Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#71

Post by jedrek » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #30

lj3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> soccer players who came in with bruises that you'd associate with a severe beating I was a lacrosse goalie in high school and didn't have the sense to wear shin pads. If you run your fingers along my shin, you'll feel divots where the bone never regenerated. I too used to walk around with bruises on my legs that you'd associate with a severe beating. > Is this because of Mountain Dew commercials and 1980s GI Joe bo…

I was 120 lbs soaking wet when I was 17. The school gently guided me away from sports. Good thing, too. Best coach I ever had. I graduated high school close to 1980. Sure, there were guys finishing the big game on a broken bone but it seems like there's a lot more emphasis on this now, and it seems more dangerous and higher risk. I have nephews and kids of friends who are electing out of organized sports. FWIW, I fee…

> it seems like there's a lot more emphasis on this now, and it seems more dangerous and higher risk.

College costs more than ever, so "pushing through" means you might make the playoffs, might get noticed and get a full ride. Hell, they're told, they might be able to go pro!

Very few people tell those kids the truth: It's a fool's errand. Only 1-2% of the kids who play basketball, football or baseball in high school actually go on to play in a division I school in college. Football players have the greatest chance of actually going pro, with a 1 in 600 chance of actually getting paid to pay pro ball... for an average of 3.5 years. If baseball is your game, it's 1 in 1850.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#72

Post by projektir » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 5:11 PM UTC

gryphonshafer wrote: post #60

sangnoir wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can still hear my drill instructor yelling, "You aren't tired until I tell you you're tired!" He was right. I wonder why Rhabdo[1] isn't more prevalent in basic than it is. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis

>90% of fatigue in basic (based on a scientific study I just made up in my head) is mentally induced because recruits have a belief of their limits that's short of reality. Part of the drill instructor's responsibility is to demonstrate these limits are just mental by pushing recruits beyond them. Of course, that still leaves the <10% of times when the limits are real and someone gets hurt, but that's just collateral…

I wonder if it's really 10%. The instructor most likely doesn't actually know the person's limits. They're setting a baseline and hoping everyone has good enough genetics to meet that baseline. The rest are injured/kicked out/may have actually been filtered out earlier. Remember that the military turns down many people, and that often includes a lot of people who have hidden medical issues or just bad genetics.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#73

Post by igravious » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

Noseshine wrote: post #49

gwern wrote: post #10

'Protection' might be the goal of physical fatigue, but it doesn't work for intellectual effort - what are you being 'protected from breaking' by not being able to write another line of code? Carpal tunnel? In that case, it looks more like it's about conserving energy or rotating to another task after having spent so much time on one task: "A Meta-Analysis of Blood Glucose Effects on Human Decision Making" http://www…

Having taken neuroscience courses for interest in the subject, the holes in our knowledge far exceed the knowledge - even if the introductory book is over a thousand pages (but that's how it is in most fields these days, and yet you only learn basics). For example, only very recently we found that the brain literally cleans itself (by flushing) during sleep ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880190/ ). Yo…

Fascinating stuff.

What's a relatively recent write-up of this stuff for a non-specialist that doesn't skimp on the details? I'm not asking for Cognitive Neuroscience for Dummies but I'm not asking for "think of the brain like a CPU" either. If there isn't a decent write-up, could you write it? I'd buy a copy ;-)

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#74

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

wallflower wrote: post #44

saiya-jin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are sports which will cripple your health in long run, almost guaranteed. many contact sports, it football comes to mind. some of my high school classmates are semi-cripples because of it (they can walk around, and that's about it). depression can be seen in their eyes - once you know what having a healthy and strong body means, and then losing it forever. I've done my share of team/contact sports in my youth.…

> depression can be seen in their eyes - once you know what having a healthy and strong body means, and then losing it forever. I've talked to a friend of a friend who basically doesn't fear what normal people fear (e.g. talking to beautiful women, surfing, rock climbing, talking to strangers - he is really successful at sales). I asked him what his biggest fear was. He said it was to his lose health/lose control of…

> we all fear mortality

Not everyone. You don't have to be afraid of death. And before someone suggests it, this is not the same thing as wanting to die or even not caring if you die.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#75

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 6:44 PM UTC

halayli wrote: post #21

gwern wrote: post #10

'Protection' might be the goal of physical fatigue, but it doesn't work for intellectual effort - what are you being 'protected from breaking' by not being able to write another line of code? Carpal tunnel? In that case, it looks more like it's about conserving energy or rotating to another task after having spent so much time on one task: "A Meta-Analysis of Blood Glucose Effects on Human Decision Making" http://www…

What about mental fatigue? The more you workout your brain the more it needs to rest. How would you like your brain to tell you that it needs to rest other than feeling fatigue? I find myself consistently productive over long spans without a burnout effect when I am sleeping at consistent hours, and working for consistent hours a day. When I overwork my productivity becomes inconsistent so I stopped doing that. I lea…

