hrc2

A great companion to "Deep Work" is "Hooked". The second is more of a how-to guide to developing products that become habit-forming. But in seeing how it's done, there's the potential to free yourself from it's grasp.

After reading these books, OP's article feels a little under-researched. Content aggregators like HN, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter are essentially using reality as a content generation algorithm. The content provided by reality is the variable reward component of the hook model shown in "Hooked".

It's not just that there's tons of information, it's that we're wired to seek novelty. This is also seen with pornography addiction, which is a more widespread phenomenon than most people realize, or admit.

From a product perspective, is it possible to take advantage of this wiring of the human brain to perform useful work? In other words, if we're wired to seek novelty, and we can create information products that are highly addictive, can we direct human attention to particular problems?

That's not to say that comment chains on Reddit don't provide value, but so many human hours of effort are spent glued to these novelty engines. It all seems inefficient, unpurposeful.

But then again, if the wheels of the economy keep turning, that's all that matters, right? Where are we headed?

I like your thinking, kinda surprised you got downvoted on HN for it.

One angle is the use of parasites to treat autoimmune diseases. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but hookworms are being studied for their ability to secrete a wide range of immune-modulating molecules. Companies are trying to determine which molecules are especially useful, and in what combination, so they can synthesize them and sell them.

But, you can get their beneficial effect right now, which is very appealing to people with major autoimmune diseases. Some companies are selling parasite eggs by mail to people who otherwise can't get them. I have MS, I take them.

It's not a lucrative business, and there are a lot of regulatory hurdles, but the treatment is quite safe.

Most people are disgusted by the idea of infecting their self with parasites. The reality is that humans evolved with parasites constantly inside of their bodies. It's only in the last 100 years that widespread anti-parasitic medication has wiped them out.

That did a lot of good for society in general, but we took it too far, essentially, by wiping out parasites entirely. There are a lot of benign "parasites", which should be thought of as symbiotes.

The way that big pharma is dealing with this is as mentioned above: they're trying to synthesize the right stew of immune-modulating chemicals to deal with this. But the immediate solution is to educate people, and sell them clean, safe parasites (or their eggs).

It's also nice if they live a long time in their host, and don't reproduce inside of the host. This is why Necator Americanus is mostly used; it fits all of these characteristics.

This article didn't touch on the idea of evolved dependence, which surprised me.

Essentially, parasites were inside the body of most human beings over our evolutionary history, up until the last 100 years. The parasites secrete immune-modifying molecules[1]. And because we don't have parasites as often anymore, autoimmune disorders have exploded in prevalence.

The thinking is that, in the same way that human beings and guinea pigs lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C because it was always available, some people lost the ability to regulate their immune system because parasites were just that pervasive. In other words, our ancestors lost genetic machinery that modulated their immune response because the parasites they had provided that service already. So losing those genes had no effect on their fitness.

It's not a widely accepted theory, but it certainly challenges the notion of self in relation to parasites.

1: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/964350/

Check out JSXGraph:

http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wp/

It's mobile friendly so long as the user's browser supports canvas (in my experience with it). It supports multi-touch devices too, but I haven't verified that.

Using artificial selection to breed good tasting insects could make insects more palatable, in the same way artificial selection has wildly changed the physiology of other livestock. It's something that will happen inevitably if the industry gains traction, but getting a head start would be interesting.

Long-term, making insects more desirable to consumers could reduce the amount of live stock raised, and indirectly influence emissions and global warming.

The Genetic Basis of Sleep and Sleep Disorders is a collection of papers on the subject, which has a chapter specifically on DSPD. Short story is, there are definitely genetic mutations which influence DSPD. In fact, DSPD seems to be influenced by a larger number of genes than it's cousin disorder, Advanced Sleep Phase Disorder.

I have DSPD, so I've been going to my local university library to study from this book.

Hey, very cool. I'm working on a hobby project using Unity that also deals with rendering equations, and I'm curious, did you use LineRenderer to render the line?