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What's the difference between Slackers and Go Getters? The answer may have to do w/ brain chemistry.

ChrisV

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But gamblers are not go-getters. They do however, tend to have higher levels of dopamine than non-gamblers. Same rings true for addicts. Higher levels of dopamine than non-addicts.
This is wrong. Addicts have lower levels. Which is why they turn to things like cocaine that will boost their levels.
 
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ChrisV

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Yeah. There are three takeaway lessons from this kind of reporting:

1. It is pop-science reporting, which means it is inevitably wrong or misleading, and drawing conclusions from it puts you further down the path of wrong. The Gell-Mann effect is real, folks.

2. The replication crisis that hit over the last 2-3 years has stuck a knife in a LOT of trendy psychological research. This is beyond a quick post. To be quick about it, most of the trendy pop-culture books and reporting and TED-talk-tier psychological and neuroscience feel-goods that came out over the last 5-15 years have proven hard or impossible to replicate in the lab. Also see 1, 2, 3. It is open season now on what psychological science really "knows" about any of these topics.

3. Even if we could take the findings at face value, the psychological sciences don't tell us much about the kinds of explanations they can offer. Pop-culture interpretations aside, no empirical psychological findings have ever been in the position to decided questions about "free will" or choice, or even whether there is a causal relationship between brain stuff and thought or behavior stuff. Obviously there is SOME connection, but the details are likely to be more complicated than simple if-X-then-Y cause and effect.

We're the only animals that can get physiologically stressed out worrying about death or TV shows. That little factoid makes it very hard to say that neuro-whatevers are the cause of feelings, thoughts, or behaviors.

The replication crisis has to do with psychology. This isn’t psychology. Neuroscience is a much harder science than psych.

Wanna do a test if Dopamine makes you a go-getter? Go get a biggggggggg bag of cocaine z(which is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor,) and watch how fast your house gets cleaned. (Okay, don’t actually do that, it will have disastrous consequences... but dopamine gives you motivation... just trust me)

There was a popular informal Data Science study/survey on Nootropics (smart drugs that improve performance,) and if you scroll down to the “Motivation” section, all the top motivation boosters were dopaminergic drugs.

https://darktka.github.io

I could explain why we get stressed out over reality TV or even cartoon, and it’s 100% because of neuro-whatevers. My explanation would just take a while.
 

rogue synthetic

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The replication crisis has to do with psychology. This isn’t psychology. Neuroscience is a much harder science than psych.

Wanna do a test if Dopamine makes you a go-getter? Go get a biggggggggg bag of cocaine z(which is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor,) and watch how fast your house gets cleaned. (Okay, don’t actually do that, it will have disastrous consequences... but dopamine gives you motivation... just trust me)

Neuroscience also relies on psychological concepts to form its theories and make its explanations of high-level human behaviors.

There is no "behavior" or "go-getting" in the brain or its parts. That requires neuroscientists who theorize about action or consciousness or motivation to hypothesize about what is going on in connection between neurological mechanisms and observable high-level behaviors.

They have to offer an intepretation of their results through a theory. This is why you will not find any observation or experiment which can "prove" any of this... it's a working methodological assumption, not a Truth like you'll find in physics or mathematics.

You can explain all you want about dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens (etc.) and someone still has to interpret those findings into a theory of behavior. That is easier said than done.

As I'm sure you know, neuroscience is in its infancy. Replication issues in psychology notwithstanding, it's neuroscience isn't even in a position to HAVE a replication problem, let alone speak with any serious authority about human behaviors.

There is a lot of progress happening here right now, but that also means lots of confusions, lots of conflicting research programs, and lots of various interpretations.

There are people who defend a mechanistic view of the brain much like you're arguing for. There are others who think mechanism is a dead end, or at best part of a much richer set of explanatory concepts. It won't do to leave everything up to the brain when so much of human behavior involves language and acts of communication between two or more people.

This is why I warned against pop-science interpretations. Media reporting and TED talks do no justice to what is really going on in this field.

