11–20 of 110 posts
I loved the writing but I don't get the point or the title. Am I supposed to infer some sort of conspiracy theory? or is it just supposed to be funny?
Ultimately, we experience tastes thanks to chemical receptors on the tongue, and as long as a substance triggers those receptors we experience a certain taste.
Now of course if triggering needs a very very specific combination of atoms, then it is not very probable, but we know especially from drug research that you can use similarities in molecular structure or sometimes in say the electron cloud of the molecule to perform this triggering. Caffeine for eg is a selective adenosine antagonist that fools the body and binds to adenosine receptors. Now of course int the case of caffeine the structures are somewhat similar, but you could imagine similar stuff happening with other molecules too
If you think of it as that sort of problem, it's not that surprising that many different types of molecules might achieve the same effect.
but please don't ask about what exactly they're cooking too much, keep the discussion on the how they are cooking it hahahha
I think it feels serendipitous only if you think of "sweet" taste (or for that matter any taste) as occurring in this giant continuum of tastes where hitting a specific spot on that continuum is probabilistically impossible. Ultimately, we experience tastes thanks to chemical receptors on the tongue, and as long as a substance triggers those receptors we experience a certain taste. Now of course if triggering needs a…
What a fabulous analysis! The serendipity is remarkably high! I suppose penicillin might be a good addition to the list of powerful compounds discovered by happenstance? Does this mean that innovation is basically a brute force calculation? Humans simply trying permutations until something hits?
AI has been an idea for decades. It wasn’t until transformers in the last few years we had big gains.
Google and giant institutions focus on fiat revenue stability over the long term, in line with political ideology. Few big ideas come out of that. I think what Adam Smith is said to have written applies; division of labor taken to the extreme will result in humans dumber than the lowest animal.
We iterated on our current political system over the Boomers lives. Next generations are tired of the threat of brute force from the elders who the kids now see as in no position to back up those threats given their age. They’re abandoning norms of the last 30-40 years, which IMO, is enabled by abandonment of thousands of years of obligation to preserve religion.
There are shorter iterative periods too; 15 years ago comic movies went crazy with Iron Man, iPhone blew up; now we’re iterating on AI generated content and spatial headsets. 15 years prior (with some wiggle room for margin of error) “information super highway” was coming.
On the shorter scales there seems to a pattern of 3-5 year warmup and 7-10 year plateau, with a cooldown of 2-3 years as the masses lose interest. This aligns with neuroscience experiments that show our brains devalue old patterns after roughly 15 years.
Generational churn and lack of generalized sense of obligation to the past (via abandonment of religious buy in by westerners) could free the future to live in cycles that align with scientific measurement versus obligation to be parrots that recite past memes.
What a fabulous analysis! The serendipity is remarkably high! I suppose penicillin might be a good addition to the list of powerful compounds discovered by happenstance? Does this mean that innovation is basically a brute force calculation? Humans simply trying permutations until something hits?
Psychedelic mushrooms make sense. You see it, you eat it. Willow bark tea is a whole process.
What a fabulous analysis! The serendipity is remarkably high! I suppose penicillin might be a good addition to the list of powerful compounds discovered by happenstance? Does this mean that innovation is basically a brute force calculation? Humans simply trying permutations until something hits?
Considering how we all seem to be the product of millions of years of hit-or-miss natural selection, it feels almost natural that our advancements have also had a great deal of luck/improbability.
But we also keep pushing back earliest dates for precursors to civilization, I start to wonder if maybe there aren't graveyards of people who couldn't distinguish thymol from ethanol and selected themselves out of human history via acute liver failure.