VoiceOfLogic
I happen to be, unfortunately, the first human super-intelligence.
What a sad tragedy to see what others can't see.
User ID: 1999
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
There is a fundamental difference between empathy induced by direct stimulus + perceived closeness vs empathy induced by "aBsTrAcT" thoughts
Besides those two categories, the third component is that empathy can be also purely semantic, devoid of emotion.
See e.g. this partial example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_death
Gender studies have also found a consistent deficit of empathy from both men and women towards men
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
As for the pharmacology of empathy I am not well versed. Oxytocin has complex and paradoxical and hormesistic effects IIRC.
Some neurosteroids are relevant too and therefore maybe etifoxine.
As for the neural basis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron are the most famous component but only? apply for the first category of empathy I defined. I don't know what are the others.
Also there is a whole class of recreational drugs called empathogens, such as GHB and MDMA and therefore serotonin and VGCC channels are relevant.
The thing is most people stereotypically seen as good empaths are from the first category, which is often useless. People are extremely defficient in the two latters categories and that explain why most humans are locally behaving as psychopaths.
I have read over 1000 Russian/USSR studies in pharmacology.
The Russian medical research is not the only one to be an isolated island, this apply also to Japanese research for example, see e.g their research on tinnitus.
While it is true that Russian research in pharmacology is understudied by the west, because of criminal mediocrity, there are many counter examples of Russian counpounds that have a decent amount of international research.
See e.g the biggest discovery in medecine of the century: skq1.
IIRC for Russian pharmaceuticals, the international researchers I "often see" study them are Indian or Brazilian. Maybe German too.
As for Nootropics or geroprotectors, they are generally markedly more ignored by the international "community" because of systemic failures, since nootropics/cognition enhancement are not considered a legitimate drug target and therefore is underfunded. Except for the niche research on mitigating fragile X syndrome, autism, the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, social anxiety, etc.
Since USSR and to some extent Russian research is public funded they are almost the only one in the world to afford fundamental research at scale of targets that have no commercial value in the prescription drug market.
As for geroprotectors the same apply, Ageing is generally not considered a disease, nor something that should be treated by taking pharmacology because we live in a very infantile/stockholmised world.
Even though geroprotectors often have partial efficacy against a wide range of lucrative diseases, the extreme inertia and cost of clinical trials combined to the extreme aversion of doctors for polypharmacology, partial drugs and simply keeping up with medical advance when it is evolitive instead of being disruptive explain that they are underresearched by the west and never prescribed.
The Russian also afford something revolutionary, they study the pharmacological application of drug that are plant/animal derived or that are endogenously produced in the human body (e.g. Peptides).
Those entire class of pharmacologicals, which have a billion of year of existence and bidirectional fine tuning, and ideal side effects profile are in general not patentable and since mostly only corporations fund clinical trials, the main class of medecine is in practice, non-existent because of broken incentives.
Because the Russian bypass those attractors/repulsors that plague the medical research, they can and do make revolutionary discoveries in most fields of medicine.
As i said, many Russian counpounds do have multiple international research that reproduce and corroborate the potency of their results.
However it is true that there is a concern of fraud/amplifying the potency of the effect of a pharmaceutical.
In my experience such fraud is rare but is possible.
The main candidate I have is the atypical anxiolytic Tofisopam.
Not Russian though, but from an ex USSR European state.
I have read the 300s studies about it.
There is IIRC a lot of corroborating studies from around the world, Including recent studies.
Tofisopam is an atypical anxiolytic, antidepressant, non addictive gabaergic, dopaminergic and generally excitatory drug as is is an atypical selective PDE inhibitor.
It is the only drug in the world to have this pharmacological profile and can be expected to have widespread, unique effects.
The body of studies for its action mechanisms are many and are very convincing in principle.
I am not rejecting the research on the nature of its effects.
Tofisopam is extremely interesting and that is not a fraud per se.
However I am rejecting the extreme amount of studies showing very potent effects on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and other psychological conditions.
While the effect is real and tofisopam might be used for those conditions, how can there be so many studies corroborating very potent results while the actual reported effect online is very mild/inconsistent is a mystery for me.
Even though the online reports are rare and it might be that tofisopam truly is a wonder drug, IMHO I doubt it.
How can it be fraud when there is so much research from different teams and decade, even international one ?
Just look at how potent tofisopam is supposed to be https://fr.scribd.com/presentation/328205226/Tofisopam-Medical-2014-REVISED
A fraud at this scale can't be explained.
It would be too risky to synchronize such a massive amount of fraudulent researchers. Among the 300s studies not a single one significantly dismiss the rest of the research.