Even neuroscientists really have no idea where things stand or where they are likely to go. As usual, the questions that matter most ... not just about the usual stuff like consciousness or free will, which are mostly pseudo-problems... but serious questions about motivation, action, about causality, things like that, these are still philosophical questions that the science itself has to account for, and put to use in making explanations.

There has been no experiment showing that dopamine is a simple cause of human behaviors. Sure, do a line of coke and you'll probably get a lot done. But it's far, far too quick to jump from that particular case to the much stronger, and scientifically unsupported, belief that dopamine explains everything we do.

There's a lot of heavy lifting there hiding just out of sight, and pointing at some neuroscience articles isn't going to change that.
 
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ChrisV

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I agree with most of what you said, but Neuroscience vs Psychology is a little different. It’s easier to prove things in Neuroscience because we’re dealing with hard physical structures rather than abstractions.

But it's far, far too quick to jump from that particular case to the much stronger, and scientifically unsupported, belief that dopamine explains everything we do.
No, I don’t think you’d find anyone willing to argue any one thing explains human behavior. The brain is probably the most complex structure on the planet. That being said, Dopamine does have a role in everything we do. You die without it.

Lets put it this way. One of my 'favorite' experiments was one where they injected the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine into the brain of rats. 6-OHDA is selectively neurotoxic to Dopamine receptors. So injecting them caused almost complete destruction of dopamine neurons.

What happened?

“After extensive destruction of ascending dopamine neurons, animals become oblivious to food and many other rewards.”

"Rats typically are aphagic and adipsic after 6-OHDA lesions, and will starve to death unless nourished artificially, even though food may be readily available”

The same thing happens when people take Dopamine Antagonists. I have a friend who who was put on Abilify (Dopamine Antagonists) and all of a sudden can’t find the willpower or energy to exercise, engages in risky behavior, neglects elf care, is totally lazy.

She’s essentially a milder version of the rats.

So if Dopamine transmission was blunted by 100% in the rats, hers was blunted by 40%.

Me? I’m prescribed Dopamine Increaser (Modafinil) for my ADHD and I notice a MARKED boost in motivation.

It’s major for motivation.

It’s more complex than that. It has to do with reward salience and how appetizing you find a particular reward.

In terms of if I believe the brain is mechanistic or a just an end, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. It’s not the first domino in the chain, it’s somewhere down the line. And it’s not even a chain it’s a 21312312 way feedback loop.
 

rogue synthetic

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I agree with most of what you said, but Neuroscience vs Psychology is a little different. It’s easier to prove things in Neuroscience because we’re dealing with hard physical structures rather than abstractions.

It does have a role in everything we do. You die without it.

It’s more complex than that. It has to do with reward salience and how appetizing you find a particular reward.

In terms of if I believe the brain is mechanistic or a just an end, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. It’s not the first domino in the chain, it’s somewhere down the line.

Chris I'm not sure you really got the problem.

That's probably my fault, since this is complicated stuff and I'm not always the best at explaining it.

I'm not saying that dopamine plays no role in human behavior.

I'm suggesting two things:

1. That neuroscience in general is presently in no position to make any authoritative claims about human behavior. What it DOES say is either trivial or "hidden philosophy".

2. That whatever role neurological discoveries DO play in human behavior will almost certainly be much more complicated than "If X, then Y"

To unpack that a little more, what this means is that levels of dopamine in any particular individual are not likely to be predictive of specific actions or experiences.

Why?

First problem: by what standard do you establish what is normal and what is deviant? If you just take a simple statistical aggregate, then you're going to have outliers by definition. So there's no clear explanatory connection... even if you establish a strong correlation, you'll always have people who have high dopamine but don't display the behaviors, and people with low dopamine who do the opposite.

So what's being explained here?

Second problem: human beings are not like rats and dogs. We are at least capable of understanding that we have certain feelings, and acting on or against them based on that understanding.

If it were as simple as "I have high dopamine, therefore I am going to act like an extrovert", then nobody could do otherwise.

People do otherwise all the time. For a simple example, I've fallen asleep after drinking a cup of coffee. Caffeine raises epinephrine and norepinephrine levels in the brain and activates the peripheral nerves to increase heart rate, stress hormones, and a bunch of other fight-or-flight systems. If it were all X-then-Y, that shouldn't be possible.

