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all 19 comments

[–]nealpert 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I remember when LessWrong was young. Excellent times.

Just as a conversation, how about that last season of Fringe? Where the Observers from the future had an increased mental capability as a result of removing emotions? It was based on a fictitious paper that said intelligence could be increased by removing an emotion and extended out to the extreme.

I'd gladly give up some emotions above a threshold, say anxiety that extends beyond the capacity to problem solve, for increased brain power in some form. I think Abrams or whomever may have been inspired by mindfulness meditators for that bit but who knows.

[–]Debonaire_Death -1 points0 points  (14 children)

This post is largely built on quotes from artists, literature, and analogies. I don't see any scientific acumen brandished anywhere. An essay for a college arts major prompt, perhaps?

As it is, this doesn't incite my worry in the least: as the author states, these drugs don't work miracles. We shouldn't expect something that doesn't work miracles to damn us, either.

Most of the major benefits of nootropics only come if one stringently follows a lifestyle designed to optimize the brain. I do this and have seen great benefits and improvements, but the biggest ones have been from daily exercise and good diet. I respond much better to nootropics because of it, but it is these lifestyle choices that make the foundation of what success I've had, and as far as I know, what makes my foundation has only been proven to ensure an active, healthy life.

[–]gwerngwern.net 9 points10 points  (1 child)

This post is largely built on quotes from artists, literature, and analogies. I don't see any scientific acumen brandished anywhere.

Really? Let me put it in a simple numeric way, there's 81 links - which are PDFs. There are even more citations than that. (My essay has many flaws but not discussing scientific research is not one of them.)

[–]Debonaire_Death 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My apologies, I didn't read your essay as deeply, or as fully, as I should have before making such comments. It is an extremely long composition that takes on drastically different tones throughout: I had ascribed a misapprehended nature to it overall.

You explore some interesting points. I dearly wish you hadn't decided to base the overall framework on literary references when discussing such a scientific topic, though; it doesn't lend the rhetorical verve I think you were shooting for. As you may have seen in some of the many works you cite, the scientific community esteems it when the facts and logic are the foremost players in a work.

I went through some segments of this in greater detail and my interest is piqued. I didn't realize you were approaching the argument from every angle, and beginning it with a point of view I disdain didn't encourage me to continue reading and/or suspend judgement.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (10 children)

I fully agree with this!

In addition the article quotes mother nature knows best, which is a really bad joke for anyone who had either evolution 101( Nature works based on the factors of selection, whuch can differ extremely in any place for any organism etc. ) or anyobe who ever visited a hospital. Cancer, auto-immune disease Nature knows best! Just a stupid phrase, nothing more.

[–]gwerngwern.net 4 points5 points  (8 children)

Cancer, auto-immune disease Nature knows best! Just a stupid phrase, nothing more.

Think some more about that claim. Humans have yet to build better cells which are not susceptible to cancer, nor have they invented immune systems which never cause auto-immune disorders while still winning the Red Queen race with parasites and invaders. Yes, they don't work all the time... but the alternatives, as the quip goes about democracy and aging, are even worse.

or anyobe who ever visited a hospital.

'Just a stupid phrase, nothing more.'

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (7 children)

Humans have defeated lots of illnesses, okay to be fair nature gave us the brain to do so. But nature is extremely inefficient it does not work scalingly economic, it used to be good some thousand years ago. But natural advance is slow even in virions and bacteria, and those are the fastest to evolve.

We need hospitals to counter the many weaknesses nature has, or our nature/genetics have. So I think it is a tad bit more than just a phrase :D

The Red-Queen hypothesis is a good example of why nature is bad to rely own. Why try to outrace the parasite if u could try to elimate its existence etc. Nature does no calculation it is a semi-blind process without a hard feedback-loop nor a good controlling. This subreddit is a good example, a lot of pwople here try to combat their lack of something, I personally am here for enhancement. You cqn always get better and there are almost no bad means for that end.

