8 ms·

See this is why I get annoyed at a body evolved for caloric scarcity. We shouldn't get tired, we should get hungry! Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Burn m

See this is why I get annoyed at a body evolved for caloric scarcity. We shouldn't get tired, we should get hungry! Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Burn more energy to get rid of them! I should be able to strap an icepack to my head, fill a bottle with olive oil, and overclock my brain to 10x speed.

sebastianconcpt 4y ago
Hahaha that would be nice. But it likely demands a stock of varied nutrients, not just "energy". Also the cells changing need to take a break to consolidate what they have adapted to (brain plasticity).
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  > Also the cells changing need to take a break to consolidate what they have adapted to (brain plasticity). I feel like this has got to be a problem solvable by throwing money at it. Not as is, most likely, but if we had evolved without caloric restriction there would be some kind of more complicated support structure which handles all that.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    This feels like it may fall into the realm of "I think if we just throw money at it we could solve it" problems that you can't actually solve by throwing money at.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      Metaphorical money thrown at evolution several million years ago, namely calories. You were built on a budget, just because it's still better than anything we could make doesn't mean it's the best evolution can do under lesser constraints
  - mywacaday 4y ago
    If we had no calorie restriction why would we have evolved.
    - rNULLED 4y ago
      underrated perspective
    - isaacgreyed 4y ago
      Something else would end up scarcer
    - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
      In an energy-rich environment, evolution should select for faster and faster reproductive rates.
      - shard 4y ago
        Perhaps so, but humans are reproducing later and having fewer offspring, so there are more variables than just energy.
        bearmode 4y ago
        Environmental stresses are well-known to cause reproduction rates to plummet. That can be because of a lack of available food, but it can really be any sort of stress.
    - lagadu 4y ago
      That's true, we evolved to adapt to calorie scarcity but our environment has changed: calories are now abundant but our system is still optimized for scarcity despite that constraint no longer existing. I'm sure in a few thousand years that'll go away (possibly faster, as we get better at manipulating our own biology) but the status quo is that we're poorly adapted to our environments, energy-wise.
    - sebastianconcpt 4y ago
      Excellent point. But note that calories scarcity is a simplistic model. What I'm trying to show with what I was saying, is that there are stocks of scarce molecules imposing performance limits too.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    If we had evolved without caloric restriction in an "easy" energy-rich environment where there's less competition for scarce energy and thus complexity and intelligence aren't absolutely mandatory to acquire it, evolution should select for faster reproductive rates by simply sacrificing complexity, not building some kind of more complicated support structure.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      Well yeah, obviously. It's just a dream after all
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> See this is why I get annoyed at a body evolved for caloric scarcity. We shouldn't get tired, we should get hungry! Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Burn more energy to get rid of them! I should be able to strap an icepack to my head Well, you did identify the major problem with the unlimited overclocking plan. Burning more energy generates more heat. An icepack on the side of your head doesn't solve the problem; at some point your brain (and the rest of the inside of your head) will cook, which is fatal.
- mancerayder 4y ago
  >Burning more energy generates more heat. An icepack on the side of your head doesn't solve the problem; at some point your brain (and the rest of the inside of your head) will cook, which is fatal. I think they sell a fancy cooling device using water cooling on NewEgg that solves that problem. It has some wild lights though.
- somebodythere 4y ago
  Imagining that we evolve cooling fins on our head for better heat dissipation. We already have the fluid circulation system after all.
  - bigbluedots 4y ago
    Many of us have evolved a lack of hair on our heads, that's a first step right?
    - saghm 4y ago
      And the rest of us are capable of removing our hair (at least temporarily). "Did you shave your head?" "Yeah, I have a big math exam coming up, so you know, I'm pulling out all the stops"
  - euroderf 4y ago
    The scrotum can rise or fall based on the need for cooling. Can we concoct the genes that would allow our heads+brains to do the same ?
tdaltonc 4y ago
I don't think energy is the limiting factor here. A better analogy would be with the limits of computability. Garbage collection tasks are postposed to when we're asleep, but they can only be put off for so long and there's a capacity for "stuff to consolidate later" that fills up. Something that you probably could get is a nob to control the adaptability/efficiency setting on your brain. At the cast of learning/remembering nothing, you could "execute" for longer. We know that real brains make this trade off, but the transition from one mode to the other is slow because it's reactive.
- ElijahLynn 4y ago
  Nice, Glutamate Garbage Collection.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  It would frankly shock me if there wasn't some pricey but extant way to handle garbage collection more quickly. It would be laughably stupid to implement in a caloric desert, but I can't imagine there isn't some way to do time-sharing or a larger support network.
- chundicus 4y ago
  > Garbage collection tasks are postposed to when we're asleep, but they can only be put off for so long and there's a capacity for "stuff to consolidate later" that fills up Do we have a strong reason to believe that? I know brain and sleep mechanisms are tricky topics with lots of unknowns, but I thought I had read research that showed sleeping brains likely perform a chemical analogue to "garbage collection".
  - tdaltonc 4y ago
    In addition to the chemical ones others discussed, there is informational "garbage collection" as well. There are a bunch of motor tasks that only show certain types improvement after sleep - not time, sleep. There are also rodent studies where you can do a learning task and then "clear" part of their hippocampus using optogenetics. If you clear it before sleep, they forget what they "learned" if you clear it after sleep they still remember it. Again, multiple clever conditions to control for time and separate it from sleep.
