I’ll probably be downvoted for pointing this out but I feel like it’s important. 90% of the comments at the time of my posting this are great examples of the logical fallacy a lot of intelligent people fall into where they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own. This would be the same error in judgment that’s turned the nootropic and longevity industries into billion dollar ones.
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.
> intelligent people fall into where they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own
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)
I like HackerNews because the conversations are mostly intelligent and polite. Not always, but it’s far better than my experience with Twitter and Reddit.
> I like HackerNews because the conversations are mostly intelligent and polite
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.
Agreed, the discourse here tends to be more polite, but as others have already pointed out, there's an insane amount of intelligent sounding, authoritative sounding content and comments here that are actually complete nonsense. Which is totally fine when talking about inconsequential things, but not when it comes to economics, medicine etc etc, lol.
HN comments have an air of authority because we so frequently do see reasoned, expert opinions. But it's still hard to mix up mere speculation, shooting-from-the-hip thoughts and well-thought-out comments. It's more pernicious here. On other sites, we routinely see incredibly low-effort and naive comments so we're on guard more: there's simply more mixed-up communities/contexts with different standards to train us to be more skeptical.
HN commenters like you and I are like ChatGPT, unaware if what we're saying is nonsense; we're full of ourselves and believe have something worthwhile to say.
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.
Like everyone else apparently I don't think the level of intelligence here is particularly noteworthy - but I absolutely agree that the average conversation here is polite and topic focused. For the most part I think the less productive conversations tend to occur as a product of genuinely misunderstandings. I think the moderation policies help a lot with this.
In the sprawling expanse of online forums, an intriguing display of intelligence often takes shape. It's a labyrinthine network where discerning authentic insight from empty repetition is a challenge. A platform where individuals, often unknown to each other, put forth their assertions and speculations under the guise of knowledge.
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.
Agreed - if you’re an expert in something slightly off the main HN topics (ie adtech, finance, real estate, etc) then hn discussions are the same intelligence level as Reddit but without the memes.
HN comments are absolute garbage on anything medical, endless uneducated "theories" and emotional anecdotes
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
Hah, so true! But, to be fair to HN users, I do find good information on here a lot. Whenever a tool or product comes up I don’t know, I tend to look it up in the HN search to see if there was ever any discussion of it. Tends to be a good way to find experience reports or possible alternative solutions.
I find HN to actually be really nice for the things HN knows well. People tend to correct comments from others with at least some respect, and normally the most accurate information floats to the top of the thread.
The thing I generally find the least valuable is the “I’ll be downvoted for this” comments. Don’t prime people to be defensive!
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.
Doesn't mean the value is in their accuracy, and there are often good comments on software industry posts. The Jupyter Lab 4.0 post currently on the front page for example has a lot of great tips!
> 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
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.
>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 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.
Physician here, and I cannot emphasize this enough. To the point where I actively avoid most medical/healthcare threads - it’s oppressive to contribute.
I feel the same way when threads come up where I know the area very well. The ignorance and strong opinions from people that don't know what they're talking about can be maddening.
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!
Anything non tech related is a drain to read because people here fall for propaganda so easily, or just don’t have any ability to think about topics outside of tech.
It's an analogy. It might fit or not. The same problem exists the other direction though. A biologist or doctor may not understand the relevant parts of the analogy and call it nonsense.
And yet you're commenting on HN on something medical, so that means your comment is absolute garbage, which means that HN comments actually are not absolute garbage, which means my comment is absolute treasure. Air tight deduction, you're welcome.
Common mistake: The opposite of "all HN comments on medicine are absolute garbage" is not "all HN comments on medicine are absolute treasure", but "not all HN comments on medicine are absolute garbage", or equivalently "there's at least one HN comment on medicine that's not absolute garbage". This can be deduced indeed, but that gives us no information about your comment.
They are exempt from what they attribute to their lower-order siblings.
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.
I think they are being funny - at least, their comments make me laugh, and it would be difficult to interpret the comment about higher order statements 'stooping' in a serious or literal context.
"You lower order sibblings are all garbage and I won't engage with you because I'm higher order and refuse to stoop to your level" is the most garbage comment on here.
