h1karu

> These chemicals will change your brain, and your brain is who you are.

I suspect that your brain is who you think you are because you've learned to associate the concept of self with your thought processes, but I ask you if you are indeed your thinking then how is it that you're able to observe your own thought ?

If you'll bear with me for a moment, doesn't it also make sense to think that you may be whatever is observing both thought and sensory phenomena ?

To run with that assumption for a moment.. if you are the observer rather than the thought, or body sensations under observation, then why assume that you're located in your brain ? After all aren't you equally observing the sensation of your little toe as you wiggle it ?

I suspect that man is so continually engaged with the process of thought-observation as his primary focus that he has developed a bais towards self-identification with that one area of the body in particular (the head) when logically speaking he has no reason to assume he's not equally located in his little toe.

Lets take this thought experiment one step further. If you can observe the body, as in the naturally arising sensory observation of bodily fabrications, and you can also observe thinking, then is it safe to assume that the observer is the same as that which is under observation ?

Or perhaps the observer is the process of observation itself rather than the observer or the observed (do you feel more like a verb or a noun lately) ?

or maybe it's both, or neither. Or could it be that it's neither nor one, nor the other, nor both, nor neither, as some buddhists have suggested ?

> It's not philosophical. It's physical.

If you come to suspect that you are either the observer, or the process of observing then how do you know for sure whether or not you are philosophical or physical in nature ? Or suppose you are both philosophical and physical in nature such as was reported to be the case with the fabled philosophers mercury of the hermetic alchemists ?

These are the kinds of questions that the process of self-reflection may stir up within the individual and for some people LSD can serve as a catalyst that prompts them to pause and reflect. I personally suggest that you can achieve the same thing with less risk to your person simply by pausing (becoming very still), and reflecting inwardly, but this doesn't come naturally, so it takes practice. I know from personal experience that the early teachings of the Buddha as preserved by the Theravada linage are almost entirely devoted to practical instruction on how to accomplish this very feat.

In closing I suppose if the article linked above is true, and ergot was a major component of the Western (greek) Mysteries then it occurs to me that perhaps it's this process of inward reflection, and it's fruits, which unite the ancient western with the ancient eastern mystical traditions.

Through well measured advertising campaigns they changed the definition of what a "happy marriage" means so that it's new meaning aligns more closely with the idea of being in a satisfactory employment situation. Everyone knows that it's not a good idea to jump from job to job too quickly, but if you've been at the same company for a long time, and a much better seeming opportunity presents itself.. then in today's world.. thanks to the PR spin machine and the divorce industry.. jumping ship seems like the only sensible thing to do, after all lets not forget that there's a huge cash reward involved which will more than cover the cost the attorneys fees many times over.

Marriage has been reduced to a transaction, a mere token in the consumer economy. The big question in my mind is, was this multi-billion dollar, multi-generational PR campaign coordinated out of greed by the divorce industry or is it an attempt by sinister forces to gradually bend the zeitgeist of western civilization in a certain ?dehumanizing? direction ? I suppose attempting to trace causation is not the most efficient means by which to remedy the situation, but yet these thoughts arise.

exactamondo, but isn't science merely an epiphenomenon of consciousness ? If so isn't this a case of the snake trying to eat it's own tail ?

Unfortunately in the US we have a divorce industry that spends billions of dollars on advertising targeting mostly women, but also men with attempts to normalize divorce or even to make it seem fashionable.

Basically if you look at the hard data and examine the strong correlation between the aggregate divorce related TV advertising spend over the last 50 hears and the number of divorces in the USA a clear picture begins to emerge.

This is just another marketing success story where PR firms spent billions to educate a market.. to help the divorce industry reach "product / market fit"

on what basis do you base the assumption that the subconscious mind is something "concretely" ? Isn't it's non-concreteness kind of the point of calling it the subconscious ?

Lets not forget that the "failure mode" of ordinary consumer culture awareness can be pretty extreme too

1.) best practice is to store it in a paper wallet.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet

yeah I can't say much about Pivotal labs aside from the unusual interview that I was a part of and the conclusions that I drew from that experience. It's certainly possible that I was imagining things but I strongly suspect they were poking and prodding to gauge my level of "reactivity" to various political statements. I understand why they felt the need to make me jump through those hoops. They felt the need to try to filter out ahead of time those individuals who are likely to express strong or controversial opinions during the course of their total engagement with the company. This makes sense because to run a pair-programming shop you have to try to build a community of relatively like-minded people who "get along" sort of like you're running a college fraternity. Polarizing issues/debates can lead to friction within these tight-knit fraternal organizations so it does make sense to try to weed out individuals who don't already have an understanding about that, and how else could you do it if not by testing them ?

