hell. I don’t know who’s more correct.
That's not what intelligence is. General intelligence is general, and can (generally) be safely generalized. When you said "intelligence in one area" did you mean "experience"?
I agree there are a lot of know-it-alls here, but I don't believe this is why quackery sells or even that anyone on here makes up a meaningful share of their business. Nobody cares or listens to this bunch of nerds shouting into the void, not even themselves.
Bringing intelligence into this is a red herring. It sells because people are willing to take a risk on what seems like a shortcut to better health. Irrational decisions like this are not correlated with intelligence, and here we are overthinking it.
Telling us HN are doing "bad" won't help until you tell us what the bad is.
The Dunning-Kruger effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.
In other words, although it is not certain that an observation will be accurate, the chances of an accurate observation are increased by someone who has previous success.
Smart people - who have observed things correctly - might have fewer errors observing and predicting.
(but I'm old and silly, frequently suffering from Gell-Mann Amnesia)
Case in point; mice still haven't reached immortality, nor taken over the world. Despite the numerous published articles regarding the innumerable wonder cures, miracle habits, and other panaceas, we have found for them.
For those either amused or interested (and still on Twitter):
- https://www.statnews.com/2019/04/15/in-mice-twitter-account-...
And there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of leeway to up the dose either because it's a laxative.
It would be nice to see a longer term study. And no people shouldn't be buying this in IndiaMart but critical analysis of studies isn't just about being as pessimistic as possible.
It's overly pessimistic as it's not constructive. Instead of asking for longer term studies you declare the effect probably won't last.
There are loads of criticisms one could make of the study and wider hypothesis. But as with all criticism it should be constructive where reasonable.
I'm not sure that's the case in the broad sense. As a simple example, blood pressure medicine is taken daily for decades and it just keeps on giving.
For instance, SSRIs have this property, because for those drugs, the tolerance is the treatment effect. The tolerance has downstream effects on things like BDNF that are thought to be the true mechanism behind their efficacy. But this is also clear from the phenomenology observed, i.e people see improvements with a delayed effect.
This drug is very pharmacologically simple though. It's an extremely selective agonist for the 5-HT-4 receptor, and its effects are mostly acute, it seems(though due to a longish half-life it does take some time to reach steady-state with once daily dosing).
Now, I'm genuinely curious: does anyone know of a drug which,
1. Has acute psychoactive effects 2. Retains those effects under chronic same-dose usage 3. And the perceived effect can not be explained by correction of a rebound effect(i.e one cup of coffee in the morning might wake you up the same, but is it really, or is it just correcting an overly tired, mild withdrawal state associated with chronic use?).
I actually can't think of any.
I have severe ADHD, so I'm taking a pretty high dose daily, and I haven't noticed diminishing effects nor rebound. My dose hasn't changed in years either.
I think the comparison between ritalin and strattera can be quite illuminating here.
Ritalin is an NDRI(norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor). It binds to and and inhibits DAT(dopamine transporter) and NET(norepinephrine transporter). This causes neurotransmitter to remain in the synaptic cleft for longer. It also acts on some interesting serotonin receptors.
Now, for ADHD treatment, you typically want to increase dopaminergic neurotransmission specifically in the prefrontal cortex(PFC), which is the part of the brain that's underdeveloped in ADHD.
Stranglely there's very little DAT in the PFC, but it turns out NET also works for dopamine, and NET does what DAT would normally do in this part of the brain. So inhibition of NET is clearly crucial to ritalin working.
This is where strattera comes in. Strattera is a selective inhibitor for NET with no appreciable effect on DAT. So strattera ups dopamine in the PFC, but not in the brain's reward centre. Helps your ADHD, but it doesn't make you high.
And the interesting thing with strattera is that it sort of has this same property that SSRIs have in that it has a delayed onset of effect Where it gets more and more effective over time. I believe there are some studies tying this to rewiring in the PFC, but don't quote me on that.
But ritalin literally works starting with the first dose. You get that sudden motivation to actually do stuff and so on.
So I actually think ritalin has at least two different modes of operation, one acute and one chronic. And it's the latter that's doing all the real work, the former is just a transitory kick in the butt, so to speak.
I hope that rant made sense!