The health podcast industry is making this problem even worse. Many people consume content like Huberman’s podcast and assume he’s an expert because he speaks so confidently and at such lengths. Yet Huberman’s podcasts are well known to contain a lot of errors on very basic concepts and extreme exaggerations. He appears to well-versed in topics related to his domain of study, albeit with exaggerations of his findings to appease a podcast audience.
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.
I, too, am interested in reading the critiques. He seems to pepper much of his podcasts with YMMVs and ”case by case” knowing full well that there is no “one size fits all” or panaceas.
My take on both of them is that there’s a lot of research supporting positive health outcomes which they oddly tend to neglect, and I suspect they have strong biases. I should preface this with admitting I know nothing at all about this stuff.
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 functionally identical to how generative LLM AIs have no problem successfully outputting objectively false bullshit or blatant hallucinations that people will readily accept as true. No one needs actual facts or data cause anyone capable of speaking with a manipulative psychopath's boundless confidence interspersed with a couple technical terms knows what they're talking about, right?
I wish I could upvote your comment twice. Based on my observation how a childhood friend of mine was treated for a psychiatric condition I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry. It essentially comes down to "hey, try this, are you better or worse, worse? Try something else. Better, have more of it". All the theories about lacks of certain neurotransmitters causing certain problems, all of it is like a bunch of cavemen trying to fix a transistor radio with their stone axes and coming up with ideas to explain various noises they hear when they whack it. Of course many conditions are so debilitating even such random experimentation is better than nothing. I don't blame individual doctors and practicioners, but I think this whole field should be much more humble about what is it they can treat, what kind of long term outcomes one can expect etc. Certainly they shouldn't be giving random drugs that really can f** with a developing human mind to treat imaginary mental illnesses that cause ones grades to be insufficiently good etc.
> I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry.
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.
> 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.
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.
Psychiatry has a long history of being absolutely sure that this time, they have it right, then doing something hideous, and then moving on. No, no, this time, we have it right. If you want hubris, look to psychiatry. Nobel Prize for lobotomy in 1949, two decades later that is over with. Not to mention its relentless collusion with governments local and larger.
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.
> 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.
> 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".
> 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.
Think you're tilting at windmills friend. You've described the same situation they did, just in esteemed tones.
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.
"They are using a large body of research, clinical experience, and shared knowledge of their peers."
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.
As somebody who is mentally ill and has tried lots of different drugs in a very unscientific way, with mixed results, you'd think I would agree with you. But actually, I don't.
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.
Sadly, what we have is bro science vs super cozy doctors and pharma industry. One group is largely ignorant, while the other wants to make money. You shouldn't trust either one blindly.
HN comments about ML and AI are so obviously un- or under-informed to the point of pure fancy and speculation that I've simply stopped trying to engage with people who don't want to confront how ill-equipped they are to be involved in discussions on the topic. Sometimes they acquire some narrow bit of useful information but without wider context they end up quickly re-introducing bullshit to the discussion.
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.
There is an alt-med based on a connection with nature, herbs, rituals, and spirituality. Most people here will be skeptical about these - both rightfully and excessively.
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.
Are they really that intelligent if they truly believe that their expertise can be applied to any field? Imo, understanding your own limitations is a form of intelligence that is very important.
I often find it less useful to think in terms of intelligence than of cleverness and wisdom, which seem not just distinct but orthogonal. Cleverness is required to be a capable programmer. Wisdom manifestly is not.
I want to argue with your wise words, but I'm not finding any ground. It just upsets me that people can't manage to temper their cleverness with wisdom. I guess that's what I consider "intelligence". Cleverness tempered by wisdom. Thank you for your comment, it helped me sort out my own thoughts.
This is in contrast to research on the subject. Intelligence is one of the very few psychological properties that's universal. A smart person is smart. Doesn't matter the subject.
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.
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.
By that criterion though, people like Edsger Dijkstra or Stephen Hawking would not be considered truly intelligent people. I think many would consider such a definition bizarre.