But if the reported potency of tofisopam is really a fraud then that is horrific for the rest of the medical research, nothing could be trusted as even a compound with so many studies, over decades and many international teams, for so many conditions would not be immune to consistent, systematic international fraud.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Strongly agreed on the saliency of it, e.g. for Elden ring.
However I sometimes try to read reviews not for being convinced but to be persuaded, to hype me.
Reading about flaws makes me emphase and give attention to them.
So there is a tradeoff but you're mostly right.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
An ambiguous "is maybe an object" is preferable to "is maybe plural" since contextual confusion about the former is extremely less likely than the later.
But yeah ideally we would create a new gender neutral singular pronoun.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
China covid policy is (was?) an immense success unfortunately the rest of the world is too inept and criminal to react efficiently to covid entry points and therefore millions of humans die and quality of life, worldwide intelligence level and lifespan are put at an extreme and yet unknown risk. How many times will people catch covid in their own lifetime? How many percents of neurons/synapse lost? This is extremely worrying.
China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany
China is the biggest exporter of vaccine worldwide (2 billions ?), while occident was keeping them all for themselves and did not allow other countries to produce patented vaccines (well it maybe was allowed very late I don't recall exactly the timeline) china saved the majority of mankind regarding covid deaths.
While their vaccine was a bit less effective, with the newer variant it is on par if not better? (I haven't looked at the viral load metric, where mRNA vaccine have become entirely useless) see https://old.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/zq0x2h/after_2nd_and_3rd_dose_chinas_sinovac_reach/
Of course the best vaccine would probably be a combination of distinct ones. Also, let me remind the world that the Russian main vaccine is very competitive and was denied out of pure racism, although nowadays we have the ukrainian war narrative.
As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.
As for anti-sino racism, while on the digression, I'll ask the reader who caused the Great Chinese Famine.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
English is not my native language but "it" seems much more gramatically correct than the plural ambiguous "they".
The fact we alter language to make it more ambiguous, for humans and even more so for AIs is worrying.
At some point I was for eliminating she/he but then I remembered the little known fact that it is useful for coreference resolution. However besides this fact I'm convinced if we eliminated he/she, there would be much less identity wars between the two genders and therefore more egalitarianism.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
You can issue corrections, prompt it with more information, tell it to adjust something, and it'll do it.
How is this implemented? Neural networks are universally stateless.
I have extensive expertise in pharmacology,
you can target most pharmacological pathways via OTC drugs, gray-zone prescritption-free prescription drugs or phytochemicals or research chemicals. A special mention to the USSR pharmacosphere which has made amazing discoveries and as a reminder the discovery of the century (skq1)
Indeed the graal is to do your own synthesis or to know a private small scale chemist, there are dedicated communities online.
However, you'd be surprised how many drugs are available on the clear web OTC, and in many cases that is legal, or beyond legal (Vanuatu for example)
In addition to this, there are online sellers of research chemicals aka legal drug variants. And it is not just for junkies, people are buying research chemicals to medicate themselves better than the bureaucratic system (e.g. many countries do not prescribe amphetamines for ADHD, leaving humans in misery), or even to increase significantly their healthspan/lifespan, such as e.g buying NACET.
You must find the markets by yourself, the increase in censorhip on the web is record high and most things that are shared become shutdown therefore keep the secrets for yourself. As a reminder, theres people that quality of life really depends on the existence of those menaced infrastructures.
As for how to precisely dose, you use a milligram scale. The seller often provide third party lab results and even if purity is low that is extremely overatted.
The idea e.g. that crystal in breaking bad is much better at above 98% is an inept meme, there is no quality factor its just a quantity. The only possible and rarely that relevant quality aspect is the ratio of levo/dextro enantiomers, but most of the processes IIRC give you the racemic form by default.
Therefore if you only get 50% purity (generally is 98%) that simply means you need to double the dose.
The concern is wether it is cut with toxic/harmful products, adjuvants (fentanyl, etc) but that concern is overatted, one there are trusted sources and lab results, second you can easily try reagents. The only common cutting agent might be caffeine and its no big deal. Note however there are many scams online, but are avoidable with enough numeracy.
Also as a reminder, one should never take stimulants without coadministred long half life potent antioxidants such as astaxanthin and at least 600mg NAC othwerise you'll kill your dopaminergic neurons.
Also make yourself a favor and beyond worrying about drugs toxicities, worry about the toxicity of living. Any non-insane person must actively slow down its aging process.
note:
there exists a niche way to get access to a medication, especially experimental ones or experimental off label uses, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_access and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law
note: If anyone know how to get guanfacine in europe without prescriptions please tell me. And yes I know clonidine is available but its not the same. I mean I know guanfacine is on india-m_art but are those offers really prescription-free? Any two-cents @JhanicManifold ? Theres written rx only in the photos.
