That was incredibly enthusiastic. I object to “foom”, applied to people. I’ve found the advice to actually think about achieving goals, and not just excuse myself with “that’s hard/painful”, actually only moderately effective when executed, so I have a hard time believing that there’s much willpower or genius waiting to be so easily unlocked for others—though of course people more innately talented (and/or presently uncoordinated) than me must exist.
I take quite a few supplements that are supposed to make me smarter, healthier, etc.
I have three models by which I expect increased performance from supplements:
correction of vitamin-like deficiencies (beware U-shaped harm per dose risks); if I were serious about this, I’d be regularly measuring levels in my body.
stimulant/placebo/focus effect—somewhat substitutable for actually caring/trying harder, and possibly with similar long-run physical-stress side-effects.
actually near-linear (in the normal vs supplemented) regimes for availability of substrates/catalysts for ordinary metabolism e.g. turning up acetylcholine (piracetam and friends) - in which case, you always have to wonder—why aren’t our bodies already upregulating these things? If there’s actual fundamental scarcity of certain compounds, we should see significant cultural/local performance advantage from differences in diet.
As a final caution, I know that drugs are capable of drastically affecting emotion and motivation. But I’m not too aware of any that produce results in a person that are amazing to a sober third party. So if you find yourself becoming very excited about some new mental program or drug, the simplest explanation is that it’s unexpectedly effective in generating enthusiasm. Always be testing.
Lol. I assure you, I was not high while writing this.
I’m just enthusiastic about this because, well, you’d be too if you believed human fooming was possible.
In my teens, I had a brush-in with organized religion (it didn’t last). I converted for social reasons, not intellectual ones, but I still felt pretty excited when I believed that the religion’s claims were possible. Excitement-at-belief can mark an affective death spiral, and can seriously impair critical thinking about your belief and its referents. It’s not an expected byproduct—for any person who becomes convinced of, say, human-fooming, and becomes giddy-excited, it should be trivially possible to imagine someone who is also convinced of human-fooming and not giddy-excited, and we should generally expect such a person to be able to make a much better case for the idea, if such a case can in fact be made.
In short, either you’re right and you’ll be much more persuasive once you find your way out of the glee, or you’re wrong and you’ll realize that when you calm down.
That was incredibly enthusiastic. I object to “foom”, applied to people. I’ve found the advice to actually think about achieving goals, and not just excuse myself with “that’s hard/painful”, actually only moderately effective when executed, so I have a hard time believing that there’s much willpower or genius waiting to be so easily unlocked for others—though of course people more innately talented (and/or presently uncoordinated) than me must exist.
I take quite a few supplements that are supposed to make me smarter, healthier, etc.
I have three models by which I expect increased performance from supplements:
correction of vitamin-like deficiencies (beware U-shaped harm per dose risks); if I were serious about this, I’d be regularly measuring levels in my body.
stimulant/placebo/focus effect—somewhat substitutable for actually caring/trying harder, and possibly with similar long-run physical-stress side-effects.
actually near-linear (in the normal vs supplemented) regimes for availability of substrates/catalysts for ordinary metabolism e.g. turning up acetylcholine (piracetam and friends) - in which case, you always have to wonder—why aren’t our bodies already upregulating these things? If there’s actual fundamental scarcity of certain compounds, we should see significant cultural/local performance advantage from differences in diet.
As a final caution, I know that drugs are capable of drastically affecting emotion and motivation. But I’m not too aware of any that produce results in a person that are amazing to a sober third party. So if you find yourself becoming very excited about some new mental program or drug, the simplest explanation is that it’s unexpectedly effective in generating enthusiasm. Always be testing.
Lol. I assure you, I was not high while writing this. I’m just enthusiastic about this because, well, you’d be too if you believed human fooming was possible.
In my teens, I had a brush-in with organized religion (it didn’t last). I converted for social reasons, not intellectual ones, but I still felt pretty excited when I believed that the religion’s claims were possible. Excitement-at-belief can mark an affective death spiral, and can seriously impair critical thinking about your belief and its referents. It’s not an expected byproduct—for any person who becomes convinced of, say, human-fooming, and becomes giddy-excited, it should be trivially possible to imagine someone who is also convinced of human-fooming and not giddy-excited, and we should generally expect such a person to be able to make a much better case for the idea, if such a case can in fact be made.
In short, either you’re right and you’ll be much more persuasive once you find your way out of the glee, or you’re wrong and you’ll realize that when you calm down.