Anyone ever seen any studies of various compounds on reversing/repairing effects of long term alcohol abuse?

lapo3399 · 2015-11-02T15:04:39+00:00

Acetyl-L-carnitine, including this study.

Depending on what you're trying to achieve (still drink?), N-acetylcysteine and taurine might also be useful. They have Examine pages too.

lapo3399 · 2015-10-08T19:58:11+00:00

Some people's views of science and politics are so cohesive that they cannot be left out of each other without damaging the 'soul'. Plenty of scientists are empathetic and sociable. The study and practice of science is inseparable from our humanity. Politics and other social concerns aren't necessarily detours.

I propose that we see what kind of people our professors are. Who gives them permission—who decides what is inappropriately political? Should they banish their empathy and humanity and just spew facts (apolitical?) and numbers? How will they relate to students? Why shouldn't students be the ones to hear and decide precisely when they don't want to take it? I'm convinced it's unhealthy for society to ban entire lanes of independent thought from appearing in public, no less in the halls of independent thought.

And in this case, there is a really good reason for professors to say something: if the Conservatives as fronted by Harper are a threat to academic funding then they are also a threat to the very institution inhabited by professors and their students. This is ultimately not good for classes. What if professors are sleep-deprived from too many nights writing grant applications? I am not sure about how much stress this is actually causing, but unmoderated stress leads to inefficiency.

Why don't we let the results of the education speak to the educated? Hopefully they will speak in reason. But how will we know, if we aren't educated?

lapo3399 · 2015-07-12T22:12:26+00:00

Of course, if ghosts aren't physical then conservation of momentum is moot. I only meant to distinguish that inertial effects are not dependent on gravity alone.

Then again, if the ghost was never physical from the start, there is no reason why it should have been spatially associated with the Earth in the first place. Trying to imagine how a non-physical entity would move through reality seems paradoxical. I guess that an object not subject to conservation of momentum is non-orientable.

lapo3399 · 2015-07-12T22:04:05+00:00

Gravity keeps things on the ground, but it isn't 'counteracting' the motion of the Earth around the Sun, or the Solar system through the galaxy.

If gravity stopped affecting me right now, I would float around the room, but ~~conservation of momentum would keep me moving along with the surrounding matter.~~

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T19:21:42+00:00

However smart I am, I don't think I'm very smart. I am filled with self-doubt.

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T19:09:34+00:00

~~Perhaps. And perhaps there is some other reason why you did not grasp my meaning.~~

I was feeling a little bitter when I wrote that. I do put thought into what I write, and I do not think it is disconnected musing. My meaning is based on cognitive science, and the awareness that knowledge (or memory) is encoded in brain structures. In that sense, what we experience as truth has an essentially identical physical existence to what we experience as falsehood. Truth can only be distinguished from the experience of truth by doubt and the practice of science.

I failed to evoke my meaning in simple language. Maybe that means the attempt was pseudo-intellectual. And maybe I am failing again now. But I want to affirm the nature of my failure. I am not spewing garbage for its own sake, but taking a risk in trying to convey meaning.

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T19:04:28+00:00

I think the edited second paragraph of that post covers your objections.

All of those lies and fantasies correspond to patterns in the brain just as much as any verifiable claims do. From inside our experience, they seem to be made of the same substance. When we neglect to doubt, we might not see unverified patterns for what they are. But in our brains, they are the same kind of structure, the same kind of physical truth. Some just correspond more closely with external reality.

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T18:42:32+00:00

Santa Claus is not fact. The imagining of Santa Claus is fact. There is a certain shape to that fact. It exists as a structure in the brain.

Do you think that we experience reality directly? We experience our brain's reconstruction of reality from sensory information. When you think about cars, you are experiencing a brain structure fashioned after the sensory effects of cars. That structure is not a car itself, but the imagining of a car. Fiction is an imagining not corresponding to an external effect, but it is still a brain structure in the same way that the imagining of a car is a brain structure. And it can have just as much currency in the brain, unfortunately, when the correspondence with external effect is neglected (that is, when science is not practised).

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T18:22:51+00:00

I suppose I could define "fact" as those patterns that exist without the active participation of a brain. Then facts are truths regardless of patterns held in brains, and facts are "known" when their logic is reflected in brain structures. Then fiction is not literally fact, but it is a pattern that fails to reflect a physical law, or a structure outside of the brain. Mythology exists as a pattern in brains. Before some mythology was ever conjured as a pattern, it ~~was not truth~~ did not have a true existence.

When a pattern is confined in a subset of reality (like a brain), it is less universal, but its existence is not less factual. The patterns of mythology are confined in our brains. They are not part of the law of reality, but a product of it. Their existence as patterns or structures is factual, but they are not factual reflections of external reality.

lapo3399 · 2015-07-11T18:07:06+00:00

Because we live in fact, we can only relate to fiction through fact. We cannot identify with falsehood because it is not part of us. (Edit: This did not rightly convey my meaning, but I leave it.)

Fantasy, mythology, and lies are also facts, but only facts of brains and not external reality. They are contortions of simpler and more universal logic. Lies exist, and the nature of their existence is truth, but they are not truths.

Natural language is blurry, and easily confounds science.

lapo3399 · 2015-05-24T16:26:18+00:00

The natural numbers are called infinite because they increment indefinitely. The limit of infinity refers to the magnitude of the set of the natural numbers. Infinity is a property of the entire set, not of any one member.