satyrnein 4y ago
Only semi related, but i wanted to install a USB jack in my belly button so i could charge my phone off my visceral fat, which seemed like a win-win. Probably best I didn't, though, because this predated usb-c...
- eastbound 4y ago
  Good point, but given there are neurons in the belly, would you be unable to process emotions or be in a really fancy mood after charging your phone?
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  Lol, more practically you could get something like this! https://www.amazon.com/Zeus-Dynamo-Powerhouse-Crank-Generator/dp/B0873VKW75/ref=asc_df_B0873VKW75/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475858389483&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2158171697674289363&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031909&hvtargid=pla-1158434116551&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Zeus-Dynamo-Powerhouse-Crank-Generato... Or, if you live in a cold climate, you could make a thermo-electric generator vest to wear around town.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Is there any ongoing development of implants to "burn" fat in-place, converting it to something more readily metabolized ? (glucose?)
AmericanChopper 4y ago
You basically can do that. One of the limiting factors is your ability to metabolise energy sources into energy your body can use. Improve that by increasing your fitness and your cognitive ability will be improved as well.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jmprspret 4y ago
> Burn more energy to get rid of them! I should be able to strap an icepack to my head, fill a bottle with olive oil, and overclock my brain to 10x speed. Stimulants like methamphetamine do that don't they? I mean with other negative side-effects, of course, you'll feel like your brain is working 10x the speed.
- tempestn 4y ago
  Tough to get a stable overclock that way though.
  - WalterSear 4y ago
    Only because more 'feels' better, so you take more. And then, more still 'feels' better. If you only stick to doses you can't feel, it's long term reliable IMHE.
- weird-eye-issue 4y ago
  You might feel like you're doing 10x the work but it won't be 10x work
  - jmprspret 4y ago
    Haha fair
quickthrower2 4y ago
Or ... be smart about being smart! Choose what problems you work on wisely. Make sure when you are getting paid, you are getting paid for familiar work (less tiring for the brain) and then use up your smart reserves on your side project, or for your friends/family or community or society. One option is to be like an Electron app, throw more RAM at it and be busy, the other is to be like a native optimized app - get the same stuff achieved with less resources. -O- To address your burn more energy to get rid of pollutants. I wonder if a 20 minute nap has the same effect. It is the CPU equivalent of letting the overclocked CPU cool down. Rather than throwing energy at the problem (which means more work and chemical processing for a biological creature), just let the body run it's natural defrag cycle.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Or...I could do all those things 10x faster and better by burning 10,000 calories a day, breathing pure oxygen, redirecting bloodflow to my brain (necessitating sitting in a chair), and running a 50 watt cooling system at all times. That's not necessarily the Electron app style, if you're already doing the best you can do your only option is MOAR POWER
- vitaminCPP 4y ago
  This is why I like this forum: Understanding brain biology with a Electron's app RAM consumption analogy.
  - rewgs 4y ago
    Had the same thought. This really is the better Reddit for nerds.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      no wonder this place is dying
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Yeah, but after you've done all that, you still have room that you could do better with overclocking yourself.
GuB-42 4y ago
> we should get hungry Personally, it does! Working hard makes me hungry, also tired, but less so if I eat well. I obviously can't overclock my brain as you describe, but there is definitely a link. Speaking of overclocking, that's what bats do. Flight takes up a lot of energy, so they have evolved systems to deal with all the byproducts, including toxic chemicals. Interestingly, this is also why they have no problem carrying what for us are deadly viruses: overclocking results in cell damage, something that bats are equipped to deal with, but it would also trigger inflammation, so bats have damped their inflammation response, but that would leave them vulnerable to infection, so they evolved a faster immune response that is able to outpace the virus, and when one of these viruses jump to humans, they have time to reproduce a lot before our immune system reacts causing a massive inflammation that ends up doing more damage than the virus itself.
- piiswrong 4y ago
  I wonder if bats get a lot of allergy problems
  - ta988 4y ago
    They get deadly nose infections by fungi... Not a great trade.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  I get sleepy when I eat
  - xnoreq 4y ago
    I once had the same problem. That usually means unhealthy diet and constant eating and lack of exercise that all result in huge insulin spikes and insulin resistance. Try 16/8 intermittent fasting and a healthier, more balanced diet and walking for a few minutes after meals and you will feel like a new person. After meals you will feel energized and awake.
    - 4y ago
galangalalgol 4y ago
Guy at work used to put his hand over people's head to see if they were solving a problem or just staring at code. He was always able to tell. I prefer a kilo of cashews to a bottle of olive oil, but you can totally train your metabolism to utilize the fat. Some antioxidants from peppers or leaves into the mix and my brain doesn't get tired until its time to do some dreaming to unclog the stuck bad ideas.
- weird-eye-issue 4y ago
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
You can overclock it with Modafinil.
misja111 4y ago
So the way to fight mental fatigue is to make sure you get rid of those pollutants, or make sure they don't build up so fast. To get rid of pollutants, your body needs to drain them away through your vessels. For this system to work optimal, you should regularly exercise and avoid cholesterol-rich or inflammatory food that clogs your arteries. What could possibly also help is move around a bit to avoid overly tensed neck muscles.
intelVISA 4y ago
>Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Perfect time to write some code to let it out. :d