There are many, many examples of this. Humans can ignore or override hunger, pain, psychological forms of discomfort that no other animal can even experience.Humans go after things that no animal can imagine.

There's more going on here than "if X in physiology, then Y in behavior" sorts of laws.

The point I'm trying to get at is that whatever neuroscience is showing us about human behaviors, it is not going to be a simple matter of pointing to this or that thing or process in the brain and then mapping it on to a concept we already use.

The word "motivation" doesn't just mean "stimulation of dopamine in XYZ parts of the brain".

There is no motivation in a brain.

Motivation is a state of a whole person, not that person's brain.
 
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rogue synthetic

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Totally disagree.

You're free to disagree. I'm not particularly worried about any opinions on the topic.

Maybe you've had different experiences from me, but I've never seen or heard about a rat or a dog giving a speech, asking a question, writing a book, creating a computer, doing the logic and mathematics required to build computers, singing a song, writing a poem, participating in a religious ceremony, or all the stuff that humans do which no other animal does.

That's a pretty significant difference.
 
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ChrisV

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That's a pretty significant difference.

Of course there are differences Humans are certainly more complex, but most rules still apply. We share 99% of our DNA with most mammals. If you were to to do the same experiment on humans, it would have the same result, but we can’t go around just injecting neurotoxins into humans’ brains. They tried stuff like tat in Germany under the Nazis and got in a lot of trouble. The test subject were, of course, Rosenbergs and Cohens.

But the same thing still apply. If you took Abilify or Seroquel (dopamine blockers,) i would bet my left testical that you would spend your entire day sitting around accomplishing nothing.
 

rogue synthetic

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And what if I didn't?

What if I knew I felt like crap and got up and got it done anyway?

(This experiment is much easier to do with alcohol, when we call it being able to work with a hangover.)

Neurochemistry plays a part in but does not by itself determine complex human behaviors.
 

ChrisV

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And what if I didn't?


I would be very, very, very, very surprised.

Let’s put it this way, if i shot you with a tranq dart, how much would be able to control the effects. You might be able to fight it for a little while, but it would certainly affect you.

If you took Seroquel here’s what would happen. For the first 10 minutes you would do all sorts of stuff, just to prove me wrong. And you’d likely succeed. For a bit. But then the exhaustion and lack of motivation would take a toll on you.

[QUOTE="rogue synthetic, post: 716586, member: 50026”]What if I knew I felt like crap and got up and got it done anyway?

(This experiment is much easier to do with alcohol, when we call it being able to work with a hangover.)

Neurochemistry plays a part in but does not by itself determine complex human behaviors.[/QUOTE]

Working wit a hangover is different. I’m confident you can do that. But saying “I’ll still be able to be motivated with the part of my brain that’s responsible for motivation destroyed” is like saying “I’ll be able to walk without legs"

I know many many many perfectly normal people who have been put on dopamine blockers who later complained that they can’t find motivation to do even basic tasks, no matter how hard they try.
 
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ChrisV

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It reminds me of the people who SWEAR that drug addiction is about ‘willpower’ then try heroin and are singing a different tune.

It’s only then do they realize the power of biology.
 

ChrisV

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TED-talk-tier psychological and neuroscience feel-goods that came out over the last 5-15 years have proven hard or impossible to replicate in the lab

And I just had to add.. the replication crisis was wayyyyyyyyyyyyy worse than that. It invalidated findings back to the 50’s and before. A lot of CORE concepts in psychology (like... stuff in textbooks) was unable to be replicated. The replication crisis was one of the worst thing to happen in science
 

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I don't think I'm understanding how dopamine works.

I thought it was, you do X (accomplish a goal) and get rewarded with dopamine.

From the above, giving someone dopamine, you increase their motivation...to go out and do stuff?

Or is there a middle ground where both are right?
 
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Mattie

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The brain has the ability to change itself (neuro-plasticity) based on repeated thoughts and actions.