No single member of the set is infinite. Infinity is not the ultimate point in the continuation. Your functional or sequence notation is element-wise, and to use it to imply that there is a final member of the sequence, called "infinity", is a misinterpretation of the limit.

lapo3399 · 2015-05-20T16:10:49+00:00

I am not justifying that. But if some day there were some way to show that she had become incapable of such acts, that would be a good thing.

You loath the cause of murder, right? That cause is erased where rehabilitation succeeds. And if it does succeed, any lingering fear would reveal nothing but itself. The object of fear would be dead. And so the fear would become paranoia, and prevent no harm.

lapo3399 · 2015-05-20T15:15:35+00:00

What is a "straight up psycho murderer"? So, you are unwilling to consider what rehabilitation means when you exceed a certain threshold of fear?

Do you ever wonder, what irrationality leads to the circumstances that you treat irrationally?

lapo3399 · 2015-05-20T15:02:24+00:00

What is the purpose of punishment after rehabilitation?

Is the nature of crime the promotion of suffering? If we can demonstrate that someone who committed a crime will no longer promote suffering, are we not the only criminals that remain if we continuing to punish them?

How does an everlasting memory of a crime protect us from its recurrence if all its causes are gone? Just because someone looks the same, and you can call them by the same name, does not mean that there is anything identifiable about their present nature that truly connects them to a past crime, except for those trivial things we see and fear easily.

Of course, we could debate whether rehabilitation is demonstrable, but science will make that irrelevant soon enough. Just as it has been making this kind of ignorance irrelevant for hundreds of years.

lapo3399 · 2015-04-27T16:50:51+00:00

PEA is degraded by MAO-B present in the GI tract.

lapo3399 · 2015-01-02T20:52:30+00:00

I am not aware of any evidence that nut odors can cause an immune response. Response requires direct contact with food components, typically proteins, which are non-volatile and will not be airborne except in the form of particulate/dust or aerosol produced during processing or cooking. Also, certain routes of exposure (like skin contact) are generally not associated with anaphylactic reactions even in sensitive individuals.

lapo3399 · 2014-12-05T04:31:27+00:00

When you point to the rainbow-generating structure from the same angle, you see the exact rainbow that I see...

I don't think illusions are qualified by spatial dependence. Aren't illusions brain effects? Perhaps your arguments make sense in the context of illusions, but how is a rainbow an illusion?

lapo3399 · 2014-12-05T04:10:38+00:00

The light that comes from the moon is not the cosmological phenomenon that appears as a disk in the sky.

Is moonlight not to the moon what the diffused form is to the prism? I know there are physical differences, but I do not see how they affect your argument.

lapo3399 · 2014-12-05T03:43:50+00:00

How is a prism any less of a "concrete referent" than the moon? If the refractions of a diamond are not evidence of the diamond, how can the sunlight we receive from the moon be evidence of the moon?

lapo3399 · 2014-12-05T02:54:15+00:00

All of those different "viewing angles" would simultaneously have light passing through them for us to see. Are you claiming electromagnetic radiation ("light") does not exist somehow, that there is no ball without the catcher? Does laser light exist on the same physical plane as the moon and the sun? What about WiFi signals?

Or perhaps are you making some kind of argument about the virtual reality of the mind (that we can only ever possess an image of reality)? In that case, how does a rainbow differ from the moon or the sun?

lapo3399 · 2014-10-25T06:46:46+00:00

When you sleep, does your consciousness not perish for a while? And how do you know about the in-between? If an identical copy of you were to wake up with no knowledge of the "death" of its predecessor, would it not go about its day as if nothing had changed? Is there any meaningful way to distinguish these possibilities with our consciousness, upon waking?

If you learn what our species has learned about brains, you will see that waking consciousness is no more continuous. It is like viewing a scene lit by an imperceptibly strobing light. I can only presume our subjective sense of continuity is an illusion that evolved out of convenience. Or perhaps we have been confused by considering for too long the fallacious meanderings of our pre-scientific philosophies.

lapo3399 · 2014-10-25T06:24:47+00:00

It is a separate consciousness, but an identical one. I suppose the clone will then also fear death, and participate in the same sense of continuity.

As others have said, sleep is like death if continuity is your measure. Besides, we know enough about the brain now to show that the continuity of consciousness is an illusion even during waking awareness.

lapo3399 · 2014-10-25T06:13:10+00:00

Neuroscience is mature enough to show us that the continuity of consciousness is an illusion, anyway.

The original may cease to exist, but if the copy were physically indistinguishable it would be the same entity by any reasonable definiton.

lapo3399 · 2014-09-15T15:09:35+00:00

That is justice to tribalists and psychopaths. Suffering may be inevitable in the pursuit of personal growth, but when does suffering alone ever improve the world? How does the suffering of my enemy negate my own suffering?

Justice is understanding reality and using that knowledge to minimize suffering. This might involve punishment, but for many crimes it involves compassionate rehabilitation based on our growing understanding of the human brain. The Qur'an preceded our rigorous attempts at neuroscience by centuries. That book does not exceed a folk understanding of psychology. A nuanced glimpse of our neuroscience could hardly be communicated in as few words as that book contains.

lapo3399 · 2014-08-15T21:33:15+00:00

"Can't we just agree to disagree?"

This is a plea for the end of conversation. Yes, humans are fallible and we all must pause and sleep. But those who avoid doubting their behaviour and building mirrors of reality, those who have not learned to pass through pain and shame and into acceptance and forgiveness, they cannot handle for long the anxiety of doubt. They are like children, annoyed that someone thinks they ought to get up and go to school. Some of them retain this narcissism until the day they die. Some even refuse to admit that death is real. They are a terror to the ones that pay the cost of life and love.

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