Viagra increases the effect of nitric oxide, which is bad stuff when it gets into cytochrome complex iv in the mitochondria (IIRC). I would personally suspect based on that, that its effects on brain health would be negative in spite of blood flow.
Nitric oxide is a crucial part of the biology of life, especially animals. Viagra does not specifically impact the amount of nitric oxide in the body or the nitric oxide cycle mediated by arginine. It instead enhances the effect of NO in the smooth muscle. I would not worry about nitric oxide in general as it’s crucial for the basic functioning of your body.
2. There's no such thing as increasing "the effect" of such a nonspecific chemical as nitrogen oxide. There's tons of effects, and it increases some of them. Also, can the active ingredient get into mitochondria?
While I can appreciate reasoning about AGI as a purely abstract thing (I loved Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence), it seems out-of-touch to believe it's at all likely to happen. Do these people even use GPT-4? Do they connect the dots of its capital to the dots of its performance, and see how we're already hitting a huge wall? All while losing MSFT cash and routinely failing to do even basic tasks?
I can't help but feel like I'm being marketed to. I've grown to completely distrust anything in this vein, since the reality of the system I see before me is so drastically inferior to how people appear to be reasoning about it. It's not like how a Model-T car differs from a modern one in safety, power steering, and so on -- it feels like an error of categories.
> Do these people even use GPT-4? Do they connect the dots of its capital to the dots of its performance, and see how we're already hitting a huge wall? All while losing MSFT cash and routinely failing to do even basic tasks?
Honestly it's a complete skill issue if you can't get it to "basic tasks". People are out there literally spinning up entire websites and apps in minutes using GPT. There is also no indication at all that we're "hitting a wall". I suppose next you're going to say its glorified auto-complete or a "stochastic parrot"?
Like is this guy completely blind to progress? GPT4 is no better than GPT2? That GPT5 or 6 will have even better capabilities??
And I say in turn, it's a skill issue if your "website" or "app" could be made by a GPT in a few minutes. Is what you're doing actually valuable, then? It consistently fails to solve my problems.
Yeah because only complex websites and apps deliver any value lol. I think you're really just admitting to having very poor creativity. I use LLM's everyday in systems that replace manual business processes. They're delivering clear value in a Multi-Billion dollar company. So again, skill issue.
You've got to extrapolate a bit. I mean 20 years ago AI was fairly rubbish. Now it can beat humans at all board games, and things like GTP4 can beat most humans at things like law exams. At the current rate of progress it'll be quite good in a decade or two.
I wonder if internet access and instant-entry is /necessarily/ a distraction or impediment to deep thought, or it could be stomached to the effect of great productivity with an especially sharpened mind.
It saddens me that the most accessible repositories of information are those that, allegedly, dumb me down.
One thing I've found comically underestimated is books. It's not whether the information is physical or electronic, but what actual corpus of information is available.
There is A LOT of information in printed books that is not on the Internet.
There was a project to put all books on the Internet -- Google Books -- but that famously got tied up in lawsuits.
As a result, if your information diet consists of the Internet and not books, you're missing out.
I occasionally write something "obvious" from a book on my blog, and people are like "wow how did you figure that out" ?
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For what Knuth is doing, he certainly doesn't need to read much on the Internet. Most of it is in books, or at the Stanford library (or whichever library he goes to).
He's probably so busy with books that the Internet seems UNINTERESTING.
If you want access to newer publications, the Internet is more efficient, but those are also available to the library. (Sadly, Scihub is the best source for those without university access.)
So yeah I'd say 3 main repos of knowledge are: the open Internet, printed books, and Scihub, and many people today only use the first one.
I've been getting deep into computer graphics recently, and having a handful of in-depth books on the subject has been immensely helpful. I don't have to spend time scouring terrible google results for answers when I don't even know the question
As an aside, ThriftBooks has been amazing for increasing my collection! I;ve gotten so many books for cheap
Yeah exactly, on top of the library, I buy old used books online, and they're dirt cheap, and dense with knowledge
No ads lol!
It's honestly sad to me when I see people scrolling through terrible web pages with tiny morsels of information, which are often "interested" or wrong.
Internet provides first class access to third class information.
Just a couple days ago I was seeking some information relating to my "Intro to DSP" course at uni. After an hour combing through a bunch of unclearly stated and poorly answered questions on various stackexchange subsites and SEO-optimized hellholes, I just libgen'd a book my professor's textbook cited and found my answer in a couple minutes.
The question was how the phases add or subtract when looking at a phase graph of a cosine wave modulated DFT transform, not exactly rocket science.
It seems like the internet has dumbed down to the point where its front page is very surface level and always requires additional research assistance in the form of SearxNG, AI chats, or turning to less SEO prone engines like marginalia or even wiby to get good and honest results. I don't think adapting to human toxic environments like the current internet is a good model for the future, when we already have the tools to filter the wheat from the chaff.
