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Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

theguardian.com

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Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#21

Post by nnq »

bordercases wrote: post #15
colejohnson66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What astounds me is that the human brain doesn't even know it works (at least consciously). Your brain tells your body what to do, but your consciousness has no idea how. For me, that's what's so amazing about neural networks! If you could ask an individual neuron why their f(x) is the way it is, they probably would only be able to tell you that "that gets the result the brain wants". They're like individual computer…

I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

My theory is that we can have several conscious thoughts at once but most of us suppress this most of the time because without a clear "winner thought" that gets the attention and gets to decide what reality is and gets to control the body, you'd end up with what people with schitzophrenia or other psychoses have...

I'd also bet that the first "human-type & human-level" AI will be quire insane by human standards at least if we don't get this inner attention focusing part right from the first time. Considering that this insane AI will also get super-human pretty fast, I'm pretty scared of what it would do before it gets itself to some sort of inner equilibrium or "sanity"...

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#22

Post by mrob »

acaciapalm wrote: post #5

It continues to astound me how little we actually seem to know about anatomy, especially women's anatomy (hold the jokes, folks).

Examples of recently discovered human anatomy:

Structural and functional features of central nervous system lymphatic vessels. (2015)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26030524

A newly discovered muscle: The tensor of the vastus intermedius. (2016)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26732825

There's probably more not yet scientifically described.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#23

Post by yazaddaruvala »

bordercases wrote: post #15
colejohnson66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What astounds me is that the human brain doesn't even know it works (at least consciously). Your brain tells your body what to do, but your consciousness has no idea how. For me, that's what's so amazing about neural networks! If you could ask an individual neuron why their f(x) is the way it is, they probably would only be able to tell you that "that gets the result the brain wants". They're like individual computer…

I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

While most of the time, ideas in my head are extremely cohesive, there are times when they are not. For one, while talking to myself, I refer to myself as a we. In other situations, primarily ones of brainstorming, I can definitely feel multiple "quadrants" of my brain initiating different ideas. The reason I feel they are different consciouses is because each idea is driven by different motivations. Some of these are good ideas, some are bad, some are moral, some are immoral. We mostly come to a consensus in fractions of a second, but sometimes its long and drawn out. Like any good team, we ensure everyone is heard and respected, we understand that there will be disagreements and we won't always get our way. Some of us never get our way. But overall we(I) seem to work well with all of the other versions of myself. Lol, at least for now. There are definitely parts of me which are very upset with the consensus to write this post.

I think you just don't hear a lot about it, and people don't acknowledge it much in themselves, because of the stigma/demonization of multiple personality disorders. For me, as long as I(we) can pass the Turing Test of Normality, I don't really mind that my brain works the way it does. If anything, I quite like the way it works.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#25

Post by agumonkey »

bordercases wrote: post #15
colejohnson66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What astounds me is that the human brain doesn't even know it works (at least consciously). Your brain tells your body what to do, but your consciousness has no idea how. For me, that's what's so amazing about neural networks! If you could ask an individual neuron why their f(x) is the way it is, they probably would only be able to tell you that "that gets the result the brain wants". They're like individual computer…

I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

And why calming conscious thoughts (meditation) is beneficial too.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#26

Post by hashberry »

hacker_9 wrote: post #19
colejohnson66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What astounds me is that the human brain doesn't even know it works (at least consciously). Your brain tells your body what to do, but your consciousness has no idea how. For me, that's what's so amazing about neural networks! If you could ask an individual neuron why their f(x) is the way it is, they probably would only be able to tell you that "that gets the result the brain wants". They're like individual computer…

I have three possible theories for this: 1. Evolution saw no need for it; knowing how our eye's classify light signals into objects and figure out depth etc are not important to survival. What is important is knowing exactly if you are looking at a predator as soon as possible. 2. Too much data for consciousness to handle; There is something like 1 million connections between each eye and the brain alone. Then there…

4. Consciousness wasn't supposed to happen as living organisms do not need it to survive and reproduce. But since humans are so successful: "It's a feature, not a bug!"

