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

quantamagazine.org

131–140 of 233 posts

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

#131

Gut health is absolutely linked to mental health. Besides actual scientific research that backs this up, I didn’t really get my mental health under control until I took care of my gut issues like IBS and stuff. Also avoiding certain foods, not gluten obviously that’s a crock of shit, but things that obviously don’t work with my body like cream sauces or whatever

> not gluten obviously that’s a crock of shit

Not really. Gluten makes me ill. I thought it was just the supermarket type bread so I bought my own bread maker.

Still hell.

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

#132

There was something about the vegus nerve being influenced by gut microbiota so it's also the parasympathetic not just the enteric nervous system but this is all hard to study I subscribed to u-Boime for a couple of years until that imploded spectacularly and the few snapshots I had are not enough of a sample size this whole field is so data poor and uncertain.

I almost ran out of breath at the end there

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

#133

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.

No problem, biology is so complex and vast, we're all gonna have differences. Thanks for replying.

God I wish all internet discussion was like this

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

#135
This should be taken into account when researching the health effects of coffee. I can drink about as much tea as fits into my stomach without too many mental effects, but coffee (or lack thereof) has strong effects. Just caffeine cannot explain this.

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

#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) probably do as well.

Now to model a human brain, you need to model an entire human, along with all the complexity of the microbiota, interactions of the organs with the environment... it all just falls apart.

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

#138

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…

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 I think for such an entity we may be closer to emerging than we like, especially if it can traverse whole internet including this comment and make summaries out of it out of reach to mere mortals.

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

#139

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 full complexity of the gut.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a high metabolism but a low desire to eat sometimes. I force myself to eat three meals a day. Could be a mental problem I don't know. But my point here was that I feel the complete opposite to this.

You should get into weightlifting.

I do and I do get stuff like OP, overeating for weightlifters that aren't professionals is stupid really long term strategy, you just expose your body to much more toxins in food and degrade whole body faster (without even going into supplements part).

Ie today I skipped breakfast since I was too busy with work and kids, no ill effect mentally. But if for example my wife would do the same, her sugar levels would drop low and she would be easily irritable, and generally would suffer quite a bit.

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