Strattera is really interesting, I've heard of it but I don't think it's available in my country. I'll ask my psych about it. We also don't have Vyvanse here, which my psych thinks would suit me better, as I'm currently on 162mg/day (of Concerta).
Have you tried Strattera? How does it compare to Ritalin for you?
Good news everybody, no more fiber intake required.
Ironically, I would not have understood that if not for your comment.
Just waiting to warm up to the place a bit more before easing into meaningful discussion no doubt ;)
Nice to have ya around. Enjoy your lurking :)
Back to the drawing board!
I myself am biased towards psychedelics, but I understand they're not for everyone. But SSRIs tend to be overprescribed and because they are often taken for far longer than necessary they cause a lot of changes neurophysically that aren't necessarily positive (and the most common side-effect, the loss of sex-drive, often creates many more problems for the user in their personal life.) I honestly don't know what's best, but I think almost nobody will have a poor reaction to a <1g dose of Psilocybin mushrooms (or if we want to be more conservative, <.5g), and the benefits of even just one small dose far outweigh the risks, in my opinion.
Ancient Romans used cannabis and opium for insomnia and earaches.
Wild animals get drunk on rotten fruit, cats stone themselves on catnip.
So you're not wrong to wonder why people take stuff, but none of that's new.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/psychedelic-mushroom-a...
Way out there, but very interesting nonetheless. I would recommend his book The food of the Gods
> Editor’s note: This article has been retracted as it does not meet Atlas Obscura’s editorial standards. Our investigation revealed the author fabricated interviews with at least one source; Brian Akers confirmed via email that he was initially contacted but never interviewed by the writer, and that quotes and other material attributed to them by the writer have been fabricated. Giorgio Samorini did not reply to multiple email requests for comment. Jitka Soukopova confirmed via email that she had been interviewed by the writer and material attributed to her was accurate. Additional details provided by the writer could not be verified.
Furthermore, I find it amazing that they are talking about rock art, but do not provide any photo...
I think these are the carvings referenced:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/37-Tassili-prehistorical...
Each of those is quite harder to achieve these days (due to work pressure, everpresent and ever-promoted processed foods, screen time, a borked dating scene, the abundance of crap jobs, and so on), even more so all of them combined...
Work pressure? Work less and push back if you need to, there's an abundance of easy jobs. Processed foods? Eat whole foods. Screen time? Use less screen. Borked dating scene? Not at all, work on yourself. Abundance of crap jobs? That means easy to get 1 or 2 of them and just coast a bit while working on self.
People complain too much.
Also: Depressed? Just be cheerful. Alcoholic? Just quit drinking. Your city is breaking down? Just move elsewhere. Kids keep you up at night? Just give them away. Terminal illness? Just get well.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy exists and is known to be a first step towards recovery.
> Alcoholic? Just quit drinking.
Yes. See Albert Bandura in 2007 in study on Addictive Behaviors. Or after that, I was just reading this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3179802/
> Your city is breaking down? Just move elsewhere.
Yes, or fix it. Or don't contribute to the break down, especially not by speaking negative or toxic things when one can otherwise just be quiet and let the people fixing things fix things.
> Kids keep you up at night? Just give them away.
Discipline them, or figure out bed-time strategy? Can't help on this one tbh since I don't have kids of my own.
> Terminal illness? Just get well.
This just comes across as a last-ditch effort to try to prove me wrong lol
Yeah, because all the other ironic examples (amounting to "just stop having the problem") you non-ironically agreed to variations of, were such well established solutions...
Of course that for the final possibility of "you're about to go to heaven" there's nothing that can be said or done besides making peace with God, I mean what else could anyone say to that? That one is definitely an unfair one because it's at the very limit where in that case you're definitely right, can't do anything about that one. (Although even then I'll note that one King Hezekiah was it? Who requested more time on Earth and it was granted to him after God saw his many earnest tears.)
One small caveat is that I must already be in a somewhat decent state to do physical activities. Sometimes I'm just too "mentally tired" to even get myself to exercise - it would be great to have a tool to get over the hump in moments like this.
In my case, I always throw my trash in sports clothes.
I need to take trash out. I also need to change clothes when I go out, because I work remote. So just choosing sport clothing instead of something else is very frictionless.