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#27

Post by Senji »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #23
bordercases wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

While most of the time, ideas in my head are extremely cohesive, there are times when they are not. For one, while talking to myself, I refer to myself as a we. In other situations, primarily ones of brainstorming, I can definitely feel multiple "quadrants" of my brain initiating different ideas. The reason I feel they are different consciouses is because each idea is driven by different motivations. Some of these ar…

That's interesting. I, don't "talk" or "think aloud" in my head myself. At all. Ideas just snap into focus at once immediately. Same goes for when I'm trying to figure out a puzzle or when programing.

At the moment I learn something new it just snaps into place at once and the knowledge is integrated on the spot.

Also English is a foreign language for me and the same goes for my native language. Whole concepts emerge as I'm trying to do or say something and then I have to put them into words(in either language).

Sometimes the process of talking is excruciatingly slow and interferes with my thoughts. I find that I can type a lot faster and that helps a little.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#28

Post by kevinnk »

acaciapalm wrote: post #9
danharaj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, especially for common disorders like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Endometriosis. We don't know why they happen and our treatments are surprisingly meager considering how many women are affected in total.

Then there was that huge study that showed the birth control pill causes loss of sex drive and depression[0]. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr...

That study showed a "link" (i.e. correlation) between hormonal contraception and first diagnosis of depression or use of antidepressants. That's not the same as showing the pill causes depression! Even the study authors explicitly say that more study is needed before we can definitively say there is cause and effect.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#29

Post by Declanomous »

sambe wrote: post #8
Declanomous wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone had a genetic disease that was somehow overcome with, say, genetic modification in some future time would her future eggs also carry the updated genetics? The answer is almost certainly yes, if the cells used to create the gametes had their DNA modified. The really interesting question is whether the epigenetic code changes in these cells. The discovery of epigenetics had huge implications in human devel…

What do you mean by "epigenetic code"? Epigenetic means not encoded in DNA. Heritability is hotly debated (and anything positive in that area tends to be overstated in the media). Wiki has a few links on contested terms and taking caution vs enthusiasm of eg Chopra. There have also been several stories like this http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-inte... over the last months.

I realize epigenetic traits are not encoded in DNA. It's perfectly acceptable to use the term code to refer to an epigenetic "configuration". I didn't point out this fact because I figured the people reading Hacker News probably know that things can be encoded without using DNA, and I felt the distinction was needlessly pedantic.

I recognize the limited scope of epigenetics, however epigenetics do play a significant role in gene expression. To say otherwise would be foolish.

I know heritability of epigenetic traits is limited. I didn't claim epigenetic traits are being passed down between generations. If women are born with all of their eggs, the DNA in her eggs would DIRECTLY be affected by the environment of her mother. There is strong scientific evidence epigenetic traits are reliably inherited by each of the daughter cells during mitosis. Thus it is fully plausible the epigenetic code of a child could be affected by their grandmother.

If what you know about epigenetics comes from Wikipedia, you are probably about as informed as "the media". As a formally trained lab biologist, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that biology is one of the worst scientific fields to learn about from Wikipedia, especially when it comes to discoveries in young fields like epigentics.

Re: Evidence suggests women's ovaries can grow new eggs

#30

Post by Alex3917 »

bordercases wrote: post #15
colejohnson66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What astounds me is that the human brain doesn't even know it works (at least consciously). Your brain tells your body what to do, but your consciousness has no idea how. For me, that's what's so amazing about neural networks! If you could ask an individual neuron why their f(x) is the way it is, they probably would only be able to tell you that "that gets the result the brain wants". They're like individual computer…

I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

> I wonder why we don't have several conscious thoughts at once.

This is something that can happen via psychedelics or meditation. I don't know of any way to predictably induce it though.

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