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fortwynt
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Mar 05, 2008
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Location: WV
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 Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Personanongrata wrote: |
Hm. I, on the other hand, am not that concerned with persuading her of anything any longer.
The damage is done. I'll be satisfied enough by her posts, to see that she is still posting. Speaking of which, I hope she does so soon...
Smith! Come rebuke me for being a monster, won't you? Rebuke me for my sociopathic tendencies, and my betrayal of your trust! Make me happy. 
Do you still have that poem I wrote you, for only you? If not, know that it's gone, gone forever.
I stopped the drug dependency, you know. Aren't you happy for me?  I thought for the longest time it would nullify me. |
good point |
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_________________
You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
--Princess Diana of Wales
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop |
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Personanongrata
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:18 pm Post subject: |
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I *did* start smoking again, however.. 
After long & careful consideration, my reasoning was, "fuckit, why not". |
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_________________
__________________________________________
"The obstacle is the path." -- Zen Proverb.
"**ck it, we'll do it live." -- Bill O'Reilly.
"...................................." -- Harpo Marx. |
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fortwynt
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Personanongrata wrote: |
I *did* start smoking again, however..
After long & careful consideration, my reasoning was, "fuckit, why not". |
Well, you definitely wont hear any criticism from me on that one.
I agree with you, "why not".....people are very selective about the evils of cigarette smoking anyway.
We're all f*cked....why not at least enjoy a smoke before it all catches up to us? |
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_________________
You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
--Princess Diana of Wales
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop |
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Personanongrata
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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Fucked? 
You mean there won't be a deus ex machina in the last act?
I want a refund! |
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_________________
__________________________________________
"The obstacle is the path." -- Zen Proverb.
"**ck it, we'll do it live." -- Bill O'Reilly.
"...................................." -- Harpo Marx. |
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fortwynt
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Personanongrata wrote: |
Fucked?
You mean there won't be a deus ex machina in the last act?
I want a refund! |
Let me rephrase....many of us are indeed f*cked, but as for the deus ex machina....well, let's just say I wouldn't give up on it just yet.
that being said...
"In a ham and eggs breakfast, the hen is involved, but the pig is committed"
I think i've found my new signature. |
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_________________
You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
--Princess Diana of Wales
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop |
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Aquarian
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Joined: Oct 25, 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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I do have transhumanist leanings, PNG. I do think there is a chance for humanity to go beyond our current physical limitations, aided by technology that serves the greater good, albeit a common good. I do not believe in supporting technology that aids in the destruction of the Earth and our resources, but I do believe in using technology that will restore the Earth and her splendor. Technology can serve to improve the lives of people; including new developments surrounding nanotechnology that involves using electrodes that will ERADICATE suffering and pain that is hardwired in the brain; restore euphoria; and eliminate any predisposition to anxiety or depression. This will create a better society. Take a look at the subject of smart drugs our society can benefit from:
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Sceptics about nootropics ("smart drugs") are unwitting victims of the so-called Panglossian paradigm of evolution. They believe that our cognitive architecture has been so fine-honed by natural selection that any tinkering with such a wonderfully all-adaptive suite of mechanisms is bound to do more harm than good. Certainly the notion that merely popping a pill could make you brighter sounds implausible. It sounds like the sort of journalistic excess that sits more comfortably in the pages of Fortean Times than any scholarly journal of repute.
Yet as Dean, Morgenthaler and Fowkes' (hereafter "DMF") book attests, the debunkers are wrong. On the one hand, numerous agents with anticholinergic properties are essentially dumb drugs. They impair memory, alertness, verbal facility and creative thought. Conversely, a variety of cholinergic drugs and nutrients, which form a large part of the smart-chemist's arsenal, can subtly but significantly enhance cognitive performance on a whole range of tests. This holds true for victims of Alzheimer's Disease, who suffer in particular from a progressive and disproportionate loss of cholinergic neurons. Yet, potentially at least, cognitive enhancers can aid non-demented people too. Members of the "normally" ageing population can benefit from an increased availability of acetylcholine, improved blood-flow to the brain, increased ATP production and enhanced oxygen and glucose uptake. Most recently, research with ampakines, modulators of neurotrophin-regulating AMPA-type glutamate receptors, suggests that designer nootropics will soon deliver sharper intellectual performance even to healthy young adults.