Also so nobody gets me wrong I like nature as in biking outside, running outside and bird-sighting. I just think that evolution is sloooooowwwwwww and quite inefficient, even compared to our capability of organisation, even tho that relies on our capabilities given by evolution. But we already start to outrace it via technological means from hospital, to information systems etc.

Edit: I just realized that is your site init. Nature creates an abundance of inefficient processes ( it does create efficient ones as well ) that can not scale, hence I say Nature knows best is just wrong.

Edit2: Skimmed your site a bit it seems like we have way different interests so opinions are prone to collide. I just do maths, well and controlling nowadays because it pays. You seem to be more philosphical.

[–]gwerngwern.net 3 points4 points  (6 children)

But natural advance is slow even in virions and bacteria, and those are the fastest to evolve.

Those evolve really fast. Look at how fast antibiotics - the single greatest category of drugs ever invented by humans after vaccines - cause resistance. (And we didn't even invent most of those, we copied them from other plants or bacteria etc.)

But nature is extremely inefficient it does not work scalingly economic

Nature is very efficient economicly. You just don't appreciate the economy of the jungle, where there are no laws or judges or justice and everything is permitted if it is adaptive.

"Again and again, I've undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn't have been a Nash equilibrium."

We need hospitals to counter the many weaknesses nature has, or our nature/genetics have. So I think it is a tad bit more than just a phrase :D

And how many people do hospitals kill every year? How much of the medical system is simply waste or harm? (I have seen claims that for almost all of recorded history, ie. up to ~1900, medicine caused net harm. Thinking about stuff like antiseptics and leeches... it's hard to disagree. If it takes ~5000 years just to break-even, that seems like a compelling case that biology is uniquely hard compared to other fields of endeavour; no one argues that iron knives only started being better than sharp rocks or chipped-stone knives by 1900!)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Not quite sure if scalingly economic is the correct term in English, but it means that your economical productivity scales linearly on or even increases when you use more power. And nature sucks at that. Deboinare posted a good link how even photosynthesis is very inefficient despite having millions uponm illions of years time to become better. For selection to work properly, that means to become a race for efficiency you need hard competition, a thing which most living things tend to avoid by occupying niches etc. It is jot aboug me not appreciating its 'effectiveness' there simply is no big efficiency in nature. Compare the increase in industrial efficiency to how many years it takes a human to mature. Nature does not understand efficiency as it is merely, in this context, lots of chemical replicators that sonetimes have bugs, for good or worse, whose success depends on their sourroundings.

When will Bacteria become immune to benzyl-alcohol if they are so efficient at adapting?

You totally over-estimate evolution and its capabilities, we could permanently stop the process by using chemicals which no life form based on this planet could survive. Alternatively we could just radiate the place into oblivion. Nature created us, but we are already more capable than she will ever be. Because we, as the human race, stand supreme in our capability of the most important thing: Ending the existence of other life forms. In the end you can argue what we do is an extension of nature as we are products of that evolutionary process. But we are so much better than the rest, even though we yet have to depend on them.

Also if you really believe nature is efficient economically take some econ and controlling classes ( It is my job to value and classify efficiency, game-theory is quite sketchy because its mathematical modelling, you can not use a model outside of what it has been made for: thats a hint ). Efficiency is very hard to measure quantitative, but qualitative most products of nature except for humans do not scale very well, maybe ants, but we could terminate them as well.

Have read some of your essays, I must actually admit I like some of them, specially the ones about google.

[–]gwerngwern.net 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Not quite sure if scalingly economic is the correct term in English, but it means that your economical productivity scales linearly on or even increases when you use more power. And nature sucks at that.

I don't think you appreciated my point about Nash equilibriums and the jungle. Nature/Evolution is exceedingly good at what it does; humans can win substantially only when we want something different than Nature was optimizing for, we can steal its optimizations, or we can draw on techniques/materials/actions too exotic for Nature to have used itself. Scaling is not something which is especially relevant under conditions of eternal competition, survival of the fittest, and Nash equilibriums/ESS. It doesn't matter if you've come up with a neat solution if said neat solutions requires everyone to be selfless altruistic actors (same reason Communism does not work outside an ant hill).