Once the trash is thrown, I'm out not he street, with my sport shoes on. I just need to start running at that point.
Comparatively, just "purposely going for a run" feels like climbing a mountain.
This is a comically bad inference.
P1: We have ailments that can be treated with class X of drugs that act on body process Y
P2: We increasingly use those drugs
Conclusion: Z is messing with body process Y
How does it follow from a class of drugs addressing a class of ailments that there's some industrial process messing with some process in the body? Does that follow from every class of drugs that addresses any class of ailments?
If we find out that aspirin is even more versatile than we thought and helps with an increasing amount of ailments, how does it follow that there's some related industrial process behind those ailments? Why not just the more parsimonious inference that... aspirin is more useful than we thought?
A rude and unwelcome comment, more appropriate for reddit than HN.
Try to respond to the content of the post.
They are definitely not. Anecdotes aside, psychedelics are extremely overhyped right now and the downsides are heavily downplayed online. The studies about psychedelics and depression use heavy amounts of therapy and careful professional guidance, which the at-home experimenters don’t get.
Psychedelics can also produce intense negative reactions, such as persistent false beliefs or even a worsening of anxiety and depression that lasts for some time. Many people online rush to dismiss these negative anecdotes if their personal experience was different, but they’re much more common than enthusiastic internet commenters would suggest.
How do you know this?
I am also increasingly feeling like this is the case. Not to say that there is no value in psychedelics (definitely looks like there is in clinical settings), it just seems like some people are touting it as a miracle solution to all mental problems. Something that can be self administered with no oversight.
I have read a couple threads over the past few months on reddit about how mushrooms increased the posters' suicidal thoughts, and that they decided to abstain from taking them because of that.
I think this perspective is even reinforced by recreational users: the first thing you are told before participating is to be in a familiar set and setting, and also to be in a good place in life. However, in certain states of mind (ex. depression or some other condition), I wouldn't trust the individual to be able to make such informed judgements. The risk is known.
Guess what we're doing a lot less of in person in the age of streaming TV and the internet?
I would go to extreme lengths to keep access to relatively small doses of mushrooms before ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER going back on an SSRI.
I don't really know how to talk about it without sounding like "a hippie" or something, and I keep rewriting this to keep it brief but since starting to experiment with low doses of mushrooms, I've basically eliminated my alcohol and cannabis consumption. I think I'm a pretty "addictive-personality" type person and didn't think I'd ever leave those behind, nor find something else that I genuinely feel is a net benefit for me, and that I don't really feel compelled to "reach for" other than when I specifically want to and have time set aside for.
I've suffered chronic lower back pain for 15 years, and the most dramatic single-point-in-time improvements I've felt have been the day after I've had a "nature day". I don't know if it's a mushroom<->inflammation thing, I don't know if it's some mal-adaptive posture issue that my brain circumvents when on mushrooms, but something is going on.
Also, I'll go ahead and say it, SSRIs didn't sap my sex drive, but made it into a psychologically damaging curse due to physical side effects. Not an issue with mushrooms.
I wasn't sleeping well and was settling into a funk. I started taking 5-htp [0] every evening before bed - and over about a month I felt like a changed man.
It took about 6 months to fully sort my sleep out and get my head back to where I wanted it, and to be honest it's only been in the last 6 months that I feel like I'm totally firing on all cylinders.
But I personally feel like 5-htp had a massive impact in that. I only took it daily for about 6 months, then more sporadically for another 6 months, and now don't take it at all (but focus on other boosters like walking, litter picking, swimming, seeing friends etc.)
On one hand, very little else changed for me, I started taking it in late summer so as the days were getting shorter. As my wife was quite ill we still didn't see a lot of people or socialise much.
But around when I'd finished my first box of tablets (180), my job started returning to the office - that could have helped (though at first I hated going back to the office and dreaded it), the spring time we also became more social again. Which is approx when I moved to taking it more irregularly.
Aware my example is purely anecdotal, but before I started taking these I had tried cbd and melatonin tablets to try and help my sleep - my insomnia was terrible and neither had helped noticeably. I had also tried the 'Calm' and 'Headspace' apps and various meditation and breathing exercises and none seemed to help me.