Citation may be needed for both of our statements, because my recollection from reading Hawking's book and other things is that he had a sense of humility about things he didn't understand, just like any good scientist must lest they lead to incorrect conclusions.
Why would the people you mentioned be considered unintelligent by that criteria? Are you suggesting that they are not humbled when faced with the fact that the world will continue rotating without them?
Humans aren't ants. They can in fact apply their intelligence to alternative "fields". This idea that you can only use your knowledge in one specialized are is idiotic. I would say your intelligence is incredibly low if you think this.
If we were unable to do this as a species we would have been wiped out long ago. Specialization is a modern mindset.
I said "apply their expertise" to other fields, not "apply their intelligence". There's a big difference between incorrectly attempting to apply specific knowledge of one domain to another, and using your general intelligence to become proficient in a field.
> 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.
Ah ok, it's fine for you to call everyone too stupid to understand anything outside of their field. However, when I challenge this idiocy, I'm the one belittling people. Interesting take.
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".
> they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own. This would be the same error in judgment that’s turned the nootropic and longevity industries into billion dollar ones.
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.
It's kind of like how we all have our favorite podcasts to learn about new things. When it's a topic we don't know much about it's so interesting and we learn so much, but when it's a topic we're experts in, we get exasperated about how inaccurate or misleading it is.
>their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own
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).
> Have you heard (intelligent!) non-tech people talking about tech? Why would (intelligent!) tech people fare better talking about non-tech?
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.
"Sure, lots of people have very rigorous training in critical thinking, research skills, and other important aspects of analysis as part of their scientific, medical, or academic background, but we programmers are the specialest boys who are uniquely able to understand absolutely everything better than anyone else."
C'mon; I'm a programmer too, but this is just rank arrogance.
I think they would fare far worse. Because of the way that our economy is structured, tech people are overpaid and overvalued, and thus have an inflated sense of their own importance which causes them to overestimate their intelligence.
I don't think we're disagreeing. I was specific to use "computer scientists" rather than "tech people". Lots of tech people are not programmers, which is mainly who I was talking about.
We are disagreeing. In my experience computer scientists are the dumbest "tech people" of all.
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.
> 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.
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.
Thanks for engaging seriously even though I was being snarky. More than I deserve.
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).
>Have you heard (intelligent!) non-tech people talking about tech?
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.
The amazing thing about tech-people and especially developer and related is that they are expected to and required to grasp an understanding of other people’s professions in order provide products/services. So I would actually expect tech-people to be able to talk reasonably about non -tech areas and to be quite happy to be corrected when they are way off the track..
Nah, they think they understand, and run with an under-informed opinion on something they have no to little real-world experience with until they've replaced the client's original concerns with something that's oversimplified for the sake of shoving into this or that software architecture pattern.
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.
“those who ask for software tend to ask for extremely simple workflow-helper type stuff rather than domain-expert-amplifier type stuff”
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.
> and remember to take all of the amazing possibilities being suggested and conclusions reached herein with a grain of salt
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):
"Someone who has gone through years of medical school to get a degree is more likely to be correct on matters concerning medicine than someone who has not" is not an appeal to authority.
At some point I started believing in something like a Gell-Mann Amnesia but for people.
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.
I don't disagree, but, and I've said this before, when I go to the doctors, they (mostly specialists) end up giving me multiple options, including doing nothing and want me to decide which. Mtfkr, I didn't go to medical school, tell me what to do. I don't know if it's a liability thing or if there's a body of work saying that empowering patients to make decisions is better, but it's ridiculous. It's one anecdote, but it feels like where it counts, people don't just want to tell you what to do.
In my mind, that leads to the what you're saying. I have also come to the realization, having recently turned 40, that most people, even those we are told to look up to, a. aren't actually that knowledgeable and b. don't really care
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.
Yeah I keep seeing this behavior here in the comments section. There are some real experts here for sure, but I think assuming you understand anything about something as complex as this without extensive prior studies about the subject is just stupid. I'm tired of reasonably intelligent people extrapolating new information about any possible subject based on their very limited basic level knowledge combined with some new cool research paper headlines.
