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Brain in a Jar
- fsiefken 10y agoCould the 'psychiatric medicine' be modafinil?
- nxc18 10y agoCould just as well be adderall or ritalin, doctors hand out prescriptions like candy on Halloween, especially to people who are currently or were recently young.
- rlabrecque 10y agoDoes it matter?
- goldenkey 10y agoThe common mistake in "hippy philosophy" is assuming that since we are ultimately subsets of the universe, we ARE the universe, here and now. Problem is, things are made up of a bunch of components. And operate due to internal and external mechanisms. Objects exist as causal sets. We all might be one, when it comes to that we are manifestations of electromagnetic energy. But that's a superset of the here and now. We're physical beings at the bottom rung, and maybe more when you take the russian doll nested sets apart. But that doesn't change the fact that each part is just as integral to identity in the here and now, or well, the physical human part might be even more important in the here and now. So yeah, we're all "one" as members of the universe. But don't let that fool you into thinking you're transcending right here and now. Everythings made from components. Everything has supersets and subsets that keep it going. You are not a brain in a jar here and now. But you may be a brain in a jar there and far. So keep a level head. And don't dismiss the philosophy that grounds you.
- sametmax 10y agoI read you, but I really don't get the point you are trying to make.
- goldenkey 10y agoI'm saying that the poster is trivializing the "brain in the jar" argument by providing something just as overfitted. His argument is just as trivial. We are a mixture of timeless things and expiring things. So for sure, don't forget you're rotting flesh. But don't dismiss brain in the jar either.
- sametmax 10y agoThank you for the clarification.
- goldenkey 10y agoGotta love how one day HN is for drugs, another day HN is against them. One day HN is for the "steve jobs" LSD hippy vibes, and the next day, HN is against them. HN has schizophrenia with regard to spirituality's duality with technicality.
- fujipadam 10y agoI really needed this! While you know these things, it takes constant reminders to not fall back into bad habits. I constantly skip on sleep and I can see my body falling apart. This was a great and simple article to remind me
- wimagguc 10y agoBeing smarty pants here, but I wanted to point out that "Brain in a Jar" usually refers to something entirely different: that one is a victim of thoroughgoing error induced by a God-like deceiver. Hypothesis, skeptical argument etc in detail: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-content-extern...
- gexla 10y agoOne person she knows takes care of himself and is successful. She doesn't take care of herself and she's not successful. Now she takes care of herself and we don't know if she's now successful but the added rest fixed some things in her life. Seems like a small sample size. Luck helps some along more than others and it's spotty in its distribution. She doesn't say if her friend is a business owner. She mentioned she wanted to start a business but she doesn't say if that was part of what she was working on. Her friend doing 5 hours of coding in one day is a lot. It's probably more than a typical 9-5 office coder puts in. Especially working from home with relatively few distractions. But when you own a business, once you have finished putting in your 5 hours of coding, you still have the rest of the business to take care of. One full time job is done, then you start the next one.
- m0nty 10y ago> Now she takes care of herself and we don't know if she's now successful I get a bit tired of the generalisations in OA. Sometimes there is far more wrong with life than just not taking good enough care of yourself in terms of sleep, diet and exercise. Sometimes you need professional help and (even if not) what is good for one person might not help you one bit. My personal bugbear is mindfulness: tried it, didn't get on with it, do not see it as the holy grail of wellbeing -- as some people seem to claim it is. It works for them, that's fine. Doesn't mean it works for everyone. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mind... > Claire, a 37-year-old in a highly competitive industry, was sent on a three-day mindfulness course with colleagues as part of a training programme. "Initially, I found it relaxing," she says, "but then I found I felt completely zoned out while doing it. Within two or three hours of later sessions, I was starting to really, really panic." The sessions resurfaced memories of her traumatic childhood, and she experienced a series of panic attacks. "Somehow, the course triggered things I had previously got over," Claire says. "I had a breakdown and spent three months in a psychiatric unit. It was a depressive breakdown with psychotic elements related to the trauma, and several dissociative episodes." Of course, people will say she clearly had deeper issues but that's my point.