I agree with this statement. While everyone's brain is different, and we all have a different chemistry, people mess up their chemistry with drugs, alcohol, chemicals, and who knows what these days. Some of this is done by their own choice and actions.

The brain research, neurology, gives all different kinds of information and depends on how they did their research, what the variables were, conditions, background, not to mention how many people every day heal their brains over time and never recorded. I believe the brain can heal itself over time. It also has to do with removing yourself from certain environments, your diet, your sleep patterns, your physical fitness routine, lifestyle, and habits.
 
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Mattie

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man who was always fun loving, caring, gentle until he suffered a head injury. All of a sudden he became violent, aggressive and would hurt his friends and family. It really makes you question the whole fabric of morality and even free will. How much free will do humans actually have?
I've seen this many times as a nurse aide. Different situations, but brain injuries do cause violence, but also diseases of the brain like Cancer or M.S., I've had lots of people try to bite me, kick me, even run after me and attack me on my job. This is quite different though since there usually is a medical condition or some type of event occurred. Which they separate this in certain categories.

Usually they don't have any control over morals, ethics, values, they're not competent enough to function in society and usually why they're not living by themselves. Usually they go through a lot of medical therapy and rehab to evaluate whether they can ever recover.

And on the other hand I've seen people wake up out of coma's for years, and those always amaze me. Some of them can function just fine, and others have issues.
 

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I don't think I'm understanding how dopamine works.

I thought it was, you do X (accomplish a goal) and get rewarded with dopamine.

From the above, giving someone dopamine, you increase their motivation...to go out and do stuff?

Or is there a middle ground where both are right?

We used to thing dopamine was the pleasure chemical, now we know it’s a little more nuanced than that. Dopamine actually comes more before the reward, and the reward chemical is either Serotonin, GABA, Endorphin (opioids,) AND/OR DA (Dopamine) (in addition to)


They usually break it down into “wanting” and “liking”

Pasted_Image_8_27_18__5_09_PM.png

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/experim...g-2013/handouts/MITES_S10S13_addictionwk4.pdf

Incentive salience, we suggest, is a distinct component of motivation and reward. In other words, dopamine systems are necessary for 'wanting' incentives, but not for 'liking' them or for learning new 'likes' and 'dislikes’.

Dopamine is mostly the ‘wanting’ chemical. When we ‘want’ something our body prepares us for action. Dopamine is very energetic. It makes us energized and motivated

For example a lion sees a gazelle. Dopamine squirt as soon as he sees it. That causes glucose to be released into the blood preparing him for action... but once he GETS the gazelle, he feels calm. Opioids or GABA.
 
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ChrisV

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@rogue synthetic, watch that video. Pay particular attention to what he says at 1:14 (but don’t start there.)

And also 3:20ish when he talks about humans.

Btw, that’s Robert Sapolsky, the world’s leading neuroendocrinologist, and one of the top biologists of all time.
 
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ApparentHorizon

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We used to thing dopamine was the pleasure chemical, now we know it’s a little more nuanced than that. Dopamine actually comes more before the reward, and the reward chemical is either Serotonin, GABA, Endorphin (opioids,) AND/OR DA (Dopamine) (in addition to)


They usually break it down into “wanting” and “liking”

View attachment 21131

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/experim...g-2013/handouts/MITES_S10S13_addictionwk4.pdf

Incentive salience, we suggest, is a distinct component of motivation and reward. In other words, dopamine systems are necessary for 'wanting' incentives, but not for 'liking' them or for learning new 'likes' and 'dislikes’.

Dopamine is mostly the ‘wanting’ chemical. When we ‘want’ something our body prepares us for action. Dopamine is very energetic. It makes us energized and motivated

For example a lion sees a gazelle. Dopamine squirt as soon as he sees it. That causes glucose to be released into the blood preparing him for action... but once he GETS the gazelle, he feels calm. Opioids or GABA.

HO LEE. FKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

upload_2018-8-27_22-3-25.png

This explains so much

Excessively Wanted Stimuli:

The stimulus is wanted, so the person will expend great effort to get it, but it is not liked. Once attained, the stimulus brings little enjoyment.

Why people like the process and not the end goal.