On the other hand the opinions you get from medical professionals is garbage as well. Just try going to a few with the same problem and you will realize it. In my case I want to 5 doctors with my knee issue and got 5 different diagnosis/treatments. One wanted knee surgery. Another wanted hip (!?) surgery, one said it's about cartilage, another said it's muscle imbalance, another said it's my hip mobility (so surgery!). One did hyaluronic acid injections another recommended manual therapy done by his friend. The one who did the surgery I later learnt is not recommended anymore told me I will never be able to run/play sports anymore. I do 15 hours a week these days including running 100+km/month for almost 3 years (I switched to other sports now as I find them more fun).
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.
Likewise. I spent 10 years and many tens of thousands of dollars (after insurance) seeing a dozen or more doctors and they mostly all reached different conclusions and mostly all were wrong. Modern medicine is great at treating wounds, but primitive at actually understanding how the body works and figuring out complex interactions. I'm no expert but I have spent thousands of hours researching looking for my own answers, and I think the human body and the many interactions between pieces is just too complex for individual humans to understand. I think with the help of machines/computers we'll get there, but we are definitely not there yet and a huge heap of humility would serve us well.
> they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own
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"?
hmmm... although it is a logical fallacy, statistics show that the margin of error based on successful previous observations is smaller than the margin of error base on no previous observations.
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)
Irony here is this comment in an "Increased Cognition" study is telling people not to use their brains cognition because they're not "experts" (TRUST THE EXPERTS!!). Systematics would define pr0zac as a systems-person.
> the logical fallacy a lot of intelligent people fall into where they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own
> 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.
There's no such thing as "intelligence in one area", intelligence is a general ability. You're basically ignoring everything that psychology has studied regarding intelligence.
That's just because he's using the word 'intelligence' here in place of the word 'competence', but that might just be because it's the verbiage competent people often use about themselves. This is a fair correction, but other than that he's obviously correct, being a talented software engineer doesn't give you any ability to understand the nuances of neurochemistry.
> being a talented software engineer doesn't give you any ability to understand the nuances of neurochemistry.
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.
A note for people not familiar with the terminology - "functional connectivity" is a specific technical term that really just means temporal correlation between brain areas, as opposed to "structural connectivity" which refers to the actual neural pathways that are formed between brain areas. If you rephrase the headline as "Serotonin booster leads to increased correlation between activity in different brain areas" it maybe doesn't sound as exciting.
Oh, that's disappointing. I was hoping for a drug that will finally help me understand how monads are just simply monoids in the category of endofunctors.
I'm also disappointed. I hoped it would help me understand palato-alveolar ejective fricatives and how they differ from voiced retroflex lateral approximants.
I know that you are memeing, but if are interested in category theory and have exp in functional programming; “category theory” for programmers is possibly a good place to start.
The main reason it's not too exciting to me is much simpler. They tested it for 6 days. You can do all sorts of wonderful stuff with a drug for a few days. But for most drugs, the effects simply cease if you keep taking it due to tolerance.
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.
The brain adapts to new regimes; that's probably part of the anti-depressive effect of SSRIs, not the acute effects. For that reason, I agree that a study of connectivity over the longer-term would be more convincing.
I'm not quite sure if laxative is the correct description of this drug, even though it's official one. It is used for treatment of constipation in cases where laxatives don't help. I'm not sure if it has any similar effects in non-constipated people as other laxatives have.
There are definitely exceptions, that's true. Usually there's an interesting pharmacological reason why though.
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?).
Not sure about the pharmacology, but I want to say methylphenidate (Ritalin)?
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.
Ooh, ritalin is a fascinating and intricate one. I also have severe ADHD, and I've also noticed this somewhat paradoxical fact about ritalin.
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.
Thanks for taking the time to explain, very informative! I've been meaning to look into the mechanisms of Ritalin for a while buuuut ADHD.
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?
yes, actually all the improvements mentioned in the article reminiscence me of positive effects of psychedelics. They happen to act on serotonin receptors, too.
Do you mind if I ask you - how have you had an account here since 7/5/12 and you only have 1 karma point? I'm flattered that you're responding to my post.