Well there is this one but how to know if its legit? m.indiam_ art .com/ proddetail/guanfacine-hydrochloride-2217963773.html
This is what you want https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.daylio&hl=fr&gl=US&pli=1
I also advise you to use the xmind zen mindmap
Now about depression, the thing that has always scared me is that there are vicious cycles but the same is true for virtuous cycles.
I have a very extensive expertise in psychopharmacology and yet I can tell you the things that will have the most impact on your well being are:
good and sufficient sleep hygiene, increase your sleep duration, for that you can start listening to ASMR made for sleep.
fight loneliness at all cost, you need to see your friends frequently
listen to music that give you joy for example you might surprise yourself dancing in front of a mirror with https://youtube.com/watch?v=cD5TrBtiCsM and https://youtube.com/watch?v=BNig6xG36i4&t=15s
improve your hobbies e.g. start reading a great book
do regular physical exercise it is a decent complementary antidepressant although not as much as sleep and environnemental enrichment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_enrichment
Something easy to achieve is to pay a gamepass pc subscription and play games with your friends such as e.g. Worms
Now pharmacologically speaking
daily vitamin D at 3000 IU is an effective antidepressant benign contrary to the classical ones
there are other benign not officially considered antidepressants with complementary action mechanisms such as ALCAR e.g. 1000 per day
more generally checking your health biomarkers including hormones can help, e.g. TRT or fight a deficiency, e.g. taking selenium 200mcg everyday (not more) can improve your health and lifespan and depression if the depression stems from some health related deficits.
About traditional antideps, they mostly have semi serious side effects, the only mostly benign ones with statistically reasonable effectiveness are the RIMA (not a MAOI) moclobemide and the melatonin agonist agomelatine. Always check CYP inhibition concerns with other coadministrated drugs or supplements. Do not trust doctors to do those checks for you, they do not know how to do their job and this is systemic.
Do not obsess about medication, it can help some but for most lifestyle and consistent mindset changes are both sufficent and effective.
Good luck dear human, it gets better :)
I feel frankly good in my life right now btw
VoiceOfLogic
8mo ago
There is also the excellent french yt channel Axolotl
VoiceOfLogic
8mo ago
Indeed toxicity can be non-linear with the dose. Btw I made this comment on the point that thc has less observable toxicity than alcohol https://www.themotte.org/post/658/smallscale-question-sunday-for-september-3/136506?context=8#context
VoiceOfLogic
8mo ago
But if so why are so many gays into the twink/femboy aesthethic?
VoiceOfLogic
8mo ago
Indeed men becoming gay/bi/trans will considerably increase given the male dysmorphia dynamic being set by women on the dating scene. However asexuality might increase by just as much, it is still an empirical open question IMO
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Sorry what does HBD mean?
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Just saying:
installing software dependencies to run it is very simple you can learn it in 15 minutes.
It depends on the environment but e.g. for the popular Javascript command line applications you need to install the Javascript virtual machine (NodeJs), it will install for you Npm, the node package manager which allow you to install dependencies.
You git clone a JS repository you find cool.
you run npm install
and to run the app it depends, could be npx run or npm run/serve, but that detail is described in the Readme file of the github repository see section how to install/run
For other programming languages, the steps are very similar and straigthforward.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Could you share a gist of what it says?
I've read the intro of the wiki page on the hajnal line and it just seems from a quick glance to be a refuted ? theory on a fertility divide.
It is well known that fertility is inverselly correlated with wealth so that divide might have been partially true.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Is this like most interesting topics on earth, something where humanity has pathologically, systematically stopped the depth of the discourse at the introductory level, or has this author or any human on earth cared enough to specify a semblance of a roadmap towards the stated hedonistic goal via bioengineering?
Where can I find a e.g. an exhaustive list of pharmacological pathways that promote positive valence qualias and of pharmacological pathways that downregulate or dampen negative-valence qualias?
Thanks Cafe, that is a great comment, exactly the kind of informatively rich comments the motte desperately lacks.
I will give you a proper answer tomorrow but when I said that tryptophan cross the BBB, I actually meant about 5 hydroxy tryptophan (5htp), which has good bioavailability, cross the BBB and bypass the rate limiting enzyme conversion of L-tryptophan to 5htp (which itself downstream will again be converted to serotonin in a rate limited manner)
1998:
phytochemicals are extremely interesting actually and a surprisingly high number of synthetic drugs are derivatives or imitations of phytos or endogenous molecules.