It explains, why I sometimes get depressed (using that term loosely) after achieving some goals. Hence, why it's important to set multiple, short, med, and long term ones. Or why other people say, set ridiculously high targets.

It's all so you would avoid that "crash" afterwards. Kind of like some people get afternoon withdrawal, but with their vision of themselves.

See also, hedonism....when pleasure is achieved, happiness stagnates.

This may also explain why people sabotage themselves.
 

rogue synthetic

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Chris I may have given you the wrong impression here.

I'm not trying to have an argument with you.

I don't mean to be rude, but that kind of argument wouldn't be too far off arguing with my three year old daughter about which letter comes first in the alphabet. She's not totally clueless, but she's easily blinded by what she sees, and beacuse of that she has little grasp of the much larger space of ignorance.

I've tried to make the point with a scalpel but I guess I need to use the hammer: I'm a bit more educated on this topic than you seem to realize.

Your whole style of carrying on here reminds me of a reasonably bright undergraduate student who is enthusiastic about the topic. You don't seem to really understand the debate or what's involved in it. You think that just linking to Youtube videos or articles where some expert says something is a devastating argument.

I know this is hard to see from the outside, but scientists and academics don't look at each other like supermen. It's pretty common even for people within a single field of study to completely savage "rock stars". It's also very common for very bright people specializing in one particular area to say incredibly dumb things about things outside their areas of expertise.

I'm well aware of who Sapolsky is since I didn't learn about these subjects by Youtube videos and popular journalism. He's a very bright and accomplished researcher.

He's not God or even a god. Neuroscientists specialize in neuroscience. On topics that aren't neuroscience, they can be just as confused as anyone else. Saying "Sapolsky says!" is about as much of a winning move as taking my advice on who's going to win the Superbowl.

Whatever your background here, this makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. Like you're more worried about proving yourself and scoring points than being genuinely interested in the issues.

There's nothing wrong with being a beginner. Everybody starts somewhre. You've got a lot of enthusiasm, clearly. Great! Keep reading and learning. But don't mistake your interest and the current 'neuro-mania' in pop-culture for genuine depth of understanding. That takes a lot of time and patience.

Most auto-didacts are better at convincing themselves they have it than actually getting there.

That's assuming you're not here to Guru your way to the top with your Special Report That Reveals Top 27 Amazing Neuro-Secrets That Will Take Your Business Game to the Top in 30 Days or Less (Guaranteed!) In which case, I wish you luck.
 
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Chris I may have given you the wrong impression here.

I'm not trying to have an argument with you.

I don't mean to be rude, but that kind of argument wouldn't be too far off arguing with my three year old daughter about which letter comes first in the alphabet. She's not totally clueless, but she's easily blinded by what she sees, and beacuse of that she has little grasp of the much larger space of ignorance.

I've tried to make the point with a scalpel but I guess I need to use the hammer: I'm a bit more educated on this topic than you seem to realize.

Your whole style of carrying on here reminds me of a reasonably bright undergraduate student who is enthusiastic about the topic. You don't seem to really understand the debate or what's involved in it. You think that just linking to Youtube videos or articles where some expert says something is a devastating argument.

I know this is hard to see from the outside, but scientists and academics don't look at each other like supermen. It's pretty common even for people within a single field of study to completely savage "rock stars". It's also very common for very bright people specializing in one particular area to say incredibly dumb things about things outside their areas of expertise.

I'm well aware of who Sapolsky is since I didn't learn about these subjects by Youtube videos and popular journalism. He's a very bright and accomplished researcher.

He's not God or even a god. Neuroscientists specialize in neuroscience. On topics that aren't neuroscience, they can be just as confused as anyone else. Saying "Sapolsky says!" is about as much of a winning move as taking my advice on who's going to win the Superbowl.

Whatever your background here, this makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. Like you're more worried about proving yourself and scoring points than being genuinely interested in the issues.

There's nothing wrong with being a beginner. Everybody starts somewhre. You've got a lot of enthusiasm, clearly. Great! Keep reading and learning. But don't mistake your interest and the current 'neuro-mania' in pop-culture for genuine depth of understanding. That takes a lot of time and patience.