I'm not saying they did something untoward in their interviewing process I'm merely pointing out that this whole hidden layer of social filtering must out of necessity exist in pair-programming organizations in order to nip drama-potentials in the bud before they have a chance to come to fruition. This is something that remote work shops simply don't have to worry about which is a major strategic advantage currently misunderstood in the popular tech media space but extremely well understood by those who are actually running successful remote teams.

In other words because their core programming methodology (pair-programming) involves forcing individuals to share more casual interaction than what would normally occur in a traditional office environment organizations like Pivotal are forced to be proactive about filtering for "casual social behavior traits" in their never-ending struggle to to maintain a harmonious drama-free zone. This puts pair-programming shops at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to sourcing talent because

A. they're drawing from a smaller talent pool, and

B. they have to care more about how the candidate behaves socially in casual 'off the record' situations.

It's my opinion that the added advantages which supposedly spring from working at the same desk with another skilled individual are more than offset by these hidden constraints which the whole business is subjecting itself to.

I didn't mean to imply that there's "emotional drama" within Pivotal labs in particular, but I did mean to imply that remote shops don't have to worry about that issue nearly as much as pair-programming shops because of the "always on the record" nature of modern group collaboration infrastructure.

I would also like to point out that the true 10x developers out there are statistically more often the personality types who are likely to express controversial opinions or touch on polarizing issues. This has been a truism throughout recorded human history when it comes to extremely brilliant individuals.

http://37signals.com/remote < recommended reading even for pair-programming die-hards

(I'm not connected with the author of that book in any way)

A few years ago I interviewed at a startup that was operating out of Pivotal Labs in San Francisco and during the process I was interviewed by the management at Pivotal. They were really nice folks, as was the team I was interviewing with. I didn't end up working there, but I did learn something from asking questions and seeing how they operate. Their philosophy, or core operating principle has to do with the value they perceive in "pair programming". This is fine if it's what floats their boat but I was left with the distinct impression that within such a paradigm the "social compatibility issues" are raised to a level of importance that becomes a nuisance in an environment where technical proficiency is in high demand.

When reviewing a team member in an open source project or a remote team working on a startup you only have to worry about "is this person technically competent and professional+expressive in his 'on the record' interactions ?" This is all that matters because there is very little "off the record" communication since it almost all occurs in hipchat, basecamp, git, etc. Contrast this to a pair-programming paradigm where there's so many more human factors that come into play because the programmers are expected to "hang out" and engage in lots of friendly "off the record" banter and social stuff. All of these extra social expectations can introduce friction, drama, and political wrangling into the team, so the management at these pair-programming shops have to go to great lengths to try to reduce these potentials.

For example during the interview process at Pivotal, after I had hung out for most of the morning I was encouraged take a walk outside of the office with some of the Pivotal team, to grab coffee, which is fine, but apparently this is a strategic part of the interview process where they go ahead and try to bait the candidate into discussing political 'hot button' issues as part of a fishing expedition. I don't think they cared one way or another what my political opinions were but rather they wanted to measure how "sensitive" I was in relation to various subjects areas and get a feel for how easy or difficult it would be to provoke me into a rant. By subtly putting their own opinions out there unnecessarily in a more casual coffee shop environment they were trying to lure me into opening up to them in a way that wouldn't be appropriate over say hipchat or some other "on the record" medium, and I suspected that if I had expressed too much of an opinion of my own that would have been a huge red flag to them.