sebastianconcpt 4y ago

Hahaha that would be nice. But it likely demands a stock of varied nutrients, not just "energy". Also the cells changing need to take a break to consolidate what they have adapted to (brain plasticity).

ravi-delia 4y ago
> Also the cells changing need to take a break to consolidate what they have adapted to (brain plasticity). I feel like this has got to be a problem solvable by throwing money at it. Not as is, most likely, but if we had evolved without caloric restriction there would be some kind of more complicated support structure which handles all that.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  This feels like it may fall into the realm of "I think if we just throw money at it we could solve it" problems that you can't actually solve by throwing money at.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    Metaphorical money thrown at evolution several million years ago, namely calories. You were built on a budget, just because it's still better than anything we could make doesn't mean it's the best evolution can do under lesser constraints
- mywacaday 4y ago
  If we had no calorie restriction why would we have evolved.
  - rNULLED 4y ago
    underrated perspective
  - isaacgreyed 4y ago
    Something else would end up scarcer
  - ProjectArcturis 4y ago
    In an energy-rich environment, evolution should select for faster and faster reproductive rates.
    - shard 4y ago
      Perhaps so, but humans are reproducing later and having fewer offspring, so there are more variables than just energy.
      - bearmode 4y ago
        Environmental stresses are well-known to cause reproduction rates to plummet. That can be because of a lack of available food, but it can really be any sort of stress.
  - lagadu 4y ago
    That's true, we evolved to adapt to calorie scarcity but our environment has changed: calories are now abundant but our system is still optimized for scarcity despite that constraint no longer existing. I'm sure in a few thousand years that'll go away (possibly faster, as we get better at manipulating our own biology) but the status quo is that we're poorly adapted to our environments, energy-wise.
  - sebastianconcpt 4y ago
    Excellent point. But note that calories scarcity is a simplistic model. What I'm trying to show with what I was saying, is that there are stocks of scarce molecules imposing performance limits too.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  If we had evolved without caloric restriction in an "easy" energy-rich environment where there's less competition for scarce energy and thus complexity and intelligence aren't absolutely mandatory to acquire it, evolution should select for faster reproductive rates by simply sacrificing complexity, not building some kind of more complicated support structure.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    Well yeah, obviously. It's just a dream after all

