Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

pnas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 200 posts

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#121

Post by kzrdude »

o10449366 wrote: post #84
johnchristopher wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. Hope I am not out of bond but I think this demonstrates why a moral code also has to be an intellectual thing and not just an instinct thing.

I agree and for me it is, but what I learned from that experience is how powerful and influential our emotional state is. It really made me feel like a psychopath at times because I would understand how I "should" feel or do in a given situation, but without a strong emotional signal it felt like it didn't matter what choices I made.

I think you learned something really profound (you could use it to understand others or why people even accept acting without conscience sometimes), thank you for sharing, too.

Tangentially related - I had the experience - from being in a depression - of empathizing more with people down on their luck, people who are chronically grumpy or unlikable etc, or maybe those that are afraid of unknown people. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it made me see different sides of the human experience and I got out alive.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#122

Post by sneak »

johnchristopher wrote: post #47
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(Just my personal, anecdotal experience - I have strong family history of depression and anxiety on both sides of my family and it's something that's afflicted me since I was a teenager.) I will be extremely hesitant to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications ever again after my last experience with them. For me, the medications helped by tempering all of my feelings - I no longer felt sad or anxious, inste…

> My moral code was compromised because I no longer felt the guilt and shame that normally inhibits unscrupulous behavior. Hope I am not out of bond but I think this demonstrates why a moral code also has to be an intellectual thing and not just an instinct thing.

Morals are about as far from instinct as one can get. They're also entirely subjective, fwiw.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#124

Post by neuro_image2 »

I strongly encourage anyone reading this to watch Dr Ben Sessa's lecture on using MDMA to treat addiction and trauma.

https://youtu.be/11u7iX4j1tA

The reality is, SSRIs and other pharmaceuticals that have been used to treat common psychiatric illnesses (anxiety/depression) have dismal outcomes and fail the vast majority of patients that they have been given to.

I'm optimistic that the next few decades will bring about better approaches to these massively underserved (and largely exploited and discarded) people.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#125

Post by xedrac »

rjh29 wrote: post #69
o10449366 wrote: post #3

(Just my personal, anecdotal experience - I have strong family history of depression and anxiety on both sides of my family and it's something that's afflicted me since I was a teenager.) I will be extremely hesitant to take antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications ever again after my last experience with them. For me, the medications helped by tempering all of my feelings - I no longer felt sad or anxious, inste…

Anecdotally I had the same response. I found they helped anxiety a lot, but did not help depression as I just felt even more disconnected and apathetic to things. What helped me was switching away from a first-line SSRI and onto something a bit more niche: Mirtazapine. It's definitely worth trying a variety of SSRIs because everyone is different and it's really common for the first one or two that you try to not work…

Mirtazapine worked wonders for me... for about 2 weeks. After that it seemed to have no effect at all, except for extreme constipation.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#126

Post by bdowling »

foverzar wrote: post #39
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is value to medications that inhibit or regulate serotonin, and every individual's experience will be slightly different based on their genetics and the circumstances of their life. Not just slightly different. It can be extremely variable from person to person. It’s well-known in medical research and clinical practice that medications likes SSRIs range from helpful to neutral to net negatives depending on th…

These medications don't really address your condition, but rather just treat symptoms. IMO, the fear is not really about short-term negatives, but about it turning into drug abuse, without actually tackling the root cause. Such drugs should only be used in extreme cases.

A cast doesn't address the cause of a broken arm. Should we only use casts in extreme cases?

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#127

Post by PragmaticPulp »

skellera wrote: post #114
meiji163 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your source for your last point has the conclusion of: “Although these biases did not significantly inflate estimates of drug efficacy, reporting biases led to significant increases in the number of positive findings in the literature.” Which is literally the opposite of what you’re citing on efficacy.

This person’s citations don’t agree with their claims at all. It’s disappointing that the comment was so highly upvoted when it was so obviously falsified.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#128

Post by willhinsa »

neuro_image2 wrote: post #124

I strongly encourage anyone reading this to watch Dr Ben Sessa's lecture on using MDMA to treat addiction and trauma. https://youtu.be/11u7iX4j1tA The reality is, SSRIs and other pharmaceuticals that have been used to treat common psychiatric illnesses (anxiety/depression) have dismal outcomes and fail the vast majority of patients that they have been given to. I'm optimistic that the next few decades will bring abou…

I’ve suffered from depression for 20 years with no relief from many different traditional antidepressant medications and many different modalities of therapy. I received my first MDMA therapy treatment in October of last year. It changed my life. It is the most important thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

It feels like I’m feeling emotions for the first time in my life. I had completely lost hope for any kind of improvement in my symptoms, until this. I am so, so thankful I found this, and am so glad that it will (most likely) be becoming legal for use in treatment outside clinical trials in the very near future. So many lives will change for the better. For the first time in a long time, I’m excited to wake up and ring in each new day.

Cheers, Will

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#129

Post by vasco »

twofornone wrote: post #107
thelittleone wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My theory is this was because of some adverse childhood events I experienced, that seemed to change something in me. Have you considered some sort of regression therapy such as hypnotherapy or if more adventurous, plant medicine? I sat next to a pretty senior FBI guy on a domestic US flight once. He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about wha…

>He was a hypnotherapist who claimed that in almost all cases they were able to use hypnosis to get information about what happened even if the conscious person was completely unable to recall any details. There's no guarantee that the information they received was true. I imagine hypnosis is in the same category as lie detectors with respect to its...interpretability.

It's also a very convenient thing for the FBI to have you believe I guess.

Re: Serotonin selectively influences moral judgment and behavior

#130

Post by GuB-42 »

zwkrt wrote: post #90
symlinkk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it brings up uncomfortable questions about free will. Like “why did he murder that guy? did he choose to do it or did the chemicals in his brain force him to?”

“Your honor, I claim that the real culprit here is the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe at the Big Bang.”

Unfortunately for you the same laws of physics and initial conditions created prisons and you are about to get entangled.
Post reply on HN