Deboinare posted a good link how even photosynthesis is very inefficient despite having millions uponm illions of years time to become better.

That would be surprising, since I usually see photosynthesis cited as an example of efficiency. (How many billions of dollars and decades have gone into solar panels, with unlimited access to the most exotic elements and things like giant silicon crystals, so far? Has PWC even reached parity with chlorophyll yet?)

Compare the increase in industrial efficiency to how many years it takes a human to mature.

Build a human, or even a computer as energy-efficient as the brain, and then we'll talk about efficiency. Stamping out brass tacks in a factory is quite a different thing.

You totally over-estimate evolution and its capabilities, we could permanently stop the process by using chemicals which no life form based on this planet could survive. Alternatively we could just radiate the place into oblivion

No you can't. The proposals like cobalt-bombs wouldn't kill extremophiles like deep sea vents organisms, radiation-tolerant organisms, or organisms just too remote from the surface to be killed.

When will Bacteria become immune to benzyl-alcohol if they are so efficient at adapting?

I was under the impression benzyl alcohol was only really effective against gram-positive bacteria. (It's clearly not very dangerous to all sorts of other cells, such as the ones making up you and me...)

Also if you really believe nature is efficient economically take some econ and controlling classes

What makes you think I haven't?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Why I do think you havent is based on your essays and their topics I would put you somewhere between literature and philosophies ( and tons of self-taught stuff ). You also use the Nash-Equillibrium very liberal which indicates you havent took a mathematical modelling module, or you simply do not care to use condition parameters. I am extremely anti-communist but rejecting it via using the Nash-Equilibrium without explaining the condition parameters and why it would fit etc is quite weird. The broader a game theory concept is, the worse it usually is. Formulae are being developed to get a certain knowledge, given the current conditions.

True normal Ethanol is better than benzyl, benzyl just came to my mind first, well because we r in /r/nootropics.

Well I have forgot about extremophiles, fair enough. But enough radiation will still finish them by simply perforating them.

Thats just energy effieciency, which is fair enough, but does not scale. If you increase the Input, the only Output you increase, is the fat mass not brain power. Nature needed million of years to create that brain, even tho I am not a too big optimist on cumputer sciences ( read tgat as pessimist actually ) computers should overpower human brainpower in 50-100 years and the coding software will prolly be better than human coding. And that technological evolution is very young, despite many tries in the ancient world the last consecutive scientific boom maybe started around mid 18ths century as human labour became too costly and hence we had to use automation, which enables a faster and faster growth, so long as we can either increase its efficiency input if throughput.

Problem with non-scaling things is, if there is enough material for input they will get stomped down. I must admit though, that I place scaling efficiency as well as self-increasing efficiency above all others, by an extreme margin. So yes Nature is energy-efficient wherever there is enough competition for liveforms to require it. But it still does not scale at all, our computer have a bad scaling efficiency, but they scale at least. Hence in a certain amount of time we will eclipse nature. I seriously doubt I will see that in my lifetime, even tho I am early twenties.

[–]gwerngwern.net 2 points3 points  (2 children)

You also use the Nash-Equillibrium very liberal which indicates you havent took a mathematical modelling module, or you simply do not care to use condition parameters. I am extremely anti-communist but rejecting it via using the Nash-Equilibrium without explaining the condition parameters and why it would fit etc is quite weird. The broader a game theory concept is, the worse it usually is. Formulae are being developed to get a certain knowledge, given the current conditions.

What I like about Nash equilibriums and evolutionary stable strategies is that the concepts are very general and fruitful in any sort of evolutionary or natural setting, from alleles competing in a gene pool to predator-prey to social dynamics. I don't think I need to talk about 'condition parameters' to mention concepts like the prisoner's dilemma, where the particular pattern of payoff inequalities is very common, and you strike me as being overly pedantic on this topic.

But enough radiation will still finish them by simply perforating them.

'enough X will destroy something' could be said of many things, but that doesn't mean humans can do it. (Enough water will destroy all life by collapsing the earth into a black hole, but we would not say humans are in any danger of destroying all life this way.)