DMF provide updates from Smart Drugs (1) on piracetam, acetyl-l-carnitine, vasopressin, and several vitamin therapies. Smart Drugs II offers profiles of agents such as selegiline (l-deprenyl), melatonin, pregnenolone, DHEA and ondansetron (Zofran). There is also a provocative question-and-answer section; a discussion of product sources; and a guide to further reading.
So what's the catch? One problem, to which not all authorities on nootropics give enough emphasis, is the complex interplay between cognition and mood. Thus great care should be taken before tampering with the noradrenaline/acetylcholine axis. Thought-frenzied hypercholinergic states, for instance, are characteristic of one "noradrenergic" sub-type of depression. A predominance of forebrain cholinergic activity, frequently triggered by chronic uncontrolled stress, can lead to a reduced sensitivity to reward, an inability to sustain effort, and behavioural suppression.
This mood-modulating effect does make some sort of cruel genetic sense. Extreme intensity of reflective thought may function as an evolutionarily adaptive response when things go wrong. When they're going right, as in optimal states of "flow experience", we don't need to bother. Hence boosting cholinergic function, alone and in the absence of further pharmacologic intervention, can subdue mood. It can even induce depression in susceptible subjects. Likewise, beta-adrenergic antagonists (e.g. propranolol (Inderal)) can induce depression and fatigue. Conversely, "dumb-drug" anticholinergics may sometimes have mood-brightening - progressing to deliriant - effects. Indeed antimuscarinic agents acting in the nucleus accumbens may even induce a "mindless" euphoria.
Now it might seem axiomatic that helping everyone think more deeply is just what the doctor ordered. Yet our education system is already pervaded by an intellectual snobbery that exalts academic excellence over emotional well-being. In the modern era, examination rituals bordering on institutionalised child-abuse take a heavy toll on young lives. Depression and anxiety-disorders among young teens are endemic - and still rising. It's worth recalling that research laboratories routinely subject non-human animals to a regimen of "chronic mild uncontrolled stress" to induce depression in their captive animal population; investigators then test putative new antidepressants on the depressed animals to see if their despair can be experimentally reversed by patentable drugs. The "chronic mild stressors" that we standardly inflict on adolescent humans can have no less harmful effects on the mental health of captive school-students; but in this case, no organised effort is made to reverse it. Instead its victims often go on to self-medicate with ethyl alcohol, tobacco and street drugs. So arguably at least, the deformed and emotionally pre-literate minds churned out by our schools stand in need of safe, high-octane mood-brighteners more urgently than cognitive-tweakers.
One possible solution to this dilemma involves taking a cholinergic agent such as piracetam (Nootropil) or aniracetam (Draganon, Ampamet) that also enhances dopamine function. Some researchers tentatively believe that the mesolimbic dopamine system acts as the final common pathway for pleasure in the brain. This hypothesis may well prove simplistic. There are certainly complications: it is not the neurotransmitter dopamine itself, but the post-synaptic metabolic cascades it triggers, that underlies motivated bliss. Other research suggests that it is the endogenous opioid system, and in particular activation of the mu opioid receptors, that mediates pure pleasure. Mesolimbic dopamine amplifies "incentive-motivation": "wanting" and "liking" may have different substrates, albeit intimately linked. Moreover there are mood-elevating memory-enhancers such as phosphodiesterase inhibitors (e.g. the selective PDE4 inhibitor rolipram) that act on different neural pathways - speeding and strengthening memory-formation by prolonging the availability of CREB. In any event, several of the most popular smart drugs discussed by DMF do indeed act on both the cholinergic and dopaminergic systems. In addition, agents like aniracetam and its analogs increase hippocampal glutaminergic activity. Hippocampal function is critical to memory - and mood. Thus newly developed ampakines, agents promoting long-term potentiation of AMPA-type glutamate receptors, are powerful memory-enhancers and future nootropics.