I find I can be highly productive with a highly inconsistent sleep schedule as long as I get significant amounts of sleep every few days. I don't think a consistent schedule is a requirement.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#76

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #48

halayli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about mental fatigue? The more you workout your brain the more it needs to rest. How would you like your brain to tell you that it needs to rest other than feeling fatigue? I find myself consistently productive over long spans without a burnout effect when I am sleeping at consistent hours, and working for consistent hours a day. When I overwork my productivity becomes inconsistent so I stopped doing that. I lea…

I heard different story: there is no such thing as "mental fatigue". The reason why we get tired when doing office work is: - our muscles need to support our body while sitting. - most mental work includes some dose of stress, which is a real reason of fatigue. Buy yourself best chair you can find plus do stress-free, enjoyable work and you can go 16 hours straight, without fatigue. At least that's how I felt about a…

This is anecdotal but I have often noticed that I become more thoroughly fatigued and thus need more sleep when working on really hard programming problems vs less mentally taxing tasks. This implies that it's more than a physical phenomenon.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#77

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #64

cel1ne wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The brain makes up 2% of a person's weight. Despite this, even at rest, the brain consumes 20% of the body's energy. The brain consumes energy at 10 times the rate of the rest of the body per gram of tissue. The average power consumption of a typical adult is 100 Watts and the brain consumes 20% of this making the power of the brain 20 W." http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JacquelineLing.shtml

The resting metabolism is very high, because the brain is expensive to build and run. But it's not much more expensive to run on one task rather than another. This is one of the major flaws in the blood glucose theory of willpower as discussed by Kurzban: some additional sugar can't be 'gasoline' for the brain because the brain doesn't use up that much more energy working on something than not working on something. (…

This assumes that fatigue is merely a thermodynamics problem. Fatigue could also be caused by the depletion of chemicals which take time to regenerate. Such effects would not be captured when looking at energy usage alone.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#78

Post by CuriouslyC » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #27

mrexroad wrote: post #25

My first thought was, "oh, reminds me of the SEAL's 40% rule... so if they're trained to ignore that limit, why don't they get hurt?" Then, in first google result [1], I read this: “I first met “SEAL” at a 100-mile run in San Diego and I was running this race as part of a six-person relay team with friends and he was running the entire race by himself,” Itzler said. “Who is this guy? I’ve never seen anything like it.…

Where does this come from in the larger culture? I can see why people who are soldiers or ... athletes at the varsity or pro level might be interested in it but why would anyone want to basically injure themselves as a ... hobby? I've worked with runners who had serious injury, soccer players who came in with bruises that you'd associate with a severe beating... I'm thinking "geez, it's gonna suck when you're 62." Be…

As someone who has injured himself for a "hobby" a number of times:

My "hobby" is a means for me to challenge myself, to push myself to my limits, to see what I am capable of and take my measure as a human being. It is a means for me to learn how to overcome fear, pain and doubt. It provides an objective haven when the subjective world is upside down.

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#79

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 7:07 PM UTC

fernly wrote: post #15

towlejunior wrote: post #9

If the claim is that muscles don't fatigue, then I am skeptical. In college, I took a weightlifting class with a bunch of athletes in it. One day, we did lunges (no weight) around and around, in a line like ants. Nearing the end, my brain thought I was totally fine. I cannot stress that enough. Bam, like a light switch, my legs went from 60% strength to 2% three quarters of the way through the last lap. Had the instr…

No, I think you are anecdotally supporting the posted article: you worked your muscles to physical exhaustion but you did not feel "fatigue", ergo, the conventional theory that "fatigue" is caused by lactic acid or other muscle chemistry is disproved.

What result would disprove the article?

Re: Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012)

#80

Post by ArkyBeagle » Mon, Jul 04, 2016, 7:09 PM UTC

lj3 wrote: post #61

saiya-jin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are sports which will cripple your health in long run, almost guaranteed. many contact sports, it football comes to mind. some of my high school classmates are semi-cripples because of it (they can walk around, and that's about it). depression can be seen in their eyes - once you know what having a healthy and strong body means, and then losing it forever. I've done my share of team/contact sports in my youth.…

> there are sports which will cripple your health in long run, almost guaranteed. many contact sports, it football comes to mind. Did you play football? The danger of permanent crippling injury has been blown way out of proportion by helicopter parents and the news. Of all the kids I played with and all the kids I coached (volunteer), only one of them ever wound up partially crippled. That kid in particular would rou…

Well, football ain't bull ridin' for sure. There's just something gladiator-exploitative about the whole mess.

Another anecdote: guy I know has a kid that's like a high school... sophomore and in order for this kid to continue to add value as a basketball player, he apparently can't afford to play HS varsity ball. It's a distraction. His other (older) son is approaching 7 feet tall and is totally over organized sports altogether, and is pointed at engineering.