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> See this is why I get annoyed at a body evolved for caloric scarcity. We shouldn't get tired, we should get hungry! Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Burn more energy to get rid of them! I should be able to strap an icepack to my head Well, you did identify the major problem with the unlimited overclocking plan. Burning more energy generates more heat. An icepack on the side of your head doesn't solve the problem; at some point your brain (and the rest of the inside of your head) will cook, which is fatal.

mancerayder 4y ago
>Burning more energy generates more heat. An icepack on the side of your head doesn't solve the problem; at some point your brain (and the rest of the inside of your head) will cook, which is fatal. I think they sell a fancy cooling device using water cooling on NewEgg that solves that problem. It has some wild lights though.
somebodythere 4y ago
Imagining that we evolve cooling fins on our head for better heat dissipation. We already have the fluid circulation system after all.
- bigbluedots 4y ago
  Many of us have evolved a lack of hair on our heads, that's a first step right?
  - saghm 4y ago
    And the rest of us are capable of removing our hair (at least temporarily). "Did you shave your head?" "Yeah, I have a big math exam coming up, so you know, I'm pulling out all the stops"
- euroderf 4y ago
  The scrotum can rise or fall based on the need for cooling. Can we concoct the genes that would allow our heads+brains to do the same ?

tdaltonc 4y ago

I don't think energy is the limiting factor here. A better analogy would be with the limits of computability. Garbage collection tasks are postposed to when we're asleep, but they can only be put off for so long and there's a capacity for "stuff to consolidate later" that fills up. Something that you probably could get is a nob to control the adaptability/efficiency setting on your brain. At the cast of learning/remembering nothing, you could "execute" for longer. We know that real brains make this trade off, but the transition from one mode to the other is slow because it's reactive.

ElijahLynn 4y ago
Nice, Glutamate Garbage Collection.
ravi-delia 4y ago
It would frankly shock me if there wasn't some pricey but extant way to handle garbage collection more quickly. It would be laughably stupid to implement in a caloric desert, but I can't imagine there isn't some way to do time-sharing or a larger support network.
chundicus 4y ago
> Garbage collection tasks are postposed to when we're asleep, but they can only be put off for so long and there's a capacity for "stuff to consolidate later" that fills up Do we have a strong reason to believe that? I know brain and sleep mechanisms are tricky topics with lots of unknowns, but I thought I had read research that showed sleeping brains likely perform a chemical analogue to "garbage collection".
- tdaltonc 4y ago
  In addition to the chemical ones others discussed, there is informational "garbage collection" as well. There are a bunch of motor tasks that only show certain types improvement after sleep - not time, sleep. There are also rodent studies where you can do a learning task and then "clear" part of their hippocampus using optogenetics. If you clear it before sleep, they forget what they "learned" if you clear it after sleep they still remember it. Again, multiple clever conditions to control for time and separate it from sleep.

satyrnein 4y ago

Only semi related, but i wanted to install a USB jack in my belly button so i could charge my phone off my visceral fat, which seemed like a win-win. Probably best I didn't, though, because this predated usb-c...

eastbound 4y ago
Good point, but given there are neurons in the belly, would you be unable to process emotions or be in a really fancy mood after charging your phone?
sgtnoodle 4y ago
Lol, more practically you could get something like this! https://www.amazon.com/Zeus-Dynamo-Powerhouse-Crank-Generator/dp/B0873VKW75/ref=asc_df_B0873VKW75/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=475858389483&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2158171697674289363&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031909&hvtargid=pla-1158434116551&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/Zeus-Dynamo-Powerhouse-Crank-Generato... Or, if you live in a cold climate, you could make a thermo-electric generator vest to wear around town.
euroderf 4y ago
Is there any ongoing development of implants to "burn" fat in-place, converting it to something more readily metabolized ? (glucose?)

