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Parasite infection is associated with entrepreneurship (2020)
- dang 3y agoPast related threads. What doesn't it do? Toxoplasmosis and Behavioural Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38951266 - Jan 2024 (1 comment) Cat parasite linked to mental illness, schizophrenia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38529342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38529342 - Dec 2023 (13 comments) Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34960674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34960674 - Feb 2023 (54 comments) Toxoplasma makes wolves more likely to become pack leaders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33741060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33741060 - Nov 2022 (1 comment) Are toxoplasma-infected subjects more attractive than non-infected ones? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30889109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30889109 - April 2022 (68 comments) Effects of Toxoplasma on Human Behavior (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29361334 - Nov 2021 (26 comments) Toxoplasmosis associated with entrepreneurial initiation and performance (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28988486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28988486 - Oct 2021 (55 comments) Increased risk of traffic accidents in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28424007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28424007 - Sept 2021 (61 comments) Toxoplasma – The Most Successful Parasite in the world (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870034 - July 2021 (6 comments) Toxoplasmosis: An important risk factor for acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27870025 - July 2021 (77 comments) Toxoplasmosis: The Cat Poop Parasite That's Probably in Your Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615857 - June 2021 (37 comments) Toxoplasmosis – A Global Threat (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27599085 - June 2021 (54 comments) Scientists find link between infection with Toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19042800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19042800 - Jan 2019 (1 comment) Risky business: linking Toxoplasma infection and entrepreneurship behavior - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18762544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18762544 - Dec 2018 (30 comments) Mind-altering parasite spread by cats could give humans more courage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18000109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18000109 - Sept 2018 (1 comment) Toxoplasma gondii may help promote the entrepreneurial spirit? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17615209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17615209 - July 2018 (4 comments) Rage Disorder Linked with Toxoplasmosis (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15376654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15376654 - Oct 2017 (66 comments) Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13709169 - Feb 2017 (41 comments) Is there association between Toxoplasma gondii infection and bipolar disorder? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13048748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13048748 - Nov 2016 (13 comments) The Relation of Toxoplasma Infection and Sexual Attraction to Fear, Danger, Pain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335134 - Aug 2016 (49 comments) Toxoplasma gondii – 30 to 50% of humanity has a brain parasite - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12011197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12011197 - June 2016 (3 comments) Toxoplasma Could Manipulate Our Behavior - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269688 - March 2015 (23 comments) Toxoplasma infection permanently shifts balance in cat-and-mouse game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6411785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6411785 - Sept 2013 (8 comments) Cat parasite toxoplasma uses 'Trojan horse' to infect human brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4888086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4888086 - Dec 2012 (1 comment) A game of cat and mouse: Evidence that Toxoplasmosis may affect human behaviour - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420315 - June 2010 (4 comments) The parasite Toxoplasma makes rats lust for cat pee and people drive motorbikes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405479 - June 2010 (24 comments) Robert Sapolsky discusses Toxoplasma's effects on mammalian behavior - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1052855 - Jan 2010 (3 comments) Giant Plush Microbes - Toxoplasmosis, Gangrene, Etc. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=577409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=577409 - April 2009 (3 comments)
- MarcScott 3y agoI want Dang's search tools.
- MacsHeadroom 3y agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Toxoplasm&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- dang 3y agoIn this case I cheated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29362079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29362079. Couldn't think of a new joke either. The other way of doing this is CPS style: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22CPS%20time%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Otherwise we end up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970518 or worse.
- jjtheblunt 3y agoit would be curious to see the average gap between toxoplasmosis stories. it's the topic that just keeps on getting clicks, every few months, in various guises, for years.
- jstarfish 3y agoI'm convinced it's a psyop, since they can't get away with dosing the municipal water supply with LSD. Chaos sells ad impressions. I've had an acute toxoplasmosis infection. It was not empowering; it was fucking terrifying. I now understand why the rat is compelled to run into the mouth of the cat-- it makes everything "bad" and dangerous seem completely normal and rational; whatever life-preserving instincts you learn suddenly become processed as the opposite. There is no "optimizing" this shit into something that leads to wealth and success. It's not fun like cocaine or Adderall. I didn't recognize my own clothes. My own wife felt like a stranger. It sounds like psychosis but nothing was hallucinated; it was instead a state of induced dysphoria or dementia I would not wish on anybody and certainly would not encourage anybody to pursue. To really understand it, pretend today is opposite day. Getting in your car to go to work will feel wrong, do the opposite-- walk the 50 miles. But sidewalks aren't for walking, silly, so just use the freeway! Human food won't feel edible, but the opposite isn't pet food. What are you supposed to eat? I never figured it out and stayed in bed eating mostly Excedrin for two straight weeks, on account of the crippling migraines. My ex's ex also caught it when we (legit) accidentally trapped a stray cat in their former apartment and he returned to retrieve some items. After recovering he refused to talk about his experience like some war veteran. This shit is no joke. We've rescued four cats. They're great companions and I'm glad we gave them a chance but would never keep cats as pets again.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 3y agoSooo - how many HNers have cats?
- a_gnostic 3y agoMy room mate has one, so …technically.
- teitoklien 3y agoMost entrepreneurs I know, hate cats.
- tropdrop 3y agoThis depends on the region, I think. My own experience: most people I know on the East Coast have cats (including entrepreneurs), significantly higher preference for dogs on the West Coast. In Eastern Europe and Japan, I also noticed people tend to have cats much more than dogs (both places with vibrant entrepreneurial scenes)
- lazerjesus 3y agoadding raw meat to my diet, check.
