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In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

quantamagazine.org

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Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#191

Post by gcanyon »

jb1991 wrote: post #152
fphhotchips wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isn't the case for me. I don't wake up when I skip breakfast, and if I don't eat throughout the day, I invariably end up exhausted by 3pm only to wake right up 45 minutes after dinner. I don't doubt your experience, but I certainly don't share it.

What kind of exercise do you get?

I’m not OP, but:

1. Food intake varies for me, but generally I don’t eat until noon, or sometimes even until 6pm. I generally don’t force this; I’m hungry right now, I’ll often eat right now. 2. (1) has been the case for years, both when exercising regularly and when not. Right now I happen to be exercising regularly. On Saturday I woke up feeling good, so I drank some water and got on the rowing machine to do a half marathon. That was with no food since the evening before, and no water during — it took 1:45, which is a moderate pace for me. After that I still wasn’t very hungry.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#192

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

thenerdhead wrote: post #171
rramadass wrote: post #38

See also: 1) The Second Brain by Michael Gershon. 2) Gut: The Inside Story Of Our Body's Most Under-Rated Organ by Julia Enders.

And “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Wong.

I think you meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Yong ?

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#193

Post by kagakuninja »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #148
saiya-jin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you are probably right, but generally I don't get why AGI needs to be 100% mimicking every aspect of human, just better/faster. Like proverbial skynet can have extreme excellence in one/few aspect of general intelligence but can be muted to almost 0 on everything else, say emotions, yet still be falling into AGI behavior and could take over the world. It doesn't need to simulate gut interactions to get there. And…

> And I think for such an entity we may be closer to emerging than we like Why are people talking about it as if it was a bad thing? If I listen to people everyone seems to be dissatisfied with their life as of now, due to work, politics, society and everything else. If AGI was to arrive it would potentially remove those frustrations, right.

We are already facing an AI apocalypse with the primitive tech we have now. AGI will only be worse for humanity.

Our current AI tech is built by and for giant corporations and governments (many of which are dystopian). AI will simply accelerate the vast divide between the haves and the have-nots.

AI is being used to increase profits of corporations, with no concern for the rest of us. AI will allow the elites to rule with fewer messy humans in the loop, who may disobey orders or have sympathy for their fellow humans. AI will blur the distinction between truth and lies, enabling dystopian regimes undreamt of by writers like Orwell. AI will provide a vast toolset for criminals as well.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#194

Post by felixyz »

Balgair wrote: post #181
belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get prett…

Regular, reasonable person here.

> Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop.

This is completely unwarranted judging from the rest of your post ("in the very infancy", "nearly completely unknown", "mostly in the dark", "haven't the foggiest idea"; although I appreciate the frankness).

If people made bold statements like "There is no such thing as X" in any other field at a similar stage of development, their claims would be rightly dismissed as pseudoscience. ("There is no such thing as a graviton. Full stop.")

Your claim is not a finding of your field of expertise, or any other branch of science. It's metaphysical belief. You're entitled to it. It's a widely shared belief. It might be a belief with a lot going for it. Metaphysical claims are fun! They can be discussed! But I wish people wouldn't confuse them with scientific knowledge.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#195

Post by ericmcer »

belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

Did you read the article? The gut "brain" can just perform it's own functionality independent of the brain. If anything the article raises the concept that organs can function without being regulated by the brain, which would mean the brains purpose is less to regulate the body and is specifically just for performing computations (and doing whatever consciousness is).

If I am doing math my skin is not being leveraged to help out.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#196

Post by InSteady »

felixyz wrote: post #194
Balgair wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get prett…

Regular, reasonable person here. > Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. This is completely unwarranted judging from the rest of your post ("in the very infancy", "nearly completely unknown", "mostly in the dark", "haven't the foggiest idea"; although I appreciate the frankness). If people made bold statements like "There is no such thing as X" in any other field at a similar stage of developm…

I gather that there are two (somewhat related) definitions of mind-body duality:

1. mental phenomena are not physical

2. the mind and body are distinct and separable

Neither of these claims are supported by modern science in any meaningful way. It is perfectly reasonable to say that mind-body duality has been disproven by science, insofar as it is reasonable to say anything has been disproven by science. Just because neuroscience is still in its infancy doesn't mean there can be no established foundations of the discipline. These foundations may turn out to be wrong or incomplete, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#197

Post by wredue »

felixyz wrote: post #194
Balgair wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get prett…

Regular, reasonable person here. > Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. This is completely unwarranted judging from the rest of your post ("in the very infancy", "nearly completely unknown", "mostly in the dark", "haven't the foggiest idea"; although I appreciate the frankness). If people made bold statements like "There is no such thing as X" in any other field at a similar stage of developm…

I took it as them dispelling the notion of metaphysical nonsense, not unlike how space and time are talked about as spacetime.

Not that it matters all that much. Every single test ever performed looking for a mind absent a body has conclusively, and unquestioningly failed. There are even large bounties available for showing a single successful test which have yet to be claimed.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#198

Post by wredue »

armada651 wrote: post #139
belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

"your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" It still is though, you will reach human intelligence by just modeling the brain. The problem is that you probably won't reach an emotionally stable human since you'll be missing all the emotional/hormonal signaling that comes from the rest of the body, but we can emulate that without having to model the fu…

“Just” is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting here.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#199

Post by BadCookie »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #190
BadCookie wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to experience pleasure and pain seems important. If we’re just input/output mechanisms, then why would killing somebody even matter?

What do you mean by matter? As species most of us developed bias to not killing because we have better odds of surviving if we work together.

I assume that it would “matter” to you if somebody shot up a class of kindergarteners at your local elementary school. That’s what I mean by “matter.”

Maybe you are right and we’re all just selfish and driven by our own desire to survive, but why does it matter to you if you survive if you are just an input/output mechanism? My computer doesn’t care if it gets crushed to bits (I assume).

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#200

Post by dimal »

felixyz wrote: post #194
Balgair wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get prett…

Regular, reasonable person here. > Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. This is completely unwarranted judging from the rest of your post ("in the very infancy", "nearly completely unknown", "mostly in the dark", "haven't the foggiest idea"; although I appreciate the frankness). If people made bold statements like "There is no such thing as X" in any other field at a similar stage of developm…

Would you say there’s a gut/body duality then? Or a fascia/body duality? Understanding of the gut and fascia are also in their infancy. We barely knew anything about the gut microbiome until a decade or two ago. Up until about a decade and a half ago, when doctors dissected cadavers, they simply threw out the fascia. Now we know it’s got more nerve endings than the eyes.

We’re in the infancy of understanding the human body, period. But why does that imply a mind/body duality? One thing that’s clear is that everything is interconnected, and I think that much is clear from the comment.

The whole idea of a mind/body duality is a historical artifact. If someone wants to argue that there is a duality, then I think the onus is on them to prove it exists, not the other way around.

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