Nice that you pointed it out, I had no idea about having 0 karma points nor I paid attention to it. Even nice that it flattered you. I just happen to be interested in psychedelics (not that I have ever tried them!). I just noticed that the drug is a 5HT agonist, just like most of the psychodelics are, and I jumped into the comments to see if anybody mentions it. I believe that psychdelics mostly act upon 5HT2a while this substance is for 5HT4 instead.
This is what I was wondering. There's the idea of "neurons that fire together wire together" which would imply so. But that's a super reductionist take on a very big field.
Something in our industrial processes must be screwing with people's serotonin levels because Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments. I personally suffer from IBS, migraines, sleeping problems, and mood swings, if I haven't taken a dose of psychedelics in the last 6 months. Now, getting regular exercise, eating well, staying hydrated, sleeping 8 hours a night, spending time with friends, sexual and emotional fulfillment, and performing fulfilling labor, that will get you 80% or even 100% towards fixing most, if not all your problems. But I think these Serotonergic drugs give people the extra push in the right direction, and immediately fixes a lot of the underlying problems that would normally take consistent, positive environmental changes to root out.
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.
> 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...
Terence McKenna, a self proclaimed ethnobotanist, held the theory that higher intelligence emerged because of psychedelics, that our hunter gatherer ancestors had a very intimate relationship with psychedelic mushrooms.
Way out there, but very interesting nonetheless. I would recommend his book The food of the Gods
> Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments.
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.
Not sure why your getting pushback on such a leveled take.
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.
> Something in our industrial processes must be screwing with people's serotonin levels because Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments.
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
I'm slightly offended since I used to teach formal reasoning (and I always make a strong effort to avoid using it when constructing any arguments). You can always arbitrarily translate any parts of any phrase into any atomic sentence, and reframe certain claims as a series of propositions. None of your propositions that you claim I made are actually within the content of my argument. And especially for things that require historical, social, and political context to understands, it is completely useless to employ a system which pretends to be divorced from all those things. How are you supposed to evaluate a claim about the health effects of the industrial revolution using formal logic? How do you even know I was trying to use formal logic in my argument, or that I even cared if it made sense in a very particular logical system which has far more relevance for mathematics and computer programming than rhetoric and persuasion. I never made a single evidential claim nor could I, since this would be an area where empirical research is lacking. I was making an inference, which you made no attempt to directly engage with.
Why is it "comically bad inference" to postulate that something environmental may be messing with our serotonin systems if psychedelic serotonergics cure ailments that we know require messaging via serotonin? (IBS ~ gut, migraine ~ brain, sleeping problems, and mood swings ~ brain)
I still don't see the argument. Let's say an argument is a series of premises followed by a conclusion. Maybe you can render it for me.
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?
Everyone feels fine. Then everyone feels bad. They start taking iron supplements and feel better again. Inference: something in the environment messed with their iron supply, be it less iron in the food, something in the water that hinders iron absorbtion, or other.
>Now, getting regular exercise, eating well, staying hydrated, sleeping 8 hours a night, spending time with friends, sexual and emotional fulfillment, and performing fulfilling labor, that will get you 80% or even 100% towards fixing most, if not all your problems.
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...
They are easier to achieve than before. All of them. Just do it.
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.
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.
> 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
>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...
Those aren't ironic examples though, the evidence shows that it really is a matter in some of those cases of a mindset switch. And note that it is listed as a starting step. One must continue the roadmap to get to the end.
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.)
Physical exercise for me is primarily a way to make my body produce drugs, to be in a better mood and sleep better. All the other benefits are icing on the cake.
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.
Think this is kind of what parent was talking about the modern industrial world. We are all trapped in situations where it is hard to get exercise and sleep. Drugs are just way to paint over those problems.
Best trick I have found so far: You "tie" the thing you want to do to a thing that you already do in a way that makes doing what you want to do as effortless as possible.
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.
Please, please, please, to anyone in the thread, don't take this as anything other than an anecdote but...
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.
About 2 years ago I wasn't in a good place. My wife had been ill for a year, I found the lockdown hard (though I agreed with them), and I was struggling at my job.