People use to joke/ridiculize them but there is nothing more ridicule than a human that ridiculize billion of years parallel bidirectional (both the molecule and the body adapt) optimization of phamacological pathways towards maximizing host or symbionts survival or other advantageous metrics.
The issue with phyto (some can be toxic btw) is that many have bad bioavailability and sometimes suboptimal pharmacokinetics or half-lives.
Both of those problems can be trivially solved, either by bypassing first pass metabolism via vitamin C and or increasing lipophilia absorption via co-administration of omega-3 and or via inhibiting the CYP 450 enzymes via e.g. piperine or grappefruit juice (beware can be dangerous with many synthetic drugs as it potentiate wildly their metabolism hence dose potency, profile and half lives)
I'm not certain to understand what your goal is with that question,
a pharmacological causative model is heuristically useful to make predictions, about effectiveness for condition X and to establish a safety, tolerance, toxicity and interaction profile.
All those things are useful but mostly unecessary for the layman.
If there is a non-negligible community that takes plant X since years in quantity Y and that doesn't report huge terrifying side effects and that they report potent effectiveness then its probably worth a try for acute use although for long term use there will always be a toxicity/accelerated ageing question but in many cases we never know for certain however in most cases we do know reasonably somewhat the safety profiles.
It has actually become very rare to find phytochemicals that have not been extensively studied regarding their pharmacology and hence the causative model is often well established assuming you take time to research the research.
But beyond annecdtotal evidence, doing a blind test scientific trial about wether X is effective for Y, e.g. depression is very cheap and therefore even without said causative model we often know wether X has elicited a potent response for Y in N people empirically following precise protocol.
Empiricisms as always trumps a priori reasoning regarding effort efficiency and indeed people should considering the mostly safe profile of phytochemicals (generalization see e.g. cyclopamide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclopamine#/media/File:Cyclopelamb2.jpg) play much more the lab rats, this would drive very significantly the speed of empirical scientific research and therefore discovery of treatments for ineptly considered incurable diseases.
edit:
only recently did we learn that tryptophan will selectively unbind with albumin at the blood brain barrier
What does that imply? We already knew tryptophan cross the BBB. You mean the competition with tyrosine?
only recently has the consensus shifted to serotonin deficiency lacking a role in depression (although I have my own views on this).
What?
Serotonergics are euphorisant see e.g. MDMA, MDAI, 5MAPB, shrooms, etc
The effect of SSRIs is less intuitive (reduction of sert receptors density) but still sert driven.
APS surely are an interesting topic:
The U.S does not yet seems to have a soft kill APS in production but Russia uses the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtora-1 on T-80 and (all?) T-90s
According to the manufacturers, Shtora decreases the chances of a tank being hit by an anti-tank missile, such as the Dragon, by a factor of 4–5:1.[10]
While russia has in addition 3 generations of hard kill APS, the U.S has 2 independent proof of concept models
first APS in history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drozd
Although reported to offer an 80% increase in survival rate during its testing in Afghanistan, the radar was unable to adequately detect threats and the firing of its rockets caused unacceptably high levels of collateral damage.[1]
later succeded with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(countermeasure)
The computer has a reaction time of 0.05 seconds and protects the tank over a 300-degree arc, everywhere but the rear side of the turret. The system engages targets within 50 metres (55 yd) of the vehicle it is defending, and the ammunition detonates at around 1.5 metres (1.6 yd) from the threat.[10] It will engage any threat approaching the tank between the velocities of 70 metres per second (230 ft/s) and 700 metres per second (2,300 ft/s), and can detect false targets, such as outgoing projectiles, birds and small caliber bullets.[11] Arena works during the day and night, and the lack of electromagnetic interference allows the system to be used by multiple vehicles as a team.[23] The 27-volt system requires approximately one kilowatt of power, and weighs around 1,100 kilograms (2,400 lb).[11] Arena increases a tank's probability of surviving a rocket-propelled grenade by between 1.5[11]–2 times.[24]
Despite being very interesting, It seems this system is not in use but is available for export versions
Last gen deployed on Armata vehicles:
Afganit (Russian: Афганит, lit. 'Afghanite') is a Russian active protection system (APS) employed on modern Russian Armata family of vehicles.[1] It is intended to supersede the Arena APS and utilises radar and electro-optical sensors in the ultraviolet and infrared bands.[2][3] The millimeter-wavelength radar detects and tracks incoming anti-tank munitions. The system can reportedly intercept armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot kinetic energy penetrators in addition to high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) munitions.[4][5] Currently, the maximum speed that can be intercepted is 1,700 m/s (Mach 5.0), with projected future increases of up to 3,000 m/s (Mach 8.8).[6] According to news sources, it protects the tank from all sides.[7][8]
A few armata (not the T-14) have been seen in Ukraine but not meaningfully deployed yet.