Another approach to enhancing mood and intellect alike involves swapping or combining a choline agonist with a different, primarily dopaminergic drug. Here admittedly there are methodological problems. The improved test score performances reported on so-called smart dopaminergics may have other explanations. Not all studies adequately exclude the confounding variables of increased alertness, sharper sensory acuity, greater motor activity or improved motivation - as distinct from any "pure" nootropic action. Yet the selective dopamine reuptake blocker amineptine (Survector) is both a mood-brightener and a possible smart-drug. Likewise selegiline, popularly known as l-deprenyl, has potentially life-enhancing properties. Selegiline is a selective, irreversible MAO-b inhibitor with antioxidant, immune-system-boosting and anti-neurodegenerative effects. It retards the metabolism not just of dopamine but also of phenylethylamine, a trace amine also found in chocolate and released when we're in love. Selegiline also stimulates the release of superoxide dismutase (SOD); SOD is a key enzyme which helps to quench damaging free-radicals. Taken consistently in low doses, selegiline extends the life-expectancy of rats by some 20%; enhances drive, libido and endurance; and independently improves cognitive performance in Alzheimer's patients and in some healthy normals. It is used successfully to treat canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome (CDS) in dogs. In 2006, higher dose (i.e. less MAO-b selective) selegiline was licensed as the antidepressant EMSAM, a transdermal patch. Selegiline also protects the brain's dopamine cells from oxidative stress. The brain has only about 30-40 thousand dopaminergic neurons in all. It tends to lose perhaps 13% a decade in adult life. An eventual 70%-80% loss leads to the dopamine-deficiency disorder Parkinson's disease and frequently depression. Clearly anything that spares so precious a resource might prove a valuable tool for life-enrichment.
In mid-2005, a second selective MAO-b inhibitor, rasagiline (Azilect) gained an EC product license. Its introduction was followed a year later in the USA. Unlike selegiline, rasagiline doesn't have amphetamine trace metabolites - a distinct if modest therapeutic advantage.
Looking further ahead, the bifunctional cholinesterase inhibitor and MAO-b inhibitor ladostigil acts both as a cognitive enhancer and a mood brightener. Ladostigil has neuroprotective and potential antiaging properties too. Its product-license is several years away at best.
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More info:
http://hedweb.com/bokowfil.htm |
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_________________
I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? ~Robert Redford, Yosemite National Park dedication, 1985 |
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Personanongrata
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:18 am Post subject: |
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"Transhumanism", "bioethics", "eugenics", whatever the terms used, you are obviously much more of an idealist when it comes to these things than I am, Aqua. I won't knock you for it.
I have to say that I did read your BNW thread, and it was quite a read. In fact, I plan to read it again soon.
I don't claim to know a great deal about such things, but I do know something of human nature. I also know that there is truth in the old saying:
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." |
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_________________
__________________________________________
"The obstacle is the path." -- Zen Proverb.
"**ck it, we'll do it live." -- Bill O'Reilly.
"...................................." -- Harpo Marx. |
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Aquarian
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Joined: Oct 25, 2003
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Location: Miami, Florida 305!
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 1:44 am Post subject: |
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Transhumanism is not eugenics in the sense that its aim is to achieve racial superiority. Unfortunately we have very selfish genes that self-replicate meaningless disease, disability, and affliction. Actually, transhumanism provides a venue by which people have more control over their bodies, reproductive rights, sexual freedom, and the freedom to become posthuman. Technologies that will radically change human life:
Psychopharmacology
Genetic engineering
Nanotechnology
Artificial intelligence
Cognitive science
The convergence of all these
Human Genetic Engineering
Technologies that will fundamentally transform human life:
Corrective somatic engineering
Correcting disease-causing genes
Genetic enhancement
Making someone smarter, healthier, longer lived, than they otherwise would be
Adding aesthetic or novel characteristics
Germline engineering
The manipulation of the genomes of sperm, eggs or early embryos, in ways which are inheritable |
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_________________
I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? ~Robert Redford, Yosemite National Park dedication, 1985 |
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Questioner101
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Joined: Apr 04, 2007
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:15 am Post subject: |
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Lost...(again.) What is Brian the Train?? (sounds like a children's TV program??)