AmericanChopper 4y ago

You basically can do that. One of the limiting factors is your ability to metabolise energy sources into energy your body can use. Improve that by increasing your fitness and your cognitive ability will be improved as well.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jmprspret 4y ago

> Burn more energy to get rid of them! I should be able to strap an icepack to my head, fill a bottle with olive oil, and overclock my brain to 10x speed. Stimulants like methamphetamine do that don't they? I mean with other negative side-effects, of course, you'll feel like your brain is working 10x the speed.

tempestn 4y ago
Tough to get a stable overclock that way though.
- WalterSear 4y ago
  Only because more 'feels' better, so you take more. And then, more still 'feels' better. If you only stick to doses you can't feel, it's long term reliable IMHE.
weird-eye-issue 4y ago
You might feel like you're doing 10x the work but it won't be 10x work
- jmprspret 4y ago
  Haha fair

quickthrower2 4y ago

Or ... be smart about being smart! Choose what problems you work on wisely. Make sure when you are getting paid, you are getting paid for familiar work (less tiring for the brain) and then use up your smart reserves on your side project, or for your friends/family or community or society. One option is to be like an Electron app, throw more RAM at it and be busy, the other is to be like a native optimized app - get the same stuff achieved with less resources. -O- To address your burn more energy to get rid of pollutants. I wonder if a 20 minute nap has the same effect. It is the CPU equivalent of letting the overclocked CPU cool down. Rather than throwing energy at the problem (which means more work and chemical processing for a biological creature), just let the body run it's natural defrag cycle.

ravi-delia 4y ago
Or...I could do all those things 10x faster and better by burning 10,000 calories a day, breathing pure oxygen, redirecting bloodflow to my brain (necessitating sitting in a chair), and running a 50 watt cooling system at all times. That's not necessarily the Electron app style, if you're already doing the best you can do your only option is MOAR POWER
vitaminCPP 4y ago
This is why I like this forum: Understanding brain biology with a Electron's app RAM consumption analogy.
- rewgs 4y ago
  Had the same thought. This really is the better Reddit for nerds.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    no wonder this place is dying
renewiltord 4y ago
Yeah, but after you've done all that, you still have room that you could do better with overclocking yourself.

GuB-42 4y ago

> we should get hungry Personally, it does! Working hard makes me hungry, also tired, but less so if I eat well. I obviously can't overclock my brain as you describe, but there is definitely a link. Speaking of overclocking, that's what bats do. Flight takes up a lot of energy, so they have evolved systems to deal with all the byproducts, including toxic chemicals. Interestingly, this is also why they have no problem carrying what for us are deadly viruses: overclocking results in cell damage, something that bats are equipped to deal with, but it would also trigger inflammation, so bats have damped their inflammation response, but that would leave them vulnerable to infection, so they evolved a faster immune response that is able to outpace the virus, and when one of these viruses jump to humans, they have time to reproduce a lot before our immune system reacts causing a massive inflammation that ends up doing more damage than the virus itself.

piiswrong 4y ago
I wonder if bats get a lot of allergy problems
- ta988 4y ago
  They get deadly nose infections by fungi... Not a great trade.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
I get sleepy when I eat
- xnoreq 4y ago
  I once had the same problem. That usually means unhealthy diet and constant eating and lack of exercise that all result in huge insulin spikes and insulin resistance. Try 16/8 intermittent fasting and a healthier, more balanced diet and walking for a few minutes after meals and you will feel like a new person. After meals you will feel energized and awake.
  - 4y ago

galangalalgol 4y ago

Guy at work used to put his hand over people's head to see if they were solving a problem or just staring at code. He was always able to tell. I prefer a kilo of cashews to a bottle of olive oil, but you can totally train your metabolism to utilize the fat. Some antioxidants from peppers or leaves into the mix and my brain doesn't get tired until its time to do some dreaming to unclog the stuck bad ideas.

weird-eye-issue 4y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

You can overclock it with Modafinil.

misja111 4y ago

So the way to fight mental fatigue is to make sure you get rid of those pollutants, or make sure they don't build up so fast. To get rid of pollutants, your body needs to drain them away through your vessels. For this system to work optimal, you should regularly exercise and avoid cholesterol-rich or inflammatory food that clogs your arteries. What could possibly also help is move around a bit to avoid overly tensed neck muscles.

intelVISA 4y ago

>Oh, pollutants build up in the brain? Perfect time to write some code to let it out. :d