I didn't actually think I was depressed at the time, but looking back it is clear I was in a place I'd not been before. 5htp might not have helped at all, but I'd recommend trying it for someone in a similar position - as it felt so transformative for me.
I equally didn't realised how long it can take to come out of feeling so down, and how much I can now control my mood through exercise and being outdoors.
---edit---
Also to add - this wasn't a magic cure - but I feel it gave me the boost and reset to my mood that I needed to make the changes in my life.
My wife is still ill to some degree, my job is 'more stressful' in some ways, but I've taken care of myself and know what to look for.
If it were patentable it would have had far more research I'm sure.
I believe it also highlights that the body cannot regulate its conversion to serotonin, as it does with L-tryptophan (which needs to be converted to 5HTP) for instance, which can result to these issues.
Also, the body does not regulate where in the body the conversion happens, you _really_ do not want it do be converted to serotonin in peripheral tissue (as it can cause heart issues), you only want it in the brain. Heart palpitations is a very common side effect due to it.
If it was patentable drug it would possibly have been banned/restricted as a drug like many other 5HT2b agonists (but it is not patentable as it is something that our own body makes), and research would have turned to something with less cardiotoxic effects.
This is the first time I've heard that, but - at some point in my life I found a technique for triggering mass bursts of seratonin when I want them. It's not that complicated; when I'm depressed and really need it, I just focus on a time when I felt my brain flooded with it. I habitually live with very low happiness but I'm familiar with the feeling of overwhelming joy - and love of everything around me - and I can put myself there, at a cost. Usually measured in hours or minutes.
I also have an arrhythmia. When I do this, I often get heart palpitations lasting from 10-15 minutes.
(I'm aware that the process I'm describing is also totally undocumented, but I've been doing it for years).
One of the physical effects of this mental routine is to dilate my pupils pretty radically. That seems to create a positive feedback loop when I interact with new people. The positive social feedback sustains the reaction until I sort of crash out of it.
On casual dates and normal nights out, I never do it.
I do use it on the rare occasions when I shoot pool.
All it really consists of is re-living the physical sensation and mental state of a few peak experiences - the ones where I effortlessly bowled a nearly perfect game, or hit a 3-point shot all net, or my first kiss with a beautiful woman (usually, but not always, my girlfriend). Nothing too complicated... just that momentary sense of something arriving and the world aligning perfectly. The whole trick for me is just thinking of that moment until I feel the rush of endorphins through my body, and remembering to keep living in it.
In pool, I always miss when I think too much about a shot - but I can make it blindfolded if my brain is perfectly one with the world around me. And so it is in all aspects of life; most of my brain function is self sabotage and unnecessary overhead when it comes to just making a shot. I think it was from pool and bowling that I learned to do this thing which helps me in society.
One should do their search before starting it, which anyway holds as advice for most supplements, but even more for this one. Anecdotes should not be taken as evidence of overall safety.
* The reason people started taking MDMA was that it caused their brains to release large bursts of seratonin, which felt good.
* Receptors to seratonin tended to be overwhelmed, which caused people in the short term to be unable to achieve the same levels of ecstasy, and in the long term caused them to (grow new receptors? or at least...) have a perceived deficit of seratonin; causing short and long term depression in MDMA users.
Surely, injecting yourself with the chemical that causes your brain to be happy can't just work forever...right?
Also, depression is not caused by low serotonin levels:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
> The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations. Some evidence was consistent with the possibility that long-term antidepressant use reduces serotonin concentration.
I did not read your paper, but believe parent is making a different claim: it is not lowered serotonin levels or reduced activity, but an increase in receptors (perhaps a proxy for expected serotonin levels) that is causing the problem.
If this paper is specifically addressing serotonin levels or movement I can’t see how it could address receptor density.
> Fourteen different serotonin receptors have been identified, with most research on depression focusing on the 5-HT1A receptor [11, 34]. Since the functions of other 5-HT receptors and their relationship to depression have not been well characterised, we restricted our analysis to data on 5-HT1A receptors [11, 34].
So they reviewed two 2016 meta analyses of one out of fourteen known receptors involved in the process.
> Both meta-analyses were based on studies that predominantly involved patients who were taking or had recently taken (within 1–3 weeks of scanning) antidepressants or other types of psychiatric medication, and both sets of authors commented on the possible influence of prior or current medication on findings.
