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Too much serendipity

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Re: Too much serendipity

#101

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

scotty79 wrote: post #97
GolfPopper wrote: post #42

Sucralose and aspartame are both reliable migraine triggers for me, and have been at least since my early 20s. Stevia and monkfruit are fine. The only other even semi-consistent migraine trigger for me is alcohol. I've successfully avoided migraines for years by carefully avoiding sucralose and aspartame (and drinking little to no alcohol), but even a small serving of something "sugar-free" and within a few hours I'l…

I think I've read somewhere that drop in blood glucose can cause headaches. Maybe sweetners trick your body into releasing a lot of insuline to deal with "sugar" but there's no new sugar in your blood so glucose level drops giving you a headache? Just a theory but you could test it by monitoring glucose after ingesting something with sweetner. According to this theory ingesting sweetner together with sugar should cau…

> drop in blood glucose can cause headaches

My anecdotal experience is that this is true. I can often (but not always) subvert a looming headache by eating something sweet. Yogurt in particularly is remarkably effective.

Re: Too much serendipity

#102

Post by jdewerd »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #64
jdewerd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there may be quantum effects involved Quantum Mechanics is why atoms and molecules exist and form bonds. QM is the physics of chemistry. Without QM, chemistry does not happen. The universe would just be a big churning mess of particles and you would never get little lego pieces that snap together according to repeatable rules that, when repeated, form macroscopic substances of innumerable description up to and incl…

I would say everyone understands that "quantum effects" refers to situations in which classical approximations break down. Likewise when we say "numerical issues", it's understood that we're talking about situations in which the usual approximation of real numbers by floating point representations breaks down. "Disk corruption" doesn't necessarily mean anything is physically wrong with the disk, only that its content…

The numerical version of this sin is

    typedef float real;
which promotes a similar confusion of concepts, even if the true meaning is understood by experts.

That said, I think the QM/not QM lingo from the molecular dynamics community is considerably worse because it stokes a common misunderstanding: that the universe runs on classical mechanics except in lasers, particle accelerators, and other "exotic circumstances." By contrast, nobody thinks that the universe runs on float32s except in lasers and spaceships where it runs on float64s. Where confusion does not exist, we do not need to fight it, but where it does, we should probably try.

Re: Too much serendipity

#103

Post by arde »

Sesse__ wrote: post #61
perfectritone wrote: post #18

I'm left curious as to why our taste receptors are so attuned to sweetness if high sugar foods weren't historically correlated with being high in energy.

If nothing else: It's certainly useful that mother's milk tastes good to babies. Imagine what an evolutionary disadvantage it would be if it tasted bitter.

To make it explicit for those who haven't tasted it, mother's milk tastes distinctly sweet (literally), in a way cow milk does not.

So yeah, there's a probable purpose for sweet receptors. An interesting question is whether seeking sweet foods in modern adult life, which would probably not have been available in our evolution, guides us to a healthy diet.

Re: Too much serendipity

#104

Post by swyx »

pontifier wrote: post #93
swyx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you use chatgpt to search for it? i have been searching for a science fiction short story i read ~25 years ago - it was in a short story anthology book, probably not very famous because i've tried to plug it in and got nothing. --- synopsis (since its a beautiful story and i may as well share it in case someone else here has read it and/or can prompt engineer chatgpt better than me): - Humanity reached abundan…

Read this a long time ago, then re-read it a couple of years ago. They called the pods "stoners" and it made me laugh. Can't remember the name though. It must have been in a collection of short stories. Edit... Found it for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On...

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On...

THANK YOU. LITERALLY BEEN HUNTING FOR THIS FOR YEARS AND HN REPLIED IN 4 HOURS WOW

also interesting to see how many details i hallucinated, but i kept the core premise intact haha

Re: Too much serendipity

#105

Post by treyfitty »

Is it just me, or is this article way too contrived and all over the place? I grok'd the article because of its high engagement in HN, but I just could not find the point of this article, nor the value of it.

I am asking this question genuinely because I have been told that I am unable to "read between the lines" and that I am considered "transactional" in nature where I need things spelled out for me. I don't necessarily agree with this assessment... could it be that I'm not capable of extracting the content "between the lines?"