- chabes 3y agoEating the parasites for the hustle
- aebtebeten 3y agoFrom the point of view of a venture capitalist, who has a diversified portfolio of startups (in aggregate occupying a point on the risk/reward curve on the frontier), a mechanism like this would be useful, as it would provide the requisite number of entrepreneurs willing to run their individual ventures at a point far riskier than the frontier.
- gopher_space 3y agoIt's been interesting to note how my ability to empathize with other people correlates to my income level, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could actually see damage in a billionaire's brain. Combining these two 'mechanisms' gives you a powerful risk-taker who, on a fundamental level, can't help but view people as numbers on a spreadsheet. What I'm saying is that you just need to give someone a cat and tell them they won the lottery to create the perfect CEO or CEO simulator.
- yieldcrv 3y agoCan you test Bill Hwang for that? my supposition is that there should be way more people like him given the expansion of the money supply and liquidity, but there hasn't been an expansion of people willing to take risky bets with capital over several billion dollars. we should expose ultra high net worth people to the protozoan toxoplasma gondii
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoThere are a lot of people in finance that realized money printing was essentially a risk free environment to lever up on all assets. The mechanics of interest rates are well known, and have been for hundreds of years. During covid, again many of them realized it was a near risk free wealth generation opportunity. Many of them in NYC, with their primary address in the Bahamas. Wallstreet bets, and the general public, caught onto this only after the party was nearly over (late 2021). Finance is notoriously quiet about all of this. I have personally met many 10 man trading shops in NYC making a consistent 10-50M a year by betting on the FED. They have no linkedin profile, no website, no public face. The common theme is many spent alot of time in mainstream high finance and attended world class universities. The faces of major hedge funds you see on TV do not take risks like this (because they are playing a different game, shave 2%+ from the 10B in assets they manage), and so they downplay the certainty one could have about Bill Hwang style bets.
- yieldcrv 3y agoI’m glad to know of that experience! I have seen prop shops like that in person as well, but haven't seen the landscape through covid Some levels of equities and commodity futures ownership require disclosures, so I still contend that one person shops (or outfits primarily trading one person’s money) are too few in number than they should be There is enough liquidity in US equities and futures markets to trade $60bn-$100bn portfolios now, and hedge in the options market, there should be more people comfortable continuing to grow capital this way. Bill Huang’s only problem was using leverage, and even then in a slower market he would have been able to liquidate all positions at their higher prices. Without losses the investigation into swaps wouldn't have happened. Someone should be able to surpass Berkshire Hathaway’s cash balance, or even Elon’s net worth, by trading public equities alone at this point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1-6 3y agoThis particular parasite infection is oddly specific to another oddly specific behavioral trait. This is either a very well done research or it’s a sham.
- bjornsing 3y agoIt’s well known that TG infection increases risky behavior. So I’m not the least bit surprised that there’s a correlation with entrepreneurship. Or what did you mean?
- gyudin 3y agoRisky people are more likely to make poor decisions and contract any kind of infections, including STDs. Probably they experience more stress and frequently deal with that by getting pets that infect with Toxoplasmosis.
- avalys 3y agoI'm not sure I buy the "risk->stress->pets" connection. In my own experience, anecdotal of course, people who take risks do so because risk-taking doesn't stress them out as much as it would other people. But your point is still valid. The conventional wisdom on why risk-taking people might be more prone to toxoplasmosis in the first place is that they're more likely to eat undercooked or other ill-prepared meat, which is actually a much more significant risk factor for toxoplasmosis than cat ownership.
- manmal 3y agoThat’s a lot of mental gymnastics. T gondii is a highly problematic pathogen, not sure why you are trying to find an alternative explanation.
- thinkingemote 3y agoIf TG can be spread sexually maybe it could be classed as a STD and a scary one that actually changes behaviour to spread more.
- 3y ago
- hyperthesis 3y agoFrom my armchair, I wonder if these published academics considered that the comfort of a cat also increases risk tolerance? BTW The EMyth, though on lifestyle not startup businesses, claimed that a major motivation of entrepreneurs is autonomy (i.e. no boss)
- lolinder 3y agoThey controlled for a lot of things but not for cat ownership, which given the particular parasite in question seems like an obvious missing piece. Cat ownership has long been associated with particular personality traits that may in turn be associated with entrepreneurship, so this could have more to do with who chooses to have cats than it does with the parasite.
- xeckr 3y agoBrb buying a bunch of stray cats to get more $$$ next time I fund-raise for my startup.
- aaomidi 3y agoBuying?
- luke-stanley 3y agoI know some cat charities often help catch stray cats and try to sell them to responsible owners, obviously after reviewing their business plan, or prototypes...
- nobodyandproud 3y agoVenture catalysts?
- NikkiA 3y agoThe true way to acquire new cats is to sit on your doorstep and offer chin rubs and belly rubs.
- atarian 3y agoComing soon: Toxoplasmosis supplements
- splittingTimes 3y agoPart of a great interview where Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology & Neurosurgery at Stanford University explains Toxoplasmosis. https://youtu.be/NroiGfNohPo?si=g_7Ob0cWQZN_QKAq https://youtu.be/NroiGfNohPo?si=g_7Ob0cWQZN_QKAq
- debo_ 3y agoOne of my favorite CRPG NPCs of all time is Erritis from Planescape: Tides of Numenera. He's "infected" with nanobots called "The Audience." The nanobots were created in a long-forgotten war to push their hosts to take great, heroic risks. So he always ends up doing insane things in perfectly innocuous situations. It's great. https://numenera.fandom.com/wiki/Erritis https://numenera.fandom.com/wiki/Erritis
- joshxyz 3y agolold at inability: concentration. he got hero complex and adhd!
- p0w3n3d 3y agoFuturama predicted it
- black_13 3y ago[dead]