Interestingly Ukraine has its own APS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaslin_Active_Protection_System however I have no clue how much it is used in practice?
About the US prototype APS:
n 2006–2007, the Institute for Defense Analysis found Quick Kill to be relatively immature and had significant development risks. Important components such as the radar were not yet fully developed and testing of the system as a whole was on hold while the warhead was redesigned. They also found Trophy, which uses a shotgun-like kill mechanism, to be the most mature of the 15 systems they analyzed.
while the other one seems promising:
However, in August 2018 the Army decided not to continue qualifying Iron Curtain onto the Stryker, saying that while the system "generally worked in concept" and was "generally able to hit its targets," it was still not mature enough.[11]
China recently deployed the GL-5 which has a range of 100 meters, twice that of arena (no clue for afganit)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GL5_Active_Protection_System
innovative since it launch 2 rockets.
The irsaely trophy seems interesting. Gun based.
almost completely negate legacy ATGMs unless paired with a sophisticated jamming attack ..
This is an unrealistic claim as of yet.
Firstly as we can see, at least for Russia and the U.S, hard kill APS are nothing more than uncertain and possibly buggy proof of concepts.
Russia did deploy some successfully in afghanistan but the fact they didn't deploy them shows that the tech is mostly not ready.
It could be that the new APS system on armatas is disruptives and working well, but that is unproven. It's possible but uncertain that using recent machine learning techniques would yield lower danger/false positives but given the classical inertia, if that were the answer, we're not ready to see that deployed until 20 years, and even so ML techniques have generally dangerous error rates.
It would be interesting to evaluate how much deployed in the wild are the ukrainian and chinese and israeli APS systems are though.
and what about hard kill APS for aircrafts/helicos?
As for soft kill APS, well russia is the only to have one widely deployed but Ukraine still manage to destroy T-90s just fine.
beyond the real world production ready-ness/falsepositives issues/safety of hard kill APS, what the manufacturer says is not necessarily objective truth
about the range, the claimed 360 degree coverage, reaction time, etc
especially I suspect many APS are weak and possibly useless against top-down attacking ATGMS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_protection_system#Top_attack_munitions
Overall I am very curious about the future of this technology and we might get answers either by:
studying academic papers/experiments about them
waiting for a china-taiwan war (unlikely)
waiting for a new israel based war (no idea)
waiting for the ukrainian APS system to be deployed or for western countries giving APS to ukraine (e.g. germany supposedly has one)
waiting for the armata systems to see some action in Ukraine, most likely but only if the war last a few years.
But your initial point is wrong, ATGMs have currently and probably for the foreasable future, destroyed tanks economics.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
It only takes one powerful real civilization to create millions, billions of ancestor-simulations. We should conclude that most pre-singularity civilizations exist in simulation.
I wish this argument would be true.
It is unfortunately inept however, have you any idea of the energy and computing power needed to simulate a universe? Have you any idea of the energy and computing power needed to simulate a bottle of water at the atomic level? A single cell ? We can barely exhaustively study quantum systems with more than 2 particles IIRC
The universe has finite resources and the constraints of mathematics are universal or even meta-universal and so is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity your hypothetical aliens must bends to those extreme limits. Even mankind has already mostly reached them, we have extreme diminishing returns everywhere.
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Has any mottizen seen the masterpiece that is Don't Hug Me I'm Scared? If so what did you feel about it? What did you think about it? And what content would you recommend based on this taste?
VoiceOfLogic
1yr ago
Unrelated but his book the art of being right is a great one for learning logical fallacies.
Oversized glasses are one of the many artificial nudge/enhancers one can use.
It is an instance of a supra-normal stimulus
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27203
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32812104344.html?gatewayAdapt=gloPc2fraMsite
I'm intrigued by your gender neutral comment though. Would you see those oversized glasses on a man face?
Close to zero straight men assume that looks currently.
IMO I think it could enhance a man's look although as usual people have a completely broken idea of what a maximally attractive man looks like.
I should definitely come back to that question, I am in complete awe with many things that some people do that are quite ineffable yet charming.
Humans are so awkward, imperfect and so fucking lovely.
The best compliment I've received lately was that some of my comments were so semantically dense it were intensely charming. As a semi-sapiosexual that's indeed one of my compliments lifegoal :)
Once someone was immensely impressed by the fact that I carried a phone without a case.
Relatable, at first I was really stressing about it but actually it's quite trivial to not let ur phone fall.
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