Re: Too much serendipity

#106

Post by swyx »

swyx wrote: post #104
pontifier wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read this a long time ago, then re-read it a couple of years ago. They called the pods "stoners" and it made me laugh. Can't remember the name though. It must have been in a collection of short stories. Edit... Found it for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On...

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sliced-Crosswise_Only-On ... THANK YOU. LITERALLY BEEN HUNTING FOR THIS FOR YEARS AND HN REPLIED IN 4 HOURS WOW also interesting to see how many details i hallucinated, but i kept the core premise intact haha

published my takes: https://github.com/swyxio/swyxdotio/issues/502

also found the anthology i got it from: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?264622

Publication: The SF Collection Editor: Edel Brosnan Date: 1994-08-00 ISBN: 1-85152-317-0 [978-1-85152-317-7]

exactly 30 years ago now. time flies.

Re: Too much serendipity

#107

Post by DontchaKnowit »

johngossman wrote: post #25

I recently learned that anesthesia is the same. Not only has no anesthesia ever been developed except through "serendipity." Not only that, but anesthesia that works for humans also effect a wide range of things including plants and bacteria. But why is an active area of research. There are even speculations that there may be quantum effects involved. Biology and chemistry are insanely complex.

I belive methoxetamine could be considered an anesthetic and it was invented expressly for the purpose of mimicing the effects of ketamine at a lower dosage threshold to avoid the ketamine associated bladder damage.

I believe the chemist was an amputee as a result of a terrorist attack and spent his life wirking to develop an analgesic as effective as ketamine for nerve pain without the side affects.

mxe was a very beloved "researcg chemical" (read:designer drug) prior to like 2016 when supply dried up.

Re: Too much serendipity

#108

Post by hinkley »

doubled112 wrote: post #24
hinkley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we ever figure out that aspens and willows have aspirin analogs in their bark? Boredom? Starvation food? Psychedelic mushrooms make sense. You see it, you eat it. Willow bark tea is a whole process.

Makes you wonder about tobacco. Hey, all the bugs that are eating that plant are dying. Let's see what happens if we smoke it.

The cool thing about tea leaves is that the caffeine is stored in crystals that are not particularly soluble. There's an organelle that contains an enzyme that breaks the crystals down into a soluble form.

There are a couple varieties of tea that are actually fermented, but for most teas it's a misnomer. You aren't causing fermentation, just autolysis (latin: self digestion), which is more akin to the malting phase of beer production. Black tea is left to process longer, while green tea is interrupted sooner. The switch is turned on by bruising the leaves, and off by desiccating them.

From a caterpillar's perspective, a tea leaf is booby trapped. Waiting for mandibles to mix the ingredients and create the insecticide.

Re: Too much serendipity

#109

Post by hinkley »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #33
hinkley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did we ever figure out that aspens and willows have aspirin analogs in their bark? Boredom? Starvation food? Psychedelic mushrooms make sense. You see it, you eat it. Willow bark tea is a whole process.

Back in the day people made tea out of anything they could get their hands on that wasn't outright poisonous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal_tea#Varieties Also, if you're in constant pain you'll try all kinds of random stuff to make the pain go away. If necessity is the mother of invention then desperation is its father.

Tea and beer are pathogen-depleted and so it makes a ton of sense that they were both imbibed 'to excess'.

History of the World in Six Glasses claims that tea and coffee more or less caused the enlightenment. One, it stopped day drinking by the intellectual class. And two, they were foil for socialization.

Re: Too much serendipity

#110

Post by hinkley »

nerdponx wrote: post #74
neuromanser wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like: This plant has no insect parasites, it must be special somehow, let's try and use it in different, increasingly "close approach" ways. I mean, humans must have figured quite early that on average, inhaling smoke of a poisonous plant has a fraction of the effect of chewing the same. Someone gets really sick after chewing some leaves, their family burns the rest of the "crop" and they get high.

It seems likely to me that any form of smoking was discovered incidentally by burning stuff that smelled nice, repelled bugs, repelled evil spirits, etc. and happening to inhale some of the smoke.

Most likely.

For mushrooms it was probably desperation, but my head cannon for mushrooms is Trial by Mushroom: You can be expelled from our community for stealing, or you can eat this mushroom and if you survive, you get to stay.

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