So both meta analyses were very sensitive to temporally proximate relevant medication use.
Of the two receptor analyses:
> one analysis was of very low quality [37], … and one was strongly influenced by three studies and publication bias was present [38].
This is about as little (and sadly as much) as one could do to address receptors, and about as far from a dismissal of association of receptor count and depression as it is possible to get.
Very scary. Rage quit my job due to a round of it. Was completely freaking out, but had no idea why. I’m normally super chill.
Serotonin isn’t a singular system in the brain. Psychedelics generally don’t interact with the receptor mentioned in this article (5-HT4) so all of the anecdotes talking about LSD or mushrooms do not apply to this story at all. Serotonin agonists are not interchangeable and have very different effects depending on their targets.
The drug in this study (Prucalopride) has been noted to influence depression symptoms positively for some time. However, it has also been noted to be associated with suicidal ideation in some vulnerable populations. This is an emergent area of research and absolutely should not be taken as a suggestion for self-treatment.
If that’s not enough to convince you to not self-experiment, you should know that Prucalopride is primarily used as a constipation treatment. If you take it, you’re going to have some dramatic bowel effects.
Please understand that these articles are interesting, but HN comments about anything related to psychedelics, serotonin, or dopamine are often quite far from the mark (despite being very confident in their delivery).
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2036.2012...
Why is there so much rampant misinformation in this comment section when the facts are a simple Google search away?
We don’t. Studies like this are specifically searching for mechanisms by which serotonin and mood are related.
I think you’re projecting the pop-culture idea of serotonin on to the research.
(not that you said so, but someone might think that if comp. neurosc. dismisses it, then it's necessarily bogus)
Altering the functional connectivity of the circuits is not necessarily correlated to "boosting" the memory.
https://www.alphagalileo.org/en-gb/Item-Display/ItemId/23440...
Couldn't that be applied to all modern technology? Humans obviously weren't meant to fly or we would have evolved flight; therefore airplanes bad. Why is this any different? Evolution is an extremely blunt force with only so many tools at its disposal. Besides, there would need to be selective pressure for being happy and content with life, even into late adulthood. Is there? That's not clear at all.
In general, I'm very excited to see drugs like these being researched, including previously illegal "schedule 1" drugs that can (and probably should) be used in therapeutic settings.
If you're looking for some good content to learn more about this, Andrew Huberman is currently doing a handful of podcasts on drugs like these, and it's really educational. (Assuming you can handle his long-form podcast style)
Serotonin receptors are not interchangeable at all.
5-HT2A and 5-HT4 receptors have completely different effects and functions. You can’t suggest that drugs that work on one are similar to the other.
They are nothing alike.
OTOH perhaps I don’t want to live in a world with happy pills… we should all be grateful
So when it's caused by reduced sensitivity I would expect it to potentially be a treatment for that part of the illness, yes.
I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually turns out that ADHD has multiple potential causes that all lead to the same symptomatic serotonin disruption though, and that only a limited number of people who have it get benefits from this treatment.
And of course, that's just the "nature" side, as mentioned. There is also a "nurture" side of things where not getting the right help to deal with the consequences of ADHD leads to issues that need to be solved through therapy (although I suppose effective medication does make it easier to able to endure therapy).
1. geniuses look at problems in many different ways. 2. geniuses make their thoughts visible. 3. geniuses produce. 4. geniuses force relationships. 5. geniuses think metaphorically.
A logical fallacy is not necessarily wrong.
There are plenty of opioid analogues to decrease it safely.
IME it's not much different from having a fiber-heavy diet.
(Me. I'm some people.)
"In this study, we used a low dose of prucalopride (1 mg as opposed to the licenced dose of 2 mg) to reduce the risk of side effects. At this time, we currently lack information about the optimal dose of prucalopride needed for occupancy of brain 5-HT4 receptors, although data from our previous reports indicate that 1mg is sufficient to demonstrate pro-cognitive potential."
I'd link the reddit wiki where it's mentioned, but we're still mid protest it seems! :)
I believe that qualitative effects of the MDMA would also be significantly reduced.
Am I missing something?
I always thought science is the art of putting what you already know into "words".
Aka "No shit, sherlock" :)
Or maybe I got it all wrong.