Jordan Peterson thinks it makes sense to compare humans with lobsters

sus

Well-known member
No interest in stanning Peterson but the serotonin thing is legit. The fact that we share our driving hormonal composition/system with crustaceans is nuts, and means something interesting and big is going on. Something you could call the "meaning" of most advanced life. @luka you especially should be interested in this, given the dopaminergics of "training"/teaching/social conditioning
 

sus

Well-known member
Maybe some of this had been said before not sure I can wade into this thread history but
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Jordan Peterson is not part of the culture war. Not deliberately anyways.

he is the living embodiment of the culture war. a real intellectual knows the left is dead and poses no existential threat. I might have said this earlier in the thread actually.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
No interest in stanning Peterson but the serotonin thing is legit. The fact that we share our driving hormonal composition/system with crustaceans is nuts, and means something interesting and big is going on. Something you could call the "meaning" of most advanced life. @luka you especially should be interested in this, given the dopaminergics of "training"/teaching/social conditioning

The search for life having meaning is circular. it always brings you back to the meaning of meaning itself.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
he is the living embodiment of the culture war
yeah I don't recall being involved with this thread whenever it was live

but that's an absolutely wild claim that he's not part of the culture war

it's hard to think of a figure on the right that's been more actively involved in the culture war
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I mean, most everything I've seen from him has been a pretty standard right-wing spiel plus maybe some Jungian bullshit, filtered through a more modern men's rights take

but blaming feminism and (campus) Marxism for everything has been a, if not the, key right culture war trope for decades at this point
 

version

Well-known member
He's a strange man. I watched one of his lectures and he would walk around then get really heated, as though he was confronting a hypothetical assailant. He'd be talking then he'd say something like "And If you approach me at a party and I'm in survival mode... Woof... Boy, you better watch the bloody hell out!".
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
"And If you approach me at a party and I'm in survival mode... Woof... Boy, you better watch the bloody hell out!"
well yeah it's like William Buckley threatening to punch Gore Vidal on live TV

men gotta be real men etc they can't be soft I'll kick yr ass etc. dudes like this are always obsessed with things like that.

like "I'm civilized and refined, but I wanted/needed to, I totally could kick yr ass"

like sure buddy. dudes who are actually hard generally don't need to make a point of telling you that.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
there was a golden past when men were men and women were women and punches were punches

then feminism happened and ruined everything

but Jordan Peterson is still a real man who will punch you in the face if you approach him at a faculty party
 

luka

Well-known member
No interest in stanning Peterson but the serotonin thing is legit. The fact that we share our driving hormonal composition/system with crustaceans is nuts, and means something interesting and big is going on. Something you could call the "meaning" of most advanced life. @luka you especially should be interested in this, given the dopaminergics of "training"/teaching/social conditioning

What's the serotonin thing I don't follow him
 

sus

Well-known member
What's the serotonin thing I don't follow him

That status, social belonging and serotonin are quite possibly tied up. I dunno anything about it either though. He uploaded a paper (by someone else, ostensibly a real scientist) on his website that I don't have time to read and assess https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/docs/434/Assigned_Papers/kravitz.pdf

I read a crazy thing about dopamine the other day check this out

> Dopamine is a neurochemical people commonly associate with pleasure. But dopamine does not actually function this way in biological organisms; instead, it is an error signal. While it may seem like dopamine is analogous to the reward in an RL algorithm, it is not the reward. Instead, dopamine is the TD error.

Echoing Pavlov’s dogs, the book describes a study where researchers (Schultz, Apicella, and Ljungberg, 1993) trained monkeys to associate a light turning on with a reward of a drop of apple juice. They hooked up brain scanners to the monkeys to monitor their dopamine receptor activity.
reinforcement_learning-dopamine.png


CS is where the teaser/signal creates an anticipation of the reward. R is where the reward is actually administered (or not). Check out that huge bump that happens at CS whenever it's given.
 

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Yeah that was the distinction I remember him making, that dopamine was anticipatory and that serotonin was satisfactory, I believe. Watched a whole course-worth of his lectures before I knew who he was.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
> Dopamine is a neurochemical people commonly associate with pleasure. But dopamine does not actually function this way in biological organisms; instead, it is an error signal. While it may seem like dopamine is analogous to the reward in an RL algorithm, it is not the reward. Instead, dopamine is the TD error.

that's extremeley interesting. makes a lot of sense. a source would be useful.

my very own theory is that the use of alcohol and sugar (both especially) but essentially all stimulants is for the purpose of regulating, controlling and suppressing the body's dopamine production rather than stimulating it.

without stimulants - when you let the body's own systems regulate themselves - dopamine production goes absolutely haywire. that's the aim of the non-attachment "technologies" - but it's a perilous state to be in.

there's a relation to vitamin c production - as mammals we are unusal in that we no longer produce vitamin c in our bodies (it's biologically more efficent to outsource it). so we need to get it by eating plants (or by eating animals that have eaten it)
 

Woebot

Well-known member
The abstract: "The neuropsychology of religious activity in normal and selected clinical populations is reviewed. Religious activity
includes beliefs, experiences, and practice. Neuropsychological and functional imaging findings, many of which have
derived from studies of experienced meditators, point to a ventral cortical axis for religious behavior, involving primarily
the ventromedial temporal and frontal regions. Neuropharmacological studies generally point to dopaminergic activation
as the leading neurochemical feature associated with religious activity. The ventral dopaminergic pathways involved in religious
behavior most closely align with the action-extrapersonal system in the model of 3-D perceptual–motor interactions
proposed by Previc (1998). These pathways are biased toward distant (especially upper) space and also mediate related
extrapersonally dominated brain functions such as dreaming and hallucinations. Hyperreligiosity is a major feature of
mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, temporal-lobe epilepsy and related disorders, in which the ventromedial
dopaminergic systems are highly activated and exaggerated attentional or goal-directed behavior toward extrapersonal
space occurs. The evolution of religion is linked to an expansion of dopaminergic systems in humans, brought about by
changes in diet and other physiological influences."
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Bit too dense for the likes of me

it just links dopamine to the religious feeling. it's the "connection" neurotransmitter - cf that old chestnut mrs X experiences a "sense of oneness"

also note that one of characteristic symptoms of prodromal schizophrenia is "excessive interest in religion"

that activities like meditation and sensory deprivation increase the production of dopamine.

and that 99% of anti-psychotic medicines are dopamine antagonists.
 
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