Thats just energy effieciency, which is fair enough, but does not scale. If you increase the Input, the only Output you increase, is the fat mass not brain power...Problem with non-scaling things is, if there is enough material for input they will get stomped down. I must admit though, that I place scaling efficiency as well as self-increasing efficiency above all others, by an extreme margin. So yes Nature is energy-efficient wherever there is enough competition for liveforms to require it. But it still does not scale at all, our computer have a bad scaling efficiency, but they scale at least. Hence in a certain amount of time we will eclipse nature. I seriously doubt I will see that in my lifetime, even tho I am early twenties.

I have no idea what you mean here. Energy-efficient chips would 'scale' to more computing power - you just use a lot of them.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Regarding the last part, I was just saying no scaling < the bit of scaling, we created with computers and the like. Whereas Nature does not scale, instead of scaling it rather saves.

We sure could create enough radiation to destroy all live on this planet, but that has to be a conscious decision as lot of work would be required. I was just using an example.

I am usually very methodological when it comes to math, maybe even morbidly so, thats the way I have been taught tbh.

The Nash-Equillibrium can hardly be used for evolution as evolutions rules are something along the lines of u need to be a carbon lifeform, for our planet that is. Evolution is not about asymetrical information nor about cooperation or non-cooperation it has no clear cut goal, hence it is hard to use game-theory on it. Unless you state which condition parameters you assume it has. Then you can say under these conditions, this would be true. So your result is true when your conditions are true etc. Using game-theory outside of big biz or big politics is often a waste. We can usually identify goals of humans or groups consisting of us. We can then try to model the reality of our specific situation and use that model to fullfil these goals. And modelling specific enviroments, goals and actions is usually a big waste of time unless your payoff is extra-ordinaire.

A good example for this is using the standard prisoners dilemma. It ignores group dynamics, i.E one of em is a gang member? It ignores feelings ( feelings are not rational, but u have them whether u like it or not, so a variable for loyalty is necesssary ) and so on this gets really complicated. Game-Theory is good in theory, and good in practice IF you are methodological or obsessive about it.

[–]Debonaire_Death -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh God. I hadn't even gotten to that point in the article.

That's terrible. Obviously this person is one of those ignorant naysayers who hasn't actually done this: getting nootropics to work properly and gleaning long-term benefits from them is not a "free lunch". It's hard, diligent work that requires discipline and determination, not to mention understanding yourself psychologically on a level that the majority of the population is uncomfortable with.

And as far as "Nature Knows Best", I recently saw a nice example of unintelligent design on Crash Course.

[–]AddMoreWeight -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Cautionary tales like this are excellent reminders of the tightrope we sometimes walk as citizen scientists.

[–]ohsnapitsnathan -1 points0 points  (3 children)

The major issue that I hve with this is that argument 1 (the intervention is not simple) can be applied to pretty much anything you want it to.

Take vaccine-preventable illnesses. Because naturally producing an antibody to measles from birth seems both pretty beneficial and simple (we already have all the molecular machinery to produce antibodies, literally all that would have to change is the DNA for the antibody being encoded in the germline) one would predict that the measles vaccine (as a simple intervention acting on the same pathway) would not really work that well, which is clearly the opposite of whatactually happens.

Why? Well you could argue that "germline immunity" would require some fairly significant changes in other aspects of adaptive immunity that make it difficult for evolution to "find" it even if it's a biochemically simple process. Similarly, it might be chemically simple for the brain to produce more acetylcholine, but that doesn't mean that the process of evolving to do that is simple.

So until we can come up with a non-arbitary measure of how "complex" and intervention actually is I don't think this is a particularly useful rule for predicting the success of a nootropic.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]ohsnapitsnathan 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Right, but my point was that being able to produce antibodies to common pathogens without "education" would be both biochemically simple and enormously beneficual, so the fact that it takes us several days to acquire immunity to things like flu or chickenpox challenges the idea that evolution will find all the simple solutions.

    [–]Ishmael_Vegeta -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    A nice essay, but makes so many assumptions that it shouldn't be discussed anymore than saying it is a nice essay.