Most deeply technical (and not computer-related) topics on Wikipedia have only one or two technical authors. They give you a view of the topic that is not particularly objective or complete.
My experience is that its mostly an impediment, see socializing here instead of thinking deeply.
But I've also used the internet to great effect when getting up to speed on a research topic because I had lots of access to high quality texts and tools (citation manager for tracking, spreadsheet for glossary of terms). Notably that didn't involve any communications, just searches.
Added sugar is not necessarily problematic, but consumption of anti-thyroid substances like high amounts of PUFA (especially seed oils), chlorine, bromine, fluoride (in absence of iodine) can make it so, by way of increasing energy supply which is not properly consumed. Industrial pollutants like PFAS and hexane byproducts also play a role.
There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive" -- it's good for you! It's an obscenely easily digestible source of energy, whose products are used very easily by the cells. In the case of fructose, its consumption is relatively more insulin-friendly than the glucose-heavy starches. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose.
Seriously "addictive" sugary foods are psychologically problematic usually for other reasons. Pure cane sugar is not very addictive when consumed alone. Try it.
I think this is an example of proportionality bias. There's a cognitive bias that big effects (obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc) must have big and complex causes.
In reality, sugar is just straight-up bad in anything resembling the quantities we eat it, and we should not. It's addictive because there's very little of it in nature and it's high energy density. Therefore it makes sense to seek out. In our synthetic world, we can make as much as we want and eat it whenever we want.
The reward system exhibits unconstrained positive feedback.
As a counter-example there are tons of things that 'feel good' but are destructive, like opioids and cigarettes. Things that are addictive aren't de facto good for you. In fact they're usually very bad for you because they overload your reward feedback network.
It is not much different than high fructose corn syrup.
"Sucrose is composed of 50% glucose and 50% fructose, whereas the forms of HFCS used in most foods and beverages are typically composed of 55% fructose and 45% glucose "
Where are you getting the idea that fructose is the sugar people consider harmful? That's definitely not mentioned in your supporting link - yes, HFCS and sucrose are the exact same to within a rounding error - except that HFCS is pre-digested corn starch, while sucrose requires enzymatic decomposition before it can be utilized by your body - a rate-limiting step after consumption.
Fructose just the principal sugar in fruit, and is used by diabetics as a sweetener. It has to be enzymatically decomposed in the liver, and doesn't yield a large insulin spike. The only particular risk is of non-alocoholic fatty liver disease if you consume way too much of it.
The point I was making in my reply was exactly what you said - there's no real difference between sucrose and HFCS, while the parent was implying there was. So at least on that we agree.
there's no difference between HFCS and sucroseWhere are you getting the idea that fructose is the sugar people consider harmful?
"Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin."
> There's a very good reason why sugar is so "addictive"
Sugar on its own isn't addictive and isn't a necessary nor sufficient ingredient for hyperpalatability. Foods can be hyperpalatable without sugar, and in fact most (~70%) hyperpalatable foods have their hyperpalatability driven by fat and sodium:
> The availability of HPF in the US food sysltem has expanded substantially over the past 30 years. The current US food supply is highly saturated with HPF, which our findings indicate comprised almost 70 % of available foods as of 2018. The growing availability of HPF over time, particularly HPF high in fat and Na, may have resulted from the reformulation of existing food products in the food system to be hyper-palatable. Thus, expanding HPF availability may be one key contributor to the obesogenic food environment in the US. Given potential consequences for population health, policy-level action is needed to address the presence of HPF in the food system. Policy may focus on limiting the nutrient thresholds allowed in foods to be below HPF thresholds (e.g. foods should contain <25 % kcal from fat and <0·30 % g from Na).
Agreed entirely. Even more glycemic foods than sugar (which is only half glucose), are not a metabolic problem. I started eating pasta, white bread, and white rice and have been able to lose weight. People on this very forum will tell me that what I do is impossible, but I'm done taking the advice of bots and people who aren't fit. I am downright skinny now. Go ahead and downvote my post, after all HN is an echo chamber full of IYIs and shills, is it not?
Graduating from college in December, looking for an entry-level job. Interested in Backend and Systems. I consider myself self-motivated and a quick learner.
Location: Boston, Massachusetts. Soon to be back in New Haven county, Connecticut.
Remote: Yes, and strongly preferred.
Willing to relocate: Leaning against, I would like to stay near family. I would need a very good reason to relocate.
Technologies: Linux (for hosting, as a daily driver), NixOS, Docker, Python (incl. FastAPI, Flask, Django), C/C++, SQL. Also have experience in Rust, Java, mild Web frontend.
It makes sense given that systems programming is more in the realm of cathedrals like Universities, whose whole M.O. to begin with is having you do free work, underpaid work, or even pay to do work
Seeing as I cannot control all the software I have on my computers, I just gave up.
Everything in $HOME that I care about is in ~/my. $HOME itself is anarchic, and that's okay with me. I have better things to do than micromanage this.