I understand why this particular factor would be so important to management at a pair-programming shop. It would be a disaster if a programmer started pairing with a team, made major contributions, became a significant factor in the success of the project, and then for whatever reason during the "forced cohabitation" ended up making some quasi-political or religious statement which led to animosity and disrupted the harmony of the team. This is the double edged sword that comes with trying to setup an environment that feels half like a business and half like a hip afterhours lounge. Which is it ? Are you trying to be friends or coworkers ? Friends open up to eachother when nudged to do so but is it secretly a trap where a jealous coworker is trying to lure you into making unprofessional statements to be used against you later in a conversation with the rest of the stakeholders or are you just being paranoid ? This is how the drama starts. It's risky to not "try to become friends" but it's also risky to "try to become friends" because it means opening up to your actual opinions about how you see the world which could gasp turn out to be controversial.

All of this precipitates what I like to refer to as "bullshit emotional drama" that just isn't a factor when you work in remote teams. Why ? Because when you work remotely all of your conversation is logged right there in hipchat so you can't be baited into saying controversial things without there being evidence of the baiting. So either the baiting is there on the record, or there was no baiting and you were being unprofessional by putting controversial opinions out there for no reason. Either way you're being judged solely based on an accurate record of the conversation so there's no ambiguity, no people misquoting you, no need for interview processes that consist of dishonest baiting. There's less "he said she said" drama.

I don't buy the idea that you need pair-programming in order to break down knowledge silos because it's clearly not the case in a ton of open source projects where everyone is remote. Imho it's not difficult to get all of the goodness about pair programming without being physically next to someone simply by having a continuous conversation going in hipchat, constantly sharing gists, and reviewing each other's commits. The rest is just sociological posturing for the sake of having a "hip" co-working space to show off to your friends. As for the idea that members of remote teams have no social life, that's nonsense because you can go hang out in a co-working space just to make friends while keeping any friendship-exploration-drama-potentials well away from your business and economic bottom line.

tldr; Remote teams have an edge :) It's only a matter of time before remote accelerators come online and start dominating if they're not already secretly doing so.

Single page web apps are broken for a lot of the most important purposes that the worlds largest and most important web-apps need to fulfill. For example how could Wikipedia function as a single page app since it wouldn't be consumable by screen readers and robots of various shapes and sizes ? That's just one example, but there are many. What about the semantic web ? microformats anyone ?

Google isn't the only search engine out there so the fact that you can use a crutch to let google crawl your site doesn't fix the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/

dicey subject area, and it's probably not God playing the dice :)

Nowadays when people smoke cannabis they don't actually combust the flowers instead what they do is heat them gently until the point where the water which is contained in the plant material turns into vapor so that the medicine can be inhaled. This way you don't get any of the trace toxins that are created when you burn carbon and you don't waste medicine by incinerating it.

Just ask anyone who lives in a medical cannabis state and they will attest that this is how it's done, the same applies for concentrates.

Epilepsy is not the only condition this plant cures, far from it, it's just the most dramatic because you can measure the decrease in seizures so rapidly.

1. cannabis doesn't cause impairment of motor skills in those who are accustomed to it's effects

2. cannabis smoke doesn't cause cancer because it's not radioactive like tobacco smoke.

European society thought of sugar as a drug for hundreds of years and it was traded in the British empire mostly by opium traders.

Using MRI is a waste of resources period. It's going to cost you more $$$$ on RAM.

Las Vegas got it's start because of the gambling money, but it has maintained itself as nationally relevant over the years despite it's inhospitable weather and isolated environs due to low taxation but also because of the "hands off of business" stance that the state has taken which is helpful to a diversity of industries other than just gambling, ask Zappos CEO about it.

In my opinion it's not a terrible choice of a place to launch a startup either because you could poach employees away from both the Bay Area and LA job markets by showing them what kind of spacious luxury highrise accommodations they could be enjoying for similar money to what they spend on their 600square foot rental in the City. The fact that they'd pay no state income taxes just makes the job offer all the more enticing. I suspect there's going to be more of this kind of thing going on in the future especially as Zappos continues to invest significant funds into renovation of certain districts.

> Science only claims correctness in light of current knowledge, within certain error bars.

I concur, but my point is that with regard to the mechanics and composition of the universe in which we live it would seem that the more we measure the larger those error bars appear to be. Every once in a while measurements come along which multiply the size of those error bars exponentially and once that happens scientists should take note to adjust the English language they use in characterizing the limitations of their own knowledge. Modern scientists seem to be notoriously slow at this and my suspicion is that this is because it would give the impression that certain fields of science are becoming less knowledgeable as time goes on, and that's not good PR. In other words my only complaint here is related to sociology, the use of language.