Most auto-didacts are better at convincing themselves they have it than actually getting there.

That's assuming you're not here to Guru your way to the top with your Special Report That Reveals Top 27 Amazing Neuro-Secrets That Will Take Your Business Game to the Top in 30 Days or Less (Guaranteed!) In which case, I wish you luck.

I'd buy it. (ok maybe not, but only b/c its a curiosity, and not my main pursuit. Maybe an audiobook I would.)

The way he presents the info, however dumbed down, makes it accessible to the rest of us. I appreciate what he's sharing, and helped provide a few keywords I could go down the rabbit hole that affected my life directly.

Just because not all of it is 100% accurate, doesn't mean it's not helpful to someone. In reality a lot of science is debatable, especially with the uptick in falsified publishing lately. (Don't get me started on China)

And that's the beauty of it in the first place. Someone states a hypothesis. Performs an experiment, and welcomes everyone else to try to falsify it.

Just saying the studies and information are wrong, b/c they're in popsci or youtube videos, isn't constructive imo. It might be helpful to the rest of us to say why it's wrong and propose alternative viewpoints, than just shutting down the discussion.

Maybe I'm coming from a naive place, but just my 2c.
 

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It reminds me of the people who SWEAR that drug addiction is about ‘willpower’ then try heroin and are singing a different tune.

It’s only then do they realize the power of biology.
Willpower to not become addicted to heroin?

Or willpower to overcome an addiction to heroin?

Which one are we talking about?
 

rogue synthetic

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Just saying the studies and information are wrong, b/c they're in popsci or youtube videos, isn't constructive imo. It might be helpful to the rest of us to say why it's wrong and propose alternative viewpoints, than just shutting down the discussion.

Oh you've misunderstood me, I'm not saying anything is wrong.

What you (everyone reading this) ought to be more concerned about is the laziness of the attitude.

The belief that you can assemble a serious and in-depth understanding of a complicated topic without putting in real work.

I'm not faulting anyone for trying. What I'm saying is that there is a serious delusion of expertise going on here.

Why am I not getting into it in more depth? Three reasons.

1. This stuff gets very technical, very fast. It's a Russian doll of problems within problems. To be blunt about it, and no disrespect intended, these aren't topics that you can expect to be digested into bite-sized chunks AND be useful AND still get you the approval badge of Science™. Pick any 2.

If you want to know what I personally think about neuroscience, I think it hasn't taught us a single thing about human behavior that historians, philosophers, novelists, poets, and other patient people who pay attention didn't already know. Most of what is interesting in cognitive neuroscience is the cognitive part, and as a mentor once put it, the projects digging into that area have yet to provide any finding that isn't either completely irrelevant, a refusal to address the actual hard questions, or just repeating the obvious in technical language that convinces people who like shiny things.

2. This is an entrepreneurship forum, not a forum about technical debates that have zero relevance outside a lab (and I'm not even embellishing). I'm glad you're interested in this stuff, but there is a very fine line between stoner-tier charlatanry and serious insights. I don't see any value in this kind of discussion. At best it is a distraction.

If you're expecting real actionable advice... well, I think your time is best spent on other things.

If that's where you think your time or money is best spent, I'm not here to argue with you. But I'd consider my sources, and keep in mind that simplicity is not always the best virtue even if it's the rule of the game on the internet. Some problems are just hard, no matter how much you want the easy way.

3. Nothing is going to be settled or proven or decided on an internet thread. It is going to degenerate into ego and name calling. Not if, when. It's already heading that way right now. I'm only here right now because I still think there's a slightly better than average chance that the carrot win.

Now none of this is far removed from shutting down the discussion you say you want to have.

Okay. What is worth having in the discussion isn't being had, and really can't/shouldn't be had here.

So what exactly would you like to know?
 
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ChrisV

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HO LEE. FKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

View attachment 21139

This explains so much



Why people like the process and not the end goal.

It explains, why I sometimes get depressed (using that term loosely) after achieving some goals. Hence, why it's important to set multiple, short, med, and long term ones. Or why other people say, set ridiculously high targets.