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.)
This warning can never be overstated for 5-HTP. Higher doses/longer term use can have a lot of negative effects in the heart, as well as in the serotonin and dopamine system (even up to serotonin syndrome in the most extreme cases). A major problem is that the body does not have mechanisms to regulate conversion of 5-HTP to serotonin (5-HT), which is not a really good property of a supplement.
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't have a great grasp of drugs or biological pathways. The following is my extremely lay understanding:
* 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?
Serotonin doesn't cause you to be happy. Its effects are more basic in some ways, but also more complex in others. It is a chemical which serves a purpose in at least all forms of multi-cellular life, from plants to animals - so you can imagine how old and fundamental its role is.
Also, depression is not caused by low serotonin levels:
> 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.
>> 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
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.
The paper is specifically claiming there is just no association between serotonin activity and depression. By my understanding, that should include increased/decreased receptors, reuptake, breakdown etc.
Ok, I read the paper. Here is the most pertinent part on receptors:
> 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.
If anything it's probably the other way around - I'd posit that the portion of the population the does mdma, speed and the like is on aberage more depressed than someone "sober". Chicken and egg
I took 5-HTP longterm (two years) and started experiencing panic attacks, among other symptoms. I had to stop. I had supposed this to be a natural supplement without side effects, but I was wrong. I suppose each person is quite unique, so your mileage will vary.
Two years it's kinda long to take anything really. You can mess yourself up even if you just drink specific herbal tea for that long if you are unlucky.
Yes it definitely made me reevaluate my vitamin routine. I cut back most supplements and only take fish oil and vitamin D in winter now. I even cut out the caffeine and feel MUCH more relaxed.
Certainly and some people also get serotonin syndrome if they mix this with other antidepressant medications. Read up before taking but to me this just highlights the impacts it can have.
If it were patentable it would have had far more research I'm sure.
> to me this just highlights the impacts it can have.
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.
>> Heart palpitations is a very common side effect due to it.
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).
I wouldn't necessarily call it totally undocumented. I think there's some form of meditative practice documented somewhere that would describe this. It kinda reminds me of loving-kindness meditation, but taken in a slightly different direction.
I pretty much only do it when I'm going into very big, stressful social situations, where I'm going to have to talk to a lot of people I don't know. I'm a person who loves one on one conversations with people (including strangers), but I'm shy and reserved in the presence of groups.
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.
I was taking 200mg a day, about 45 mins before I'd go to sleep, with a piece of brown bread. (200mg is considered a high dose - but I hadn't done a lot of research, I was just looking for 'something' to help, and bought from the first shop I found had them.
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.
My poor sleep and stresses started well before Covid, but definitely came to a head then, combined with my wife's illness from long covid.
After seeing what covid did to my wife and others with long covid, plus friends who lost parents etc., I remain fully supportive of the lockdowns here in the UK - though as I've said here before:
the lockdowns were not about saving the old, but about keeping as many of the infirm out of hospital as possible, so that people wouldn't die from broken arms or childbirth.
For anyone coming to this comment section in hopes of understanding this further: This comment section is full of misinformation and discourse about drugs that are completely unrelated to what’s discussed in the article.
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).
Neither of them are 5-HT2b agonists, the cardiac effects of cisapride are due to inhibition of the cardiac HERG K+ channel, but apparently this does not seem to be as of an issue with prucalopride [1].
As someone in the pharmacy field, I would advise anyone against messing with the serotonergic pathway without knowing what they're doing. Serotonin serotonin syndrome can wreck you and complete recovery can take. Especially taking high doses of serotonin booster while consuming foods high in tyramine. Avoid quack pseudo-health care advices and supplements.
I wish we stopped treating serotonin as a button that automatically improves mood. It is bullshit. Let's recognize the complexity of neural signaling. Whenever people call serotonin the happiness hormone I want to throw up. Such people would probably never believe that if you inject serotonin, the result is extreme pain at the injection site.
Agreed. Trying to fix depression with drugs is a bad move for most people. They usually cause long term problems with continuous use and lead to psychosis and suicidal ideation in a large!!! number of patients.