Thank you for prompting me to refresh my memory on the differences between mathematics and scientific inquery because in so doing I ran across a quote having to do with the role of the theorist (my favorite) who is caught between the two worlds:

"Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned — the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted - nature's answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of the theorist, who finds himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics. Of course, this does not mean that the experimenter does not also engage in theoretical deliberations. The foremost classical example of a major achievement produced by such a division of labor is the creation of spectrum analysis by the joint efforts of Robert Bunsen, the experimenter, and Gustav Kirchoff, the theorist. Since then, spectrum analysis has been continually developing and bearing ever richer fruit." — Max Planck

'The Meaning and Limits of Exact Science', Science (30 Sep 1949), 110, No. 2857, 325. Advance reprinting of chapter from book Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography (1949), 110.

To posit such a thing as "all previous states" implies that a universe is a finite state machine whereas for all we know the universe could be infinite in which case the value "all previous states" becomes a mathematical impossibility.

> If you don't know, how can you be sure they don't either?

I don't mean to assert any claim about individuals and their personal knowledge I'm merely suggesting that in my opinion the global community of scientists as represented in academia, scientific journals, and in popular literature hasn't made a compelling case for having met it's own scientific burden of evidence (scientific method) to be able to say that "science knows".

In the past that burden of evidence was lower because we had reason to believe that the universe was a much smaller place and that we could measure a much larger percentage of it, but given what we know today that burden of evidence has grown tremendously to the point where any serious scientist should admit to himself that science doesn't know.

>Provide incentives to attract scientists, firms and users;

> Establish a favorable business environment and regulations.

> Except … this approach to innovation clusters hasn’t really worked. Some have even dismissed these government-driven efforts as “modern-day snake oil.”

I would argue that such an approach has never actually been attempted only lip service has been paid. The types of solutions you describe above are politically untenable because they involve significantly lowering taxes.

I would say that Nevada is an example of a place where this kind of approach has worked. Look at Las Vegas it's a metropolis that sprung up out of nowhere in the middle of a vast desert wasteland. Maybe Michigan could learn a thing or two from Nevada and begin by lowering it's state income tax to 0%.

> the universe used to exist as a point and expanded from there. Everything we see, everywhere, points to this.

Yes but if I understand them correctly most modern scientists think that "everything we see" is only a miniscule fragment of the universe. The vast majority of the universe they assert is invisible and it's characteristics are said to be unknown to man. They use placeholder words to describe the vast majority of the universe such as "dark energy" or "dark matter".

If you hold to such a view then how is it reasonable to assume that science has enough data to draw any conclusions about the mechanics of the universe as a whole ? Isn't it analogous to the proverbial blind man who feels one small part of an elephant and assumes he understands what it is and how it works ?

To be clear I haven't been arguing against the existence of randomness nor against the existence of the big bang, because truly I don't hold any beliefs either for or against their existence. I'm just honest enough to admit that I don't know, whereas it seems most academics at least are convinced that they do know. My larger point is simply that science does not have the means by which to ascertain whether or not these things exist or ever have existed with any kind of reasonable accuracy.

Society just likes to pretend that we know more than we really do for political reasons and because it makes us feel more at ease in general. This psychological phenomena is well documented with vast amounts of supporting evidence dating all the way back through the history of science.

You start by asking me to make an enormous leap of faith (free miracle) which is to assume that it's possible to know for sure whether or not you have perfect information about any given system. I simply can't fathom how such an assumption could ever be reasonably made so therefor I really have no way to follow along with the rest of your reasoning. I appreciate hearing you perspective though.

“The hard swallow built into science is this business about the big bang… This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant… notice that this is the limit test for credulity. Whether you believe this or not, notice that it is not possible to conceive of something more unlikely, or less likely to be believed. I defy anyone. It’s just the limit case for unlikelihood: that the universe would spring from nothing in a single instant for no reason… It is in fact no different than saying, “and then God said, ‘Let there be light!’ What the philosophers of science are saying is “give us one free miracle and we will roll from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom.” -Terence McKenna

Yeah you bring up an excellent point.. that there's not a way to prove perfect knowledge of any given system because you can't rule out the existence of factors that you don't know about and are unable to measure. Your idea of "a universe that controls our own" seems a little far out and quasi-mystical to me, but I do think that the probability seems quite high that there may be forces acting upon any given system which we are not yet capable of measuring (within our universe). After all throughout history science has continually discovered new factors outside of it's previous range of measurement.