- cwp 10y agoRight. It's not a peer-reviewed, replicated, double-blind study using a large, stratified sample of the population of Earth, so it's meaningless.
- chvid 10y agoAnyone reading this and going "3 cups of coffee per day" ... how is that a lot?
- cannonpr 10y agoLeaving asides the heavy variability in metabolism rates of caffeine... yea I've been up to 18, at which point my most major water intake really was coffee... Not saying mine was healthy, more saying studies show variability in how much coffee is healthy per person.
- beobab 10y agoI was drinking 10 a day when someone offered me "Java" coffee. Oh my days. Pale, shaky, heart palpitations. I couldn't touch coffee for almost a year after that mug. Apparently, you're supposed to drink it in teensy cups. Who knew.
- huxley 10y agoPerhaps it was a Java espresso? Would explain the teensy cups, Java beans are normally middle of the road when it comes to caffeine content.
- Moeg 10y agoFinland average coffee consumption is almost 3 cups a day per person, but that's a bit misleading statistic because it includes children too, who in general don't drink the stuff.
- frozenport 10y agoNo. I'm around 0-2 cups a day and am starting to worry about addiction. I was able to get through days with no coffee intake but now I'm sleepy without it. I was a nice boost but now my baseline has shifted.
- unwind 10y agoYes, but I'm Swedish. The average here seems to be around 3 cups per day (or ~9 kg roasted coffee beans per person and year, haven't computed the cup size that renders).
- ggambetta 10y agoEat well and rest. -- and exercise. The best natural anti-depressant and life-extension technique (fine, maybe tied with caloric restriction). TL;DR: Exercise.
- ams6110 10y agoI dislike exercise. It makes me tired, grumpy and sore. Don't generalize.
- bostonpete 10y agoSaying people should exercise to feel better is not an inappropriate generalization. Maybe you just need to find an exercise that works for you, or broaden your definition of exercise.
- jcoffland 10y agoWhat's your BMI?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 10y agoThe evidence base for exercise as a treatment for depression is weak, and probably wouldn't stand up after better testing. It's important that people get exercise, and it might have protective preventative effects, but it's a bad thing that people keep pushing exercise as some kind of miracle cure for depression.
- Razengan 10y ago> exercise. The best natural anti-depressant and life-extension technique To put it better: Physical Activity. Exercise is a subset of physical activity. You could be building something, say a fence, or working on a farm, without particularly exerting yourself, and I bet it would have the same anti-depressant and life-extension benefits as rigorous exercise. In fact, I suspect that we might be able leave out "physical" — that even sufficient mental stimulation without physical exertion, say working on a computer program, or a close match of Chess or Go with a good friend, may have the same benefits, as long as you don't let your physical aspects suffer; maintain good posture, keep a healthy diet, and take regular breaks. So I think the best anti-depressant is basically to be involved in something that you believe is improving your self, in something you see as progress, without neglecting your physical health. Exercise just happens to check off most of those boxes.
- m-j-fox 10y ago> 3+ (actually, I didn't count, it was a lot) cups of coffee per day My God. You monster.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoI thought this 'Brain in a Jar' article was going to be about the philosophical 'Brain in a vat' question. Disappointed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat oh and, don't work too hard young people. Burn out is the worst.
- pfd1986 10y agoI'd make the crazy (/s) argument that the mindset, not the eat well/exercise/sleep is what matters. I tried endlessly during my PhD to eat healthy, sleep well, and such but this only worked when I truly realized 'ok, my normal routine is killing me', like OP did. It's scary because that's how you know yourself to be / work but once you have no alternatives it is easier to risk a productivity deficit (.:. it's also easier when you're more confident about your achievements so far and don't think you have to prove as much of yourself to others). Luckily for me the marginal productivity deficit is totally compensated by living a burnout-free life. (I hope. Ask me again in 5-10 years)
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoA site with nothing but static text content and yet it is completely unusable without Javascript.
- Rumudiez 10y agoAbsolutely awkward. You can load the site with JS enabled, but if you disable it then suddenly the entire page disappears, and yet it still scrolls. What's the point?