Is everything in media mind-control? Or is it just certain groups of susceptible people affect severely by the programming?? Bred to be susceptible?? (Hitler's Himmler, Mengele, Eichmann, Goebbels, Hess...??)
How does one know one is susceptible?? Or is it a gene malfunction/manipulated mutation?? |
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\\\"I´m disenclined to acquiese to your request...\\\" |
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Personanongrata
B.V. Info Seeker
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Posts: 1912
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:09 am Post subject: |
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| Aquarian wrote: |
Transhumanism is not eugenics in the sense that its aim is to achieve racial superiority. Unfortunately we have very selfish genes that self-replicate meaningless disease, disability, and affliction. Actually, transhumanism provides a venue by which people have more control over their bodies, reproductive rights, sexual freedom, and the freedom to become posthuman. Technologies that will radically change human life:
Psychopharmacology
Genetic engineering
Nanotechnology
Artificial intelligence
Cognitive science
The convergence of all these
Human Genetic Engineering
Technologies that will fundamentally transform human life:
Corrective somatic engineering
Correcting disease-causing genes
Genetic enhancement
Making someone smarter, healthier, longer lived, than they otherwise would be
Adding aesthetic or novel characteristics
Germline engineering
The manipulation of the genomes of sperm, eggs or early embryos, in ways which are inheritable |
Whatever. It still boils down to the creation of a superior human race.
Who decides which traits are "superior" and which are "inferior", and who controls these technologies? |
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_________________
__________________________________________
"The obstacle is the path." -- Zen Proverb.
"**ck it, we'll do it live." -- Bill O'Reilly.
"...................................." -- Harpo Marx. |
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Personanongrata
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:29 am Post subject: |
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| Questioner101 wrote: |
Lost...(again.) What is Brian the Train?? (sounds like a children's TV program??)
Is everything in media mind-control? Or is it just certain groups of susceptible people affect severely by the programming?? Bred to be susceptible?? (Hitler's Himmler, Mengele, Eichmann, Goebbels, Hess...??)
How does one know one is susceptible?? Or is it a gene malfunction/manipulated mutation?? |
Anyone is susceptible. The methods, programs are various.
*sigh* It's complicated. Especially when you factor in tech like directed energy.
Blaine the train, fort referred to, is a character from a Stephen King book. |
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_________________
__________________________________________
"The obstacle is the path." -- Zen Proverb.
"**ck it, we'll do it live." -- Bill O'Reilly.
"...................................." -- Harpo Marx. |
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Questioner101
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 6:02 am Post subject: |
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| Sounds more like Huxley's "Brave New World".....how many here are Alphas, Betas, Deltas???? |
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fortwynt
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 6:56 am Post subject: |
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Questioner...it's interesting you mistook "blaine" for "brian"...TOO interesting even.
Now you have my head spinning. |
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_________________
You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
--Princess Diana of Wales
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop |
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Questioner101
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 9:44 am Post subject: |
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That's what I get for reading too quickly...Blaine the train?? Never read Stephen King so have no clue what or who that refers to...sorry....
His Dujo and Carrie books....just weren't appealing...and the films...blahhhh.... |
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\\\"I´m disenclined to acquiese to your request...\\\" |
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fortwynt
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| Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 9:57 am Post subject: |
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Well THAT EXPLAINS IT...those books are lame.
I started reading King by reading "The STand" then went on from there, and got into the "Dark Tower Series"....stuff before that just isn't all that interesting to me either.
but , to each their own.
Just thought it weird you saw "brian" where I typed "blaine"..I, ummm, know someone with that name, let's say. |
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_________________
You can't comfort the afflicted without afflicting the comfortable.
--Princess Diana of Wales
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
~Aesop |
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