Anecdotal, but I had depression episodes on weekly basis for 4 years, then started to microdose mushrooms for completely different reasons, and it is almost 2 years now, when I barely had a single such episode.
I remember during my PhD, already 5 or more years ago, the term "functional connectivity" was frowned upon by the computational neuroscience community and the concept was considered out of date.
>This provides further evidence that prucalopride is having an effect in areas of the brain that improve cognitive function – both by increasing and reducing connectivity between specific brain regions as required.”
Altering the functional connectivity of the circuits is not necessarily correlated to "boosting" the memory.
Isn't there a theory that any nootropic substance needs to have a downside or we would have naturally evolved it by now? I am amused thinking of the idea that this drug being a laxative is that downside
> Isn't there a theory that any nootropic substance needs to have a downside or we would have naturally evolved it by now?
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.
I came to the comment section to mention other seratonergic drugs that do something similar to what the study mentions. Psilocin is a serotonin 2A agonist, LSD is a 1A agonist (according to a quick google search), and this new drug works on "4" receptors. All of which seem to have similar beneficial therapeutic effects when used properly.
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)
> I came to the comment section to mention other seratonergic drugs that do something similar to what the study mentions. Psilocin is a serotonin 2A agonist, LSD is a 1A agonist (according to a quick google search), and this new drug works on "4" receptors. All of which seem to have similar beneficial therapeutic effects when used properly.
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.
Could this potentially help schizophrenia, emotional regulation, impulsivity, reward processing, ADHD etc because of an improvement in functional connectivity?
Anecdotally, I've used it on and off for about 10 years now and personally notice a strong correlation with impulse control. I have an OCD diagnosis and the only two things that have worked to manage symptoms are consistent journaling, exercise, yoga, meditation and therapy (all together), and 5-HTP.
This comment sums up why I’m so sad to be living in what I feel will be looked back on as the dark ages of neuroscience - these very very smart people are limited to “more correlated brain activity might help with everything!”
OTOH perhaps I don’t want to live in a world with happy pills… we should all be grateful
Seems like psychiatry is throwing things at the wall and going with whatever sticks. That plus spurious statistical correlations supporting the use of certain medications.
I can't speak for any other illness mentioned, but from what I've been told as someone with ADHD a significant part of the "nature" side of it is caused by either reduced serotonin sensitivity, a faster-than-normal re-uptake of serotonin whenever it gets released (meaning it doesn't get to do its job), or some other disruption of how serotonin is supposed to function in the brain.
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).
"INCREASED FUNCTIONAL BRAIN CONNECTIVITY" sounds pretty neat. Instead of debating why the brain is or is not like a computer. Or why you or your sister-in-law's brain is addled by mental illness. Let's frame this optimistically, hopefully. Maybe there's a genius working that study or commenting here. Geniuses think different.
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.
With magnesium it's more the specific salts that are laxative. Like the oxide which is both a laxative and has a low bioavailability. Citrate in huge doses is used as a laxative too. On the other hand, I have good experience with the orotate. Lactate and gluconate should be good too.
Magnesium supplements have laxative effects as long as they are not absorbed. More bioavailable forms of magnesium do not exhibit laxative effects in normal dosages.
The study dosing was 1mg/day, compared to the standard dose as a laxative of 2mg.
"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'm not quite sure if laxative is the correct description of this drug, even though it's official one. It is used for treatment of constipation in cases where laxatives don't help. I'm not sure if it has any similar effects in non-constipated people as other laxatives have.
I've had both feelings from MDMA. Urgent need for #2 on come up. Complete inability to perform #1 even though busting at peak. Maybe it's a serotonin thing
Big time, it's often included in the introductory "stacks" for new members. I haven't really dabbled with nootropics since college, but I do remember 5HTP being suggested.
I'd link the reddit wiki where it's mentioned, but we're still mid protest it seems! :)
It's a highly specific HT4 agonist, I'm not sure why you'd be more likely serotonin syndrome by combining it with MDMA vs MDMA alone - it doesn't affect release or transport, nor does it have have significant activity at other binding sites.
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.