It's all so you would avoid that "crash" afterwards. Kind of like some people get afternoon withdrawal, but with their vision of themselves.

See also, hedonism....when pleasure is achieved, happiness stagnates.

This may also explain why people sabotage themselves.
Well this chart leaves out the other side of the coin..

wanting.png
 

ChrisV

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Chris I may have given you the wrong impression here.


I'm not trying to have an argument with you.


I don't mean to be rude, but that kind of argument wouldn't be too far off arguing with my three year old daughter about which letter comes first in the alphabet. She's not totally clueless, but she's easily blinded by what she sees, and beacuse of that she has little grasp of the much larger space of ignorance.


I've tried to make the point with a scalpel but I guess I need to use the hammer: I'm a bit more educated on this topic than you seem to realize.


Your whole style of carrying on here reminds me of a reasonably bright undergraduate student who is enthusiastic about the topic. You don't seem to really understand the debate or what's involved in it. You think that just linking to Youtube videos or articles where some expert says something is a devastating argument.


I know this is hard to see from the outside, but scientists and academics don't look at each other like supermen. It's pretty common even for people within a single field of study to completely savage "rock stars". It's also very common for very bright people specializing in one particular area to say incredibly dumb things about things outside their areas of expertise.


I'm well aware of who Sapolsky is since I didn't learn about these subjects by Youtube videos and popular journalism. He's a very bright and accomplished researcher.


He's not God or even a god. Neuroscientists specialize in neuroscience. On topics that aren't neuroscience, they can be just as confused as anyone else. Saying "Sapolsky says!" is about as much of a winning move as taking my advice on who's going to win the Superbowl.


Whatever your background here, this makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. Like you're more worried about proving yourself and scoring points than being genuinely interested in the issues.


There's nothing wrong with being a beginner. Everybody starts somewhre. You've got a lot of enthusiasm, clearly. Great! Keep reading and learning. But don't mistake your interest and the current 'neuro-mania' in pop-culture for genuine depth of understanding. That takes a lot of timeline and patience.


Most auto-didacts are better at convincing themselves they have it than actually getting there.


That's assuming you're not here to Guru your way to the top with your Special Report That Reveals Top 27 Amazing Neuro-Secrets That Will Take Your Business Game to the Top in 30 Days or Less (Guaranteed!) In which case, I wish you luck.

Oh god, another credentialist.

Yo, I don’t care what your credentials are.

Evidence or GTFO.

I wasn’t linking to argue. I was linking because I figured you’d want to learn something. I thought that’s why people were on this forum.

What you’re essentially arguing for is Free Will. There’s barely a shred of evidence that free will exists and almost no one in any Academic communities believe in it. You should know that.

Furthermore, in science we don’t argue, we PROVE IT. If you have the background in any of those fields, you already know that.

Show me the studies.

I’ve linked to a number of valid studies, evidence, charts, links. Your “background” doesn’t mean shit to me without evidence. I linked Sapolsky because he provides EVIDENCE. You can look those studies up.

Your evidence? “I have more of a background in thin than you think” .. “you sound like an excited undergraduate.” Yea, that’s a totally scientific argument.

There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner? Bro I posted this thread THREE YEARS AGO. And it’s a topic I’ve been fascinated by and reading about since I was a kid. I just don’t see it as profitable so I’m not gonna rack up that debt. Especially in a day and age where colleges are dying and MOOCs are taking their place.

Whatever. if you don’t want to learn, not my problem.

I mean whatever you wanna believe bruh. F*cking with your dopamine makes you a rockstar. Motivation through the roof.

I know 10000% you’re wrong, and if you want to be wrong on a topic that can seriously benefit you, that’s fine.

It’s like MJ says “some people would rather be right than rich.”

If you’re gonna continue with the credentialist bullshit like that dimwit in my Psychology thread (the same kid that was later cowering in my PMs, threatening to call a lawyer because he thought I was going to ruin his reputation) I’m just gonna block you.

If you don’t post evidence, I don’t care. If you do, I’ll be happy to reconsider my views.

If not, ta-ta.
 
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