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Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

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Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they exempt from being garbage?

They are exempt from what they attribute to their lower-order siblings. When someone makes such a statement in a coversation, that should be the implicit charitable interpretation, so much so, that your kind of statement is uncharitable/disingenuous.

I think they are being funny - at least, their comments make me laugh, and it would be difficult to interpret the comment about higher order statements 'stooping' in a serious or literal context.

Neat side topic though

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote your comment twice. Based on my observation how a childhood friend of mine was treated for a psychiatric condition I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry. It essentially comes down to "hey, try this, are you better or worse, worse? Try something else. Better, have more of it". All the th…

> I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry. Discounting an entire field of science like this, based on a second-hand observations, is exactly the kind of hubris the parent comment was talking about: There’s something about psychiatry and neuroscience that makes a lot of people who are good at engineering/softwa…

Psychiatry has a long history of being absolutely sure that this time, they have it right, then doing something hideous, and then moving on. No, no, this time, we have it right. If you want hubris, look to psychiatry. Nobel Prize for lobotomy in 1949, two decades later that is over with. Not to mention its relentless collusion with governments local and larger.

Sure, science progresses. As well it should. But psychiatry occupies a particular corner of a square with self-certainty on one axis and "how much could you really know about that topic" on the other.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could upvote your comment twice. Based on my observation how a childhood friend of mine was treated for a psychiatric condition I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry. It essentially comes down to "hey, try this, are you better or worse, worse? Try something else. Better, have more of it". All the th…

> I think all of the "science" of using drugs to treat mental issues is at the level of advancement comparable to medieval blacksmiths doing dentistry. Discounting an entire field of science like this, based on a second-hand observations, is exactly the kind of hubris the parent comment was talking about: There’s something about psychiatry and neuroscience that makes a lot of people who are good at engineering/softwa…

Think you're tilting at windmills friend. You've described the same situation they did, just in esteemed tones.

I think most folks expectation is that since we know so much about so many things that our level of understanding about the brain and psychiatric treatment is more advanced than it is, who are then surprised to find out that some (all?) treatments are basically just modifying the behavior of a messenger chemical across the whole of the brain.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#234
As someone in the pharmacy field, I would advise anyone against messing with the serotonergic pathway without knowing what they're doing. Serotonin serotonin syndrome can wreck you and complete recovery can take. Especially taking high doses of serotonin booster while consuming foods high in tyramine. Avoid quack pseudo-health care advices and supplements.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments. They are definitely not. Anecdotes aside, psychedelics are extremely overhyped right now and the downsides are heavily downplayed online. The studies about psychedelics and depression use heavy amounts of therapy and careful professional guidance, which the at-home experimenters don’t get. Psychedelics…

Are you affiliated with the drug industry in some way? I can't imagine anyone else saying all this.

Everything that poster said is true. And I am pro-psychedelics.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are easier to achieve than before. All of them. Just do it. Work pressure? Work less and push back if you need to, there's an abundance of easy jobs. Processed foods? Eat whole foods. Screen time? Use less screen. Borked dating scene? Not at all, work on yourself. Abundance of crap jobs? That means easy to get 1 or 2 of them and just coast a bit while working on self. People complain too much.

Yes. Also: Depressed? Just be cheerful. Alcoholic? Just quit drinking. Your city is breaking down? Just move elsewhere. Kids keep you up at night? Just give them away. Terminal illness? Just get well.

> Depressed? Just be cheerful.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy exists and is known to be a first step towards recovery.

> Alcoholic? Just quit drinking.

Yes. See Albert Bandura in 2007 in study on Addictive Behaviors. Or after that, I was just reading this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3179802/

> Your city is breaking down? Just move elsewhere.

Yes, or fix it. Or don't contribute to the break down, especially not by speaking negative or toxic things when one can otherwise just be quiet and let the people fixing things fix things.

> Kids keep you up at night? Just give them away.

Discipline them, or figure out bed-time strategy? Can't help on this one tbh since I don't have kids of my own.

> Terminal illness? Just get well.

This just comes across as a last-ditch effort to try to prove me wrong lol

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#237

Something in our industrial processes must be screwing with people's serotonin levels because Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments. I personally suffer from IBS, migraines, sleeping problems, and mood swings, if I haven't taken a dose of psychedelics in the last 6 months. Now, getting regular exercise, eating well, staying hydrated, sleeping…

> Something in our industrial processes must be screwing with people's serotonin levels because Psychedelics and other serotenergic drugs are becoming the defacto treatment method for a whole host of ailments. This is a comically bad inference. P1: We have ailments that can be treated with class X of drugs that act on body process Y P2: We increasingly use those drugs Conclusion: Z is messing with body process Y

> This is a comically bad inference.

Try to respond to the content of the post.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#238
post #157
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing thing about tech-people and especially developer and related is that they are expected to and required to grasp an understanding of other people’s professions in order provide products/services. So I would actually expect tech-people to be able to talk reasonably about non -tech areas and to be quite happy to be corrected when they are way off the track..

Nah, they think they understand, and run with an under-informed opinion on something they have no to little real-world experience with until they've replaced the client's original concerns with something that's oversimplified for the sake of shoving into this or that software architecture pattern. There are of course trans-disciplinary efforts done right but those take orders of magnitude more time than your typical…

“those who ask for software tend to ask for extremely simple workflow-helper type stuff rather than domain-expert-amplifier type stuff”

I was a HS English teacher for about ten years before moving into tech, and this reality was a source of frequent frustration with (most/almost all) new ed-tech offerings. There are enough practical constraints on instruction quality that amplification tools would be welcome; however, improving educational quality through improving instrumental performance does not appear to be a notable focus.

FWIW: I believe the low hanging fruit begins with assessment.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#239
post #73

I’ll probably be downvoted for pointing this out but I feel like it’s important. 90% of the comments at the time of my posting this are great examples of the logical fallacy a lot of intelligent people fall into where they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own. This would be the same error in judgment that’s turned the noot…

> they think their intelligence in one area means they’re qualified to make assessments or reach conclusions in fields outside of their own. This would be the same error in judgment that’s turned the nootropic and longevity industries into billion dollar ones.

I agree there are a lot of know-it-alls here, but I don't believe this is why quackery sells or even that anyone on here makes up a meaningful share of their business. Nobody cares or listens to this bunch of nerds shouting into the void, not even themselves.

Bringing intelligence into this is a red herring. It sells because people are willing to take a risk on what seems like a shortcut to better health. Irrational decisions like this are not correlated with intelligence, and here we are overthinking it.

Re: Serotonin booster leads to increased functional brain connectivity

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health podcast industry is making this problem even worse. Many people consume content like Huberman’s podcast and assume he’s an expert because he speaks so confidently and at such lengths. Yet Huberman’s podcasts are well known to contain a lot of errors on very basic concepts and extreme exaggerations. He appears to well-versed in topics related to his domain of study, albeit with exaggerations of his findings…

> Yet Huberman’s podcasts are well known to contain a lot of errors on very basic concepts and extreme exaggerations Is there a list?

I, too, am interested in reading the critiques. He seems to pepper much of his podcasts with YMMVs and ”case by case” knowing full well that there is no “one size fits all” or panaceas.
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