I suppose that as long as you're using the word random as a placeholder for a best guess, estimate, or assumption about reality then I think you're on solid ground. I only meant to point out that there's no way of scientifically proving that randomness exists apart from a concept or pointer in the mind of man.

The existence of a "spectrum disease" is a misnomer. The people who invented the term clearly defined it as an approach to researching disease, merely a psychological crutch to use when thinking about disease and not something that actually exists. This flawed "research view" unduly medicalizes problems which are simply challenges people face in life.

There was talk of including some limited use of the term spectrum in the planning of the DSM-V but that's all it was, talk.

you're right I mispoke. The article didn't promote self-diagnosis but I felt that what Osmos said subtly did, that's why I replied about it.

I think that one can end up promoting self-diagnosis and over-diagnosis simply by using the term "mildly depressed" to refer to the general idea of "being upset" or "being in a bad mood" which is becoming increasingly common in our vernacular. I would argue that it's becoming increasing common because commercial interests set out to promote it's use in that way.

yes exactly, my point is that if you don't fall within the DSM then you should not not think of yourself as "being depressed". Many people like to characterize themselves as depressed or "mildly depressed" even though they come nowhere near the DSM criteria and I think that articles like the one in question promote that kind of thinking.

> It creates a bar that someone has to be "this sick to get diagnosed".

You're using incorrect language there. It creates a bar where a person has to show "this many symptoms" in order to be diagnosed with a particular illness. This is how modern medicine works and none of us question this model when it comes to physical illness so why should it be different for mental illness ? For example flu-like symptoms alone should not be enough to diagnose someone with the ebola virus or AIDS and the same principle applies to mental illness.

>It creates a fear of being told that your problems aren't really problems, and you're just not dealing with them correctly (regardless of the intent of your original argument).

No. It creates an expectation that one should refrain from automatically assuming that normal human experiences are indicative of mental illness. It's normal for human beings to experience certain problems (such as fatigue, anxiety, trouble sleeping, weight gain/loss, etc) during the course of their life and it doesn't mean they are necessarily sick.

The view that "almost everyone is sick but most people are hiding it out of fear" is a ridiculous notion that is probably being injected into the cultural conversation for commercial reasons and I doubt many people take it seriously.

It's never been more socially acceptable to start taking drugs for mental illness due to the pervasiveness of drug advertising. I think it's easy to make an increasingly strong argument that it's been over-normalized to the point where misdiagnosis is commonplace

The topic of the thread is "We need to talk about depression" therefor I'm on-topic. Just because I disagree with the premise of the article does not mean such opinions are misdirection or off-topic.

Your assertion that credentials are needed in order to form an opinion about what is and is not normal human experience is in my opinion ridiculous, and it borders on the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy.

> So you go directly from 'doesn't warrant a full diagnosis' to 'doesn't exist'? What exactly are you suggesting here?

For example flu-like symptoms do not necessarily mean that you have early onset AIDS or ebola virus even though those diseases do produce flu-like symptoms. Therefor people shouldn't refer to those common symtoms as "mild ebola" or "mild AIDS". The same principle applies to mental health and words like "depression".

> Another way to put this: It is normal for someone to become depressed in response to tough circumstances or disappointment

I would argue that this is incorrect. If a certain human condition is normal then by definition it is not an illness! Therefor to use the word 'depression' to characterize normal circumstances is not only a misnomer but a dangerous charade that downplays the seriousness of the genuine mental illness. A whole generation is confused on this point in my opinion due to advertising campaigns that are designed to confuse them and the doctors don't seem to be motivated to help clear up this confusion and I can only assume that is due to profit incentive.

> When you say 'it's perfectly natural for people to experience X', what you may actually mean is 'many people suffer from mild depression and/or bipolar disorder symptoms without ever being treated', which is absolutely true.

I would argue that what people call "mild depression" IE symptoms that do not warrant a diagnosis.. is actually not depression at all but rather part of the normal human range of emotion and feeling. Many people latch on to the advertising concept of "mild depression" but that doesn't mean it actually exists